In 2 weeks, Apple will cut Epic Games off from the iOS platform completely unless Epic removes its direct payment option in Fortnite. Without Epic compliance, or court intervention, Fortnite could be removed from iPhones, iPads, and Macs forever.

Epic's staged coup against Apple could have massive ramifications for the games industry. First Epic added a direct payment option to Fortnite on iOS that completely circumvented Apple's 30% revenue cut. Apple fired back by removing Fortnite from iOS. Epic predicted this, and had an anti-trust lawsuit at the ready, which it submitted to courts.

Now Apple is threatening to completely remove Epic's developer account from iOS if it doesn't remove the direct-pay system. Epic has two weeks to comply, or else its accounts will be closed and its iOS licensed revoked. If this happens, it won't just be Epic that's scrubbed off iOS. The entire Unreal Engine toolset will be removed too, and Epic would be forced to discontinue Unreal support for the platform. Epic is risking the ruination of one of its most lucrative business segments to force change.

WB Montreal is back with more teases for its big new Batman game, and this time confirms what we long suspected: The Court of Owls will be an antagonist faction.

Today WB Montreal put up a mysterious new R3dakt3d.com website up that teased its new Batman game. Through a bit of Chrome inspect wizardry, users have manipulated elements of the site's code and uncovered a message and some hidden content. The website clearly teases something for tomorrow, 8/18 and lets you enter codes--or it did, before WB Montreal turned off this functionality--that unlocked an image showing a specific area on a map.

Here's a Twitter thread with instructions on how to view all of this yourself.

Saber Interactive has 15 new projects in the works across its multitude of work-for-hire and internal dev teams, THQ Nordic confirms.

The Embracer Group (THQ Nordic) reveals that its Saber Interactive branch is working on more than a dozen new projects. Saber, which has now become a label that oversees the newly-acquired Metro developer 4A Games, is developing 15 new games. One of these games is a new Metro title with online multiplayer, which Saber is co-developing with 4A Games and will utilize the World War Z online live service framework.

The company's financials confirm Saber's Madrid and St. Petersburg studios are both working on new games--the latter of which is the native land of Metro writer Dmitry Glukhovsky, who is also helping write the next Metro title.

You don't need to be a scientist to understand that the mining industry is, at least to some degree, impacting Earth negatively. So, how do we solve this problem?

Well, there are a few ways humans can solve the pollution issue from the mining industry, and one of them is to take our mining ventures off Earth and into space. As explained by Kurzgesagt in the above video, many of the metals found in very common devices are metals that are ripped out of Earth, and through the extraction process there's a loss of "biodiversity soil erosion, and contamination of surface water, groundwater, and soil."

Luckily, these same metals are also found in space but are trapped inside the surface of asteroids. If humans pooled their resources together to attempt landing on one of these asteroids to harvest its resources, and when considering the sheer size and resource capacity of some asteroids floating close to Earth, we could potentially rule out any mining done of Earth altogether. The idea would be to change one of the resource-heavy asteroids' trajectory and redirect it, so it was much closer to Earth.

Alright, switching gears between the flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card and its tease of 24GB of GDDR6X memory that Micron has clocked at a ridiculous 21Gbps -- we have the GeForce RTX 3080 with some juicy specs.

According to a new Device ID listing confirmed by leaker _rogame on Twitter, we have some preliminary specs on NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3080. The new GeForce RTX 3080 will have its GPU clocks at a limit of 2.1GHz -- which is identical to the Turing GPUs which have a 2.1GHz GPU clock ceiling for the most part.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 should have 10GB of GDDR6X which according to these leaked specs, will be clocked at 19Gbps. Micron is making the memory for this batch of Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards with Micron providing NVIDIA with some blistering fast 21Gbps chips for its flagship GeForce RTX 3090 (which I really, badly want to be called the RTX 3090 ULTRA or RTX 3090 ULTIMATE).

We are getting more and more information on the flagship GeForce RTX 3090 (I hope it's called the GeForce RTX 3090 ULTRA or ULTIMATE) where now we're hearing about price.

According to new rumors we're looking at a price of $1999 for NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 3090 (which is meant to be 40-50% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti), where if it does indeed feature 24GB of next-gen GDDR6X memory at an absolute blistering 21Gbps from Micron then the price seems about right.

NVIDIA priced its Turing-based TITAN RTX graphics card with 24GB of GDDR6 memory at $2499, so it would make sense to offer a faster card for less money this time around. It will give NVIDIA more wiggle room between the GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 pricing, without completely cutting the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti off at the knees.

Google is saying that it could "no longer guarantee" accurate search results, as well as news organizations having the power to "artificially inflate their ranking online" and Google services to Australians could change under new laws proposed by the Australian government.

Where is this coming from? The ACCC (or Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) ruled that Australians should be paying for the news it uses. Google hit back, saying that the proposed changes would make internet and video search results "dramatically worse", adding that "the way Aussies search every day on Google is at risk".

In a new "open letter" to Australians, Google Australia managing director Mel Silva said: "We're going to do everything we possibly can to get this proposal changed so we can protect how search and YouTube work for you in Australia and continue to build constructive partnerships with news media businesses; not choose one over the other".

Japanese adult book enthusiast and kamehameha blaster Master Roshi is coming to Dragon Ball FighterZ, Bandai Namco today announced.

Master Roshi is one of the most ridiculous characters in Dragonball Z, and since practically every other character is in Bandai Namco's new DB Fighterz, it's only fitting Roshi gets added too. The affable curmudgeon will be the third DLC character in the latest DB FighterZ pass, and will come with signature moves and stylish attacks in place like the Evil Containment Wave, which was used in the old Dragon Ball series.

We didn't get to see Roshi transform with his Max Power move and get ultra-buff, nor did we see the signature kamehameha, but expect both of those to be included. And I'd love to see a return of the turtle Umigame too.

The Last of Us Part II is Sony's third best-earning PlayStation game of all time in the United States, beating historical legacy games and second behind other PS4 mega-hits.

According to NPD Groups latest U.S. earnings for July 2020, The Last of Us Part II has cemented itself as the third best-earning Sony game of all time, and is currently the third best-selling game of 2020 to date. The game sits behind PS4 games like Spider-Man and God of War, which conquer the U.S. sales revenues charts.

No exact sales revenues were given for the sequel, but Sony did confirm The Last of Us Part II was the fastest-selling PS4 exclusive of all time with four million copies sold in 3 days.

The Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic) now owns 190 intellectual properties, including high-profile franchises like Saints Row, Metro, Dead Island, Kingdoms of Amalur, and employs a massive 3,439 studios across 98 development studios.

In its recent earnings reports, THQ Nordic outlined its astronomical pool of IPs that it currently has as its disposal. Right now THQ Nordic owns a treasure trove of 190 IPs across a fleet of franchises, but the company is careful to say not all of these IPs will get new games. The more relevant IPs will power the massive 133 game development pipeline that Embracer is currently working on.

This IP count increased by 16 franchises after the company's recent acquisition spree, which saw THQ Nordic buying up 8 new studios including Metro developer 4A Games.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was just listed on Amazon UK, hinting at an upcoming remaster.

Skyward Sword is probably coming to Switch soon, but maybe not in 2020. Remember that this year marks the 35th anniversary of Super Mario on the NES. Reports say 2020 is supposed to be the Year of Mario, complete with a ton of re-releases and remasters on the Switch including Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario 3D Land, and Super Mario 64. Nintendo already made good on these reports by releasing a new Paper Mario game.

This listing contrasts with what Nintendo said in 2018, when it disconfirmed rumors of a Skyward Sword remaster on Switch. "At this time we have no plans to release The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on Nintendo Switch," Nintendo told Eurogamer in 2018. Luckily that was two years ago and there's been lots of time to work on a remaster.

Reports say that Sony has made pricey timed exclusivity deals to ensure some multi-platform games come to PlayStation 5 first. While this could be true, the spending is far off the mark.

A recent rumor says Sony is spending $750 million to get Grand Theft Auto 6 to be 30-day timed exclusive on PS5. This is preposterous for many reasons. It's not the fact that Sony would secure timed exclusivity for GTA 6 that's ridiculous. That deal could very well be possible. Sony did open its PlayStation 5 reveal event with the next-gen announcement of Grand Theft Auto V, and also secured a free 30-day deal for the new standalone GTA Online for PS4 and PS5 gamers.

What's most ludicrous is the price tag associated with this report.

It looks like the next big technological leap for mankind could be wireless power transmission, something New Zealand-based Emrod is working on right... now.

Emrod has created a method of both safely, and most importantly, wirelessly transmitting electrical power over long distances without the need of copper wire. Emrod is now in the starting stages of working with New Zealand's second-largest power distributor with this technology.

Wireless power isn't something new -- with Nikola Tesla first playing around with it in the late 1800s and then powered light bulbs over two miles away with a gigantic 140-foot Tesla coil in the 1890s. But now Emrod is coming out of nowhere and doing something very similar, with the backing of a gigantic power company in New Zealand.

This is quite possibly one of the largest game-changing discoveries of the last few decades, where scientists have effectively turned red bricks into supercapacitors.

How? By coating the bricks with a polymer containing intrusive nanofibers, that turn red bricks into something that can both conduct, and store electricity. The red brick is made up simple red clay, which is a key part of researchers making this discovery.

The researchers explained: "The red color of a brick originates from hematite, a pigment first utilized by humans 73,000 years ago and serving today as a low-cost naturally abundant inorganic precursor for catalysts, magnets, and alloys. State-of-the-art energy storage materials are also produced from hematite".

A huge tease took place on Twitter just over a week ago, where Rocksteady Games confirmed it was working on a new Suicide Squad game -- with a simple picture of Superman with a target on his head.

Now we know what is coming: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which will be unveiled at the virtual DC FanDome event on August 22 at 5PM PT, 8PM ET, 1AM BT. Will Arnett, who voices Batman in The Lego Movie, and The Lego Batman Movie, will be hosting the event.

The Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League event will be a smaller 20-minute event inside of DC FanDome, which I'm sure will give Rocksteady enough time to get the hype meter flying in the (hopefully positive) right direction.

We were meant to have already had enjoyed Crysis Remastered for nearly a month now, with its original release date of July 23, 2020 -- but it was delayed. It has since been released on the Nintendo Switch, and now we're getting some more teases about the game.

In a recent tweet, the official Crysis Twitter account teased that the "wait is almost over, and we promise it will be worth it. Please stand-by for further intel". The tweet includes a download link to a brand new remastered 8K Nanosuit wallpaper that you can download here.

The screenshot itself looks magnificent, so I'm hoping the entire of Crysis Remastered has that type of visual upgrade. It did give my PC a small stroke to look at it, but with a Intel Core i9-9900K and custom MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti LIGHTNING Z -- waiting for Ampere here, guys -- to run Crysis Remastered at my 43-inch 4K 144Hz and 8K 60Hz monitors.

We first heard about NVIDIA reportedly using a new 12-pin PCIe power connector on its GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards, and now we have more confirmation.

I've been talking to industry sources of mine who have said that NVIDIA will be using the 12-pin PCIe power connector on its new GeForce RTX 30 series Founders Edition graphic cards, while AIB partners on the other hand will not be using the 12-pin connector, and rather will have multiple 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

This lines up with the purported GeForce RTX 3090 PCB photo that was leaked yesterday, as it was reportedly a COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 3090 Vulcan-X with 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors and no 12-pin PCIe power connector in sight. That is because it's a custom card -- which I exclusively reported will launch alongside, or very close to the launch of the GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards.

Infinity Ward pushed out a new, and small update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone -- except it stuffed up in a huge way for Xbox One gamers.

The new title update is a small download for PS4 players at 1.2GB, while PC gamers have a download somewhere between 800MB and 1.83GB. But wow did something go wrong with the Xbox One update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone coming in at a gigantic 66.3GB.

Why is it so big? Well, Infinity Ward explains it was due to an "unforeseen bug with the Microsoft patch delivery process, this download requires Xbox users to redownload files they already have, but it does NOT impact the overall install size".

THQ Nordic's (aka the Embracer Group) financials hint that big games are on the way, which historically means big Deep Silver games. This could mean Dead Island 2 or Saints Row V (or both) will release in 2020, likely for next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles.

THQ Nordic's new Q2'20 financials are jam-packed with information, but one key metric stood out to me: It's forecasted earnings from completed games. This is basically how much the company expects to make from the games that will be available in or by 2020. The tremendous surge in expected earnings could telegraph what's to come from THQ Nordic.

For 2020, THQ Nordic expects to make up to 1.4 billion SEK from completed games, which represents an all-time high. It's also a substantial 123% year-over-year increase from 2019, which delivered 644 million SEK.

The Embracer Group (aka THQ Nordic) has over 100 games currently in development and most of them have yet to be revealed to investors or consumers.

THQ Nordic's latest Q2'20 earnings report is jam-packed with interesting tidbits including earnings, in-development project pipelines, and an update on its studio headcount. Right now the company currently has 133 projects in development, and 79 of them, or 59%, are unannounced projects across its mighty stable of developers. This total is up 30 projects from last quarter--18 unannounced projects and 9 announced games--which clearly shows how much THQ Nordic is accelerating its plans.

The jump in projects comes from its recent acquisition spree, which saw studios like Metro developer 4A Games, New World Interactive, Pow Wow Studios, Palindrome interactive, Rare Earth Games, Vermila Studios, and DECA Games. New announced projects include the next Metro game, which 4A Games is currently developing alongside Saber and will have online multiplayer, alongside Dead Island 2 and Saints Row V, which should be released at some point.