I tried to play Blades of Fire like a game I already knew, and I suffered for it. I died, over and over again in MercurySteam's new action-adventure, the same studio behind Metroid Dread and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and it wasn't until I began to get on board with just how pig-headedly and stubbornly different Blades of Fire is that I realised how exciting it can be.Blades of FireDeveloper: MercurySteamPublisher: 505 GamesPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Releases 22nd May on PC (Epic Games Store), PS5, Xbox Series X/SBlades of Fire was only announced last week, so you'll be forgiven for not knowing what it is. But it's coming out very soon, on 22nd May. Somehow MercurySteam kept this game a secret through four years of development. Quite how it managed that with a team of 200 people, I don't know - it's a minor miracle. What it means for the game I play at a preview event is that it feels all-but finished, so it makes an incredibly glossy first impression.We're squarely in fantasy territory here - rich, overabundant, lavish fantasy, as well as occasionally brutal and twisted. Magic courses through a land teeming with flowers and buzzing with wildlife, and creatures like trolls and elementals romp around. Soldiers who look a bit like the Locust enemies from Gears of War - they have that same chunkiness and sallowness to them - loiter, waiting. In fact, the whole game has a chunkiness to it, a bit like Blizzard games do. Hands and arms are oversized, and buildings and walls are double-thick, which combines not only to make a pleasing visual picture, but to give the game a sturdy feeling, and heft. Remember how chainsawing Locust in two in Gears of War felt? That kind of splattery satisfaction is here too, popping heads like watermelons with huge hammers, or lopping off limbs with scything strikes of your swords.The debut Blades of Fire trailer.Watch on YouTubeTo give you the topline: Blades of Fire - not to be confused with ice skating film Blades of Glory - is an action-adventure that's heavy on the combat and features a unique forge mechanic, around which everything revolves. You play as a gruff character called Aran who wakes up one day in a hole of some kind, and crawls out to find himself fighting soldiers and being handed a magical forge hammer that he seems to know and fear. Upon using it, he's whisked away to a magical forge realm where he'll return time and time again to make his weaponry.This forge mechanic is not a frivolous thing - I've never actually seen anything quite so detailed. It blows out the process of making weaponry into multiple steps and many decisions, all of which alter the properties your weapon will ultimately have. You can choose the metals you use for various parts of the build, for example, and deliberate over blade shapes and cross-guard shapes and pommel types. For hammers, you can consider wood choice for handles. Do you want something huge and heavy, or something small and nimble? Do you want something with good block and parry potential, or something more glass-cannony? There's a lot to decide upon. That's the troll I killed! There's a darker take on fantasy running through the game, resulting in some - clearly - quite twisted creations. | Image credit: MercurySteamFirst, you choose the weapon you want to make from a list of scrolls you've collected, then you chalk out a design based on the decisions mentioned above. Then you grab a lump of red hot metal and hammer it into shape in a mini-game. What you're trying to do is bang a pattern into a specific shape, but like the pattern of a graphic equaliser, each time you bang down one end, another end spikes up, so it's a tricky thing in practice to do. And you only have a limited number of hammer strokes within which to achieve it. At the end, you'll get a star score for your work. It's a surprisingly involved process, and an engaging one.Once teleported back to the game world, you'll start to understand the importance of the weapons you make. Enemies you fight have vulnerabilities which you discover by locking onto them. Should they highlight in green, your current set-up is good and you'll do maximum damage against them. But if they (or parts of them) are highlighted in orange, then that's the signal your set-up could use some improvement, as their armour will soak up some of the damage from your blows. Lastly, if they appear red, you've got a problem, and your weapon attacks will do no damage at all. It's a traffic light approach, in other words: you highlight an enemy and cycle between weapons and fighting styles until you find one that's green to go. The forge gameplay is engaging and detailed. I really like it. | Image credit: MercurySteamI'm used to this idea - that different weapons work against different things - but I'm not used to a game negating attacks entirely if they're mismatched. I'm also not used to this particular way of switching between them. Here, changing weapons involves holding down the right trigger and pressing the right stick, but changing fighting styles requires only a tap of the right trigger (or at least it did on the PS5 controller I was using that was connected to a PC). Fighting styles, incidentally, alternate the way you use a sword, preferring either the tip for thrusting, or the sides of the sword for slashing. Hammers, meanwhile, only crush, as far as I can tell. None of this sounds complicated, I know, but in the heat of battle, it's fiddly, especially when different enemies within a group require a different approach.Blades of Fire's combat system is also awkward to begin with. I mean, who puts a dodge-roll on the left bumper, for goodness sake? It's typical of the way in which this game does things its own way and no one else's. The face button attacks are different, too. Rather than denoting light or heavy attacks, here they determine the direction of your attacks. Different face buttons correspond to a strike from the left or right, or an attack to the head or body, and if you hold the button down, a mutilation - which is what you think it is: a potentially fatal and very gory power attack. Remember the watermelon head-pops I mentioned? Hold down triangle to achieve them. What a lot of merry and painful adventures you'll have. | Image credit: MercurySteamIt's an unusual system, but Blades of Fire does it this way to tie into the traffic-light system outlined above. Enemies can have independent areas of vulnerability on them - patches of green, if you like - so if they're vulnerable on their torso, you want to aim for the body, and if they don't have a helmet on, you should pop their head. It's a lot to take in all at once.Exacerbating the awkwardness is the game's difficulty. To me, Blades of Fire sits somewhere between a Soulslike and the modern God of War games. Actually, there are quite a lot of parallels to God of War in how you're a gruff old fella adventuring with a bright young lad called Adso; you suddenly take it upon yourself to kill an evil queen, and Adso pledges their service to you, offering useful sidekick help by highlighting enemy weaknesses and assisting in solving puzzles for you. The game has the impact of God of War in combat, too, but it punishes you more like a Soulslike would, not by robbing you of experience, but by making you drop your handmade weaponry when you die. You'll retain a default sword, but if you want your stuff back, you'll have to fight your way through respawned enemies to get it - which can be tricky when you no longer have some of the specialised weaponry you'd want to use against them.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Back to the forge you go, then, and it's on my fourth or fifth visit there in the 90 minutes I play that the forging starts to chafe a little. You can, thankfully, instantly remake weapons you've made before, to save time, but the process as a whole began to lose its appeal somewhat. I felt as though I was enduring rather than enjoying what I played.But then it all started to change. It started with slowing down and nosing through the game's menus and built-in tips to see what I was doing wrong, and there, I learned the nuances I'd been missing. Armed with that new knowledge and sharper weapons, and a stamina regen trick (hold down block - unusual), I re-entered the world and suddenly found myself achieving, trouncing a huge troll that had been harassing me for the last half-an-hour. A troll that personified the game's attitude towards me, I think - a stubborn obstacle to be overcome. My abrupt reorientation complete, I was finally able to truly begin.Despite how it might sound, I really liked what I played of Blades of Fire. I have huge admiration for teams that stick to their own design principles despite what other games are doing, and that's what it feels like here. Blades of Fire is different. It has ties to a game made years ago by some of the MercurySteam founders, called Severance: Blades of Darkness, but only loose ones. Mostly, Blades of Fire is new, and it feels it. And because MercurySteam is co-funding it, it gives the studio a chance to finally have something of its own, having spent years winning acclaim for other company's brands."For an independent developer, the industry ocean is tough to navigate," CEO Enric lvarez tells me. "We think that if we are flying with our own wings it will give us more chances. It will give us autonomy. It will give us full responsibility; we're taking part of the risk. But for us, more than a risk is an opportunity to create something that belongs to us and that we don't rely on anyone to make it happen. In that sense, Blades of Fire is an opportunity for us, from a business and also from a creative standpoint. It involves some risk, yes. What in life doesn't involve a risk?"Whether it will come together as a cohesive whole, I couldn't possibly say yet, but the glimpse I've had is exciting. Roll on, May.This coverage is based on a press event, for which food and travel was paid by 505 Games.

Balatro developer stopped playing other roguelikes to try and "reinvent the wheel" with hit poker game"I didn't want to borrow tried-and-true designs."Image credit: LocalThunk News by Tom Phillips Editor-in-Chief Published on March 7, 2025 The creator of Balatro has revealed fresh details on the hit indie card game's development, including the fact he gave up playing other roguelikes for more than two years to avoid subconsciously borrowing ideas.LocalThunk, the Canadian IT-worker-turned-indie-game-maestro, published a lengthy timeline of Balatro's development today on his blog. It features insights into his design decisions while working on the project, and notes about his own personal life and health over the course of the last three years.In December 2021, after beginning work on a Balatro prototype, LocalThunk said he made "a very conscious effort not to play any more roguelike games starting now". To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Does anyone really want long games anymore?Watch on YouTube"I want to be crystal clear here and say that this was not because I thought it would result in [Balatro being] a better game, this was because making games is my hobby, releasing them and making money from them is not, so naively exploring roguelike design (and especially deckbuilder design, since I had never played one before) was part of the fun for me," LocalThunk continued. "I wanted to make mistakes, I wanted to reinvent the wheel, I didn't want to borrow tried-and-true designs from existing games. That likely would have resulted in a more tight game but it would have defeated the purpose of what I love about making games."It was a pledge he seemingly kept until May 2023, when LocalThunk writes:"I downloaded Slay the Spire and played it for the first time. Holy shit. Now that is a game."I did this because I was having some troubles in my controller implementation and I wanted to see how they handled controller inputs for a card game but I ended up getting sucked in. Thank goodness I avoided playing it until now because I surely would have just copied their incredible design (intentionally or subconsciously)."The full development timeline is lengthy but well worth a read for anyone who's played Balatro and is interested at what point various features made it into the game (which for a long time was alternatively named Joker Poker).Balatro's fundamental Chip X Mult scoring system was part of the game since its earliest days - back when it was called Big Cheat - in 2021. However, it wasn't until late 2023 that the decision to include as many as 150 Jokers in the game was finalised. It was also during late 2023 that LocalThunk reports on difficulties with his health, due to the increasing attention that Balatro was getting and the long hours spent working on its development. Balatro began life as a game project LocalThunk hoped to share with friends, or potentially launch on Steam just to have something he could show to a future employer. As of January 2025, the game has now sold 5m copies."It's the game that's been on everyone's lips (and brain, and console, and phone and practically every device going) since it took the world by storm back in February," our Katharine wrote, praising Balatro as one of Eurogamer's best games of 2024. "Balatro has been a force of nature this year."

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereDeath and taxes are lifes only guarantees. And while Fortnite has always had plenty of the first, its now introducing the second! Thats right, the latest update brings an in-game tax, meaning youll have to fork over some gold before you can even use a toilet. Looks like in Fortnite, nothing is certain except death, taxes and sweaty players in the final circle.Next time you visit a vending machine, make sure to carry extra gold in your pockets. After all, Baron requires you to pay a hefty tax which sometimes exceeds hundreds of gold!You now have to pay tax in FortniteFortnite Chapter 6 Season 2 brought several new features to the video game. This season is all about heists and gold, and racking up that sweet currency is easier than ever. Players have been begging Epic Games for more ways to spend their accumulated gold, and guess what? Epic listened! Well kind of.Vending machines offer a variety of weapons you can purchase in exchange for gold. However, before you dish out 1,200 gold for the Plasma Burst Laser, you will have to pay a Baron Tax. If you thought that real-life tax was bad, wait till you see that you need to pay Baron 50% of the amount of purchase.Next time you want to use a toilet in Fortnite, make sure you pay the tax. Image by VideoGamerTo make things worse, you cant even use a toilet in Fortnite without paying tax! Whats next? Will we have to buy a ticket to ride the train? Will cars be off-limits without a license and registration? Will the bus driver start checking for passes? At this rate, well need to file a tax return before dropping from the Battle Bus!Given Epics love for tricking Fortnite players, some of these features might come in the future. But as long as were still out there building, battling, and having fun, who cares about a little in-game tax, just consider it the price of victory! FortnitePlatform(s):Android, iOS, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/XGenre(s):Action, Massively Multiplayer, Shooter9VideoGamerRelated TopicsFortnite Subscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereHave you ever played through PvE battles in Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 and thought: This is thrilling, but what if I could lead 19 other players into war? Well, one modder has thought the same as you can now burst through Xenos scum as part of a massive army of Space Marines.Space Marine 2 20-man squadsCreated by modder CrabikMonkey11, a new Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 mod allows you to go ham and spawn in a massive army of friendly marines to stomp through Tyranid hordes.Dubbed the 300 Marines mod, the mod actually attempts to give players a huge army of 300 Space Marines. However, the mod actually hits the limit on the number of Space Marines the game can actually spawn, making it so that you have a rotating squad of 20 friendlies.Just look at that Squad!Nevertheless, this gives you an absolutely massive number of friendlies to battle throughout your Operations. Right now, the mod only works for that particular modealthough that is already a lot of contentbut the modder is also working on getting the mod working throughout the games campaign.Whatever the case, being able to stomp through levels as a 20-man squad is a power fantasy like no other. Saber already did an amazing job making Space Marine 2 feel like the ultimate Warhammer 40K power trip, and this only exacerbates that.While Saber works on a very different Horde Mode for an awesome future update and toil away at new difficulty modifiers to appease the games more masochistic players, modders are constantly working on new features, cosmetics and more to play along with.For more Warhammer coverage, read about how franchise owner Games Workshop is actively searching for its next Space Marine 2 level of success. Additionally, read about Saber Interactives next game thats already in active development at the studio.Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2Platform(s):PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series XGenre(s):ActionRelated TopicsSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

ByZack ZwiezenPublishedWednesday 3:55PMWe may earn a commission from links on this page.Photo: Andrew Harnik / Staff / Kotaku (Getty Images)President Donald Trumps recently imposed tariffs on Mexico, China, and Canada could potentially lead to higher game and console prices, fewer physical releases, and supply shortages, according to some industry analysts. Suggested ReadingThe Best Reveals From The Game Awards 2023Share SubtitlesOffEnglishSuggested ReadingThe Best Reveals From The Game Awards 2023Share SubtitlesOffEnglishThe Best Reveals From The Game Awards 2023As reported by Ars Technica on March 5, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella recently posted on social media that it wouldnt surprise him to see physical games that would be subject to tariffs simply not get made, and that publishers might move to an all-digital strategy to avoid those tariffs. Currently, most video game discs are produced in Mexico, so whatever game discs are still printed and shipped out will likely cost more to buy due to a newly activated 25-percent tariff. Remember, publishers and other companies are going to pass the cost of tariffs onto consumers. What a mess, added Piscatella.And if youre thinking, Well, Ill just buy games digitally to avoid the price increase, that might not be possible. As pointed out by Piscatella last year, publishers would either raise prices on digital games to reach parity with the higher cost of physical games or, as mentioned already, simply give up entirely on producing and sell discs. Either option is bad. It also comes at a time when the future of physical media looks bleak. Consoles are also likely to be impacted by tariffs, as explained by Nike Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad. On March 4, a day after the Trump administrations tariff against China became active, Ahmad posted that, despite some mitigation efforts, 75 percent of consoles are produced and imported from China. These consoles will be hit by the tariffs and will likely cost more to buy in the United States. Its also likely that fewer will be produced, which could lead to supply shortages.As we reported in January, the presidents tariffs could see the price of consoles jump dramatically. A Switch could potentially go from $300 to $400. A PS5 Pro could see its price leap from $700 to $1000. And the Switch 2 could be slapped with a higher-than-expected price tag due to the ongoing tariffs, making a console that was potentially already going to be hard to buy in its first year even trickier and more expensive to obtain. .

In UteroWhat do you get when you mix Beavis and Butthead, Daria, and Bojack Horseman? It turns out, it's an MTV-style rock-band management sim called RockbeastsReminisce over the 90s and try not to go off the rails in a world of excess and hedonism in Rockbeasts, from Team17.Image credit: Team17 Article by Kelsey Raynor Guides Writer Published on March 7, 2025 Think back to the 90s. I wasnt alive during it, but Ive listened to enough Nirvana and played enough of the Nintendo 64 without a mobile phone in sight to imagine what it mightve been like. I do know that this era of excess and plenty was the time that video games exploded in popularity and made obscene technological advancements, when dressing up in neon colours and bad haircuts were deemed a hell of a lot more fashionable than it is now, and when the music was great. 90s nostalgia is real, and even today the love for its music, in particular, lives on.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Think Weezer, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and Beastie Boys. Metallica, Motley Crue. Pavement, Sonic Youth. The 90s saw Oasis release Wonderwall, for Gods sake. The song that will quite literally never die, no matter how many of us are tired of hearing it played at any bar across the north of England each weekend. God forbid someone breaks out a guitar at a party.Rockbeasts which I was briefly shown during Team17s Showcase last in late February 2025 is an upcoming game developed by Lichthund that harkens back to the era of alternative music and bad haircuts, tasking you with becoming the manager of an upcoming rock-and-roll band and helping them skyrocket to fame. Or aiding them with becoming complete sellouts. Your call.As a management simulator, you can expect to have to manage the band's time; when (and if) they eat, rehearse, perform publicly, and so forth. But you can also expect to get to know your band, and all of the other 100+ wacky characters they will run into on their journey to the top (or bottom), on a much deeper level. Everyone knows this is what the 90s looked like, right? | Image credit: Team17This cast, which consists of all kinds of anthropomorphic animals that any Bojack Horseman fan will drool over (including a bass-playing sea bass, of course), boasts an appearance from The Stooges Iggy Pop, as well as a range of voice actors from Baldurs Gate 3, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Alan Wake 2.The game doesnt look to shy away from the dark underbelly of rock 'n' roll stardom in the 90s, either - with cutthroat, comedic dialogue that doesnt dial down the swearing. Much like its visual style, dialogue takes inspiration from adult cartoons such as Beavis and Butthead, Daria, Bobs Burgers, and even Family Guy. So you can imagine the type of humour that the game is going for.While we didnt get much of a look at it during our time with the game, Lichthund did allude to life as a rock band manager not being all sunshine and roses. It seems as though theres more to Rockbeasts that simply keeping your band in line and landing them bigger shows; therell no doubt be conflict and controversy perhaps within the band itself, as well as from exterior forces to manage in the raging capitalist society of the 90s, all part of your bands ascent to fame.I certainly expect my band to get booed off stage more than once, thats for sure, and I suspect thats not even the beginning of things that could go wrong for a rock band manager in RockbeastsRockbeasts is expected to release in 2025.

Can't Squid-ze It InUPDATE: As Helldivers 2's squid singularity looks like it could be gearing up to make another planet go pop, Super Earth's 30 year olds beg Arrowhead to revamp how Illuminate MOs work"It's time to introduce [the] squids as an actual front."Image credit: Arrowhead News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Updated on March 7, 2025 UPDATE (07/02/25, 4:05 PM GMT): Helldivers 2's next major order has now gone live, and it brings good news. Thanks to the divers' efforts in the Gloom, Super Earth has what it needs to "begin to establish a blockade around Meridia, and through that, reduce the amount of Dark Energy that is amassing at the singularity and giving it momentum".In order to support that, players have been tasked with killing a metric tonne of bugs and bots - a billion automatons, six million shredder tanks, 1.5 billion terminids, and eight million bile titans to be exact. So, make sure you pack plenty of ammo.Helldivers 2 players have recently closed out another major order, and while it ended in success on the Automaton end, folks couldn't rack up enough defeats of Illuminate attacks in time to satisfy the second element of it, meaning a mixed result.The result is looking like it could be bad news for the planet Moradesh, as the Meridian Singularity is set to continue on its path of destruction towards Super Earth - the Helldivers' home world. Meanwhile, a pretty sizeable group of players are petitioning Arrowhead to change the way the Illuminate conflict works in order to give them ore chanbce of fighting back.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. First of all, the possible danger to that planet. Based on what players have spotted when looking at the singularity eariler today, it's looking like it's building up to do a thing soon - I'd assume when the next MO is deployed.Given the last order briefing specifically said Moradesh is the next planet in danger, I'd get ready to evacuate any relatives your diver might have there. Dear AH, (in regard to Squid MOs) byu/SL1Fun inHelldiversTo see this content please enable targeting cookies.Meanwhile, following that last defeat, one player's letter to Arrowhead via the Helldivers 2 subreddit, which as the studio to switch up how it's handling The Illuminate in the Galactic War, has amassed over 2.5k upvotes. Basically, it argues in favour of a pernament Illuminate front that's more like what the Terminids and Automatons have, rather than players being tasked with fending off suprise Illuminate attacks that only pop up on the map for a limited time - during which folks may be off doing stuff in the real lives."I imagine the HD2 playerbase is surely college-aged or older at the very least," wrote the post author, user SL1Fun, "This means between school and work, it isn't feasible for the playerbase at large to keep up with the rotating Squid raids. I noticed this personally when doing MO dives on only Squids over the past few days: whenever I could play, the Squid raids were already halfway over, and that's not including the ones I flat-out missed. The short time limit just makes these incompatible with the fact we have to work."This, they reason, is which Arrowhead should turn the Illuminate threat into "an actual front" that'll allow players to engage with these major orders in a more flexible fashion without risking missing anything.Do you agree, or do you think that part of the appeal of constantly evolving and changing Galactic War is the idea that bigf stiff can transpire when you're AFK, making it much tougher for the community to win every MO? Let us know if you've lost count below.

Cubone used Hug.There's nothing quite like a cute Pokmon plush to bring a smile to the face, is there? Well, this new range arriving in Japan's Pokmon Centers next week might just be the cutest of the bunch (thanks, NintendoSoup).The "Brrr... Squish! Plush Toys" series (at least, that's the way Google Translate puts it) will arrive in the Tohoku Pokmon Center's re-opening preview on 13th March before landing on Japan's Pokmon Center website the following morning.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Image: NintendoWith the news in 2023 that Nintendo would be working on an official Legend of Zelda movie in collaboration with Sony Pictures Entertainment, you can bet that we had to scoop our jaws from off the floor.Even with the success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie, a Zelda adaptation just didn't seem all that feasible to us, and it sounds like Nintendo was of the same mind for many years. According to the Video Game History Hour podcast with ex-Nintendo "marketing mastermind" Gail Tilden (thanks, GamesRadar+), legendary developer Shigeru Miyamoto would flat-out say "No" when approached about a potential Zelda movie.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube798kWatch on YouTube In fact, not even the hypothetical involvement of Steven Spielberg was enough to convince him:"People were always calling about doing a movie. You can imagine that the most common question is, you know, "Were calling, wed like to do a Zelda movie". So the answer was always no. And so, you know, even I personally said, "Mr. Miyamoto, like, if Steven Spielberg himself wants to do a Zelda movie, what is the answer?" He said no. So that was it."The answer was always no."It makes us question exactly what occurred to change Nintendo's mind on the matter. Was it the overwhelming success of the Mario movie? Or is it simply Nintendo's desire to expand its reach with movies and theme parks? Regardless, we're cautiously optimistic about the upcoming Zelda movie.With Shigeru Miyamoto and Avi Arad producing, the Zelda movie will be directed by Wes Ball, who most recently enjoyed critical success with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, a continuation of the reboot series previously helmed by Rupert Wyatt and Matt Reeves. "He's a true genius in that world"It's a franchise close to his heart, like Star WarsAre you happy that Nintendo has changed its tune on Zelda movie adaptations, or are you approaching the upcoming movie with scepticism? Let us know with a comment in the usual place.[source gamehistory.org, via gamesradar.com]Share:662 Nintendo Lifes resident horror fanatic, when hes not knee-deep in Resident Evil and Silent Hill lore, Ollie likes to dive into a good horror book while nursing a lovely cup of tea. He also enjoys long walks and listens to everything from TOOL to Chuck Berry. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...Related ArticlesNintendo Confirms Removal Of Switch Online SNES GameSuper Soccer will "no longer be available"Nintendo Discounts Several Games On Switch For MAR10 Day (North America)"I'm a slasher... of prices!"Nintendo Runs Out Of Replacement Parts For 2DS Systems And New 3DS LL, Ends Repairs In Japan"We apologize for any inconvenience"Mario Day Celebrations Begin With Free Switch Online Trial (US)Available for a limited-timeMy Nintendo Store Adds Two Mario-Themed 'Exclusives' (US)Fancy a Mario bag or license holder?

The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday criminal charges against the administrators of the Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex for allegedly facilitating money laundering by criminal and terrorist organizations, as well as violating U.S. sanctions.The two administrators are Lithuanian national and Russian resident Aleksej Besciokov, 46, and Aleksandr Mira Serda, 40, a Russian national residing in the United Arab Emirates, who knew that criminal proceeds were being laundered through Garantex and took steps to conceal the facilitation of illegal activities on its platform, according to the indictment against them.The DOJ said that Garantex received hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds and was used to facilitate various crimes, including hacking, ransomware, terrorism, and drug trafficking, and that the exchange processed at least $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions since 2019.In the indictment, prosecutors accuse Besciokov of personally allowing transactions linked to cybercriminals, including the North Korean-government hackers known as Lazarus Group.The announcement of the indictment came a day after the U.S. Secret Service and a coalition of law enforcement agencies took down and seized the official websites of Garantex, replacing their contents with a banner featuring the agencies logos and announcing the sites seizure.When TechCrunch reached out to three Garantex email addresses listed on its official page prior to the takedown, our emails were returned as undelivered. Garantex did not respond to multiple requests for comment through its official Telegram channel.A banner displayed on the official website of Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex. (Image: TechCrunch/Screenshot)Image Credits:TechCrunch/ScreenshotBesciokov and Mira Sera are both accused of a money laundering conspiracy, while Besciokov is also accused of conspiracy to violate sanctions and conspiracy, and of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Both face a maximum of 20 years in prison for the money laundering charge, while Besciokov faces another maximum sentence of 20 years for conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions, and another maximum of five years for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.Its unclear if the two have been arrested. Shannon Shevlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, told TechCrunch that the DOJ doesnt know if Mira Serda has been arrested in the UAE.The two charged Garatex administrators could not be reached by TechCrunch for comment.U.S. prosecutors alleged that Besciokov and Mira Serda knew that their crypto exchange was used for money laundering and actively worked to make that happen even when Russian authorities asked questions. According to the DOJ, when Russian law enforcement requested records at some point related to a Mira Serda account on Garantex, the company provided incomplete information, and claimed the account was not verified.In reality, Garantex had associated the account with Mira Serdas personal identifying documents, according to the indictment.Millions in crypto seized, DOJ confirmsGarantex has been the focus of Western government action for several years.In 2022, as part of a series of actions against Russian cybercrime, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Garantex, mentioning an analysis that showed that over $100 million in transactions are associated with illicit actors and darknet markets, including nearly $6 million from Russian [Ransomware as a Service] gang Conti and also including approximately $2.6 million from [darknet market] Hydra.Also, in 2024, as part of a series of sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine, the European Union sanctioned Garantex, alleging the exchange is closely associated with EU-sanctioned Russian banks.According to the DOJ, despite sanctions imposed by the U.S. government, Besciokov and his co-conspirators violated sanctions law by continuing to accept transactions with U.S.-based entities, and also redesigned Garantexs operations to evade and violate U.S. sanctions and induce U.S. businesses to unwittingly transact with Garantex in violation of the sanctions.For example, Garantex moved its operational cryptocurrency wallets to different virtual currency addresses on a daily basis in order to make it difficult for U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchanges to identify and block transactions with Garantex accounts, read the DOJ announcement.The DOJ also said that U.S. law enforcement froze over $26 million in funds used to facilitate Garantexs money laundering. DOJ spokesperson Shevlin told TechCrunch that the department froze a total of 23,034,884.75 Tether and 35.57 Bitcoin on Binance (worth around $3 million as of Friday), amounting to about $26.2 million.Even before these law enforcement actions, Garantex announced on Thursday that it had suspended all services, including cryptocurrency withdrawals, after stablecoin issuer Tether blocked wallets belonging to Garantex that were holding more than $28 million.We have bad news. Tether has entered the war against the Russian crypto market, Garantex wrote on its official Telegram channel in an announcement. We are fighting and will not give up! Please note that all [Tether] in Russian wallets is currently under threat. As always, we are the first, but not the last.After the DOJs announcement on Friday, Garantex posted an alert on Telegram about scammers pretending to be the restored Garantex exchange or offering to withdraw funds.These are all scammers! Their goal is to gain access to users personal data, wallet addresses and other sensitive information, the announcement in Russian read, according to a machine translation of it.The announcement made no mention of the website takedown, nor of the indictments of Bescikov and Mira Serda.