Developer People Can Fly’s Outriders demo has seen over 2million players.

Square Enix’s Outriders community manager ‘thearcan’ took to Reddit to deliver the news. The post also explained what to expect from an upcoming patch for Outriders that’s set to release next week.

The free demo first debuted in late February. It allows players to make their way through the game as quickly or as slowly as they’d like and will be live indefinitely. That way, players can transfer their progress over to the full game starting April 1.

People Can Fly explains that certain issues arose during the demo that the patch is aiming to resolve.

For instance, some players experienced connectivity issues when trying to join the game. The backend couldn’t scale in time with how many people were joining at the same time, which meant some players weren’t able to get in and play as soon as they wanted.

The developer assures players in the Reddit post that won’t be an issue with the full release. The patch will resolve similar problems to that one as well as crash fixes, a motion blur toggle, improvements to matchmaking times, and a host of additional “minor” improvements and fixes.

There’s a backend update coming specifically for the demo as well on March 5 at 3pm GMT for all platforms. It won’t require a separate download, with “seamless” changes. This includes changes to Captain mob abilities, Gauss’ health points, and loot drop frequency and the types of items you can receive.

Square Enix and People Can Fly been working hard to bring the final version of Outriders to fruition. Previously in October 2020, the companies made the difficult decision to push the game’s release back to February 2021. It was since delayed further in January 2021, with the announcement of a free demo, and is now expected on April 1.

The upcoming Harry Potter RPG Hogwarts Legacy is reportedly set to feature transgender character creation options.

After speaking with members of the development team, Bloomberg have revealed that the character customisation options in Hogwarts Legacy will allow players to customise body type, voice and gender placement in the school’s dormitories.

Based on information provided by those familiar with Hogwarts Legacy, players will be able to have a masculine or feminine voice regardless of their body type.

The focus on inclusivity is something the team is reportedly passionate about, although according to the report the management team initially pushed back on the idea.

The news came after a number of controversies surrounding the author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling. Last year, Rowling came under fire on Twitter for posting a series of tweets which were deemed transphobic by members of the LGBTQA+ community.

A number of stars spoke out against the tweets, including Daniel Radcliffe who played Harry Potter in the movie adaptations of the series.

In a short essay he wrote for the LGBTQ crisis intervention and suicide prevention charity The Trevor Project, Radcliffe commented: “We need to do more to support transgender and non-binary people, not invalidate their identities, and not cause further harm”.

Originally planned for a 2021 release, Hogwarts Legacy was recently delayed until 2022 with the developer Avalanche Software stating it needed “more time to deliver the best possible experience”.

The game was recently banned from gaming discussion website Resetera after it was discovered that Hogwarts Legacy’s director, Troy Leavitt had previously ran a YouTube channel which promoted “anti-fem and pro GG” videos.

GG refers to Gamergate, a harassment campaign targeting women and minorities in the games industry.

Epic Games has announced its acquisition of Mediatonic’s parent company, Tonic Games Group.

The announcement was made via a blog post on the Epic Games website today, March 3. Besides Mediatonic – best known for Fall Guys – Tonic Games Group also owns several studios such as Irregular Corporation and Fortitude Games.

Epic Games has assured Fall Guys fans that “gameplay isn’t changing and Epic will continue to invest in making the game a great experience for players across platforms”.

Per a separate Fall Guys-centric FAQ page, Epic and Mediatonic confirmed that Fall Guys will remain on Steam. A spokesperson for Epic also reportedly shared with Kotaku’s Ethan Gach that “[long] term plans are still in motion but we expect to bring Fall Guys to the Epic Game Store at some point to help them expand to new audiences”.

Asked Epic about this but no direct answer. From a spokesperson:

“Long term plans are still in motion but we expect to bring Fall Guys to the Epic Game Store at some point to help them expand to new audiences” https://t.co/UBaf0EvznZ

— AmericanTruckSongs8 (@ethangach) March 2, 2021

Mediatonic’s FAQ page also reiterated that no changes are being made to the Fall Guys team: “We’ll continue to be the same team, working on the same game”. The only difference is that now, Mediatonic will “have the full power of Epic Games to help us take the game to new (dizzying) heights”.

The acquisition won’t be beneficial to just Mediatonic, as Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said in a statement: “It’s no secret that Epic is invested in building the metaverse and Tonic Games shares this goal. As Epic works to build this virtual future, we need great creative talent who know how to build powerful games, content and experiences.”

It is currently unclear how much the acquisition deal is worth.

In other Epic Games news, the company has recently begun giving away free V-Bucks to players who purchased a loot box in Fortnite: Save the World. “We’re dropping 1,000 V-Bucks into the accounts of all players globally who bought a random item Loot Llama in STW before we stopped offering them,” the company said on Twitter.

Gamers have been sitting patiently for more news on Elden Ring since the game’s announcement in 2019. Now, players are getting their first look at the game through what appears to be a leaked trailer.

Several variations of an Elden Ring trailer found their way onto Twitter on Monday, March 1, before being uploaded onto YouTube. The YouTube channel Elden Ring News has compiled 4 snippets into a single video, which can be seen below.

The leak’s quality is rough and grainy, and comes with “CONFIDENTIAL” trademarks plastered all over the clips. The leaked trailers seem to stem from an internal marketing clip that was not intended for public viewing. The footage includes a peek at the game’s melee combat, dragons and boss fights.

While neither publisher Bandai Namco nor developer FromSoftware have commented on the leaks or confirmed their authenticity, Bloomberg’s Jason Schrier has suggested that the leaks that were shared by VGC are legitimate, but suggests that it is not “a terrible idea to just wait for the real thing”.

The leaked Elden Ring footage I’ve seen is blurry, angled, and only part of the trailer, so I don’t think it’d be a terrible idea to just wait for the real thing

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) March 1, 2021

The leaks come shortly after Xbox Games’ Marketing General Manager denied rumours that a trailer for the game will premiere at an upcoming Xbox event. “This is not happening,” said Aaron Greenburg. “There are always things we have in the works but nothing coming soon that would feature game announcements or world premieres like this.”

Elden Ring is currently in development and has not received a release date.

Legendary rockers Queen have released a new rhythm game for mobile devices.

Queen: Rock Tour, which is now live on iOS and Android, is the first official Queen game to be released. The game’s release has been timed in celebration of the band’s 50th anniversary this year.

Queen: Rock Tour will give players the ability to recreate bits of the band’s iconic styles, while costuming their outfits. Gamers will be able to play as Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon or Roger Taylor, and will perform at 10 historic venues worldwide, recreating the band’s iconic tours.

The game will include 20 of the band’s biggest hits including ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘Radio Ga Ga’ and ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. High scores will unlock band trivia and exclusive images from the official Queen archives, according to a Spin report.

“We devoted enormous attention to the details of Queen’s history, authenticity and artistry to craft a fitting tribute to one of the most significant bands in rock history and aim at setting new standards for how band-focused music games could be executed on mobile today,” said developer Gamesloft’s creative director Cedric Ratajczak via a press release.

In other mobile game news, Square Enix has announced two Final Fantasy VII mobile games. Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier and Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis are scheduled to release later this year, although concrete release dates have yet to be announced.

The First Soldier will be a battle royale title that features familiar summons from the RPG series, magical spells, Chocobos and other Final Fantasy mainstays. Ever Crisis will include additional story elements and will be structured in separate chapters that tells the entire story of Final Fantasy.