Fallout: New Vegas is a sprawling RPG filled with sketchy factions, greasy NPCs, rubbery morality, and tough decisions, all of which ultimately lead the player to one of four possible outcomes that share one thing in common: They're not great. Which isn't to say they're not satisfying, just that there's no optimal outcome where everybody's happy and nobody gets hurt. The wasteland is a pretty crappy place, after all, so outcomes tend to be crappy too.

In a recent interview on The Examined Game with Steven Lake, New Vegas designer and director Josh Sawyer revealed his own personal 'best of a bad lot' pick for the endgame, and it's independence all the way.

"It is very hard. I mean, some people would say like, I love Caesar, and great," Sawyer said. "But it's kind of hard to hand everything over to an individual like Caesar or Mr. House. It feels dangerous. And then with NCR, you just realize like, man, they got a lot of problems. Like, they have a lot of problems right now. They're doing things for a lot of very questionable reasons.

"Even if you find people that you feel are very virtuous and and are sacrificing a lot to fight in the Mojave and not because they're trying to be imperialistic, even though NCR is being very imperialistic, it's difficult to wrestle with that and come away and say like, yeah, I think NCR is great."

For Sawyer, then—and most players, apparently—an independent New Vegas is the least worst choice. "I know it's going to be dysfunctional, I know it's going to be bureaucratic, I know there's going to be corruption—but also it hasn't been tried yet, right? Like we haven't organized this yet, so let's give it a try."

Sawyer said Obsidian tried to portray independence as having its own "drawbacks of dysfunction," arising from the proliferation of bureaucracy and the corruption that inevitably follows. Even so, I think I have to agree that it's probably the way to go: If there's one thing history keeps on trying to teach us, it's that handing the keys to an unstable autocrat or a fascist military superpower (or, god forbid, both at the same time) never goes well.

For myself, I wrapped up Fallout: New Vegas with a fifth option that isn't canon, strictly speaking, but is my head canon: I got so sick of getting jerked around by the competing Mojave factions that when Mr. House asked me to take out the Brotherhood of Steel, I just packed up my stuff and wandered back out into the desert, never to return. Was I a little bored with Fallout: New Vegas at that point, after sinking countless dozens of hours into it? Sure. But turning my back on the grasping travails of the last ragged remnants of humanity and disappearing into swirling sand and crackling radiation, to be remembered only as that guy who did that stuff—that's real warrior of the wasteland stuff, baby.

Sawyer, in case you hadn't heard, is reportedly heading up a new Fallout project at Obsidian, which would be nice except that it came amidst the recent major cuts at Xbox, which saw roughly 25% of the studio's workforce let go and the cancellation of multiple other projects, including a sequel to Avowed.

There are, somehow, those of us who still haven't played the hit 2023 RPG Baldur's Gate 3, and I know that because someone asked My Chemical Romance front man Gerard Way at a recent concert.

As spotted by IGN, the question came via a large paper sign made by fan KatanaLuciana, who recorded the interaction for TikTok. The sign caught the eye of a bandmember, who then tapped Way's shoulder to get his take between songs.

"No, I've only played Baldur's Gate 1," Way announced to the room. "Not that I probably wouldn't have liked 2 or 3. I did play the Icewind Dale expansion, but I just ran out of time, you know?"

Way's nerd bona fides are well documented—he's a longtime D&D player, once streamed Overwatch and discussed his love of D.Va, and co-created the Umbrella Academy comic series that later became a Netflix show—but I'm not sure he's talked at length about classic CRPGS. He clearly knows some ball, so we'll forgive him for remembering Icewind Dale as an expansion rather than a standalone game.

"Did you play Baldur's Gate 3?" he asked fans. "Is it good? I would assume so, the first one was a lot of fun. It was the closest thing at the time to playing D&D."

At risk of putting my foot in my mouth, if he loved crusty ol' Baldur's Gate at the time, imagine how Larian's modern masterclass would hit. The studio quickly caught wind of Way's interest, of course, and reached out to help correct the injustice.

".@gerardway of My Chemical Romance, what do you mean you haven't played the critically-acclaimed Dungeons & Dragons RPG, @baldursgate3," the official Larian account posted. "There's a code with your name on it if you fancy trying it."

Somebody get that man a Steam Deck, because I can't imagine a better game to pass long hours of touring.

If Palworld's 1.0 launch has brought you back for a fresh round of legally distinct Pokemon—as it's done for millions of other players—you're going to be crafting a lot of items. Thousands and thousands of items.

Luckily, while the game would normally expect you to hold the F key for the duration of every building and crafting interaction, there's a way to spare your finger the combined ache of every straw Pal bed and roasted berry. And no, you don't have to buy a 100g weight to hold down F for you like this hapless soul on Reddit did. You just need to switch two settings.

TIL that I'm stupid 🙃 from r/Palworld

How to stop holding F to build in Palworld

To liberate your digits from prolonged F presses, hit Esc to open the menu, then select Options > Game Settings. Move over to the Keyboard tab (or Controller tab, if that's your style) and turn both "Single button for hold interactions" and "Change build mode from Hold to Toggle" to ON.

Make sure you've enabled both options; the former only affects interactions in the world, but you'll be left having to manually hold F for crafting and building back at base if you don't turn the latter on as well.

Hit Esc once more, and select YES to apply and save your selections. And there you go! No more overtaxing your index finger whenever there's something you can't leave for your Pals to finish.

I've seen some reports from players who say those settings won't stick after closing the game, but I haven't run into that issue on my end. Might be worth a double check at the start of your next few sessions once you've made the switch, just to be sure.

Otherwise, go—live deliciously. Bask in your regained seconds of manual freedom. Think of all the bad posts you'll be able to scroll on your phone while slapping together your next batch of Pal Spheres. Has there ever been a truer form of luxury?

From the archives: This interview was originally published 10 years ago this month in PC Gamer #293 (UK, July 2016), and conducted not long after the release of Stardew Valley. You can see how developer Eric Barone was just realizing how life-changing Stardew would prove to be, and many of the game's now-beloved features, like multiplayer, were still to come in the future.

Also check out out 2025 interview with Barone on YouTube in which he looks back at Stardew's release, discusses why he just can't stop working on the game, and what he hopes to accomplish with Haunted Chocolatier.

"You know,” Eric Barone says, “as a kid I never really thought about how games were made. They were just these things that existed, almost like magic."

He first turned his hand to programming four years ago, as a way of improving his CV. Juggling game design, bills and a job at a local theatre, he put his coding skills to the test by singlehandedly creating Stardew Valley—the farming simulator RPG that was released in February this year. It’s since sold several hundred thousand copies. “Now I feel like a wizard because I understand the magic.”

Raised on the console classics of yesteryear, Barone spent much of his youth obsessed with his family’s Super Nintendo, spending hours in front of Mario Kart, Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana. Back then, he admits, the thought of making a game didn’t cross his mind all too often, although he recalls occasionally tinkering with Basic on his parents’ PC. One game captured his heart, and would go on to heavily inspire his debut venture some way down the line.

“I guess there was a period where I stopped following current games and just kept playing old ones,” says Barone. “And I spent countless hours playing Harvest Moon. I loved it.”

In 2011, Barone graduated from the University of Washington-Tacoma with a computer science degree, but struggled to find work shortly after. In a bid to make himself more employable, he decided to pursue computer programming as an entertaining way of learning something new, and began creating what was essentially a Harvest Moon clone.

At first, he worked from his bedroom at his parents’ house, but before long he moved into an apartment with his girlfriend. “She was supporting us,” he admits.

“Although I did work part time as an usher at the theatre. My girlfriend was working as a lab technician at the local university and we were living off of that. I think she probably had some doubts, but she wanted to support me and knew this was what I wanted to do, that this was my dream.”

Farm labour

In addition to his theatre shifts, Barone spent anything between 60 and 80 hours per week developing what was first known as Sprout Valley. He was learning on the job, constantly iterating, poring over the minutiae of his code and adding new things.

Within a year, he had a working game—one that was basically finished—yet would go back and axe whole sections, features and storylines as his expectations changed and the scope of the project increasingly widened.

“When you get to that point, where you need to redo it all, it just feels depressing—when you know you’re in for another year or more of work, at least,” says Barone.

“That happened to me several times.” Worse still, Stardew Valley, as it was eventually renamed, was nearly cancelled. Barone had neglected to backup any of his work, so when his computer crashed about a year or so into development he was convinced it was over. He frantically gathered new hardware, besides the existing hard drive, and, luckily, was able to salvage everything from there.

Harvest time

“In retrospect, it feels like crazy that it all worked out,” he says. “The whole development was so sloppy. It was the most indie development you could imagine: no professional style at all, figuring it all out as I go, and just the scrappiest code you could imagine. I’m almost embarrassed to have other people look at my code!”

Yet Stardew Valley’s overnight success paints a different picture. Although born from fond childhood memories, it is a deep and engaging game that seems to have struck a chord with PC players—particularly those who missed the console-exclusive Harvest Moon almost two decades ago. Barone concedes that part of the reason he started down this path was precisely to this end—that the absence of such a game on PC implied there were people, like him, who wanted one.

It appears he was right. Even though Barone expected his first foray into development to be a hit among Harvest Moon fans, he is still genuinely surprised by its burgeoning global success, not to mention the extremely positive feedback he’s had from players.

This is of course his reward for teaching himself how to code, for working alone, and for staying positive for moments of uncertainty that spanned four whole years. I ask Barone what kept him going throughout that time.

“I just really wanted to be a game developer,” he says simply. “I’d told everyone I was making a game, all my friends and family, so there was a lot of self-imposed pressure to prove myself.” All the students who’d graduated when he had were working by this time.

“If I’d failed and had to get an entry level job to gain experience, well, it wouldn’t have been an ideal way to start my career. I’d put all my eggs in one basket.”

With the help of Starbound publisher Chucklefish, Barone’s future plans include multiplayer support, console ports, and many more as yet unannounced ideas that he seems desperate to introduce. He also plans to tour this year’s gaming expos—something he’s never managed in the past.

“My wildest dreams have come true and I’m in this whole new world,” says Barone. “My life has completely changed in one month.”

One of the biggest end goals in a farm sim (other than a massive wine-making operation) is getting married to your favorite townie. Moonlight Peaks lets you really play the field by going on dates with pretty much everyone before you lock down one chosen beau.

I've been through the process a couple times already, so I've broken down everything you need to know about popping the question, prepping for a wedding, and how to get divorced if you want to head along to your second (or third) marriage. I won't judge you for getting married early and then realizing that you want to date Samael later.

Marriage in Moonlight Peaks

How to get married in Moonlight Peaks

1. Reach 8 friendship hearts with your partner
2. See your partner's 8 heart cutscene (check your map for sparkles indicating where to go)
3. Invite your partner on a date
4. At the end of the date, you can now propose marriage instead of a hug or kiss
5. Set a date for your wedding when prompted (check your calendar after to see it logged there)
6. (Optional) Starting the day after your proposal, buy white attire from Third Eye Threads to wear on your wedding day
7. Your wedding ceremony will take place first thing on your wedding day

What happens when you get married

• Spouse moves into your house
• Spouse unlocks two final (10 total) friendship hearts for you to earn
• Anyone else you were dating becomes "hurt" and goes back to only four hearts
• You can no longer invite other characters on a date and are locked at four hearts with other marriage candidates

When you propose and become engaged, your partner will temporarily have the "fiancée" relationship label and a total of 11 friendship hearts. Any other character who you had a "dating" or "partner" relationship with will be in their feelings about it and temporarily gain the "hurt" relationship label. They will be reduced to just four broken-looking friendship hearts, will have sad dialogue when you chat with them, and will not accept gifts from you. This status seems to only last a day though, so singles in Moonlight Peaks move on fast.

After you get married, your spouse will move into your house but will still go about their own business in town by exploring or going to work like they always have. They will go back to having eight friendship hearts and will have two new hearts to earn while married for a total of 10. You can continue to ask your spouse to go on dates together, which will help you earn those final hearts. You cannot have children in Moonlight Peaks, but you can get divorced.

Divorce in Moonlight Peaks

How to get divorced in Moonlight Peaks

1. A few days after your wedding, Llemi will come to your house to tell you about divorce
2. Visit Llemi's house in the Pink Grove (must progress the main story and unlock Luna Bay to reach it)
3. Tell Llemi you want to divorce your spouse
4. Sleep until the next night and your spouse will return to "friend" status

Getting divorced in Moonlight Peaks is arguably way too easy. When Llemi first comes to your house a few days after your wedding to just casually drop the possibility of divorce into your mind, he calls it "A clean slate. No bonds, no vows, no lingering what-ifs. A love undone as if it had never been."

Despite his protests about breaking your partner's heart when you actually come to take him up on the offer, "as if it had never been" seems to be how Moonlight Peaks treats divorce because your ex-spouse will be totally unfazed by your marriage ending. They'll return to being your "friend" the following day with only four hearts, no "hurt" relationship label, and will not acknowledge the divorce in dialogue at all. In fact, they'll act like they want to start dating you all over again.

Remember though, getting married in the first place locked all your other relationships at four friendship hearts. If you want to tie the knot a second time, you've got a lot of gifting and dates to do to make it back up to eight hearts with your next prospective spouse.

Agent 64: Spies Never Die, a lovingly-crafted homage to the classic Nintendo 64 James Bond game GoldenEye, made quite an impression when it turned up at the PC Gaming Show in 2022, but all hasn't gone quite according to plan since then. An early access release expected later that year didn't come together, and updates on Steam have been few and far-between since then.

But today we got the update we've been waiting for—developer Replicant D6 announced that Agent 64: Spies Never Die is set to launch on August 11.

"After a grueling five and a half year of work, I can finally put a final release date down," the dev wrote in a short-but-sweet update on Steam. "Everything is almost ready and set. Let's make it worth it!"

There was no multiplayer in Agent 64 when we first laid eyes on it, but that changed a year later when Replicant D6 announced plans for split-screen multiplayer, and then again in 2025 when online multiplayer was revealed.

That's a big deal: Multiplayer was a major part of GoldenEye's success, so it was a bit surprising that such a spot-on remake intended to move ahead without it. Replicant D6 said earlier this year, however, that "singleplayer remains the main focus of the game," which as a fan of singleplayer shooters I take as good news.

Another big deal: The Agent 64 singleplayer demo that was slated to be pulled earlier this month is being left online until August 9, just a couple days ahead of the game's release, so you still have time to give it a rip. The demo, available for free on Steam, includes the first two missions of the game, so it should provide a pretty good sense of what it's all about.

If Steam is struggling to load on your PC or phone, it's not just you. The store is currently struggling, with multiple issues shown on SteamStat.us.

Currently the store and community pages are reflecting a "Very Slow" status, with several regional servers overloaded and Deadlock's multiplayer API reflecting an Internal Server Error.

The Steam API itself seemns to be flickering between normal and offline. The store and community are also throwing some "Bad Gateway" errors, which means they may not load at all.

We get it, Steam: it's Monday.

It took all of one day for Marvel Rivals to enrage players after the release of season 9 with a new, unasked for, and slightly confusing patch. It buffed tons of heroes some of which in no way needed a helping hand.

"Our temporal scanners have been working overtime, analyzing battlefield telemetry and listening to chatter from you, the community," a blog post explains. "We've seen the meta shifting, and to ensure the combat arena remains as dynamic and competitive as possible, we are deploying this emergency hotfix. Rest assured, our Watchers will remain vigilant, and further recalibrations will be made as new threats emerge."

My guess is that by 'temporal scanners' NetEase means 'hero pick rate list' and a decision has been made to try and get each and every hero's pick rate up, or at least above 1% (looking at you Storm). Unfortunately, the way in which NetEase has gone about this isn't exactly slick.

LIke buffing Cyclops and Gambit—yes you heard that right—I've played against both Gambit and Cyclops since this patch, and it sucks just as much as you'd expect. It's also improved Black Widows kit while also making her completely homogenous with other hitscan heroes. But the most frustrating part of the latest patch is all the general buffs to Strategists.

Other than Gambit getting more self-regen and Bridge Boost healing, we now have Invisible Woman, Jubilee, Rocket Raccoon, and Ultron buffs alongside a class buff that gives Strategists more ult charge for healing. Now the healing to energy conversion efficiency is at 70%—a mere decrease of just 5% of what it was pre season 9 compared to the 15% decrease Vanguards and Duelists got.

Strategists that were somewhat nerfed include Ultron and Mantis, as her healing provided by Healing Flower has gone down from 15+3% of max health to 12+3% of max health. Even this is just a small change.

"The front lines of season 9 have been intense," the patch notes explain. "We've seen our Strategists absorbing more pressure than ever, which has suppressed their efficiency in gaining ultimate ability energy. Therefore, we will be partially reverting the efficiency of ultimate ability energy gained from healing actions for Strategists."

And, in completely forseen circumstances the change hasn't left people happy. "What are we doing with this one," streamer Flats says in a social media post. "EVEN IF they had data showing the character is weak. No exaggeration Gambit is a PERMA BAN in ranked and has been for four seasons. I know they likely want every character to be 'broken' this season but this guy isn't seeing the light of day."

It's become predictable that whenever NetEase decides to dial up the fun and dial down the balance players begin to yearn for said balance: "Revert this change please, I want more neutral gameplay that takes skill." The complicated part is that players will also yearn for the fun when NetEase decides to prioritise balance. Personally, I think NetEase needs to pick a lane for Marvel Rivals and commit to one or the other before everyone gets estranged.

Everything I know about crime scene investigations I learned from the TV series CSI: Miami, a show where sexy people get murdered and different sexy people—plus David Caruso—solve the crime by doing lab work.

My memory of the show is that Caruso always kicks off the episode by saying the first part of a sentence, then puts on his sunglasses and finishes the sentence with a devastating zinger related to the sexy murder victim. But that's sort of not true. His zingers in this 8-minute montage of Horation Caine one-liners are pretty darn underwhelming. Sometimes he just states the obvious, like when a body that had been thrown off a building was determined to have been killed elsewhere:

"Priority number one…" *sunglasses* "...is for us to find the murder scene."

Yep. That's… that's the thing everyone already knows you need to do. Wasn't a cool thing to say, and didn't need to be said at all.

Hoping to fill his shoes this week, I'm trying out a new career in Forensics: Crime Scene Detective, and unfortunately it seems I'm about as good at solving crimes as David Caruso is at delivering memorable zingers.

My first case is to collect evidence from a drug dealer's apartment. Not drugs, unfortunately, but electronic devices that include communications to his clients, perhaps text messages that read "hey if you would you like to buy some illegal drugs hmu 💉💊🌿🤪"

At the apartment I get to label, photograph, and collect evidence, which is rad. I've seen them do it on TV a million times: placing little yellow plastic numbered markers next to things like bullet holes and blood stains and then taking photos. In the alleged drug dealer's apartment there are just a couple smartphones and a password written on a post-it note, so I label 'em, snap 'em, and take them back to the lab.

That's where the problems begin. I use the password to access one of the phones, but the other is damaged so I have to open it up and "desolder" it: heat up the memory card so the glue melts and it can be removed—but without heating it up so much it's destroyed. I gingerly heat the card and try to remove it. Nope. I try again. Nope.

Ultimately, it goes the way things go anytime I toast a bagel:

• It's untoasted
• It's untoasted
• It's untoasted
• It's burnt beyond all recognition.

My first act of lab work and I nuke the evidence. And not only did I destroy this device, it turns out I also missed a third electronic device somewhere back at the apartment. I guess this drug dealer… *sunglasses* …is going to continue dealing drugs.

Embarrassingly, I flub my next two cases, too. Finding fingerprints is kinda fun: I shine a purple light around a room until I spot one—and it's always just one, because people only touch a surface in their home with a single finger then never touch it again. After labeling and snapping a pic, I sprinkle dust on the print and lift it with tape, which I bungle on the first two attempts by using almost no powder and then by using way too much. That makes it tricky, or some might say, impossible, to match prints back in the lab.

My second case: Unresolved! I'm glad this game doesn't simulate getting yelled at by the chief of police.

My third time out I'm hopeful because there's blood, and I'm good at collecting that: you just stick a Q-tip into it. But again, I wind up torpedoing the lab work. I use some sort of machine to extract DNA and then compare results on a readout to see if it matches. I know it must match: this is a crime-solving game, so I figure most of the cases will result in a "solved" scenario instead of a "nope, this one stumped us" ending, but no amount of fiddling with the knobs helps me ID a perp.

Why am I dealing with squiggly lines, anyway? Aren't we living in the grim future of no privacy and information harvesting? Surely I should just be able to feed both DNA samples into a computer and it gives me two pictures, and if the guy looks the same in both pictures, he's guilty. Why doesn't science work like that?

Finally, I get a case involving a gun. I'm an American and a former gun store owner, so this should be a slam dunk. No one was killed, this is just sort of a "please don't fire a gun in your apartment" type of case. The bullet is lodged in a wall, so I do that fun thing where you put a stick in the hole and it points where the gun was fired from, and then something more fun: shining a laser along the path of the bullet, and then spraying some kind of mist so the laser can be clearly seen and photographed. Awesome.

And for the first time, I don't bungle the evidence back in the lab. I take the gun, fire it into a water tank, and collect the bullet for comparison, which is done basically the same way as in The Great Mouse Detective: line 'em up and twist 'em to see if the scratches match. Finally, I score 100% on a case—and it only took four tries. What's that famous saying? Let justice be done though three hardened criminals go free so you can imprison one guy who shot his own living room wall.

It's about time I reveal the shocking twist in this story: those four cases were just the tutorial. That's how bad at this I am: I even fail at being given step-by-step instructions on how to do basic tasks. It's with real trepidation that I take my first real case, praying it involves someone else shooting a gun because I nailed that. C'mon, violent gun murder!

I open the folder and it's a coin burglary. Shit. Someone has been stealing antique coins. Filled with dread and disappointment, I go to the perp's apartment.

It's not so bad: at first. I dust for several fingerprints and do a decent job at lifting them. I find a whole crapload of evidence to label and photograph, including an actual pile of coins—which the game oddly does not consider relevant to this case.

But while I know I'm pretty good at working the crime scene, I'm just utter shit in the lab. And here's another twist—in my first real case I was also terrible at the scene! I missed several additional fingerprints, a second electronic device, and at least one password. Labwise, I failed to even complete the fingerprint analysis. My score for this case was a mere 16/100.

I hope someone can solve the case of my brief investigative career, because it's dead.

Performance Evaluation

On Saturday, June 20, something weird happened here in Chicago: 4,000 people gathered in person (and over one million tuned in to the stream) to watch Deadman All Stars, a PvP tournament of Old School RuneScape. Even with my only RuneScape experience having been getting cyberbullied in it by half of a pair of evil blonde twins at my middle school circa 2006, the good vibes were infectious.

Old School is hot and, by almost any metric, in a new golden age surpassing its original run in the aughts. But MMO PvP as a live esports event? It shouldn't work, but it did, and I got to talk to Old School RuneScape creative director Kieren Charles about how Deadman All Stars came together, as well as the logistical challenges of bashing a 25-year-old MMO into shape for it.

But first, glory to the victors, Team Dino Nuggets, consisting of the eponymous Dino, as well as B0aty, 61M, Sick Nerd, and MMORPG. Well played to runners up the Odablock Warriors, Framed Friends, Westham Weasels, Rhys Rhinos, and Purpp Rebels. My personal favorite player handle at the tournament belonged to Skiddler on the Rebels.

Tourney Hero

RuneScape has a rock-paper-scissors sort of combat system, where every method of attack has strengths and vulnerabilities. So high-level RuneScape PvP involves a lot of item switching, inventory management, and fast inputs. Combat is based around classic RPG dice rolls, and two players in end game gear will tend to miss most of their attacks, furiously swapping armor and weapons until one slips up or the RNG delivers a hit.

Jagex senior communications manager Danni Amos told me that the players mostly brought their own kit⁠—mice, keyboards, etc.—to ensure maximum comfort and that their muscle memory was on point. Much like how high-level Counter-Strike players sometimes opt for a low-res, 4:3 view to maximize performance and focus their aim, I was delighted to see the tournament players were all rocking with a tiny, 640x480 window on their massive, curved gaming monitors.

Amos told me that serves to limit the distance their mouse has to travel between the inventory menu and the play field, but I also find it rhymes with how you might have illicitly played RuneScape in a school computer lab or on the family computer back in the day.

"We actually started experimenting in competitive e-sports over 10 years ago now," said creative director Charles. "We've done mini events like this in the past in the UK, but it was 50 people." He attributed the Deadman format to prominent Old School RuneScape video maker and official Jagex collaborator, Solo Mission.

Matches are set up like a fighting game crew battle, or maybe a Pokémon fight with no substitutions. Each team's first guy goes out to duel: Team A's first player wins, so he stays out and keeps fighting until he runs out of health and healing items as Team B's second member tries to take him down, repeat until one team's roster is depleted. It's a great format, pairing the purity of 1v1 with a layer of strategy and teamwork. There were a lot of hero moments, players sticking it out way longer than they had any right, or managing stunning upsets.

There's also an added wrinkle with Deadman's prep stage: All the players had to start from scratch with fresh accounts, with a 120-hour playtime limit over nine days to level and gear up. But the tournament itself did not occur in OSRS' live game: Jagex had a special instance of the MMO running right there at the theater.

Logistics win wars

"RuneScape was definitely not built to have a LAN setup at all, so it's actually been a really interesting challenge for the tech team to work out how we make it a LAN event," Charles told me. "It was no small undertaking. We were doubting at times whether we actually can pull it off, because [with] a lot of the setup, the code expects to communicate with this server, speak to that server, and all of a sudden it's not really a thing."

After everyone was geared up and ready to go, they sent their save files to Jagex to load onto this special, instanced version of the game, with the offline Old School RuneScape server whirring away in a back room of the Rosemont Theater.

"There's so many advantages to doing it. A lot of these online events, they have the risk of DDoS and network attacks⁠—you've got to mitigate that," said Charles. "But also it's ping, it's reaction [time] for the players. The smaller the ping, the better they will play.

"So the fact the server is right there next to where they're playing, they're playing in perfect conditions in a way they've never played before. But now that we've done it, I imagine this is the sort of thing we could do when we do similar events in future."

And there seems to be a high likelihood of that: Deadman All Stars was Jagex's first time hosting an event in North America, yet it was also its biggest, surpassing even RuneFest in the UK. And at a time when much of the games industry is struggling, it's heartening to see a game and community thrive like this.

Steam's new Games Made in Sweden sale is out here reminding me just how many great titles we owe to our Scandinavian cousins. Vermintide, Darktide, Payday, Valheim, Amnesia, Satisfactory—the list goes on and on. Currently, a lot of these games have decent discounts, such as Vermintide 2 (one of our games of the year for 2018) for only $3 / £2.34. For my money, it's still the best Warhammer Fantasy action game around, even eight years on.

But what really caught my eye in the sale was three of my favorite microstrategy games, each an absolute banger in its own right: Bad North, Kingdom Two Crowns, and Battle of Polytopia. You can grab all three for under £10 or just over $10. Here are the deals plus a bit about each game:

Bad North ($2.99 / £2.55)

Wonderfully simple yet surprisingly tough, Bad North is all about defending beautiful diorama-esque islands from a huge viking invasion nipping at your heels. Each turn you hop to a new island defence, gathering soldiers, upgrading units, and unlocking abilities in an ever-escalating game of tag.

It's such an elegant formula I was certain it was inspired by hnefatafl (or viking chess) since it contains a similar concept of fending off encircling enemies, but when I interviewed Oskar Stålberg, he assured me it isn't. Stålberg's equally brilliant island-building game, Townscaper, is also on sale, should you prefer something a little more chill.

Kingdom Two Crowns ($3.99 / £3.35)

Kingdom Two Crowns is a vibe. Not just one of my favorite microstrategy games, but one of my favorite games, period. Buoyed by a brilliantly chill soundtrack from Amos Roddy and some of the most gorgeous pixel art you will see in a game, the Kingdom series, for me, is the best iteration of the "build a town, get attacked at night" formula.

You ride across your sidescrolling kingdom on a menagerie of steeds, upgrading your defences, uplifting your population, and uncovering each island's mysteries through trial and error. It also has split-screen or online co-op. Perhaps my favorite mechanic is the coin purse—you can tap to drop coins to pay for upgrades, but you can only hold so many and they'll spill out when it overflows.

The game also lets you pick a number of different settings, including vikings, ancient Greece and feudal Japan.

The Battle of Polytopia ($4.49 / £3.41)

Last, but not least, The Battle of Polytopia is a no-nonsense 4x done fast. It's honestly quite cathartic if, like me, you're the kind of player who rarely gets time to finish his 4x campaigns, or peters out before the end. In Polytopia, you can face off against other players in a quick 30ish minute game instead of pouring days into your standard 4x playthrough.

It's got a surprising amount of depth, too, with 16 different civilizations, three game modes, and even diplomacy mechanics. Definitely one to grab if you're growing tired of endless playthrough bloat.

There are tons of other great games available in the Games Made in Sweden sale (though sadly not Arc Raiders), but still, thanks for all the good times Sweden!

Palworld recently celebrated its launch into 1.0 and out of early access with 27-pages of patch notes and no price hike, and the devs were rewarded with the best turnout they've seen since the game first released into early access way back in January 2024.

A peak of 855,525 concurrent players turned up for the 1.0 release on Steam alone yesterday placing Palworld back up near the top of the Steam charts. It's a massive achievement and one that was properly celebrated, not least by Pocketpair's head of publishing and communications, John "Bucky" Buckley.

"I promise I'll try not to just be posting Steam numbers every day but really, thank you so much, gamers," Buckley said in a social media post. "Obviously, we had high expectations for 1.0 internally, but this is staggering. We really hope you are enjoying your time in Palworld again."

Palworld's all-time peak still sits at 2.1 million, a ridiculous achievement that places it above the likes of Counter Strike 2, Dota 2, and Monster Hunter Wilds. In fact, the only two games that have managed to beat Palworld's all-time player count on Steam are Black Myth: Wukong and PUBG, of course.

Players seem to be enjoying the full release so much that they're asking for even more content, in usual fashion. Ideas like randomised maps, switched-out resource nodes, and even a sequel have been thrown around. Players really can't get enough of Pals and guns.

There are some players, however, who aren't asking for even more content days after a major update. Instead, they're asking for fixes. "I just want them to finally fix and polish the many systems involved in bases and pal behavior," one player says. "Building/stability, missing pieces, pathfinding and interactions, clipping, proper work priorities and so on. It's a huge part of the game and I was honestly disappointed with 1.0 in that regard. The state this is in is fine for EA but hard to accept for a full release."

After a successful launch weekend, Palworld's biggest challenge, as it is with all games, will be retaining players. That's not to say it needs to be reaching the heights of last weekend from here on out—hell, even if it pulled in an eighth of what it did yesterday that would still be impressive—but with so much competition it'll have to keep players hooked one way or another.

Catching Panthalus isn't something you'll be able to do early on in Palworld. As with most other legendary pals, this newly-added giant whale is a tricky fight, and what's more, you'll have to complete a quest before you can even face it.

Despite the fact you get the Panthalus quest after the new tower boss added in 1.0, you can actually do it yourself at any time provided you visit the Ancient Civilization Researcher at the Deserted Islet. This means that if you're strong, but haven't progressed the towers much, you can still fight Panthalus and catch it.

How to get Panthalus in Palworld

To catch Panthalus, you first have to unlock its boss fight on the Deserted Islet, a fair way to the north of the Windswept Hills, just north of the Twilight Dunes. It's quite easy to spot, since it's right in the middle of the channel between Ice Wind Island on the left, and the ruins at the southern tip of the Astral Mountains on the right.

Here you'll find an Ancient Civilization Researcher, who will ask you to collect four bones from around the map, beginning the Panthalus quest. Besides being able to reach the researcher, there isn't an unlock requirement for this quest, though Panthalus is a very tough fight.

You also don't need to unlock this quest to find the bones—you can gather all four and then speak to the Ancient Civilization Researcher for the first time after, so it's entirely up to you which order you do things in.

Marine Echobone location (124, -524)

The first bone is on the skull of the giant whale skeleton to the west of where you start in the Windswept Hills. It's really easy to spot at a distance, since it emits a glowing light, so simply fly over and continue west up the skeleton to the skull where you can grab it.

Silent Echobone location (356, -111)

The second bone is a reasonable distance to the northeast of the Windswept Hills, east of the Verdant Brook, and northwest of Eastern Wild Island, right by where the Level 55 Jormuntide hangs out. As with the others, you're looking for a giant whale skeleton.

Head to the Altar of the Windcaller fast travel point, then go south across the water, over the protruding ribcage (and Jormuntide), to spot the glowing item on a low down bit of bone at the back.

Seafoam Echobone location (-515, -545)

This third bone is located far to the west of the Windswept Hills towards the center of Mount Obsidian. You'll want Level 2 Heat Resistance for this, so wear the Tropical Outfit or Heat Resistant Pelt Armour and keep your fire pals stowed.

Travel to the Eternal Pyre Tower Entrance fast travel, then head due east over the cliff edge to spot the giant skeleton on the right side of the lava pools area below. The item is just inside the skull, which is on the side of the skeleton closest to you.

Tidewind Echobone location (-265, 483)

The final bone is in the north of the Astral Mountains, which are themselves to the far north of the Windswept Hills. If you've already unlocked the Deserted Islet where the Ancient Civilization Researcher is, you could also head there and continue north. You should also bring at least Level 2 Cold Resistance for this icy biome.

From the Land of Absolute Zero fast travel, head west over the cliff and down into the frozen lake where you'll spot the head of the giant skeleton and the item glowing on top of it.

How to craft the Echoing Flute

Now you need to head to the Ancient Civilization Researcher on the Deserted Islet. If it's your first time speaking to them, you'll have to accept the quest first, and then speak to them again. This will get you the Faded Schematic, which you can use to craft the Echoing Flute at any workbench using the four bones you found.

After that, head back to the researcher, speak to them, and interact with the glowing symbols on the stone nearby to unlock the Panthalus boss.

How to beat Panthalus

As with any other legendary pal, Panthalus is really hard. The other way you get this quest is after the newest tower boss, so it's not something you're expected to do early. You also only have ten minutes to defeat them. You'll want to bring strong gear like a Plasma Cannon or Multi Guided Missile Launcher, but most importantly, bring a high level, fast-flying pal you can ride during the fight.

Panthalus's entire arena is water apart from one small island, so land-based pals will get decimated. Being able to fly fast will help you avoid most of the attacks. Once you reduce Panthalus's health fully, it'll collapse and you'll get an opportunity to catch it with a sphere—this is 100% guaranteed, so you can focus on the fight knowing you'll for sure catch the legendary pal at the end.

If you've forgotten Silent Hill: Downpour it was the western-developed Silent Hill that went semi-open world and had a bunch of sidequests in it, but was still a bit too busy trying to retell Silent Hill 2 only with the villain in a different hat. It wasn't a disaster, but to say "at least it wasn't Silent Hill: Homecoming or the arcade game" is to damn it with such faint praise you may as well be whispering from the other side of the street.

Still, those sidequests were tasty. Ignore the main plot about a prison escapee being chased by embodiments of his own guilt—wow, a man in prison has a dark past, what a shocking development—and you could explore a town full of ghost stories and little mysteries. The one where you follow color-coded ribbons to find out what happened to a missing girl was a particular favorite, a reminder that Silent Hill can still be properly haunting when it tries.

Good luck trying to play it today, though. Downpour came out on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and absolutely nothing else, which means your best bet is probably to emulate it in RPCS3. Or to wait for a PC native port to come along, and what's that? Oh, it's a trailer for a PC native port someone's been chipping away at.

Indie_RU's port isn't just a way to play Downpour on PC with an uncapped framerate and higher resolutions, nice as that always is. It's also restoring cut content, letting us wield extra weapons like the Bogeyman's hammer and bringing back deleted cutscenes, notes, dialogue, and entire sidequests. It's also restored a boss battle seen in an early trailer where you fight the "Monocle Man" who was reduced to a cameo in the finished game.

Apparently we can expect the finished product around September/October, which is also when we're expecting Silent Hill: Townfall, Screen Burn Interactive's Scottish take on the series. I've got my fingers crossed that's going to push the series in an interesting direction, because all those arena battles in Silent Hill F weren't really my cup of rusty tea with mud in it, or whatever they drink in Silent Hill.

Last month at the PC Gaming Show we got to bring you a behind-the-scenes look at Total War: Warhammer 40,000 including glimpses of a battle between the Astra Militarum and orks. The video above, revealed at BiliBili World, is a more detailed look at the same battle in the Armageddon Theatre campaign, and looks sick as hell.

Though I'm not convinced my PC will be able to run it. Seeing the framerate drop when the explosions go off and limbs start flying through the air has me looking at my wallet in concern.

While the spectacle looks neat, once again the part I'm most interested in is the cover system. A couple of minutes into that video, you can see the player send infantry into barricades and it looks like they dynamically split into smaller squads to suit the cover available, and to take advantage of cover provided on the upper storey of a ruined building.

Then the ogryns come along and stomp through a bunch of it. Like the sentinel walkers in an earlier part of the footage, the hefty lads trash barricades they pass through while the regular infantry are animated vaulting over them. Looks like we'll have to be careful to maneuver around any protection we want to preserve for the sake of keeping the little guys alive.

Though maybe that's not in character. As the narrator says watching a barrage rain destruction on one and all, "These men did their duty." The average Imperial Guardsmen has an estimated life expectancy of 15 hours in combat, and once you've done your duty tying down enemies with jump-packs long enough for the artillery to load, well, both you and your cover are expendable.

From the archives: This feature was originally published in PC Gamer #302 (UK, March 2017). You can still subscribe to PC Gamer to get new issues of the magazine (in print!) every month.

My playthrough of the first game was more disaster than Dishonored. At the time, I didn’t quite grasp that slitting every throat I met in those early Dunwall levels would send me spiraling toward the dreaded High Chaos ending, never to return.

As the hours rolled on and the increasing swell of rats began to gnaw on Corvo’s bootstraps, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I might be able to redress the balance by going full stealth, stifling the screams of my foes without shuffling them off their mortal coil.

Alas, Arkane’s Chaos system was more severe than I’d anticipated. The rats continued to scoff their way through the mounds of decaying flesh strewn about the city, and poor Emily might as well have been crowned Queen of the Dunwall rodents by the end, her citizens having long since been digested in a million tiny rat stomachs.

No wonder Corvo felt so sluggish when he possessed them—his hosts had been binging on the Great Dunwall Rot-off. Fortunately, Arkane evidently managed to get the exterminators in before the events of Dishonored 2, and I finally got my chance to do things right.

In a fit of madness, I decided to embark on a perfect, no-kill, no-detection run—a tall order for someone whose last attempt at stealth ended up elbowing half of Prague to death in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

40 hours later, I finally succeeded, but not without having doused my trigger finger in several vats of anti-itch cream first. Indeed, there were several moments during the Clockwork Mansion mission where I almost gave in.

After five hours of quick-saves and hasty restarts (yes, five), I could have happily shot Kirin Jindosh in the face during our eventual confrontation, but the opportunity to strap him to his own electric chair and reduce him to a babbling idiot felt like better revenge.

Even the Grand Designs team would struggle to piece his house back together, let alone someone who can’t even spell their own name anymore.

Little did I know that Jindosh would have one last laugh, as just a couple of chapters later I encountered his infamous Jindosh Lock, a sealed door that you can only open by solving a riddle. I could have squeezed some hints out of the local neighbourhood gang lords, but I was determined to solve it peacefully. So I sat there, staring at it. I don’t know how much time passed, but even my monitor got bored waiting, going into sleep mode long before I cracked the combination.

Paper case

Damn you, Jindosh, I thought. This scrambled brainpan isn’t going to get the best of me. So I put my keyboard aside, grabbed a pen and reached for my dusty gaming notebook, something I haven’t touched since scrawling my way through The Witness earlier in the year. I tore out several scraps of paper and made cards for every last variable, shifting them around until, at last, my brain whirred into life.

Admittedly, it was immensely satisfying solving Jindosh’s last remaining masterwork, but it did make me wonder whether I should have been so merciful just a few hours before. I won’t spoil the solution here, but I will say you should definitely start with the alcohol (both literally and figuratively). It helps. A lot.

As reported by Massively OP, senior developers at ZeniMax Online Studios said that the company has returned to its circa 2015-2018 headcount, before it staffed up for the development of canceled MMO Blackbird. The estimate is similar to one recently proffered by id Software in a statement on X, "The Everything App."

Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP) Discord moderator Baratron relayed the statement from the Elder Scrolls Online Tavern event in Hesse, Germany, where a number of devs are interacting with fans.

"According to both Jason Barnes (Associate Design Director) and Jessica Folsom (Associate Director of Community Management), ZeniMax Online Studios is now at the same size as it was when they made both Wrothgar and Summerset,” Baratron told the UESP Discord. "Which, as we know, are both highly acclaimed DLCs.

"So while the layoffs are extremely upsetting for everyone involved (of course including players), this is not necessarily the end of new content or the game going into maintenance mode."

For context, ESO's Orsinium (containing the region of Wrothgar) and Summerset DLCs were released in 2015 and 2018 respectively. In id Software's statement last week, it wrote that "The team today is about the size we were when making Doom (2016)." According to WARN Act filings, ZeniMax Online and id Software laid off 213 and 136 employees respectively. ZeniMax also laid off 62 people in 2025 immediately following the cancellation of Blackbird.

I have some sympathy to members of these studios wanting to counter narratives of their decline⁠—see also Outer Worlds 2 director Brandon Adler's harsh words for outsiders who flippantly claim the studio no longer has the same developers who made classics like KotOR 2 or New Vegas. It is also not inherently sinister for two studios with the same parent company to adopt a similar PR line.

At the same time, it doesn't sit right with me. It is an admission of undoing a decade of growth and development at these studios. Even if the headcount is the same on paper, a studio on the upswing is a vastly different environment from one that's just been gutted. The 136 people fired from id and 213 from ZeniMax were brought in for a reason. Game development has changed in the span of 10 years.

Bungie and BioWare probably hit similar headcounts as in their golden ages amid wave after wave of layoffs in the 2020s, and it did not improve their output or efficiency. It did not bring back Halo: Reach or Mass Effect 2.

If this is a PR justification Microsoft would like to exploit in the coming days, I have no interest in indulging it. It carries the tacit implication that those who were laid off did not matter, and beckons to that nasty "lazy devs" rhetoric.

It's a line of thinking that, at its heart, allows for this wanton misery and mismanagement to have been a necessary course correction by the adults in the room. I have no patience for it.

We're officially seven months into 2026. First of all, what the hell? I don't know about you, but it feels like this year has absolutely whizzed by despite… not a whole lot happening. Apart from, y'know, an insane number of layoffs and the industry slowly crumbling while a giant GTA 6-shaped asteroid slowly approaches.

But in the mess and chaos, we've still been blessed with some pretty good videogames this year, as well as killer soundtracks to go alongside them. I'll admit I've not quite been on top of my 2026 gaming this year—I'm well and truly back in my Final Fantasy 14 brainrot era, and have also discovered Project Zomboid 13 years too late. So we're on a little retro vibe right now.

That doesn't mean I haven't had time to play any new releases, though. Or that I've not been listening to their music even when I haven't quite gotten around to actually playing the damn thing yet. While there's still another five months of potential videogame bangers ahead of us, I wanted to take a look and see which tracks really grabbed my attention so far in the big 2026.

If you've got some 2026 favourites of your own, I'd love to hear which soundtracks or specific videogame tunes have been on your radar this year. Be sure to drop a comment and let me know!

What's old is new in League of Legends Classic, which was teased a couple of weeks ago in the wake of leak after leak. The full reveal came during yesterday's MSI Finals, where the mode debuted in a showmatch starring pros like Doublelift and Cpt Jack. It's a Frankenstein's monster of different eras with a huge emphasis on season three: a bunch of old kits are back, but some of the art has been modernized and various late additions like ward trinkets have made it in.

More details can be found on the Riot Games website, which reveals that the mode will release later this month on July 29. It names a bunch of old, busted builds poised to make their triumphant return: ability power Master Yi (God help us), pre-rework Sion (God help us), any mage with Deathfire Grasp, and so on.

But unlike, say, World of Warcraft Classic, it won't split itself up into era-locked versions—the mode will change with the times as voted by the community, similar to Old School RuneScape. If we, the common MOBA proletariat, can vote the 3v3 map Twisted Treeline back into League of Legends, it might just restore my faith in democracy.

And yes, the old upgrade systems are back. Runes and quintessences will let you pile on incremental stat upgrades, and the old mastery pages will simplify the system back down to three talent trees. Old summoner spells are back too, so if you've been missing the likes of rally and revive, you're in luck.

If you're hungry for more details, RiotMeddler has been on Reddit confirming various factoids. For instance, more old-school champions will be added over time—Graves and Urgot were examples he gave of characters he was particularly excited for, and others like Sion will be there day one. And if you're hoping to hear that sweet champion select song of auld, it's coming back.

Player reaction online seems mixed, especially with regard to the mode's 'era mashup' approach. "They really should remove the modern mechanics (trinket, base gates) and the modern models should AT THE VERY LEAST be toggleable into the old base skins," commented Reddit user WitchySofia.

The art style seems a prominent point of contention: "I want Meddler to tell me why they had an artist spend time making a brand new, never before seen health bar graphic that's uglier than the old health bar," said Reddit user TheScyphozoa on the same thread.

Comparisons, like this one from Reddit user JaxIsBadDontPick_ indeed suggest that the game version used in the showmatch has more muted colors and newer character models than League actually had a decade and a half ago.RiotMeddler confirmed in a different thread on Reddit that a dev blog with "a range of details" will go up Tuesday.

I've sunk legendary galleons, sailed across the Caribbean procuring plunder, and I've experienced Edward Kenway's redemption arc from start to finish. But upon rolling credits on Ubisoft's nostalgia-fuelled remake, I came to a realisation: almost everything good in Black Flag Resynced exists in the original game.

Sure, it's prettier and quality of life changes do help sand away the rougher edges, but removing all friction from a game isn't necessarily a good thing. Take stealth sequences, for instance—Black Flag Resynced now allows you to crouch anywhere, but it also removes all fail conditions from stealth missions, making the system somewhat redundant.

This give-and-take is something I experienced frequently with the remake. Resynced makes climbing far faster, but this means you no longer have to think about movement as you zoom up the side of almost every structure in sight. And don't even get me started on removing hidden blade combat, fisticuffs, and temporary weapons. The new cutlass-only fighting may be slightly harder, but it's ultimately bland thanks to fewer options.

I've now spent 40 hours with Black Flag Resynced, but I find myself unconvinced it ever needed a remake, especially one which more often chooses to change core components over retaining the feel of the original. It'd be a lie to say Resynced isn't good, but almost everything good in it is still good in Black Flag. Better, in fact, if a fond nostalgic adventure be your wish and you'd prefer not to toss a handful of dubloons in the sand for a game you likely own.

Hopping into the original Black Flag after playing Resynced, I was shocked by how remarkably well the game has aged. The combat still feels fluid (albeit easy thanks to chain finishers) but it benefits from the classic high profile, low profile control scheme that came to define the first three Assassin's Creed games—something the remake also does away with.

The movement and climbing also feel far more grounded. Instead of zipping up the sides of cathedrals, you've got to route yourself somewhat, especially since Black Flag includes a bunch of tailing sequences that require you to keep a target in sight at all times. Many players despised these, but after playing Resynced where stealth never mattered and I could murder my way through every situation, the challenge felt positively refreshing.

Alongside the visual upgrade, one of the few unequivocally positive changes is that ship combat feels far more dramatic in Resynced. The Jackdaw (Ed's ship) has new firing modes and officer upgrades, but naval battles are also significantly harder. Where, in the original, you could feasibly defeat a legendary ship without a fully upgraded Jackdaw, that feels almost impossible in the remake—ships fire fast, accurately, and use mortars more.

If you found naval combat in Black Flag too easy, this is definitely a good change. For my part, I found that the tough ship battles came to revolve around Lucy Baldwin (one of the new officers) and her Perfect Brace ability, which all but mitigates damage when you time a brace appropriately.

Even 13 years later, Black Flag's story is still first-rate, exploring, as it does, a man driven by greed and personal ambition, qualities that still make him a breath of fresh air by comparison with Assassin's Creed's usual goody two shoes protagonists. It's so well-written, in fact, that the new quests Resynced adds can't help but come off poorly by comparison.

The same goes for retaining the in-game shop that lets you purchase cosmetics that look like they're right out of Skull and Bones, or even buy the locations of in-game collectibles for real money. And don't forget the inexplicable addition of the weird Animus projects from Assassin Creed Shadows. I'm not sure who thought adding a battlepass mechanic to the remake was a good idea, but honestly, it sucks.

Ubisoft added many of these elements to modernise Black Flag, but ultimately creates a juxtaposition between old and new which really doesn't reflect well on either Ubisoft itself or the state of our industry. Black Flag was a formative game for me, arguably the beginning of open world bloat for the series, but a fun, well-written adventure with some of the best side content around—no wonder it's one of the few Assassin's Creed games I 100%-ed.

But Resynced ultimately doesn't feel like the same game to me. I thought it did, but then I went back and played the original Black Flag and remembered what it was actually like. I suppose it depends why you're playing a remake. If your goal is to revisit your past experiences and nostalgia, the original will serve you far better in that endeavor.

I'd never considered the prospect that some people might cheat at playing Helldivers 2. But I suppose it's inevitable given some people will find ways to cheat at anything. In this case, rogue Helldivers have found ways to game super credits—the premium currency used to buy Warbonds—to earn them at impossible rates, and it's become such a problem that Arrowhead has implemented new ways to tackle it.

"You've told us that cheaters and exploiters ruin the experience that it feels unfair when someone games the super credit system while you're out there earning yours the hard way," Arrowhead wrote in a Steam post. "We heard you, and we're starting to implement changes that will tackle issues like this."

Arrowhead only explains these changes in the broadest terms, stating they include "improving our monitoring methods for suspicious super credit activity." Basically, if Arrowhead sees a player earning credits "at an unreasonably high rate" there are "now steps in place to counter this."

The developer stresses that players who earn super credits the traditional way—grinding maps, clearing POIs, looting bunkers etc "will never experience any change". Instead, the system is targeted at "Cheaters. Botters. People using automation and duplication exploits to hoover up super credits at rates no human Helldiver could ever reach legitimately."

Ultimately, Arrowhead claims that "A healthier economy means the super credits you earn through honest service to Super Earth stay worth earning". This could be a joke, but it is a slightly odd way to frame the solution in any case given Helldivers 2 doesn't really have an economy. At least, not one that players have any real say in. It isn't like you can buy and sell items from other players, or that the price of Warbonds is affected by the game in any way. Not to mention, the main benefactor of these changes would be Arrowhead, as it is the studio which ultimately profits off of super credits.

Which isn't to say that cheaters should be allowed to roam freely, especially if players' games are being clogged up by bots. But I do wonder if the prevalence of credit cheaters in Helldivers 2 is symptomatic of a broader problem—namely that earning super credits is tremendously boring.

As has been the case since launch, players can only acquire super credits from the same dozen or so points of interest that appear randomly on a map, and scouring those POIs time and again grew tiresome ages ago. Compounding the problem is that the fastest way to earn super credits is to play on easier difficulties, creating a contradiction between natural player progression and unlocking premium items.

To be clear, I'm not saying that earning super credits should be easier—although given Helldivers 2 is a premium game that has sold 20 million copies by this point, Arrowhead could afford to be a bit more generous with them. But I would like earning super credits to be more fun, perhaps tied to some new side objectives or combat challenges rather than blithely hoping they appear in some random bunker or shipping crate.

Super credits aside, Arrowhead's broader efforts to address player concerns with Helldivers 2 appears to be working. The studio has adjusted and reworked many different aspects of the game lately, from performance to player progression.

As a result, recent Steam reviews have shifted from mostly negative to mostly positive in the space of a couple of months. While I wouldn't say we're in the "We're so back" phase of the game's turbulent relationship with its community, Helldivers 2 is kind of back, which is good to see.

When the excellent Command & Conquer successor Tempest Rising released last year, it featured three factions battling for supremacy across a war-torn future Earth. But only two of those factions—the GDF and the Tempest Dynasty—were playable with their own singleplayer campaigns. The third faction, the mysterious Veti, were wholly computer controlled.

Developer Slipgate Ironworks has always said the Veti would be made playable at some point. Indeed, it has been testing the faction's multiplayer integration for some time. But the question of whether the Veti would receive any singleplayer missions has remained unanswered, until now. It turns out the Veti will be getting their own campaign, but you will have to pay extra to play it, as it's arriving in the form of an expansion.

The Veti's Wrath sees you play as Tempest Rising's third faction across 11 new campaign missions—the same size as the campaigns for both the GDF and the Tempest Dynasty. Slipgate doesn't provide many specifics about how the campaign will pan out, but it does say that the early campaign missions "will serve as a tutorial for the faction" in a similar vein to the campaigns featured in the base game.

The Veti are very different from the other two factions, an ancient race that has slumbered beneath the Earth for centuries, boasting a distinctly Ancient Egyptian aesthetic. This carries through to how they play too. Conversion and sacrifice are two major themes of the Veti's playstyle, with the faction able to raise dead enemy soldiers as "enlightened", which can then be spent as a resource to upgrade structures and provide other benefits.

While the full release won't be happening until later this year, you can also play a snippet of the campaign right now via the Tempest Rising demo. This includes the first two Veti missions, plus the first two missions for both the GDF and the Tempest Dynasty. It's also worth noting that, while you'll have to pay to play the Veti in singleplayer, they will be available as a multiplayer faction in the base game at no extra cost.

If you're an RTS fan and missed out on Tempest Rising when it launched last year, I'd strongly recommend you give it a whirl. As I explained in my Tempest Rising Review. It's a genuinely great riff on the classic C&C formula, and one of the few RTS games of recent years that really understands the importance of a strong single-player offering. It's also 30% off this weekend, meaning you can grab it for $27 (£21). That discount ends tomorrow.

I Counter-Strike 2, small changes can have huge ramifications. There aren't many games where the addition of volumetric smoke grenades would be a headline feature. But in CS2's hyper tense battles, true 3D smoke cover has game changing consequences.

Now, with the advent of Season 5, Valve has made another tiny-yet-huge change. Put simply, it's changed how the bomb works, giving players more of a chance to survive after it detonates. Valve detailed the changes in a Steam post (via PCGamesN). "Now, when the bomb detonates, an explosive wave of destruction will flow from the bombsite through the map."

This won't make much difference if you're standing close to the bomb, with Valve emphasising that "you're toast". However, Valve explains that "the shockwave dissipates around corners and doesn't go through walls" meaning that a bit of canny positioning will keep you alive after detonation, preserving your precious gear into the next round.

But how will you know if your hiding spot will keep you alive? Well, Valve has thought about that too. As the bomb counts down, your health bar will flash to highlight how much damage you'll receive in your current position once it goes off. The shockwave effect has been pre-calculated for all defusal maps, which presumably means it'll be the same each time.

Valve hasn't posted any clips showing the new bomb tech in action, but Valve YouTuber Gabe Follower has uploaded a video detailing the changes in Season 5, alongside some footage of the shockwave. He also discusses another new feature which, currently, is only available in private testing: A new console command that enables players to detonate grenades remotely by shooting them. You can imagine the knock-on effect such a system would have in a Counter-Strike match, so it'll be interesting to see whether Valve implements it more widely.

Alongside the bomb changes, Season 5 also introduces two new weapon and sticker collections, one with an Arabian theme and another that's all about spy tech. There's also a new map, Cache, which replaced Overpass in the active-duty map pool, plus five community maps that have been added to various modes.

While Counter-Strike 2 remains the biggest game on Steam, it's not the only entry in the series that's doing well for itself at the moment. Its predecessor, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, has racked up an impressive player count after it was de-absorbed from CS2, attracting tens of thousands of players despite not being listed on the steam store.

After Traffic and Breaking Bad used it for scenes set there it became know as "the Mexican filter", though it's sometimes used for scenes set in South Asia or anywhere a bit tropical. You may recognize it as "the piss filter" that stained the original incarnation of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It's the yellow gradient that's usually intended to make things look warm, and it's not to everyone's taste. Like piss, I guess.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is the latest videogame to fall under the stream, making Edward Kenway look a bit more tanned and the waters look a bit more green. I didn't think it was particularly excessive until I saw some before and after screenshots with it removed, and yeah, it does seem a bit dehydrated actually.

These images come courtesy of Blu, a modder who has cooked up a reshade called ACBlackFlag Natural Colors: "A simple reshade preset that removes the ugly yellow filter from the game and corrects oversaturated colors."

You'll need the latest version of Reshade to install it. While you're at it, the ACBlackFlagFix will let you uncap the cutscene framerate, set cloth to animate at 60 fps, and remove pillarboxing, while Fast Launch will get you through those annoying startup videos at a rate of knots.

I've developed a bit of a reputation among my coworkers for loving niche, lo-fi indie games that make you feel bad and gross and weird on the inside. I'm flattered to stand out in such a way, but I also don't ever want to be typecast. Anyway, Brno Transit is a game about being trapped underground with your nasty, weirdly sexual boss and neurotic coworkers as reality disintegrates around you.

I loved developer Spytihněv's previous game, the Soviet boomer shooter Hrot, so I've been eagerly awaiting his next project. Much like fellow FPS designer David Szymanski (Dusk, Iron Lung), Spytihněv zigged rather than zagging, following up Hrot with a short narrative horror game rather than another shooter.

You're a novice train conductor learning the ropes under Brno, the second city of the Czech Republic. It's "the dampest subway east of anything that matters," according to Spytihněv, and I think it helps set the tone out of the gate to know that Brno does not have a subway system in real life.

What follows is a surreal, scatological (a Spytihněv signature), and homoerotic (that's new!) delve into guys being dudes on the job. For me, it called to mind Szymanski's Iron Lung (but more fleshy, sexual, and human) or 2024's breakout Mouthwashing (but not as character driven, and somehow even less life-affirming). The controversial Horses also sprang to mind, but with less explicitly harrowing subject matter⁠—and more explicit full-frontal nudity, let's go boys.

Even more than Mouthwashing, which portrays one of the most evil fictional workplaces I've ever seen, Brno Transit captured the feeling of starting a job where you matter so little as to want to die, while the apathy and neglect of your coworkers is somehow even worse than if they actively hated you.

This game runs on surprise, so I'll try to talk around the real zinger moments, but it's one long sequence of "Go here, do this. Why did you do that? Now you have to fix it. Embarrassing." If you've ever talked to a coworker at a shit job and felt like they were a space alien playing a prank on you with how they think and view the world, Brno Transit will speak to you on some level.

Your first day ends with you eating a tainted hot dog that gives you the runs and the voms, sending you scrambling for a bathroom as gurgles and whines fill your headphones. The doorless, exposed toilet in the employee area is indefinitely occupied when you reach it, while the bathroom in the station above is out of order. I don't know if there's another way of finishing this bit, but I had to take the train to another station to find an open commode. I haven't shared this exact stress dream or level of gastrointestinal distress, but it was still incredibly gnarly and relatable in the moment.

You black out and wake up on a dirty floor mattress in the conductors' area, with splotches of feces and a trail of brown footprints trailing backwards from your resting place. Out in the depot, an entire train is covered in crap, and the first order of the day is to hose it off, Powerwash Simulator-style. How could this have all been you?

Events only get stranger and grosser from there, and I was hooked. Brno Transit shares a brown, desolate, hopeless world with the preceding Hrot, despite being set closer to the modern day. It's a new standout of the mundane or on the job horror subgenre. I want these awful subway stations to get love like the Backrooms or Exit 8.

Model trains

Brno Transit is a medley of nastiness punctuated with surreal hilarity, and while much of the humor is front-and-center in the scripted story, one of my favorite moments was emergent: I had to do a double take out of the corner of my eye to notice a passenger randomly hanging off the end of a train as it left the station. The simulated little world of Brno Transit, which exists whether you're paying attention to it or not, is what really takes it to the next level.

Undergirding the scripted story stuff is a continuous simulation of a small subway system with two lines, one counter- and the other clockwise. It feels like zooming into someone's model train set, and does a superb job of evoking a much larger world than what's just in front of you.

A diverse array of NPCs mill about the stations or wander on and off the trains. They have this sense of anonymity and guarded hostility that really nailed the feeling of making eye contact with strangers on the subway⁠. You don't matter to them, don't bother them.

This effect, plus the the shifting and jostling of the train cars, the way the lighting changes as you pass through tunnels, as well as Spytihněv's excellent sound, music, and foley work add up to this uncanny feel of actually riding the subway. I was reminded of how no one's done nighttime better than Thief or Thief 2, even with their aged graphics. These three games are punching well above their weight in art and atmosphere.

You have to ride the train to start, but you quickly take control of your own engine, carefully adjusting your acceleration to avoid hitting stops too late or too early, doing your best to slot seamlessly into the pre-existing schedule of trains constantly running on this loop. It's a simplified approximation of a whole-hog train sim like Densha de Go!

A free ride mode unlocks after completing the story, and I feel like there's all kinds of weirdness left to discover under Brno. At one point in the story, I stumbled into a skull-filled catacomb attached to one of the stations, with unnerving music, a confusing, switchback layout, and a bumbling tourist snapping photos. I thought for sure this was part of the critical path, but it was just there. What other odd shit is waiting for me at all the stops I never explored on the critical path?

Brno Transit would have been an easy recommendation for me at $9 if it was just the standout surreal horror narrative adventure, but the fact that it's built on top of this little model train world truly sets it apart. I love this freaky little game, I love a Spytihněv joint, and I can't wait to see what he does next.

The latest EA Sports College Football game has finally arrived, which is tantalizing news if you were excited for the series' hotly anticipated comeback a couple years ago. Less tantalizing is the game's reception, which so far has been marred by widespread backlash to its egregious microtransactions. Complaining works: in a post on X yesterday, the official CFB account said those microtransactions are out.

"Your feedback on Road to Glory and Dynasty is that we've missed the mark with the introduction of paid progression options," the statement reads. Notably, Road to Glory is a single-player mode (in a game that already costs $70)—a prominent point of contention amid the negative feedback.

"This was added independent of deeper mode progression with the aim to give players more choice … tomorrow morning, we will remove all paid progression options from Road to Glory and Online Dynasty." That's today, so if you were planning to dump some change into those modes, you may have missed your chance.

The backlash was led in part by YouTuber Bordeaux, who got the hashtag "#CFBPlayDontPay" trending on social media. In response to the statement from EA, he posted "we did it" with a clip from Breaking Bad: Walter White saying "I won." Fans are generally elated—"Never let anyone tell you that organizing against giant corporations doesn't do anything," said Reddit user UnrealAce on a thread approaching 5,000 upvotes. "They tell you it doesn't work so you don't try because they KNOW that it works."

"Organizing" might be a strong word given that EA folded in a matter of days and it's not like anyone marched on the developer's offices, but it's hard to argue with the results. That said, it doesn't necessarily seem like the beast is dead.

A line in EA's post notes, "Our goal for live service plans in CFB28 and beyond will be to deliver valuable features and content with greater transparency and communication." Given that and the lines stating EA "missed the mark with the introduction of paid progression options … they're not adding the value we intended," the statement suggests the problem here was merely the rollout and not the notion of paid progression itself.

I'm somewhat prone to pessimism in this column, though that's not without cause. MMOs aren't exactly a dying breed, per se—we've got Guild Wars 3 to look forward to, and most of the old guard, while a little grey in the beard, have respectable playerbases and are thrumming with things to do.

But it's hard not to feel my blood pressure notch up a few numbers at this week's Xbox layoff news for… well, a number of reasons, really. I'm irate in particular, however, at the current state of Zenimax Online Studios (ZOS), developers of The Elder Scrolls Online, who seem to have become Microsoft's punching bag.

Left hook

I'm hard-pressed to think of a more depressing set of facts than Zenimax's past couple of years—back in July of 2025, Microsoft put thousands of people out of work, including those at ZOS and, more to the point, the cancelled Project Blackbird.

Blackbird was Zenimax's next major project, and while I can't say for certain it would've revitalised the MMO market or anything, we sure as hell need more new MMOs. It was in development for over half a decade, something the then-founder Matt Firor had described as, admittedly, a bit of a "large bet."

Still, the odds weren't bad. The then-CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer reportedly had to be torn away from it, and it was slated for a tentative 2028 release. And listen, even if you've got a cynical heart—five years of work from a development team of around 300 people getting flushed right down the toilet, along with 62 jobs (per a WARN notice), is a damn shame.

It was something that shook Zenimax to its core—but the studio did manage to pull through. I actually spoke to some of them back in January, speaking with executive producer Susan Kath who said that "the team has very much rallied … I see a lot of enthusiasm from the team as we're going forward. Folks are excited about their work. I'm excited for them to be doing this. We're looking forward."

Game director Nick Giacomini also echoed: "We are excited by what we're doing. We're excited by this transformation, this change, this evolution. It's like a second wind, and we've definitely got our eyes on the future, because this is our home. We are determined to make it continue to be so for us, for our players, for as long as we possibly can."

Indeed, things were looking up for ESO. It had found itself in a bit of a rut, as most MMOs do from time to time—but a new commitment to a seasonal model and a whole heap of reworks seemed dedicated to addressing long-held quality-of-life complaints and shaking things up.

The air, to me, felt like a smaller-scale version of the turnaround that World of Warcraft had after the disasters of Shadowlands, commitment to roadmaps and all.

Right hook

Fast-forward less than half a year later—an unconscionable amount of time in shareholder land, I have to imagine—and Zenimax Online Studios has been all but gutted. As PC Gamer's own Ted Litchfield figured out earlier in the week, an estimated 60% of the studio has been laid off between 2025 and 2026, with 213 of those layoffs happening this week.

That's a reduction of 275 developers at the studio in a year and a half, and, look—I don't want to cry that the sky is falling for ESO. Quite the opposite, I am hoping against hope that it'll manage to find a second wind somewhere down the line—but you simply cannot lose the contributions of 275 people without a massive dip in quality.

It's a response echoed by employees at the studio itself. Andrew Young, who left it in 2024, wrote: "There’s really no one left and no changing it now". Other employees were sent reeling, stunned at the absence of teams they'd been working with for years and forced to pick up the pieces.

I want to point out that Xbox saw fit to lay these people off literally as its first season launched—with layoffs occurring on Monday July 6, and the season launching on July 8.

Just imagine it—you work on ESO, the layoffs from last year hit you hard, but you're determined to turn things around. You're using words like "rallied" in interviews, you're finally getting to sort out complaints players have been having for years, you're trying new things. And after a year of work, your first season of the new era of your game is coming out. Two days before it arrives, Microsoft lays off 213 of your team. That, or you're shown the door yourself.

This is despite the fact that your game has brought in over $2 billion in revenue over its lifetime. That figure, posited in 2024, was touted 10 years after the game's launch. That means that ESO was raking in an average of $166 million a year.

Now obviously, that figure's going to have dips and peaks, that's just the nature of doing business—but the sheer boneheaded, next-quarter blinders you have to have on to believe that a game that historically brings you in $166 million annually somehow isn't profitable seems absolutely absurd to me.

And sure, maybe this reaction holds water if the fanbase wasn't liking your new changes—except they did! Here's just a few quotes from the Elder Scrolls Online subreddit:

• "What the fuck man. ESO was really getting a second wind," says u/PompeiiSketches.
• "The game seemed to be on the up and up, what happened?" says u/Crimsonmaddog44.
• "Absolute insane behavior to make cuts to the team that has gotten tons of players (myself included!) back into engaging with the game" says u/Ion_bound.

In a post on the game's forums, understandably stating that Zenimax'll have to be shifting its schedule around a bit, support is present, too:

"I just came back because of your roadmap for the future, and knowing now the people working on it are getting cut by a company that's billions in the green is really heartbreaking," writes one user, "know we haven’t always been happy with you all but those affected, whether they remain or not, did not deserve this. Especially in an era where things were finally looking up again. I am horrified," writes another.

This really does paint a picture of an MMO that was finally getting its sea legs back, just for Xbox to sweep in and knock it right off its feet again.

Holding shares

I will state it plainly: I think the way that Zenimax Online Studios has been treated is cruel, senseless, and short-sighted. There's no capitalist argument to be made about shareholders or prices or changing industries that's going to reach my ears on this one—it's downright unconscionable.

This is a studio that was making a profitable MMO with big dreams for the future, one that had somehow, miraculously, recovered from having a massive project that'd been in development for half a decade shuttered overnight. One that was just about to release the first proper season of its new imagined identity for the game that earned Microsoft over $160 million a year for the past decade.

It has been sacrificed almost wholesale on the altar of growth, by a company that spent over $68 billion on Blizzard, with Microsoft itself spending over $80 billion in 2025 on AI pipedreams. Its developers have been laid off to support a fantasy of getting 1 billion daily players, somehow, in a portfolio that's down 1,600 working roles and will be down 1,600 more by 2027.

More than that, this is an MMO we're talking about. If ESO takes a nosedive from here on out (and god, I am hoping it doesn't), that'll be one less game in an already-dwindling genre that's struggling to put up a fight amongst the unhealthy ambitions of the current industry's gluttony. ZOS deserved better.

Star Citizen received a major update back in May, one which implemented a "full reset" of its sci-fi universe while also adding a bunch of new features. Unfortunately, Alpha 4.8 also added a lot of bugs to CIG's space MMO. So many, in fact, that the studio has been forced to change course on its next update, postponing plans for several new features and turning it into a gigantic bug-squashing exercise.

CIG announced the new plans in its latest roadmap roundup (via MassivelyOP), stating that the studio has "reassessed our bug prioritization process following the release on Alpha 4.8.0" and that "based on reports from the Issue Council, Spectrum, Reddit, direct player feedback and other sources, we have identified nearly 100 issues that significantly impact core gameplay systems and quality of life."

Alongside this, CIG is also looking at fixing "broader quality of life issues reported by new players" as "while many veteran players have learned workarounds for common problems, they shouldn't have to." This includes addressing "many of the issues that commonly affect the first hour of gameplay." I'm sorry, the first hour? I feel obliged to point out here that Star Citizen recently surpassed $1 billion in player funding.

CIG says that "roughly 20%" of these issues have already been addressed so far. But the task ahead remains substantial, requiring CIG to pull developers away from building new stuff to address the issues. "As a result, we've temporarily paused work on a small number of features while we focus on improving the stability of these foundational systems."

The main casualty is Siege of Orison, a dynamic event that originally appeared in Star Citizen several years back. But it is seemingly returning with newly introduced instancing for FPS play, giving players more control over these mission spaces. However, players will now have to wait a few more weeks to play it. "We're moving all Siege of Orison and all instance-related content out of alpha 4.9.0 and into a new 4.10 scheduled for mid-August."

This doesn't mean alpha 4.9 will be wholly devoid of new features. The patch will introduce a series of repeatable "support the miners" missions, some new combat clothing, improvements to ship combat UI, a new gun, and two new hairstyles. Alpha 4.10.0 meanwhile, will add a new mission giver, a heavy machinegun, a rebalance to fuel consumption alongside the instancing system and Siege of Orison.

Since hitting the big $1 billion milestone in May, Star Citizen has raised a further $26 million from its spaceship-loving player-base. While development rumbles on, the full release of the MMO remains years away. Its single-player component, Squadron 42, is scheduled to release in 2026, though with less than half of the year remaining, a specific release date is yet to be confirmed.

Mortal Shell 2 finally has a release date, and it's arriving sooner than you might think. Like so many other games releasing this year, Cold Symmetry is getting ahead of Grand Theft Auto 6's attention tidal wave blocking out November's horizon, and will launch at the tail end of August.

That makes the August-October release schedule even more stuffed than it already was, with games like Star Wars: Zero Company, Gears of War: E-Day, The Blood of Dawnwalker and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 all releasing in that window. Yet despite the vast amount of competition, I don't think Mortal Shell 2 has much to worry about, for two reasons.

First, Mortal Shell 2 is releasing right at the start of that crush, so it won't be jostling for space in a way that a lot of those late August, mid-September games will be (I'm concerned for that new A Plague Tale game, for example). Mainly though, it's because Mortal Shell 2 looks absolutely rad.

The basic premise appears to be "What if Dark Souls was metal as fuck?" and that comes through like a power chord on a 400-watt amp in the release-date trailer. There's a real emphasis on absolutely bodying enemies in the sequel, with combat that's several factors more brutal than the original. By the looks of it, you'll be constantly tossing enemies around, battering them with massive weapons, and performing utterly gnarly finishers on them. It reminds me of id Software's modern Doom games in a lot of ways, with as much emphasis on kinesis and aggression as being bludgeoned to death by a big boss.

I was a fan of the original Mortal Shell, which did an impressive job of replicating the challenge and satisfaction of Dark Souls despite being made by a tiny team on a fraction of the budget. But stylistically it did little to separate itself from FromSoftware's work. As such, I'm pleased that Cold Symmetry has found a way to give the sequel a stronger identity. Combined with the fact that it's ranking fairly high on Steam's most wishlisted page, I think it could prove to be one of the year's bigger hits.

Mortal Shell 2 releases on August 20. It isn't the only big hack 'n' slash releasing in the coming months, either. Onimusha: Way of the Sword arrives just a couple of weeks after Mortal Shell 2 launches, and that was one of the best games we saw at this year's Summer Games Fest.

It's a miserable time in the upper echelons of game development right now, but in the midst of all the layoffs, cancelled games, and legendary studios being horribly and inexplicably gutted, one company at least is riding high—Saber Interactive.

Previously known for vehicle simulators and middling action games like World War Z, Saber found itself with a monster hit on its hands two years ago, courtesy of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. Saber saw colossal success with the license, and according to Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits, the sequel put the studio on the map for other licenses seeking the videogame treatment.

In an interview with The Game Business (via RPS), Willits said that Space Marine 2 "literally changed everything" for Saber's fortunes. "It not only changed the way that the team looks at making games, it changed how people look at us," he explained.

Willits said that Space Marine 2's success has been a huge boost to Saber's confidence and their ambitions. "I've seen this in my career. When you have a huge hit, when you go to make the next game, everything has to be awesome. It's like, 'This has got to be the most awesome toaster ever.' And it fuels success."

The studio's confidence has been further bolstered by other potential partners now approaching them to collaborate, with Willits stating that numerous "major license" holders have been in touch with potential deals. "We are in a very fortunate position to turn down more than we can accept. I can't say the name, but … you know you're successful when you've turned down those guys."

Following Space Marine 2's success, Willits said that Saber's plan is to continue adapting other licenses, in games like Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, simply because having that pre-existing fanbase generally makes those games a safer bet: "Let's talk about Hellraiser. If we wanted to make a survival horror game and it was our own IP, it would be more of an uphill battle. But people have heard of Hellraiser. People have heard of Space Marine, and Space Marine 2 was a huge success. World War Z, a great book, okay movie, and a super good video game."

Grand Theft Auto 3's Ghost City was my first proper experience of community discovery.

I was too young to fully appreciate game-breaking in the likes of Super Mario and Alex Kidd, so the idea of flying the clipped-wing Dodo aircraft from the runway of Frances International Airport at a very specific angle in order to break the 3D map and wind up in an otherwise inaccessible area—the section which housed the game's opening bank robbery cutscene, floating well beyond the playable map—blew my teenage mind.

In 2004, modder Eliano86 built a bridge that allowed players to more formally access the area with less of the faff, however the project's original hosting platform (gta-downloads.com) has long since disappeared from the interwebs. Now, hobbyist creator Mod_Saver has resurrected that project well over two decades down the line. Enter Ghost City Available.

"For over a decade, this specific alternative bridge mod was considered 'Lost Media'," says Mod_Saver. "The original hosting platform went completely offline, and the original link was dead forever. Even the Wayback Machine couldn't recover the downloadable files. This mod was gone.

"Instead of letting it fade into history, I decided to fully recreate and resurrect it from scratch based on an old 2012 video (GTA 3 - Tips & Tricks - How to Reach Ghost Town by GTA Series Videos) footage. But I didn't just clone it: I fixed its biggest flaw. The original 2004 mod was strictly visual (you would fall straight through the Ghost Town floor). 22 years later, I have finally built the missing collision files (.col) to make the entire island solid and fully playable for the very first time."

Which is pretty beautiful, truth be told. I'm a sucker for game preservation, for unearthing secrets and for the passion that drives each and every hobbyist endeavour—in this case in relation to a game now 25 years old and an OG mod just a few years younger.

Amongst all the news of brutal layoffs, studio divestments, and ironic task force appointments at Microsoft this week, over in the Call of Duty corner of the megacorp, something kinda cool happened. Activision released updated ports of Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) and Black Ops 2 (2012).

They come with caveats, of course: At $40 a pop, the Call of Duty tax is firmly affixed to these elderly shooters. They're also PlayStation only, sadly, so the millions of fans who originally played them on PC are cut off from the reinvigorated scene. But they are nearly complete updates of those original games, now upscaled to 1080p, with few exceptions. Players were especially surprised to learn that even the emblem editor—a beloved and somewhat controversial feature of Treyarch's early games—made the cut.

Because, well, people are making swastika emblems with it. And depictions of 9/11. And Charlie Kirk's assassination. And a KKK member. And that's just all that fit into this tweet from influencer JakeSucky.

As you can see, the emblem editor is surprisingly powerful—its stock of primitive shapes, symbols, colors, and layers let dedicated thumbstickers depict just about anything. Most often, custom emblems ended up looking like the trash bin of an early South Park animator, but it was a regular occurrence to glance at a profile and be treated to a remarkably convincing Mona Lisa, cartoon character, or yes, something naughty.

I'm also quite surprised the feature made the cut. Even with player moderation, there's no policing photoshop, so a tool that allows for high expression assumes that sometimes your killer will flash you with cartoon racism. There are normal, cool, creative emblems being made as well, but in keeping with the Call of Duty community, terrible behavior is more the norm.

As others have pointed out, they should've done the work to let people turn off custom emblems entirely—there wasn't an option back in 2010 and there isn't one now.

Weirdly, the only major change to the ports is the omission of some modes. Wager matches are gone from Black Ops 1, so clearly developer Iron Galaxy did some surgery here, but you won't find modern options like FOV sliders or high refresh rates. Pretty barebones ports, all told.

For the first time ever, seasonal content is here for The Elder Scrolls Online. Return of the Thieves Guild, its inaugural season, has launched for the long-running MMO, something you'd expect fans would be all abuzz for—if not for the fact that ZeniMax Online Studios has been gutted as part of the mass layoffs at Xbox this week.

Yeah, the timing on this one ain't great. The developer of the MMO, which has reportedly generated over $2 billion in its lifetime, has been hit especially hard. We learned this week that ZeniMax Online lost 213 employees this week, which when combined with more layoffs over the past 12 months, means the studio has lost more than half of the development team of TESO.

So, it's not surprising that this massive content drop has been met with little discussion of the season itself. Instead, players have mostly been sending well-wishes to the affected development team members—occasionally with a bit of ire for Microsoft.

"Surprised there was anyone left to post this," one commenter said in response to the Steam announcement of the season's launch. "So sorry for you guys. Hope you can keep the game going. Or better yet, find independence from MS."

"Heartbroken for all the developers who were laid off," said another. "Wishing the best for everyone. ♥️Hopefully this vicious cycle will end one day"

"ESO has wonderful, passionate developers behind it and to lose them breaks my heart!" another commenter wrote.

"To all those who got laid off, thanks for all the content you gave us, 5000 hours and counting," said another.

Not everyone was quite as polite. "May whoever fires talented people like you BURN IN HELL along with all of Microsoft," one commenter said. "I hope those who lost their jobs find companies more worthy of your talent."

The Return of the Thieves Guild trailer on YouTube got a similar reaction: not many people talking about the trailer itself, but mostly expressing warm sentiments to the developers.

"Like everyone else at Bethesda, you guys don't deserve what has happened to you, and I am very sorry," one commenter said. "Stay strong and keep up the good work."

Even non-fans were sympathetic: "I'm sorry, even though I wasn't that into ESO you guys deserved better," said another commenter. "I hope everyone affected by the layoffs lands on their feet."

And yes, there was a bit of chatter about the new season and how it looks—yet even those sentiments were still typically focused on the people who make the game.

"This game and all the work you've put into creating such engaging and beautiful art, content, and stories has brought my friends and I a lot of joy over the years," a YouTube commenter said. "I always look forward to hopping on and seeing what's new—there is literally something for everyone in this game. Can't wait to see what you all come up with next, I'm happy to keep supporting and I hope everyone that was cruelly and needlessly laid off finds great opportunities in their future."

And of course, a few in the YouTube comments were a little snarkier about the mass-layoffs from Microsoft, particularly in regard to the poorly-timed launch of Return of the Thieves Guild.

"Media guy must have scheduled this before he was banished to the shadow realm," the top comment reads.

"You can tell there's meant to be a voice-over here," a commenter said, "but bro got fired before he had the chance."

"I would say Microsoft is out there being the real thieves guild," another said, "but the thieves guild still values people's lives over profit."

I gotta hand this one to the suits: I thought gamers might find a $60 price tag on a rehash of a 13-year-old Assassin's Creed game to be a bit much, and apparently I was wrong. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced sold more than two million copies in just one day, and has handily surpassed Steam player counts of newer games in the series, including Assassin's Creed Shadows.

"Dash my Buttons... Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has already passed 2 million copies sold!" Ubisoft wrote on X the day after the overhauled Black Flag launched. "Whether you're sailing with us again, or stepping aboard the Jackdaw for the first time: THANK YOU from the bottom of ARR hearts."

It's notable here that Ubisoft refers specifically to two million copies sold, as opposed to the "one million players" it used to characterize the success of Assassin's Creed Shadows in its first day of release. As Joshua Wolens noted at the time, it left us uncertain as to how Shadows was really doing compared to Valhalla, although Ubisoft later said Shadows had put up the "second-highest day one sales revenues in Assassin's Creed franchise history."

A more straightforward comparison can be found in the concurrent player numbers on Steam, where Black Flag Resynced stands head and shoulders above the rest. Here too, some differences need to be accounted for: Ubisoft had a years-long no Steam dalliance so Valhalla didn't arrive on that storefront until a couple years after its debut on the Epic Games Store, and Shadows was weighed down by coordinated culture war nonsense over the presence of the Black samurai Yasuke. Shadows also costs $10 more than Black Flag Resynced.

Still, it's about as close to apples-to-apples as we're going to get, and the numbers make it clear: Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

(These are ordered by their all-time peak concurrent player count.)

"Black Flag has always held a special place in the heart of the community, and ours." Assassin's Creed brand boss Martin Schelling said. "Bringing it back with Resynced was a promise to that passion for Edward’s adventures, and to the unique sense of freedom players experienced back then. Seeing two million players set sail on day one, along with the great reviews from critics, is the greatest reward we could have hoped for."

The Palworld 1.0 update sure is a big one, and with all of the new pals, weapons, and zones to track it's easy to miss the little things—like new resources for crafting. As I climbed the revamped tech tree again, I breezed through most recipes until I ran into hardwood. It's a new tier of the basic building block you'll see pop up in later level recipes (around 40 to 50), after planks.

After deforesting a few islands, I finally realized I'd missed some spots to farm hardwood that were right in front of me. To save you the same headache, here's how to get hardwood in Palworld.

Palworld hardwood location

Make sure you gather a hefty stack and unlock a few of the surrounding fast travel statues, or just make a nearby base for easy access. You'll need 10 hardwood per High Quality Wooden Board when you unlock the craft at level 43 in the tech tree.

Today, Palworld left early access with a massive 1.0 patch that brought an avalanche of changes and has drawn hundreds of thousands of new and returning players with the seductive allure of making creatures work in conditions that OSHA would object to if they were people.

Unmentioned in its massive 1.0 changelog, however, are a series of visual reworks the patch made to a handful of Pals that previously bore the most blatant resemblance to preexisting Pokémon designs.

I think this is all redesigns from r/Palworld

At launch, Palworld attracted derision with its inclusion of Pals that tested the definition of creative inspiration. These weren't just conceptual similarities: These were Pals constructed in Frankenstein fashion from recognizable Pokémon silhouettes, limbs, details, and design elements—often without even changing the color palette.

Now, even Pocketpair seems to agree that some of those Pals were in particularly poor taste. Players have identified a number of Pals who've been reimagined to add some plausible deniability when they're compared with their Pokémon counterparts.

Verdash, one of the Pals more commonly cited as proof of Palworld's creative indecency for being a Cinderace lookalike, has been given less-humanoid proportions and is no longer aping the legwear of its inspiration. Robinquill and Fenglope are no longer using the color palettes of Decidueye and Cobalion, respectively, and both Pals have received a detail rework to further distinguish them from their doppelgangers.

Don't worry, though. Cremis is still Cremis—and definitely nothing else.

To be absolutely clear: Palworld's character designs were never the basis of Nintendo's still-ongoing lawsuit with Pocketpair, which is instead centered around a series of patents that Nintendo holds on specific creature-capturing and riding mechanics. We could speculate that the 1.0 patch's redesigns might have been part of an as-yet undisclosed settlement agreement—but there's no immediate reason to do so. Especially considering the amount of doubt that has been cast on the validity of the Nintendo patents in question since the lawsuit was initiated.

Still, the Pal reworks are a quiet acknowledgment from Pocketpair that its creature designs weren't a sterling example of creative integrity. Now that it's made its millions, however, that's evidently a fixable problem.

But hey: At least it wasn't as blatant as Pickmos, the game formerly known as Pickmon.

I don't blame you for loading up Moonlight Peaks and saying: "Wait, how are you supposed to date Samael?" The broody bartender is easily the most conventionally attractive guy in town. If you peeked at the datable candidates list for Moonlight Peaks, you'll have seen Samael featured alongside all the other eligible townies. When you start playing, though, you notice pretty quickly that Samael only has four friendship hearts in his relationship panel unlike the other bachelors, so what gives?

Unlocking Samael's romance involves some main quest story spoilers about characters who you won't meet for several seasons, so scroll down with caution. If you just need reassurance: Samael is datable. Just keep plugging away at the main story improving the town and you'll likely see his relationship progress in the first autumn or winter depending on how fast you're progressing.

How to date Samael

Once you've got Samael's expanded relationship hearts unlocked (scroll down for spoilers on that below), you can approach going on dates with him just like other locals:

• Reach four friendship hearts
• See Samael's four heart cutscene
• Talk to Samael and "invite" then "ask on date"

Here's what you need to know to woo Samael fast:

• Samael loves red wine, so make sure you're keeping your kegs stocked with grapes and talking to him each day
• You can prepare to romance Samael by going ahead and reaching four friendship hearts with him before his romance is available
• Samael will take you on a stargazing date where you'll identify constellations he points out, how romantic!

How to unlock Samael's romance (spoilers!)

• Complete the quest "Bride's attendant duty"
• Wait one week for Orlock to visit your house
• Complete "Unfinished business"
• Earn four hearts with Samael to ask him on a date

To unlock Samael's romance, you need to progress through the main story quest until you unlock Luna Bay and meet the Hosu family. The quests "A Curious Passage" and "The Mysterious Bay" are the precursor to Samael's story. You'll need to lift a fallen tree, repair a bridge with Ludo, and help Samael prepare for a really big day.

Don't panic when it becomes clear that the guy you've been pining after is carrying a torch for your new mermaid neighbor. Samael's freakishly fast marriage to Kim doesn't actually go through. After you help them prepare for the ceremony, Kim's brand new feet get cold at the altar and she runs away. Samael will still be un-datable for one week after being ditched. One week later, Orlock will display some uncharacteristically perceptive behaviour by arriving at your house and enlisting your help to shake his nephew out of his sad funk.

You'll help arrange a meeting for closure between Samael and Kim and then, finally, you'll be able to open your relationship panel and see that Samael now has extra hearts for you to unlock past the first four hearts of friendship just like other datable characters. If you've already reached four hearts with Samael, you can go ahead and invite him on a date immediately. No shame.

During the quest The Mysterious Bay you're going to need to lift a fallen tree in Moonlight Peaks to help your newly-discovered mermaid neighbors rejoin the town proper. After you get the rundown, you might wind up scratching your head over where that tree you're supposed to clear was. It certainly isn't nearby in the Howling Marshes where you'd assume.

How to lift a tree

If you've perused the spells at Webb of Wonders, you'll have already noticed there's a spell for lifting a tree that you can buy from Sabrina You'll need three mana to cast the Arborascend spell, so hold off watering your magic crops for the day (or cook yourself a mana food to supplement) so you can go lift the fallen log.

In case you've forgotten, you can refresh your memory on casting each spell in the first tab of your almanac in the game menu. The pattern for Arborascend looks like a tree after you finish casting it: down, up, right, left, up.

Fallen tree location

The fallen tree is in Moonlit Pines near Luna's seed cart. If you forgot exactly what Rei and Kim told you, you may mistakenly think there's a tree in the Howling Marshes that you need to lift since that's the area adjacent to their home in Luna Bay. But nope, you're actually looking for a fallen log over in the forest where the witches hang out.

You can spot the fallen log blocking a small waterfall just west of the set of stairs that leads to Luna's seed cart and cottage. Cast your Arborascend spell to trigger a cutscene that removes the tree. Kim will rush down to thank you, excited to be reunited with her "Sammy" again.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is here and violently colon-less, despite my deep-rooted ancestral urge to fill every gap between those words with dots and dashes, as our forefathers did in the days of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.

But it's not Ubisoft's crimes against grammar that prompted the game to hit Mixed Steam reviews at launch (it's picked up since, and at time of writing is at Mostly Positive). It was the fact that, in typical Ubisoft fashion, the game's store page ripples with microtransactions for outfits, weapons, and the obligatory 'Pay $5 to play less of the $60 game you just bought' map-reveal pack.

The reviews were home to a lot of people who felt nickel-and-dimed. "What's the point of getting the deluxe version when, immediately in game, there's $84.91-worth [of] 'DLC' that you don't own" asked one. "I want a single player experience I can enjoy WITHOUT microtransactions," wrote another.

Ubi, perhaps inadvisably, is actually responding to some of these reviews, though. The studio's boilerplate response to a bunch of complaints about the game's microtransactions reads as follows:

We've seen your feedback since launch, and we're reading all of it. Thank you for caring this much about Black Flag Resynced. We want to be clear on one point: the standard edition is the full, complete experience. Every mission, every island, the full story and the complete world are all there, with nothing held back. The additional packs are entirely optional extras for players who want them, never a requirement to enjoy or complete the game.

We'll keep listening as you play!

At least one positive review that mentioned the microtransactions got a differently-worded but similar "We hear you" response. "The frustration around day-one DLC is something we take seriously," Ubi said in that one, while reiterating that the game's DLC isn't a 100% necessary purchase.

Which certainly strikes me as a little odd! I can think of two possible explanations here. Either Ubi genuinely thinks people are going to experience some sort of Damascene conversion upon being confronted with the corporation's unassailable logic—which would be very silly—or it's just coating a fairly catty 'You control the buttons you press' response in anodyne marketing speak. Which would also be silly, but at least in a kind of amusing way.

I've not touched the remake myself, but our Rory wasn't happy with how Ubisoft had tried to relentlessly monetise the Black Flag remake when he was playing it. Somehow, I doubt a copy-paste assurance that the DLC isn't necessary to beat the game will make him feel any better about it.

Our reviewer Morgan actually agrees with Ubi that the DLC is entirely ignorable outfits and weapons, but therein lies the tackiness of the whole affair. What's actually annoying, he reckons, is how easy it is to accidentally end up on the store page during normal play—when you press Start to pause, pressing Start again to unpause will actually take you to the store tab. To leave the pause menu, you actually need to hit B/Circle. Diabolical stuff.

After NetEase's best attempt at competitive balance in Marvel Rivals season 8.5, this latest season has done a complete 180, with flamethrowing sharks, lethal dive comps, and ridiculous CC counters. I'm certainly not a fan of chaos comp, but my wishes for NetEase to pick a lane are starting to supersede any desire for actual balance.

The new Team-Up system is as extensive as it is busted. With every character getting to pick between two base abilities and then having a further couple of enhanced effects that they can utilise when the other character is on their team. One of the most ridiculous I've encountered so far was Invisible Woman's team-up with Human Torch, which enlarges her shield and covers it in flame, so that anyone who shoots through it adds flame damage to their shot.

Jeff can become a flamethrower with Invis’ new teamup from r/marvelrivals

This is busted in and of itself, but add Jeff the Land Shark into the mix and you get a special kind of terror, as his primary-fire water gun essentially turns into a flamethrower. I actually came across this comp earlier today, and let me tell you that little monster was having a great time flambée-ing my team to a crisp.

There's also Iron Man's new gamma shield, which adds another layer of protection to the billionaire in a killer tech suit with a terrifyingly short ult-time. What can I say? The rich get richer. Plus there's Luna's White Fox ability: it's lethal down chokepoints as she sends a huge fox racing forward which heals allies and pulls enemies in together, so they're like fish in a barrel for your dear teammates to kill.

NetEase has clearly gone for the mantra of 'more is more' in this latest season, which is cool on paper when you have mountains of new abilities to sift through, but in practice it's a right pain.

I can't help but feel that so much of what's been added, like the shield regen or CC counters, is just there to patch over issues that are a result of existing abilities or unbalanced hero behaviour. You wouldn't need so many CC counters if there weren't so many bloody stuns in this godforsaken game.

But this is where I think NetEase finds itself in a tricky predicament. It seems like the devs have been trying to cater to absolutely everyone, and just adding whatever players scream about loudest. In many cases, players don't know what they want, and the loudest group usually doesn't offer the best advice.

Players that say they want wacky abilities for creative kills really just want the space to pull off cool plays, which you can't actually do when you have a billion different abilities being hurled, usually randomly, your way. Likewise, players who claim to want balanced comps usually want tough games with the small caveat that they'll always win them. They also don't tend to like it when their main gets nerfed according to that balance.

Which is why the devs need to make a tough decision. Instead of flopping around from 'sort of balanced' to 'no balance at all', NetEase should draw a line in the sand and decide whether it wants Marvel Rivals to be fun, creative, and casual or tough, balanced, and competitive.

If it's going to be casual and creative, great, have at it and balance for fun, but know that it'll mean there's even less of a competitive scene than there already is. For competitive games to thrive it needs a fair and slightly punishing ranked system that doesn't just reward time played over skill, and consistent comps.

If it's going to be competitive then that's also great, but that'll mean forsaking some of the wackiness that Rivals has at its disposal. Either way you lose out on players and will piss people off, but clarity is kindness and at the very least it won't mean everyone's alienated for different reasons—a game for everyone is a game for no one.

The first hotfix since Arc Raiders' 1.36 update has rocked up, and while it may be small it does tackle some important issues, namely a new duplication exploit which has popped up recently and saw mountains of explosives spawn even faster than the throwables glitch.

"We have just pushed a hotfix on all platforms to mitigate a duplication issue, an official blog post explains. "As we stated before regarding the use of exploits, we will continue issuing bans on accounts that have been gaining significant advantage."

All's well that ends well, right? If only it could be so easy. Like most things that happen on the internet, this hasn't satiated all players, as some question why Embark can fix this glitch but not one that is seen to be considerably worse.

"This hotfix proves embark can respond overnight, so why is weapon duping still here?" player Loose_Fish5725 asks. "A dupe that literally anyone could abuse gets discovered, spreads like wildfire, and gets patched in less than 24 hours. Meanwhile, we've had duplicated Bobcats and weapons circulating for weeks. Entire kits are being duplicated, sold, and recycled, destroying the economy, yet that's somehow a lower priority?"

The weapon dupe glitch in question is like many others but the issue is with it flooding Arc Raiders lobbies with 'fake' weapons and ruining the economy as rare weapons become pretty common. If you've seen players with hordes of Bobcats on your travels that'd be why.

"The speed of this fix proves the developers can react quickly when they choose to," the player continues. "That's why it's frustrating watching the in-game economy continue to suffer while the most impactful exploit remains unresolved."

The reality of the situation, though, is likely quite simple. Embark was probably able to fix the new duplication glitch because it was new and came from the most recent patch. Older duplication glitches are harder to deal with simply because it's been around for longer and is relentless in how it just keeps popping up.

It's also easy to ban accounts with ridiculous stack value, but it's harder to correct the internal economy when much of the duplicated gear has been spread across accounts that found items fair and square during matches and not by duplicating them. That's all to say that Embark will likely be fighting duplication glitches for the rest of the game's lifecycle, the important thing is to try and stay on top of it.

Plenty of Warhammer 40,000 novels have been written from the perspective of humans and space marines, but it took a while before Games Workshop really got into publishing books from the perspective of 40K's many alien species. If you're into orks I recommend Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh, and for swashbuckling aeldari pirates there's Voidscarred, but the peak remains The Infinite and the Divine by Robert Rath.

It's the story of a long-term feud between two necrons, Orikan the Diviner and Trazyn the Infinite, immortal robots who were once flesh-and-blood and went a bit loopy in the uploading process. An argument over who owns a particular artifact becomes a heated rivalry (not in the sexy way, though now that you mention it…) that encompasses, as Games Workshop's own summary puts it, "clashing with Exodite armies, xenos uprisings, and a spell in Necron small claims court."

As the part about small claims court suggests, The Infinite and the Divine has a sense of humor. While it's not all comedy all the time, it's the 40K book that's closest in tone to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a perfect sense of the absurdity of these bitter old robots turning their petty grudge into the entire universe's problem.

While it was a self-contained story, I'm delighted to hear it's getting a sequel by the same author. As announced on Warhammer Community, Orikan and Trazyn will be back in The Wicked and the Warped, in which the two rivals have to work together to find out what happened to an expedition lost on a planet corrupted by Chaos. As Dawn of War showed, if you want to force an unlikely alliance in 40K, throw Chaos at some enemies and they'll have to work together. I look forward to Orikan and Trazyn bickering their way through a few hundred more pages while trying not to get eaten by daemons.

The Wicked and the Warped doesn't have a release date yet, but The Infinite and the Divine is being reprinted in hardback in the meantime. I've heard good things about the audiobook narrated by Richard Reed too.

It's not just you: Steam is down right now. If this were a Tuesday around this time that'd be no big deal (Valve does maintenance every week), but on a Thursday, you have good reason to be looking for an explanation for the error that currently displays when you try to load Steampowered.com:

"You've made too many requests recently. Please wait and try your request again later."

No, you're not being blocked from Steam for reloading the store too many times. Something's wrong: SteamStat.us reports "too many requests" errors for both the Steam store and Steam community. Maybe something to do with the Summer Sale ending today?

Many of Steam's services are still showing a green light, and we're able to see friends online. Steam's matchmaking services are likewise still in operation, according to the status page. It's specifically the Steam website that's out of commission. We'll update this post as the situation develops.

While I wait for Diablo 4 to figure out its messy new season, the only game that has managed to tear me away from playing more Path of Exile 2 is Hell Clock.

I should've known it would: Hell Clock's new Cursed War expansion was delayed to give PoE 2's season some time to breathe. The developers at Rogue Snail know their audience because they're part of it too: Action RPGs players cycle through games on a seasonal basis, and Hell Clock is perfect for filling in the gaps.

It's a run-based roguelike with an action RPG engine under the hood. There's loot, but you don't need a degree to understand how it all works. You stack on everything that promises more damage after clearing each room and watch screens of monsters explode. There's depth in its buildcrafting of course, but I suspect min-maxing your items is more important in higher difficulties. On normal, I never hit a wall during the original three-act campaign by simply tossing stuff together on the fly.

Hell Clock has had some major updates since I played it the first time, so my trip through the campaign almost felt like playing a new game. Movement is smoother now (you can go full WASD or click-to-move) and bosses are much meaner than before. Rogue Snail also implemented an entire set of crafting items that borrow basic ideas from Path of Exile's crafting system. It took a few nail-biting boss fights for me to realize how important they are for creating items that beef up your defenses so you can survive more than a hit or two.

The Cursed War expansion adds a fourth act that tells the origin story of main character Pajeu, and it's just as bloody as the others. One of the reasons Hell Clock works at all is that it's not an action RPG where you kill demons for the thrill of it—it's a fictionalized revenge story for a real-life massacre that happened in Brazil. Pajeu watched the First Brazilian Republic slaughter an entire town during the War of Canudos. The game takes place years later as Pajeu revisits the town in its hellish, tormented form, armed to the teeth to face the undead soldiers that haunt still it.

Cursed War rewinds the story back to when he was recruited into the Brazilian army during the Paraguayan War as a slave. This is where the fury Pajeu carries in the base game was born, and it makes the sting of the third act—which shows how the atrocities have bled into the present day—last longer than it already did the first time I played through it. Hell Clock feels like a grown up's version of Diablo's Sanctuary, where the demons have names and uniforms.

I felt no remorse for picking up one of the new skills, Tupã's Wrath, and frying every last one of them. Rogue Snail basically put my favorite PoE 2 skill into the game, letting me unleash a flood of lightning bolts in every direction. Each run I stumbled into new ways to scale its damage up, like a relic that causes it to empower your skeletal minions. I found an unstoppable combination on my first run of the new act, that builds a defensive layer over my health as I spam thousands of lightning bolts. Nothing but bosses can touch me now.

At least they couldn't in the normal difficulty mode. Hell Clock also has two harder modes to climb through if you're interested in finding some of the game's most powerful items. There's enough roguelike randomness to challenge even a build like mine in there, especially as monsters gain elemental resistances and other threatening bonuses. And, just like in Hades, there are plenty of mid-run boons I've not even tried yet, let alone the other skills that came with the expansion.

Hell Clock is so good that I don't want to squeeze it dry in a week of non-stop blasting. I want to savour it between all the other things I'm playing. A run here or there while I think of another new combination of relics or skills to try. As much as I am still in love with PoE 2 at the moment, I'm always excited to close it and see how a quick 20-minute rampage through Hell Clock will go, and the $10 expansion has just given me a whole new box of toys to play with.

Destiny 2 is done: The final patch is out, Bungie is decimated, and the game will remain playable but the story of one of the biggest, best and most influential online shooters ever is over. To memorialize the moment, Bungie has rolled out one last gift for players: A new emblem, free for everyone, called Gloriabundus.

The emblem, shared on X (via Eurogamer), is a simple one, but elegant: The Destiny logo, and a distant city skyline, bathed in light. It's a small thing overall, but the restrained styling is, I think, appropriate for the moment.

Bungie communications lead Dylan Gafner, known to the community as dmg04, also reassured players that while the end has come, Destiny 2 won't be completely abandoned and left to rot. "There may be moments where we break glass for highest priority issues (game crashes)," Gafner wrote in a separate message.

"There will indeed still be downtimes for general server maintenance/upkeep. If we have the opportunity, a small fix could sneak in here or there."

Some Destiny 2 fans have held out hope that Sony will reverse course on the game's end, particularly given the resurgence in players on Steam that followed the end-of-development announcement. But that seems extremely unlikely: Bungie's been on thin ice with Sony for at least the last couple years, and in June it laid off "most of the Destiny team" at the studio.

Update: It turns out that the Gloriabundus emblem wasn't the final final farewell after all. In the noble spirit of "we gettin' fired anyway," the Destiny 2 Team followed up the next with a whole bunch more freebies. Gloriabundus indeed—get 'em all below.

No hit or no damage playthroughs have become an increasingly common badge of honor online, especially in precise, timing-driven action games like the Souls series. But what about in a dice rolling, stats and RNG-heavy CRPG? Davey Gunface on YouTube not only proved it's possible, he did so in perhaps the most tedious circumstances: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous' Unfair difficulty.

WotR and its predecessor, Kingmaker, are two all-timer CRPGs for me. But even die-hard fans recommend them with caveats. Wrath, especially, is kinda bullshit. Once every two to five hours or so across its marathon runtime, a guy who by all rights should be a miniboss is just out of nowhere the strongest guy who ever lived. It's like when Battle Beast first shows up as some guy's goon in Invincible and he solos all the strongest heroes of earth.

Crazy difficulty spikes, Armor Classes through the stratosphere, save-or-die spells, level drain, damage immunities, literal minutes-long hard crowd control, Wrath embraces these and more. Its normal difficulty will make a Baldur's Gate 3 Honour Mode veteran sweat a bit, while completing the "Core" difficulty is a real CRPG achievement in my book⁠—you should get your picture on a wall at Owlcat HQ like you finished a Paul Bunyan Big Boy meal at a roadside steakhouse. The "Unfair" difficulty? It's unfair.

I can only assume Gunface allowed for reloading in this challenge due to the random chance and marathon nature of a WotR playthrough⁠—it really is, consistently, a 100+ hour deal. Gunface set the challenge of getting through without taking any avoidable damage. There are a few instances of story or cutscene-derived, unavoidable hits that just feel unsporting.

He took the definition of "avoidable" to some admirable extremes though, like managing to sidestep a "supposed to lose" fight at the beginning of the game by uncovering a rare sequence gated as the failure state of a specific moral choice. That's pure RPGs, baby.

WotR, like Neverwinter Nights: Swordflight, already sits at the end stage of optimization and powergaming for a Core playthrough. Unfair, let alone hitless, demands you escalate to primeval outer reaches of buildcrafting psychosis.

One example: Gunface got through WotR's infamous Shield Maze prologue with the popular Unfair tactic of sacrificing your starter companions' builds, multiclassing them in ways that are ruinous in the long run, but life-saving in the hyper-specific hell of levels 2 through 4. The one-shot master Rowdy Rogue came in handy, and everybody loves giving companions Lann or Wenduag a Sabertooth Tiger pet.

Across the whole of the game, Gunface opted for a Human (gotta get that extra feat) Witch of the Veil 10 / Loremaster 9 / Rowdy Rogue 1, parlaying the Witch's game-changing early hexes but booboo spell list into the Loremaster prestige class' expanded spellbook. He also picked the "eviler than the bad guys" Swarm That Walks path, making for a fun pairing with his custom portrait, a picture of his dog.

Truly, this is a "beyond the impossible" sort of challenge, one better suited for precise, input-driven games where you actually control whether you get hit or not. Doing so in a game built on d20 rolls feels avant garde. Gunface's full video is a three-hour long runner if you're looking for something to come back to over a few days, and you can also follow him on YouTube or support via Patreon.

PalworldAfter two-and-a-half years of early access, Palworld is launching into full release tomorrow, July 10. It's a moment that brings both good news and some potential bad news: The price isn't going up, which is very nice, but if you have any old mods left installed, you may run into trouble.

Pocketpair said in today's caution that it supports modding, writing, "we look forward to seeing all the amazing mods that will be made after 1.0." The potential for trouble, particularly for people who are coming back to the game for the 1.0 release after a long time away, is found in old and "potentially harmful" mod data that may still be lying around.

"The upcoming 1.0 update for Palworld makes significant changes to the game’s systems," Pocketpair explained. "If you still have mods installed from the past, especially mods that have been left installed since around 2024, you may encounter problems such as crashes when launching or playing the game, corrupted save data or save data failing to load, [or] quests or events becoming impossible to progress."

Simply disabling mods isn't sufficient, because data and mod loaders may still be loaded when the game starts, even if the mods themselves are switched off. The only way to be sure is to nuke it all from orbit—which is to say, manually delete all the relevant data.

Detailed instructions for doing so are included in Pocketpair's mod usage guidelines, but it's not an especially complicated procedure: Back up your save data (always back up your save data before you start horsing around with this kind of thing), delete Pal\Binaries\Win64 and Pal\Content\Paks, verify your game files on Steam, then verify the game launches properly before applying the 1.0 update. If you're subscribed to any Steam Workshop mods, you'll have to unsubscribe from those as well, and be sure to manually delete that data too.

Pocketpair also recommended not reinstalling any mods until their makers have confirmed they've been updated for the 1.0 version, and doing them one at a time to ensure everything works nice and smooth—because, as the studio said, "Please note that issues that occur while using MODs, or modified game data, are not covered by support."

It's been just shy of two months since Subnautica 2 splashed into early access, and developer Unknown Worlds is celebrating its success on X by sharing some official statistics on what players have achieved during their over 58,000,000 hours of combined playtime.

According to the studio's data, those achievements include a spectacular number of drownings. I'm talking about truly impressive metrics regarding millions of people forgetting they need to breathe.

Tallying the top causes of reprint (read: death), Unknown Worlds says running out of oxygen is by far the most common source of Subnautica 2 mortality: Players have drowned a total of 15,636,881 times, accounting for 42.6% of all player deaths. By my calculations, that means that—between Subnautica 2's early access launch at 11 am EDT on May 14, 2026 and the time these statistics were shared at 11 am EDT on July 9, 2026—an average of 192 players have drowned every minute since launch.

For context, the CDC says there was an average of 4,083 yearly unintentional drowning deaths in the US from 2012 to 2021, meaning that in just under two months Subnautica 2 players suffered a number of drownings more than 3,829 times higher than what Americans suffer in an entire year.

Allow me to remind you that these are players who are often equipped with oxygen tanks and who are navigating oceans populated by alien flora that release bubbles of breathable oxygen at regular intervals. It's a stunning accomplishment in mortal incompetence.

But not all of Unknown Worlds' statistics are so grim: The studio also shared that players have collectively traveled 545,615,747 kilometers through the ocean depths of Proteus, which—I'm told—is about 86.8% of the distance between here and Jupiter. And yet the few meters separating players and breathable air still seems so insurmountable. Funny how that works.

Along the way, we've managed to collect over 331 million water slugs, either for avoiding dehydration or just to pile them in a room so we can admire them later. And while it's interesting to know we've built a total of 5,887,642 Tadpole submersibles, the studio included the curious statistic that, somewhere in the world, there's a player who built 195 in a single game.

I can only begin to guess why; there are, as ever, countless mysteries in the deep. And with Subnautica 2's first update arriving this week, there are likely plenty more in store.

We're just a day away from Palworld's much anticipated 1.0 release, and to celebrate Pocketpair both released all 27 pages of patch notes and confirmed that there'll be no price hike when the survival and crafting game exits from early access. Oh yeah, it's all coming together.

"After much thought, we have decided not to raise the price of Palworld following the 1.0 release and will keep it at $29.99," Palworld announced on social media. "We are incredibly proud of how far Palworld has come. Thanks to the amazing support of our players, it has become a success beyond our wildest dreams."

Keeping the price fixed at its early access rate is just "a small way of saying thank you" from the team for all the "continued support" the game has been shown by its very dedicated playerbase.

It's typical for games to raise prices when leaving early access: Valheim, for example, announced it will jump from $20 to $30 when it graduates to 1.0 in September. his isn't outlandish, the whole point of early access is it's an unpolished and unfinished snippet of a game, and therefore its full release should be worth more if you consider the better state it'll release in and all of the additional content it'll contain. If the 27 pages of patch notes are anything to go by, Palworld fits the bill as well, which makes it all the nicer that Pocketpair has chosen to keep the price steady.

All in all, $30 for everything that Palworld offers seems like a proper steal. You get all the much-loved existing features, new additions like the wing pack, plus all the new items and Pals. Oh, and that big old World Tree. It's certainly a great way to kick off and celebrate the launch of 1.0—all that's left is to wait and see what it's like once we actually get our hands on it.

It's Spring in Forza Horizon 6 Series 2, so we've got another treasure chest to find. While last week sent us into the snowy hills of Sotoyama, this week's Ito region Treasure Hunt calls for a beach day. Finding the specific beach you need on the islands of Japan, you know, where there are tons of beaches, isn't easy. Here's where you need to go.

Forza Horizon 6 Ito region Treasure Hunt location

This week's Festival Playlist Treasure Hunt chest is in Ito, on the beach at the northeast tip of the region, past the coastal town of Ine—you can see the white and blue sign on your map. It's basically as northeast as you can travel in the region, and there are no major events around here, just a billboard. Simply:

1. Travel to the coastal town of Ine in the north of Ito—this is where the Moto Auto Zine story missions take place.
2. Take the road northeast up the narrow coastline on the right side of the harbour.
3. Drive onto the sand and up to the northern tip, where you'll see the chest.
4. Crash into the Treasure Hunt chest to smash it, completing the challenge.

As always, you'll earn three Festival Playlist points, 5,000 XP, and 100,000 credits, which is a good reward for such a quick diversion.

This week, those Festival Playlist points go towards the 2017 Mercedes-AMG GT R and the 2017 Saleen S7 LM, which is much more exciting than last week's trucks to be sure. You should also grab the last few points to unlock the Series 2 milestone rewards, the 1993 Porsche 911 Turbo S Leichtbau and the 2018 Lotus Exige Cup 430, before Series 3 rolls around next week.