For all the talk of "Fortnite" and its so-called metaverse of character crossovers, it is Nintendo and its "Smash Bros." fighting game series that has created the industry's biggest team of rivals.

The big picture: For "Smash," Nintendo flexes its strength as a successful video game company to rope in collaborators and occasional competitors in the service of making its own $60 game increasingly successful.

• The current vehicle for this is 2018's "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate," which tomorrow will receive another addition to its roster of combatants in the form of Kazuya Mishima from Bandai Namco's fighting game series "Tekken."
• The paid update will also add crossovers with Capcom's "Devil May Cry," Microsoft/Bethesda's "Skyrim," and WayForward's "Shantae" series, all in the form of costumes for the game's most generic combatants, the doll-like Mii Fighters.
• The "Tekken" addition gives "Ultimate" a roster of fighters from 39 franchises, more than a dozen not made by Nintendo.

Epic's approach with "Fortnite" is to wedge a wide array of pop culture icons — from gaming, movies, sports, music, etc. — into a format that is ostensibly a 100-player shootout but can be used as a social space.

• That creates a multi-branded playground that can double as a marketing launch pad for any company's next game, movie, album, or show.
• Epic isn't selling more copies of "Fortnite," because the game is free, Instead, it's enticing players to log back in, maybe buy a new costume but also receive these crossovers as ads.

Between the lines: "Super Smash Bros." launched on the Nintendo 64 in 1999 as a fighting game featuring many of Nintendo's most famous characters, but it has morphed into a corporate barrier-breaking rumble.

• Newer releases added characters from Sega's "Sonic The Hedgehog," Square Enix's "Final Fantasy" and "Dragon Quest," Konami's "Castlevania," and more.
• One of Nintendo's most active collaborators is rival console maker Microsoft, which supported recent crossovers with "Banjo-Kazooie" and "Minecraft."

Big companies are Nintendo's favored partners, but it has also worked with indies.

• Yacht Club Games' Shovel Knight, Toby Fox's Sans and WayForward's Shantae all appear in limited forms.

What's next: Smash Bros. producer Masahiro Sakurai said today that Nintendo's efforts to add downloadable characters to "Ultimate" will end later this year with one final character.

Players are beginning to return to the widely panned "Mass Effect Andromeda" following the success of "Mass Effect Legendary Edition," according to a report from Eurogamer's Wesley Yin-Poole.

Why it matters: The way we view video games after launch can shift depending on game updates, expectations, or even cultural factors.

• Around its launch, "Andromeda" became a running joke as players posted clips of animation slips and bugs; its memes were more memorable than most of its gameplay.
• The original "Mass Effect" was also plagued with bugs and goofy glitches, but launched in 2007, when social media wasn't as popular.

It didn't help that Andromeda was playable early for EA Access and Origin Access subscribers, who were able to play up to 10 hours of the game ahead of its official launch. The game notably had a day-one patch for its official release.

The big picture: While "No Man's Sky" is perhaps the most successful example, CD Projekt Red is currently attempting to turn "Cyberpunk 2077" around. The game has slowly been returning to platforms it was removed from, like the PlayStation Store.

• CDPR recently told WSE Innovation Day attendees that the game has reached a "satisfactory" level of stability due to the team's constant work on improving it.

The makers of "PUBG Mobile" say they banned 3,884,690 accounts from the globally popular battle royale game between June 18 and June 24.

Why it matters: Cheating is a plague in online games, though even head-spinning ban counts don't seem to deter people from playing big games nor cheating in them.

By the numbers: The game's developers say 5% of the banned cheats involved players using X-ray vision to see opponents, 2% used "auto-aim," and 76% in some way modified the model of their character.

• The week prior, they said they had banned 2.6 million accounts.
• This hasn't stopped interest. The next update for "PUBG Mobile" has garnered 50 million pre-registrations, according to the game maker.

Now for some quick news.

Video game writer Chris Avellone is suing women who accused him of sexual misconduct last year for libel, saying, "I have never violated consent with anyone, ever."

• "I stand by my story and the stories of the other women who came forward," one of the women named in the lawsuit tells Kotaku.

The dog that "Fallout 4" based its German shepherd companion, Dogmeat, on has passed away.

• "Dogmeat is a tether," said developer Joel Burgess. "He grounds you in the world, will always stand by you, lead you to your family, and anticipate your needs ... And if love is River's legacy, I am contented."

Wrestler Booker T. Huffman has lost his copyright lawsuit against "Call of Duty" makers Activision.

"Nier Reincarnation," a free-to-play, gacha-style game in the series, is coming to mobile devices July 28.

Discord has purchased Ubiquity 6, whose Backyard service has served as a social hub for gamers.

🤖 Voice AI is scary good now. Video game actors hate it. (Aimee Hart, Input)

🎨 "Final Fantasy" remasters reignite controversies over pixel art. (Patrick Klepek, Waypoint)

Bidoof: buck-toothed friend, meme, and now national holiday. "Pokémon" is celebrating July 1 as "Bidoof Day," a bookend to a "Pokémon Go" event.