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Respawn Entertainment has responded to an anonymous Glassdoor review that claimed the developer was overworking employees and enforcing strict deadlines during the work-from-home period. An image of the review was shared on the Apex Legends subreddit, where a number of employees responded to the post, most notably game director Chad Grenier.

The review said that Respawn, unlike others in the industry, was not extending its timeline for Apex Legends updates nor was it being flexible with deadlines while teams work from home. The anonymous employee said they were working 12 to 13 hours a day and that the team did not plan properly around doing a live-service game.

Grenier (u/HkySk8r187) wrote a lengthy response in the comments of the post, addressing the issues. “I’ll chime in on this because a lot of this falls on me as the leader of the Apex team, but I truly believe Respawn has its [employees] best interest and health in mind, and always has,” Grenier wrote.

Quickly transitioning from the team working together in a shared space to working from home was not an easy change and Respawn did not have systems in place that made for a smooth switch, he wrote.

“As the Apex team leader I was vocal every day telling people to only work as much as they can. This was reiterated by Studio leadership, and EA leadership as well. Many have kids at home since schools are closed, or maybe their work environment isn’t comfortable, they don’t have a suitable home PC, or they have to take care of sick family members,” Grenier wrote.

Grenier wrote that both Respawn and EA put systems in place to ensure employees working from home were taken care of, like unlimited paid time off for those feeling physically or mentally unwell, reimbursement for any purchases to make working from home more comfortable, and additional pay each check to cover increased energy and internet bills.

As for hardset deadlines, Grenier pointed out that Season 4 of Apex Legends was extended by two weeks to provide the team with more time.

“Like a broken record I continuously asked that people speak up to their managers or producers if they will not be able to get their work done on time without crunching. Delays would be ok, we just need to know one is needed,” Grenier wrote. “Remember that odd [two] week delay when Season 4 was supposed to end, and then magically an additional [two] weeks was added to the end of the season with no weekly challenges? Yeah, that was because I delayed Season 5 by [two] weeks.”

Grenier wrote that despite leadership telling everyone to not push themselves, that the team is full of passionate workers, who always want to do their best, even in circumstances where it’s difficult to do so.

“The one thing I’ve learned about the team during this pandemic is that the team is filled with a bunch of rock stars and do-ers. Nobody wants to be the person to raise their hand and say they’re not going to hit their deadline,” Grenier wrote.

Lastly, Grenier closed by writing that above all else that while Respawn and EA are not perfect, both companies care more about the health of their employees–pandemic or not–than profits.

“As one of the original Respawners I can honestly tell you that Respawn (and EA) has been a great place to be over the past 10 years and is a place that puts the people first,” Grenier wrote.

In other Apex news, the Season 5 quest ended with a tease for a new character and a new map, possibly coming in Season 6.

Now Playing: Apex Legends – Meet Loba Character Trailer

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Stunt work can be exhausting and dangerous. And when actors step into the role of a stunt person, things can get a little sticky, literally. During a panel at Comic-Con@Home, actor Charlize Theron recounted a moment when her The Italian Job co-star, Mark Walhberg, threw up on set.

Discussing her work in films, Theron explained that the stunt work in The Italian Job led to some dizzying moments, as she explained to moderator Terri Schwartz of IGN. “I vividly remember Mark Walhberg, halfway through one of our training sessions, pulling over and throwing up because he was so nauseous from doing 360s,” she said during the panel.

Outside of the car sick moment, Theron was a monster–no pun intended–when it came to honing her craft with the stunt driving in that movie. “The Italian Job was a great experience in the sense that I realized there was still so much misconception around women in the [action] genre–even though that film, the action is really based on cars,” she said. “We had to physically do a lot of that stuff. The only good thing that came out of that experience was that there was a real pressure to pull off those stunts with the actors. And that was the first time I experienced anything like that. But there was a very unfair process that went with that. I was the only woman, with a bunch of guys, and I remember, vividly, getting the schedule in our pre-production, and they had scheduled me for six weeks more car training than any of the guys. It was just so insulting. But it was also the thing that put a real fire under my ass. I was like, ‘Alright, you guys want to play this game? Let’s go!’ And I made it a point to out-drive all of those guys.

“I was very proud of the stunt work we did in that. I did a stunt in that movie where I do a reverse 360–or maybe 180–in a warehouse, with props everywhere and people, and I did that completely on my own. And it was a huge moment of like feeling, ‘We can do this all stuff.’ And women are so unfairly thought of and treated when it comes to the genre.”

Theron recently appeared in the Netflix movie The Old Guard, and in GameSpot’s review of the film, Meg Downey said, “The Old Guard may not be reinventing any wheels, and it’s certainly not going to go down in history as a watershed moment in cinema, but it will be a welcome watch for anyone who’s looking to kill some time this weekend while stuck at home. It’s streamlined, simple, and, depending on your age demographic, maybe even a little nostalgic; making it a worthy watch for 2020’s barren summer blockbuster season.”

And while fans were excited to learn that the next Mad Max movie will revolve around Theron’s character Furiosa, she will not be reprising the role, and she will be recast as it will be a prequel. Theron said that decision was a “tough one to swallow.”

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Now that we know when The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead will be returning, it’s finally time to focus on The Walking Dead: World Beyond, the latest show set in that universe. After being previously scheduled to debut earlier this year, it was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, though, we know when you’ll finally be able to see it.

It was announced during its Comic-Con@Home panel that World Beyond will premiere on AMC on October 4 at 10 PM ET/PT, immediately following the episode initially meant to serve as the Season 10 finale of The Walking Dead. After it airs, a special episode of Talking Dead will dig into both shows.

A new trailer for the series was also released, showing a group of young people that grew up in a world overrun by zombies. Now they’re venturing outside of the safety of their community for the first time, and coming up against foes–living and dead.

Even with a young cast and seemingly a younger target demographic, World Beyond’s trailer makes it clear this is still going to be the gruesome and violent tone fans have come to expect from The Walking Dead’s universe. With an entirely new cast of characters, though, as well as a different time frame, it’s getting to tell different stories.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond will premiere Sunday, October 4, following the return of The Walking Dead.

A new Nintendo source code leak has been reported by Video Game Chronicle with videos of prototypes of several classic Nintendo titles including Yoshi’s Island and Super Mario Kart appearing online. According to an anonymous 4chan post, this leak may include source code for other games like Super Mario RPG, Star Fox 2, F-Zero, and even Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. There are also early sprite designs for beloved characters like Yoshi and Donkey Kong circulating.

This leak could be related to another that was first reported in May where over 2 terrabytes of data were released onto 4chan. According to modder Crash, RouteFree, who are responsible for iQue, was hacked resulting in a huge leak of N64, GameCube, and Wii data. iQue was a console sold exclusively in China to combat the piracy of Nintendo games there. It was basically a miniature N64 and could play titles like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Mario Kart 64.

If these leaks are legit, it could be a huge win for the ROM hack scene, giving modders the ability to bring these classics to PC and even edit them. Having access to more source code and other data could smooth out the process for these communities, though some have already proven resourceful enough to reverse engineer source code to create a working PC port of Mario 64 without the aid of leaks. How long these projects will last is always in question, however, since the legality of these efforts is often in question and Nintendo has proven its not afraid to take these creators to court.

When The Walking Dead delayed its Season 10 finale due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there was no word on when fans would actually see the episode. After its Comic-Con@Home panel, though, we now know when it will air–and that it’s not exactly the finale anymore.

During the panel for The Walking Dead, it was revealed that the Season 10 finale, “A Certain Doom,” would finally broadcast on AMC on Sunday, October 4–one week before the premiere of Fear the Walking Dead. However, showrunner Angela Kang also revealed that it’s technically not the final episode of Season 10, as AMC has ordered additional episodes. Six more Season 10 episodes will premiere in early 2021, though no specific dates were announced.

To celebrate the extended season, the opening three-and-a-half minutes of the Season 10 finale were revealed in the panel, showing the various settlements gearing up for war against the Whisperers and their army of walkers. What’s more exciting about the clip, though, is the return of Maggie (Lauren Cohan), who is shown finding a letter catching her up on what’s been happening since she left in Season 9. Since then, Maggie has only been seen once, in a hallucination by Michonne. However, based on this clip, it looks like she’s headed back to join the fight. And according to Cohan herself, during the panel, “It’s more than a visit. She’s coming back.”

It’s not all good news, unfortunately. While Season 10 will be longer, Season 11 will miss the show’s traditional October premiere window. Because of the pandemic, the next season of the series has been delayed with no set time for it to actually premiere.

Instead of dwelling on that, though, think about the good news. The Walking Dead will return on October 4.

I’m a bit of an Xbox guy and indie game guy so when Microsoft announces that it’s releasing over 70 brand-new game demos on Xbox One via its ID@Xbox program, I already know that I’m going to try playing as many as I can. I haven’t checked out all 73 yet–I’m only about halfway through the list–but one in particular stood out to me: The Vale: Shadow of the Crown from developer Flying Squirrel.

While the demo was downloading, I quickly skimmed through the description of the game. In The Vale, you play as Alex, a woman who’s the second born in a royal family–essentially the backup if something terrible happens to the first kid. But because she’s blind, Alex hasn’t had the same type of upbringing as her older brother. In fact, her father seemingly doesn’t want anything to do with her. So when she’s old enough, Alex’s uncle (a fellow second born) takes her away to be the warden of a small castle on the outskirts of the kingdom. 500 miles into the journey, Alex and her uncle are attacked and she’s separated from him. Alex decides her best course of action is to make her way home but as she sets out, she runs into a shepherd that informs her that an invading army is occupying the land between where she is and her brother’s castle.

My initial thoughts were that it sounded like a very typical setup for a fantasy-based RPG, save for the main character being blind. But this isn’t the first video game to feature a blind protagonist–typically they rely on some form of magic or echolocation or technology in order to see the world in a different way so that even if the character is blind, the player can still see. That is not what The Vale is.

My first indication that this would be a rather different game was the title screen. The game has been designed to be accessible to people who can’t see very well or are blind, and a voice guides you through every selection while you set up your game and adjust your difficulty. And then the game starts. “That can’t be right,” was my immediate reaction. I could hear voices but the screen was all black save for a few fluttering dim spots of light. Figuring it was a glitch (this was a demo after all), I reset the game. But nope: I got the black screen again. And then it hit me: “Oh, this game is actually making me blind to its world too.”

The Vale is the first game I have ever played that makes you as blind to its world as the protagonist you play as. You can’t see anyone or anything. Instead, you need to rely on the noises around you to gather all the information you normally would just see. Instead of looking for a clearing to find a river and fresh water, I had to listen to the sound of running water and shuffle in that direction. I couldn’t just easily see where the blacksmith’s shop was in a town’s square. I had to listen to the cacophony of a busy market and pinpoint the telltale clang of a blacksmith’s tools in order to figure out where he was. And when I bought a supposedly fabulous bow and arrows from him, I just had to hope that they matched the quality that he described. There’s no menu or stats to see, only voices coming to me from an endless black void. You have conversations with shopkeepers instead of immediately jumping into a list of items to scroll through.

Here’s the thing: The Vale is an action-based RPG. You do all the things that are traditional to the genre. You talk to people and make choices. You explore hub-like locations and pick up side quests for extra coin in order to buy new weapons and armor. You use those weapons and armor in combat. But you do it all as a person who’s blind and needs to rely completely on your other senses (which in The Vale is primarily sound but also a bit of touch through controller vibration feedback) to both navigate the world and interact with the people in it.

Given this dynamic, combat is especially intriguing. It begins relatively simple. You have a sword and must listen to where enemies are and swing at them when you can hear a tell that their guard is down. Stamina prevents you from swinging wildly, and since there’s no in-game UI to look at, you need to listen to Alex’s breathing to determine how much stamina she has left. But then combat gets more complicated–you get a shield and a bow, you’re given opportunities to stealth your way through areas. And when I spoke to Flying Squirrel founder David Evan, he told me that there’s a lot more in the full game. Specifically, combat gets much more complicated.

“Pattern recognition isn’t super important in the demo, at all,” Evan said. “And managing combat isn’t super important. But once you’re given enemies that have different tells that you have to listen for or they have alternating tells, you have to respond differently. And you’ll also be given different abilities that you don’t have at the beginning. You’ll have heavy attacks, you’ll have weapons that will open up new abilities like guard-breaking, and then you’ll have some magic as well–simple stuff, you’ll have a sword that lights on fire and an explosive AoE effect, which you’ll use strategically to do certain things.”

He continued: “You start with a sword, then you get a shield, then you learn how to use a bow, then you can combine those three things in how you handle encounters. And then eventually–it’s not in the demo–you’ll be able to move through spaces, listening for enemies and deciding whether or not you want to fire at them from range or move in and attack them and there are certain advantages to doing one or the other.”

Originally, Evan was simply aiming for something novel with The Vale. No one has really made a game like this before, at least as far as both he and I can tell. “But very quickly, when [The Vale] became a game that might be for the visually-impaired community–at least more focused in that direction–I sort of forgot about the novelty and started developing a game that needed to be accessible first and then rediscover the novelty of it,” Evan said. “And once I started, I realized how intimate the experience was and that there would be some interest and excitement for playing a game like this, that had the limits that it does have.”

Within the first month of developing the game, Evan figured he needed to connect with the blind community in order to create both an accessible and immersive experience. The first playtests of The Vale were set up at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, and the first people to get their hands on the game were those with low-vision or who were blind. “That was the focus and we learned quite a bit about our game–universal issues with what we were doing and trying to do as well as specific things that meant something to the blind community,” Evan said.

To that end, Evan made sure The Vale always followed one rule: You could not have an advantage in the game if you happen to be someone who can see. But surprisingly, the blind community weren’t the ones that struggled with The Vale’s controls. It was the players who could see, who were used to playing games in a certain way, that initially struggled with The Vale.

For example, unlike in traditional games, pushing left or right on the left thumbstick does not make Alex walk left or right. Instead it makes her turn left or right. But players who can see have been mentally trained to think that pushing left is go left and pushing right is go right. To address that, small colored particles float around on the black screen and act as a handhold for players who can see. So when you push left, for instance, the particles move in a way to emulate the act of turning your head left–a reminder to players who can see that this game doesn’t work in the way they’re likely used to.

But in all honesty, I had the best experience playing The Vale with my eyes closed. There is a learning curve to The Vale. I bumped into stuff when I first started playing the demo–like a lot. But over time, I learned to “see” the world around me. I crafted mental maps of the locations I visited multiple times. I got better at orienting myself in the middle of a fight. And closing my eyes made the process easier because it removed the distraction of any visual stimuli around me. I was forced to just listen. I got all my relevant information through my headphones (trying to play this game through speakers is not ideal, you need to easily know from which direction a sound is coming from). I have never played an RPG like that before and I had a good time with The Vale’s demo, both because the experience was refreshingly novel and because Alex is a wonderful character who I love and want to play as. I have no idea how the rest of the game is going to stack up, but I can’t wait to find out.

For now, The Vale has no exact release date, but the hope is that the game will come out this year. “We’ve left [the release date] open because of COVID,” Evan said. “The linchpin has become voice over. We have one or two sessions left and things have opened up in Canada to the point where we can go and safely record. We have this whole stage system here and Toronto is going into Stage 3 a week or two weeks from now. And that, I think, is a good sign that we’ll be able to go in and get the final recording. But production has started back up in the studio. Once all that’s done? I feel like we’re a month or two away. I would like to be looking at a time of year that we still call the summer–that’s my hope. But we’ll have to roll with it because of what we’re up against.”

If you’re looking to play the demo for The Vale: Shadow of the Crown ahead of its official release, you don’t have much time–it, along with all the other ID@Xbox Summer Game Fest demos will no longer be available to download and play after July 27. The Vale is not the only demo that has us excited for future Xbox releases either–seven ID@Xbox Summer Game Fest demos caught our eye.