Dota 2's Patch 7.32 will likely launch in late August, before The International Regional Qualifiers
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[Update]: Dota 2's hotly anticipated Patch 7.32 has now arrived with a brand new lane creep and tons of changes!
If you're itching for a bit of a meta shake up, or at least a couple of tweaks to some of the heroes, you'll be happy to hear that Dota 2's next big update has now been announced. No exact release date has been given just yet, but Patch 7.32 will be launching before The International Regional Qualifiers which will run from September 3 - 18, so I'm expect it to arrive in late August.
Similarly, and this should come as no surprise given that this is Valve we're talking about, not a single change has been revealed just yet. Still, I think it's safe to say that overplayed heroes like Zeus are most likely going to get some nerfs flung their way, while somewhat mediocre ones like poor ol' Primal Beast might get a helping hand. I certainly hope that's the case as it's always sad to see a brand new hero completely vanish from the meta.
MTG Arena is adding the singleton, community-made Gladiator format as a limited event
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[Update]: The Gladiator format has now arrived alongside a sizable rebalance of the Baldur's Gate draft!
In order to help pass the time until the next premier set releases in September, MTG Arena will be launching a spotlight event for the community-made format called Gladiator. The event will run from August 11th to August 15th and will give you a chance to play around with either your own creations or ten pre-made competitive decks.
The rules of the Gladiator format are fairly simple: decks must contain no fewer than 100 cards and no sideboards, with a maximum of one copy of each card other than basic lands. Matches are then played in the best-of-three format, though without any sort of sideboarding between games.
Hitman 3's free update has added a brand new map to completely ransack- Ambrose Island
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After a brief round of teasers, IO Interactive have now unleashed a sizable new update for Hitman 3. It brings with it a variety of fixes and enhancements, including stability improvements across all platforms, as well as a brand new map to explore and most likely ransack - Ambrose Island. Best of all, the whole thing is entirely free!
What this looks like in actual gameplay, as well as what the new storyline is all about, that you can find out through two of the previews below. Have a gander, starting with the cinematic intro:
Four years later, Evolve: Stage 2's multiplayer servers have suddenly turned back on
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Turtle Rock Studios, developers of Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood, originally launched their 4v1 shooter Evolve back in 2015. Unfortunately, due to some gameplay and monetization issues, Evolve never managed to catch on and secure itself a sizable playerbase. As a last ditch effort Turtle Rock Studios released Evolve: Stage 2 as a free-to-play game, though once again, things didn't go well and the servers were ultimately shut down in 2018.
This is usually where the story would end, but in a refreshing little twist, Evolve: Stage 2 has now been given another chance! Thanks to a recent update, peer-to-peer servers and parts of the matchmaking system have now been restored, thus enabling players to jump into matches without too much hassle.
Obsidian's miniaturized survival game Grounded is leaving Early Access on September 27th
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[Update]: After two years of updates, Grounded has now finally been unleashed from Early Access!
After two years in Early Access and a whole bunch of updates, Obsidian's backyard survival game Grounded is finally getting ready to be released in full. You can expect to see Version 1.0 arrive on September 27th for PC and Xbox alongside a sizable update.
The exact details are still few and far between, but the launch version will bring with it the upper yard as a brand new region to explore, along with the usual batch of new armor and weapon recipes to play around with. There will also be numerous new secrets to uncover, one which will be a seemingly nasty endgame boss - the Mantis.
Guild Wars 2's August 2nd update will fix the recently introduced Warrior and Mesmer problems
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[Update #2]: The August 23rd patch will buff up many of the long-forgotten builds and specializations. Additionally, the August 23rd patch will see Guild Wars 2 launch onto Steam alongside a brand new set of achievement-based armor.
[Update]: The balance changes have now arrived alongside the Festival of the Four Winds.
As a part of the June update, Guild Wars 2 brought in a whole bunch of balance changes to pretty much every aspect of gameplay. While some of these ended up working out well and created more viable builds for certain classes to play around with, others were a complete failure and only ended up making the affected specializations almost undesirable in endgame content.
So in order to fix some of these problems, ArenaNet is planning a new balance update for August 2nd. This one will be focused primarily on getting the Mesmer's Chronomancer specialization back up to par, both in terms of damage and support options, as well as reworking the incredibly tedious Warrior banners.
Team based platform fighter MultiVersus has now launched alongside an impressive player count
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[Update #2]: MultiVersus' Season 1 update has just added the first Battle Pass, while Rick & Morty will be coming soon.
Unlike recent platform fighters like Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl that have fizzled out almost immediately after launch, Warner Bros.' freshly released cross-over madhouse MultiVersus is currently booming. It's only been a couple of days since it first arrived, and already it's quite comfortably breaking the 100,000 concurrent players mark during peak hours.
Besides the much greater level of polish, I'd say the biggest reason MultiVersus has found so much success is that it's a free-to-play game. After all, fighting games tend to high barrier to entry, especially for newer players, so letting people jump in for free (and with the option for co-op with their friends) is definitely a great idea.