The game, a follow-up to Tribes: Ascend, is being developed by a studio that was originally founded under the umbrella of Hi-Rez studio, which originally worked on Tribes: Ascend before it moved on to other titles. Prophecy Games has since gone on to become an independent studio.

Details on the game are currently quite sparse aside from a few screenshots released on the game’s Discord channel. Going by these screenshots, however, it looks like the new Tribes game will follow tradition in being a movement-focused multiplayer shooter with unique weapons.

One of the core things that set the Tribes games apart from its contemporaries, as well as to many modern multiplayer shooters, is its emphasis on fast-paced movement with massive maps featuring team-based game modes like Capture the Flag.

The new Tribes title seems to be under development on PC.

Starting December 6, subscribers of PlayStation Plus Essential, Extra, and Premium will get free access to Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Biomutant, and the newly-announced Divine Knockout (DKO), a new platform fighter that’ll be available via the service at launch.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition in particular is a solid offering, so subscribers who haven’t yet played BioWare’s beloved trilogy will have the chance to go it a go. Meanwhile, Divine Knockout’s Founder Edition will be on offer to subscribers, which will also include bonus content.

That, of course, means that PS Plus subscribers have until December 5 to claim November’s free games, which includes Nioh 2.

Announced through a post on the game’s Steam forums, as part of the shooter’s year 2, Hi-Rez is implementing a feature called Simulmedia, which pretty much boils down to players watching ads in-game to earn additional reputation points. Hi-Rez Studios has attempted to assuage doubts in regards to this feature, saying that it is completely optional, and players have to opt-in by clicking a button on the game’s home screen.

“If you do not want to opt-in, you will never see an ad and your Rogue Company experience will be the same as always,” the developer adds. “We will never add forced or unskippable ads to Rogue Company.”

Each ad viewed will award the users with 75 reputation points, and the feature is currently only available on PC (not on Switch), with the game’s PS5 version getting it soon.

There’s no shortage of free multiplayer online titles nowadays, but as the saying goes, the more the merrier. Today sees the launch of another game into the sphere in Rouge Company. While the game has been running for awhile now, it’s now free-to-play and to try and stake its claim in the virtual shooter space.

Rogue Company has been available to play via purchase of the Standard or Ultimate Founders Packs that included some extras, but now the game has gone into open beta and is free-to-play (you can still purchase the Founders packs if you want the bonuses, however). The game sees two teams of four square off in either deathmatch or objective-based modes. You chose your character as well as buy your gear and weapons before combat. Alongside the beta launch is also a new character, Dahlia, and you can see her introduction below.

Rogue Company is now in open beta for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch and PC.

Hi-Rez Studios’ free to play battle royale title, Realm Royale launched for consoles – namely Xbox One and PS4 – back in August of last year, and the developers had stated their intention to enable cross-play for the title long ago. In a new update, they have now confirmed that cross-platform capabilities have finally been enabled in the game across Xbox One and PC.

That includes not only cross-play, but also cross-progression, so you can have a unified progression across Xbox One, Steam, and Discord. Notably missing is, of course, the PS4. Hi-Rez Studios have, in the past, publicly called out Sony for allegedly playing favourites with which games they allow cross-play for, but Sony have gone on to deny any such favouritism. Hopefully that means that cross-play being enabled for Realm Royale on the PS4 as well is more a matter of “when” than “if”, but it’s hard to say either way for sure right now.

You can check out more details on the latest update in the video below.

We’ve seen a whole lot of developers begin to call Sony out on the favouritism they are allegedly exhibiting when it comes to allowing developers to implement cross-platform play with other consoles on PS4. While Fortnite and Rocket League both allow it, Sony’s original announcement was careful in stating that they would only allow “select” games to have the functionality.

And yet, in an interview with Game Informer, PlayStation boss Shawn Layden seemed to refute any such claims, suggesting that Sony does not play favorites, and any developer who wants to implement the feature in their game simply needs to apply with their PlayStation account manager.

“We got to that place in Fortnite and it seems to be going reasonably well, from what I can tell,” he said. “The Rocket League light up will happen soon. People keep saying, “Why doesn’t Sony allow more people to have it?” We’re open for business on this one. All it takes is for publishers and developers who wish to permission it. As ever, just work with your PlayStation account manager, and they will walk you through the steps that we’ve learned through our partnership with Epic on how this works. I don’t believe right now there is any gating factor on that. I think they’re open to make proposals, because the Fortnite thing worked pretty well.”

Someone is very clearly not being entirely upfront in this situation. Sony’s original update on this matter explicitly stated that they will only allow select third party games to enable the functionality, so either the policy changed recently (in the wake of Fortnite’s success with this program, as Layden seems to suggest), or he himself isn’t that familiar with how his company is handling the functionality. Whatever it is, I hope all parties involved figure this thing out soon, so that we can start seeing more cross-platform play in future games.

While Sony allows full cross-platform play in some games on the PS4, such as with Rocket League and Fortnite, they aren’t letting every developer who wants to implement it do it either, unlike Microsoft or Nintendo. We already saw the developers of War Thunder, Gaijin Entertainment, call Sony out on playing favorites with doling out permission for cross-platform play recently. Now, it seems Hi-Rez Studios, the developers of Smite, Paladins, and Realm Royale, are joining in, too.

President Stewart Chisam recently posted a tweet calling Sony out on exactly this on Twitter. For people who believe there are no tangible benefits to a feature like that, Chisam also posted several that his company’s games saw once cross-platform play between Xbox One and Switch was implemented, including a reduction in wait times and bad matches for players.

On the whole, I stand with these developers on this issue—cross-platform play is the future, and Sony needs to just stop picking and choosing who it lets implement the feature.

https://twitter.com/schisam/status/1093887667190808576?s=21

Xplay improves match quality in multiplayer games. When we added crossplay between Paladins Xbox and Switch:
>> Wait time reduced 30%
>> Level spread between players down 40%
>> 40% reduction in ELO std deviation per match
>> 80% reduction in "Bad" matches (by our internal defn)

— Stewart Chisam (@schisam) February 8, 2019

Paladins was originally supposed to get cross platform play with a previous update, but the feature was apparently pushed to January (that is, this month). However, now, it seems to have been pushed further. In an update on the official website, Hi-Rez Studios, the developers of Paladins, announced that the feature, which will combine PC, Xbox One, and Switch player pools, is still not ready to roll out.

The reason cited for the delay is a “focus on polish”, by which I assume it’s still not working fully as intended. Paladins players, however, can expect full voice chat, cross platform friends list, and cross platform matchmaking, as well as cross platform progression, in the future, with an announced Update 2.02 (though, it is to be noted that cross progression will be for Xbox One and PC only for now)–though for now, we don’t have any release date for this update, either.

Paladins is out now on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

With Fortnite paving the way for full cross platform play across PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, PC, and mobile, you might expect other games to follow in its footsteps, but so far, none of them have. In fact, the latest addition to the cross platform play family, the free to play hero shooter Paladins, got crossplay enabled today via an update—but not for PS4.

It’s cross platform play has been enabled for Nintendo Switch, PC, and Xbox One. This means that if you are playing on the PS4, you now effectively have access to the smallest pool of players. That said, this should not come as a surprise to anyone, because the developers of Paladins have explicitly called Sony out on their stance towards cross platform play previously (comments made after Fortnite was enabled for full cross platform play, that is).

Hopefully, whatever the issues are that are holding up the activation of cross platform play on the PS4 side of things get resolved soon. You can see part of the patch notes for the newest update below.

GENERAL BUG FIXES

• Fixed an issue that allowed players to select a non-saved loadout if the match popped while they were constructing it.
• Fixed an issue where Lian’s Lounge Emote did not include her chair.
• Fixed a text error with the Jenos Squidbert skin.
• Corrected the Death Stamp order on the Profile Equip menu.
• CC reduction now reduces percent effectiveness of slow instead of duration.

ITEMS

Haven is now properly reducing damage from the following abilities:

• Buck – Net Shot
• Maeve – Pounce
• Ash – Shoulder Bash
• Lian – Grace
• Zhin – Spite
• Strix – Flare
• Talus – Blitz Upper
• Khan – Commander’s Grab

MAPS

Fixed various Warder’s Gate collision issues, one of which could result in players falling through the floor of the map.

Cross platform play in some capacity or the other has been a thing for over a decade now. But it was only with first Rocket League, then Minecraft, and finally Fortnite, that it became a major consumer expectation across the board. Fortnite, especially, being the most popular game in the world, and available on every platform, really helped push cross platform play, to the extent that it was the first game that Sony, the last holdout in the cross platform play stakes, ended up enabling it for.

Speaking with PCGamesN at HRX, Hi-Rez Studios, the folks who brought us Paladins, games that are available across many platforms and have cross platform play to some degree in all of them, spoke about the cross platform play initiative. General manager Chris Larsson specifically singled Epic Games and Fortnite as being the spark that gave rise to the cross platform play flame.

“Epic kind of did a favour for everyone,” he said. “I don’t think Epic wanted cross-play for its own financial gain. It was really to provide a better experience for its players, and I think that in the industry as a whole, that’s going to be a benefit for everyone. Without Epic, we would not be close to cross-play in its current state. It’s only since Fortnite kind of pushed for cross-play that providers have really started to embrace it.

“If you allow people to move their content freely between different platforms, you could lose some people. But at the same time, you may gain a lot of people, and also goodwill on top of it.”

Hopefully, what Epic Games started continues on with more and more games in the future. Fortnite is available on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android; Paladins is available on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.