Apple hits back against Epic

According to a new motion filed on behalf of Epic Games, Apple has retaliated against Epic’s lawsuit by threatening to terminate Epic’s membership in its developer program and also pull access to any Apple software tools. This would have the effect of preventing Epic from updating Fortnite (big deal, you’re thinking), and also the Unreal Engine, which is a Big Thing.

Epic’s motion is a restraining order meant to prevent Apple from actively blocking Epic access to software tools as well as reinstating Fortnite on the App store.

While this is definitely a bad look for Apple, Epic are not necessarily the good guys in this scenario.

Microsoft Flight Simulator releases tomorrow, reviews are excellent

Asobo Studio’s long-awaited Microsoft Flight Simulator comes out tomorrow! The massive PC/Xbox game – which contains 20 planes, 37 thousand airports, 1.5 billion buildings, and 2 trillion trees, among other things – is seeing some stellar early reviews, currently garnering a 93 on Metacritic.

You can pre-order the game (or not, since pre-ordering is kind of a terrible idea nowadays) on Steam or get it on Xbox Game Pass.

Steam adds new policy that prevents devs from promoting non-Steam versions of games

A new section added to the Steamworks documentation pages spells out a curious, though not completely unbelievable policy change that prevents developers from promoting their Steam games on other platforms:

Q: Can I use the Steam community to let customers know of non-Steam versions of my game?
A: In the game you ship via Steam, and in communications on Steam, you may only promote the Steam version and its availability via Steam, and not other distribution outlets. This applies both to full versions of your game and to content patches that change the existing version.

Ghost of Tsushima announces Legends, a new free co-op game mode

Riding high after the immense success of PS4 title Ghost of Tsushima, developer Sucker Punch announced a completely free co-op multiplayer mode. Titled Legends, the mode supports two or four players (story missions with two players, “wave-based survival missions” for four players) and will debut sometime in the fall of this year.

Beat Saber gets Linkin Park music pack

I rarely say anything about Beat Saber, mostly because I don’t really find it very engrossing as a rhythm game in the VR space.

But! Beat Saber’s latest music pack brings nu-metal powerhouse Linkin Park and eleven of the band’s biggest hits (fifty-five total beatmaps):

• Bleed It Out
• Breaking the Habit
• Faint
• Given Up
• In The End
• New Divide
• Numb
• One Step Closer
• Papercut
• Somewhere I Belong
• What I’ve Done

You can grab the pack’s individual songs for $1.99 or get the entire thing for $13.99.