It must be nice being Capcom. At a time when most of the games industry is in a historic bout of brutal layoffs, studio closures, and other assorted cost-cutting measures that mysteriously seem to never touch the C-suite, the Resident Evil and Street Fighter maker is raising salaries and, now, posting its seventh consecutive year of record profits and 11th consecutive year of operating profit growth.

In a Capcom press release earlier today, the company announced that its net sales in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024 totalled 152,410 million yen, or around $979 million (£784 million, a 21% year-on-year increase. The company’s myriad other income breakdowns—operating and ordinary income and “net income attributable to owners of the parent”—also saw dou…

It’s been a rough couple of years for the games industry—and even laying it out like that feels like an understatement. Back in February, the number of layoffs and studio closures were already numerous enough to fit into a horrifying chart, and things haven’t exactly slowed down since.

One of the more high-profile recent shocks came from Microsoft, which shut down studios Arkane Austin—developers of Prey and Dishonoured—as well as Tango Gameworks, the studio behind surprise hit Hi-Fi Rush.

It was an especially messed-up situation because, as plenty of developers noted in the aftermath: A studio probably shouldn’t sink after a single flop like Redfall, but even if they do make an excellent game, that still won’t save them from the margin-fuelled m…

Back in my day, we didn’t have these fancy-schmancy newfangled quest markers and compass points—we had to download add-ons if we wanted the minimap to tell us where our ten boars were, and then walk up the hill, both ways!

If you’ve been playing RPGs since the early 2000s, you’ve likely got a similar old man yelling at clouds in your soul. Simply put, open-world RPG design has slowly moved away from the discovery part of “questing”.

It used to be that quest givers in RPGs (both single-player and massively multiplayer) would rely far more on verbal instructions than UI elements. Morrowind in particular doesn’t even have a compass—locking every quest behind some local’s vague approximation of the land. That kind of design’s gone the way of the dodo, unfort…

Since the release of AMD’s RX 7000-series with the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT, some reports have arisen suggesting that AMD-designed cards may be heating up to an uncomfortable level—reportedly up to 110°C on what’s known as the hotspot temperature reading on these cards. So much so that AMD has now admitted that there may be an issue affecting a limited number of reference design cards.

“We are working to determine the root cause of the unexpected performance limitation of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards,” AMD says in a statement (via Hardwareluxx). “Based on our observations so far, we believe the issue is related to the thermal solution used in the AMD reference design and with a limited number of cards sold. We are working to resolve this issue for the affe…

I love every single one of Dead Cells’ animated trailers—they’re funny, well-produced, and hit me right in my weakness for chunky and expressive linework. I’m not, however, entirely sure how the writers and animators are going to dig up a compelling narrative from Dead Cell’s bloated, five-year-long story.

Dead Cells – The Animated Series will be made by Bobbypills—the same team responsible for their trailers—and co-produced by the French Animation Digital Network. It’s set to span 10 seven-minute episodes and will “initially be exclusive to France before being made available worldwide” in 2024.

While I’m confident the series will be good fun, ‘good fun’ doesn’t carry a good story. They’ve added plenty of lore and worldbuilding…

Watch On

Six years on from Darksiders 3 (and five from great but overlooked spin-off Darksiders Genesis), I’ll admit I’d started to think THQ Nordic had given up on the series. Not so, apparently—a new teaser tells us we should be “prepared to ride again”.

There’s not much to the video, first shown at the end of the THQ Nordic Showcase 2024—just a shot of the Charred Council (those fiery rock lads that order the Four Horsemen around), looking the same as ever. An accompanying Xbox Wire blog post, however, seems to confirm that this does indicate a new game is on the way: “It won’t be long until we reveal more about where the Darksiders series is going next, but for now, know this… the Four Horsemen will ride again.”

Huh, does that mean this sequel wi…

After being gone for more than a year, Blizzard’s biggest games will soon return to China. Blizzard confirmed tonight that it has struck a new deal with NetEase to bring all the games covered by the previous publishing agreement, including World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, “and other titles in the Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, and StarCraft universes,” back to the Chinese market. The new deal will take effect this summer.

“We at Blizzard are thrilled to reestablish our partnership with NetEase and to work together, with deep appreciation for the collaboration between our teams, to deliver legendary gaming experiences to players in China,” Blizzard president Johanna Faries said in a statement. “We are immensely grateful for the passion the Chinese community has shown for Blizzard game…

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail’s world first raid race is over. After the release of Patch 7.05 yesterday, teams from around the globe hopped into voice chat, assembled their parties, and wept profusely as dozens of materia vanished into their pentamelds—all to have the honour of saying, “we did it first.”

In case you’re unfamiliar, Final Fantasy 14 does its raids in tiers, each containing four boss fights. “Normal” difficulty, which releases first, is easy enough to be done with a group of seven randoms, so there’s not really a race involved—but “Savage” difficulty is the bulk of the game’s hardcore content, making it perfect material for a breakneck competition. Players had two weeks between the Normal difficulty to prep and get their crafters ready for the occasion.Read more

The single most expensive hat trade in Team Fortress 2’s history went down this week, with one player exchanging goods worth over 10,000 of the game’s crate keys (around $1.80 each) for an unusual Arcana Crone’s Dome, the characteristics of which make it the only one in existence. It’s a witch’s hat with some Halloween effects, basically, and the trade was first spotted by PyroJoe on X (formerly Twitter), who called it “the biggest singular unusual TF2 Hat trade” in the game’s history.

The hat-fancier is a player called Gummy from Singapore, who exchanged various items (including a lesser Crone’s Dome) that were worth approximately 10,000 keys when taken as a bundle. PyroJoe told PCG that this is now the single most expensive hat trade in TF2 history, though n…

“Ever notice that swinging the sword downward put you at a big disadvantage?” Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone asked earlier this week on Twitter. “It’s always bugged me, but I had tuned it that way so that the area of effect would match the visual. For 1.6, I decided that game feel is way more important than precise visual accuracy.”

I will admit that melee combat is not the first thing that leaps to mind when I think about Stardew Valley. It’s all about festivals and farmer’s markets and bringing in the crops and finding a life mate and hats and cats and hats on cats—but combat? 

Well, yes, that’s all part of the farm life too. And that’s not entirely inaccurate: Farmers typically pack heat in one form or another, although explosive ammo and bombs are a rarity…

It’s Lightfall day, and players are already finding new details in Destiny 2’s latest expansion. Those who visit the Tower before jetting off to Neomuna will notice some redecorating that has occurred in the time since the game went offline for maintenance. Near Zavala you’ll find the new Monument to Fellowship, and with it a memorial to a long-departed NPC.

Cayde-6 was the Nathan Fillion-voiced joker of the Vanguard—the de facto leaders of the Guardians. His death was the inciting incident of Destiny 2’s first expansion, Forsaken, and was teased heavily in the run-up to its release back in September 2018. It was a dramatic moment for fans: the first major on-screen character to die his final death in the fight against the Darkness.

The new memorial is a simple bust wi…

Prepare to be smote. Smited. Smitten. Look, they’re making another Smite—Titan Forge’s godly and enduringly popular MOBA that first released in 2014—and it’s gearing up for an alpha test, should you wish to rage against the heavens as soon as possible.

Revealed at the Smite world championships, Titan Forge is pitching Smite 2 as “everything players love about Smite 1” in a sleeker, more modern, and prettier package. The announcement boasts of a “refined user interface, updated audio, clearer spell effects, and fresh physics-based abilities” for its various gods. You’re also getting “new God pantheons, kit refinements, gameplay changes, and overhauled Relic and Item systems for deeper strategy. 

In other words, it sounds like the devs are keen to make the gam…

Dublin. Filled to the brim with gigs, events, and nightlife, I often get a ping of nostalgia just looking at the spire—thanks to my years there spent chasing my degree. However, after looking at the crowds of people caught up waiting for a Halloween parade that would never come, I’m very glad I wasn’t back there this week.

Seemingly coming from an AI-generated website based out of Pakistan, thousands of people in Dublin, Ireland, crowded around O’Connell Street for a parade that would never come. The site claimed to have originated this parade is called “Myspirithalloween” and appears to have stolen that name from Spirit Halloween, the Halloween retailer that focuses specifically on costumes, decorations, and general festivities.

The attached Facebook page has since …

Helldivers 2’s story is mostly background dressing—told through galactic war events, NPC dialogue, and Super Earth broadcasts that are easy to miss. It does have one cinematic, though, and it’s such a specific brand of ’90s corny that it’s impossible to forget. 

Now there’s a behind-the-scenes video of it, courtesy of the folks over at Goodbye Kansas Studios—letting you get an up-close-and-personal look at actor Craig Lee Thomas’s face as he collapses to his knees and screams for sweet liberty.

It’s honestly great to see how much of the cinematic’s excellently hammy facial expressions are 1:1 translations of Thomas chewing the scenery. The exact moment the patriotism drains from the Super Earth spokesperson’s face, replaced with abject horror in a fis…

If you were out last Friday, you may have encountered some difficulty shopping, getting a coffee, or, god forbid, trying to catch a flight due to a bug that crashed 8.5 million Microsoft devices and messed up a few Linux-powered computers.

After realising that the core issue came from a configuration file in an update for CrowdStrike’s Falcom platform, the cybersecurity company has been working around the clock to fix the issue, and things seem mostly back to normal. As a partial apology for its huge error, Crowdstrike has been sending out $10 Uber Eats vouchers to its “teammates and partners” (via TechCrunch).

The email was sent out and also posted to X, though it has since been taken down: “To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or a late night snack is on us!…

Looking for some Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands Shift codes? Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands well underway and there are all-new Shift codes to redeem. There’s a big ol’ chest in Brighthoof, home of Queen Butt Stallion, and you’ll need a Skeleton Key to open it, which you’ll get from a Shift code. There’s no telling what loot is stashed away in the chest but rest assured, it’ll be some powerful stuff. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the latest Shift codes and how to redeem them.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands Shift codes

As of July 23, 2024, there is one current active limited-time Shift code for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which expires on July 25, 2024:

• SF6T3-CSWJ3-333JJ-TTTB3-CB3F5 – Three Skeleton Keys

New Shift codes typically appear weekly, o…

When V started coughing up blood during a conversation with Johnny Silverhand, I thought Cyberpunk 2077 was really trying to drive home the urgency of my ticking time bomb of a brain. Throughout the next quest, and the one after that, my entire field of vision kept pulsing with the glitchy blue effect that highlighted Johnny popping into a conversation. It felt like a bit much, but I was really getting into the roleplaying, so I figured heading home to V’s apartment for a night’s rest would set me right. When it didn’t, I asked my colleagues how they got rid of “Johnny vision” because clearly I’d missed something.

That’s when I got the bad news from Phantom Liberty reviewer Ted Litchfield: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen before.”

Uh oh.

“Tha…

At a games conference in Sofia, Bulgaria earlier this year, Larian gameplay scripter Mihail Kostov gave a presentation outlining the philosophies and strategies the studio employs to ensure games like Baldur’s Gate 3 stay playable even as players are actively tearing them apart. Recently made public on YouTube (via GamesRadar), Kostov’s talk explains how Larian addresses “edge cases”—times when “player action may push a system to the extreme”—with solutions that reward, rather than stifle, creativity.

We’ve written about the near-absurd depth of contingencies Baldur’s Gate 3 has in place to account for player chaos, like its roster of purpose-built backup NPCs who stand ready to replace any plot-relevant characters you might murder (and replacements for t…

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree has drawn some criticism for being too hard—spinning up the FromSoftware design discourse anew two entire years after the base game’s release. Its flavour feels different this time around, though, since even supposed souls superfans have been antsy about it, earning it a “mixed” user review score on Steam at the time of writing.

There’s a few culprits here. The new Scadutree Fragments scaling system has caught players off-guard, bosses are hyper aggressive with the longest combo strings Miyazaki’s devised yet, and a sadly choppy performance isn’t exactly helping people feel the flow.

While I think the DLC bumps against the ceiling of what FromSoftware can get away with right towards the end, I’m not really on the “it’s too hard” train.…

It wouldn’t be a Call of Duty: Black Ops game without Zombies, now, would it? And it wouldn’t be Zombies without an incredibly well-hidden and complex easter egg that reveals the true story of each map. Though they were solved remarkably quickly, the Black Ops 6 Zombies easter eggs are among the most long-winded and challenging.

Zombies is far different from multiplayer, though you’ll be pleased to hear that your weapon progression and other unlocks carry over into Zombies. This means you can start both Liberty Falls and Terminus armed to the teeth. It will certainly help in the early stages of the easter egg but it will still be far from easy. To save you the trouble of figuring them out for yourself, here’s how to beat …

In a statement more foreboding than its tone suggests, ChatGPT maker OpenAI is considering allowing its users to “generate NSFW content in age-appropriate contexts through the API and ChatGPT.” Creating AI-generated pornography, in other words, potentially opening up an enormous can of worms for the very popular AI, which is already the target of all kinds of scrutiny, criticism, and litigation.

The announcement that OpenAI is “exploring” the possibility of opening up its tools to explicit content came in the form of a brief aside in a long document about the development of its AI models.

Currently, OpenAI tools like ChatGPT are subject to content filters that are supposed to stop them from spitting out smut at unsuspecting users, and it’s important to stress that changing…

Be afraid of the Windows 11 KB5043145 optional update. Very afraid. For reports are in, claiming that it unleashes a borknado of problems if installed.

According to various sources, including HKEPC and Windows Latest, update KB5043145 for Windows 11 versions 23H2, and 22H2 is causing problems including outright bluescreen crashes, loss of keyboard and mouse functionality, USB ports on the blink, plus WSL 2 and Wi-Fi issues.

Windows Latest says that Microsoft has confirmed it is aware of the problem. However, there is no word on any official remedy, for now. As an optional update, KB5043145 is not supposed to download and install automatically, though some reports indicate that may be happening anyway.

Of course, losing your keyboard and mouse is particularly egregiou…

If you thought the ongoing dip in PC sales that AMD is predicting will last into 2023 could mean falling prices of CPUs and particularly GPUs, we have some bad news. Turns out AMD has been intentionally limiting supply of its chips and plans to continue to do so.

As we reported earlier today, AMD just clung onto profitability at the end of 2022 thanks to booming server chip sales. Its PC processor and GPU sales are, according to AMD’s own numbers, tanking badly.

You might normally expect the dip in demand that implies to push prices down. Unfortunately, CEO Lisa Su says AMD is doing its best to restrict the supply side of the supply-and-demand equation.

During AMD’s most recent earnings call, Su explained how AMD was adjusting its output of PC CPUs and GPUs in light of…

Atari has today announced the purchase of the Intellivision brand alongside “certain games” from Intellivision Entertainment LLC. This is a melancholy coda to the early days of home consoles in the West, where in the US market especially the Atari 2600 dominated the late 1970s scene. Intellivision was one of Atari’s main rivals, almost entirely because the machine had the backing of Mattel (these were the days when videogames were sold in the toy section of stores), and launched its first console in 1979.

The concept of a “console war” didn’t really exist, but the competition was real. Mattel had been working on the Intellivision (the name is a portmanteau of “Intelligent Television”) since 1977 and launched with a big-money ad campaign directly comparing the system’s capab…

2024 games: Upcoming releases
Best PC games: All-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best MMOs: Massive worlds
Best RPGs: Grand adventures

On an average day about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that’s a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is relea…

I have no need for a $3,500 augmented reality headset that turns my regular computer screen into a virtual computer screen floating in the middle of my apartment, but I regret to say that Apple’s unmatched ability to hype up a gadget has worked on me: its new Vision Pro AR headset,  which is releasing next year, looks cool, even if it costs more than a lot of OLED TVs.

Here are some of the Vison Pro features Apple revealed at its WWDC event today:

• Micro-OLED display with 23-million pixels across two “postage stamp”-sized panels, which allows it to display virtual 4K screens
• Hand and eye tracking without controllers or external sensors, plus voice control
• Downward-facing cameras so that you don’t have to hold your hands in front of your face…
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As “the Brothers Hildebrandt”, Greg Hildebrandt and his twin Tim were legends of fantasy and science-fiction art. They became famous with their work on the official 1976 J.R.R. Tolkien Calendar, at the time the best-selling calendar ever released, and the warm light of their vision of Middle-earth accompanied many subsequent Tolkien calendars and books. That vision influenced other artists, and their depiction of hobbits having extra-large feet—something not mentioned in the books—became the default even in Peter Jackson’s movies decades later.

The Brothers Hildebrandt were chosen to illustrate Star Wars based on the popularity of their calendar work, hired at the last minute to replace a pre-release poster for the movie’s 1977 release the studio were unhappy with. G…

2024 games: Upcoming releases
Best PC games: All-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best MMOs: Massive worlds
Best RPGs: Grand adventures

On an average day about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that’s a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Ste…

Arrowhead continues to lean into the Joel thing, with a brave studio member entering the containment unit where the Helldivers 2 game master is kept in order to capture footage of the strange and elusive creature.

In the footage, posted to X/Twitter, an Arrowhead “video team member” enters a glass-doored closet marked “J.O.E.L.” and catches footage of a figure, who looks like those hooded stock photos of hackers, clattering away at a keyboard with an array of monitors showing various views of Helldivers players in action. The strange creature does a breathy cackle while considering a button which apparently fires those mysterious blue beams at successful players. From there things get hectic, as the agitated Joel notices the filming employee and, you kn…

It’s never too early to plan your penny-saving with a Steam Sale schedule. In times past, predicting Steam sales was more soothsaying than science, but we’re in a beautiful new world of predictable price cuts. Nowadays, Valve reveals Steam Sale dates well in advance, major seasonal sales serve as reliable quarterly landmarks, and—best of all—there’s no messy augury required. Still, with Steam now rolling out frequent genre-specific sales, it can be helpful to have someone keeping the calendar. That’s where we come in. We’re tracking all the confirmed Steam Sale dates as they’re announced, so you can focus on curating your wishlist. You’re welcome.

Another month, another set of results from Valve’s PC hardware survey. It’s comforting to know that some things never change but if you’re Nvidia, then it will be even more comforting to note that one thing has changed—in the space of 12 months, its RTX 40-series of desktop graphics cards and laptop GPUs have an 80% bigger share of all the surveyed machines.

In the October 2023 survey, Ada Lovelace graphics processors accounted for 10% of all the sampled machines, whereas in the latest figures reported, it’s climbed to 17%. While the number itself might not seem all that impressive, it’s a sizeable increase.

For something to increase in this survey, another thing needs to go down and in the case of Nvidia’s GPUs, the GTX 10-series (aka Pascal) saw the bigges…

The huge hole in AMD’s graphics card lineup shouldn’t be too far away from being plugged. Just last week Powercolor erroneously set its RX 7800 XT Red Devil webpage online, giving us a look at the card and its near complete specifications. Details regarding the RX 7700 XT have been more elusive, but now we’ve got an indication that it is coming soon too.

A product listing was spotted by @momomo_us at the Eurasian Economic Commission (via VideoCardz). It reveals a list of ASRock graphics cards, two of which are RX 7800 XT 16GB models. They are joined by another three RX 7700 XT 12GB models. The five cards will make up part of ASRock’s Phantom Gaming, Steel Legend and Challenger sub-brands.

The RX 7700 XT cards carry a 12GO suffix. In ASRock parlance, that indicates 12GB of VR…

We’ve all been there: right at the end of character creation in the latest big RPG, staring at our choice of character class and wondering which is best. The good news is that there is no best class for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. And I don’t mean that in the wishy washy “pick which class suits your playstyle way,” it’s more genuinely true than most other RPGs.

The Veilguard has done a lot to really cut down on the fundamental differences between warriors, rogues, and mages in The Veilguard. All three, even the mages, have survivability at close range, plenty of AOE, and status effect application. On top of that, your party members are all just AI helpers, and you’re almost always going to be the center of attention in a fight, meaning there’s way less emphasis on party compositi…

First reported by Vice, Colombian First Circuit Judge Juan Manuel Padilla Garcia claims to have used ChatGPT in the process of deciding a case in the city of Cartagena. The judge attests to the tool’s use in a court document from January 30.

“What we are really looking for is to optimize the time spent drafting judgements after corroborating the information provided by AI,” Garcia explained in the court document (translated from the original Spanish). Garcia was hearing a case between a health insurance company and the family of an autistic child over the child’s medical coverage.

Garcia seems to have based his final decision in the case on the chatbot’s responses regarding legal precedents and jurisprudence, and asserts that all responses were fact checked in this case&#828…