Respawn has seemingly nerfed Wattson's electrified fence in Apex Legends.

As spotted and shared by Twitterer LilakeyLK, it looks as though the latest season has not only introduced a new Legend and competitive mode Arenas, but it's also made a tweak to one of Wattson's key defences... with an emphasis on "fence".

Previously, running into Wattson's fence would slow down an opposing player, but now it looks as though the slowdown and corresponding stun has been removed, essentially making the fence useless (thanks, PCGN).

Read more

This week, Microsoft boss said games are evolving into "metaverse economies". But what does this mean, and how will it impact our favourite games? It's the main topic of discussion during this week's Eurogamer News Cast!

In the video below, Eurogamer reporter Emma Kent, news editor Tom Phillips and me run through the week's headlines and dig a little deeper into the details.

First up, we talk about PlayStation's stunning financial performance, and the amazing sales success of the supply-constrained PlayStation 5. PlayStation just had its best ever year - despite not being able to meet demand.

Read more

If you somehow missed it, earlier this week Respawn unveiled some massive changes coming to Apex Legends in its upcoming Legacy season - the biggest being a new permanent game mode called Arenas. Set to run alongside Apex's standard battle royale matches, Arenas has been described as the "first step" in moving Apex Legends beyond battle royale. And as it turns out, the first pitch document for Arenas was inspired by Auto Chess: a pretty surprising choice given that battle royales and auto chess, erm, aren't particularly alike.

It all made me wonder what sort of wacky experiments Respawn is carrying out behind the scenes, and what we could potentially see next. Could it be single-player modes, co-op, gauntlet runs? So I decided to put this question to Respawn in an interview with chief operating manager and Apex Legends general manager Dusty Welch, and game director Chad Grenier. It seems that the Apex Legends team is keen to venture further into areas such as PvE - and pointed to previous Apex experiments as an example.

"We dipped our toes in a PvE mode a few seasons back with quests," Grenier said. "And the team certainly loves to make that kind of content. A lot of our team comes from a single-player background... we made the single-player campaign in Titanfall 2.

Read more

Apex Legends' ninth season, Legacy, is a bit of a big 'un; alongside map changes to Olympus and a new 3v3 arenas mode, it introduces a brand-new hero in the form of "winged avenger" Valkyrie, who's now been detailed more thoroughly ahead of Legacy's launch on 4th May.

As revealed in developer Respawn's recent Stories from the Outlands video, Kairi "Valkyrie" Imahara is the daughter of Titanfall 2 antagonist Viper. By the time we meet her in Apex Legends, Valkyrie has fashioned herself a fancy jetpack using the flight core from her father's Titan, Northstar, to honour his memory - and it's this that informs most of her unique abilities.

Valkyrie's passive ability, for instance, comes in the form of VTOL Jets, which give her the power of flight for as long as the fuel tank holds out (although, luckily, it'll refill over time). That's accompanied by Valkyrie's Missile Swarm tactical ability, which can target a specific area and fire off a barrage of mini-rockets capable of damaging and disorientating opponents.

Read more

Server issues have always been a bit of a hot topic within the Apex Legends community, with players highlighting problems with lag, code:net errors and - more recently - DDoS attacks on ranked servers. To address all these concerns, Respawn has now published a developer deep dive aiming to "demystify" some of the problems, and explain what the team is doing to address them. You might want to put the kettle on, as this one's a long read.

Written by lead engineer Samy "Ricklesauceur" Duc, the blog post notes that Respawn has made some changes to how it tracks server issues. The introduction of a performance display in Season 6 meant players could report their problems more accurately, and Respawn also began tracking key performance metrics for players and servers. In recent seasons, Respawn also used a data science team to systematically analyse performance data. But despite all this, Duc said this approach means Respawn can still be slow to fix problems.

"From the moment you start noticing problems, it may take us up to two weeks to find a fix, and even more to deploy the solution if it requires a server patch," Duc said. "We can do better. We will do better. So let's talk about solutions."

Read more

We've seen some pretty high-profile cases of cheating in ranked Apex Legends recently - the ongoing problems with DDoS attacks being just one example - but today a spectacularly cruel example of teaming has popped up on the Apex Legends subreddit. One poor soul was betrayed by their squadmates and used by another team to farm kills: effectively trapping them in an endless death loop.

Reddit user "MohSSEEZZ" posted a clip of a diamond ranked game in which their random squadmates stood by and allowed them to be brutally murdered by another team. At this point MohSSEZZ's teammates collected their banner, respawned them, and allowed them to be murdered by the other team once again.

MohSSEZZ said they were killed and respawned three times before eventually deciding to leave the ranked game. The reason why this is particularly bad is that Apex Legends penalises you for leaving a ranked game early, so MohSSEZZ had to choose between an infinite death loop or taking an abandonment penalty. It seems they eventually decided on the latter, and MohSSEEZZ said they "got a ban for leaving the game [because] I didn't wanna give them more points".

Read more

Well, it sure looks like that Arena mode leak from last year was correct, as the latest trailer for Apex Legends' new season has dropped - and it's teased something called "Arenas".

Following on from the reveal of new legend Valkyrie, the Legacy Launch trailer shows the usual cast of legends fighting their way through various combat situations, before Ash (a simulacrum pilot from Titanfall 2) bids viewers welcome to "the legacy of the Apex Predators" known as "the Arenas".

A phrase that the trailer description and developers are currently repeating is going "beyond battle royale", which director Chad Grenier initially told me in an interview for the launch of Season 7.

Read more

It's been quite the week for video game news! Thankfully, Eurogamer news editor Tom Phillips, reporter Emma Kent and me are on hand once again to dig deeper into the biggest stories. It's the Eurogamer News Cast!

Undoubtedly, the headline story of the week was Sony's dramatic U-turn on its decision to shut down the PlayStation 3 and Vita stores. But, we ask in the video below, is this decision simply delaying the inevitable?

Elsewhere, we chat about the free-to-play games actually going free-to-play on Xbox, after Microsoft this week ditched the Xbox Live Gold requirement for the likes of Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone. To be clear: I do not actually think Phil Spencer forgot Microsoft still required a Gold sub to play free-to-play games on Xbox. That was a joke. A hilarious joke.

Read more

Apex Legends has released a new Stories from the Outlands video to introduce its latest legend, Valkyrie, confirming that titans are coming to Apex Legends. Or at least, a chunk of one is.

The lore video "Northstar" introduces Kairi "Valkyrie" Imahara, daughter of Titanfall 2 antagonist Viper. The animation tells the story of how she experimented with flying a titan at a young age, and had to be bailed out by her father when she accidentally steered herself into battle. IMC commander Kuben Blisk also makes an appearance, and gets his whisky glass shot for his troubles.

The video ends with a shot of Rampart modifying the remains of Viper's Northstar titan for Valkyrie, which will be the focus of the new legend's abilities. The image shared on Respawn's website suggests the modified titan will provide Valkyrie with missiles and some form of aerial manoeuvrability. A date of 4th May also appears at the end of the video, which is the confirmed start date for the new season.

Read more

Buckle up, Titanfall fans - "a ton" of Titanfall-flavoured content is coming to spin-off battle royale, Apex Legends.

During a panel at BrownGirlGamerCode, Apex's senior writer, Ashley Reed, hinted that the studio was working "to integrate Titanfall" into future updates, as "Titanfall's very much a part of the universe".

Apex's game director, Chad Grenier, went a little further, too, confirming that Apex would host some "really cool stuff" we might recognise from Respawn's critically-acclaimed shooter series.

Read more