Sony has revealed the PlayStation Plus monthly games lineup for June. These are the three titles that folks on the Essential, Extra and Premium tiers can all claim and retain access to as long as they continue to subscribe. The headliner for June is NBA 2K23. The most recent edition of the long-running series features the return of the Jordan Challenge, in which you can play through 15 key moments from Michael Jordan’s legendary career.

Also in the lineup is Jurassic World Evolution 2, a construction and management sim in which you'll build your own Jurassic World theme park. Perhaps you'll have better luck at keeping the dinosaurs in their enclosures than the characters from the movies.

The third game PS Plus subscribers will able to snag next month is Trek to Yomi. It's an Akira Kurosawa-inspired action-adventure set in the Edo period of Japan. You play as a young samurai who seeks revenge against those who attacked his village. I enjoyed Trek to Yomi quite a bit. It's more style than substance, but goodness is that style gorgeous — I've used a screenshot as my desktop background for the last year.

You can add these games to your library at no extra cost starting on June 6th. PS4 and PS5 versions of all three will be available. In the meantime, you still have a chance to claim May's games: Grid Legends, Chivalry 2 and Descenders.

The pro League of Legends scene has been upended after players voted "overwhelmingly" in favor of a walkout to protest changes Riot has made to the minor leagues. Now, the publisher has threatened to cancel the summer season of the League Championship Series (LCS), which would prevent North American teams from qualifying for the LoL World Championship, if an agreement can't be reached.

Players approved the action only a few days before the Summer Split of the LCS, the top level of LoL esports in North America, was set to start. Riot has delayed the season by two weeks in an attempt to resolve issues with players and the LCS Players Association (LCSPA), the association that represents them.

"Hopefully, this two-week window will give us time for productive dialogue between the LSCPA, teams and the league and then resume LCS competition this summer," Naz Aletaha, Riot's global head of LoL esports, wrote in a blog post, which was published after a meeting with the LCSPA. "The LCS will not be penalizing the teams for not fielding their rosters during this two-week period to allow everyone space to focus on constructive dialogue. We are doing our best to ensure LCS employees, contractors and others supporting the LCS are not negatively impacted by the delay."

The company said although it needs "an LCS that is thrilling to watch and showcases the highest levels of League of Legends play," it wouldn't be able to delay the Summer Split any further. Aletaha said doing so "would make it nearly impossible to run a legitimate competition," and as such Riot would be prepared to nix the season entirely. "That is not an outcome we’d want, but it’s unfortunately the reality of ensuring we run a fair, competitive global system," Aletaha added.

The LCSPA claimed on Monday there had been "attempts to require teams to field scab players at the start of the season." The LCSPA urged potential replacements to refuse to play for an LCS team because "crossing the line puts all players’ futures at risk" and "undermines player negotiating power."

On Sunday, a majority of the 50 LCS players voted in favor of the walkout, resulting in one of the first major instances of collective action in esports. They are protesting a decision Riot announced earlier this month to no longer require LCS teams to field a team in an official farm system. The company agreed to a request from the teams in order to "support the continued, long-term success of the teams and the professional esports ecosystem in North America."

Most LCS teams swiftly said they'd be dropping their North American Challengers League (NACL) rosters. The LCSPA said the move would result in "as many as 70 players, coaches and managers" losing their jobs and that most of the current LCS players came through the official farm system. The LCSPA claimed the average salary cost of an NACL roster "accounts for less than 17 percent of an average LCS organization's League-based salary costs in a year." It claimed that although farm systems in other regions were working well, "North America now has a developmental product with no viewership, no institutional support, no paying jobs and no future."

The LCSPA urged Riot to agree to several conditions, including a promotion and relegation format between the LCS and NACL. It also wanted the publisher to "commit to a revenue pool for player salaries of $300,000 per NACL team per year."

Aletaha addressed each of the LCSPA's five requests in the blog post. In terms of the revenue pool, "this ask is for multiple millions in subsidies for the NACL. That simply isn’t sustainable — and to be brutally honest, it shouldn’t be necessary. We have other Tier 2 leagues around the world which thrive on their own, and we believe the NACL can get to that place too." Aletaha noted that Riot is giving the organization that operates the NACL a one-time payment of $300,000 to "jump-start" the season and provide support to teams.

"Without players, there is no league, and there is no esport," the LCSPA said in response. The association planned to today start discussions "that result in meaningful collaborative action to get our players back where they want to be: competing for fans on the LCS stage."

It's once again time to watch skilled gamers rip through their favorite titles as quickly as possible in the name of a good cause. Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ) is back with another week-long charity speedrun marathon. The event starts at 1PM ET on Sunday, May 28th and it will end in the early hours of June 4th. You'll be able to watch all the action as it happens on the Games Done Quick (GDQ) Twitch channel, which is embedded below. If you miss a run you're interested in, you'll be able to catch up later on the GDQ YouTube channel.

The action kicks off with the debut of Sonic Frontiers at SGDQ and the event will wrap up with a co-op run of Super Metroid (here's hoping the runners save the animals). There will be many, many runs in between, including half a dozen The Legend of Zelda titles. The heavy focus on Zelda probably shouldn't come as a surprise given that Tears of the Kingdom has taken over the gaming world over the last few weeks.

You'll be able to marvel at a runner beating Breath of the Wild in just a couple of hours while wearing a blindfold and another conquering Elden Ring as quickly as possible without using any glitches. I'm particularly looking forward to the Super Mario Maker 2 relay race. Those are always a blast at GDQ events. I'm also intrigued by runs of Ring Fit Adventure, Choo-Choo Charles,Hi-Fi Rush and one of my all-time favorite games, The Curse of Monkey Island. You can check out the full schedule on the GDQ website.

SGDQ will stream live from Minneapolis with an audience in attendance. GDQ events are so much better with a live crowd reacting to astonishing feats of video game prowess. Organizers will be hoping to raise millions more dollars for Doctors Without Borders after bringing in over $3 million during SGDQ 2022. They'll be aiming to beat the record for a GDQ event, which was set during Awesome Games Done Quick 2022. Over $3.4 million was raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. You'll be able to donate via the GDQ website.

Folks who subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube next season may not have to worry about missing out on too much of the action. Initially, YouTube planned to limit the number of simultaneous streams to two per subscriber, despite there often being many more NFL games than that on a given regular season Sunday. Being limited to two streams seemingly wasn't going to be enough for many fans. As such, YouTube is lifting the limit to offer unlimited simultaneous streams.

"We heard your feedback that 2 concurrent streams just wasn’t enough for NFL Sunday Ticket, so we’re updating our product functionality to include unlimited streams at home for NFL Sunday Ticket," the YouTube TV team wrote on Reddit. "You and your household can also access 2 additional streams on the go."

As 9to5 Google points out, YouTube TV uses certain signals, such as your network and specified home location, to determine a user's "home" location. That, and the on-the-go restriction, are likely in place to help YouTube minimize account sharing.

Google announced late last year that it secured the exclusive rights to Sunday Ticket for residential users starting in the 2023 season. DirecTV is still the Sunday Ticket provider for commercial use, such as in bars and restaurants.

An NFL Sunday Ticket package for the 2023 season costs $249 for YouTube TV subscribers who sign up before June 6th. It'll cost more for non-YouTube TV subscribers, those who wait until after June 6th and folks who want access to NFL RedZone.

We’re in the midst of a three-week break in the Formula E calendar, so now is a good time to take stock of the season so far. This is the ninth season of the all-electric racing series, but it’s the first of the Gen3 era. The new car is a massive leap forward in terms of technology. This model is able to regenerate up to 40 percent of the power needed to complete a race while on track. After a tumultuous preseason and major concerns heading into the first race back in January, there were some indications the series might stumble with its ambitious trajectory for the Gen3 racer. Despite the initial warning signs, the new generation for the series has begun without major issues.

I spoke to Neom McLaren team principal Ian James and Jaguar TCS Racing team principal James Barclay to get their thoughts on how the season has gone, the challenges of Gen3 and what’s to come in the near future for Formula E.

The races have been exciting to watch

Sam Bagnall

One of the major selling points of the Gen3 car was the ability for drivers to race each other in closer confines than Gen2. This was proven true in one turn at the Monaco E-Prix when Envision’s Nick Cassidy passed two cars (he nearly overtook a third) in the hotel hairpin. That’s not typically a spot on the compact street course where there’s a ton of passing, but with the Gen3 car, drivers were consistently running three-wide into that tight turn.

“​​I think the racing has been phenomenal,” James said. “There was a lot of talk at the beginning of the season about tires and the energy side of things, even the aesthetics of the car. But I actually think it's delivered.” He noted that the start of Gen3 has “mixed up the field” and that the competition has been “very close.” There have been six different winners in the first nine races and the championship lead has already changed hands multiple times.

There have also been a lot of overtakes. That’s mostly because no one wants to lead at some of the tracks until the very end of the race. The Gen3 car has considerable drag aerodynamically, so you use a lot more energy staying out front than running in the pack. Starting in Brazil, this peloton effect became apparent where drivers willingly hand off the lead to conserve power until the closing laps. Even the leaders will back off and bunch up the field in a bid to maximize efficiency while out front. For example, Round seven in Berlin saw 23 lead changes with this in-line running.

“It’s a different kind of racing, but it’s no less exciting,” Barclay said. “In quali [the Gen3 car] looks spectacular because the drivers are on the limits, and the race looks spectacular because there’s lots of overtaking. It’s always about making sure we have the best balance of both things, and that’s what we’re all working towards achieving within the championship.”

McLaren’s team principal also expressed the need to find “balance” within the new style of racing for Formula E, but agreed what we’ve seen out of the new car so far has been quite captivating. “It’s about the drivers learning and anticipating, making sure they can turn that into their advantage,” James said. “I think we’ve got to be careful that it doesn’t become the defining feature of Gen3 racing… but if we get the balance right, the racing is going to continue to be phenomenally exciting.” The overtakes will continue, according to the McLaren boss, but there also stands to be “some real speed” from the Gen3 cars too.

Teams have adapted quickly

LAT Images

When I spoke to James before the season began, he explained that teams would face “a very steep learning curve” starting at the first E-Prix of Gen3 in Mexico. That has been apparent in nearly every round of Season 9 so far. Teams like Porsche and Avalanche Andretti who started off strong have stumbled at times. And others, like Jaguar, who struggled at first have begun to find their form.

“What we have seen in these first races of the year is how quickly it has evolved,” Barclay said. “From where we were in Mexico [with] everyone getting to grips with the new car and the new tech, now everyone is absolutely flat out in quali and we’re into really complex race strategies because we’re really on top of the cars.” For Jaguar, its ability to get “on top of” Gen3 was most apparent in two particular races. In Berlin, the team scored its first 1-2 finish and in Sao Paulo Jaguar cars locked out the podium for the first time with Envision’s Nick Cassidy swiping third (Envision runs Jaguar powertrains).

While there have been some temporary issues that caused teams to pull cars from practice sessions out of caution, a major catastrophe has so far been avoided. Perhaps the biggest incident occurred in Cape Town when Mahindra and ABT Cupra pulled all of their cars from that event due to a suspension issue (the latter runs Mahindra powertrains as a customer team). The decision was made before qualifying citing safety concerns over running on a particularly bumpy track. The Race reported afterwards that rear suspension problems were discovered during manufacturer testing before the season began. Mahindra apparently modified the suspension afterwards, but the issue wasn’t sufficiently resolved for the cars to run in South Africa.

The new tires are a challenge, but that’s a good thing

Sam Bloxham/LAT Images

Heading into the season, drivers were vocal about the challenges of the new Hankook tires that were developed for Gen3. The compound is much harder than the previous version from Michelin, but it’s also more durable. Previously, tires would degrade so much over the course of the race that what began as treaded rubber would end up almost completely slick. Now, the series uses a compound that performs more consistently throughout an E-Prix

“What’s amazing is we have a car with less mechanical grip, because we have a harder compound tire,” Barclay explained. “Yet, we’re going faster.”

The tires posed the biggest challenge for the two races in Berlin, where Formula E runs on a temporary street circuit at the decommissioned Tempelhof Airport. The concrete surface is much more abrasive than asphalt. Combine that with the long curves and straights in the track layout and you can easily overheat the tires if you’re not careful. Sure, these two races are outliers for teams looking to unlock the full potential of the new compound, but it only made matters worse for those like McLaren who were already struggling with traction.

“Berlin was definitely the most acute circuit for that particular problem for us,” James said. “It's something that we're working hard together with Nissan to understand and hopefully bring some improvements in the future that will start to close the gap to the competition.” (McLaren runs Nissan powertrains as a customer team)

McLaren doesn’t have an issue with one-lap pace; the team has put its cars on pole twice already. James explained that the larger issue is due to the lack of overall traction and maximizing the energy usage simultaneously. “That’s when things start to become a little bit trickier,” he said. As a result, McLaren is seeing a compounding effect as each lap passes in a race, which James admitted “puts us on the backfoot.” He noted that some teams have figured out how to unlock the potential of the tires in different ways, but for others it’s still a fight. And at times it can be quite costly in terms of overall pace.

Formula E had to introduce in-season fixes

Carl Bingham

Following several big crashes in pre-season tests, Formula E made the decision to introduce a secondary braking system as soon as possible. Because the Gen3 car is regenerating power under braking on both the front and rear powertrains, there wasn’t a backup system in place if those systems became unusable – like in the event of a powertrain failure or a software issue. This led to several incidents where drivers weren’t able to safely slow down their cars. Formula E moved quickly to find a fix, with the first on-track tests of the emergency-use system occurred at the second race in Diriyah.

“The FIA, ourselves, we’re all learning and we’re working together to find the best outcome,” Barclay explained. “I think we have addressed those [issues], whether it be the secondary brake system or the change to the traction control regulations.” He said that all of the critical problems that have popped up are somewhat expected with a new car as both the teams and the series is “in this mode of optimizing Gen3.”

The traction control monitoring system is another area Formula E has addressed with an in-season change. Teams aren’t allowed to have traction control to ensure no one gains an unfair advantage and the FIA polices those regulations with torque sensors mounted on the driveshafts. This setup is meant to uncover any software-based tricks being used to unlock better grip. Speaking to The Race, the new system was described as “an evolution” of previous monitoring tech by Formula E’s technical boss Alessandra Ciliberti. The change had been in the works for months, in consultation with the car manufacturers who were also performing tests. Formula E decided the new tech, which monitors for consistent oscillations that differ from those caused by bumps and kerbs, was ready for use in Monaco earlier this month.

There’s still more to come

LAT Images

Before the first race of the season, Formula E announced that it planned to test quick-charging pit stops at a few races this year. These cars don’t visit pit lane during an E-Prix unless there’s a problem, mostly because it ends any chance you have of keeping up with the pack and remaining in contention. In the early days of the series, teams had to swap cars to complete the races, but battery tech advanced enough that hasn’t been a requirement since 2018.

Of course, it’s not only the act of stopping for 30 seconds — you also have to learn how to use the technology that makes it possible. And there will also be changes to the race format. Currently, drivers leave the racing line to activate Attack Mode for a temporary power boost while remaining on track. With the reintroduction of pit stops, drivers will instead earn two Attack Charges, but it’s unclear how and when they’ll be deployed.

When Formula E announced it would postpone the stops until next year, series co-founder Alberto Longo explained that the technology was ready but that supply chain issues meant the system couldn’t be implemented until the last three or four races. He admitted changes to the race format that late in the season made testing the system “not the right decision.” Teams up and down the paddock are in agreement.

“We need to understand the implications of bringing it in on the race itself and make sure it’s done in a way that adds value rather than detract from the show,” James said. “And because we've afforded ourselves the time to be able to do that analysis, I think we'll put ourselves in a much better position.” He further explained that he’s less worried about the impact the fast-charging stops will have on the team as he’s confident in their ability to adapt, mostly due to their years of experience in the series.

Barclay echoed those thoughts on behalf of Jaguar. “The amount of newness in this Gen3 car, from the new tires to the slightly different race format (number of laps vs. time), there was a lot to go out,” he said. “I think adding those extra things add more complexity and [could have] potentially taken away from what we’ve seen.” He noted that the team has had plenty to tackle already, but they’re looking forward to the new challenge of Attack Charge when it comes.

“We’ve gotten into a place where we’ve seen some great races, and I think that will only be more of the case as the season unfolds,” he said.

It took just a few minutes for Lego 2K Drive to sink its hooks into me. The second I left the road, my sports coupe converted into an off-road buggy. Just before hitting some water, the vehicle's Lego bricks swiftly contorted themselves into a speedboat. Those satisfying transformations are something you'll see a ton of as you explore multiple open areas and compete in races that play out across ever-changing terrain.

This arcade racer is the first Lego game from Visual Concepts, a developer that has otherwise focused on NBA and WWE games over the last few years. The studio hasn't hit the same heights of humor and wit as TT's Lego games (to be fair, Visual Concepts doesn't have nine movies worth of iconic Star Wars movies to riff on), but 2K Drive is still packed with surprises and clever ideas.

It's a fun blend of Forza Horizon 5 and Mario Kart. Zooming through the open areas can be a blast and losing bricks from your vehicle when you take damage is a neat touch (smashing breakable objects will restore your health and increase your boost meter). So, it's a shame that the actual races can get pretty frustrating.

Visual Concepts has tuned races to make them feel as close and exciting as possible, for better and worse. No matter your vehicle loadout, every other competitor in the race storms ahead of you as soon as the light goes green. At first, finding a way to overtake your race-specific rival and other Lego drivers to win is thrilling, but the game quickly shows its hand. You can never build up too much of a lead. If you spin off the track at a tight corner, enemies will kindly slow down a little for you. The rubberbanding works both ways, but it makes races ultimately feel overly contrived. More than once, I was on the verge of victory only for an opponent to storm past me at the last second.

There are some Mario Kart-style powerups you can grab during races and in the open world. On the surface, the powerups seem to add another dimension to races, though any enemy car I destroyed was quickly back in the thick of the action. They can work against you too. In one race, I was about to take the checkered flag when an enemy launched a spider web to obscure my vision and slow me down.

Winning races is essential to progress through the story, and it's annoying that there's no quick restart option when you aren't victorious. You have to go back to the open world before you can try a race again.

Those quibbles aside, the game is plenty enjoyable. There's a ton to do after beating the campaign, even if you don't care about online races. There are dozens upon dozens of challenges, side missions and collectibles to discover. You might find yourself smashing alien robots to protect some towers or scooting around a small town to pick up residents and protect them from skeleton attackers. There are fetch quests galore too. The story missions and challenges can become too much of a grind — you have to reach a certain experience level to unlock some races — but there was just enough variety to keep a smile on my face.

Visual Concepts/2K

The most exciting aspect of Lego 2K Drive for many players will be the vehicle builder. You can use virtual Lego bricks to build pretty much anything you want, including replicas of pre-made cars you unlock or even toy vehicles you've built in real life. The one car I made is a monstrosity, but at least it works, unlike many of the janky vehicles I've seen in Tears of the Kingdom clips.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the game nudges you in the direction of microtransactions for the pre-made cars. You'll slowly earn currency, but it'll take you quite a while to unlock vehicles from the shop for free. After playing for seven hours, I still didn't have enough Brickbux for a car. As it happens, you can pay real cash to unlock cars and drivers faster, as well as more types of bricks for your custom builds.

Lego 2K Drive is almost a great game. Most of the right pieces are in place and younger players may get more of a kick out of it than more experienced gamers. Hopefully, Visual Concepts can tweak the race AI and other minor flaws to make it really sing. In the meantime, I'll still be hunting for rainbow bricks in Big Butte County.

Pro League of Legends players may hold a walkout in protest of changes made by the game's publisher, Riot, to the esport's minor leagues. All 50 players in the League Championship Series (LCS), the highest level of LoL esports in North America, will reportedly vote this weekend on a potential walkout. If the walkout goes ahead, it would be among the first major instances of collective action in high-level esports.

The vote will reportedly take place a few days before the start of the LCS Summer Split. That's one of the two annual competitive LCS seasons and the pathway for North American teams to qualify for the LoL World Championship. “If we have 26 out of 50 of the LCS [players] willing to do something, I can tell you right now, the league's not running,” LCS Players Association (LCSPA) executive director Phil Aram told journalist Mikhail Klimentov, who was first to report on the vote.

The issue stems from a decision that Riot announced earlier this month to no longer require LCS teams to field a team in an official feeder league. The company claimed LCS teams asked it to drop the obligation "to unlock more operational and financial flexibility." Riot agreed in order to "support the continued, long-term success of the teams and the professional esports ecosystem in North America."

Although three LCS teams have committed to continue fielding a team in the North American Challengers League (NACL), most said they were dropping their developmental rosters. That didn't sit well with the LCSPA, a group run by and for pros to offer them "counsel, programs, information and support."

The LCSPA said that while Riot framed its decision "as a commitment to the NACL, the reality is that as many as 70 players, coaches and managers will lose their jobs overnight. The unprecedented decision to destroy the NACL less than a month before the start of the 2023 NACL Summer Split with no plan — and no warning — is a stain on their leadership."

The group noted that over half of the current LCS players came through the NACL system. "Claims that the NACL is in any way responsible for team financial instability are false; the average annual salary cost of an entire NACL roster represents less than 17 percent of an average LCS organization's League-based salary costs in a year," the LCSPA said. It argued that while the feeder systems in Europe, Korea and China are doing well, "North America now has a developmental product with no viewership, no institutional support, no paying jobs and no future."

"Riot gave each team $3 million this year to operate in LCS + NACL, but only 3 could afford to spend 15-20 percent of that to promote the future of NACL?," the player organization said. "Shame on Riot for letting teams get away with it and shame on every team that pocketed the future of the league."

The LCSPA's executive council agreed on Monday to authorize a walkout vote among players. The vote is scheduled to take place this Sunday, according to Klimentov.

The LSCPA shared a list of requests it's making of Riot. The organization wants there to be a Valorant-style promotion and relegation format between the LCS and NACL and for the publisher to "commit to a revenue pool for player salaries of $300,000 per NACL team per year." For comparison, that's less than what each LCS player was reportedly making on average as of 2020. The LSCPA also wants other protections and cost-sharing opportunities for LCS players and teams.

“We cannot go and be in the room with Riot and have meaningful negotiations of any kind like we've had in the past, unless we're able to establish with them that the actions that they took without our consent, without consideration for us or for the league, in this case, are not acceptable,” Aram told Klimentov. “It's an important inflection point for our players.”

Although the idea of playing video games professionally is alluring for many young gamers, the reality is that it's tough to make a living in esports. Pro careers are typically short and several players have retired from the scene at a young age due to mental health concerns. There's a lot of competition to land a spot on a team in a major esport too.

The industry as a whole seems to be struggling. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that many esports organizations have made significant cuts over the last several months. Many haven't been able to turn a profit and some are looking to sell their teams, even at a loss. For one thing, TSM, one of the major North American esports organizations, is selling its spot in the LCS and plans to compete in LoL esports in another region.

Engadget has contacted Riot for comment.

When Blizzard announced earlier this week that it had canceled Overwatch 2 hero missions, a central part of its player vs. environment (PvE) story mode, fans were none too pleased. So director Aaron Keller published a blog post today to ease the concerns and offer more transparency about the development team’s “incredibly difficult decision.”

Hero missions, revealed in 2019, were designed to provide a “deeply repayable” branch of the game based on RPG-like talent trees. Although progression would have been separate from the main game (to avoid giving hero mission players an unfair advantage), it was still part of the hype Blizzard used during the past four years of marketing the title. But the publisher ultimately found that the hero missions were pulling too many development resources away from the live game.

“When we launched Overwatch in 2016, we quickly started talking about what that next iteration could be,” Keller wrote. “Looking back at that moment, it’s now obvious that we weren’t as focused as we should have been on a game that was a runaway hit. Instead, we stayed focused on a plan that was years old.” That years-old plan refers to the development team’s influence from its work on Project Titan, Blizzard’s canceled MMORPG. The creators initially saw Overwatch as a vessel to reintegrate some of the ideas from that scrapped project.

Blizzard Entertainment

“Work began on the PvE portion of the game and we steadily continued shifting more and more of the team to work on those features.” But, Keller says, “Scope grew. We were trying to do too many things at once and we lost focus. The team built some really great things, including hero talents, new enemy units and early versions of missions, but we were never able to bring together all of the elements needed to ship a polished, cohesive experience.”

Keller says the team’s ambition for hero missions was devouring resources at the expense of the core gameplay. “We had an exciting but gargantuan vision and we were continuously pulling resources away from the live game in an attempt to realize it,” said Keller. “I can’t help but look back on our original ambitions for Overwatch and feel like we used the slogan of ‘crawl, walk, run’ to continue to march forward with a strategy that just wasn’t working.”

The decision to abandon hero missions came down to prioritizing present quality over past promises. “We had announced something audacious,” Keller reflected. “Our players had high expectations for it, but we no longer felt like we could deliver it. We needed to make an incredibly difficult decision, one we knew would disappoint our players, the team, and everyone looking forward to Hero Missions. The Overwatch team understands this deeply — this represented years of work and emotional investment. They are wonderful, incredibly talented people and truly have a passion for our game and the work that they do.”

Overwatch 2’s story missions — minus the canned hero missions — are set to arrive in season six, scheduled for mid-August. PvE aspects include a single-player version with a leaderboard, in-game and out-of-game stories and “new types of co-op content we haven’t yet shared.” Before that content arrives, there’s still season five, set to launch in June.

Disney has known for a long time that it would eventually make the ESPN TV channels available on a standalone streaming service. Now, it seems the company has begun the work of uncoupling the channels from cable providers so it can offer ESPN directly to cordcutters.

The Wall Street Journal says Disney has started laying the groundwork for the transition as it has been in talks with cable providers and sports leagues. The company hasn't yet locked down a timeline for the standalone ESPN streaming service, which could still be years away.

ESPN is one of the crown jewels of cable bundles. It will still be available on traditional TV platforms after the streaming service goes live, according to the report, though cable providers would have a new competitor to contend with.

Disney debuted ESPN+ in 2018. While that service does include some MLB and NHL games and an NFL game streamed exclusively on it for the first time last season, it doesn't have ESPN's TV networks. As such, Disney hopes to bring the matchups ESPN carries (including NBA and NFL games) to the streaming world outside of the confines of services like YouTube TV and Sling.

It's worth noting that sports streaming rights are a hot commodity among legacy broadcasters and tech companies. Apple has snapped up some MLB and Major League Soccer rights, while YouTube will be the home of the NFL Sunday Ticket starting next season. Peacock, meanwhile, will be the only place where you can watch one of next season's NFL playoff games.

Apple added a multiview feature today for watching live sports on the Apple TV 4K. You can now watch up to four live streams of Major League Soccer matches, Friday Night Baseball games and the studio shows MLS 360 and MLB Big Inning. Previously, multiview options for Apple’s set-top box were limited to third-party services like FuboTV, YouTube TV and March Madness streams.

After choosing a compatible match, other available live games will appear at the bottom of the screen in the Apple TV app. There, you can customize whether to watch one stream prominently (with others tiled in smaller windows to the right) or two to four matches in split-screen (of equal sizes). In addition, it lets you choose which audio to hear, including home radio broadcasts for MLS and home or away feeds for Friday Night Baseball. Finally, you can switch to full-screen mode with one click if a stream demands your total attention.

MLS Season Pass, which has no obnoxious blackouts, requires a $15 / mo. (or $99 / season) subscription to watch and use multiview. (Apple TV+ subscribers pay a bit less at $13 / mo. or $79 / season.) Additionally, Apple offers a one-month trial for new and returning subscribers until the end of October. Meanwhile, Friday Night Baseball is available to all Apple TV+ subscribers.