AMD’s figured out why Ryzen CPUs were burning up, BIOS fix already rolling out-

AMD has confirmed an issue that saw some users Ryzen 7000-series CPUs burn out, and says a fix is on the way from its motherboard partners in the “next few days,” if it’s not already available.

“We have root caused the issue and have already distributed a new AGESA that puts measures in place on certain power rails on AM5 motherboards to prevent the CPU from operating beyond its specification limits, including a cap on SOC voltage at 1.3V,” the statement from AMD says. 

“None of these changes affect the ability of our Ryzen 7000 Series processors to overclock memory using EXPO or XMP kits or boost performance using PBO technology.”

That last bit is crucial, as the issue had previously been linked in a statement from Asus to EXPO memory profiles. These memory profiles allow for easy overclocking of memory kits to their advertised speeds, and require an increase to SoC voltage in order to run sufficiently stable. It’s this SoC voltage that is likely the cause of the issues some users have since reported, including the damage seen to user Speedrookie’s CPU, as seen in the picture posted to Reddit below.

While EXPO memory profiles are considered overcloc…

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Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya says ‘it would be a disaster’ if he ever collaborated with Hideo Kojima or Yoko Taro- ‘It doesn’t work like in Dragon Ball’-

“Unemployed man” Hideki Kamiya continues to update his YouTube channel in the wake of his departure from Platinum, keeping the world at large updated on what he’s been cooking, his opinions on onsen, and the last time he visited an aquarium.

All of which is a treat, but Kamiya has been chatting about a few videogame-related things too, including the likelihood of him ever teaming up with other legendary devs like Yoko Taro and Hideo Kojima. In short? Kamiya reckons a team-up like that would just cause friction.

After a fan remarked that it’d be great if he ever made a game with Dead Or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki, Kamiya chuckled that he “[gets] this kind of comment a lot,” noting that people often get excited about the prospect of him working alongside Yoko Taro or Hideo Kojima specifically. “Look,” said Kamiya directly into the camera, as if delivering the news that Christmas has been cancelled to a dewy-eyed 6 year old, “It would be a DISASTER!”

“It doesn’t work like in Dragon Ball, where Goku fuses with other characters,” continued Kamiya, “Two people with completely different personalities and ideas would clash. There’s no way you’d get a decent game ou…

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Blizzard quietly had World of Warcraft players test run The War Within’s biggest new feature last year- underground zones-

Blizzard quietly had World of Warcraft Dragonflight players test run an upcoming The War Within feature without telling them.

Zaralek Cavern, which arrived last May in patch 10.1, lets you explore the zone underneath Dragonflight’s main landmass at a scale never done before in the MMO. It works sort of like Elden Ring’s underground areas except it’s fully accessible without loading screens or long elevator rides. You can dip down there to finish some quests and leave whenever you like.

In a recent group interview with PC Gamer, game director Ion Hazzikostas said, “Zaralek Cavern was a little bit of a test run for something we were planning, as is now pretty obvious.”

While the first phase of the War Within alpha build going live this week only has the surface-level intro zone available, the influence of Zaralek Cavern is already apparent. In the first Delve, flexible mini dungeons new to the expansion, you battle through small caves with a buddy just like some of the activities in Zaralek. There’s a short quest to finish and some new hazards to avoid, like a knock to your health in dark areas, but the overall aesthetic is very close to what we saw in Dragonflig…

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After 6 years, Blizzard is finally bringing back the rarest Mercy skin in Overwatch, and there’s a new version too-

After six years, Blizzard is bringing back one of the most popular Overwatch skins to date. The coveted Pink Mercy skin will return, along with a new rose gold variant, on June 25 as part of another campaign to raise money for breast cancer research with the BCRF.

The original Pink Mercy skin will cost $15 and the new rose gold version will be included in a $20 bundle with other cosmetics. Blizzard says 100% of the purchase price (excluding platform fees and taxes) will be donated to the BCRF after the campaign ends on July 8.

In 2018, enough people bought the Pink Mercy skin to raise $12.7 million, which has remained the largest single donation ever made to the BCRF. And you can tell, because any Overwatch 1 Mercy main you meet keeps the skin in regular rotation. It’s one of the few skins she has that recolors her wings while she’s flying in her ultimate, giving them a bright pink glow. It also has sparkly sound effects.

The new version of the skin is essentially the same with rose gold accents on her suit, and her matching hair now ends with pink tips. Someone at Blizzard knew exactly how to reel in people like me who don’t even play Mercy much anymore. It’ll…

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AMD might give the Ryzen 9600X and 9700X a big post-launch TDP boost in the name of chasing higher performance-

Oof, the trials and tribulations the CPU market is facing right now… Between Intel CPU stability issues and mass AMD CPU underwhelm, there might seem to be frighteningly little room for optimism. But the rumour mill keeps on churning, as always, and is now spitting out word of even more potential changes for AMD’s mid-range 9000-series chips.

According to tech leaker chi11eddog, the newly released AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X will have their TDPs boosted to 105 W. This change is rumoured to be pushed in an AGESA 1.2.0.1a Patch A BIOS update.

Both these Zen 5 CPUs launched with a low 65 W TDP and plenty of reviews noted how power-efficient and thermally light they are. Unfortunately, performance increases over equivalent previous-gen Ryzen CPUs were slight and talk of “Zen 5%” abounded. Given their launch prices being far more expensive than the current pricing of the Ryzen 7000-series chips they’re replacing, it’s unsurprising they don’t seem to be flying off the shelves.

The 9600X and 9700X, as they stand, don’t seem like chips offering high-performance improvements. They seem like chips offering efficiency improvements and we in the PC Gamer hardware…

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‘We are killing Sony’- A 272-page PDF of classified Sega of America docs from the mid-90s is now something you can just download-

The strangest things will just drop onto the internet’s collective lap. As highlighted on Twitter by MegaDriveShock, a whopping 272 page PDF of classified Sega of America documents from the mid-90s has simply materialised on the Sega Retro wiki, a community-ran database full of info that aims to “cover everything possible about Sega from the 1940s to today.” 

One fascinating nugget of gaming history inside is an email sent by Tom Kalinske—former CEO of Sega America—on the subject of the Sega Saturn console. The Saturn was a flop in the US, unfortunately releasing just before the Nintendo 64 a year later and coming with a host of troubles otherwise. As MegaDriveShock mentions in the Twitter thread: “The retail margin was only 6%! Meaning retailers made only $15 per Saturn sold.”

In the email itself, Kalinske wrote: “We are killing Sony. In every [store in Japan], Saturn hardware is sold out and there are stacks of Playstation. The retailers commented they can’t compare the true sales rate because Saturn sells out before they can measure accurately. […] I wish I could get all our staff, sales people, retailers, analysts, media, etc. to see and unders…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 cinematic animation lead Jim Southworth has died- ‘We will all forever have a Jim-shaped hole in our lives’-

Larian Studios announced on Monday that Jim Southworth, who led the Baldur’s Gate 3 cinematic animation team, has died. He was 56 years old, and had been diagnosed with cancer at the end of 2022.

“Jim was always ready to join in the fun,” said Larian UK studio head James Austin in a statement sent to PC Gamer. “Friends with everyone in the team. Eager to be with his animators yet old enough to be their father. He loved making games, and we loved making them with him. We will miss him greatly.”

Among Southworth’s other credits in his multi-decade career are sandbox MMO Boundless, multiple PlayStation EyeToy games and the early PSVR development, and ’90s animated series The Animals of Farthing Wood. He worked on Baldur’s Gate 3 for five years, starting in 2019.

Earlier this year, we awarded Baldur’s Gate 3 one of the highest review scores in PC Gamer’s history, a decision that had a great deal to do with the RPG’s now-beloved companion and supporting characters, who are summoned into being by a combination of great scriptwriting, acting, and animation. Essential to that effort were Southworth and the cinematic animation team he established, led, and grew to encom…

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All Disney Dreamlight Valley codes and how to redeem them

Disney Dreamlight Valley codes offer a chance at filling out your little corner of the Magic Kingdom with some new furnishings and clothing, at no cost to you. To celebrate new updates and events, Gameloft has been releasing redeemable DDV codes, which you can claim for quick and free additions to your Dreamlight Valley selection. There’ve been codes for outfits, furniture, crafting materials.

So far, most Dreamlight Valley codes have had a limited lifespan of about a month, while others seem to last indefinitely. Don’t wait on grabbing your freebies when they’re available. Here’s a list of the latest active DDV codes and instructions on how to redeem them.

Active Disney Dreamlight Valley codes

  • FOFSOUFFLE24 – 10x Soufflé
  • FOFFISH24 – 5x Kingfish, 5x Fugu, 5x Anglerfish
  • FOFGEMS24 – 3x Diamond, 3x Ruby, 3x Sapphire
  • FOFSHARDS24 – 10x Night Shard, 10x Dream Shard
  • FOFTHANKS24 – 150x Moonstone
  • FOFSNOW24 – 25x Hardwood, 25x Rope
  • FOFPRANK24 – 150x Moonstone
  • FOFWORKOUT24…
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AMD FSR 3 and frame generation support is debuting in two games this week-

AMD’s FSR 3 upscaling technology is set to make its debut tomorrow, on September 29, or September 30 depending on where you live in the world. AMD’s Frank Azor, the chief architect of gaming solutions and marketing made the announcement today via Twitter (or X if you really must call it that). FSR 3, or FidelityFX Super Resolution, was announced by AMD back at the launch if the Radeon RX 7000-series in early November 2022. It’s been a long time coming, but the wait is almost over. 

Two games with FSR 3 support will be announced, though which two was not stated. The two likely contenders are Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum, which are the ones prominently mentioned on AMD’s website, though of course, more games with FSR 3 support are in development.

FSR 3 introduces what AMD calls Fluid Motion Frames, and it can be thought of as AMD’s answer to Nvidia’s DLSS 3. It uses a combination of super resolution temporal upscaling and frame generation to deliver major performance increases in games that support it.

For a very good explainer of FSR 3, do check out our man Jeremy’s comprehensive overview.

According to AMD, FSR 3 will be optimized for a broad rang…

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All four modern Fallout games catapulted into the most-played games on Steam Deck this past month-

It’s no secret that the Fallout show was a big success, with Amazon saying it was the streaming arm’s biggest hit since The Rings of Power, with 65 million viewers. It’s also no real secret that successful videogame shows make people want to play the games, but it is pretty cool to see how many go and do just that: This month’s little Valve survey of what people are playing on the Steam Deck shows all four modern Fallout games taking a top 20 spot for most-played by playtime.

Fallout 4 takes number two in the top 20, Fallout: New Vegas takes spot seven, Fallout 76 spot 10, and Fallout 3 snuck onto the list in 20th place. Prior to this month, only Fallout 4 had popped up on the list consistently

The whole situation isn’t without precedent or anything: Back when the Witcher TV series first debuted, Witcher 3 saw concurrent player counts higher than it ever had before with sales up some 554%. It’s a real lesson that you can bet big publishers are taking to heart: If you can get a TV series made you’ll drive older players back to your game and boost new sales.

It’s also a real point at a way you can expect these types of marquee series to stay in the public light a…

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Baldur’s Gate 3’s hardest difficulty is supposed to ‘feel like you’re going up against a DM that’s trying to push you to your limits’-

In the final Panel From Hell preview of Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian revealed the details of the game’s highest difficulty, Tactician. In addition to reprising features of the mode from Divinity: Original Sin 2 like increased enemy stats and more aggressive AI, Tactician will also include bespoke additions to many of the game’s combat encounters in order to tip the scales for your enemies.

“We have it in two layers: there’s the base layer that all the characters in the game are gonna get⁠—that’s the basics like just increasing HP or making it easier to hit you,” explained Larian senior combat designer Matt Holland. “Then there’s the local layer. We’ve gone through every single combat in our game and we’ve added little bits of spice to make that combat shine just a little bit hotter and be that much harder.”

To demonstrate, the Panel From Hell presenters went through the same combat encounter once on “Balanced” (read: normal) difficulty, and once on Tactician. On Balanced, a duo of Monks was able to get the better of a gaggle of goblins strewn throughout the town. The player characters had one KO, but otherwise took care of the fight pretty handily.

On Ta…

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Baldur’s Gate 3’s most prolific speedrunner managed to Olympic broad jump their way into a romance scene in under two minutes-

100% and any% speedruns are usually the biggest ticket speedrun categories in most games, but most games aren’t Baldur’s Gate 3. This steamy RPG’s copious coitus led speedrunners to see just how fast they could get it on in a given playthrough, leading to a lively sex% category (it’s even tracked by speedrun.com!)

First spotted by Eurogamer, one of the great maestros of BG3 speedrunning, who goes by Mae (or “maeeeeee”), already has a lock on the Gale-bombing, Shadowheart-boxing any% record, and they’ve now set a new world’s best in the sex% category they helped establish by banging in Baldur’s Gate 3 in under two minutes.

The basic contours of the run are similar to when Mae brought it under eight minutes back in August: Githyanki psionic buffs and oodles of strength give you big, beefy broad jumps to bypass combat and terrain alike. Mae’s chosen avatar for this historic occasion was an ugly Gith goofball dubbed “EXTREME COITUS HAVER.”

Everyone’s favorite freaky homeschool kid Lae’zel is the easiest bud to bed in Baldur’s Gate 3, but you still have to reach the Grove of Silvanus and let her cyberbully a Tiefling in real life to show her you’re …

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Are you stressed out- Maybe you have too many browser tabs open-

Are you feeling anxious? Demotivated? Discombobulated, even? If the answer is yes, you may want to ask yourself one thing: How many browser tabs do you open right now?

Researchers at Aalto University in Finland recently studied the cause and effect of what they call ‘browsing clutter’ on people and the different ways they have of dealing with it. They surveyed 400 participants and interviewed over a dozen people who spent more than 10 hours a week online about their browsing habits and feelings once the tabs started piling up.  

So what counts as clutter? Most of the participants commonly have 1-3 windows open with around 5-10 tabs open in each window, so you’re talking about more than a dozen tabs open at once on average. Over half of the people who participated in the study consider browser clutter “a serious problem.”

Those who consider their excess tab usage a problem said it made them feel overwhelmed, anxious, frustrated and demotivated. And if that wasn’t enough, some said the visual overload resulted in decreased work efficiency, increased levels of distraction, and difficulty sorting through information.

Just think about when you’re shopping…

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Assassin’s Creed Shadows is delayed into 2025, will launch on Steam on day one

Ubisoft has announced the surprise delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Instead of launching on November 15 as planned, the game is now slated to come out on February 14, 2025.

“Assassin’s Creed Shadows will now be released on February 14, 2025,” Ubisoft said. “While the game is feature complete, the learnings from the Star Wars Outlaws release led us to provide additional time to further polish the title.

“This will enable the biggest entry in the franchise to fully deliver on its ambition, notably by fulfilling the promise of our dual protagonist adventure, with Naoe and Yasuke bringing two very different gameplay styles.”

Star Wars Outlaws, which came out on August 30, was generally well received but reportedly not a big sales hit. Ubisoft confirmed that in today’s statement, saying that “initial sales proved softer than expected.”

That under-performance may also be driving what appears to be a step back from its commitment to the Epic Games Store, as Ubisoft said Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be available on Steam on launch day.

The traditional season pass model is also out: “All players will be able to enjoy the game at the same time on F…

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A new frontier of immersion awaits you with a device that fires the smell of games into your home-

Designers of gaming gadgets have tried for years to make something that will take you to new heights of immersion. Spatial audio, VR, and haptic triggers will only take you so far, though, because there’s one sensory input that no game tackles: Your nose. Well not anymore gamers, because with the new GameScent unit, you’ll be able to literally smell grass as you roam the fields in Skyrim.

We picked up news of this…umm…thing over at Dexerto and the response around the office ranged from ‘Dear Lord, no thank you’ through to ‘We have to review one!’ Essentially, the GameScent appears to be an automated aromatherapy type of device, containing six scent injectors that blast a combination of smells into the air, depending on what’s happening in your game or movie.

It’s done by tracking the audio feed, sending it off to a server for analysis (“Powered by AI”), and then one or two seconds later: Poof! Your nose will join your eyes, ears, and hands in giving you a scent…sorry, sense…of what’s going on. Events that involve explosions, guns firing, vehicle racing, clean air, forests, and storms will activate the smell-o-feedback.

If th…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 localization studio apologies for missing credits, says they’ll be added ‘in an upcoming patch’-

Larian Studios says it has been in contact with a localization company that failed to provide complete credits for the Brazilian translation of Baldur’s Gate 3, and promised that all missing credits will be added in a future hotfix.

The issue of the missing credits first came to light last week on Twitter. “Congratulations to the heroes who translated @larianstudios’ Baldur’s Gate 3!” @MittoVac tweeted. “Sorry you couldn’t get proper recognition, but ctrl+C/ctrl+V is still way too complex for @Altagram_Group.”

Some Altagram Group localization credits did make it into the game, but as @katrinaltrnsl8r noted in a separate tweet, they included only the names of company executives and leads, not the localizers who worked under them.

She also theorized—guaranteed, actually—that Altagram Group, and not Larian, was responsible for the apparently missing credits. “Larian Studios likely asked them for their credits, Altagram gave them their ‘full credits,’ intentionally omitting translators, and Larian trusted them without checking,” she tweeted. “After all, who doesn’t credit their writers?”

In a statement sent to Eurogamer, Larian di…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 player thinks they’ve fooled a god with a first level spell, right until they realise they’ve stumbled into Act 2’s new worst ending-

Baldur’s Gate 3‘s second act has a couple of very important decisions—so much so I wrote a whole dang guide on how to thread its particular narrative needle. Before I get stuck into it, spoilers for the game’s second act, in case the headline didn’t clue you in.

A Reddit thread optimistically titled “How to bamboozle Lady Shar” by rokamuda (thanks, Gamesradar) lays out how exactly this comedy of errors happened. “I made short work of Nightsong, saw the cutscene of Last Light Inn dome crumbling and got all of Lady Shar’s boons … as I exited through the portal I got the cutscene of Lady Shar cursing me for not completing my mission, being marked as the enemy, and Shadowheart asking forgiveness.”

Turns out, that’s down to the Disguise Self spell. This first-level bit of trickery magic wraps you in the arcane guise of… well, anyone. Its scope is unfortunately a little limited in Baldur’s Gate 3, but it does change the context of a few scenes, letting you access different race’s dialogue options—some of which can get you into new areas, as long as you go in with a plan. It also lets you Speak with Dead to a corps…

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Asus’ Dual RTX 4060 Ti with an integrated M.2 SSD slot answers a question few thought to ask-

The world of graphics cards can sometimes appear to be a bit ‘me too’. Adding a splash of RGB, a factory overclock or a funky shroud are a few ways to differentiate a card from the pack, but adding an M.2 SSD slot is something else. Asus has done exactly that. Its new Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti features a PCIe M.2 slot built right into the graphics card itself.

Though the card has been demonstrated before, it’s now showing up at a handful of European based retailers (via @momomo_us). As expected, the SSD slot equipped model comes with a markup compared to the regular Dual RTX 4060 Ti 8GB. The Multitronic listing shows a price of €559, compared to €470 for the non-SSD equipped Dual RTX 4060 Ti. Though there’s no doubt this solution introduces some complexity justifying a price premium, that’s a big markup.

The listing at Multitronic even includes some marketing information, which includes a line stating the slot is “capable of PCIe 5.0 speeds”. The RTX 4060 Ti only supports PCIe 4.0 though, so take that line with a grain of salt. The slot also includes Asus’ Q-Latch mechanism for easy installation.

On the GPU side of things, the RTX 4060 Ti is a well kno…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 enters top 10 all-time peak Steam games, knocking Apex Legends out-

Launch weekend has seen Baldur’s Gate 3 break into the top 10 all-time concurrent player counts on Steam with 712,281 players here on on August 5th, 2023 at once according to SteamDB. That huge peak puts it above Goose Goose Duck, taking the 9th most-played spot, and pushing Apex Legends and its 624k peak into the 11th spot. The “you must be this tall to ride” bar for the top 10 is now firmly fixed at a peak of over 700,000.

Don’t feel bad for poor Apex Legends, in the merely prestigious 11th spot, as the free to play battle royale shooter can wipe its tears upon a giant pile of money and a current player count that the concrete, bounded experience of Baldur’s Gate surely won’t consistently have a year from now.

Baldur’s Gate 3 surpassed 500,000 players yesterday and nearly reached 600k, so this Saturday peak puts it a strong hundred thousand people up from that peak. Probably because not all of us can just play all day on a weekday and/or take off work for a game launch.

If you think that this peak will be the last for Baldur’s Gate 3, that could well be wrong. Monster hit Elden Ring didn’t hit its 953k peak concurrent player count until the weekend after laun…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 speedrun brought under 5 minutes thanks to ‘Shadowboxing,’ a trick where you kill Shadowheart and stuff her in a box to skip Act 2-

Sometimes you watch a speedrun and just let it wash over you⁠—Mario backwards butt jumping until he clips into the stairs and flies away, I have no idea how it works and I don’t want to, it’s just a beautiful thing to behold. There’s a bit of that “Mario clipping into things” energy in speedrunner Mae’s blistering 4:15 Baldur’s Gate 3 Any%, all thanks to a particularly nasty new trick uncovered by the community. Spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3 ahoy.

The run opts for Gale as the player avatar for reasons that we’ve reported on previously. Mae avoids all combat and doesn’t level up, instead opting for the level 1 spells Enhance Leap and Feather Fall to just jump like a moon man past every encounter. Loading into Act 1, they ignore every companion and quest and just make a break for the Mountain Pass.

Thanks to her story-critical Astral Prism needing to be along for the ride, Shadowheart helpfully shows up and joins the team even after being ignored till now. Speedy Gale then Olympic broad jumps his way past Rosymorn Monastery, ignoring the difficult Death Shepherd fight and leaping into Act 2.

Here’s where things get weird. Runners have …

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Bethesda Game Studios developers form ‘wall to wall’ union that includes artists, designers, and programmers-

Developers at Bethesda Game Studios have elected to unionize with the Communications Workers of America, a national labor organization that has also worked with Activision Blizzard employees on collective bargaining efforts.

Unlike some games industry unions whose membership is isolated to QA departments—ZeniMax QA workers unionized last year, for instance—this is a “wall-to-wall union,” says the CWA, and was formed by votes from 241 “artists, engineers, programmers, and designers” across three offices. It’s the first of its kind at a Microsoft-owned studio.

Bethesda Game Studios, which was spun off from publisher Bethesda Softworks, is the company most people are referring to when they say “Bethesda”: The Todd Howard-led developer of the modern Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, as well as last year’s Starfield.

Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media in 2021, a purchase which included not just the two Bethesdas, but also a number of other subsidiary studios, such as id Software. Earlier this year, Microsoft shuttered four of those studios, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks.

In the run-up to Microsoft’s other huge recent acquisition—it…

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‘We begged for more information, more details … all flatly declined’- former Blizzard community development manager tears into Bobby Kotick over Overwatch 2’s Steam launch-

Activision-Blizzard’s transfer over to the growing empire of Microsoft has been a bit of a drama, to say the least—but it’s all over now, its curtains called with the departure of the company’s former CEO Bobby Kotick, exiting stage right.

Kotick has been a controversial figure in gaming, quickly building up a reputation as a ruthless capitalist—like when Activision-Blizzard sued Double Fine over Brutal Legend, prompting the studio’s founder Tim Schafer to call him a “total prick”. There was also a disastrous interview with Variety where he denied the allegations of sexual harassment problems at Blizzard as an “aggressive labour movement”—as well as a harrowing instance where he reportedly threatened an employee via voicemail in 2006. 

A spokesperson later told the WSJ that the voicemail was “obviously hyperbolic and inappropriate” and that he “deeply regrets the exaggeration and tone in his voice”. Still—he’s gone now. After 32 years, some former developers are singing ‘ding and dong’ with a side of ‘the witch is (metaphorically) dead’.

Andy Belford (a former senior manager in community development at Blizzard) took to Twitter a fe…

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Blizzard’s Diablo 4 stats suggest barely anyone is trying PvP-

Back in March, not long after Diablo 4 concluded its second beta weekend, Blizzard put out a set of stats revealing that players had collectively spent about 7000 real-life years in the game over its six days of accessibility. Well, turns out those were rookie numbers, because the latest stats say we’ve now all cumulatively spent over 30,000 years—or 276 million hours—in Sanctuary since the game’s early access period began on June 1.

For reference, 30,000 years ago was the late Stone Age, when Diablo 1 was still in a pre-development phase and uttering the words ‘Halsey and Suga from BTS have collabed on a Lilith-themed music video’ would have got you clubbed to death by a less genteel forebear of Ötzi the Iceman. Going the other way—30,000 years into our future—of course puts us in the time of the Horus Heresy and the start of the downfall of the Imperium of Man.

It’s too much time, in short, and it’s not the only eye-popping number Blizzard is boasting about. In their 276 million hours in the game, players have slaughtered 276 billion monsters and died a mere 317 million times (5.8 million of which were served by The Butcher). That is, I…

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Best CPU for gaming in 2024- these are the chips I recommend for gaming, productivity and peace of mind

The best gaming CPU is one of the most hotly contested titles in the industry, changing hands with each successive new generation of processors. Both Intel and AMD have some excellent CPU contenders in the mix, but on this hallowed page, we’ll reveal the very best.

AMD’s mega-cache X3D CPUs offer stiff competition for Intel andthe best gaming CPU is now the mighty AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D. For a much more affordable option, the best budget CPU is the Intel Core i5 13400F, although as noted below, Intel chips come with a potential caveat as things currently stand. The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X is the best mid-range chip, thanks to its excellent all-round performance and reasonable price.

A note on Intel CPUs: Due to recent crashing issues with a number of Intel chips, we’ve changed our picks to reflect this. We’ve also added caveats to our remaining Intel CPU recommendations. A fix has now been issued by Intel and while it may prevent new chips from running into problems, processors already damaged may need to be replaced.

Managing Editor, Hardware

The quick list

The best gaming CPU

If …

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Baldur’s Gate 3 player finds an edge case the game doesn’t account for- Reverse-pickpocketing a dead wizard into the devil’s inventory like a Trojan nuke-

Baldur’s Gate 3 has choices—oodles of ’em. Choices that Larian’s accounted for, for the most part. In my recent playthrough, instead of taking a certain character to a certain body for a story quest, I picked up the corpse and dumped it back in camp like a cat bringing their owner a dead bird. The dialogue still worked (though I had to have them in my party) besides one or two out-of-context lines. 

However, one player has found an edge-case scenario that the game doesn’t account for at all, and it’s honestly pretty reasonable when you break it down. Spoilers for Act 1 and Gale’s storyline to follow, as well as a minor Act 3 spoiler. 

As outlined by ThePawn08 on the game’s subreddit, reverse-pickpocketing a dead wizard onto the devil incarnate isn’t on the list of things Larian thought to program. For context: Gale of Waterdeep (ponderer of orbs and all-around dweeb) has a sphere of Netherese magic in his chest that’ll act like a nuke if he dies.

The range of it isn’t infinite, though, as he insists he’ll find a cosy, remote spot to go all nuclear should he become unable to con…

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After 10 years survival game Rust is finally getting backpacks, but pets ‘will not be released this year’-

“How do I craft a backpack?” is typically the fifth question I ask when starting a new survival game, following “How do I craft an axe?” and “Where can I find water?” and “How do I make a campfire?” and the all-important “What the hell was that noise?” 

That’s because when carrying resources and food and tools and junk around in your pockets you tend to run out of room pretty quickly, so a backpack that gives you extra inventory slots is an essential early game survival staple.

Except in Rust, that is. The multiplayer survival game has been around for 10 long honkin’ years and it’s only now just getting around to adding backpacks. Which isn’t to say the concept just occurred to the developers: according to Rust guru Shadowfrax, backpacks were first proposed about six years ago, it just took a while for them to actually get here.

Better late than never! Facepunch Studios’ latest devblog says backpacks will arrive on February 1, but if you can’t wait that long they’ll be available for testing on Rust’s staging branch next week. Nice.

That’s not the only thing coming to Rust in 2024. Updates will include new monuments, a tutorial for new p…

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Alan Wake 2’s out-of-the-blue system requirements change means you no longer need an RTX card to hit its minimum spec-

In a fantastic turn of events, Remedy has lowered the PC system requirements for Alan Wake 2. This means you can now enjoy the beauty of Bright Falls and all the horrors that lie within without needing a beefy PC. 

The performance optimisation patch for Alan Wake 2 lowers the minimum GPU requirement to a GeForce GTX 1070 or Radeon RX 5600 XT. Previously, you needed to have at least an RTX 2060 GPU to even think about playing the horrifying yet beautiful game. More modern GPUs also received some improvements. According to Digital Foundry, the recent patch saw the RTX 4070 enjoy a 14% frame rate jump.

However, an Intel i5-7600K or the AMD equivalent is still a minimum requirement, along with a minimum of 16GB RAM and 90GB SSD storage. So double-check the specs before purchasing this fantastic horror game—don’t make the same mistake I did. 

When I first saw what the minimum requirements were for Alan Wake 2, I was a little shocked. Usually, I have no problem booting up whatever game I choose to play. However, I only just made the cut with my RTX 3070 if I wanted to use raytracing, and that still wasn’t enough as I didn’t have 1…

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Black Myth- Wukong crushes Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077’s all-time player records on Steam with 1.2 million and counting-

Update: The monkey king keeps on climbing. Since this piece went live, Wukong has become the second most-played game on Steam of all time, beating out the likes of Counter-Strike 2 and Palworld. You can find an updated version of this story here.


Original story: That sure didn’t take long.

The most-wishlisted game on Steam is now the most-played game on Steam going by current players. As of this writing, less than two hours after launch, more than 1,249,525 people are playing singleplayer action RPG Black Myth: Wukong, rocketing it into the hall of fame for all-time record Steam launches.

It’s already easily surpassed an elite list of powerhouse games including Hogwarts Legacy at 879,000, Elden Ring at 953,000, and Cyberpunk 2077 at 1.054 million, all according to SteamDB.

Next in its sights is Dota 2, which it will probably pass by the time this article makes it across the internet and into your eyeballs. The bigger question is whether Black Myth can take down the concurrent numbers of PUBG and Palworld, which set their records in January 2018 and January 2024, respectively, at 3.26 million and 2.1 million.

Tha…

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As Helldivers 2’s Steam reviews begin to recover, Arrowhead’s CEO shares an ‘accidental’ cape design based upon its Overwhelmingly Negative rating, and of course the community wants it added to the game-

It’s been a rough few days for Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead. Seemingly blindsided by Sony’s attempt to restore the requirement for Steam players to link their game to a PlayStation Network account (which was suspended at launch due to the game’s extensive technical issues), the studio has seen its game subject to a ferocious review bombing campaign, with its recent review score dropping to an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating.

Now though, the crisis is over. Sony has walked back its plans to force PSN accounts onto Steam players, and those negative Steam reviews are slowly being flipped to positive (though the game’s recent review rating remains at “Mostly Negative”). It seems Arrowhead hasn’t lost its sense of humour over the debacle either. Following up a tweet about how “impressed” he was by the willpower of the Helldivers 2 community, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt shared an “accidental” cape design based on the game’s recent avalanche of negative reviews.

Created by a community member, the cape ‘design’ is based upon the three red lines from Helldivers 2’s recent reviews graph, which, when isolated from the rest of the graph against Steam’s blueish background,…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 crossplay is on the way, but Larian says ‘we don’t want to put a date on it until we’re sure’-

Baldur’s Gate 3 is now available on PC and PlayStation 5, and an Xbox version is on the way too. And while you can’t currently play with your pals on other platforms, Larian director of publishing Michael Douse told Eurogamer that someday, you will.

“[Crossplay] was always in the planning, but we knew it wouldn’t be [ready] for launch,” Dowse said. “It’s in the roadmap, and though we have an idea of when we’d like to get it ready for, we don’t want to put a date on it until we’re sure.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 already supports cross-saves, which means that if you’ve been playing on PC and want to move to the PS5 for some reason, you can. Of course, it works the other way too, so if you’re starting out on PS5 and score yourself a sweet gaming PC for Christmas, you can switch your game over and treat yourself to the whole banana the way it was meant to be played. There are a couple of caveats, though: Only your five most recent saves will be synced, and if you’re using any Baldur’s Gate 3 mods your PC saves will not be compatible with the PS5 version.

But the implementation of crossplay is a whole different beast. Baldur’s Gate 3, like the first two game…

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Cities- Skylines 2 studio boss warns that growing toxicity could force developers to ‘pull back our engagement’ with the community-

Cities: Skylines 2 was not in great shape when it launched in 2023. The underlying game was quite good but it was plagued with performance problems and missing a number of features, most notably an editor. That sparked a quick backlash on Steam, visible in the “mixed” user rating, but it also kicked off what Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen described as “a growing tendency of toxicity in our community.”

Hallikainen said the level of toxic behaviour that’s followed in the wake of Cities: Skylines 2 is “something we have not experienced to this extent before,” and it’s aimed not just at developers but players as well. That could have a negative impact on the game in the long run, she warned, as it discourages people from interacting with other members of the community: “In the long run, this will really hurt not only the mood and the happiness of community members but also discourage creativity and modding, something we would be very sad to see.”

“We have always treasured having the devs present on the different social platforms and having direct communication with the community, but our biggest responsibility will always be protecting the team and making sure th…

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‘The gold rush is over-‘ Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon devs say that big Game Pass and Epic exclusive deals have dried up for indie devs-

In an interview at last week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the developers behind indie sensations Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon said that the deal some small developers have come to rely on for funding in recent years—like Epic Game Store exclusives and Xbox Game Pass—are no longer what they once were.

“I talked to at least five small teams, like 35 [members] and under, during GDC, and they’re like: Cuts, cuts, cuts, funding canceled, talks that were going on for a year, canceled,” said Casey Yano, the co-founder of Slay the Spire studio Mega Crit. “It sounds like it’s shit. We’re definitely very privileged to be able to self-fund. [Otherwise] I’d be very, very, very scared right now.”

Slay the Spire launched to slow sales in Steam early access before eventually becoming a deckbuilding juggernaut. Darkest Dungeon was likewise a Steam early access success; both games are available on PC Game Pass, though DD director Chris Bourassa said that Microsoft’s deals for getting games on Game Pass have “come down in scope” since the subscription service began.

“Way down,” Yano added.

“So has Epic,” Bourassa said. “The Gold Rush is …

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Animal Well’s solo dev casually reveals that the breakout metroidvania left ‘at least twice as many rooms that are in the game’ on the cutting room floor-

Goodness, hasn’t Animal Well done… well? Launching to almost universal acclaim, the breakout metroidvania looks like it’s teed itself up to become the next Hollow Knight. The game was funded by Bigmode, an outfit created by popular YouTuber Dunkey to, quote, “publish some of the very best games out there”. 

At the time there was plenty of cynicism, but I’ll be damned—he really did simply publish a game that’s good, not bad.  

The game’s success, though, is primarily down to Animal Well’s maestro of a solo dev Billy Basso who made the dang thing. As if making Animal Well wasn’t impressive enough, he also revealed in an interview with our friends over at Edge magazine (as part of their most recent issue) that he had a lot of rooms during the design phase that didn’t make it down the well.

“I think designing a Metroidvania is a lot harder than designing, say, a linear platformer where you can load the stages,” Basso tells Edge. “Just putting the new rooms into the map is the first step, and then it needs to go through probably five or six iterations of just playing through it and trying it … I will come up with a new item that has imp…

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Arrowhead is aware Helldivers 2 players are using an ‘undemocratic’ exploit to easily farm Super Credits, but doesn’t seem too worried about it-

Give players free premium currency, and they will learn how to farm it. Helldivers 2 is set up like lots of other service games, with cosmetics and warbonds purchasable with premium Super Credits, but it’s unique in how easy it is to get its premium bucks for free. You’ll find Super Credits just lying around in underground bunkers or supply pods out in the field in 10 credit chunks.

If you play a lot, those chunks naturally add up over time, but some players are utilizing an exploit with how Helldivers 2 generates a mission to farm the same Super Credit pickups over and over again. The process is slow, but reliable, and Arrowhead is catching on (as spotted by GamesRadar).

“We’re aware of this undemocratic behaviour,” Arrowhead community manager Twinbeard responded to Discord user CyberViper, who raised the alarm on Super Credit farming in the #troubleshooting channel. “Thanks for doing your sworn duty and reporting it, though. Hooah!”

I was curious how lucrative these farming methods going around actually are, so I tested the one in question. It’s not so much a bug or glitch, but an exploitation of Helldivers 2’s randomly generated points of interest. All you h…

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