PC Gamer

During a Take-Two earnings call today, CEO Strauss Zelnick addressed questions about how the company deals with issues of diversity and harassment, in light of the recent lawsuit against Activision Blizzard.  “Inclusion, diversity and common decency are of paramount importance to everyone here, and specifically highly important to me for the 14 years we’ve been around,” Zelnick said at the start of a lengthy answer. “I’ll say it in as black and white a way as I can: We will not tolerate harassment or discrimination or bad behavior of any kind. We never have… We don’t think fostering an appropriate…

There’s no feeling worse than watching your packages getting lifted with nothing you can do to stop the porch pirates. After recently having a package stolen, Youtuber Ryder Calm Down built himself his own anti-package pilfer alarm system using AI, flour, and a truck horn. It looks like something out of Evil Genius 2, minus the fatal spike trap.  The setup is simple enough: a camera watches the front porch in real-time, using a custom model TensorFlow (a machine learning platform) to recognize when a package is there. Then it arms itself. If the package is removed by an unauthorized…

Looking for the cyberdeck upgrade locations in The Ascent? If you’ve ventured far into the dystopian world of Veles, you’ll know that there are specific mechanisms you can hack using your cyberdeck to help you on your journey. The Ascent’s cyberdeck is handy for opening locked doors, vending machines, or any turrets you might come across. But you’ve likely found some are inaccessible due to the level of your cyberdeck. Luckily, there are upgrades to be found throughout the game, so you’ll be hacking your way to success in no time. Here are The Ascent cyberdeck upgrade locations. The Ascent…

Skateboarding skim SkateBIRD has been slightly delayed from its original August 12 release date and will now be with us on September 16 instead. According to a tweet by Glass Bottom Games founder Megan Fox, the reasons for this are quite simple—SkateBIRD is the studio’s first “giant” game that ships on multiple platforms simultaneously. “But no this isn’t in response to the PAX demo,” Fox goes on to say. “That went fine. The feedback was great. Seeing a few stories saying “ALL NEW UI!” and no, heh. Fixed a few bugs is all. ;)” “Shipping games is hard” the delay…

The current global chip shortage has put the PC component market on edge. We’ve seen price hikes and panic aplenty across the industry; reports have even surfaced of people smuggling silicon across borders by strapping CPUs to their bodies.  And it doesn’t look like the pressure will be lifting any time soon, with STMicro’s CEO now chiming in with his 2023 prediction. Seemingly aligned with the forecast from Intel, IBM and TSMC—who placed the culmination of the chip crisis somewhere toward late 2022/early 2023—President and CEO of European chip maker, STMicroelectronics, Jean-Marc Chery, is confident things will return to normal,…

Two new trailers for Age of Empires 4 have arrived, one a brief glimpse of the Abbasid Dynasty civilization (based on the Abbasid Caliphate and the Mamluk Sultanate, rulers of the Islamic world for 750 years), their camel riders and House of Wisdom, and the other showing naval warfare. Neither has much to say about how the game will play, except that it sure looks like a game you’ll be able to run on a laptop. Which is no bad thing, and the buildings do look much more nicely detailed than the not-to-scale units around them. Given that most of…

Rumors that Eric Baptizat—a 16-year Ubisoft veteran who left the company to join EA Motive earlier this year—was working on the Dead Space remake have been confirmed. It’s right there on Baptizat’s LinkedIn profile: “game director on Dead Space”. Previously, Baptizat was game director on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and a lead game designer on Black Flag, Unity, and Origins. Tempting as it is to make jokes about how the Dead Space remake will definitely have climbable towers or a map full of sidequests for Isaac Clarke to unlock, that’s not really how games or game directors work. Baptizat’s other lead…

The leaks seemed to guarantee it, but now we’ve got confirmation that Ariana Grande will kick off Fortnite’s Rift Tour from August 6-8. As Fortnite has done in the past, the virtual performance will have five showings to accommodate players in various time zones. It’s not just the spectacle that will presumably attract players, because an Ariana Grande Outfit and Piggy Smallz Back Bling will be available from August 4 in the Item Shop. Here’s a short teaser showing those cosmetics off. Also, everyone who takes part in the Rift Tour will get a Cuddly Cloudcruiser commemorative umbrella: (Image credit:…

Welcome to This Week in PC Gaming, a show where we take a look at the new games, updates, events, and more coming at you over the next week, every week. Expect a new episode every Sunday morning and expect it to tell you something you didn’t know or already forgot about. This week we look at a trio of awesome indie games full of gore and empathy. A brand new legend emerges in Season 10 of Apex Legends, and EVO 2021 Online kicks later this week, where you can watch digital black belts duke it out from the safety…

Sage is one of the new jobs coming to Final Fantasy 14 as part of the Endwalker expansion, a healer class that fights with four floating blades called nouliths. Its icon represents those four weapons, and the MMO’s designers probably weren’t expecting it to receive as strong a reaction as it did. “When we released new details for sage and reaper on the special site, we also included their icons,” producer and director Naoki Yoshida wrote in an update, “not thinking that they were particularly big reveals. However, we soon received feedback from players all over the world, who told…

We once had a neighbour who would hammer, weld, and saw at all hours, prompting my housemate to regularly quote Tom Waits: What’s he building in there? We had a lot of theories, but never found out. Whether you’re making up stories about what next-door is up to or attributing every unexplained noise to “the ghost”, sharehousing seems to have an in-built tendency toward mythmaking.  That’s especially true of student sharehouses, full of overactive imagination and time to talk about nothing. No Longer Home reflects that. It’s set in a London flat and you play two students at the end…

You know, the kind of game you only need to check in on periodically to see how things are going with your nation, football team, or spaceship’s journey from one end of the galaxy to the other. Or the kind of game where you can mindlessly click or grind your way through most of it without actually needing to engage higher brain functions, which you can then spend marathoning TV shows on the other screen. What’s a game you like to play while doing or watching something else? Here are our answers, plus some from our forum. (Image credit: Riot…

Blizzard’s recently publicized sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit filed by the state of California is just the latest in a long string of controversies. Between massive layoffs, numerous reports on its toxic workplace, and highly anticipated launches reportedly sabotaged by mismanagement, the last few years have dramatically altered the perception of what used to be PC gaming’s darling developer. This timeline covers Blizzard’s most notable controversies and high-profile departures since 2018. These events help paint a broad picture of Blizzard’s recent turmoil over the past few years and can also give some useful context in its changing corporate culture and…

The PCI Express Gen 4 interface is rapidly approaching default status, especially if you’re talking new as opposed to installed hardware. Intel’s latest desktop and mobile CPUs support it, AMD having jumped on the PCIe 4.0 wagon back in 2019. The Xbox Series X/S and Playstation 5 also support the standard. As for solid-state drives, we’re now well through the early adopter stage, with numerous high-end PCIe 4.0 drives available, plus several value drives. The new ADATA XPG Gammix S50 Lite, sampled here in 2TB configuration and M.2 2280 format, falls into the latter category. But where some Gen 4…

From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random obscure games back into the light. This week, a Russian adventure that’s not as porny as it sounds, but whose surrealism might make you gag in a very different way… Sorry. Normally I try to find something interesting and a little bit unusual for you. This week though, I’m afraid we’re going to have to resort to that most tired and cliched of gaming staples: secret agents struggling with sexual inadequacy after being bitten on the penis by a poisoned penguin. And they…

It’s a big deal for Halo that Halo Infinite’s multiplayer includes bots. It’s a first for the 20-year-old series, aside from the PvE Firefight mode that debuted with Halo ODST and the bots in a single game mode in Halo 5 called Warzone that was cool in theory, but also saddled with microtransactions. Bots being available in every multiplayer mode means Halo newcomers can practice against easier opponents, and players who love Capture the Flag but don’t want to deal with other human beings online can just jam by themselves. I expected all of this going into Infinite’s technical test,…

The needler never gets the respect it deserves. Halo fans have always raved about the Halo 1 pistol and the battle rifle, or the plasma sword or the Halo Reach grenade launcher or even the Covenant carbine, but dammit: I love the needler. And it looks like the combat designers for Halo Infinite do, too, because after a couple hours of hands-on with the multiplayer technical test, I think this might be the strongest the needler’s ever been. I love the tiktiktiktik sound it makes as it fires out a quick sequence of razorlike purple crystals. I love that it…

Valve has not had great luck making hardware. The Steam Controller failed to revolutionize the controller scene despite its innovative design, the Steam Link worked well but was muscled out by a less-impressive app, and the ballyhooed Steam Machines basically faceplanted right out of the gate. The Index is an impressive unit, but hasn’t sparked a meaningful uptick in VR adoption since its release. We said earlier this month that Steam Machines could be seen as a cautionary tale for early proponents of the Steam Deck, Valve’s upcoming handheld gaming device. But in an interview with IGN, Valve designers Greg…

Epic has announced new details on the exclusive Fortnite Crew skin for August. It looks like subscribers will be treated to a version of season 2’s Skye character, dressed up in appropriately summery shorts and a T-shirt. We’ve got all the details you need to know, including what other cosmetics Fortnite Crew subscribers are getting in August, when Summer Skye is releasing, and more. Don’t forget that if you want July’s Fortnite Crew skin, Marvel’s Loki, you’ll need to subscribe before the end of the month or risk losing out on it forever. Fortnite Crew August: Summer Skye skinHere’s a…

Release date: Late 2021 (possibly as early as October)Architecture: Golden Cove + Gracemont coresMax Cores: 8+8 (24 threads)GPU: Intel Xe (Gen 12.2)Socket: LGA 1700Process: Intel 7 (previously known as 10nm Enhanced SuperFin)RAM support: DDR5 and DDR4The Intel Alder Lake CPU lineup is the 12th generation processor family for desktops and laptops. It’s set for release in the second half of 2021—the rumour mill is currently split on exactly when, but the best guesses have them dropping sometime between September–November. The exact date isn’t known yet, but October is looking more and more likely, especially with Intel’s InnovatiON event taking place…