To combat the surging issue of scalping in the incredibly popular Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG), Pokémon Center stores are escalating their tactics. Following the lead of most Pokémon Centers in Japan, the Singapore store has become the first location selling English TCG products to remove the outer plastic wrapping from sealed booster boxes at the time of purchase.

This strategy aims to deter scalpers who buy at retail price only to resell at inflated prices. By removing the plastic, it makes it harder for secondary market buyers to trust the integrity of the boxes.

For regular Pokémon TCG enthusiasts buying cards at official stores, this packaging removal has no real impact, as the individual card packs inside remain sealed and untampered with. While some collectors of sealed products have expressed disappointment, the move is largely seen as a positive step by the majority of consumers frustrated by the prevalence of scalping in the TCG market.

The Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF) has announced the 40 esports clubs selected for its $20 million Club Partner Program. This initiative aims to foster the sustainable growth of esports organisations, offering up to $1 million in funding per club. The program’s focus for 2025 is to drive global fan growth by supporting impactful storytelling and creative marketing campaigns leading up to and during the Esports World Cup 2025. These 40 partner clubs, collectively reaching over 300 million fans, will leverage EWCF support to create engaging content and experiences, ultimately deepening their connection with the global esports community. The program offers flexible funding to encourage fan engagement, EWC-related narratives, and club innovation.

“The EWCF Club Partner Program is a cornerstone of our mission to build a sustainable future for esports Clubs worldwide while creating opportunities for organisations from some of the world’s fastest-growing markets,” said Faisal Bin Homran, Chief Product Officer at the Esports World Cup Foundation. “This year’s 40 partnered Clubs represent a diverse and dynamic cross-section of global esports, spanning legacy organisations, rising stars and global powerhouses that collectively define the rich history and the rapidly evolving future of the industry. By investing in their growth, the program will enable Clubs to expand their audience and reach, strengthen their brands, and gain greater visibility through fan-first content, shaping the future of esports as a global sport and mainstream entertainment.”

The 2025 EWCF Club Partner Program boasts a global lineup with a focus on high-growth regions. Among the 40 selected clubs are six from China, along with teams from rapidly expanding markets like Japan, India, and LATAM. Prominent selections include 100 Thieves, Cloud9, FaZe Clan, Fnatic, G2 Esports, Gen.G, Team Liquid, and Team Spirit. Tencent E-Sports supported the application process in China, leading to the selection of top teams like All Gamers, Bilibili Gaming, Edward Gaming, JD Gaming, Weibo Gaming, and Wolves Esports, which collectively engage over 125 million Chinese fans.

All clubs underwent a rigorous evaluation process based on their 2024 Club Championship performance, potential across multiple games, social media presence, fan engagement, and strategic plans. Eight clubs received direct invitations based on their EWC 2024 ranking, while the rest were chosen from an open application pool. The 2025 cohort includes 19 new and 21 returning clubs.

“Esports is evolving faster than ever, and the EWCF Club Partner Program is driving that evolution by giving Clubs the tools to grow, engage fans, and compete at the highest level,” said Fabien “Neo” Devide, Chairman and co-founder of Team Vitality. “EWC 2024 was a defining moment for us—winning points in five games, two podium finishes, and securing a top-four finish at the Club Championship. The scale and energy of the event proved just how influential esports has become. We’re proud to be part of the program again, fueled by the enthusiasm of French fans who continue to support and inspire us as we look to elevate our game, win as many tournaments as possible, and carry Team Vitality’s colours high on the biggest stage in esports.”

Mosaad Al-Dossary, Co-Founder and Chairman at Team Falcons, said, “The return of the EWCF Club Partner Program highlights the growing impact of esports and its expanding influence in engaging fans globally. Following our Esports World Cup victory, we understand the dedication required to compete at the highest level, and Saudi Arabia’s pioneering role in the esports and gaming industry continues to set the standard. We look forward to once again competing among the best and securing another win to make our country proud.”

Ibraheem Altamimi, Founder and CEO of POWR said, “We are excited to be part of the EWCF Club Partner Program and to compete on the grand stage of the Esports World Cup this summer. This initiative presents a fantastic opportunity to grow our fanbase and reach millions of fans. As we make our debut at the EWC, we look forward to showcasing our talent, representing our country, and contributing to the continued growth of the global esports ecosystem.”

Membership in the EWCF Club Partner Program requires annual renewal and doesn’t guarantee participation in the Esports World Cup 2025. Clubs must separately qualify for each game’s EWC tournament through official pathways. The Esports World Cup 2025 will be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, uniting the global gaming and esports communities for a cross-game competition. This event will award a substantial prize pool to winning clubs and players, celebrating the best in esports.

Ahead of the Game Developers Conference (GDC), NVIDIA announced enhancements to its NVIDIA RTX neural rendering technologies, including that neural shaders are coming to Microsoft DirectX preview in April, DLSS 4 hits a major milestone with over 100 games and apps now available, RTX Remix is officially releasing alongside a new playable Half-Life 2 RTX demo, the NVIDIA RTX Kit is receiving major updates with Unreal Engine 5 support for RTX Mega Geometry and RTX Hair, and NVIDIA ACE autonomous game characters are debuting in two titles.

NVIDIA and Microsoft revealed that neural shading support will come to DirectX preview in April, unlocking the power of AI Tensor Cores in NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs inside of graphics shaders used to program video games. “Neural rendering is the future of graphics and we are happy to partner with Microsoft to bring AI to programmable shaders in DirectX. All game developers can use Tensor Cores built into GeForce RTX GPUs to deliver next-gen realism and performance to Windows gaming,” said John Spitzer, NVIDIA VP of Developer Technology.

Neural rendering represents a revolution in graphics programming, using AI alongside traditional rendering techniques to dramatically boost frame rates, enhance image quality, and reduce system resource usage. NVIDIA RTX Neural Shaders SDK enables developers to train their game data and shader code on an RTX AI PC and accelerate their neural representations and model weights with NVIDIA Tensor Cores at runtime. This significantly enhances the performance of neural rendering techniques, allowing for faster and more efficient real-time rendering with Tensor Cores.

“Microsoft is adding Cooperative Vectors support to DirectX and HLSL, starting with a preview this April. This will advance the future of graphics programming by enabling neural rendering across the gaming industry. Unlocking Tensor Cores on NVIDIA RTX will allow developers to fully leverage RTX Neural Shading for richer, more immersive experiences on Windows,” said Shawn Hargreaves, Direct3D Dev Manager at Microsoft.

NVIDIA also released Unreal Engine 5 support for RTX Mega Geometry and RTX Hair through NVIDIA RTX Branch of Unreal Engine. NVIDIA RTX Kit is a suite of neural rendering technologies to ray-trace games with AI, render scenes with immense geometry, and create game characters with photorealistic visuals. NVIDIA’s new GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs feature a major advancement in the acceleration of ray tracing for hair and fur – a new linear swept sphere (LSS) primitive. The new primitive is a step toward rendering high-quality digital humans in real time by replacing typical triangle primitives with spheres that can represent individual strands of hair with better accuracy and performance.

At CES, NVIDIA showcased what’s possible with neural rendering through a stunning technology demo, Zorah. At GDC, an updated Zorah demo, built in Unreal Engine 5, will showcase the latest advancements in neural rendering, featuring RTX Mega Geometry, RTX Hair, ReSTIR Path Tracing, and ReSTIR Direct Illumination.

A year ago, NVIDIA released RTX Remix in Open Beta, a revolutionary modding platform that enables classic games to be remastered with RTX. Today, NVIDIA is officially releasing an enhanced version of RTX Remix, featuring DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, a host of new RTX Neural Rendering technologies, and numerous community-requested updates, enabling modders to deliver stunning remasters with even better image quality and higher frame rates.

To demonstrate RTX Remix’s capabilities, and the power of the latest RTX innovations, Half-Life 2 owners can download a free Half-Life 2 RTX demo from Steam on March 18th. Showcasing their work in Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt, Half-Life 2 RTX is being developed by four of Half-Life 2’s top mod teams, working together under the banner of Orbifold Studios. Half-Life 2 RTX features full ray tracing, remastered assets, DLSS 4, Reflex, RTX Neural Radiance Cache, RTX Skin and RTX Volumetrics.

DLSS 4 was introduced with the release of GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, and now over 100 games and apps now feature support for DLSS 4 due to the rapid adoption by game developers. This milestone is hitting 2 years quicker than DLSS 3, making it the most rapidly adopted NVIDIA game technology of all time.

DLSS 4 debuted Multi Frame Generation, which uses AI to generate up to three additional frames per traditionally rendered frame, working in unison with the complete suite of DLSS technologies to multiply frame rates by up to 8X over traditional brute-force rendering. This massive performance improvement on GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards and laptops enables gamers to max out visuals at the highest resolutions, and play at incredible frame rates.

In addition to the 100 games and apps available now, Lost Soul Aside, Mecha BREAK, Phantom Blade Zero, Stellar Blade, Tides of Annihilation, and Wild Assault will all launch with DLSS 4, giving GeForce RTX gamers the definitive PC experience in each title.

Earlier this year, NVIDIA unveiled AI-powered NVIDIA ACE autonomous game characters, adding autonomous teammates, NPCs, and enemies to games, unlocking a whole new set of gameplay possibilities. Now, these ACE autonomous game characters are making their debut later this month in two titles – inZOI and NARAKA: BLADEPOINT MOBILE PC VERSION. In the life simulator inZOI, players can customize ‘Smart Zoi’ NPCs with life goals that in turn use AI to guide behavior and interactions with other NPCs. In NARAKA: BLADEPOINT MOBILE PC VERSION, NVIDIA ACE-powered teammates help players battle enemies, hunt for loot, and fight for victory.

“NVIDIA enables game developers to push past expected boundaries with AI technology. NVIDIA ACE in NARAKA: BLADEPOINT MOBILE PC VERSION allows us to create AI autonomous teammates running on the device locally that naturally assist the player in their epic battles,” said Zhipeng Hu, Head of Thunder Fire BU, SVP of NetEase corp.

NVIDIA ACE technologies are continuing to advance, incorporating new vision and audio language models, enhancing facial animation with new model architectures, and accelerating game development with updated ACE plugins for Maya and Unreal Engine for offline authoring. Two upcoming games are leveraging these advancements with Black Vultures: Prey of Greed adding NVIDIA ACE speech and language models and Fate Trigger adding NVIDIA ACE Audio2Face-3D.