Firaxis has announced Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 is coming VR, launching Spring 2025 exclusively on Meta Quest 3 and 3S. Developed by PlaySide Studios, the VR version brings the world of Civilization to life on a Command Table, allowing players to interact from a new perspective. The game offers both immersive VR and mixed reality experiences. While initially exclusive to Meta Quest, it’s a significant step for strategy games in VR.
Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 only 51 percent on Steam as of 10th February
This announcement comes as the PC and console release of Civilization 7, launching February 11th, 2025, faces critical reviews on Steam. These reviews, primarily from $99 Deluxe ot $129 Founders Edition players with early access, are concerning, citing UI issues and missing features. Whether the VR version can revitalize the sequel remains to be seen. Firaxis has promised to address the PC version’s issues. And we will monitor it.
PlayStation Network Critical Outage on 8th February 2025
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
PlayStation Network Suffers Prolonged Outage, Raising Concerns About Digital-Only FuturePlayStation Network (PSN) experienced a major outage that began Friday night and continued well into Saturday, impacting players on PS5, PS4, and PS Portal devices.
The outage, first reported around midnight, peaked early Saturday morning, and persisted through Saturday afternoon, though some users reported intermittent service restoration later in the day.The outage affected core PSN services, including account management (sign-in, account creation, settings), online multiplayer gaming, cloud game streaming, and the PlayStation Store. The disruption prevented players from accessing online features and purchasing digital content.
PlayStation acknowledged the issue on Friday evening via X (formerly Twitter) but has offered minimal updates since, leading to frustration among users. The cause of the extensive downtime remains unclear. The official PSN status page continued to report widespread issues throughout much of Saturday.The outage has created problems, for some special events. A beta version of the anticipated game Monster Hunter Wild is avaiable, and Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is offering a double XP weekend.
The incident has also fueled discussion about the potential downsides of a fully digital gaming future. With physical disc-based games, players can typically still access single-player content even during network outages. The PSN downtime, however, completely locked players out of online-dependent titles and digital-only purchases, sparking speculation on how such incidents might affect a market gradually shifting away from physical media.The most impacted online games are Fortnite, Call of Duty, Roblox and Marvel Rivals.
Beyond Blue, available free until February 13, 2025, is an underwater narrative adventure that puts you in the role of a deep-sea explorer and scientist. The game was made in collaboration with BBC’s Blue Planet II team, offering an educational yet engaging experience as you discover the mysteries of our oceans. You’ll scan and catalog marine life, use advanced technology to track sea creatures and uncover a thoughtful story about ocean conservation and scientific discovery.
However, the real heavyweight of this week’s offerings is HUMANKIND, also free until February 13, 2025. This grand strategy game presents a fresh take on the 4X genre (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) by allowing players to combine different historical cultures as their civilization evolves through the ages. Instead of picking one civilization and sticking with it, you can shift between cultures at key moments, creating unique combinations like beginning as the Ancient Egyptians and evolving into the Medieval Japanese.
The timing of HUMANKIND‘s free release is particularly interesting with Civilization 7’s announcement. This is an excellent opportunity for strategy fans waiting for the next Civilization entry to try a different approach to historical strategy gaming. HUMANKIND differentiates itself through:
A unique combat system with tactical terrain-based battles
A fame-based victory condition rather than traditional victory types
The ability to mix and match historical cultures as you progress
A more flexible city-building system that adapts to terrain
An innovative approach to diplomacy and cultural influence
Whether you’re a seasoned strategy player or new to the genre, claiming HUMANKIND while it’s free is highly recommended, especially as it can serve as excellent practice for understanding complex strategy mechanics before Civilization 7’s release. The game typically requires a fairly powerful PC to run smoothly, but since it’s free, there’s no risk in adding it to your library to try later.
The F-5A(G) is a Royal Norwegian Air Force multi-role fighter jet. This modification is equipped with a new sighting system, all-aspect AIM-9L Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, and the Penguin guided anti-ship missile with a thermal imaging homing head, which will prove itself in battles against tanks. The F-5A(G) is the first Norwegian aircraft in War Thunder and also has a unique “tiger” camouflage.
War Thunder F-5A(G) – 336 Sqadron Tigers
The event will run from February 6th (11:00 GMT) until February 24th (11:00 GMT).
Event Structure and Prices
The “Freedom Fighter” event consists of nine progression stages, each demanding 45,000 mission points for completion. Points accumulate through Air Battles, with bonuses varying by game mode and vehicle rank. Rewards come with each stage completion, with the F-5A(G) unlocking at stage eight. The initial coupon remains untradeable, but collecting 750,000 mission points throughout the event grants an “Upgrade for coupon,” enabling Market sales after six days. Stage nine delivers exclusive camouflage and four random modifications, provided the F-5A(G) exists in your collection. Players pressed for time may purchase stages using Golden Eagles, with costs reducing significantly near completion. When reaching 95% progress, the price drops to one-fifth of the original.
Today, Gaijin like to give you a heads up regarding the removal of the R2Y2 V1, V2 and V3 for research so that you can get them before they’re gone. In War Thunder, Gaijin want to include vehicles that were complete and built, either in full, in the prototype phase or in the experimental phase. Much like the removed German ground vehicles in 2019, the three R2Y2 aircraft are unhistorical “paper” vehicles that were never built in any capacity, added in 2014 to fill a gap due to the severe lack of possible aircraft available for Japan at the time.
The Yokosuka R2Y was an unarmed Japanese reconnaissance aircraft prototype that flew in the very late months of the Second World War in May 1945. This version (R2Y1 Keiun) was a piston-engined version of the aircraft that featured twin coupled engines. Naturally, the war stopped before its development could be taken any further, and of the three prototypes, just one was completed. However, plans were made for a jet-engined version of this aircraft, featuring twin Ne-330 engines in an attacker configuration. It is this version (R2Y2) that we decided to introduce in 2014 to the game, as it most closely matched the existing or planned jet bombers/attackers for other nations at the time. For example, the Canberra, B-57, Ar 234 and IL-28.
As the R2Y1 was destroyed and its development was not taken further, the R2Y2 was very much a mystery. There were only estimations of its performance, based on a combination of known R2Y1 details and the performance of the Ne-330 engines. Its overall design was very much speculative in terms of the “V2” and “V3” configurations and it’s questionable if they were even part of the original design plans to begin with. Back in 2014, we worked with what resources there were on the aircraft and brought it to some form of reality, being virtual reality, in War Thunder.
Explanation
Our stance on the R2Y2 series is that they would be removed when functional replacements became available. Fast-forward to 2025, the Japanese aircraft tree now features many new aircraft, including Thai aircraft that fill enough spots and cover various Battle Ratings so that this can happen. Gaijin know that many players will want to obtain these vehicles before they are removed from being able to be researched, so there are just under 3 months to research them before they’re gone.
On April 30th 2025, the following three will be removed from research from the Japanese aircraft tree.
These vehicles will no longer be available for research after the above removal date and will become collectable vehicles to everyone that currently owns them. They will not be hidden from anyone who already owns them.
If you’ve put at least 1 RP into one of these vehicles (through RP earned or converting RP), you’ll be able to fully finish the research even after the removal date. Remember, there are three in the game — if you want to keep all three, you’ll need to put research into each individually. Since they are in a group, this would require researching V1 and V2 fully to be able to put research into V3.
Gaijin currently have no plans to ever return the R2Y2’s to the game to be researched or obtained after the removal.
