Sylvester Stallone has taken to social media to call out Rocky producer Irwin Winkler as part of an ongoing dispute over ownership rights to the long-running boxing franchise.

As reported by Deadline, Stallone pulled no punches on Sunday morning when he shared an illustrated image depicting Winkler as a knife-tongued serpent on Instagram. In the caption of the post, he addressed Winkler directly, calling for a "fair gesture" from the 93-year-old producer, who he says is withholding ownership of the franchise and its sequel series Creed.

"After Irwin controlling Rocky for over 47 years, and now Creed, I really would like have at least a little of what's left of my rights back, before passing it on to only your children," Stallone wrote. "I believe that would be a fair gesture from this 93 year old gentleman? This is a painful subject that eats at my soul because I wanted to leave something of Rocky for my children."

Stallone portrayed Rocky Balboa in eight films, directed four of them, and served as a writer or co-writer on all the Rocky films and Creed II. He then announced in 2018 that he would be officially hanging up his gloves and retiring from the role, meaning that he would not return for Creed III, the next entry in the Michael B. Jordan-starring Rocky spin-off series.

In recent years, Stallone has voiced his frustrations over his lack of ownership of Rocky considering his involvement in the franchise. According to Variety, Stallone was paid $75K plus 10 net points, which equated to at least $2.5m for the first movie. Another source claimed the actor had made more than $10m on Creed and in the mid-teens on Creed II.

However, Stallone told the outlet in 2019 that he had "zero ownership" of the lucractive franchise. "When I finally confronted them, I said, 'Does it bother you guys that I've written every word, I've choreographed it, I've been loyal to you, I've promoted it, directed it and I don't have 1% that I could leave for my children?' And the quote was, 'You got paid.'"

Creed III, starring Michael B. Jordan as Apollo Creed, is due to hit cinemas on November 23, just over a year after the release of the ultimate director's cut of Rocky IV. IGN's review of Rocky Vs. Drago praised Stallone for managing to "wonderfully fine-tune Rocky IV with The Ultimate Director's Cut, chopping out what didn't work and keeping what did."

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Another new AAA studio has joined the gaming scene, this one founded by Jerry Hook, one of the architects of the original Xbox who most recently worked on Halo Infinite.

The new studio's mission is to "create a new generation of narrative-driven action games" with "immersive worlds." Its founding members include Paul Crocker, who served as lead narrative director on the Batman: Arkham trilogy; Greg Stone, who produced DOOM (2016), and Steve Dyck, who worked on SSX, NBA Street, and the Halo series. Hook's new venture follows his departure from 343 Industries, where he served head of design on Halo Infinite. Hook also helped launch Xbox Live and worked on Halo 4, Halo 5, and Destiny in various capacities.

Speaking with IGN in an interview ahead of the announcement, Hook says that the collective decision to leave 343 Industries was part of the natural cycle of departures that follows the release of a major project.

"I took a step back and really wanted to take a look at what is the impact I wanted to have moving forward; what is the impact I wanted to have not just with games or the next big idea, but really taking a look at teams and how could I build a home for creators and content creators who could really flourish and specifically help them grow so that they can put their entire passion against a project," Hook says. "And so on top of creative ideas and new game ideas and all the innovation that goes into games, I realized that probably my biggest challenge was we haven't really, in the game development space, spent a lot of time trying to innovate with teams and studios and studio structures."

Jar of Sparks is currently in the early stages of forming its core team, which the studio hopes will provide ideas for its first project. Hook estimates that the studio's first game is three to four years away.

One thing that's for certain is that it won't be a live service game. Even with Hook's experience working on projects like Xbox Live and Destiny, he deems live service to be too much of a risk for a fledgling studio like Jar of Sparks.

"[O]ne of the main challenges we all seem to struggle with is there's only so much risk you can take on within a new studio. You're forming a complete team with people who don't know each other, have never worked with each other or brand new IP. Live service adds more complexity on top of that and I really think from my own experience for service driven games, the amount of work you need to do to make a live service work is pretty tremendous. And I think the first game that Jar Sparks is going to go do isn't going to have that component to allow the team to flourish first and be able to put their creative energy first without having to worry about the continual pressure of server driven models," Hook explains.

And despite the studio's status as a "AAA developer," Hook isn't thinking in terms of massive budgets and even bigger sales.

"One of the challenges I think the industry has gotten itself into, where if everyone is always shooting for the 300 million mark or 10 million mark, I'm just like, okay, how about you build a team with the right budget that allows you to be successful with just a couple million or just a million? And you can be successful that way," Hook says, citing smaller-scale successes like V Rising and Valheim. "So my goal or at least our goal that we've talked about with the founder is — we don't want to go after God of War, we want to create our own space. It has a good dedicated following and it is a great title that people want to sink their teeth into, that's it."

As for NetEase, Hook sees the Chinese publishing giant as a backstop against the difficulties that can arrise from the volatile games industry.

"If you go and innovate and you need to slip something, your publisher of those people financing, you have to be clear that you can slip," Hook says. "And that was one of the key conversations I had with NetEase, which is, you need to prepare for slipping if we're going to go and innovate; if you're onboard with us innovating, you know the risks, and they were very clear with me."

Jar of Sparks joins a host of other studios that have formed amid the glut of financing in the games industry, among them Nightingale developer Inflexion Games, Callisto Protocol developer Striking Distance Studios, and Stormgate developer Frost Giant Studios. The surge of of studios helmed by experienced industry veterans is only now beginning to see results.

NetEase, for its part, calls Jar of Sparks a "new first party studio that will enjoy full creative freedom." Its other holdings including Grasshopper Manufacture and the new studio formed by Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Microsoft is pushing hard to make mainstream cloud gaming reality, partnering with Samsung to release a smart TV app while making it a big part of the Xbox Game Pass package. But at least one former Xbox developer thinks there are still plenty of issues to work out.

Speaking with IGN on the occasion of the launch of his new studio, Jar of Sparks, former Xbox developer Jerry shared his thoughts on whether we're near the end of the line for the traditional console model. Hook, who once helped launch Xbox Live and most recently worked on Halo Infinite, has his doubts.

"My brain says [this isn't the last console generation], even in my notes for the studio, it's like, okay, [the next console generation] should land about here, so let's at least plan for it," Hook says. "But yeah, I have a hard time saying that it would be the last one just because of the struggle my friends globally have with streaming. And if everything's going to be in the cloud, you can't have millisecond delays, especially for what I consider AAA, like e-sports and competitive games, that just won't work. So you'll need something there."

Hook himself is taking a decidedly old-school approach with Jar of Sparks, choosing to focus on narrative action-adventure games rather than live service games, which he considers risky for a fledgling studio.

Games like the ones that Hook wants to make are ostensibly a good fit for the sort of cloud-based tech Xbox is offering, but online games are a different matter. Hook has plenty of experience making online shooters himself, and he thinks top competitive players will balk at any amount of input delay.

"Yeah, you really have to talk to esports players and you ask them and they'll go, 'Nope,'" Hook says. "They get mad when we have input lag just to the console at times, so it's something that I think again, for the general or the hobbyists where we're just not good enough. I know I'm not good enough to detect some of it, but some of it you can still detect or when there's spikes within the network. It's that kind of thing where the last mile problem of networking that you're always going to have to manage, that you can't predict because everyone's house isn't standard."

Regardless, Xbox continues to press ahead with cloud gaming while publishers like Square Enix release cloud-based games of their own, such as the widely-panned Kingdom Hearts 1.5+2.5 Remix for Nintendo Switch. It hasn't been all bad though — there are plenty of anecdotes to be found of players enjoying games like The Ascent with a mobile phone and a Backbone controller.

Either way, we're getting close to a turning point, with Hook himself acknowledging that we're "getting dang close" to a truly high-quality cloud gaming experience. Until then traditional consoles will have to suffice.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

At first glance, Two Rock, Arizona is merely a backwater town occupied by little more than tumbleweed and a few rows of houses. But very little is as it first appears, and all it takes to reveal As Dusk Falls’ many layers of storytelling depth is one small, decades-spanning tragedy. And it’s all about the story, since this is a choose-your-own-adventure-style graphic novel that cleverly pulls ideas from games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead series and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. Each member of this voice-acting cast of unique and interesting characters has their own, often conflicting emotional stakes that accelerate the story in seemingly hundreds of logical and intelligently connected directions. Through the powerful and often far-reaching consequences of your own actions, this small town is gradually unveiled as a powder keg full of secrets, vices, and familial bonds that run far deeper than any outsider is initially led to expect.

This story begins with a heist carried out by a trio of brothers who, while searching for a place to lay low, collide with another family at the auspicious Desert Dream Motel. You initially alternate between the soft-spoken youngest brother, Jay, and Vince, a married father who can either care more about his troubled professional history or his family – depending on how you choose to play him. The voice acting is several steps above competent, featuring familiar names like Deus Ex’s Elias Toufexis and Returnal’s Jane Perry, just to name a few, and each character is played with believable conviction. For a game with this much melodrama, very little of it is played awkwardly, and that’s a huge positive.

The orange-hued art style certainly harkens back to shows like Breaking Bad, and the painterly finish is reminiscent of Disco Elysium as well. Some might take umbrage with this art style, but arguably, that’s what makes it stand out so well against other story-focused games, where the uncanny valley might make it a little too difficult to take certain scenes seriously. Once I got used to it, my imagination began to fill in the gaps between frames. As a result, I remembered many of the scenes in much richer detail than they actually appeared.

These characters and their motivations can vary wildly depending on the order of actions you choose, such as confronting a mugger with a shotgun or attempting to reason with him. Everybody has their own view on Two Rock and its history, and if the story begins to paint one non-player character as a villain, things rarely stay that way for long. The moral tug-of-war is constant here, and you may just want to play the six-hour campaign several times; not because you need to, but because taking different paths and exploring these wildly different stories is so satisfying.

It’s great that As Dusk Falls points out which decisions are the big ones with a giant sign overhead, but don’t just assume the most obvious choice will always have the desired outcome. These cascading events are a constant source of twists and turns, meaning things can spin out of control in ways you usually didn’t intend, and practically none of the core cast is safe. It’s also easy to jump back to a decision that didn’t go your way if you’re picky about how you want a playthrough to go.

The likelihood you’ll manage to see everything meaningful on the first run is slim to zero, and the availability of an up to eight-player mode where everyone gets to vote on decisions make As Dusk Falls much more of a party game than any other visual novel to date. People can even vote using their phones. In the right circumstances and with the right group of people, it could be one of the most replayable visual novels to date.

Fans of TV crime dramas would feel right at home in Two Rock, and the pace is so leisurely that even if your friends and family members aren’t typically into video games, this could be a great starting point for them. It’s the storyline that’s intense here, not gameplay; interaction is largely dominated by quick-time events and dialogue choices with a countdown timer that’s usually pretty generous. The meat of this story campaign is in exploring the plethora of story choices and then watching their often clever and sometimes tragic outcomes woven together with a story so well-written that it might as well be on AMC.

Since no time is wasted making you search for puzzle clues or awkwardly stumble around in a 3D environment, As Dusk Falls leaves space for a noticeably wider number of meaningful decisions than in any Telltale game, and they don’t just feel like they’re giving the mere illusion of choice. Some actions, such as talking to a dog versus throwing a stick to ward the dog away, resulted in two vastly different outcomes that temporarily changed the shape of the story. In another instance, a series of events led to one character’s death early on, whereas making a totally different array of choices led to a completely different outcome near the end of the story. Many of these decisions seem innocent or meaningless at first, but they do tend to coalesce and influence the overall direction of events. Something you did four hours ago might pop up again, or not. As a result, when I saw a chain of earlier decisions come together to form larger consequences it felt ethereal.

The self-awareness across As Dusk Falls’ several layers of cascading events is impeccably consistent, but this is still just sleight of hand on the writers’ part, and like in any other story game with branching storylines, the skeleton of the plot remains pretty consistent throughout. Certain events will happen no matter what, though the silver lining here is that you may get a chance to see those events from a totally different angle if you make different choices. For example, a character who died early in my first playthrough lived long enough to disclose a secret later on in the second, and that revelation completely redefined how I viewed the story and some of the other characters. This led me to believe As Dusk Falls isn’t playing anything close to its full hand in the first six hours.

Tying these still images together is excellent sound design that accurately depicts everything with cinema-like fidelity. The original soundtrack by Forest Swords is rich, deep, and tense – coming in at ideal intervals, for example, to create drama with bassy tones.

The quick-time events could be done a little bit more imaginatively, however, since they only ever really come down to the basic “move a cursor or quickly tap a button” prompts, and they tend to show up in some very strange places, such as scenes where your character is doing something as basic as packing boxes. At least it gives you something to do during quieter moments. But overall, As Dusk Falls feels conventional in this area, and after having played Disco Elysium and 13 Sentinels, both of which took the whole concept of interactive fiction and turned it on its head in unique ways, it’s safe to say that Interior/Night wasn’t exactly willing to go skydiving without a parachute during the getaway scene. Yes, that was a reference to Point Break. But anyway, it isn’t reinventing the wheel, and its quick-time events would be downright boring if the story wasn’t so compelling.

2017's Calexit certainly made waves in the comic book industry, given that its premise was very directly inspired by the events surrounding the 2016 presidential election. Now writer and Black Mask publisher Matteo Pizzolo is following up that story with an equally topical speculative fiction series called Rogue State.

IGN can exclusively reveal the first details about Rogue State ahead of the book's official unveiling at SDCC this weekend. This ongoing series reunites Pizzolo with Calexit: San Diego artist Carlos Granda. It explores an alternate version of the US that has splintered into a series of paramilitary militia groups, and where a new freedom fighter named Vya of Brightstars emerges to rally a terrified nation.

Black Mask will be teasing the new series through a free preview ashcan booklet being released exclusively at Comic-Con. Check out the slideshow gallery below to see some of the unlettered artwork featured in that ashcan:

Here's Black Mask's official plot description for the new series:

In ROGUE STATE, a crew of young vigilantes will rise against an authoritarian state robbing Americans of their rights. The ongoing series tells the story of Vya Of Brightstars, a mysterious freedom fighter rising from the unrest, and Clara Santos (she/her), a young professional who becomes activated in Vya’s movement when her fiancée Taylor Sanchez (they/them) is disappeared as militias take over their Mission District neighborhood. As a nationwide police state takes shape following a contested Presidential election and The Supreme Court’s Second Amendment ruling to deputize paramilitary groups, Vya and Clara’s rogue state will blaze a path across America, inspiring others to raise their own armies… some in solidarity, others in opposition. Each issue of ROGUE STATE will also include non-fiction material about building local support networks and grassroots campaigning for coming elections.

“This is an amazing and crucial moment in the history of comics. It’s a real renaissance for socially relevant and politically challenging comic books and graphic novels, but at the same time these books are facing more attacks, lawsuits, and bans than they have in a generation,” said Pizzolo in a press release. “Researchers are pointing out the explosion in book banning has been disproportionately impacting graphic novels–and whether it’s Maia Kobabe’s powerful GENDER QUEER, Art Spiegelman’s incredible MAUS, Alison Bechdel’s moving FUN HOME, or Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s piercing V FOR VENDETTA, it’s clear that deeply personal and fearlessly political comics and graphic novels are capturing imaginations across our polarized world. There’s never been a more robust range of comics and graphic novels speaking to the demand for social and political change than right now.”

The Rogue State preview ashcan will be distributed at Black Mask's Comic-Con booth and during the Rogue State panel being held on Saturday, July 23 at 5pm PT. Additionally, the publisher will be offering the following exclusive comics at the con:

• Calexit: Our Last Night In America [Uncut]
• Godkiller: For Those I Love I Will Sacrifice #1 advanced issue
• Godkiller: Tomorrow’s Ashes Collected Edition Hardcover & Softcover
• Rogue State ashcan
• Destiny, NY Chapter 1

Rogue State #1 will be released in October 2022.

For more on San Diego Comic-Con, find out how to watch this year's event and what to expect.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.