Electronic Arts recently came under fire for how much money the company pays to its top executives. An activist investor group, CtW, called out the gigantic sums that EA's top management is paid, asking for other investors to vote against a proposal regarding compensation.The EA annual meeting of stockholders took place on August 6, and in a rare move, the investors overwhelmingly voted against the proposed pay packages for EA's executives. Federal documents show that 170.9 million votes were cast against the proposal, with 59.6 million in favor.While the proposal for EA's executive compensation package was rejected, all of EA's top directors were elected again, as you can see in the chart below.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Assassin's Creed Valhalla was first revealed back in April with a cinematic trailer, which showcased the male version of protagonist Eivor as he warred against the British. Now, a new version of that same trailer has been released, featuring the female form of Eivor, so fans of that design can see and hear her in action.The trailer is otherwise identical, beat for beat, in terms of action and dialog. Only the character and the background music have changed. You can watch it below.This new trailer is called the "Official Soundtrack Cinematic Trailer," and when Ubisoft announced it on Twitter they highlighted the fact that it features a remix of the main theme instead of the presence of female Eivor.A rumor sprang up recently that Eivor was originally conceived as female-only, but that internal pressure changed that. The game's narrative director, Derby McDevitt, has refuted these claims. Interestingly, Valhalla will let you switch Eivor's gender at any point in the game. This all comes in the wake of multiple accusations against Ubisoft staff of creating and fostering a hostile work environment. Valhalla's creative director Ashraf Ismail stepped down from Ubisoft following multiple accusations of infidelity, and he's one of many. Here's some further reading on the recent firings and policy updates at Ubisoft:Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Yet another SpongeBob TV show spin-off is in the works. In addition to Kamp Koral, Nickelodeon is moving forward with a second show focused on SpongeBob's dim-witted best friend, Patrick.The animated show is called The Patrick Star Show, according to Deadline. Bill Fagerbakke is returning to voice Patrick in the show, the report said. Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

FIFA 21 is releasing this year as a cross-generation title, coming not only to the PS4 and Xbox One, but also the PS5 and Xbox Series X. The game, which has been largely developed under COVID-19 restrictions, will add new features and tweaks, as is standard--but it won't feature cross-play.The FIFA Direct Communication Twitter account confirmed that you won't be able to play across consoles or generations, meaning that, for instance, PS5 players can't play against PS4 players. Whichever console you play the game on, your online opponents will be limited to whoever else is playing on that console.You won't be able to play across console generations or cross-play in #FIFA21. However, you will be able to carry over your FUT progression from PS4 to PS5 and Xbox 1 to Xbox Series X. https://t.co/mUqU3zcAud — FIFA Direct Communication (@EAFIFADirect) August 10, 2020Progression, however, will carry across--at least in the FIFA Ultimate Team mode. Start the game on this current gen and you'll be able to continue your Ultimate Team journey on your new system if you buy one. If you buy the game for PS4 or Xbox One, you can get a free upgrade to the next-gen version once it releases. You'll need to stick to the same console manufacturer to get that upgrade, though--you can't upgrade from PS4 to Xbox Series X, for example.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The beta for Marvel's Avengers gives players a more expansive look at the game than anything we've seen so far, but it's not a complete one. Though the beta provides a sense of the game's characters, story, teamwork-focused gameplay, combat, and loot chase, it's still only a sample of all those things. What we've seen gives a general sense of how the game will work (as well as some of the hidden secrets of Marvel's Avengers), but leaves out some specifics.Apparently, there's a lot more to building your Avengers and assembling your team than the beta shows off. As Crystal Dynamics studio head Scot Amos and Avengers game designer Lauryn Ash explained, thinking about the characters you're building and how they'll work together, either as AI companions or on teams with other human players, is a big part of the experience. Only a small sample of that shows up in the beta, but expect a whole lot more complexity in character interactions in the full game.At first, it comes down to your characters' customization and specialization through their skill trees. The beta includes a few short, truncated skill trees for each character, but it sounds like there are a lot more skills that will appear in the full game. When you customize your characters, you'll be thinking about how they handle combat with abilities that allow them to tank more damage or focus on more ranged combat, while also figuring out how you want them to support their teammates.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

A closed beta for NHL 21 is coming soon. EA Sports has announced that registrations for a closed technical test for this year's professional ice hockey game are now open.You can visit the sign-up page here to get started. An EA Account is required, and you must select your platform of choice (PS4 or Xbox One). Those who are selected will receive an email with further instructions on how to access the closed beta test, which is scheduled to begin in the "coming weeks."The fine print also points out that progress, achievements/trophies, and other data will not carry forward to the full release, which is normal and expected. The page also warns that players accepted into the beta may find bugs and other issues due to the in-development state of the game.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Another major celebrity has been diagonosed with COVID-19, but thankfully it sounds like they're doing okay. Antonio Banderas, who received his first Oscar nomination earlier this year for Pain & Glory, announced the diagnosis on his 60th birthday.In a tweet made in Spanish, and translated by Variety, Banderas said that while he has been diagnosed with the potentially deadly virus, he has little reason for serious concern. "I feel relatively good, just a little more tired than usual, and am confident that I will recover as soon as possible following medical instructions that I hope will allow me to overcome the infectious period that I am suffering," he wrote."I will take advantage of this isolation to read, write, rest, and continue making plans to begin to give meaning to my 60 years, to which I arrive full of enthusiasm," the actor continued. "A big hug to everyone.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Mediatonic's whimsical battle royale game Fall Guys is the latest craze in gaming, and the fervor around the title is extending beyond gaming circles.The NHL's Washington Capitals put out a tweet asking for the developers to add hockey skins to Fall Guys. They created a mock-up showing a blue jelly bean character wearing a Capitals jersey, along with a helmet and skates. KFC's gaming Twitter account also asked for a special skin for Colonel Sanders. You can see both of the mock-ups below.Other brands, including Clash Royale and the Get Well Gamers UK charity, also chimed in to call on Mediatonic to release special skins for the game. Clearly, there is a lot of demand for special skins in Fall Guys, and it'll be interesting to see how Mediatonic responds in time.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Raphael Colantonio, who founded studio Arkane and worked on classics like Arx Fatalis, Dishonored, and Prey, went indie after leaving the studio in 2017. His new studio, WolfEye Studios, will debut their first game Weird West next year. Now, in an interview with PC Gamer, Colantonio has explained why he left the studio he created, and the benefits of going independent.Colantonio says that the risk of development is offset, at least partially, by the studio's independence, saying that "what's at stake is a little lower" than it was with Arkane's bigger offerings. "We can take more risks, and we are less worried about the market than we would be if we were doing a AAA game," he says. "Because the numbers to recoup a AAA game, you're talking about numbers that are so high that, then you're not making a game anymore, you're making a product."This is a large part of why he left Arkane. "My dream when I started Arkane in '99 was to make Underworld for the rest of my life," he says, referring to Ultima Underworld, a series that hugely influenced his work. Following Prey, he felt a creative anxiety over what he was working on, and says he was "so tired in general".Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Fortnite's new Joy Ride update has brought a lot of silliness to the battle royale. Players are taking the newly added cars seriously--with some running their own in-game gas stations to fill up enemy cars and provide healing items before sending them on their way. It's wholesome and a brief break from the carnage and chaos that Fortnite usually emphasizes. "Thank you to this random Summer Drift [player] that protected me and helped me so I could fill up cars," said u/PokeStarChris42 on Reddit, who had been running his own gas stop in-game. "And thank you for avenging me when I died.""Excellent service, 10/10 would fuel up again" from r/FortNiteBRA number of players have started to run their own filling stations by surrounding the in-game ones with walls (except for an entrance and exit to drive through), loading up their enemies cars with gas after they drive up, and even giving out healing items to make sure they have a safe drive. Everyone wants to enjoy driving around the map--no one likes getting destroyed when they're pumping gas. If you're into that sort of thing, we won't judge.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The year is 1996, the place is World Championship Wrestling (WCW). With the New World Order, made up largely of former WWE stars, reigning supreme, WCW Nitro took the ratings lead over WWE Raw--a streak it would hold onto for 83 weeks. In that time, WCW regularly boasted about trouncing its competition in the ratings. After all, when you're the king of the wrestling mountain, why wouldn't you want to talk about it? That said, wrestling fans know how this story ends. WCW ultimately falls apart, with a long list of reasons for its downfall, from ego to a corporate merger. The story remains the same, though: For all of its non-stop bragging, the company lost.Fast forward to 2020 and there's something intriguing happening on Wednesday nights. When All Elite Wrestling (AEW) launched in October 2019, it looked to be an exciting alternative to WWE's programming. And, thankfully, in many respects, it is. Many of the wrestlers are interesting and new, having not appeared in a major role in WWE before--from the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega to Private Party and Orange Cassidy. However, as time goes by, AEW seems to be borrowing more and more tactics from WCW's playbook, and it's starting to get grating.This is most evident with the TV ratings. Pretty regularly since its debut, AEW has topped WWE's NXT in the 18-49 TV rating demographic, the one typically seen as the most important factor to TV advertisers. For the majority of its existence, the company hasn't let that become much of a factor in its storylines. After all, WWE doesn't tout when it beats AEW--which would largely be seen as punching down--so what good would it do for AEW to start doing so?Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

With coronavirus raging and a bona fide live game hit on its hands, it seemed likely Activision would drop teasers for its next Call of Duty game within the structure of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone. Now it appears that's happening, as a mysterious new message introduced in Season 5 looks like something out of Black Ops. We could very well be going back to the mystery-filled Cold War era games we've seen a decade ago. The numbers, Mason! What do they mean?Players are randomly receiving blurry, glitched messages saying "Know Your History." GameSpot confirmed the message during a Warzone session, but it appears so quickly you could easily miss it. Another part of the glitched message appeared to show a message in Russian, and it certainly seems to hint at a new CoD. The allusion to history could be a reference to the rumored Black Ops: Cold War. That would set it in a historical context, and Black Ops is known for its mind-bending plot elements that revolve around false memories and other light sci-fi elements.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The beta for Marvel's Avengers is now available for PlayStation 4 players who preordered the game, and it's pretty expansive--it covers an early portion of the game's single-player story, includes a bunch of multiplayer missions, and gives you a chance to take on the roles of four different Avengers. But it also has some secrets mixed in, including a hard-to-find hidden mission that represents the best take on Avengers' multiplayer so far.The hidden mission is a War Zone set in the Snowy Tundra area of Siberia, which you'll visit during the story portion of the beta when you play as Kamala Khan and the Incredible Hulk. In that mission, your job is to find a secret SHIELD bunker that's been hidden away from the enemy forces of AIM. After you finish that mission, Snowy Tundra is no longer accessible from your War Table map where you select missions. But you can return to the location for a new War Zone, provided you find a hidden SHIELD cache in another mission.When you return to the Snowy Tundra, you'll go after a secret SHIELD vault that's full of high-powered gear and resources. The difference is, this SHIELD vault is enormous, and requires you to solve a puzzle to open it while defending the location from enemies. The Snowy Tundra area is also one of the biggest in the game, according to Crystal Dynamics, so exploring it is pretty fun on its own.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Remedy Entertainment's Control bears some resemblance to its earlier game Alan Wake, and in the new expansion AWE, that resemblance gets much more overt as we see how the two games are actually connected. It's the first step in establishing what the studio is calling the Remedy Connected Universe, and as it turns out, it's working on a new game that will also take place there. Just what that happens to be isn't clear, but it adds a new layer of intrigue to a developer known for crafting mysterious worlds over the last few decades. This information was shared by Remedy's creative director Sam Lake, who has written several of the studio's biggest games and served as the literal face of Max Payne way back when."What took place in 2010 in Alan Wake is one of the cases that the Federal Bureau of Control has been investigating," Lake said. "The AWE expansion is the first official Remedy Connected Universe crossover event, bringing more Alan Wake lore into Control."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The beta for Marvel's Avengers didn't particularly blow me away, but I did enjoy the snippet of story I got to see. Specifically, I love Kamala Khan, who's the focal point for the campaign. Not only does she have my favorite combat mechanics, but she injects both a wonderful playfulness and human element into the story.Kamala is a nerdy teenager who likes to tell cheesy jokes, but she's also struggling to come to terms with being labeled as a freak for having the superpower to enlarge and stretch her body (which she calls embiggening). Marvel's Avengers is about Earth's Mightiest Heroes learning to become a team again, but the beta also showcases that it's just as much the origin story for an ordinary girl who becomes the second Ms. Marvel--a symbol of inspiration for Inhumans and teenage superheroes. This is the aspect of Marvel's Avengers that I'm most intrigued to see unfold, and that largely comes from actor Sandra Saad's performance as Kamala.Saad does a wonderful job bringing the young hero to life and, after playing through the Marvel's Avengers beta, I got to sit down and talk with her about her performance, how she prepared for the role, and what someone like Kamala means to both her and the wider superhero fan community. I was immediately surprised by how much Saad already is so much like Kamala--I can see why she was cast. "That's what I've been told," she said, laughing. "That I'm pretty similar to her character DNA already, so I didn't have to go very far in my study."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com