And now for something adorably sweet.

Like many children, Shane Hickey’s young daughter loves to draw, and again like many children based her sketches and doodles on what she saw around her. In this case it was Blizzard’s upcoming game Overwatch and she decided to design her own character, which Shane decided to tweet to Blizzard to show them his daughter’s fanart:

@PlayOverwatch hi team! my daughter created a new character.Her name is birst. She’d love to know your thoughts pic.twitter.com/b31YWUPqSs

— Shane Hickey (@shanehickey) May 20, 2016

The character, named “Birst”, is described as a combination damage-dealer-healer equipped wither boomerang and a laser-suit-dress hybrid garment. She could be considered somewhat a combination between existing characters Lucio and Mercy, but it seemed that the Overwatch team loved the idea.

One of the concept artists decided to take the original fanart sketches and… well, here’s the result:

@shanehickey Our artists were so inspired by this that they created their own fan art! Hope your daughter loves it! pic.twitter.com/c1ToeH1MJF

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) May 21, 2016

Reportedly Shane’s daughter considered it “the highlight of her life thus far”. Currently Shane’s account has the fanart as his avatar and banner as well.

It might just be a small gesture, but it’s always lovely to see bigger companies doing things like this, especially for younger fans. Who knows? Maybe in a future update Birst will become playable or the basis for a new character.

Hey, remember when Team YP got banned from competing in one of eSports’ major leagues? Well now it seems Capcom are also about to cause more headaches for the porn site sponsored-team – Capcom have banned sponsors of “adult content” in a recent rule change.

Players will not be allowed to participate in any tournament if they are sponsored by any sponsor that could be linked with adult content, which Team YP’s sponsorship with site Youporn certainly falls into. While many eSports events and ESL have been outlawing the adult content sponsors in their rules, this is the first time a publisher has followed suit.

The new rule, which also has an effect on sponsorships involving tobacco, alcohol and even e-cigarettes, has been attracting a little concern not only from Team YP although they’re probably the most obviously affected by this. Other teams in the Street Fighter V professional circuit have been adding their weight to the discussion too. Even commentator and long-time proponent of the fighting game community, James Chen has added his voice to the discussion:

“I definitely don’t think it’s fair for players like Filipino Man and Valmaster (two of Team YP’s players) to have this rule sprung on them like this. I do hope that a compromise can be achieved where these players are allowed to be supported by their team for travel/lodging and still play.”

Capcom have said that they are currently reviewing if any compromises can be made, such as allowing players to compete if they do not promote their banned sponsor.

“We understand everyone’s concern around the sponsorship rule in the [Capcom Pro Tour] ruleset. We will review and have an update soon. In the meantime, we won’t promote sponsors we deem inappropriate but all players are allowed to compete.”

Previously it had been said by the founder of Oculus that he didn’t care which headset players used to play their games – just as long as they still reaped the benefits of the sale. However, time moves on and it seems that someone has changed their mind.

The latest Oculus Store update comes with the standard tweaks and bug fixes, but according to reports it has also snuck in some DRM onto the platform. What this basically means is that now the Oculus Store will check to see if the headset is a Rift before letting you play – no Rift, no play.

The original statement from founder Palmer Luckey was said on a Reddit post a while back: “If customers buy a game from us, I don’t care if they mod it to run on whatever they want. As I have said a million times (and counter to the current circlejerk), our goal is not to profit by locking people to only our hardware – if it was, why in the world would we be supporting GearVR and talking with other headset makers?”

Of course, this was before someone actually cracked on how to actually DO that. Revive was a hack that made Oculus exclusives playable on Vive. Luckey wasn’t a fan saying: “This is a hack, and we don’t condone it. Users should expect that hacked games won’t work indefinitely, as regular software updates to games, apps, and our platform are likely to break hacked software.”

And it seems that now it’s actually happened. Not that it really comes as a surprise, as few other parts of the video game industry make their exclusives… well, non-exclusive or playable on another platform (at least not for a while).

It just seems that VR is evolving to match the current business plans.

It’s been around a year since the Kickstarter that did so well for Playtonic – Yooka-Laylee – finished and in that time there’s been snippets of news from the team. Mainly though they’ve been keeping quiet to work on the game, until earlier today when they released a massive update to backers of their campaign.

Firstly we were introduced to the central conflict of Yooka-Laylee’s world – namely that a hostile takeover of company Quack Corp by Diabolical Publishing Corporation has meant that the duo are currently venturing about the corporate building of Hivory Towers to recover Pagies and unlock the mysterious Grand Tomes. Diabolical seek to control all the world’s literature and make as much dollar from it as possible, lead by villain Capital B.

Joining the cast will be the previously announced Trowzer, a snake salesman who will sell you the unlocks for certain moves which you can unlock in any order you wish; Dr. Quack who was the former head of Quack Corp and is now inventing all sorts of inventions to keep the Diabolical shareholders happy; Dr. Puzz who was Quack’s former protege, now turned helper for Yooka and Laylee and will be responsible for transformations yet to be detailed and many more yet to be talked about.

Obviously there’s still a lot more to be revealed yet, but the play style will be very reminiscent of Yooka-Laylee’s forefather game, Banjo-Kazooie. More details will be coming in the next few months, with a feature in Edge Magazine on May 26th, reports on various gaming online channels and a showing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Also, for those who backed the game to a certain level (and I’m one of those people), Playtonic have said that the sandbox of the game will be releasing to them in July. The sandbox is intended to be a spoiler-free way for players to get used to the platforming style that will be Yooka-Laylee’s bread and butter.

As someone who loved Banjo-Kazooie as a child and can count herself among some of the first backers of the Kickstarter, I can’t wait to see Yooka-Laylee’s full release. Even if right now Playtonic have said they’re not ready to set a date in stone yet.

If you’re looking forward to the Blood and Wine expansion that’s coming out soon for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt but don’t actually own the base game or one/both of the last two Witcher games, you might want to keep reading.

Right now GOG is holding a sale of The Witcher series, which includes pre-ordering the afore-mentioned expansion to the game. It also includes all 3 of the games and the Hearts of Stone expansion. Take a look at the prices below:

• The Witcher – $1.50
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings – $3
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – $25
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Hearts of Stone – $9
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Blood and Wine (pre-purchase) – $18
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Game and Expansion Pass – $50
• The Witcher Adventure Game – $1.50

As always with GOG, the games are DRM-free as well. The sale period will run through to the end of the month and will end on Wednesday, June 1st at 10am PST.