NBA 2K21's WNBA mode was barebones, to put it charitably, but 2K and Visual Concepts intend to flesh things out for the follow-up. The developers have detailed improvements to "The W" in NBA 2K22 that address some of the core complaints. Most notably, there's a new badge-based player progression system that lets you upgrade your MyPlayer creations to match your specialties. It still doesn't appear to be as sophisticated as the MyCareer mode from 2K21, but it should be more involving.

Off-the-court advancement has received improvements, too. Instead of picking options on a card, there are three playable experiences (scrimmage games, team practices and category-specific contact workouts) to improve your badges. The contact drills will also help you form bonds with WNBA stars, according to 2K.

You'll also find upgrades to the next-gen-only online mode. You can now hook up with friends before you start matchmaking, and you'll earn season experience points whenever you play against other people.

As Polygonnoted, there are still areas where the WNBA component will be underdeveloped compared to the men's league. There aren't mentions of improved team management or options to spend your virtual currency. Like with other sports titles, it could take a while before the modes are on par. The creators are clearly aware they need to catch up, though, and 2K22 appears to be an important first step.

Riot Games is changing its plans for the 2021 League of Legends World Championship (aka Worlds). The event was supposed to take place in China for the second straight year, but it's moving to Europe amid travel complications brought on by the rapid spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant.

"We've reached the point where it's extremely difficult to guarantee that qualifying teams and their best players would be able to attend Worlds this year," John Needham, Riot's global head of esports, said in a video. "After considering all possible options, we concluded that moving Worlds to Europe provided the best opportunity for the most teams and their best players to compete."

Worlds 2021 was supposed to take place in five cities across China, culminating in Shenzhen in November, after initially being announced for the US in 2018. Riot hasn't revealed exactly where in Europe it will bring one of the biggest events in esports this year, though Needham noted that accessibility for the highest number of teams and their key players will be the most critical factor. Riot will reveal more details about Worlds 2021 in the coming days and weeks.

Earlier this month, Riot moved the final matches of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) — the esport's North American league — from a New Jersey arena to its LCS Arena in Los Angeles. It said the rise in Delta variant cases meant that it "cannot in good conscience conduct a massive fan event at this time."

Other esports are still pressing forward with in-person events in North America. The 2021 Call of Duty League season just wrapped up, with its championship weekend being held at a packed Galen Center in Los Angeles. The Overwatch League playoffs and grand finals are set to take place in Dallas and the same LA arena respectively next month, marking the esport's return to in-person events in the US.

Esports is most commonly associated with high-octane competitive games such as League of Legends, Rocket League and Call of Duty: Warzone. A chill farming sim might not immediately spring to mind, but very soon, some of the world's finest Stardew Valley players will face off for thousands of dollars.

Creator Eric Barone (aka ConcernedApe) said the first official Stardew Valley Cup event will take place at noon ET on September 4th. “It’s a competition of skill, knowledge and teamwork, with a prize pool of over $40k,” Barone wrote on Twitter.

Barone and Stardew Valley streamer Zach “UnsurpassableZ” Hartman have concocted more than 100 challenges for competitors to tackle, as Kotaku notes. Four teams of four players will each have three hours to complete as many of the tasks as they can. The challenges include things like giving someone a gift they love at the Feast of the Winter Star (worth 25 points), winning the ice fishing contest (15 points) and completing item bundles in the Community Center (10 points each).

Players will have to prioritize the tasks, since some might not be entirely worth the points at stake. For instance, unless players are able to craft a ton of staircases, it can take an hour or so to reach the bottom of the mines, which is worth 10 points. Hartman will also add five surprise challenges during the event, each of which are worth 50 points, so competitors might have to adjust their plans on the fly.

Barone and Hartman will be commentators for the event, which you can watch on Hartman's Twitch channel.

It's actually not the first competitive Stardew Valley event with cash at stake. A few Stardew Twitch Rivals competitions have taken place. One event in 2019 had $35,000 on the line, and included challenges like catching all five legendary fish as quickly as possible and obtaining the most gold.

It's a big weekend in the world of pro wrestling. WWE has two major shows lined up, including one of its marquee events, SummerSlam, which takes place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Saturday. The company is making some strides elsewhere, thanks to a new audio content partnership with Spotify.

WWE and The Ringer (which Spotify bought last year for around $200 million to bolster its sports lineup) are building a podcast network together. The Ringer podcast The Masked Man Show has been rebranded as The Ringer Wrestling Show. More podcasts are on the way, including a narrative series produced by Bill Simmons (a self-professed lifelong WWE fan) and additional shows from WWE talent. WWE's current podcasts, including The New Day: Feel the Power and WWE After the Bell with Corey Graves, are becoming Spotify exclusives too.

Along with the podcasts, there'll be live audio discussions on Spotify Greenroom after every big WWE pay-per-view event. The Ringer is recording some podcast episodes and hosting Greenroom conversations live in Las Vegas this weekend.

WWE is a solid get for Spotify, given the brand's popularity and global reach. Although SummerSlam might become overshadowed by events elsewhere in the pro wrestling sphere this weekend, it seems as good a time as any to kick off the partnership.

Earlier this year, the WWE Network moved to Peacock. So, if you're a Peacock Premium member, you can watch SummerSlam and Sunday's NXT TakeOver 36 at no extra cost.

EA Sports' NHL series is finally making the switch to Frostbite, several years after FIFA and Madden NFL moved to the engine. As such, NHL 22 marks the "biggest leap forward" for the franchise in terms of gameplay and graphics, according to EA.

Developer EA Vancouver has seemingly made every stitch of player uniforms visible via high-res graphics. Player models have been overhauled as well. EA says Frostbite enables enhanced spatial awareness, with players having upgraded eye animations and the ability to track and react to what's going on around them. The publisher is promising "new physically accurate stick interactions" as well.

A system called Superstar X-Factors brings unique moves to some of the more high-profile hockey pros with abilities based on their real-world traits. For instance, cover star and Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews' Shock and Awe move allows you to let fly with "exciting shots," while Andrei Vasilevskiy’s Contortionist ability plays into the Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender's body-twisting flair to let him pull off impressive saves. Superstar X-Factors will feature in the Franchise Mode, as well as the Be A Pro, Hockey Ultimate Team and World of Chel modes.

NHL 22 is the first game in the series to have dedicated PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions. It's also coming to PS4 and Xbox One, but the standard edition doesn't include a free upgrade to the PS5/Series X/S versions through EA's Dual Entitlement system.

For that, you'll need to opt for the X-Factor edition, which includes extra Hockey Ultimate Team (HUT) packs and other bonuses, as well as three days of early access. If you buy the NHL 22 X-Factor edition for PS5 or Xbox Series X/S, you'll also have access to the respective previous-gen versions. However, the only game progress you can move from previous-gen consoles to PS5 or Xbox Series X/S is your HUT team, and it's a one-time content migration. 

The FIFA and Madden NFL games moved to Frostbite in 2016 and 2017 respectively, so NHL is lagging behind a bit. That said, Frostbite was primarily designed for Battlefield and other first-person shooters. Some EA studios, such as BioWare, have found the engine difficult to work with and had to build some of the tools they needed from scratch. That might go some way toward explaining why it took so long to move the NHL franchise over to Frostbite.

NHL 22 will be released on October 15th.

Splitgate, a frenetic free-to-play arena shooter with portals, has become a word of mouth hit with 10 million downloads in under 30 days. Developer 1047 Games has announced that the game will remain in open beta indefinitely as it works on managing the sudden influx of players. As a result, Splitgate is no longer slated to fully launch this month. Instead, 1047 will continue to roll out updates and fixes to the game complete with new content and improvements to the backend that can facilitate the uptick in players. Queue times are now less than 10 minutes and a new Ranked Duos mode recently went live.

Splitgate injected the tired arena shooter with a much need blast of vitality by adding portals to the mix. Players can cast these wormholes around the map and even shoot opponents through them. It helps that it's free-to-play, contains a variety of guns and plenty of game modes (like Team deathmatch, Team Shotty Snipers and Team SWAT). 

While the game has been in early access since 2019, it exploded in popularity in the wake of its open beta launch in early July, which brought with it cross-play with Xbox and PlayStation consoles. According to 1047, the shooter went from an initial 4,000 concurrent players to more than 175,000 in a few weeks. Naturally, the massive increase caused backend issues. Splitgate was taken offline twice in recent weeks as the small 1047 team worked on server optimizations. 

In late July, the developer announced that it had raised $10 million in a recent funding round led by Human Capital on top of the $6.5 million it snagged earlier in the year. 1047 said it would put the money toward expanding its engineering team. The company also has a major announcement in store for Gamescom later this month as it looks to build on Splitgate's breakout success. In a recent Q&A session on Twitch, the developer reportedly mentioned that a Switch and mobile port of the game was "part of the vision."

“This has been the most surreal time of my life,” said Ian Proulx, CEO and co-founder of 1047 Games. “The fan support has been incredible as we work to improve the player experience. We never dreamed of having to scale this big this quickly, and as a result we have had to overcome challenges to keep up with player demand. We met several major milestones in a short time, creating a stable platform where fans can expect to find a server to play on relatively quickly, and I’m proud of what our team has accomplished - but there’s a lot more to come!”

Proulx continued, “In looking at the issues facing the scalability of the game’s backend, the process includes far more than simply dealing with server capacity. We are focused on keeping the game stable for fans, and iterating on the game’s concurrent capacity in order to minimize player wait times. We want to do this the right way, and we want to be prepared for massive scale when we officially launch, all the while continuing to improve the beta with frequent updates, additional features, and improvements to server capacity.”

Epic Games has released a new limited-time mode in Fortnite called Imposters, allowing players to scratch their Among Us itch without leaving the battle royale. Each match features two teams made up of eight agents and two imposters.

The action takes place in a new interior map called The Bridge. The agents need to complete various tasks to get to the end of the match safely. Naturally, the imposters are there to throw a wrench in that plan. When a dead body is found, everyone who’s still alive convenes to voice their suspicions and vote who they believe committed the crime. In a twist to the proceedings, public voice chat is disabled, and you’ll need to use a quick chat menu and emotes to communicate with anyone who isn’t in your party.

As an imposter, you have a handful of tricks up your sleeve to throw the opposing team off your tracks. You can make both agents and imposters temporarily look like Fortnite’s banana mascot Peely, as well as teleport everyone to a different location on the map. Like in Among Us, you also have the power to freeze the progress of any assignments the other players are working on in and around The Bridge.

For Epic Games, this is its second take on Among Us. At the end of last year, it released The Spy Within, another limited-time mode that saw players divided into teams of eight agents and, in that case, two infiltrators. You can queue to play Imposters once you download the latest Fortnite update. 

Robots that can swim underwater are nothing new. For instance, Carnegie Mellon fitted its famous snakebot with turbines and thrusters earlier this year to give it aquatic capabilities. But few can do so with the grace, speed and effortlessness of a real-life fish. And it’s not that scientists have avoided trying to create a robot that can do just that, but the exact way fish swim faster or slower is something that has proved elusive.

Marine biologists have known for a while that the secret lies somewhere in the way they can alter the rigidity of their tails. The problem is that it’s difficult to measure that while a fish swims. However, using a combination of fluid dynamics and biomechanics, researchers from the University of Virginia say they’ve derived a formula that not only provides an answer to that question but also allows a robot with a specially designed tail to be nearly as good as its natural counterpart at speeding up and slowing down in water.

When they applied the formula to a tuna-like robot they built, they found it could swim at a greater variety of speeds using almost half as much energy as one with a fixed-stiffness tail. If you’re a cyclist, you’ll love this analogy. "Having one tail stiffness is like having one gear ratio on a bike," Dan Quinn, one of the co-authors of the study, told Big Think. "You'd only be efficient at one speed. It would be like biking through San Francisco with a fixed-gear bike; you'd be exhausted after just a few blocks."

With a tuna-sized machine under their belt, the University of Virginia team plans to scale their tail technology for use on both bigger and smaller robots. They’re also developing one that undulates like a stingray. Their work could one day lead to a class of drones that can quickly travel to a remote location and then slow down to investigate the area. Like an aquatic snakebot, that's something the Navy could use to inspect their ships for damage. 

The eSports world is coming to grips with a resurgent COVID-19 threat. As The Vergenotes, Riot Games has moved the last two matches of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) from Newark, New Jersey's Prudential Center to the LCS Arena in Los Angeles. The US spread of the new coronavirus' Delta variant has made it impractical to hold the large in-person event "in good conscience" even with vaccines in use, Riot said.

The LCS Arena is a "safer" location that will protect the health of Worlds representatives before they go to China, Riot said. While it wasn't surprised that other events would carry on, the Series didn't need to put people at risk just to offer its "core competitive product." LoL teams have played against each other in person at LCS Arena over the summer, but even those were derailed in favor of virtual competition after people associated with two teams tested positive for COVID-19.

The developer promised events at Prudential Center in the future, and said it would offer full refunds. More details would be coming soon, Riot added.

Other eSports leagues, such as the Call of Duty League, have pressed forward with in-person events in spite of the virus surge. However, Riot's decision suggests that at least some organizers are having a change of heart. We wouldn't be surprised if others followed suit, at least until vaccine use climbs and cases (hopefully) drop again.

Pokémon Unite is getting an update just over a month after it landed on the Switch. The free-to-play battle arena game pits two teams of five players against each other in ten-minute brawls. Ahead of its arrival on mobiles in September, the Unite update is aimed at adjusting the balance of battles. 

As a result, over a dozen Pokémon are getting tweaks to their stats that reduce things like attack damage and HP restoration and fix bugs. They include Charizard, Talonflame, Venusaur, Absol, Wigglytuff, Eldegoss, Cinderace, Gengar, Zeraora, Cramorant, Machamp, Lucario, Greninja and Alolan Ninetails.

The update lands August 4th at 3AM ET. You can also expect a special spectate feature test release as well as text fixes. Check out the full patch notes via the link above. Of course, players also have the mobile release to look forward to next month, with plans for cross-platform play between the Switch and smartphones. Those who log in to a Nintendo Account or Pokémon Trainer Club account will also be able to cross save their game data and progress on any device.