Hardsuit Labs has apparently undergone layoffs following Paradox’s decision to remove the team from working on Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2. The news hasn’t been confirmed by Hardsuit, but several developers have shared news of their departure on social media. Last week, publisher Paradox Interactive announced that Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 has been delayed again, this time out of 2021. Furthermore, developer Hardsuit Labs would be replaced as the primary developer on the game going forward. While the full scope of these decisions are still unclear, one apparent consequence has been a series of layoffs at the studio. While these reports indicate the layoffs primarily hit Hardsuit’s narrative department, other roles appear to have been impacted as well. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/06/13/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-damsel-trailer"] Several members of Hardsuit’s narrative team have shared news of the layoff on their personal Twitter accounts. One former employee shared, “I’ve been laid off from my position as a narrative designer at Hardsuit Labs - alongside the rest of the narrative department (and many others).” Others, including producers and QA also appear to have been a part of the layoffs. In a statement last week, Paradox thanked Hardsuit Labs for its work on Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 for its work up until this point. “The studio has done a tremendous job in laying the foundations for the game and we hope that you, the community, will also appreciate their contribution to Bloodlines 2,” says Paradox. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/03/22/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-reveal-trailer"] Along with the previous delays that moved Bloodlines 2 out of 2020, the Creative Director left the development team in 2020 and the Senior Narrative Designer also left that same year. There is currently no replacement release date for Bloodlines 2, nor has Paradox named a successor studio to take over the project. IGN has reached out to Hardsuit Labs for comment. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt T.M. Kim is News Editor at IGN.

Actors Hugh Grant and Sophia Lillis are joining the cast of Paramount’s upcoming Dungeons & Dragons film, Deadline reports.

While plot details on the film have been kept tightly under wraps, Deadline’s sources say that Grant will play the story’s antagonist. Grant, a longtime staple of British cinema and romantic comedies, is coming off the well-received HBO series The Undoing, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

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It’s currently unknown what character will be played by Sophia Lillis, who starred as Beverly Marsh in 2017’s It remake and It Chapter Two. Lillis has also previously starred in 2020’s Gretel & Hansel, HBO’s Sharp Objects, and Netflix’s I Am Not Okay With This.

[caption id="attachment_2481308" align="alignnone" width="720"] NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 11: Sophia Lillis attends the 2019 Glamour Women Of The Year Awards at Alice Tully Hall on November 11, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/WireImage,)[/caption]

The pair are joining previously confirmed actors including Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Detective Pikachu's Justice Smith, and Bridgerton’s Rege-Jean Page. Former Marvel Studios executive Jeremy Latcham is attached to produce for eOne. Spider-Man: Homecoming's Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley are attached to direct.

Dungeons & Dragons is currently slated to release on May 27, 2022, having previously been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/monk class for IGN.

This week in Red Dead Online, claim special Collector bonuses, including Double Role XP for discovering new Collectibles in Free Roam, and much more.

Nacon, publisher of The Sinking City, has denied developer Frogwares' claims that Nacon bought a copy of The Sinking City, altered it to include Nacon logos, and reuploaded the game to Steam to sell to customers without Frogwares' permission. In a post to Steam today, Nacon said that the version of The Sinking City published on Steam under its name is "an official and complete version," and that the only issue with the release is a lack of Steam-specific features such as cloud saving and achievements -- a problem it attributes to a "lack of cooperation" with Frogwares. This comes in response to a blog post yesterday from Frogwares attesting that while a legal battle over whether Nacon has the rights to publish The Sinking City was underway in French courts, Nacon purchased a copy of the game from Gamesplanet, altered certain elements such as splash screens and logos to make it appear as though the game was licensed to Nacon, and then reuploaded it to Steam as an official version. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/06/25/the-sinking-city-review"] The Sinking City was first removed from multiple storefronts back in August 2020, with Frogwares saying at the time that the publisher had breached its contract with the developer, stopped providing owed payments, and tried to mask the involvement of Frogwares in the versions of the games it was licensed to distribute. The dispute, which also involves a number of other similarly-published Frogwares titles such as the Sherlock Holmes games, has gone before French courts. A decision is still pending. First launched in 2019, we reviewed The Sinking City at launch and found the game compelling in its storytelling, though clunky in certain mechanics such as open-world travel and combat. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Scientists are creating "smart tattoos" that use the technology in TVs and phone screens to make tattoos glow. And scientists say there are applications for glowing tattoos that go beyond just cool looks. The report, from Advanced Electronic Materials and reported by SciTech Daily, says the tattoos are temporary and are placed by taking the OLED tattoo paper and pressing it against the skin with a wet cloth. The smart tattoos are easily removed by scrubbing with soap and water. While these tattoos will undeniably make for some great Halloween costumes and cosplay, scientists point to more practical uses that can greatly help people. When combined with other "tattoo electronics," athletes can use light-emitting tattoos to detect when they are dehydrated or when they're about to get sunburnt. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="442"] An OLED tattoo, which is about 2.3 micrometers thick or less than 1/400 of 1 millimeter. Credit: Barsotti – Italian Institute of Technology[/caption] "The tattooable OLEDs that we have demonstrated for the first time can be made at scale and very cheaply," Professor Franco Cacialli, the senior author of the paper, said. "They can be combined with other forms of tattoo electronics for a very wide range of possible uses." Cacialli points to medical uses for smart tattoos that can make breakthroughs in the fight against cancer. "In healthcare, they could emit light when there is a change in a patient’s condition – or, if the tattoo was turned the other way into the skin, they could potentially be combined with light-sensitive therapies to target cancer cells, for instance," Cacialli said. The OLED tattoos are approximately 2.3 micrometers thick or, as SciFi Daily puts it, 1/400 of a millimeter. The researchers successfully used the technology to make a green light glow on glass, paper, plastic, and an orange. The tattoos can also be placed on fruit or food packaging to detect when they are expired, according to SciTech Daily. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2016/06/06/top-10-gadgets-we-wish-were-real"] In other science news, scientists have taught an AI to beat Pitfall on Atari and discovered that humans can fall into black holes. NASA also recently landed the Mars Rover on Mars and hid a message inside the parachute that the internet decyphered. Anybody in a sci-fi mood can check out IGN's list of the best sci-fi movies on Netflix or the top 10 gadgets from games, movies, and TV that we wish were real. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-sci-fi-movies-on-netflix&captions=true"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN.

The ongoing conflict between Justice League actor Ray Fisher and WarnerMedia and DC Films continues to grow. In a tweet posted Tuesday morning, Fisher accused former DC Films co-president Geoff Johns and producers Toby Emmerich and Jon Berg of “racially discriminatory conversations” focused on his character of Cyborg in Justice League.

“When it comes to matters involving race, I always try to give the benefit of the doubt to those who may be ignorant of their own biases,” Fisher wrote, saying he received information about the conversations from individuals who witnessed them firsthand. “But when you have studio executives (particularly Geoff Johns) saying ‘we can’t have an angry black man at the center of the movie’ -- and then those executives use their power to reduce and remove ALL black people from that movie -- they are no longer entitled to any benefit associated with doubt.

“[WB head] Toby [Emmerich], Geoff [Johns], and [WB co-president of production] Jon Berg were not ignorant of their biases,” Fisher continued. “They understood full well that the racist rhetoric they chose to entertain in those meetings was offensive, discriminatory, and unacceptable. Furthermore, they dared not speak those things to me, nor any black person associated with the film. Instead, they chose the cowardly route of gaslighting -- complete with extremely problematic requests such as asking me to ‘play Cyborg like Quasimodo;’ and forcing a scene to be reshot so they could highlight the existence of Cyborg’s penis.”

You can read Fisher's entire statement below:

Please Read.

A>E pic.twitter.com/C6PjkBLlDE — Ray Fisher (@ray8fisher) March 2, 2021

Fisher continued his post stating that while Geoff Johns was not credited as a co-writer on Joss Whedon’s reworking of Justice League, he was an “enforcer” of race-based discrimination during conversations with Emmerich and Berg. Fisher also reiterated his position that DC Films president Walter Hamada owes an apology to those individuals who participated in the investigation of workplace toxicity on the set of Justice League.

Hamada and Fisher were thrust into the spotlight following Fisher’s accusations against director Joss Whedon, who took over for Zack Snyder following his departure from the original project.

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WarnerMedia and DC Films dispute Fisher’s allegations, citing a third-party investigation that found no misconduct and no interference from Hamada, whom Fisher has accused of protecting Johns. This lead Fisher to state he would never participate in any project associated with Hamada in the future. WarnerMedia said the investigation resulted in “remedial action,” but failed to specify against whom. And we learned from Zack Snyder that Cyborg's storyline had been reduced when he left the project, something he hopes to remedy with the upcoming Zack Snyder's Justice League. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/22/zack-snyder-wasnt-paid-for-the-snyder-cut-and-hasnt-seen-joss-whedons-justice-league-ign-news"] Whedon has since stepped down from directing HBO’s The Nevers series, citing the COVID-19 pandemic. HBO is owned by WarnerMedia. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.

A line about grief from the latest episode of Marvel’s WandaVision on Disney+ has stirred up quite a bit of fan debate online, so IGN asked series director Matt Shakman to offer some insight on the original intention behind the line. Warning: full WandaVision spoilers ahead! [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=wandavision-all-the-marvel-and-tv-easter-eggs-in-every-episode&captions=true"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] The line in question--"What is grief, if not love persevering?"--comes in Episode 8 as Agatha Harkness takes Wanda on a supernatural trip down memory lane to unearth the source of the Hex. One pitstop in Wanda's memory of Avengers HQ shows her opening up about the loss of her brother Pietro, who was killed by Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Vision consoling her with one of his many philosophical musings on life.

Wanda: It's just like this wave washing over me again and again. It knocks me down and when I try to stand up, it just comes for me again. And I can't... It's gonna drown me.  Vision: No. No, Wanda. Wanda: How do you know? Vision: Because it can't be all sorrow, can it? I've always been alone so I don't feel the lack. It's all I've ever known. I've never experienced loss because I've never had a loved one to lose. What is grief, if not love persevering?

While the line about grief was received earnestly by some who expressed how they could relate to what Vision said, it wasn’t long before those with an opposing view began to heavily criticize the line, and now the line has completed the full Internet Discourse Cycle by becoming the basis for a viral meme. Shakman explained how the line about grief and the scene where it is delivered was so significant to Wanda’s life. “[Episode 8] was so important because it pulls back the curtain on what the whole story has been all season, and hopefully folks can go back and look at episodes one, two, and three in a new light now. This is a story about love, it’s about loss, it’s about grief, it’s about how we move on from loss, something I think we all know too much about in general, but especially this year of the pandemic,” Shakman told IGN in an interview. “And so everything that we’ve done so far, even silly live-audience sitcoms in the ‘50s, is fueled by Wanda’s loss and about how she’s trying to find solace from that loss. So that’s what the Avengers HQ scene is really about. “And it’s also about [Wanda and Vision’s] connection. We’ve seen them together, they’ve been quite charming together making paprikash, we’ve seen the highs and the lows, but this is the moment where they really come together. This is the moment where [Vision] provides the solace that she needs, a way forward, and that line [about grief] is quite beautiful. But it’s also made especially beautiful by the line before it, as well, when Wanda articulates what loss is like to her and he is able to give her a way forward. He is able to show her that love is the way through that. He is quite a wise person, Vision. Even though he’s not human, he seems to be more human than any of us. He has some of the best lines in the MCU, I think that one [about grief] written by [WandaVision writer] Laura Donney is gorgeous.” Stay tuned to IGN for the full interview with director Matt Shakman. For more on WandaVision, check out how that little Monica Rambeau moment is a big setup for Captain Marvel 2. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/24/how-wandavision-sets-up-captain-marvel-2"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joshua is a Senior Editor and Producer of Features at IGN. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Star Wars are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.

Epic Games has officially acquired Tonic Games Group, the development company behind Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. Epic shared the news while also confirming, "your gameplay isn’t changing and Epic will continue to invest in making the game a great experience for players across platforms." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/08/06/fall-guys-ultimate-knockout-review"] Furthermore, Epic has said, "your favorite colorful beans will still stumble through the chaos on PC, PlayStation, and soon Nintendo Switch and Xbox." Mediatonic also announced the news with a FAQ that is set to answer some of the biggest questions regarding the future of Fall Guys. Alongside revealing that the Fall Guys team has already grown from 35 to 150, Mediatonic promised that "your gameplay isn't changing" and that this acquisition will help them bring a ton of features already seen in Fortnite and Rocket League, other games owned by Epic. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/17/fall-guys-ultimate-knockout-nintendo-switch-trailer"] These features include account systems, cross-play, squad vs squad modes, and more. While Mediatonic mentioned Fall Guys will continue to remain on Steam, it had nothing more to announce regarding a possible move to a free-to-play model. As to why Mediatonic chose Epic, the developer said they've been "mutual friends for a while" and that the team has "a lot in common and share a lot of the same goals." "It’s no secret that Epic is invested in building the metaverse and Tonic Games shares this goal. As Epic works to build this virtual future, we need great creative talent who know how to build powerful games, content and experiences," Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-and-worst-reviewed-games-of-2020&captions=true"] Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is in the middle of its third season and has recently begun teasing season 4, which is titled Fall Guys 4041 and appears to have an '80s sci-fi theme. Fall Guys has been a runaway success since it launched last year, even becoming the most downloaded PlayStation Plus game of all time. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Ratchet & Clank is currently available for free for PS4 and PS5 owners.

Mike Mignola's name may be synonymous with Hellboy, but he's far from the only creator to work in this iconic horror universe. Mignola's career and pop culture influence are the subject of a forthcoming documentary called Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters. Drawing Monsters is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter, though the film has already earned several times its funding goal within the first 24 hours. One of the Kickstarter tiers includes a portfolio set featuring art prints drawn by various Hellboy veterans. Along with a new image by Mignola himself, that creative lineup includes artists Dave Stewart, Laurence Campbell, Duncan Fegredo, Alex Maleev, Fábio Moon, Mike Norton, Paolo Rivera, Craig Rousseau, Tim Sale and Ben Stenbeck. IGN has an exclusive preview of that portfolio set. Check out the slideshow gallery below for a look at the process art for four of these prints, including rough pencils, inked versions and finished, colored images. It's a unique opportunity to see how Hellboy and his world are given life by these talented artists. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=how-4-superstar-artists-bring-hellboys-world-to-life&captions=true"] Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters is co-directed and produced by ECCC founder Jim Demonakos and Clockwork Girl director Kevin Hanna. The film features behind-the-scenes footage of and interviews with Mignola, along with interviews featuring American Gods creator Neil Gaiman, Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar, Victor LaValle (The Ballad Of Black Tom), artist Tara McPherson and comic book creators Vita Ayala, Duncan Fegredo, Fábio Moon, and Joe Quesada. Production on the documentary is currently underway, with the directors aiming for a Spring 2022 release. “There’s already eighty hours of footage in the can that we have shot over the last year and a half,” said Hanna in a press release. “This is an ambitious in-depth documentary to celebrate Mignola’s legacy in style.” Mignola fans won't have long to wait for his next project. Hellboy: The Quarantine Sketchbook collects a number of charity sketches Mignola drew in 2020. The book releases in comics shops on March 3 and bookstores on March 16 .with proceeds benefitting Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen. Mignola is also hard at work expanding his *other* shared horror universe in 2021. Tales From the Outerverse is a new trio of miniseries set in Mignola and Christopher Golden's Baltimore/Joe Golem universe. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/04/10/hellboy-review"] While Dark Horse continues to publish new comics set in the wider Hellboy/BPRD universe, the core Hellboy saga reached its dramatic conclusion in 2019 with the release of BPRD: The Devil You Know #15. Find out why we think the Hellboy saga is an unprecedented accomplishment for Mignola and his collaborators. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.