Lost Ark is already one of Steam's biggest-ever games, overtaking the likes of Apex Legends and Among Us in peak concurrent users, even before it goes free-to-play later this week.

Per SteamDB data, the game's peak concurrent users currently stand at 532,476, placing it sixth in Steam's all-time list behind only New World, Cyberpunk 2077, Dota 2, CS: GO, and PUBG. Incredibly, it hit that number within 4 hours of going on release as a paid game, even though it will become free-to-play on Friday.

That sheer influx seemed to be causing some problems initially, with users reporting connectivity issues and increased queue times that prompted developer Smilegate to open another North American server shortly after launch:

In response to increased queue times, we have opened up a new server on NA East (Karmine).

The team will continue to monitor server queues and make additional adjustments if necessary.

— Lost Ark (@playlostark) February 9, 2022

Lost Ark is an MMO / ARPG with isometric action similar to the Diablo games, featuring 15 playable classes, a cinematic story-led campaign, and co-op PvE combat. It was released in South Korea in 2019 and later in Japan and Russia, with a North American and European release finally arriving this week.

As you'd expect, the game is also seeing massive viewership on Twitch with SteamDB reporting a peak of more than 1.2 million people watching on its early access launch day.

A key to the game's streaming success may be in the free items given to Lost Ark players for watching gameplay. Content creators with early access participated in the Legends of Lost Ark launch event that had them compete to unlock Twitch Drops for viewers.

Twitch users, for every four hours watched, can unlock a Battle Chest Item, an Arkesia Paper Hat Chest, a Helgaia Pet Chest, and a gold Neugier hoverboard mount until February 28 - the incentive made possible by Twitch's owner Amazon also funding the game's western release.

Lost Ark will officially launch as a fully free-to-play game on February 11 at 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern / 5pm UK (that's February 12 at 4am AEDT).

In our preview for the game, we said Lost Ark's combat is "very, very good, combining the best elements of MMOs and ARPGs," and there's "a sense of wonder surrounding this game that has us greatly excited."

Lost Ark marks Amazon's second major gaming success after the launch of New World - which sits in fifth place on Steam's peak concurrent users lists - after it became Steam's most played game of 2021 just a day after it was released.

New World's popularity also brought problems however as Amazon had "alarms going off" for months after the release, as it was forced to double servers, and fix other issues such as gold exploitation and crashing.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus has received its first post-launch patch, which has helped fix a glitch that made the Pokémon Cherrim incredibly difficult to catch.

Version 1.0.2 of the game was released on February 8 and "fixed an issue that sometimes made it difficult to catch Cherrim" alongside a handful of other minor bugs.

Players may have expected Arceus and the other legendary Pokémon to be among the hardest to catch but Cherrim, while easy enough to beat, often refused to stay in its Pokéball.

I have been fighting this Cherrim for like half an hour. I've thrown >50 ultra balls with no success. Am I losing my mind? pic.twitter.com/7KCHt0vavK

— zippyzap (@zippyzapps) February 8, 2022

As Pokémon Legends: Arceus encourages catching the same Pokémon over and over, Cherrim certainly proved a problem as it sometimes refused to be caught even after dozens of attempts.

Cherrim's unique ability allows it to change form depending on the weather - its flower opens if it's sunny and closes if it's not - but the glitch seemingly dropped the Pokémon's Catch Rate to zero if it changed forms even once.

Following the patch. however, many users are now reporting that the elusive Cherrim can now finally be caught as expected.

The full patch notes can be seen here:

• Fixed an issue where, while offline, the screen could freeze after trying to pick up a lost satchel by throwing out a ball that contains a Pokémon.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes made it difficult to catch Cherrim.
• Fixed an issue where a certain event would not occur during a particular Mission, preventing the scenario from proceeding as intended.
• Fixed an issue where players could obtain certain Pokémon twice instead of once only as intended, prohibiting the player from obtaining other certain Pokémon. The relevant Pokémon will appear for players who were unable to catch those certain Pokémon due to this issue.

IGN said Pokémon Legends: Arceus was "good", and "an ambitious revamp that successfully revolutionizes the defining Pokemon experiences of catching and battling, but is unfortunately set in a drab, empty, and at times tedious world."

The merger between Nvidia and Softbank's chip business, Arm, has reportedly fallen apart due to regulatory and competition concerns. This decision came after Nvidia's board meeting on Monday. If it had been successful, the merger would have given Nvidia much more power in the chip industry.

In a new report from the Financial Times, SoftBank and Nvidia decided to stop pursuing the deal between them because of the regulatory hurdles that came with completing the transaction. Executive management at Arm has been changed due to the deal collapsing. CEO Simon Segars has been replaced by Rene Haas, who was previously the president of Arm's intellectual property group.

SoftBank will receive a fee of 1.25B and said that it would be looking to seek an initial public offering of Arm before the end of the next fiscal year in March 2023. It's currently unknown whether Arm will list itself in New York rather than London, as its headquarters are located in the UK.

With its base of operations in the UK, British politicians viewed Arm as a strong asset to have in the country. A British competition review was even extended due to concerns about national security because of the company potentially being listed outside of the UK.

However, Nvidia tried to assuage the anxieties of British politicians by saying that it would be able to financially help Arm expand into new markets. Softbank reportedly wants to list Arm in New York because it would have a higher valuation than the UK.

Some big tech corporations, such as Qualcomm and Microsoft, were against this merger because they relied on Arm's chip designs. Nvidia would have gotten first rights to Arms technology if the merger had been approved.

The deal between Arm and Nvidia was announced in September 2020. Recently, there have been shortages of semiconductor chips globally, as gaming companies like PlayStation and Nintendo have reported that the production of consoles has slowed down as a result.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey

Nothing old is safe, not even a beloved green clay-man.

THR reports Fox Entertainment has bought the rights to Gumby, the 1950's stop-motion animated character, from Joseph Clokey, son of Gumby creator Art Clokey. The deal includes all characters from the Gumby universe, including his horse pal Pokey.

Fox plans to "reimagine" the green character through multiple live-action and animated productions. Fox also plans to stream past Gumby series on its Tubi streaming service, plus develop new merchandise, including NFTs.

“Competition for globally recognized intellectual property is fierce. Uncovering this gem, with its built-in awareness and affinity, and bringing it to Fox, adds meaningful value and creative possibilities to the IP itself and to multiple divisions of our company,” said Fox Entertainment CEO Charlie Collier. “Fox is proud to be home to these iconic characters. Welcome one and all.”

"Uncovering" might be a generous term to use for resurrecting a beloved kid's property that multiple generations still remember fondly. Gumby debuted to American audiences in the early 1950s on kid's program Howdy Doody, rocketing to success and multiple series airing on NBC through the '50s and '60s.

In the '80s, Gumby experienced a revival thanks in part to comedian Eddie Murphy's SNL parody of the character and the success of home video purchases. Eventually, Gumby reruns aired on both Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. Gumby is commonly regarded as a landmark television series for its stop-motion animation.

Since selling much of its IP to Disney, Fox has acquired Bob's Burgers animation studio Bento Box and MaraVista Entertainment, acquired TMZ, and entered a new production studio partnership with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.

Credit: NBC/SNL

Sony is beta testing some new customization features for PlayStation 5 users based on feedback from the players. The new software beta is kicking off tomorrow, and it includes new party chat options, game base enhancements, accessibility options, and UI features.

As announced on the PlayStation Blog, Sony detailed the new features coming to the console. First, Sony said there are new changes to the Parties system on PS5. Players will now be able to start an open party, which all of your friends can see and join, or a closed party exclusively for players you invite.

PlayStation 4 players will also be able to control individual voice chat volume for every person in a party, which is already a feature on PS5.

Sony is also making changes to the Game Base, which is the PS5 menu where you set up parties, invite friends, and see messages. Now, it will be divided into three menu tabs: friends, parties, and messages. PlayStation says this should give players faster access to find what they're looking for.

As for UI features, you'll be able to sort your game collection by genre. Previous sorting options were limited to alphabetical order and recently played games.

There's also an option to keep up to five games and apps locked to your home screen, so they don't get pushed off the page if you haven't opened them recently.

Another big change is a new voice command feature that's getting a limited test release in the U.S. and U.K. With this, you can open games, apps, and settings using the built-in microphone on the PS5's DualSense controller. Players will launch the voice command option by saying "Hey, PlayStation!", much like how you start a voice command on your iPhone or Google Home. You can turn off the voice command feature at any time in system settings.

Keep in mind, these settings aren't rolling out to every PS5 user just yet, only to players who make it into the beta. In other news, PlayStation recently integrated Discord, allowing users to connect their accounts to their consoles.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant

The Oscar nominations for 2022 are officially here, which means that it's also Oscar snubs season. As is tradition, a number of 2021's most notable films and creators were left off this year's list, with Dune director Denis Villeneuve and Spider-Man: No Way Home among the omissions that raised eyebrows on social media.

Villeneuve was not among those nominated for the Best Director category, which featured Steven Spielberg (West Side Story) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza). His absence was striking in light of Dune picking up 10 nominations, including one for Best Picture. While not always the case, movies nominated for Best Picture generally get packaged with a Best Director nod.

Fans and industry observers were quick to note Villeneuve's absence from the Best Director category.

How is it even possible Denis Villeneuve was not nominated for Best Director for DUNE? #OscarNoms

— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) February 8, 2022

"How is it even possible Denis Villeneuve was not nominated for Best Director for DUNE?" The Game Awards founder Geoff Keighley tweeted, echoing the sentiments of a number of critics on the platform.

Some compared the snub to Inception, which also garnered a Best Picture nomination in 2011 while Christopher Nolan was snubbed for Best Director. Both films stand out due to their strong creative direction and visual aesthetic, which have typically been credited to their directors.

"This is a technically brilliant, visually amazing movie with a top-notch cast and deep sci-fi concepts," Scott Collura in IGN's Dune review, observing that Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic had previously been considered virtually un-filmable due to its sprawling scope and unconventional pace.

Vanity Fair called Villeneuve's snub "shocking," but argued that it could also "galvanize" the film's Best Picture hopes.

Voters and moviegoers already liked Argo, a lot. But it was in a tight race against Lincoln and Life of Pi. Blowback over Affleck's snub was just a little extra wind in Argo's sails, helping it pull ahead. And on Oscar night, Affleck did indeed collect the best picture trophy. What does this mean for Dune? Well, it's hard to engineer a campaign around sympathy; seek that sentiment and it immediately evaporates. But if a sense of “Denis was robbed" evolves naturally and authentically, it can be a powerful, invigorating force. If enough people—if enough voters—are scratching or shaking their heads over Villeneuve's absence, it could lend a little momentum to Dune in a year where there isn't already an established frontrunner.

Villeneuve himself didn't specifically address the snub, but he did talk about pancakes while saying that the Dune team had an "amazing morning."

"Here is a trick for all filmmakers on Oscar nominations morning. At the very last minute before announcements, make pancakes. It helps with the stress," Villeneuve wrote in a statement thanking the Academy. "Second, make sure you put enough eggs in the preparation, our pancakes were a disaster."

Dune already has plenty of momentum even without Villeneuve being nominated for Best Director. Apart from Best Picture, it was nominated for awards in the Best Costume Design, Best Sound, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, and Best Visual Effects categories. One way or another, Dune should clean up on awards night.

"...Second, make sure you put enough eggs in the preparation, our pancakes were a disaster.”

Full statement: pic.twitter.com/X1JwjgBaQf

— John Jurgensen (@johnjurg) February 8, 2022

Spider-Man and Lady Gaga also snubbed

In the meantime, there were plenty of other snubs, with Lady Gaga for Lead Actress (House of Gucci) and Spider-Man: No Way Home for Best Picture both drawing attention. Spider-Man's omission was notable but not surprising — out of all the superhero films released to date, only Black Panther and Joker have been nominated for Best Picture. Even a permanent expansion to include 10 nominees hasn't been enough to get more comic book movies in the mix. Spider-Man did earn a nomination for Best Visual Effects.

Among the films that did make the cut, Power of the Dog led the way with 12 nominations. West Side Story and Belfast received seven nominations each.

The Oscars will take place on March 27. While you wait, check out our list of the best reviewed movies of 2021.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN

America's Army: Proving Grounds, the video game used as a recruitment tool for the United States military, will shut down on March 5 after more than 20 years on various platforms. As first reported by Vice, It will be delisted from Steam and PSN, and online matches will cease to be hosted. Offline and private matches will still be available.

America's Army is a first-person shooter released in 2002 and developed and published by the U.S. Army. The game was explicitly designed to encourage American citizens to join the United States military, and represented the United States' government's first major use of video games as a recruitment tool, as well as being a free-to-play game long before such a term became standard practice in the video game industry.

America's Army released in three major iterations throughout the years, updating content and gameplay for an audience of 20 million players. Proving Ground was the latest version, released in 2013.

"The free-to-play America’s Army PC Game represented the first large-scale use of game technology by the U.S. government as a platform for strategic communication and recruitment, and the first use of game technology in support of U.S. Army recruiting," a forum post announcing the shutdown said. "Three mainline titles and more than 20 million AA players later, the series’ original purpose continued. There have been over 30 million objectives completed, 180 million successful missions accomplished, 250 million teammates assisted, and many more in-game achievements attained in AA:PG alone."

The America's Army team said it will "shift our focus to other new and innovative ways to assist the Army with comms and recruitment," and promised "future announcements" for the series, suggesting it will return in some fashion.

Released in a time when support for the United States military was at an all-time high in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, America's Army quickly became a popular attraction, reaching nine million total players by 2007. As a first-person shooter, it resembled Counter-Strike or Rainbow Six's militaristic themes, but also included mechanics that reflected the real-world.

Its status as a recruitment tool made it controversial, particularly among those who opposed the Iraq War. It was a common sight at game events in the early-to-mid 2000s, with recruitment officers on hand to demo it for interested players. In 2007, Iraq War veterans protested an America's Army showing while chanting, "War is not a game."

Twenty years after release, public support for the military is actually waning, according to a 2021 survey by the Ronald Reagan Institute. In the years since America's Army: Proving Ground has launched, the military has found new, often controversial ways to recruit young adults and engender a familiarity with the military from a young age, such as Twitch streams and official esports teams.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.

Bandai Namco announced Tuesday that it plans to develop an "IP Metaverse" for its library of games, and is spending 15 billion yen (or 130 million USD) on the project.

First reported by VideoGamesChronicle, the three main goals of the metaverse project include connecting Bandai Namco with fans of their games, enhancing the value of Bandai Namco's IP, and connecting each IP's world into an interconnected universe known as the "ALL BANDAI NAMCO concept."

Bandai Namco also plans to invest 25 billion yen (or 216 million USD) to "maximize IP value" through new IP creation, "groupwide IP projects," and innovation.

The metaverse is a popular term in the tech and entertainment world for a persistent virtual world where people can interact with one another and various brands. Several major companies and brands are rushing to get in on the idea, including Disney, Epic Games, Microsoft, Facebook, and Square Enix.

"Through the IP Metaverse, we will establish communities among Bandai Namco and fans, as well as among fans themselves," Bandai Namco shared on its mid-term plan presented to investors. "Through these communities and content, we will build deep, broad, multifaceted connections that continue for long periods of time, and we will focus on the quality of those connections. In this way, we will work to maximize IP value over the medium to long term."

Bandai Namco's library of IP includes the Dark Souls and Elden Ring franchises, Pac-Man, Gundam, Dragon Ball, Soul Calibur, Katamari, as well as its library of classic games like Dig-Dug and Galaga.

"One of our strengths is the ability to foster connections with both digital elements, such as games and the metaverse, and physical elements, such as amusement facilities," Bandai Namco said.

The 15 billion yen will go towards developing something called the "data foundation (data universe)" and "development of content."

Bandai Namco concluded its mid-term plan by stating that realizing the metaverse concept is one of its three primary strategies for its digital business unit.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.

Four items in Demon's Souls on PlayStation 5 seemingly remain undiscovered, despite the game being released more than a year ago – but a prominent dataminer says they may be completely unobtainable.

Lance McDonald, who's previously revealed secrets from Bloodborne, P.T., and God of War, tweeted that he knows the items exist in the game code but doesn't know how to obtain them, or if it's possible at all.

In the tweet (below), Mcdonald said, "Bluepoint Games added a number of new items to the Demon's Souls Remake that still remain undiscovered."

"If I knew how to get them myself, I would," he said in a follow-up. "I just know they exist in the data. If we ever get a PS5 jailbreak, maybe I'll be able to figure it out, but for now all I know is there's four undiscovered items, and what they're called."

Bluepoint Games added a number of new items to the Demon's Souls Remake that still remain undiscovered.

— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) February 7, 2022

Speaking to IGN, McDonald didn't reveal exactly how he came to know of the items, or what they're called, but did speculate that developer Bluepoint Games may have simply chosen not to include the items in the final game at all.

He said: "They could have created the items completely and chosen not to actually make it possible to find them. I have no way to know at the moment.

"Bluepoint added many new items, such as gold coins, ceramic coins, the penetrator armour, grains. All of these have been well documented and some were incredibly hard to find at first. There are just four more I know of that no one knows how to access."

None of the Bluepoint's added items made a significiant difference to the original fabric of Demon's Souls, interesting though they were. Gold and ceramic coins offer mild, temporary boosts and can be traded to certain NPCs for other items. Grains offer temporary resistance to fire, and most of the other new items are also basic consumables.

The biggest change is the inclusion of the Penetrator armour set that can only be obtained after trading ceramic coins for a special key, and then unlocking a door behind a hidden wall tucked away in an early level, that itself had fans stumped for weeks.

Fans have speculated that the hidden items may be another armour set, given that armour in Demon's Souls is made up of four items. As the Penetrator set is hidden in such an intricate and fiddly way within the game, it wouldn't be a huge surprise if the missing items simply hadn't been found yet.

McDonald said "it's hard to say" whether these items are discoverable or completely off limits. "I don't know much about how Bluepoint feel about messing with the flow of games they remake," he said. "I think it's 50/50."

When McDonald spent three months trawling through Bloodborne files in 2018 he found a number of unused assets within the game code including characters, enemies, and objects, meaning it's entirely possible that a similar situation applies here.

That being said, FromSoftware's Hidetaka Miyazaki - the man behind the Souls games and Bloodborne - only confirmed that players had rinsed Dark Souls of all its secrets after four years, so even if the items did exist in Demon's Souls it may be a while before they're found.

Demon's Souls was originally released in 2009 and started FromSoftware on the path of its difficult but rewarding RPGs, adding Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and soon Elden Ring to that lineage.

Like the original, IGN said Demon's Souls on PS5 was "amazing", because "a touch of smart quality of life changes and gorgeous visuals go a long way in modernizing this tough PS3 classic."

Elden Ring, like its predecessors, will also be wrought with secrets but IGN already has you covered with our evolving guide that will cover everything from dungeons, to bosses, to the best loot.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.

The Batman star Robert Pattinson has revealed that he spent a lot of time on set dressed as Batman, even in his downtime – which meant he did everything from reading to making music in costume.

During an interview with GQ Magazine, the 35-year-old actor revealed how he would unwind on the set of The Batman. It's kind of an amazing image.

“I’d be in the tent just making ambient electronic music in the suit, looking over the cowl,” he said. “There’s something about the construction of the cowl that makes it very difficult to read books, so you have to kind of almost lean forward to see out of the cowl.”

Who would have thought that Pattinson's Batman would have something in common with fellow composer-in-a-cowl, LEGO Batman?

The grueling shoot, which took 18 months to complete, took place in pandemic conditions. Pattinson described the set, on the outskirts of London, as a “bubble within a bubble.” And after the crew built him a tent to decompress between takes, it looks as though he spent a lot of his time in the batsuit.

“The nature of the shoot was so kind of insular,” he said. “Always shooting at night, just really dark all the time, and I felt very much alone. Even just being in the suit all the time. You’re not really allowed out of the studio with the suit on, so I barely knew what was going on at all outside.”

Thankfully, it seems he’s pleased with the end result. Inspired by the Zodiac Killer murders, this new Batman movie apparently edges more towards horror and detective fiction than previous films.

“I watched a rough cut of the movie by myself,” he said. “The first shot is so jarring from any other Batman movie that it’s just kind of a totally different pace.”

“It was what Matt was saying from the first meeting I had with him: ‘I want to do a ’70s noir detective story, like The Conversation.’ And I kind of assumed that meant the mood board or something, the look of it,” he explained. “But from the first shot, it’s, Oh, this actually is a detective story. And I feel like an idiot because I didn’t even know that Batman was ‘the world’s greatest detective’; I hadn’t heard that in my life before—but it really plays.”

“Normally, when you see Batman, he arrives and beats people up,” he added. “But he’s having conversations, and there are emotional scenes between them, which I don’t think have been in any of the other movies.”

Robert Pattinson stars as The Batman alongside Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Colin Farrell as The Penguin, and Paul Dano as The Riddler.

The Batman is directed by Matt Reeves, based on a screenplay he co-wrote with Peter Craig.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.