If you’ve been tempted to get into D&D—perhaps after enjoying Baldur’s Gate 3?—but been intimidated by the price, now might be the time to jump in. With big sales on both the official D&D store and D&D Beyond, core books and sets are looking a lot more affordable, and it runs until 17 September.

Dubbed the “Back to School” sale (sounds like a lot more dragon-slaying is going on in classrooms these days than there was in my day?), it offers its biggest savings on digital books. On D&D Beyond—a digital platform for playing D&D that you can read more about in our guide to online role-playing—you can pick up the big three core books (the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the Player’s Handbook, and the Monster Manual) for 40% off. There’s also some goo…

Valve boss Gabe Newell is headed to court. A court order filed on November 16 (via Gamesindustry.biz) says Newell is required to testify in person in the ongoing antitrust lawsuit between Wolfire Games and Valve so the plaintiffs in the case can “adequately assess” his credibility.

Wolfire filed the antitrust suit in April 2021, claiming that Valve suppresses competition in the PC gaming market through the dominance of Steam, while using it to extract “an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its store.” Valve takes 30% of all sales made on Steam up to $10 million, after which the percentage drops to 25% on sales up to $50 million, and 20% for all sales beyond that.

The suit was dismissed without prejudice in November 2021, meaning Wolfire had 3…

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m bullish on Dragon Age: The Veilguard and I’m not ashamed to defend its honor. Yes, BioWare’s had a streak of lean years. Yes, there have been numerous high-profile departures from the studio. Yes, Larian and CD Projekt have kind of eaten BioWare’s lunch in the meantime. And yes, there was just something slightly off about its first trailers. Despite all that, the game underneath always seemed solid to me. But god damn, EA and BioWare could have avoided a lot of doubt if they’d just led with something more like today’s release date trailer for The Veillguard’s official reveal in June.

The unanimous take from DA-likers on the PCG team is that this just felt more Dragon Age than anything we’ve seen of The Veilguard to date. The …

Things keep going from bad to worse for the Borderlands movie, and now it has been dealt perhaps the most cruel insult of all. Infamous film director and full-time troll Uwe Boll has come out all guns blazing at the film’s reception, positively jubilant at how badly it’s been received.

Boll posted an image on social media he’s nicked from IGN, which says the film only made $8.8 million on its opening weekend, against a budget of $115 million. “Haha,” writes Boll. “My movies were rated R and made more money than this. Now you wish I directed.”

Let’s put the last part aside for a moment: have Boll’s movies really made more than $8.8 million? They have if you add a bunch of them together. Twitter user StopSkeletons replied to Boll with some of the stats: Boll’s bi…

Yesterday on the Diablo 4 subreddit, a user by the name of MrFrodoBaggins posted the sum total of his findings from a three-day stint through Diablo 4’s cellar levels, which are small, bitesize dungeons you can find scattered throughout Sanctuary. 

“Hello everyone, I decided to diversify the levelling of the second barbarian a little and thought, why don’t I go through the basements 10 times each and see what happens.”

Let’s do some napkin maths really quick: assuming each basement took them two minutes to complete, that’s roughly 42 hours of solid basement delving. I think if I had to endure that, I’d emerge looking like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, but MrFrodoBaggins did come back from his journey with some interesting statistics.

Over the course of his advent…

Dragon’s Dogma 2, like its predecessor, handles parties in a cool and novel way—through its “pawns” system. Basically, there are soulless people-shaped adventurers you can summon from beyond the rift, often created by other players. You get a main pawn that you get to customise, while your remaining two party slots are filled out by rentals.

Getting your pawn rented gives you rift crystals (RC), which can be spent on in-game items or to hire pawns above your current level. As a bonus, players can send your moonlighting mate back with a gift or two. Or just a rotten hunk of meat, if they’re feeling vindictive.

As discovered by players on the game’s subreddit (thanks, GamesRadar), however, your Pawn might be getting pity-rented by Capcom itself.

“You can t…

Early sales figures for AMD’s new Radeon RX 7800 XT indicate that it’s a hit with gamers. Numbers from German retailer Mindfactory make the 7800 XT the second most successful day one seller this year with around 400 units.

Only Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Ti has edged it, with an estimate 400 to 450 units sold on day one. However, Mindfactory managed to shift just 40 examples of the 7700 XT on day one. That’s one tenth the volume. Yikes.

These figures tally with other obvious indications of demand for the new GPUs. On Newegg, all variants of the 7800 XT sold out on day one. Happily, restocking has been taking place and as we write these words two days after launch, there are three 7800 XT variants available on Newegg, one of which is offered at the 7800 XT’s $499 MSRP.

By contra…

Nothing stands still in F1, and Frontier’s impressive pace of change in licensed sports management sim F1 Manager 2023 is a testament to that. Building on last year’s fine debut release, the updated 2023 title introduces several key innovations, including an all-new scenario mode. 

Entirely separate from the main career, scenario mode is a chance to relive key moments from the unfolding season, take on specific strategy conundrums that crop up during the actual races, and find out whether the strategy you shouted at Sky Sports F1 repeatedly really would have done better than what Ferrari went with. 

A new trailer played at the PC Gaming Show reveals that scenario mode in action, giving the player a chance to right some wrongs that they watched unfold th…

After two attempts to mollify fan outrage over a new $250 version of Escape From Tarkov with an exclusive PvE mode, developer Battlestate has finally relented, promising PvE access to players who previously bought the $150 Edge of Darkness edition of the game that promised access to “all future DLC.”

In a statement on the Tarkov subreddit early this morning, Battlestate COO Nikita Buyanov said he was “very sorry that fans and the game community in general are experiencing these feelings,” and that this negative response would factor into his future decision making. In terms of the company’s response, Buyanov offered the following concessions and assurances:

• $150 Edge of Darkness purchasers would get access to the PvE mode with no further payment or time limit during ear…
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All hail the conquering hero. Iconic Elden Ring boss-fight artist and our gamer of the year for 2022 Let Me Solo Her has completed what must, surely, be his greatest challenge of all time. He’s finished the modded run of the game he began last month in which every single enemy—from the lowliest rat to the Elden Beast—was replaced with Malenia, the game’s toughest boss.

Fighting Malenia is nothing new to LMSH. The legendary player made his name in the Elden Ring community by helping other players overcome her, manifesting like some kind of jar-clad angel of death to lay waste to the boss thousands of times. But that was just one Malenia. The Malenia. You’d imagine even he would struggle with a roiling sea of angry Maleniae.

Apparently not! Over the course…

A recent court deposition in the case between 22-year-old Ben Brody and the owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, has been made publicly available after a transcript was obtained by the Huffington Post.

First, some important context. The lawsuit, filed by Brody, relates to a reply to a since-deleted tweet June 27 of last year. Musk accused a brawl that broke out (between the far-right groups the Proud Boys and a local neo-Nazi organisation) during Pride Night Fest in Oregon City, June 24, as being a “probable false flag situation”.

Musk theorised that two members in the footage looked like “a college student (who wants to join the government” and “maybe an Antifa member”. This led to Brody being falsely accused of being a federal agent plant in the Rose City Nationalists, the local n…

The dream of any sci-fi fan is a functioning holodeck. Just step into a humble room and be transported into another world, time period (probably in 1930’s Chicago, if you’re one particularly popular sci-fi TV show), get up to hijinks, and come crashing back into reality when it all goes dreadfully wrong. Well, sci-fi fans, you’re in luck because Disney just showed off a floor that looks incredible for limitless traversal in a small space.

In a video homage to Disney Research Fellow and Imagineer Lanny Smoot, who is set to join the prestigious ranks of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the inventor showed off the incredible floor. It’s called HoloTile, and it’s one of the sleekest VR flooring solutions I’ve seen.

“It will automatically do whatever it needs to have me stay …

Last Moon is a retro 1990s RPG reminiscent of the early Legend of Zelda games with maybe a little bit of Wonder Boy in Monster Land thrown in, developed by the independent French team at Sköll Studio. Its wacky setting is a world that exists on top of a giant called If, which has become covered in corrupted creatures after the moon was somehow destroyed by human greed. This situation calls for a plucky Lunar Knight to restore order, and guess what? That’s you, my guy.

After waking up inside a gem held by an overgrown vine—look, I told you it was wacky—you set out on a quest that’s definitely going to involve some block-pushing puzzles and returning to previously locked-off areas to gain access to them once you’ve gained the ability to, say, remove a wall of thorns…

If you type Waffle into Google you will no longer find a delicious square breakfast treat covered with syrup and powdered sugar as the number one result. Instead (at least in the US and UK) you will find Waffle, one of the many daily word puzzle games that were inspired by the sudden smash-hit success of Wordle.

That’s pretty impressive—waffles have been around since the 14th century and Waffle only popped up in February of 2022. 

Granted, if you want to eat a waffle you probably just go and eat a waffle, you don’t look it up on Google it first. But Waffle (the game) is still pretty darn popular. According to Waffle’s creator, James Robinson, the game now has roughly 450,000 daily players, and that success hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Speaking…

The big Elden Ring patch that dropped today ahead of the Shadow of the Erdtree launch does a lot of good things—you can finally change the map key!—but it’s causing some headaches for Steam Deck users.

“A Steam Deck related issue has been identified and a hotfix is being worked on,” FromSoft said. “Leaving your Steam Deck inactive for more than five minutes may stop the game from accepting inputs.”

Elden Ring is Steam Deck Verified, meaning it’s been tested and confirmed to be fully functional on Valve’s handheld device. It’s pretty great on it, too: There were some initial technical hiccups, but updates took care of that, leading us to include it in our list of the best Steam Deck games as “one of those games that really hits the ‘I can’t believe this runs on th…

Way back in the day, one rich dude in a Rolls-Royce pulled up to another rich dude in a Rolls-Royce and asked, “Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?” It was an ironic expression of performative wealth that quickly evolved into a sort of pop culture touchstone, referenced and parodied many times since. There’s even a spot on Wikipedia dedicated to it.

Things are a little different these days. Wealthy white guys with dijon mustard and Phantoms are out, and wealthy hip-hop artists with Steam Decks and big SUVs—specifically Drake and Lil Yachty—are in.

“Want it? Yeah, you want it?” Drake asks, holding the “portable gaming console” out the window as the two vehicles slowly converge. When Lil Yachty replies in the affirmative, Drake says, “So then get it,” before…

Eidos Montreal, developer of the Adam Jensen-centric Deus Ex reboots as well as 2021’s Guardians of the Galaxy, announced today that it has laid off 97 employees “from development teams, administration, and support services.” According to a Bloomberg report, the layoffs coincide with the cancellation of an unannounced Deus Ex game the studio was working on. 

Eidos didn’t confirm the existence or cancellation of an unannounced Deus Ex project in its announcement, but Bloomberg describes the game as having been in development for two years, likely starting just before or immediately after the studio’s acquisition by the Embracer Group in 2022.

According to the anonymous sources who spoke to Bloomberg, the game was ready to transition out of pre-production into full develo…

The great X spiral continued today as Sony revealed on its support site that integration with the social media platform formerly known as Twitter will be disabled on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles next week.

“As of November 13, 2023, integration with X (formerly known as Twitter) will no longer function on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles,” Sony said (via The Verge). “This includes the ability to view any content published on X on PS5/PS4, and the ability to post and view content, trophies, and other gameplay-related activities on X directly from PS5/PS4 (or link an X account to do so).”

Sony’s decision to drop X integration comes several months after Microsoft opted to disable uploads to the platform from Xbox consoles and the Windows Game Bar. Blizzard re…

Elon Musk is a controversial figure in the online community, or really, any community. Whether you think he’s a super genius the likes of which the world has never seen, or simply a grifter that ruins perfectly functional social media websites, you’ll find strong opinions about the owner of X/Twitter on both sides.

Someone who has been voicing their opinion on the Musk-master, however, is ex-Twitter Vice President for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Bruce Daisely. Writing in The Guardian in regards to Musk’s references to civil war during the recent UK riots, Daisley offers a simple solution to prevent Musk’s pot-stirring antics: arrest him.

For those not internationally aware, Britain has recently been host to a number of far right protests—ostensibly claimed…

I’m always here for some hack’n’slash action—and that’s exactly what Necrofugitive promises to offer. Developed by Black Garden Studios, the game centres around a runaway monster hounded by mediaeval knights after a brutal witch hunt. It’s just dropped another gameplay trailer as part of Realms Deep.

The basic premise is this: you’re The Prisoner, you have gory shapeshifting powers, and the whole kingdom—plus a few bounty hunters—wants you super dead. The trailer shown above promises a hack ‘n’ slash time through the Kingdom of Avencia, though it’s not all combos and evisceration.

As per the game’s website, Necrofugitive features a reactive AI system with enemies keen on actually hunting you down, rather than just being cannon fodder for your big boney claw…

We finally got our first word on Final Fantasy 16’s promised PC port since its initial announcement in September. Speaking with Famitsu (spotted via Genki_JPN on Twitter), FF16 developers Hiroshi Takai, Takeo Kujiraoka, and Naoki Yoshida (affectionately called Yoshi-P by fans) briefly touched on the PC version in a long interview about the game.

“Details will be announced in due course,” Yoshida replied to a question about recommended PC specs for the game. “However, I would like you to prepare an SSD… In FF16, a game where loading speed is critical, an HDD would be difficult to use.

“Of course, we will do our best to optimize as much as possible, but we cannot overcome the hardware barrier alone, so please consider that an SSD is a must.”

That makes plenty of s…

Habbo, formerly known as Habbo Hotel, went all-in on the Web3 nonsense in 2021 with the announcement of the Habbo NFT project in 2021. Its first offerings were Habbo Avatars, which quickly sold out 10,000 randomly generated NFT avatars, before moving on to NFT furniture and other cosmetics.

You can see why publisher Sulake thought this idea might be a winner, and it certainly wasn’t alone. 2021 was a bit of a peak for companies getting on-board with various Web3 ideas, before 2022 saw the wider crypto ecosystem hit by crisis after crisis, exposing various schemes for the cash grabs they were.

Habbo’s model seemed relatively successful from the outside, probably because a game about collecting cosmetic items, decorating rooms and socialising is a natural fit for ‘uniqu…

Rockstar has released the first official trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 early, and in 12 hours it’s already smashed through 60 million views (and counting). Needless to say the 90-second video is jam-packed full of details and hints about what we’ll be getting up to in Vice City, and if you want the nuts-and-bolts breakdown we’ve got you covered. But one element of the trailer really jumped out at me: TikTok framing, and the real-world parallels.

It’s no surprise that GTA 6 will incorporate its own version of TikTok, because the series has always jumped on the tech trends of the moment: characters use their iFruit phones, you can surf Live Invader (Facebook) or Bleeter (Twitter), and pretty much any piece of pop culture you can imagine has its GTA equivalent. What Rockstar’s seize…

PC hardware and gaming are like a perpetual arms race for the enthusiast’s money. Games continue to excel at technical levels with realistic graphics, audio, and physics engines that demand more and more out of our little machines. Even without jumps in computation, storage alone can be a constant battle forcing you to decide which 100GB game you’ll need to delete for your newest adventure. Or you could just buy some more storage with Samsung’s current sale.

Samsung is having a sale across a range of its SSDs over on Amazon and the official Samsung store. For PC gamers there’s big savings on M.2 format drives, and there’s plenty on offer for console gaming fans too.

You can grab a 1TB stick of Samsung’s 990 Pro NVMe M.2 SSD with a 41% discount down from $170 to $100 on both …

HBO’s The Last of Us has finally unveiled its Abby and it’s Kaitlyn Dever, the actor known for her roles in Booksmart, No One Will Save You, and that other Naughty Dog game you may have heard of, Uncharted 4.

“Our casting process for season two has been identical to season one: we look for world-class actors who embody the souls of the characters in the source material,” series co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann told Variety. “Nothing matters more than talent, and we’re thrilled to have an acclaimed performer like Kaitlyn join Pedro, Bella and the rest of our family.”

Season two of The Last of Us is expected to follow the events of The Last of Us 2, which is set five years after The Last of Us and features Abby in a pivotal role—sorry, no spoilers. How cl…

When it comes to PC hardware decisions, it doesn’t get more subjective than monitor choices. For some, only the highest resolutions will suffice, while for others it’s all about color reproduction. But for a chosen few, a high refresh rate is key. If you find yourself belonging to this happy tribe, and happen to be looking for a larger screen on a tight budget, then this Acer Nitro monitor may be just the thing you need.

The Acer Nitro XZ323QU X3 packs a multitude of features into a rather svelte 32-inch frame, including a 1440p resolution 31.5-inch panel, a 240Hz refresh rate, FreeSync Premium, Anti-glare coating and a 1000R curve. Quite a good feature set, we think you’ll agree, especially as Newegg currently has it listed for $300, a whopping $150 off its MSRP.

Round the …

Hackers are threatening to publish stolen data from a recent breach of Western Digital’s systems in March unless the company pays a hefty ransom. But the hard drive maker is not playing ball. 

Earlier this month, Western Digital revealed a “network security incident” where an “unauthorized third party gained access to a number of the Company’s systems.” WD also admitted that the attackers “obtained certain data from its systems” but didn’t release any additional information about the stolen data. 

According to this Techcrunch report, the hackers claim to have stolen at least 10TB of the company’s data, including customer information. The hackers shared some of the stolen data with Techcrunch so that it could independently verify that it was legit. They said t…

Every week for the past few months the developers at Paradox Tinto have been posting developer diaries and in-progress map screenshots from the game that everyone knows is Europa Universalis 5, but which for now they’re just calling Project Caesar.

This week was a big one, as yesterday’s Tinto  Maps post was the grand heart of early modern Europe: The Holy Roman Empire. Historical strategy fans long knew that this would be an immense undertaking at the level of fidelity which EU5 intends… but I don’t think anyone truly saw this coming.

The shockingly detailed detailed map shows just how absurd a patchwork of principalities, prince-electors, prince-bishoprics, free cities, prelates, archbishop-electors, and imperial peasant republics the incredibly complex Holy Roman E…

Inkblot Obra-Dinn-like adventure game The Collage Atlas originally released as an iOS exclusive in 2020, but when its Apple Arcade contract expired last year, the striking pen and ink game became unplayable. To keep it alive, its creator released a Steam version last month.

The architect of this post-modern duotone walking simulator, John Evelyn, began by creating renders of each game world object in Unity and then painstakingly drawing out each texture by hand. 

In an interview with The Verge, Evelyn discussed how he fell in love with pen and ink art: “I liked all the incidental details and the accidents that come out along the way,” he said, even though “sometimes it goes horribly wrong!” The inkblot visuals impart a rich depth of texture, something tactile and person…

CD Projekt Red’s two biggest RPG hits, The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, are both known for big main quests and engaging characters, but more than anything you’ll hear people consistently bring up the little adventures they have between other stories. In an interview with PC Gamer at GDC this past week, Cyberpunk 2077 lead quest designer Pawel Sasko said that’s mostly because they’re thinking of lots of ideas and only using the best ones.

“A good designer has an acceptance ratio of their ideas of between five to 10%,” said Sasko, “If someone has 10%, this is probably one of the best people we have in the team.” “

Sasko emphasized that for CD Projekt the key to weeding out the bad ideas was in the process of having quest designers pitch all of their ideas to the team so that …

The Final Fantasy 14 x Fall Guys event has been in the pipeline for a while now, and we’ve just been treated to a full list of details, as outlined on the game’s official website. 

I’ve felt deeply conflicted about this whole thing. While FF14’s no stranger to crossovers—heck, there was an entire raid series that was just Nier Automata—they still fit into the game’s lore if you kinda squint. Etheirys and its shards already have ancient Allagan test tubes, spaceships, dragons that are aliens, and a VR fight where you battle against a train.

But this is… this is just Fall Guys. There’s not been much of an attempt to make it Final Fantasy, save the occasional chocobo sign. The event rewards are also so garish I actually kinda love them—with the exc…

When Ghost of Tsushima launches on PC tomorrow, you won’t need a PlayStation Network account to play the game in singleplayer. But you will need one if you want to play Legends, the game’s online, crossplay-inclusive multiplayer mode. There is now a question as to whether you will need one permanently, however, as port developer Nixxes has revealed the mode will launch with a ‘beta’ label attached.

As reported by Eurogamer, when Nixxes shared the game’s system requirements last year, they simply stated that players “will be required to sign into [their] PlayStation Network account to access Legends mode.” However, an update to this post issued on May 14 states “At launch, cross play on Legends Mode will be in Beta”.

It adds that cross play between PS4, PS5, and PC “is suppor…

Hideo Kojima has relaunched the Hideo Kojima YouTube show ‘HideoTube’, a Hideo Kojima production starring Hideo Kojima. Okay I’ll stop with the obvious jokes, but this is a new episode (“The HideoTube 2024 special”, no less) in a series that stopped shortly after the creator’s acrimonious departure from Konami, and the first new entry in seven years. It’s an hourlong and wide-ranging chat between Kojima, host Risa Unai, and various talking heads involved with Kojima Productions’ work. 

I’m the biggest Kojima fan in the world, but I will admit the man is not shy about blowing his own horn. A whole bunch of the running time is Kojima and company re-watching the recent trailers for Death Stranding 2, OD and the Physint announcement and then talking about how…

Late last year, CD Projekt Red announced it would step back from development of its free-to-play collectible card game Gwent, with new cards continuing to be added in 2023, but the card pool be considered complete after that, and further balance changes left up to the players.

Update 11.10 is the final CD Projekt update, and as Molegion in the overview video explains, “This is the last handmade developer-prepared content update for Gwent, so after this we won’t be preparing changes to cards any more. Instead we will be using a system, you can see it in the main menu, it’s called balance council.”

The balance council allows players of at least Prestige 1, who have either won 25 ranked games in the current season or reached Rank 0, to vote on changes once per month. Each playe…

Stealth-horror immersive sim Gloomwood has development continuing apace, with the latest development preview bringing attention to extremely important—nay, vital—advances in rat-based gaming technology. A couple videos posted by developer Dillon Rogers over the past few weeks shows off some cheese-seeking AI behavior for Gloomwood’s rat NPCs, behavior that made its way into the January 30th update.

The critters will now sniff things out, eat them, and attack them. Also, rats can now navigate around through rat-only wall holes. You can also pick up dead rats if you are some kind of monster that has allowed a rat to die. What these changes herald, we do not know, but tinkering with little game systems for useful and unexpected outcomes is the heart of the immersive sim g…