Month: June 2026

Eight years after launching the Epic Games Store, Epic is getting ready to rebuild the PC storefront and launcher from the ground up. Written user reviews are coming. So are player profiles, community features, better library management, universal controller support, gifting, preloading, and improved download tools. Epic says the store reached 295 million PC customers by the end of 2024, and monthly active users hit a high of 74 million in December. Total spending was up 15% year over year to $1.09 billion, Epic says, with Fortnite and other Epic-owned games doing most of the lifting.

The softer spot is still third-party sales. Spending on games not published by Epic fell 18% year over year to $255 million, according to the company. That makes it two straight years of decline, and it leaves Epic with about 3% of the third-party PC market, based on Epic’s own estimates, while Steam sits around 74% to 75%. This happened even after Epic gave away 89 free games that were claimed an eye-popping 595 million times in 2024. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney still sees those giveaways as the cheapest effective way to get people through the door, but a lot of the features now being added are things Steam has had for years. That comes after years of complaints that Epic leaned too hard on timed exclusives and free games, while leaving reviews, forums, social features, and game discovery underdeveloped.

Anyone who uses the Epic Games Store regularly should probably watch this rebuild closely, especially with Epic’s 88/12 revenue split and the Epic First Run program, which offers developers 100% of revenue for the first six months. Even then, the real problem hasn’t changed: Epic still has to figure out how to turn all those free claims into paid sales for third-party games. You can download the Epic Games Store on PC through the Epic Games launcher.

Ubisoft rolled out The Division 2‘s Year 8 Season 2, Into the Dark, today. This season centers on a new progression item, Sample Canisters, which players can turn in to the new seasonal vendor at the White House.

Each canister you hand over pushes up a global progress bar. As that bar fills, it unlocks High-Quality Munitions, temporary buffs that strengthen your abilities and modifiers.

Players digging into the update have already settled on the most efficient canister farm, and right now it points pretty clearly toward Hyena-focused activities. That tracks with Into the Dark’s seasonal story, which has the Hyenas cooking up a stronger version of Spice.

The quickest route at the moment seems to be the new Toxic Dark Zone. It’s a PvE-only area, and players are piling up canisters fast by clearing landmarks and cracking open loot chests. For The Division 2, that’s a pretty big change, since the Dark Zone has usually been built around PvPvE.

With Year 8 Season 2, the Dark Zone now rotates between three versions: the Toxic Dark Zone, the Classic Dark Zone, and a Balanced Dark Zone that normalizes PvP stats.

If you’re chasing the best returns, the Toxic Dark Zone by itself already looks like a strong reason to give this update a shot.

There is a safer option, though, in the open-world Hyena Retaliation activity. Hyena Retaliation comes with a guaranteed elite Knock-Knock Gang spawn, and that enemy reliably drops 30 canisters. That should make it the easier, more approachable farm for casual players.

So far, early feedback from players on both farming methods has been good.

Into the Dark is live now in The Division 2.

Nintendo Music just got a sizable Zelda-related addition: the full Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment soundtrack is now live in the app. Nintendo Switch Online subscribers can stream all 69 tracks, which adds up to 3 hours and 35 minutes of music.

Until now, there wasn’t a way to hear the complete Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment score outside the game.

The Switch 2 exclusive launched in November 2025 as a prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Its music was composed by Monaca, the same team known for NieR. People have praised the soundtrack for its huge, cinematic battle pieces, but also for the quieter, more atmospheric tracks that pull from Hyrule’s mood and setting.

Nintendo Music itself debuted in October 2024, and the app has seen a steady run of updates through 2026. Those updates have brought in more Mario Kart World songs, plus web browser support, Apple CarPlay, and Android Auto. That suggests Nintendo sees the service, still limited as it is, as something bigger than a throwaway extra.

If you follow Zelda closely, or just use Nintendo Music a lot, this one is probably worth a look.

The soundtrack drop also helps Nintendo keep attention on the Switch 2. The console launched on June 5, 2025, cleared 6 million sales in Japan by May 2026, and reached 1 million units sold in the UK faster than the original Switch did.

You can listen through the Nintendo Music app with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, though the service is still only available in 49 regions.

The Sims 4 has kicked off another round of fairy-cheat demand, especially from players picturing something along the lines of an Enchanted by Nature expansion. The focus has already landed on the kinds of commands people would expect from a fairy-themed pack: cheats to edit Fairy Sims, raise an Apothecary-style skill, and jump a Sim straight up the occult ranks.

Looking at how Electronic Arts handled The Sims 4: Vampires, The Sims 4: Werewolves, and The Sims 4: Realm of Magic, the usual guesses make sense. Players would likely expect cheats that turn a Sim into a Fairy, let them skip rank progression, unlock perk trees, use the familiar `stats.set_skill_level [skill_name] [level]` format for Apothecary, and maybe even control a nature- or alchemy-based career connected to the larger game world.

Cheat wish lists usually tell you what people actually want from a new life state. In this case, it’s more than wings and sparkles. Players are asking for real progression, careers, strengths and weaknesses, and gameplay that feels genuinely separate from spellcasters, vampires, and werewolves. Fairies have stayed popular for a reason, going back to The Sims 3: Supernatural and continuing through years of mods, wings, magic animations, and fairycore custom content.

If your saves already lean hard into occult gameplay, a pack like this would only feel worth buying if it came with a full system that could hold up over time. Cosmetics on their own wouldn’t be enough.

And some players still aren’t convinced a single occult type can carry a full expansion, especially with Kits, Marketplace content, and Project Rene heading off in its own free-to-play direction.

There’s nothing to download yet, but The Sims 4 is available on PC and consoles.

Sony’s PlayStation Plus has marked 12 Game Catalog titles in the Extra and Premium tiers for removal in July 2026. They’re expected to leave on or around Tuesday, July 21. Right now, the list includes Bomber Crew, Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, Cursed to Golf, Get Even, Hundred Days: Winemaking Simulator, Infinite Minigolf, Onee Chanbara Origin, Risk of Rain 2, Roki, Source of Madness, Space Crew: Legendary Edition, and Tropico 6.

Twelve games at once is more than PlayStation Plus usually loses in a month. Most months, the number is closer to six to eight. So if you’ve been planning to try any of these, you’ve got about a month left to play them without paying anything beyond your subscription.

If Risk of Rain 2 or Tropico 6 has been sitting in the backlog, this is probably the moment to finally start. Cursed to Golf and Get Even are worth checking out too. So far, though, the response has been pretty subdued, mostly because there isn’t a big AAA name in this batch.

The timing stands out for another reason. Sony raised prices for new PlayStation Plus subscribers in most regions in May 2026. Then in June 2026, it changed the Game Catalog schedule from one monthly drop to weekly staggered releases.

You can still play all of these through PlayStation Plus Extra or PlayStation Plus Premium until they’re removed. Regional availability still applies, though, and some games, including Onee Chanbara Origin, aren’t offered everywhere.

Futurism says Google Search’s AI summaries recently treated SCP Foundation fiction as if it were factual. That’s a problem, because the SCP Foundation is a collaborative creative-writing project built around fake classified files on paranormal objects, creatures, and events.

In Futurism’s reporting, there were at least 20 cases where Google’s generated answers summed up SCP entries in a confident, authoritative voice without clearly telling readers the material was fictional. The examples included SCP-565, described as an anomalous human head tied to forensic records. SCP-426 showed up in the first person, as though the fictional toaster were talking about itself. Futurism also pointed to entries like SCP-922 and SCP-779. The larger issue wasn’t just that these pages appeared in summaries. Google seemed to strip away any clear fiction label and fall back on a vague reference to “lore.”

If you’re used to trusting those polished answers at the top of the page, keep that in the back of your mind. I haven’t run every search myself, and Futurism noted that later searches didn’t always produce the same result. SCP-565, for instance, no longer reliably triggered a summary, and Google’s chat-style search reportedly identified it as a “fictional anomaly.”

Still, it gets at the bigger accuracy and accountability problem. Earlier AI summary mistakes have included made-up historical claims, wrong dates, shaky health advice, and the infamous glue-on-pizza answer.

Oumi puts the accuracy rate at close to 90%. At Google’s scale, though, that can still mean millions of wrong answers every hour. And a court in Munich has already ruled that these summaries should be treated as Google’s own statements.

Google Health has been updated to version 5.02 on Android and iOS, available through Google Play and the App Store. Early reports from users suggest the redesigned app is restoring nap tracking and hourly activity tracking, two features Fitbit users lost, or had a much harder time finding, after the move to Google Health in May 2026.

The update looks like part of Google’s attempt to settle down the redesign after complaints about a cluttered interface, missing features, and bugs.

Those same early reports point to nap tracking and hourly activity tracking finally showing back up after disappearing, or getting buried, during the May 2026 migration from Fitbit to Google Health.

A recent Android Authority survey captured that mixed response pretty well. More than half of respondents said they liked the new look, but many of those same users also felt Google Health had become harder to use. Google has already pushed earlier fixes for exercise tracking, sleep score visibility, and food logging, and the company says more updates are on the way through summer 2026.

Google Health 5.02 finally brings back Fitbit features users have been asking forhttps://t.co/Y03FGkkZaV pic.twitter.com/BPdLbb2ZNy

— Android Police (@AndroidPolice) June 19, 2026

Google wants Health to be one place for wearable data, wellness tools, U.S. medical records, and its premium Health Coach service. The company also says your health data won’t be used for Google Ads.

If you relied on Fitbit’s smaller day-to-day stats, this update is probably worth grabbing. More than anything, version 5.02 will be judged on whether it makes the app feel useful again.

You can download Google Health 5.02 now from Google Play and the App Store.