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Nintendo is in a giving state of mind this season, offering some holiday deals on games in the eShop, including a few recent Switch 2 titles. For instance, the Switch 2 version of Ball x Pit, which was one of our staff's favorite games of 2025, is 20 percent off at $12. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is $40, down from the usual $50 on Switch 2, which is about as good a deal as youll get for a current-year game release.There are also a few older games that have gotten even steeper discounts. Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition for the Nintendo Switch 2 is a whopping 75 percent off, so load it onto your new console for less than $18. At about $33, Cult of the Lamb: Unholy Edition is half off for the original Switch. No Man's Sky is also 50 percent off, so you can grab it for either Switch console for just $24. Star Wars: Outlaws is down to $40, which is $20 off, and Nier: Automata is $16, compared with its usual $40 price tag.Those are just a few that caught our eye. The discounts will run until January 4, so you can make purchases as a last-minute gift or load up your own Switch in case nobody gifts you with a game you've been eyeing.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-has-huge-discounts-on-switch-2-games-in-its-holiday-sale-220058951.html?src=rss
Anna's Archive, the open-source search engine for shadow libraries, says it scraped Spotify's entire library of music. The group acquired metadata for around 256 million tracks, with 86 million actual songs, and is just under 300TB in total size. "A while ago, we discovered a way to scrape Spotify at scale. We saw a role for us here to build a music archive primarily aimed at preservation," the group said in a blog post. The pirated treasure trove of music represents over 15 million artists with over 58 million albums. The group intends to make all files available for download for anyone with the available disk space. "This Spotify scrape is our humble attempt to start such a preservation archive for music. Of course Spotify doesnt have all the music in the world, but its a great start," the group wrote. The 86 million songs that the group has archived so far represent about 99.6 percent of listens on the platform. This only represents about 37 percent of the total and the group still has millions left to be archived. The open-source site is normally focused on text like books and papers, which it says offers the highest information density. The group says its goal of "preserving humanity's knowledge and culture" doesn't distinguish between media types. Of course none of this is exactly legal, and the sharing or downloading of all these files is flagrantly in violation of IP protection laws. Anna's Archive contends that current collections of music, both physical and digital, are over-indexed to the most popular artists or composed of unnecessarily large file sizes due to collectors' focus on fidelity. The group says that what it's amassed is by far the largest music metadata database publicly available. The music files will be released in order of popularity in stages.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/pirate-group-annas-archive-says-it-has-scraped-spotify-in-its-entirety-211914755.html?src=rss
Game developer Vince Zampella, known for his work on many popular first-person shooter franchises, has died. According to Los Angeles news channel NBC4, Zampella was killed in a single-vehicle car crash on Sunday along with one other unnamed person. He was 55.Zampella has helmed several well-known first-person shooter titles. He was a founder of Infinity Ward, where he was a creator of the Call of Duty series. Zampella remained at the company for the launch of the hugely popular franchise's first few installments. In 2010, he co-founded Respawn Entertainment, the studio behind Titanfall, Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends. Respawn was acquired by EA, and most recently, Zampella was leading DICE's studio in Los Angeles and headed up the Battlefield franchise, another FPS series that just saw the launch of Battlefield 6 earlier this year.EA shared the following statement about Zampella's death: This is an unimaginable loss, and our hearts are with Vinces family, his loved ones and all those touched by his work. Vinces influence on the video game industry was profound and far-reaching. A friend, colleague, leader and visionary creator, his work helped shape modern interactive entertainment and inspired millions of players and developers around the world. His legacy will continue to shape how games are made and how players connect for generations to come.Update, December 22, 2025, 3:53PM ET: Added statement from EA.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/call-of-duty-co-creator-vince-zampella-killed-in-a-car-crash-204046354.html?src=rss