Amid the games industry’s constant push-pull between contained single-player stories and sprawling multiplayer experiences, Josef Fares and his studio Hazelight keep making things that sit somewhere in the middle. 2018’s A Way Out, and 2021’s It Takes Two are both well-presented, start-to-finish stories built around set protagonists, just like the titans of the single-player world. But they can also only be played in co-op (whether in-person or online), enforcing some of the competitive camaraderie of multiplayer onto that familiar structure, and adding new challenges and ideas that single player games simply can’t.

Fares has, in effect, created a new genre

Blizzard has given its game launcher, Battle.Net, a new visual design, marking its first major overhaul in eight years. It’s available now for some players in North America, and will be gradually rolled out to other users over the coming weeks.

The new design repositions games from the left-hand sidebar to a row of icons across the top of the window, allowing for more space to be taken up by the game page, which features the latest news and updates on the relevant title. The friends and social bar has also been permanently affixed to the right hand side of