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In a recent update, the post-apocalyptic MMO survival game Rust got a few unusual changes. The game now randomly selects player’s skin color and faces, tying them to each player’s Steam ID so that they cannot be changed.

Lead designer Gary Newman detailed the changes in a blog post last week saying “Everyone now has a pseudo unique skin tone and face. Just like in real life, you are who you are – you can’t change your skin colour or your face. It’s actually tied to your steamid.”

Previously, players were all identical young people, but the developers wanted to shake that up. “There’s a lot of skin colors in the world,” Newman added. “It’s really easy to appear racially insensitive when doing this. This is compounded by the fact that everyone is really used to seeing this guy as a white guy, so when you see him as a black guy it feels like he’s just ‘blacked up.’ So we’re spending a lot of time trying to lessen that effect.”

So far, the response has been mostly positive, but as PCGamesN reports, comments on the game’s steam forums have been pretty nasty (gallery below). Some people aren’t happy about the fact that they aren’t white men anymore. Apparently that’s also been accompanied by a surge of racially-charged language. In an interview with Kotaku, Newman quipped, “It makes me wish I’d set up some analystics to record how many times the N-word was used before and after the update. It was used quite a bit from what I’ve seen.”

Newman wanted to take action against the players using that kind of charged language, but other players began stepping in. “What we found was that when someone was being racist, they were always in the minority and more often than not the other members of the server stepped in and took action (i.e. they all worked together to hunt him).”

Newman hopes that this will teach people about empathy and what other people have to deal with on a regular basis.

“I would love nothing more than if playing a black guy in a game made a white guy appreciate what it was like to be a persecuted minority. There’s still work to be done, so consider this just the boilerplate of an idea for now. It’s quite pleasing to see different races working together in game, and makes you realize how arbitrary race is.”

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Sci-fi shooter Destiny will be getting the House of Wolves downloadable content pack soon, and Bungie has revealed more information on the patch players will be getting prior to its release. Detailed on the official Bungie site, the update makes a few tweaks to the game, including increasing players’ in-game vault space.

Update 1.1.2 will increase the vault dimensions for armors and item to 24 slots and for weapons to 36 slots. Prior to this, all vault item spaces were capped at 20 slots each. The expansion of the vault was limited by “memory constraints on older generation hardware,” which required a compromise to expand storage space. For Destiny players on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the item comparison feature will no longer function in the vault. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players will remain unaffected.

PlayStation 4 owners are getting the 2.50 Yukimura update today, which introduces a Suspend and Resume function. While Suspend and Resume won’t immediately work with Destiny, the 1.1.2 Update will enable its function.

Patch 1.1.2 will be out in April, before the House of Wolves DLC hits. The update will also bring new audio options, a feature for colorblind players, and various gameplay fixes.

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Speaking today during a post-earnings financial call, GameStop COO Tony Bartel said gamers should not expect to see as many new hardware bundles that come with free games in 2015 as they did last year.

“Based on our discussions with publishers and platform-holders, these pack-in programs will be significantly reduced in 2015,” Bartel said.

In 2014, Microsoft and Sony offered various hardware bundles. Microsoft sold Xbox Ones with free copies of Assassin’s Creed Unity (and Black Flag), Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and Sunset Overdrive. Meanwhile, Sony sold PlayStation 4 bundles with free pack-ins such as Destiny and The Last of Us, among others.

Bartel said GameStop’s overall new software sales took a hit last year due to these bundles. Citing an NPD study, Bartel said as much as $250 million was lost in physical sales as a result.

“We believe that new software sales were impacted in the latter part of 2014 as many games were given away as subsidized marketing incentives in next-generation hardware bundles,” he said.

Microsoft just this month launched a new Xbox One Master Chief Collection bundle. So bundles aren’t going away entirely (as evidenced by the number of bundles currently being offered at GameStop), but Bartel sees them as making up a smaller piece of the pie this year compared to last.

Currently, Xbox One and PS4 free game bundles–in the case of the Master Chief Collection and The Last of Us bundles–cost the same as a standard console. That’s $350 for Xbox One and $400 for PS4.

Also during the presentation, the retailer shared some data from an upcoming DFC Intelligence report. It claims that, of the total number of AAA games sold in North America last year, 88 percent were physical and 12 percent were digital.

Of that 12 percent, 60 percent were given away through hardware bundles, while 40 percent were paid for.

Overall, when factoring in total unit sales of AAA games in 2014 (physical and digital), paid-for downloaded games made up just 2 percent of all units, according to the study.

The full DFC Intelligence study will be released later this year.

Earlier today, GameStop reported earnings for the fourth quarter and full-year. Check out GameSpot’s full report for everything you need to know.

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Whether it’s an in-joke between friends on the development team or a nod to a developers’ favorite games, most games have some kind of easter egg, and Ori and the Blind Forest is no exception.

As a challenging action-platformer with plenty of backtracking and exploring, Ori’s design has some obvious influences like Metroid and Castlevania. But dedicated fans have managed to track down easy-to-miss references to games like Super Mario Bros., Super Meat Boy, and The Legend of Zelda, as well as the infamous, non-game-related Wilhelm scream.

In the video above, posted by YouTube user Captain Eggcellent, you can see a quick rundown of four easter eggs fans have found so far:

• The Super Meat Boy character
• A pipe from Super Mario
• The Wilhelm Scream
• The Triforce from The Legend of Zelda

We provided some screencaps of the easter eggs below, but have you found any that Captain Eggcellent missed? Let us know in the comments below!

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