Niantic and WB Games have announced that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will be shutting down on January 31, 2022.

In a blog post, Niantic announced that starting on December 6, 2021, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will be removed from the App Store, Google Play, and Galaxy Store before support ends completely the following January.

“When we launched Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, our vision was to allow players to experience the wizarding world right in their real-world surroundings as they stepped outside and explored their neighborhoods,” the developers said in a blog post.

As Niantic sunsets Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, there will be some final gameplay tweaks added including increased rewards, reduced brew times, and more XP. Niantic also revealed some final events for Wizards Unite taking place in the final three months of operation.

Like Pokemon Go, Wizard Unite required players to interact with the real world through their smartphones. Players could encounter magical creatures to fight, choose a Hogwarts house and wand, and craft potions, or partake in other activities.

But while Pokemon Go has been a worldwide hit, Wizards Unite doesn’t appear to have hit the same heights. According to numbers provided by Sensor Tower, Harry Potter: Wizard Unite generated close to $40 million from player spending. By comparison, Pokemon Go has accumulated nearly $5.5 billion over its lifespan and generated almost $1.1 billion this year alone.

While Wizard Unite will not be around much longer, Niantic announced it is deepening its partnership with Nintendo to create more games based on their iconic franchises. Niantic and Nintendo recently released Pikmin Bloom, a health-focused take on Nintendo’s nature strategy series.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

The latest Fortnite Chapter 2, Season 8 update adds a new event called Strike from the Shadows Week. It also invites players to vote for one of two returning weapons: the Proximity Grenade Launcher or Flint-Knock Pistol.

Fortnite Update: November 23 Hotfix: Strike From the Shadows Week

Thanks to Naruto and Team 7 recently hitting the item shop, the island has been teeming with ninjas. Fortnite’s latest update/event thematically encourages their presence by adding stealth-based combat. But not in the way most players would expect.

Strike from the Shadows Week is all about being sneaky. Starting today and running until 9AM ET on November 30th, an increased number of Shadow Stones and Shadow Floppers will be scattered all over the island. Once picked up, these items will turn you into a shadow, boosting your basic movement speed and jump high while also granting a dash-like ability. You won’t be completely invisible in shadow form though and attacking will switch you back to normal. The idea is to use the increase in mobility to get the drop on rival players (as opposed to slowly stalking them while hidden).

Once you’ve spotted an enemy, change into a shadow and quickly move to a suitable vantage point. Then use a Paper Bomb Kunai – which has also increased in number – to blow your opponent to smithereens.

Fortnite: Proximity Grenade Launcher vs. Flint-Knock Pistol

This week’s update also brings about a new fan vote. This time it’s the Proximity Grenade Launcher vs. the Flint-Knock Pistol. The grenade launcher has always been a blast to use (heh) as its explosive ordnance can quickly destroy both structure and foe. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best choice for players though. The Flint-Knock Pistol not only packs a punch, it helps in keeping enemies at a “safe” distance by sending the wielder flying backwards with every shot.

Players are encouraged to help Looper decide on which of these weapons to un-vault. This is done by funding a weapon’s development using gold bars at Fortnite’s Donation Stations. Whichever one hits 100% first will be unlocked and added to the island. Choose wisely!

And that’s it for Fortnite’s latest update. Be sure to check back here for more Fortnite Chapter 2, Season 8 patch notes!

Kenneth Seward Jr. is a freelance writer, editor, and illustrator who covers games, movies, and more. Follow him @kennyufg and on Twitch

SPOILERS AHEAD for Season 1 and 2 of Netflix’s The Witcher!

Netflix's The Witcher stars Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, the famous monster hunter. Throughout the series, many monsters find a way to get in Geralt or another character's way. And we figured you might want some back story or explanation on who and what these various critters are…

While we've seen all the terrors that arrived with the show's first season, the brief footage we've seen of the second season has already teased such fearsome foes as the Leshy and the Bruxa. We also catch a glimpse of Kristofer Hivju's Nivellen, a cursed man who appears to be a big part of this new season's story.

From dragons to Djinns to Kikimoras, we've gathered all the monsters that appear in Geralt's journey that will also hopefully help make the wait for The Witcher's next season's debut on Netflix on December 17, 2021!

Leshy

A Leshy, or Leshen as they are also known, are forest monsters that are highly intelligent and are said to be iron-resistant. Some peasants in The Witcher’s world believe the Leshy to be a protector of the forest, but actually it appears to be a dangerous creature that hunts and surprises those walking in its home. The Leshy also has the ability to shapeshift and can take the forms of many things to stalk its prey. While Geralt doesn’t run into one in the books and only hears of its legend, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s Geralt does and can find them in Velen, Reardon Manor, Downwarren, and more.

Bruxa

The Bruxa is a type of vampire that can take the form of both a dark-haired human and a large bat. They are incredibly fast and often appear as attractive women to lure unsuspecting men to their doom so they can drink their blood. Bruxae appear in both The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine expansion. In The Last Wish story, Geralt has to deal with the Bruxa Vareena at Nivellen’s Manor, which we know will be featured in this season. It has been confirmed that Agnes Bjorn will play her.

Nivellen

Nivellen is a cursed man who appears in The Last Wish story and will be played by Game of Thrones’ Kristofer Hivju in the Netflix series’ second season. His younger days were spent as a gang member in Redania, where he was coerced into raping a young priestess while his partners robbed the temple of Gelibol. The woman was part of Coram Agh Tera – also known as the Cult of the Lionhead Spider – and she cursed Nivellen to be a “monster in a man’s skin.” He would soon thereafter become a monster outwardly, while still staying himself. Without spoiling too much, Geralt meets this cursed man while looking into the deaths of a merchant and female companion near his manor.

Woman of Fire

Lars Mikkelsen’s Stregobor returns for Season 2 and appears to conjure a woman of fire who may or may not be a monster. This creature very well may be a fire elemental, as The Witcher 2’s journal entry on them states, “Sorcerers proficient in the Art can create gateways to dimensions ruled by the four elements and force the creatures dwelling there to serve them.”

Kikimora

The Kikimora is an insectoid monster species that can be found in swamps. We are introduced to the Kikimora in the opening moments of Netflix’s The Witcher as Geralt has to take one down, while making sure not to be drowned by its many legs.

When Geralt brings the Kikimora back to Blaviken to collect on a bounty, Marilka says her father asked for a Graveir, and that Kikimora are better left alive for “population control.”

The Devil of Posada (Torque the Sylvan)

Geralt is given a job to kill a “devil” that is stealing a farmer’s crop. The monster in question is not a devil, but a Sylvan, Torque the Sylvan to be exact.

A humanoid monster with goat-like features and horns atop its head, Torque was working with Filavandrel, King of the Elves, after the Elves were forced out of Dol Blathanna and into hiding. He worked to get/steal them food and supplies to help them survive.

Striga

The Striga is a woman who is cursed and turned into a monster. King Foltest of Temeria had an incestuous relationship with his late sister, Adda, who then became pregnant with his child. Ostrit the knight had also fallen in love with Adda and cursed Foltest for what he did. However, the curse passed to the child. When Adda died while she was pregnant, their child emerged as a Striga.

Using Ostrit as bait, Geralt went to an abandoned part of the castle to cure the Striga of its curse, which meant locking himself away with her until dawn broke. He accomplished his mission, but not before the Striga tore through his neck. Luckily, Triss Merigold was nearby to save his life.

Magical Assassin's Monster Pet

This ferocious monster served the assassin chasing after Yennefer and Kalis as a battle/chase ensued featuring portals and enchanted tracking jewelry. This creature features blade-like front claws and a top speed of quite scary.

Duny, Urcheon of Erlenwald (The Cursed Knight)

Duny, the Urcheon of Erlenwald, was a cursed knight who wished to marry Pavetta, the daughter of Queen Calanthe of Cintra. He was cursed with a head to resemble a hedgehog and was set to be killed by the Queen, but invoked the Law of Surprise.

Duny saved Pavetta's father in the past and his payment was this law that states the savior would be rewarded something unexpected in the future. The Queen did not much care and still ordered the death of Duny, but Geralt helped intervene until Pavetta revealed she possessed powers, which in turn caused Calanthe to honor the Law of Surprise.

Duny was then cured of the curse, and then proceeded to offer Geralt a Law of Surprise in return, which would set many events of The Witcher in motion as their future daughter Ciri would see this debt paid.

Doppler

The Doppler is a doppelgänger who can take the forms and memories of its victims. This particular Doppler took the form of Mousesack to lure Ciri out of the safety of Brokilon.

Djinn

Sometimes, the scariest monsters are those you can not see. The Djinn is similar to a genie in that it grants three wishes to those who release it. Jaskier finds this particular Djinn and is then injured, needing Geralt to save him by taking him to Rinde.

He then crosses paths with Yennefer, who wants the Djinn for herself for its power that would hopefully allow her to give birth.

It is then revealed that Geralt is actually the Djinn's master. We don't find out what his last wish was, but the Djinn ends up leaving Yennefer's body, saving her.

Hirikka

The Hirikka, in Witcher lore, is said to be even rarer than a dragon. Geralt knew of this creature and told his traveling companions to put down their weapons as it simply looked hungry.

Eyck took matters into his own hands and gruesomely killed the creature. Karma sure did catch up with him quickly, however.

Dragon

Borch Three Jackdaws enlists Geralt to his hunting party that is set to compete in a contest arranged by King Niedamir to kill a dragon found in the mountains.

Geralt travels with Borch and his companions, a pack of dwarfs, some reavers, and Yennefer. When they reach the cave, they find out Borch is actually a rare mythical golden dragon named Villentretenmerth and he brought Geralt along not to kill a dragon, but to protect one.

The Undead

Geralt finds himself in a battle with the undead after he meets a merchant named Yurga at a refugee camp. Geralt defeats the undead horrors, but not before one takes a near-fatal big bite out of his leg.

Mind-Controlling Ear Worms

These terrifying little worms utilized by the Nilfgaardians are deployed in the final episode to turn the tide of the Battle of Sodden Hill. They crawl into unsuspecting victims and turn them against their allies.

For more on Netflix's The Witcher, check out our look at the latest trailer for The Witcher's second season, our explainer of the first season's ending, a look at who Vesemir is, and how this new season will start with an adaptation of A Grain of Truth.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN who can't wait and is so excited he just can't hide it. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

In their years working with small developers through cooperative-owned gaming label Glitch, CEO Evva Karr noticed a serious problem.

While Karr had encountered many small, diverse game development teams with talented creators and brilliant ideas that they believed could be incredibly successful, those teams were struggling. Some didn't have the initial funding needed to get their projects started, while others simply lacked the practical knowledge to even publish a game. Making it, sure, but what about pitching it to publishers, marketing it, releasing it on consoles, or running a studio as a business? Turns out, none of that information is easily accessible to a lot of up and coming developers.

What's more, Karr felt that gaming audiences were being woefully underserved. Diverse individuals: women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, all play games, but frequently don't get the same opportunities to make games that have been made by the historically white and male industry over the decades. Fortunately, through Glitch, Karr was in a position to do something.

Karr started the Moonrise Fund, an early-stage gaming investment fund focused on supporting what they describe as "new types of gameplay that haven't been seen before." Moonrise is backing a steady stream of up-and-coming studios in their early stages of development on new projects, while also offering advice and mentorship as they go. All the while, it's building a network of successful developers who can share knowledge with one another and gradually build on the support it can offer to its developers over time.

While they know it sounds like a pipedream, Karr tells IGN that Moonrise is their attempt at showing the entire games industry that the ways in which games are made — and how the people who make them are treated — can be much better.

"I believe there's a bigger, better, more inclusive, and just completely revitalized game industry that's possible," Karr says. "I think it's one that's sustainable, possibly co-creative, and also shaped by new players and new experiences."

To that end, Moonrise has announced the first three studios it's backing, and offered some tidbits about their upcoming projects. The first is Future Club, a co-op game studio formed by the developers of Skull Girls and Indivisible. They're working on a secret project at the moment, though CEO Francesca Esquenazi was able to tease it a bit: an original IP that’s narrative-focused. Future Club is making it both with a mind to show off its critically-acclaimed animation and character design prowess, as well as center stories from women's perspectives.

Next up is Virtuoso Neomedia, which currently has three projects in the works, all in different genres. There's Raddminton, a fighting game and racket sport mash-up. Then there's Killer Auto, a futuristic racer. And finally, Zodiac XX is a narrative underwater dogfighting game. Virtuoso notably places particular emphasis on music in its games, and is working with artists like 2Mello and DV-i on its upcoming projects.

Finally, Moonrise is backing Perfect Garbage, the studio behind Love Shore that's also working on an unannounced genre-mash that mixes classic gameplay loops with new narrative ideas and centers the perspectives of people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Oh, and they love horror.

One thing all three studios have in common is that while they were all up and running prior to Moonrise's support, their ambitions were much smaller before their help. Son M., project director at Perfect Garbage, says that, ultimately, their goal is to be self-sustaining. "We've lived that Kickstarter life and decided we're tired of it already."

Rather than waiting until they shipped two or three more games to attract funding, Perfect Garbage was able to conceptualize its next game as the game they really, really wanted to make. Narrative designer Emmett Nahil adds that Moonrise's direction, advice, and availability was also game-changing, calling it "honest-to-god mentorship."

Ethan Redd, head of Virtuoso, notes that Moonrise was also supportive of his studio's "furious independence," saying that the studio wants to do "weird things" with games and how it releases them. And then there’s Future Club which as a worker co-op — where all employees have equal say in decision-making and profits — has a structure that could potentially make traditional games funding models challenging to work with. But because of Moonrise, they were able to make a key new hire and carve out time and space to work on something new, instead of putting aside their main project to do Skullgirls contract work to keep the lights on.

"There are games we've wanted to make for a really long time," says Future Club creative director Mariel Kinuko Cartwright. "And it's hard to find people who are on board and in the same way completely open-minded about exploring those possibilities. Moonrise…is saying, we believe in you, we want this to happen, we can help you get there because the things you want to make should exist."

Then there's the practical help, with Moonrise offering access to documents as simple as budgeting templates. Redd notes that so much of the decision-making and data is kept behind closed doors in the games industry, so developers of their size don't often get to work with actual numbers when doing things like setting goals and making sales and marketing plans. Nahil adds that this is especially true for marginalized developers.

"As a self-owned and operated indie studio, we're always doing on-the-job learning. That's all well and good, but it does help if someone gives you a textbook. You learn by doing, but you also learn by having access to the things that people have [already] learned so you're not just operating in the void."

Moonrise's goal is to support and uplift "new forms of play," and the leadership of its first three studios are eager to contribute to this vision. As Redd notes, Moonrise's open-mindedess about what games can be won't just benefit its members; anyone who likes games ultimately benefits from more new, interesting ideas.

"The fact that games [traditionally] are being made by people with similar backgrounds, similar education, all that, it homogenizes," he says. "When you bring in new people with fresh ideas, you're going to get fresh games…you're going to see people you wouldn't have seen before doing things you probably haven't seen before."

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Nintendo's Switch production will fall 20% below its original projection this fiscal year. The total number of units produced for the console now will only be 24 million through March.

According to a report from Nikkei, the issue comes from a shortage of semiconductors and other electronic parts, as well as strong demand for the console, such as the latest OLED version. Around spring, components such as microcomputers caused production bottlenecks, and Nintendo scaled down its production targets because the company was not able to get enough parts.

The original plan was to produce about 30 million Nintendo Switch units, a record number due to more people spending time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We are assessing their impact on our production," a Nintendo spokesperson said. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa admitted that the company was not able to make as many Switch units as it would have wanted because of the uncertainty issues surrounding production. However, he also explained that demand for the Switch is still going strong.

As of August this year, Nintendo had sold a little over 89 million units of the Nintendo Switch, surpassing both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in lifetime sales. Additionally, Nintendo Switch also swept the Japanese sales charts for one week, with the 30 best-selling games coming from one console. It was a feat that hadn't been accomplished since the Famicom in 1988.

On October 8, Nintendo launched the OLED model of the system alongside the new Metroid Dread game. In IGN's Nintendo Switch OLED review, Taylor Lyles said, "After playing with it for a week, I’ve found that the Nintendo Switch OLED Model’s brighter, more vibrant, and slightly larger screen has made me want to take it out of docked mode much more often – and not just when I am about to travel."

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey