As a result of a class-action lawsuit from US app developers, Apple has announced a slew of changes to the App Store as part of a proposed settlement agreement. US developers filed litigation against the tech giant back in 2019 to break the tech giant's "improper monopolization" of iOS apps.

Pending approval from the court, Apple will payout $100 million and also clarify several of its app store policies. Most notably, it will allow developers to reach out to customers (with permission from the user) to collect information inside their apps, allowing them to email about alternative payment options available outside the App Store.

Developers on the App Store could previously communicate with customers outside of their apps and even collect payments outside of their apps (e.g. renewing a Netflix subscription on the official Netflix website). But prior to this proposed settlement, developers were not allowed to communicate with iOS customers about other payment options available outside of the App Store.

However, the potential changes to the app store would still not allow developers to inform iOS users about alternative payment options from within the app itself so that developers could bypass the "app store tax," a 30 percent cut Apple receives from the in-app payment system. Apple's in-app payment cut has been the subject of a different lawsuit filed by Epic Games last year, which a federal judge is currently reviewing after the case was argued in May.

Another concession Apple will make should the proposed agreement get approved for the case Cameron et al. v. Apple Inc, is that the iPhone maker will create a Small Developer Assistance Fund. It will payout $100 million, divided among small developers who make $1 million or less, with payouts varying depending on how many people submit and are approved for their claim. The remaining funds will be donated to the nonprofit Girls Who Code. The website is up, but it is not fully operational, likely due to the settlement pending approval from a judge.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Elden Ring will have a gameplay mechanic that sounds unlike anything FromSoftware has done before, allowing you to collect the souls of your enemies and summon them in battle. Kind of like Pokemon. But during a hands-off preview and Q&A, FromSoftware assured us that this new mechanic has been carefully balanced to not make Elden Ring easier.

“What we’ve tried to do is design the spirit summons where they’re placed throughout the game and how you will level them up throughout the game in a way that doesn’t make the game just drastically easier whenever you bring them out,” FromSoftware said during a media Q&A event.

In an interview with IGN earlier this year, Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki explained a new mechanic in Elden Ring where you can summon defeated enemies to help you in battle. These aren’t player NPCs you can summon like in other FromSoft RPGs, but offline AI with their own progression elements.

Summoning AI or online player help during boss fights can make a big difference, but FromSoft says that because of the way summons in Elden Ring are designed, there is a trade-off to using them in the first place.

“It’s up to the player what summons they choose and when, but it’s also up to the player to invest their stat points into the summons if they so choose or into their own character, so it’s a bit of a trade-off there.”

Furthermore, the summons you collect are determined by how you explore and progress through Elden Ring’s massive world, “So it’s not intended to lower the difficulty drastically.”

If past FromSoftware RPGs are any indication, the effect of summoning spirits in your game will likely be down mainly to how you choose to use the system. Summoning AI and online players do help considerably when facing challenging bosses in Dark Souls but it's also a completely optional system. And while it sounds like you can level your summons at the expense of your experience points, any additional tool in your arsenal can only help you in the end.

You can find out more info about Elden Ring in our hands-off preview, how the world-building and lore will now come from the game's many NPCs, and how director Hidetaka Miyazaki is leading the in-game text you'll see in the game.

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

FromSoftware says that its approach to storytelling hasn’t changed with Elden Ring, but it may have expanded. Instead, during a recent preview event, the developers revealed that players will still interpret the lore on their own, but that this time clues can come from talking with the game’s many important NPCs rather than just from things like item text.

As FromSoftware explained during a Q&A, whereas in “Dark Souls, and maybe to a lesser extent Sekiro, you’d be picking up these pieces that talk about the world and allow the player to formulate an idea of the world itself and their place in it, they didn’t often talk to the characters and the people living in that world.”

This isn’t the case in Elden Ring. “With Elden Ring, we have a large number of NPCs and a lot of major players in the story,” FromSoft says.

And just as players picked up pieces of the lore through item text, “things like that are going [to come from] talking to those important NPCs and those important characters, and that way we feel the player is going to learn more about the drama, more about the history of the world,” through interacting and learning more about the many characters in Elden Ring.

The developers hope that this dialogue will help “formulate a more personal and dramatic image of the world.” In fact, FromSoft’s Yasuhiro Kitao goes so far as to say Elden Ring is a “multi-protagonist drama.” Kitao also said that director Hidetaka Miyazaki will be leading the in-game text and dialogue you’ll see in Elden Ring, based on the mythology laid down by collaborator George R.R. Martin.

In an interview with IGN earlier this year, Miyazaki explained how Martin helped create the world and inspired the characters and central drama. And while Martin says his contributions to Elden Ring were done “years ago.”

Either way, it seems that lore hunters obsessed over every detail in FromSoftware games will have to pay extra attention when speaking with the game’s NPCs if they want to uncover the secret of The Lands Between and Elden Ring.

Check out IGN’s Elden Ring preview for a better look at how dungeons will work in Elden Ring or read about how the new summoning mechanic is being designed to not interfere with the game’s difficulty.

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

When Elden Ring was first announced, one of the biggest surprises is how it’s a collaboration between FromSoftware and A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin. Since then, more information about the collaboration has come to light and while Martin was responsible for creating the overall world and mythos of Elden Ring, the in-game text is being director Hidetaka Miyazaki.

“In From fashion, the story is told in fragments, and we haven’t changed our principle of providing a world and narrative that the player can interpret for themselves,” FromSoft’s Yasuhiro Kitao says.

And while this means lore can still be discovered by item text and cutscenes, NPC dialogue will also contribute significantly to world-building, and Miyazaki is "at the forefront of the text, writing the text in the game."

In an interview with IGN from earlier this year, Miyazaki explained that Martin helped build the world, including the Lands Between, and central narrative. However, Martin himself said that he finished his contributions to Elden Ring “years ago” and development continued to build on the foundations established by Martin.

Miyazaki praised Martin and said the author’s contributions led Elden Ring to be more character-focused than previous FromSoft games. “He brought things to the table that we couldn’t have done by ourselves, in terms of that rich storytelling and that sense of character and drama.”

Given that Martin’s most famous work involves complicated character dynamics and the way people interact with each other while vying for power, this makes sense. With the open-ended, in-game text handled by Miyazaki, it sounds like fans will get the best of both Miyazaki and Martin’s worlds in Elden Ring.

Check out IGN's full preview of Elden Ring as well as how the new summoning mechanic is being carefully designed to not impact the game's overall difficulty.

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

When I interviewed Hidetaka Miyazaki back in June about Elden Ring, one of the things that really stuck with me was how so many of his answers came back around to this core theme of Elden Ring being all about freedom and choice. Having now watched about 15 minutes of gameplay from a variety of sections of the game, I now fully get what Miyazaki was saying, and how Elden Ring offers more options and flexibility than anything From Software has worked on in the past.

The gameplay demo opened up with a look at Elden Ring’s first open field, which spread out in every direction with a number of easily visible points of interest. To the left was a small watch tower, far off in the distance straight ahead was the gigantic glowing Erd Tree, and just in front was a site of lost grace, which will serve as the game’s bonfire checkpoints. But what’s interesting about them is that some will cause a light to lead the way towards a recommended path, but of course, it's up to you whether you actually follow that path or not.

One of my takeaways from watching the open field gameplay was this feeling that you could encounter almost anything while exploring. In one section, the player approached a group of enemies gathered around a campfire, when all of a sudden, a gigantic Dragon swooped down in typical Souls fashion and took them all out in a single blow, which then prompted a massive boss fight. In another section there was a group of passive enemies walking along a trail escorting a giant carriage that could presumably be attacked and robbed of its contents, should you be skilled enough to survive the fight. In a different area, there was another carriage that was guarded, but this time by a large encampment of enemies that the player carefully snuck through without alerting the whole camp, even going as far as using a sleep arrow to silently pacify a guard.

Of course, in order to navigate across such a giant open field, you are able to summon a Spirit Steed, which can utilize special jump platforms to leap over cliffs, allowing for a ton of verticality in the open-world design. One big departure from previous Souls games (though one that makes sense with a world as massive as The Lands Between), is that you’ll now have access to a map. The map gets updated by finding map fragments throughout the world, and has the look of an actual illustrated parchment made by an actual cartographer who lives within The Lands Between. You can drop markers to note locations of tough enemies, NPCs, treasures, or dungeon entrances. As you’d expect, marked locations also place a beacon that’s easily visible in-game, allowing you to set your own waypoints when you’re looking for places to go next.

Dungeons can be found throughout the open field and of course, they’re full of enemies, traps, treasure, and even illusory walls. The one dungeon that I got to see seemed very basic in its design, with a room that featured a bunch of guillotine traps, and then a treasure room that was guarded by a handful of enemies ready to pounce when you went for the treasure, but since the gameplay I watched was cut up and segmented, I never really got a feel for how big or substantial it really was.

The Legacy Dungeon however I did get a feel for, and it felt massive. Legacy Dungeons are the main attraction of each of the six main areas of The Lands Between, and I got to see the first of them, Stormveil Castle. This particular Legacy Dungeon begins with a choice, you can either head through the main gate and suffer through an intensely challenging route full of enemies aware of your presence, or you could sneak around the side through a secret entrance that takes you along a lesser guarded, but still very dangerous, path with narrow walkways that will punish one errant dodge roll with a fall to your death.

Stormveil Castle definitely brought to mind comparisons to the Boletarian Palace from Demon’s Souls, right down to a section lined with explosive barrels and an enemy looking to ignite them all with an explosion of their own. Moments like these felt more like homage than anything else, and what really stuck out to me more than anything else was how enticing exploration felt with all of the various paths that were left unexplored in my hands-off demonstration. Way off in the distance was a house all by its lonesome on a narrow cliff that had me wondering how I could get to it; when the player looked back towards the cliffside I saw all sorts of unexplored platforms and shinies; and with the ability to freely jump, I constantly wondered if I could jump across certain gaps and find something on the other side. I was told that Legacy Dungeons were built with this kind of freedom in mind, and that they were designed to be complex and multi-layered, which is exactly what I had hoped to hear.

The Legacy Dungeon capped off with the player reaching a rooftop that oversaw the main path the player could have taken if they went through the main gate and fought through the army that awaited them. Since the enemies were unaware of their presence, the player was able to use a sleep arrow to incapacitate the giant beast guarding the boss door, and make it through undetected.

Finally, I got a little tease of the boss fight against the giant multi-armed lord from the trailer, and it was about the Soulsiest boss they could have possibly shown, with gigantic sweeping attacks, earth shattering slams, counter attacks that come out while it reels from being hit, and eventually, a second form with a transformed Dragon arm that spewed fire and had an unblockable grab that just roasted the poor player. It looked absolutely brutal and I can’t wait to try it myself.

Going back to the theme of player choice, all throughout the presentation I was reminded at just how much freedom and choice was offered to the player. The freedom to go in any direction right from the start in the open field; the freedom to engage or not engage the passive roaming enemies; the choice of whether to run or fight when the dragon swooped down; the choice of stealth or reckless violence when attacking the enemy camp; and the choice of whether to go through the main or side entrance in the Legacy Dungeon. None of this is all that new in the world of open-world RPGs, but in a From Software action RPG, it’s certainly an unprecedented level of choice, on top of the already existing customization of builds, weapons, and magic.

With every new bit of Elden Ring I see, the wait becomes increasingly more difficult to bear. But bear it I will, as Elden Ring is planned for release on January 21, 2022.

Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit