The Fantastic Four will debut in Marvel Rivals on January 10th with the arrival of Season 1: Eternal Night Descends. The first gameplay trailer for the acclaimed superhero family is now available, and it focuses on Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic. Check it out below.As a Duelist, Mister Fantastic stretches his arms to strike opponents at exceptional ranges. He can also grab two enemies to slam them together, catch projectiles (including Ultimates) and send them back, and bulk up to deal more damage. His Ultimate is also appropriately absurd as he bounces around, slamming on opponents multiple times.Alongside Mister Fantastic, The Invisible Human, The Human Torch, and The Thing will join the roster. Stay tuned for their dedicated reveal trailers to learn more about their abilities.Marvel Rivals is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Check out our review here. Since launching last month, its crossed over 20 million players. Its also surpassed Overwatch 2 in viewership on Twitch in recent weeks.

See the Sprawling Secret Passageway Built for Florences Elite 450 Years AgoThe 2,500-foot-long Vasari Corridor impressed guests of the Medicis and other leaders that followed (including Benito Mussolini). Now, its reopening to the public The passage connects the Uffizi Galleries to theBoboli Gardens. Uffizi GalleriesIn 1565, a simple, elegant hallway was built atopPonte Vecchio (or the Old Bridge) in Florence. The passage was restricted to Florentine elites, who used it to easily traverse the Arno River without mingling with passersby on the bridges lower levels. Now, after years of restoration and repair, the once-secret hall has reopened to the public.The passagewayknown as the Vasari Corridorconnects Florences lushBoboli Gardens to the world-famousUffizi Galleries, an art museum boasting works such as Sandro BotticellisThe Birth of Venus and CaravaggiosMedusa. The passage sits atop Ponte Vecchio, a bridge that spans the Arno River in Florence. Uffizi GalleriesAccording to astatement from the Uffizi Galleries, the 2,500-foot-long Vasari Corridor was commissioned by the second duke of Florence,Cosimo I de Medici of the infamousMedici family, which controlled Tuscany for much of the time between the 15th and 18th centuries. As Alessandro Giuli, the Italian culture minister, says in the statement, the Medicis would walk the Vasari Corridor en route from their home,Palazzo Pitti, to their workplace,Palazzo Vecchio, the government headquarters.The corridor is named for its designer,Giorgio Vasari, a Renaissance artist, architect and writer. Vasari modeled the passage on a similar structure in Rome. Entrants descend 58 steps from the second floor of the Uffizi to a covered brick walkway alongside the rivervisible through porthole windowsbefore continuing across Ponte Vecchio, according to CNNs Julia Buckley.The panoramic aspect has certainly always made the passageway interesting, as art historian Simona Pasquinucci, a curator at the Uffizi Galleries, tells theGuardians Angela Giuffrida. It was interesting for Cosimo to more or less check what was happening in his city from these windows. Back then, the river was much livelier, with all the fisheries, mills and other activities on and around the bridge. The windows in this part of the passage were expanded in the 1930s. Uffizi GalleriesPer the Guardian, the Medicis used the Vasari Passage to impress guestsa practice that would continue through the 20th century. In fact, the large windows that line the passageways bridge section werent actually added until the 1930s: Benito Mussolini had them installed before welcoming Adolf Hitler to Florence in1938.The Vasari Corridor was last restored in the 1990s, per the statement. Officials closed the hallway in 2016 because it didnt meet safety regulations. In 2022, an approximately $10 million restoration project began, which ended in late 2024. The elevated passage runs alongside the river before crossing over. Uffizi GalleriesThe corridor is a parallel city within the city that has remained a mythical place for the Western world, as Uffizi director Simone Verde tells CNN. He adds that the corridors construction illuminates the role of culture in the Medicis rule.This was new to the Renaissancethe cultural element of government, says Verde. The culture created here was the motor for all the courts of modern Europe.Restricted for centuries to aristocrats, officials and eventually study groups, the Vasari Corridors views are now available to ticketed Uffizi visitors for 18 (around $19) in addition to the galleries 25 (about $26) entrance fee. As Giuli says in the statement, Accessibility, safety and energy sustainability define a route that, through its intricate historical, urban and monumental layers, allows visitors to admire Florence in all its splendor.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Architecture, Art, Fascism, Florence, Italy, Museums, Political Leaders, Renaissance

Paleontologists and volunteers excavate dinosaur trackways in Oxfordshire, England, uncovering the biggest find of its kind in the United Kingdom. University of BirminghamAbout 166 million years ago, dinosaurs ambled across a shallow lagoon in modern-day Britain. Some of the Jurassic giants took their sweet time, moving in fits and starts; others might have skulked more urgently. All made the mud squelch beneath their toes as they tromped here.At the time, such an occurrence was just a mundane event of dinosaurs on the march. But the terrain preserved these fleeting crossingsthough the dinosaurs are long gone, the impressions they left behind remain. Now, researchers and volunteers have uncovered the entire trackway where these Mesozoic monsters came and went. Containing around 200 marks in total, the site is the largest collection of fossilized footprints to have been discovered in the United Kingdom.This is one of the most impressive track sites Ive ever seen, in terms of scale, in terms of the size of the tracks, Kirsty Edgar, a micropaleontologist from the University of Birmingham in England, tells Rebecca Morelle and Alison Francis of BBC News. You can step back in time and get an idea of what it would have been like, these massive creatures just roaming around, going about their own business.The dinosaur stomping ground was first discovered by quarry worker Gary Johnson while he was operating a mechanical digger. As he stripped back the clay from the ground, he felt unusual bumps underneath his machine. These might not usually be anything to gape at, but it was their repetition that caught Johnsons attention. Every ten feet or so, he would find a similar hump.Johnson had historical precedent to suspect that the regular impressions could be of paleontological significance: In 1997, a dinosaur crossing with 40 footprints was discovered nearby. He wondered if the holes on the ground could be another hotspot for dinosaur traffic. To find out for sure, he called in the experts.I thought, Im the first person to see them. And it was so surreala bit of a tingling moment, really, he tells BBC News.Last June, researchers from Oxford University and the University of Birmingham led a week-long excavation at the quarry site. More than 100 or so students and volunteers searched the ground for the footprints, then liberated them with brushes.The team uncovered five trackways in the rock, each made by a different dinosaur. Four of them came from the footfalls of some herbivorous sauropod, likely a Cetiosaurus. These behemoths grew up to 59 feet in length. The final set of footprints were tellingly three-toed, belonging to a fearsome predator: the more than 20-foot-long Megalosaurus. As a species, Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur fossil to ever be named and described, and its study in 1824 kickstarted modern-day paleontology. A three-toed track left by Megalosaurus, a Jurassic predator. Dr. Luke Meade, University of BirminghamThe longest of the sauropod trackways spans 490 feet in length. But the footprints disappear under a cliff at the edge of the quarry, which has yet to be fully excavated. So, according to a statement from Oxford University, the series of tracks could extend much farther.Dinosaur footprints are an uncommon sight, and for good reasonit takes very specific circumstances to maintain them. The recent find was in one of the lucky areas. Its rare to find them so numerous in one place and its rare to find such extensive trackways as well, Emma Nicholls, a paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, tells the Agence France-Presse. The research team suspects a storm piled sediment on top of the footprints and protected them from erosion.The tracks preservation is so exquisite that scientists were able to cobble together snapshots of dinosaur behavior. One set of the sauropod tracks intersects with those of the Megalosaurus. From the shapes in the ground, the researchers conclude that the sauropod came by before the carnivore. Perhaps the predator was tracking its potential target, they suggest, though its impossible to say for sure. Elsewhere, one of the footprints on the largest sauropod track is out of sequence; researchers think the behemoth could have paused to look back over its shoulder.The preservation is so detailed that we can see how the mud was deformed as the dinosaurs feet squelched in and out, says Duncan Murdock, an Earth scientist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, in another statement. Along with other fossils like burrows, shells and plants, we can bring to life the muddy lagoon environment the dinosaurs walked through.Modern analytical tools and digital recording equipment will help scientists glean more insights about the dinosaurs day-to-day lives. During the dig, the team created molds from individual footprints and took more than 20,000 photos. These will help researchers create 3D models of the individual markings, as well as the terrain. The data will help inform scientists about the makers size, gait and walking speed, as well as how they might have interacted. Using computer models, the researchers can potentially recreate the scenes of dinosaurs on the move.Prehistoric footprints might not be as glamorous as a dinosaur skeleton, but they give beholders a different kind of view into history. Bones provide largely static informationlike shape and anatomybut footprints are records of life, when the dinosaurs were still moving.To me, dinosaur trackways are much more alive than fossilized bones, which can only be from dead animals, says Emily Howard, an Oxford University earth sciences undergraduate student, in the statement. She was involved in the efforts to excavate the tracks last summer. Similar to when you see human footprints on a path ahead of you, a dinosaur track gives the impression that the creature could be miles away in the direction the tracks march on but was here only a moment ago.Taken together with the bones, howeverand with some help from modern technologythese earthen imprints give a holistic picture of the prehistoric creatures that sashayed along in their heyday, oblivious to the puny mammals of the future who would gawk at their footprints millions of years later.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Cool Finds, Dinosaurs, Discoveries, England, Fossils, Paleontology

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Rocksteady cut further jobs at the end of 2024It's unclear how many people were impacted by this second redundancy round in just three months News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Jan. 7, 2025 Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League developer Rocksteady made another round of layoffs just before the close of 2024.It marks the second round of job cuts in just three months.As reported by Eurogamer, half a dozen developers impacted by the cuts confirmed to our sister site that they had lost their jobs, including employees working in the programming, artistry, and QA teams.The cuts came just weeks after the Warner Bros. subsidiary Rocksteady Studios laid off a separate round of staff in September 2024.It's unclear how many people were impacted by the layoffs and as yet, Warner Bros. has not responded to press requests for comments.Warner Bros acknowledged shortly after launch that Suicide Squad "[fell] short of expectations]," added to the tough comparison with the launch of Hogwarts Legacy in the same window the previous year.Shortly thereafter came reports detailing various problems during Suicide Squad's development, including frequent changes in vision, perfectionist leadership, and Rocksteady's lack of experience with both multiplayer and live service games.

Justin Carter, Contributing EditorJanuary 7, 20252 Min ReadImage via Jar of Sparks/NetEase.At a GlanceJar of Sparks was founded in 2022 by 343 Industries alum Jerry Hook, with the intent of making narrative-driven action games.Jar of Sparks, an indie developer spun up in 2022, is pausing development on its debut project as it searches for funding.On LinkedIn, founder Jerry Hook explained current staff would be allowed to look for new opportunities during this process. "If youre searching for exceptional professionals who are driven and think outside the box, please reach out," he wrote. "Wed be more than happy to connect you with some of the best developers I have had the pleasure of working beside."Jar of Sparks was founded as a NetEase subsidiary, and Hook said in 2022 the studio intended to make "a new generation of narrative-driven action games." This marks one of the first developers to cease operations and cut staff in 2025.Throughout 2022 and 2023, NetEase courted veterans from developers like Ubisoft, Riot Games, and Cryptic Studios to spin up their own teams. As of last year, the status of those other studios is unknown. By December, the tech giant was reportedly preparing to shut down Ouka Studios, which had released Visions of Mana in August.Roadblocks for other new studios from veteran developersBefore 2024 ended, two other developers were in similar positions as Jar of Sparks. Worlds Unknown, a studio headed up by BioWare alum Mac Walters, also ceased operations to hunt for a new publishing partner. Similarly, Tales of Kenzera creator Surgent Studios paused activities and offered a public first look at its current project, 'Uso,' to lure prospective partners.Of Jar's first game, Hook said the team "strived to create something truly new and exciting for the industry. We couldnt be prouder of the groundwork weve laid together. [...] From the day we formed to this very moment, this team has accomplished remarkable featsproving that a small, focused, and dedicated group can achieve great results. We thank each of them for their courage, skill, and friendship.""Thank you to everyone who supported us throughout our journey here at Jar of Sparks," he concluded, "and we look forward to updating you all with our next step in our journey."Read more about:LayoffsAbout the AuthorJustin CarterContributing Editor, GameDeveloper.comA Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don't ask him about how much gum he's had, because the answer will be more than he's willing to admit.See more from Justin CarterDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

Private Division, the indie game label from Take-Two, has been reportedly acquired by staff from last year's mass exodus at Annapurna Interactive.Per Bloomberg, the new, still-unnamed studio will inherit games and franchises previously published under the Private Division banner. The titles that will fall under this new developer's purview include the Kerbal Space Program series, and an unannounced project from Pokmon developer Game Freak.Last November, it was reported Take-Two had sold the label to a then-unknown company. According to Bloomberg, the buyer was the Austin-based private equity firm Haveli, which reportedly struck a deal to fund the Annapurna alums' studio. As a result of this purchase, some of the near-20 Private Division staffers will be laid off.What happened with Private Division and Annapurna InteractiveLast summer, the Grand Theft Auto publisher planned to either close (or shut down) Private Division. That was preceded by the full closure of Roll7 (Rollerdrome, OlliOlli) and layoffs at Kerbal creator Intercept Games. Yellow Brick Games and Bloober Team, two developers whose projects were to be published by Private Division, respectively switched to self-publishing or had their deal with the label fully dissolved.Over at Annapurna Interactive, an alleged power struggle primarily between studio leadership led to a resignation wave among staff. Among its many issues, the video game division of the popular film studio was reportedly set to launch its own offshoot called Verset, which would handle current and future Annapurna Interactive deals, and indie work of its own.Instead, discussions between Verset's planned leaders, James Masi and Nathan Gary, and Interactive co-founder Megan Ellison hit a standstill. Despite attempted negotiations, the 25-person Interactive staff all departed. The reported plan at the time for the staff was to launch its own publisher. What remains of Annapurna Interactive began hiring staff so it could make good on pre-existing deals.Bloomberg's full report on Private Division's new situation can be read here.

RCA has announced a new line of bright QLED TVs designed to be installed and blend into outdoor settings with bezels finished in a spirit of wilderness and Mossy Oak camouflage design. Theyre dust and water-resistant, and will work in temperatures ranging from minus 22 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.The company hasnt announced when its new outdoor TV lineup will be available. When they are, the TVs will be offered in four sizes: a $3,999 43-inch model, a $4,999 55-inch model, a $5,999 65-inch model, and the largest, a 75-inch model for $7,999.Why does RCAs 43-inch quantum dot TV cost almost four grand when similarly-sized alternatives can be found for less than $300? The TV in your living room almost certainly doesnt come with an IP55 rating. The RCAs are built with a scratch-resistant aluminum case that can withstand dust and moisture ingress. You wont want to leave them out in a downpour, but they can survive being sprayed with a hose or pummeled with wind-blown rain.Other features include up to 2,000 nits of brightness that helps keep the TVs viewable in bright sunlight, Dolby Atmos support, and Google TV to provide access to various streaming apps.