‘The Sims 4’ will be free to play starting next month

Almost exactly eight years after first arriving on PC, The Sims 4 is going free to play. Starting on October 18th, publisher EA won’t charge you anything to download the base game on Mac, PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. If you already paid for the original release or decide to buy it before October 17th, the company will gift you the upcoming Desert Luxe Kit. The DLC comes with a handful of southwestern desert-themed furniture items.

Note that EA has released 12 expansions for The Sims 4, and if you decide to play the game for free, you’ll be missing out on a lot of the features that make the game feel so compelling in 2022. For instance, without the Cats & Dogs DLC installed, your sims can’t get a feline or canine companion.

As for what today’s news means for the game’s future, EA says developer Maxis is “more dedicated than ever to developing new and meaningful experiences for players, and will continue to develop and release packs, kits, and Sims delivery express drops into the foreseeable future.” On that note, the two will host a YouTube and Twitch livestream on October 18th to share what’s next for the franchise.

Zoom is reportedly developing email and calendar apps

Zoom may have ambitions to expand its business beyond video calling. According to The Information, the company has spent much of the past two years developing its own email and calendar clients. Known internally as Zmail and Zcal, Zoom could announce the apps at its annual Zoomtopia conference in November. Zoom did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment.

You’re probably asking yourself, does the world need another productivity suite? Looking at it from Zoom’s perspective, The Information suggests the company may see the apps as essential to its survival. At first glance, Zoom is doing better than most pandemic darlings, having recently recorded $1.1 billion in quarterly revenue. But beneath those results, the company has seen growth slow and its stock price drop to pre-pandemic levels.

It also finds itself in the same situation a lot of companies competing against Google and Microsoft have had to tackle recently. One significant weakness of Zoom is that many businesses use the app in conjunction with Workspace and Office 365. Those are comprehensive suites that can cover the majority of a company’s productivity needs. In a market where businesses are constantly looking to cut costs, that’s not a good position to be in. At the same time, it’s hard to see how email and calendar clients help Zoom beat back its competitors when Google and Microsoft have spent years polishing Gmail and Outlook and those products dominate the market.

‘Rise of the Ronin’ is a historical action RPG from the team behind ‘Nioh’

The studio behind Nioh plans to take PlayStation fans on an adventure through Bakumatsu-era Japan. On Tuesday, Team Ninja — not to be confused with Ninja Theory — announced it is working on a new action-adventure game titled Rise of the Ronin. 

Set in 1863, about a decade after Commodore Matthew Perry ended Japan’s isolation from the West, the game grounds the player in an era of dramatic technological and political change. You’ll play as a wandering Ronin navigating a fractured country. This being a Team Ninja project, expect stylish third-person melee combat. It also looks like the game will take inspiration from Western open-world games like Assassin’s Creed — which, you have to admit, is fitting given the subject matter. Rise of the Ronin will be a PlayStation console exclusive when it arrives sometime in 2024.

Flickr adds a virtual photography category as more games embrace photo modes

Flickr is adding a new virtual photography category to help users find and categorize images they capture in their favorite video games. Previously, the platform only offered three content categories: photos, illustration and art, and screenshots. The …

Discord voice chat is now available on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S

Following an Insider beta test that began in July, Discord voice chats are now available on all Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles. The integration allows Discord users on Xbox, PC and mobile to join the same voice channels. You’ll first need to lin…

Uncrewed Blue Origin capsule lands safely after New Shepard rocket failure

Blue Origin’s recent NS-23 flight didn’t go according to plan. On Monday morning, the private space firm was forced to abort the uncrewed mission after one of its New Shepard rockets suffered an unspecified “booster failure.” The problem came up about a minute after the flight took off from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site at 10:26AM ET. You can see the entire incident unfold in the video the company shared on Twitter.

“It appears we have experienced an anomaly with today’s flight,” a commentator said during the NS-23 livestream. “This was unplanned and we don’t have any details yet. But our crew capsule was able to escape successfully, we’ll follow its progress through landing. As you can see, the drogues have deployed, and the mains are going to be pulled out next.”

The capsule was carrying NASA-funded research equipment. “It’s useless to speculate about what happened at this point. Not even the company knows the cause,” tweeted Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, adding in a separate post that had the spacecraft been manned, the crew “would have felt a serious jolt, but would have been safe.”

Blue Shepard won’t be able to fly again until Blue Origin investigates the incident and the Federal Aviation Administration signs off on the company’s findings.