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Full list of The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature cheats for editing Fairy Sims or mastering their Apothecary skills

Andrea Shearon — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 02:44:32 +0000

The Sims 4 painted the town green with its outdoorsy, fairy-themed expansion, but if you don't want to work your way up the faefolk rankings to get to the good stuff, you can use Enchanted by Nature cheats for an easy shortcut. Some fairy features don't have their own code, but here you'll find cheats for most Sims 4 careers, skills, and traits that were added with the expansion.

If you need extra guidance, check out our main list of The Sims 4 cheats for a refresher on the basics. And if you're looking for other expansion commands, we've got lists for Businesses & Hobbies cheats and Life & Death cheats.

Enchanted by Nature career cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Enchanted by Nature added one new career to The Sims 4 with the Naturopath. It's a handy career for curing ailments, and you can even take things a step further with branching career paths as a Lifestyle Coach or Apothe-curist.

Career	Cheat code
Naturopath	careers.add_career Naturopath careers.retire Naturopath careers.promote Naturopath careers.demote Naturopath

Career

Cheat code

Naturopath

careers.add_career Naturopath

careers.retire Naturopath

careers.promote Naturopath

careers.demote Naturopath

Enchanted by Nature skill cheats

The Sims 4 received two new skills with Enchanted by Nature: Apothecary and Natural Living. Sims skilled in Apothecary will learn how to make cures for ailments, while Natural Living sims learn how to thrive outdoors.

Use the testingcheats true command before setting a skill level via cheat code.

Skill	Max skill cheat
Apothecary	stats.set_skill_level Major_Apothecary 10
Natural Living	stats.set_skill_level Skill_NLS 10

Enchanted by Nature trait cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Sims get three standard traits in this expansion: Disruptive, Mystical, and Plant Lover. There are Enchanted by Nature cheats for all three, but you can always add them via Create-a-Sim by:

Using testingcheats true in the cheat console
Using cas.fulleditmode in the cheat console
Clicking your sim and selecting "Edit in CAS"
Find both in the "Social" traits section

You can also add or remove traits in the console with the codes below. Traits marked with the fairy emoji 🧚 are exclusive to the occult sim.

Personality traits

Trait	Cheat code
Disruptive	traits.equip_trait trait_Rogue traits.remove_trait trait_Rogue
Mystical	traits.equip_trait trait_Mystical traits.remove_trait trait_Mystical
Plant Lover	traits.equip_trait trait_Plantlover traits.remove_trait trait_Plantlover
🧚High Fae Lineage	traits.equip_trait HighFaeLineage traits.remove_trait HighFaeLineage

Reward traits

Trait	Cheat code
Nature’s Best Bud	traits.equip_trait NaturesBestBud traits.remove_trait NaturesBestBud
Well-Balanced Practitioner	traits.equip_trait trait_NaturalMeds_HealsWithPills traits.remove_trait trait_NaturalMeds_HealsWithPills
Into the Everdew	traits.equip_trait trait_FairyStories_Initiation_IntoThePixieland traits.remove_trait trait_FairyStories_Initiation_IntoThePixieland
🧚Happily Harmonious	traits.equip_trait LightPath_LightPixie traits.remove_trait LightPath_LightPixie
🧚Delightfully Discordant	traits.equip_trait DarkPath_DarkPixie traits.remove_trait DarkPath_DarkPixie
🧚Problem Fairy	traits.equip_trait trait_ProblemFairy traits.remove_trait trait_ProblemFairy

Enchanted by Nature death cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Enchanted by Nature adds two overdramatic deaths for fairy sims, Death by Emotional Starvation and Death by Emotional Overload, but there's only a cheat for one.

Fairy death cheats

Death	Cheat code
Death by Emotional Starvation	traits.equip_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation traits.remove_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation

Death

Cheat code

Death by Emotional Starvation

traits.equip_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation

traits.remove_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation

How fairy sims die from Emotional Overload

Fairies can detect and absorb other sims' emotions, but consuming Overload Moodlets can lead to Death by Emotional Overload. Here's how to get the process started:

Use Detect Emotion on other sims to find overload emotions (look for an exclamation❗)
Use Absorb Emotion until it triggers Enraged, Hysterical, or Mortified
Continue until triggering Death by Anger, Death by Laughter, or Death by Embarrassment

Sims have been able to die from extreme emotions for a while, but the fairy sim option is still a new way to experience all three possibilities. If you're trying to avoid death or bring someone back, refer to our main list of Sims 4 cheats.

Enchanted by Nature fairy cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

As Enchanted by Nature's occult sims hone their magical abilities, they'll also improve their fairy ranking. There are five ranks to work (or cheat) your way through, each with their own perks and special manipulation magic.

There's no cheat to directly equip the fairy rank to your sim, but you can use an XP shortcut to accomplish the same thing.

Fairy rank	Cheat code
Faint	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 0
Glowing	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 500
Glimmering	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 1500
Brilliant	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 3000
Radiant	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 4500

Is there a cheat for turning a sim into a fairy?

No, unlike other occult sims, there is no Enchanted by Nature cheat to turn a regular sim into a fairy sim. But that doesn't mean you can't edit them directly with the same Create-a-Sim cheat from before:

Enter testingcheats true in the cheat console
Enter cas.fulleditmode in the cheat console
Click your sim and select "Edit in CAS"
Set their occult status to "Fairy" in the top left corner of the Create-a-Sim menu

Steam Controller demand is so high that new reservations won't be fulfilled until 2027

shaun.prescott@futurenet.com (Shaun Prescott) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 01:26:31 +0000

Valve is struggling to meet demand for its Steam Controller. The trackpad-equipped gamepad quickly sold out when it released in early May, and ever since there's been a reservation system similar to the one once used for Steam Deck.

And people have been using it, to such an extent that Valve has needed to upgrade the system to manage expectations regarding when you'll actually get one. "When we launched Steam Controller last month, we quickly saw that initial demand exceeded our expectations," Valve writes in an update.

"We have no plans to stop making Steam Controller. But as we look at the current demand compared to how many we know we can make by the end of the year, we want to manage expectations as much as we can with regards to when folks can expect to receive their order."

To get to the point: if you're not in the queue already you probably won't get a Steam Controller until 2027. One of my colleagues based in the United States joined the queue today and their "estimated order availability" is 2027. It's the same for me in Australia.

According to Valve the reservation page now shows one of three estimated shipping windows, including "by September 2026", "by December 2026", and "in 2027", with more specific timing for the latter to come later. If you joined the queue already you can revisit the page and it'll show you which of those three categories you fit in.

Still, I do wonder how many of those in the queue have decided they're definitely going to buy a Steam Controller. It's possible to reserve your place without placing a deposit, so there's really no harm in registering your interest even if you're not committed to making the purchase. When something is in such hot demand, it's probably smarter to make the reservation than to not, because what if you change your mind between now and next year? What if the Steam Machine proves so mindblowing that the Steam Controller becomes an essential piece of kit?

Whatever the case, once your ticket is called you have 72 hours to make the purchase before you lose your place in the queue. With Steam Machine and Steam Frame seemingly imminent, I'd be very surprised if we don't see the same situation with those.

2026 games: All the upcoming games
Best PC games: Our all-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Best co-op games: Better together

Steam Next Fest's top played games include only 1 of over 500 demos with an AI disclosure

shaun.prescott@futurenet.com (Shaun Prescott) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:26:46 +0000

Valve has revealed the ten most played Steam Next Fest demos, and based on the hours I've spent browsing the more than 4,000 demos, I'm not super surprised by the results. Bandai Namco's forthcoming Sword Art Online RPG, Echoes of Aincrad, is grabbing a lot of expected attention, and so is the offroading sim by the creators of Art of Rally. There's a Soulslike extraction RPG, a new 6v6 Titanfall-like by the Splitgate studio, and a cheerful looking dollop of friendslop.

Here's the full list, which is provided in no meaningful order:

Echoes of Aincrad - Anime third-person ARPG set in the Sword Art Online world
Mistfall Hunter - An extraction RPG, supplanting the usual shooting with Soulslike third-person combat
over the hill - Chill but gruelling offroad adventuring by the Art of Rally devs
IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator - A heavy turret simulator
EMPULSE - A 6v6 shooter by the creators of Splitgate that kinda looks like Mirror's Edge blended with Titanfall
Dust Front RTS - A vintage-looking RTS for '90s PC gaming heads
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu - Four-player co-op about scouring a dangerous, slightly sci-fi jungle for treasure
Embers of the Uncrowned - Nexon's next big dark fantasy MMORPG
BOMBANANA! - Whimsical friendslop about monkeys defusing bombs
Casualties: Unknown - A survival platformer about exploring a murky, dangerous subterranea

There's some decent stuff in there: I'm especially keen to try Casualties: Unknown and Over the Hill. Mortal Shell 2's absence is notable, and I'm surprised that Valor Mortis—the new first-person Soulslike by Ghostrunner devs—isn't listed. Half of these games are multiplayer, and only one of the games listed have an AI disclosure.

That one's Embers of the Uncrowned, the next Nexon MMO which, ironically, appears to have the biggest budget of the lot. "During the development and live service of the game, AI-based tools may be utilized to support in-game visual content creation, marketing materials, live chat translation features, and partial in-game dialogue and script localization," reads the disclosure.

"In all such cases and regardless of the workflow, the final product is a reflection of our own development team's creativity and artistic expression."

The latest Next Fest has plenty of games with AI disclosures. Of the 4,397 products listed as Next Fest demos on SteamDB, 551 have the AI Content Disclosed user tag attached. Of course, user tags on Steam can be exploited, but assuming there's not some widespread concerted effort to tarnish non-AI games with the AI tag, that's a very high figure. Last week over 300 games were released on Steam, and 120 of them had AI disclosures.

The floodgates are open but that doesn't mean we're wilfully drowning. I think a new Nexon MMO—or any big budget MMO, really—is going to attract a lot of curiosity no matter how it was made. But I've noticed this week while browsing Next Fest that I've fallen into the habit of scrolling directly to where the AI disclosure normally sits on a Steam store page, without reading the description, watching the start of the trailer, or looking at a screenshot. It's not a brilliant user experience, and given how common antipathy towards AI in games seems to be, it's probably about time Steam included a filter.

The devs of EVE Online's survival spinoff are on a 'side quest' to get it on Steam Deck: 'Our goal is to get this to as many players as possible'

ted.litchfield@futurenet.com (Ted Litchfield) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:02:01 +0000

At this year's EVE Fanfest, the developers of EVE Online sister game Frontier were touting its new driving controls and gamepad support⁠—features that have already resulted in a vastly different game than Fenris Creations' (formerly CCP Games) original MMO.

As a big Steam Deck sicko, I was naturally curious whether Frontier's gamepad support opened up any portable PC possibilities, and it turns out some members of the team have been on a "side quest" to make it happen, to quote game director Sæmundur Hermannsson.

Frontier product manager Scott McCabe has been personally experimenting with the game on Valve's handheld. "I wanted to get on the Steam Deck," said McCabe. "I have one at my desk, and we're just kind of testing it out, dipping our toes in the water."

"Anything that runs on [Linux compatibility layer] Proton can basically be squeaked onto a Steam Deck," McCabe said, pointing out that, at that point, there's little separating the Deck from a normal PC aside from power and performance considerations.

The original EVE Online, by contrast, has been playable on Steam Deck for some time, but is a much less obvious fit for handheld play with its more mouse and keyboard-centric control scheme. "As soon as you start having a control system that works with a game pad," said McCabe, "There's absolutely no reason you can't put it onto these types of devices."

McCabe cautioned that Steam Deck support was not on any official development roadmaps, but that "it makes such obvious sense with the manual controls now." Hermannsson was even more bullish on the prospect when I asked him about it the following day.

"It's a no-brainer," the game director said, joking that "I don't know if the marketing people will punch us or whatever" for over-promising. Hermannsson echoed McCabe's point that making Frontier gamepad-friendly in the first place was a far bigger challenge than anything specific to the Deck.

"We already have experiments running on Steam Deck," said Hermannsson. "We just couldn't get it in time⁠—we want to focus on the gamepad stuff instead. The biggest problem we ran into was actually the launcher. It's not the game itself, it was just like some config files."

A number of high-profile multiplayer games are unplayable on Deck due to their anticheat being incompatible with Linux, but EVE Frontier sidesteps this issue by eschewing traditional anticheat altogether. Frontier is being built to be highly moddable⁠—eventually open source⁠—but with guardrails baked into the game to prevent cheats or exploits, something the team at Fenris refers to as "digital physics."

Hermannsson said he was less personally invested in Deck compatibility as he wasn't much of a handheld PC gamer, but he sees it as a way of broadening the appeal of the complex, experimental game as much as possible. Frontier development director David Bowman put it succinctly when I asked him about Deck support: "Our goal is to get this to as many players as possible."

Trump says Apple has agreed to build chips with Intel in the USA

Jeremy Laird — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 23:21:18 +0000

This is not the first time the idea has been mooted. And the source here is either about as authoritative as it gets or as unreliable as humanly possible, depending on how you look at it. But President Trump says that Apple has agreed to make chips with Intel in the USA.

Specifically, in a Truth social post Trump said, "First, we helped bring in Nvidia, and they agreed to build their first level Chips with Intel. Next, Elon agreed to build his TerraFab, the largest Chip Factory in the World, designed together with Intel’s Technology team. And, finally, Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build its Chips in America."

It should be said that there is, as yet, no official confirmation of any of this from the companies concerned. Indeed, that includes not only Trump's claim that Apple has agreed to make chips with Intel, but also with Nvidia.

Nvidia and Intel are very much on-the-record about a collaboration. But thus far, that's about combining Intel CPUs with Nvidia GPUs. Exactly how those chips get made hasn't been detailed. Nor, inevitably, are there any specifics regarding chips Intel might make for Apple.

That said, there have been rumours for some time that Apple could use Intel's fabs to make certain chips. Much of the coverage suggests that Apple could choose Intel to make lower-cost chips, perhaps for mainstream iPhone and MacBook models, while the really high-performance, cutting-edge stuff for Pro models remains at TSMC.

Soon to be powered by Intel silicon (again...)? (Image credit: Apple)

Almost any deal with Apple would clearly be a huge win for Intel and its nascent customer fab business. Unsurprisingly, Intel's stock price leapt up 7% following Trump's announcement on Truth Social.

Equally unsurprisingly, Trump called out Intel's stock price gains of late, saying, "We decided to help Intel in exchange for 10% of their shares. Is that too much or, too little? They were worth around 100 Billion Dollars when we made our offer. Now they are worth over 600 BILLION DOLLARS! Nine months, and they’ve increased in value over HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS. America’s stake is now over 60 Billion Dollars. When was the last time a President made America money?"

For now it's unclear what, if anything, Intel and Apple have agreed. If there is an agreement, it will no doubt be years before the first Apple chips flow from Intel's fabs. Any deal may well be contingent on the performance—or yields—of Intel's new 18A and 14A nodes. If it's not good enough, Apple may have an exit written into the deal.

So there may be a deal. But it doesn't necessarily follow that there will definitely be chips. As ever, watch this space.

Instead of wishlisting its game, the developer of my favorite Next Fest demo wants you to play anyone else's: 'There are some genuinely great creators in this fest who deserve the attention'

lincoln.carpenter@futurenet.com (Lincoln Carpenter) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:54:09 +0000

Of the thousands of demos on offer during the current Next Fest, I've far and away been most fond of About Fishing, The Water Museum's downright Lynchian "fishing mystery game" of surrealist, psychological angling that's eerie, absurd, and endearing in equal measure. My tackle box has a conspiracy board inside it, the town church has a prison ward in the basement, and I can commune with caught fish to retrieve submerged clues from waterways.

It's magnificent, and it is entirely, precisely my shit. But despite it being the traditional goal of Next Fest participants, About Fishing developer The Water Museum doesn't seem particularly concerned about whether I wishlist the game or not.

(Image credit: Playstack)

In a Steam news post that coincided with the start of Next Fest earlier this week, Water Museum developer Kevin said it's a great time for players to try the About Fishing demo. But then he made an unconventional ask:

"After you're done—you don't have to wishlist it," Kevin said. "Just promise me you'll find another demo that looks interesting and give it a go. There are some genuinely great creators in this fest who deserve the attention. Take your time with it."

Kevin continues to suggest we then turn off the computer, go outside, and maybe enjoy a nice tree. (Having gone on a lovely walk this morning, I can personally confirm the efficacy of the looking-at-tree meta.)

(Image credit: Playstack)

Considering that wishlisting is conventionally understood as one of the most valuable things a potential customer can do ahead of a Steam launch, The Water Museum's declaration that we should actually just find another cool game is a surprising act of developer solidarity. It probably helps, however, that About Fishing has already secured an audience of eager players: On June 11, The Water Museum announced via a Steam post that About Fishing had lured 100,000 users into wishlisting.

Get it? Lured. Like in fishing.

While The Water Museum might be too pure to tell you to wishlist its game, I urge you to try it for yourself if you think you'd enjoy seeing its unsettlingly detailed textures stretched over entirely too few polygons, doing Wanted-style bullet curving on your fishing hook mid-cast to execute hyper-precise angling, or being told by your ethereal grandfather that "the fish around here might've been the last witnesses to a murder."

(Image credit: Playstack)

If not, then check out one of the 4,400 other demos. As Kevin said, there are plenty of playtests worth your attention.

About Fishing is set to launch sometime later this year.

World of Warcraft players will never have to leave the MMO once Blizzard adds Discord chat for guilds in the next update

Tyler Colp — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:50:30 +0000

Life is about to get much easier for World of Warcraft players tired of having to track down guildmates to get a group together for a raid. Blizzard is officially acknowledging that Discord is the most convenient solution to this problem and will be integrating its chat directly into the MMO in the next update.

Blizzard announced that patch 12.1, Curse of Ula'tek, will bring cross-platform chat between Discord and WoW guild chat. Messages will show up in the MMO and in Discord, and can be set up so it's all-in-one combined chat or separated into individual channels.

The only requirement is to link your Battle.net and Discord account and have a guild leader or officer adjust how they want the chats to work. Once that's done, you'll be able to see people chatting directly from Discord with the logo next to their messages in-game.

This is big news for guilds with hundreds of players across different time zones. WoW's in-game chat just isn't equipped for that, especially without an easy way to scroll through an archive of messages across multiple days. I have two monitors so it's not particularly hard to swap between Discord and a game, but I'm sure solo monitor and laptop players will be relieved to hear they don't need to stop doing their dailies to answer a ping.

This does make me wonder if we're about to see Discord chat show up in more games as a replacement for developers having to build a guild or clan chat system. It's not just MMO players who need to wrangle people together; I could see this being useful in other multiplayer games, like Arc Raiders or Overwatch.

All of this might be moot by the time Discord gets around to rolling out its extremely unpopular global age verification, which is supposedly happening sometime before the end of the year. If that goes awry, WoW players might be back to juggling chat apps trying to see if enough people are online to run some Mythic+ dungeons.

The director of all six Sharknado movies has a new film, and it's a Dave the Diver live-action short

clivingston@pcgamer.com (Christopher Livingston) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 19:17:31 +0000

I've got some exciting news for fans of Sharknado, Sharknado 2: The Second One, Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, and The Last Sharknado: It's About Time.

Anthony C. Ferrante, the director of all six Sharknado movies (and the upcoming Sharknado prequel, Sharknado Origins, coming soon to probably-not-a-theater) has a new film out, though it's surprisingly both shark and 'nado free. It's the official live-action film for Dave the Diver: In the Jungle. It's about 10 minutes long and you can check it out below:

Yes, it's silly. It's cheesy. The casting is pretty good, but the production values are on par with mid-range cosplay. And that's fine! Look, you don't go to Asylum, producers of proudly bad-good shark flicks, unless you want your movie to be goofy and, dare I say it, shot quickly and affordably.

Instead of sharks, the film is mostly about Dave and his pals fighting Sulong, an enormous crocodile that serves as one of the expansion's bosses. And don't worry, though Ferrante has mainly focused on sharks in his movie-making, gators are still well within his wheelhouse: he co-wrote the song "Meth Gator" for the Asylum film Meth Gator, which is about a gator on… let me check my notes… yep, meth. You can even hear the song Meth Gator in the Dave the Diver film credits. Gotta say, it kinda slaps.

(Image credit: Asylum/Mintrocket)

I'm fully on board with the cheesiness of the Dave the Diver short, with one exception: I took a bit of psychic damage from seeing the mighty Bancho depicted with a glued-on beard from Party City. I know the Asylum specializes in low-budget offerings, and that's completely fine: I've only seen the first Sharknado movie but I thought it was hilarious.

But I can't forgive that dollar-store beard. Do not disrespect Bancho again, Anthony C. Ferrante, or you will answer to me.

A small band of Nightdive rebels united to make the System Shock remake after it 'ran out of money' midway through development

joshua.wolens@futurenet.com (Joshua Wolens) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:23:47 +0000

Although my mental conception of time is convinced it came out perhaps three weeks ago, Nightdive's System Shock remake is three years old. The game released in 2023 after a long and winding road through development, consisting of various course corrections and reboots. All in all, it was eight years between the game's announcement—originally as a remaster—and players getting their hands on it.

Which is a long time, but it could have been longer! In the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine, Nightdive producer Daniel Grayshon revealed that, for a while there, odds were decent we would never get the System Shock remake at all.

By 2018, Grayshon had already been at work on various iterations of System Shock for a while, crafting and recrafting areas in accordance with whatever the project's direction was at the time. "I did feel like maybe some people—who were then with us—were trying to focus more on selling the game to a publisher to get more funding rather than actually build the game," he recalls, and after several years of wheel-spinning, things came to a head.

"The project had run out of money [in 2018]," says Grayshon. "I remember being so devastated internally. This was the big project that I was working on." But the devs weren't going to let it lie there—some of them formed La Résistance—a "small Discord group" of guerillas dedicated to getting "this game out come hell or high water."

Which wasn't the easiest gig in the world, especially for Grayshon. He was tasked with building System Shock's Citadel Station—its entire setting—in an engine he had no experience with: Unreal Engine 4. "I was going onto websites, finding tutorials, finding whatever I could just to get a foot in the door."

Not to spoil the story, but he pulled it off in the end, and the System Shock remake came out to much acclaim, albeit with a few tweaks from the original game to make things make sense in a modern engine, like doors that were no longer "paper-thin" or staircases that, well, made sense in physical reality. "It’s still very faithful to the original game," says Grayshon, "but it has a lot more staircases in it, and lot more of a spaced-out feel to it … because it just mathematically wouldn’t work [otherwise]." But it nearly wasn't anything. Thank god for that band of Nightdive System Shock die-hards, eh?

Snapdragon Reality Elite chip aims for 'up to 60% higher GPU performance, up to 30% increase in CPU performance' in VR gaming

Jess Kinghorn — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:22:31 +0000

Though I do wear glasses and I'm intrigued by the idea of techie wearables on paper, I'm far from all-in on AR glasses. Still, depending on how Qualcomm's fresh chip geared towards augmented and virtual reality headgear is implemented, I can see myself changing my mind.

Qualcomm has just revealed the Snapdragon Reality Elite, a SoC it pitches as enabling "longer-lasting, sleeker, and cooler devices." The Reality Elite will debut in the Xreal Project Aura, offering "better optical see-through, improved power efficiency, and better hand and head tracking" on the Android-based XR wearable.

But Qualcomm doesn't just have its eye on smart glasses with this chip, citing a number of performance boosts for VR headsets specifically. Compared to its XR2 Gen 2 chip that you'll find inside the Meta Quest 3, the Reality Elite purportedly enjoys "up to 60% higher GPU performance, up to 30% increase in CPU performance, and up to 160% higher NPU performance, giving developers greater flexibility to push immersive XR experiences further."

A Reality Elite-based VR headset could offer gaming at "up to 4.4K per eye at 90 frames per second," while a more straightforward XR wearable will enjoy "enhancements to video see‑through (VST) [that] reduce latency and improve image quality, helping digital content blend more naturally with the physical world." Valve's VR headset, the Steam Frame, might feel just a little bit underpowered in comparison.

Now, this wouldn't be a tech announcement in 2026 without an AI angle. The Snapdragon Reality Elite doesn't buck that trend, instead touting "up to 48 TOPS" (that's 'trillions of operations per second,' and Qualcomm further breaks it down as a measurement of AI performance here).

In the press release, Qualcomm says the beefed-up performance will "enable everything from photorealistic avatars with Gaussian Splatting and LLM‑based agents to real‑time large vision model (LVM)–driven object generation that brings dynamic digital content into the user’s environment," allowing an XR experience to supposedly respond to a user in real-time.

Besides maxed out machine-learning, the Snapdragon Reality Elite also takes aim at more practical aspects of XR wearables. For one thing, the chip aims to deliver "up to 20% longer battery life," while also being an "up to 12 degrees Celsius cooler chipset under load." In theory, that should allow for thinner, lighter, and cooler smartglasses frames. Snap's just announced Specs uses two unnamed Snapdragon chips, though perhaps those bulky frames should've been left to cook just a little bit longer.

Melgeek Real81 review

James Bentley — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:54:15 +0000

I recently had the chance to test two different Melgeek keyboards at the same time. They are the space-themed Centauri 80 and the black and gold Real 81. Though they're made by the same company, they couldn't be more different in approach.

The Centauri 80 is heavy, flashy, with a built-in OLED screen, and it costs $360. The Real 81, on the other hand, is more practical at $140, or at least as practical as you can get from a competitive gaming keyboard.

If I could compare it to keyboards I've tried before, I'd say it's a similar feel and design to Lemokey, specifically the Lemokey L4. It's small but blocky and a little chunky. It's the type of keyboard you could throw into a backpack, but you probably wouldn't want to because it's pretty heavy. Still, I don't think I'd fear it breaking on the train.

It also comes with many of the features you would want out of a competitive keyboard. It can go all the way up to 8,000 Hz (should you have the reaction speed for that to matter), and its keys are all rapid trigger capable, which means they can register presses and unregister presses based on a specific actuation. In practice, this means being able to stop walking quicker or button bash more effectively.

MelGeek Real81 specs

Switches: Honey magnetic switches
Keycaps: Transparent
Lighting: Yes
Polling rate: 8,000 Hz
Connection type: Wired
Layout: 81 keys
Weight: 1.1 kg
Price: $139

Immediately, it's a more attractive package for the average gamer than the Centauri 80. Where the Centauri shows up in the looks department and feels impressive, the Real 81 is simpler in approach. It doesn't have any gimmicks and comes in at a reasonably competitive price.

Naturally, I still wouldn't call $140 cheap, or even budget, but the Gamakay x NaughShark NS68 sits in a league of its own for 8,000 Hz pricing. And Gamakay give up build quality in return for that super cheap price point. $140 feels about right for the keyboard I've had my mitts on, factoring specs and build.

Future

In the looks department, the Real 81 has a few flourishes, with a gold trim and a small LED bar down the bottom right, but it's not too flashy either. It's all black otherwise, and the keys have a dark gold lettering.

Unfortunately, like the Centauri 80, the Real 81 is quite hard to make out in a dark environment. If I don't have at least a light on in the room, I have to rely mostly on feel to make out where the keys are. This isn't a huge problem for me, as I'm fairly familiar with where to put my hands, but it's still an odd issue to have. Keys are, thankfully, well spaced and easy to get to, though.

Future

The RGB underneath keys does look pretty good, and that's because its keys are translucent. It even has per-key RGB, which can be adjusted in Melgeek's own software. That software can also be used to set custom controls, which does help make up for the lack of any media buttons on the keyboard itself. You can download that software, or use it on the web, and the web app is super solid. I like that customisation is straightforward and easy here. The Real 81 is simple to use out of the box and doesn't even require software, past the first update.

As far as typing feel is concerned, the Real 81 performs okay. Keys are a tad springy for my liking, and are less smooth than I would have hoped. I feel like I'm simply putting in a little more effort than I expect when trying to bash them down in a flurry for a piece of news. Mine came equipped with Melgeek's Honey magnetic switches, and Honey is an apt name, as they just feel a tad sticky. The space bar and caps lock also have an uncomfortable clack feeling, which is less nice than the somewhat muted sounds of the rest of the keyboard. I wouldn't say it's bad, as far as sound is concerned, but just inconsistent.

Melgeek employs a 5-layer sound-dampening gasket mount to help flatten that sound, and it's mostly rather satisfying. The majority of keys have a 'tick' sound that's just quite enough that it hasn't bothered my partner on a late night when inspiration has suddenly struck me. The feel of the keys would certainly send me to bed before the sound would, anyway.

Future

In games, the Real 81 does perform pretty well, though. Keys are responsive and super quick in Counter-Strike 2, and I can stop walking nearly instantaneously. Your reticule is smaller when standing still in Counter-Strike 2, so this feels like a boon to me. I'd say competitive games overall perform quite nicely. The slightly tougher keys are actually pretty solid in the likes of Battlefield, where a stray misclick is rather common.

Buy if...

✅ You're a competitive player who wants a chunky board: Thanks to 8,000 Hz polling and snappy rapid trigger switches, the Real 81 is a solid competitive pick. It's also blocky, heavy, and with little flex, so you could theoretically throw it around the room.

Don't buy if…

❌ You type a lot: Though not awful, I found the honey switches to be a tad cumbersome to use, and not as smooth as I'd want for a day of typing

❌ You can't touch type: In the dark, the Real 81's keys are genuinely quite tough to make out.

In more casual single-player games, I find the Real 81 does its job, but it's less comfortable to use after a few hours than other keyboards I've had my hands on. That's because the springy keys just require a bit more effort. Longer gaming sessions feel ever so slightly tiresome.

I noticed this after a few hours with roguelite city builder Super Fantasy Kingdom, where I just wished I could control it all from my mouse, as the combination of its hardy keys and my leaned posture made it feel like a little more effort than necessary.

Most keyboards have to make compromises, but I can't help but feel like Melgeek's compromises are by accident here. It's a solid set of competitive keys, but not amazing for everyday typing. It has vibrant RGB and gold lettering…which you will struggle to see in the dark. It has a solid dampening solution that works well… but not on every key.

The Real 81's monkey paw curls on almost every good side, and there's certainly enough good to outweigh the bad points, but there's still far more bad than I was expecting. Or hoping for.

Apparently some of the best gaming mice aren't staying at the right DPI when moved slowly

Jacob Fox — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:24:16 +0000

According to one PC peripheral YouTuber, some of the best gaming mice on the market that use the latest sensors aren't sticking at the DPI they're set to (via MouseCast). At least, not when moved at a very slow speed.

An X user noted the problem a couple of years ago, pointing out the problematic feature in the firmware for some popular mouse sensors: the PixArt PAW3395, PAW3950, and PAW3399. Designed to prevent stationary cursor jitter, the 'DPI downshift' feature (as the X user phrased it) apparently works by throttling higher DPIs down to a lower one for when velocity is very low.

The potential problem with this is that one might intentionally be moving the mouse very slightly and very slowly, in which case the DPI will be lower than you've set it to and you'll get a slower movement than you might expect.

The YouTuber, pandahling, explains that there are three kinds of DPI downshift you might see. One that's binary, where it downshifts to a threshold (usually 7,500 DPI) when above this DPI and at very low velocity. The second type is caused by a profile switch in the firmware which changes things somewhat but still means that most DPI settings will be subject to downshift at low velocities.

The third kind of DPI downshift is much more slight, but apparently affects every these sensors at every DPI setting, not just at high ones. The YouTuber notes that all four PAW3950 mice they bought recently suffer from this one, as well as the Viper V4 Pro, the best gaming mouse on the market, which uses a newer, custom PixArt sensor.

The mice tested were found to have a 2–5% downshift in DPI, except for the Viper V4 Pro which was found to have a much higher 8–10% downshift. All only when at very low velocity, of course.

(Image credit: panDAHLING @ YouTube)

The graph above, from Pandahling's video, shows MouseTester results for the Viper V4 Pro at 800 DPI and 8K polling.

The vertical line on the left represents when the mouse moves quickly, and the slope on the right represents it moving the same small distance but very slowly. As you can see, there are fewer 'counts' of deviation from a stationary position when the mouse is moved slowly, which means there are fewer inputs registered by the mouse.

In other words: very slow movement means a decrease in DPI. That's why the slope ends lower on the right than it started on the left. The same distance has been travelled, but there were less dot/count registers on the slow return journey, and MouseTester therefore assumes that it hasn't returned to its starting spot.

I use a mouse with a PAW3950—the Zowie EC2-DW—and haven't noticed any problems, even when making small and slow micro-adjustments when holding an angle in Counter-Strike. But I only play at a low DPI of 800—if it's good enough for CS2 pros then it's good enough for me. And the PAW3950 seemingly doesn't suffer quite as much as the Viper V4 Pro reportedly does from this third type of DPI downshifting that occurs even at lower DPIs.

I must say, I'm not sure just how much of an effect such slight downshifting would have in practice given I don't tend to move my mouse gradually at a very low velocity—I'll have to try it out once the Viper V4 Pro is back from its merry travels at the PC Gamer offices. But one recommendation for those with an affected sensor, unless the manufacturer has fixed it in a firmware update, might be to keep your mouse DPI at least below 7,500 to make the first two types of more dramatic DPI downshift less likely.

My quick test of Lumen Lite shows that it's probably good news for ray-traced gaming on handheld PCs, but I suspect that it will be used everywhere because of the pressure developers are now under

Nick Evanson — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:14:33 +0000

At its State of Unreal event in Chicago, Epic Games officially unveiled Unreal Engine 5.8, and one of its key new features is Lumen Lite: a scalability setting that targets the use of ray-traced global illumination for the Nintendo Switch 2, with the goal of 60 fps. As the feature also works for PCs, I thought I'd dive in and check out just what the fuss is all about. Or if indeed any fuss ought to be made.

By default, the Unreal Engine editor gives developers a simplified way of checking out various graphics settings to see how they affect performance and visual quality. There are 11 separate options that can be tweaked, but the new Lumen Lite mode only affects global illumination (GI) and reflections, as these are the main things that Epic's ray tracing system affects.

In older versions of UE, switching to 'Medium' GI and reflections fully disables Lumen, but in the latest release, the same setting enables Lumen GI, though reflections are still screen-spaced, i.e. SSR. Ray-traced global illumination is normally the preserve of the 'High' or 'Epic' settings, so to make it more performant for low-end GPUs, Lumen Lite replaces a key stage in the lighting process with something quicker but lower in quality than the usual system.

I first caught a glimpse of this in action via Skydek's YouTube channel, earlier this year, and the end results looked really promising, as Lumen Light was giving up to 40% more performance for very little difference in visual quality. But watching the demo, set in a fairly simple environment and using software Lumen, I kept wondering how much of a difference it would make when hardware Lumen is used and in a graphics-heavy scenario.

To that end, I fired up Unreal Engine 5.6 and 5.8, and used Epic's Electric Dreams Environment demo to see Lumen Lite in action. Now, as I'm merely a UE hobbyist, I did nothing more than install all the assets for each UE build and check out the performance in the viewport.

This is very much a 'worst-case scenario' or, if you prefer, a 'Nick is rather lazy' scenario, as the displayed performance is not even remotely representative of how it would all be in an actual game, and I've just clicked a few buttons, rather than directly adjusting the code for the graphics settings and then building the full demo.

Anyway, let's set the scene, as so to speak, by seeing everything in action in Unreal Engine 5.8, using Epic scalability and materials. It's not the very highest setting you can use, but in the case of Lumen, it's for targeting consoles at 30 fps. I've used a Core Ultra 270K Plus with a GeForce RTX 4080 Super, so not console-like at all, but as you can see, it certainly looks great, albeit with a rather low frame rate.

Now, let's take a look at the same situation and settings, except with 'Medium' used for GI and reflections, i.e. Lumen Lite. The first thing you should notice is that the performance is roughly 25% better, and the overall lighting is pretty good. Only the screen space reflections spoil the picture somewhat, but that's what you get for not using ray tracing in those areas.

Before you get your pitchforks out over the fact that Epic says that Lumen Lite is "twice as fast as Lumen High quality", it's worth noting that only the GI and reflections processing is twice as fast. What we're seeing here is that everything else in the UE editor viewport demo is exceptionally heavy, which is why there's only a 25% uplift, rather than a 100% one.

I was keen to compare UE5.8 and Lumen Lite to UE5.6, as that iteration was notable for targeting more performance across the board, and since 'Medium' GI and reflections in this version just disable Lumen altogether, I'd expect to see a big difference in the frame rate for a notable loss in visual fidelity. Well, that's exactly what I got. In fact, it's quite remarkable just how bad it looks compared to using Lumen, with heavy flickering across almost all objects.

So I tried it all again, switching to 'High' GI but leaving reflections SSR-based by using the 'Medium' setting. Notice the immediate improvement in how it all looks? More importantly, can you see that the use of Lumen GI doesn't hurt the performance too much?

Of course, this is all on a high-end gaming PC, not a Switch 2 or a handheld device like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally. The former has more than enough resources to hand for the ray tracing part of the whole rendering chain to not be a problem, as demonstrated by the difference between Lumen Epic and Medium quality above.

But it did make me wonder whether Lumen Lite is a little bit unnecessary, and that a healthy dose of good old-fashioned optimization will be just as good. If I were a Switch 2 developer, I'd probably say, "No, Lumen Lite is very necessary and a great idea," because I only have to worry about two hardware configurations: docked and handheld mode.

When it comes to making PC games, it's a whole different kettle of fish, and while Lumen Lite might be useful as the default mode for 'Steam Deck' settings, every other hardware config really needs careful tweaking to account for the differences between the numerous models of AMD, Intel, and Nvidia GPUs that can support Lumen (software or hardware).

If a studio is going to dedicate the necessary time and resources to doing all of that, then they probably won't use Lumen Lite and instead will fine-tune things by hand, so to speak. However, now that we're in a period where many studios are being shut down and hardware costs are ballooning, any game devs using UE5.8 will probably just stick to the basics because of time and cost constraints.

Epic almost certainly added Lumen Lite on the basis of feedback from developers, looking for a quick and simple solution to ray-traced lighting on the least capable hardware. Well, they've got exactly what they asked for, and it is genuinely useful. I just fear that the 'one-click solution' is going to be heavily used instead of what we'd all like to see.

Valve's latest SteamOS is out with 'initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware'

joshua.wolens@futurenet.com (Joshua Wolens) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:01:44 +0000

After a standard spell in beta, the latest iteration of SteamOS—Valve's Arch-based Linux distro for use on Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame—has hit the big three-eight. Or, well, three-point-eight. SteamOS 3.8 is out, is what I'm saying, and if you turn your face to the wind and inhale, you can detect the first notes of upcoming hardware.

Specifically, the Steam Machine, for which SteamOS 3.8 brings "initial support," as well as support for waking a SteamOS device from sleep via a connected Steam Controller. Alas, no word on the Steam Frame in these patch notes, but consider me as eager as ever to get my hands on Valve's living room box, presuming the RAM crisis has not made it cost $5,000 dollars.

But this is a pretty big release even excluding the GabeCube stuff. I'll stick the full patch notes down below, but there are a number of tweaks and new features that leap out to me as a longtime Deck user. Chief among them is that yer Deck now defaults to Wayland rather than X11 in desktop mode.

Those are two different display servers for Linux desktops—the gubbins that make your GUI function when you're not working straight in the virtual console like god intended. To cut to the chase: X11 is the old one (and as such, tends to have greater compatibility and work better for some particular tasks, at least for now) and Wayland is the new one (though it's been out in some form for nearly 20 years)—it's more secure and generally a bit more dextrous for most tasks.

So swapping to Wayland-by-default means that SteamOS has reduced "several cases of reduced performance in Desktop Mode compared to Game Mode" on your Steam Deck, desktop mode also has better scaling on TVs, support for external HDR displays, and support for VRR displays. The kind of stuff you might care about if you were making an OS for a device that's expected to live underneath people's TVs.

There are also new BIOSes for the LCD and OLED Decks, which will be installed as part of the general 3.8 update when you run it. The LCD one, sorry to say, isn't too exciting, save that it adds preliminary support for device hibernation. OLED, though? Valve's updated the Deck so that the charging LED now respects your device charging settings. If you set your Deck to top out at 80% charge for battery health reasons, then the LED will turn green—meaning fully charged—when it reaches that point, rather than remaining standard 'charging' white for eternity.

All good stuff, then. Here are the full patch notes for your perusal.

General

Updated Arch system base
Initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware
Added support for waking from sleep via connected Steam Controller
Substantially improved speed of future OS updates on high-speed connections
Improved support for screen casting in Game Mode (e.g. OBS/Discord)
Fixed dropdown menus not appearing in some games
Fixed excessive trackpad sensitivity on certain early Steam Deck LCD models
Improved support for games that attempt to open PDF files in external viewers
Fixed an issue where video output could become frozen while using Remote Play
Fixed a possible session crash when using Game Recording with certain "Maximum video height" settings
Fixed an issue affecting certain titles (such as "SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide") where the game window could have an incorrect position
Fixed closing certain titles (such as "STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor™" and Starfield) resulting in a session crash
Improved support for certain USB racing wheels and USB devices that boot in a non-standard mode
- Frequently these are devices that appear as USB storage devices with a driver installer, and must be switched to their normal mode by the OS
Steam Deck controller firmware updates now display update progress on the splash screen
Fixes issue on specific Steam Deck revisions where firmware updates could render the left controller inoperative for that session
Numerous stability and security updates

Display / Performance

Updated graphics driver with performance and stability fixes
Added preliminary support for HDMI VRR for devices with native HDMI output
Fixed an issue where "Allow Tearing" wouldn't have the intended effect in certain configurations
Improved VRR frame pacing
Fixed FSR badge remaining off in the performance overlay, even if it was actually active
Fixed a case where per-app performance settings would intermittently fail to apply when launching a game
Added missing graphics features needed for titles such as "Crimson Desert"
Fixed an issue on certain TCL TVs where the display may remain blank using the Steam Deck Dock when VRR is enabled (requires a Dock firmware update)

Bluetooth / WiFi

Fixed a case where WiFi performance could become degraded until the device was put to sleep or manually reconnected
Re-re-enable Bluetooth Wake for Steam Deck LCD
- Fix for more spurious wake issues that were present in earlier attempts

Audio

Detect HDMI channel count and expose surround configuration if available
Add a setting to allow using Bluetooth headset mics (Bluetooth playback quality will be worse while capture is active)
Restore internal audio device on reboot if set to "Off" in desktop mode
Increase suspend timeout for HDMI devices so initial audio isn't cut off after a few seconds of inactivity
Fixed a bug with switching input devices when a wired headset is plugged in
Fixed an issue where audio underruns could be experienced after sleep/resume
Fixed a bug on Steam Deck OLED where rebooting would occasionally cause a loss of speaker output until rebooted again
Fixed a case where FPS limits would fail to apply when downscaling games from a higher resolution

Accessibility

Added an option to force mono audio output

Desktop Mode

KDE Plasma updated to version 6.4.3 from 6.2.5, and now uses wayland by default
- Fixes several cases of reduced performance in Desktop Mode compared to Game Mode
- Improved support for rotated displays
- Better scale factor out of the box on TVs
- Adds support for external HDR displays
- Adds support for VRR displays
- Adds support per-display scale factor
- For more information, see Plasma release announcements
Keyboard layout and language are now obeying Game Mode settings
Improved windowing behavior for games running in Proton
Fixed a bug in Desktop Mode causing previously open applications to not be remembered when using the 'Return to Gaming Mode' shortcut to logout
Fixes for experimental nested desktop mode
Fixed Desktop Mode night color settings inappropriately remaining active when switching back to Game Mode

System Firmware

Includes Steam Deck LCD BIOS v133
- Security updates
- Added "Memory Power Down" setup option
- Preliminary support for hibernation
Includes Steam Deck OLED BIOS v114
- Security updates
- Charging LED now changes color when charge limit is reached, rather than only at 100%

Non-Deck

Improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms
Greatly improved video memory management on discrete GPU platforms
Fixed a compatibility issue with the SteamOS chainloader that could cause a boot failure on some desktop systems with recent UEFI firmware
Power button short and long presses now supported across a wide variety of devices
Improved controller support for OneXPlayer F1 series, GPD Win 5, GPD Win Mini, Anbernic Win600, OrangePi NEO, and Lenovo Legion Go
Added controller support for OneXPlayer X1 series and Lenovo Legion Go 2
Added system and controller firmware update support for the Lenovo Legion Go 2
Added preliminary charge limiting support for Legion Go, Legion Go S, and Legion Go 2 - currently only accessible in Desktop Mode
Added controller RGB LED color settings for the Lenovo Legion Go 2
Added controller, TDP control, and speaker audio support for the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally series
Reduced handheld controller input latency from 5-8ms to 100-500us
Night mode, color vibrance, and color temperature sliders in Steam now work on Z2E and later AMD APUs
Seamless boot fixes for Z2E and later AMD APUs
Automatically handle internally rotated display for some third-party handhelds
Improved motion control support for handhelds with BMI260 IMUs
SD card reliability improvements for some third-party handhelds, including ASUS ROG Xbox Ally, Legion Go 1, Legion Go S, Legion Go 2, and MSI Claw
Fixed washed out colors for Zotac and OneXPlayer handhelds with OLED
Fixed some GPU hangs on Phoenix APU devices (Tales of Arise, Octopath Traveler II)
Fixed ASUS ROG Ally power consumption from fingerprint reader while shut down
Fixed trackpad losing functionality after sleep/resume on the Legion Go
Fixed spurious wake-ups when using a Logitech Bolt receiver
Add controller support for MSI Claw devices (A1M, 7 AI+ A2VM, 8 AI+ A2VM, A8 BZ2EM)
Add controller support for OneXPlayer APEX and X1 series.
Improved gyro response for devices that use AccelGyro3D (Legion Go 1, Claw A1M)
Fixed a system crash on international Asus ROG Xbox Ally models
Fix Bluetooth not working on some Intel handhelds
Add initial firmware for upcoming Intel handhelds

Developer

Desktop Mode now uses Wayland by default
- X11 support may still be selected via Steam developer settings, or via `steamosctl`
Updated Linux kernel to 6.16
Steam now uses steamos-manager to query available desktop sessions and trigger desktop session switching
Added support for setting the desktop password in developer settings
Initial support for running as a Virtual Machine guest (virtio guest drivers)
Added support for third-party devices to trigger the SteamOS boot menu via EFI variable
Added `custom-update` verb to `atomupd-manager` for easier testing of specific builds
System reports now include more audio debug information
Initial support for LAVD CPU scheduler via `steamosctl set-cpu-scheduler lavd`

'Many people want to use VPNs for privacy—that is important—but we know that some children use them to get around restrictions': UK government considering VPN ban

Jess Kinghorn — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:53:22 +0000

In the UK, the Online Safety Act now requires that websites verify the age of its users through checks often carried out by third-party vendors. Personally, I'm trying to avoid handing over either scans of my government ID or face as long as possible and, so far that's resulted in me being locked out of my Bluesky DM's. Though not ideal, it's easily remedied by hopping onto a VPN—though future restrictions could mean I'll have to rethink that strategy.

The UK government is considering an Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying that the ban could take effect as soon as spring next year. As for the much nearer future, Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told BBC Breakfast earlier this week, "We will make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions."

To be clear, no specific restrictions have yet been announced and Kendall sounded somewhat cautious about an outright ban during a parliament debate that took place the same day. "I have commissioned further research about their usage. There are really important issues to balance here," she says. "Many people want to use VPNs for privacy—that is important—but we know that some children use them to get around restrictions. I will come back to that in July in our response to the consultation."

So, we'll have to wait until next month for anything definite, but it's hard not to feel like a full ban on VPNs is already on the table. If that does come to pass, more than the contents of my Bluesky inbox will be at stake.

Utah in the US has already tried to implement a full VPN ban (though this was postponed until September after Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, challenged the law in court). The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticised the Utah's proposed ban back in May, saying, "The legal risk could push the site to either ban all known VPN IPs, or to mandate age verification for every visitor globally. This would subject millions of users to invasive identity checks or blocks to their VPN use, regardless of where they actually live."

'We will make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions'Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told #BBCBreakfast she will outline more details next month about the social media ban on under 16s in the UK - as well as additional restrictions on Virtual Private… pic.twitter.com/QvRVFGeOIPJune 16, 2026

In other words, the UK could just be the next domino after Utah, potentially setting off a chain reaction that affects users around the world. Obviously, VPNs are used for more than getting around age verification checks to clap eyes upon your direct messages or 'adult material.' As a journalist, VPNs can also be a hugely valuable tool to protect my privacy online.

Age checks themselves can be a privacy nightmare in themselves, with the security breach that exposed the personal info of 70,000 Discord users last year being one case in point. To quote Evin McMullen, co-founder of age verification provider Privado ID, many age verification methods "are over exposing data to prove a simple point." Our Jacob spoke to McMullen as well as a number of other age verification specialists to explore some of the alternatives to our current privacy nightmare.

On one hand, I do understand some of the thinking behind the UK's planned ban more broadly—I won't pretend that having completely unfettered internet access in my youth was only ever beneficial. However, as I've written about before, I'm sceptical that age verification checks or other attempts to seemingly quarantine children online is the route to take. To echo the words of my wider PC Gamer colleagues in this group piece, instead of locking the kids out of online communities, perhaps world governments should make any attempt at all to better regulate social media giants.

SanDisk's latest Optimus gaming SSDs start at $799 MSRP for the 2 TB model and you don't even get Gen 5 speeds for that

Jeremy Laird — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:44:08 +0000

That we're in something of a crisis when it comes to PC storage and memory prices isn't news. But the pricing and specifications of SanDisk's new gamer-focused SSDs for PC and console are still pretty shocking.

The dubious fun kicks off with the SanDisk Optimus GX 7100X. It's a PCIe Gen 4 M.2 drive rated up to 7,250 MB/s for reads and 6,900 MB/s for writes. And it has a list price of $800 for the 2 TB config. The only other model is a 4 TB drive for $1,580. Ouch.

The drive is at least based on TLC NAND, rather than cheapo QLC memory, and comes with a five-year warranty. But still. Currently, SanDisk is offering the drive at a "discount" on its website, with the 2 TB model slashed to $630.

That's quite a bit off the MSRP, but it's still very silly money for a 2 TB Gen 4 M.2 drive, even in the current climate. Currently on our Prime Day SSD deals page, you can snag a 2 TB WD Black SN8100, which is an uber-fast Gen 5 drive, for $386, making the SanDisk drive look hopelessly over priced.

Is there anything that justifies the incredible $800 sticker price and still-silly $600-plus sale price? Well, it's "officially licensed" for the Asus ROG Xbox Ally consoles. But to the best of my knowledge, a generic Gen 4 SSD works fine in the Xbox Ally, so I'm not really clear on the real benefit there. I don't think there are even warranty implications for the Ally.

You really don't want to know how much the SanDisk drive for the PS5 costs... (Image credit: SanDisk)

As if this wasn't bad enough, I give you the SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 850P. This little beauty, another M2.2 SSD, kicks off at 1 TB. So, you might hope it's a bit more accessible. Yes, and yet no.

The 1 TB model has a list price of—wait for it—$475. The 2 TB model? That's $950. And this, ladies and germs, is still a Gen 4 drive, rated at 7,300 MB/s for reads and 6,600 MB/s for writes.

Again, there's a lower current "sale" price for the 1 TB model of $380. But that is still bananas for a 1 TB Gen 4 drive. Yes, that pertains even now in the AI-fuelled memory and storage crisis. And again, our Prime Day SSD deals page shows the way forward here, with the WD Black SN7100 1TB yours for $189.

The Optimus GX PRO 850P is also "officially licensed", this time for the Sony PS5 console, which still doesn't carry much more meaning given the PS5 should work with any 4-lane PCIe Gen 4 M.2 NVMe drive in capacities between 250 GB and 8 TB.

It has a chunky looking heatsink which is presumably optimised for the PS5's thermals. But, still, it's very hard to fathom where the money is going. For the record, SanDisk will do you an Optimus M.2 drive with PCIe Gen 5 support, the Optimus GX PRO 8100. That lists at a scarcely believable $525 for the 1 TB model, $350 on "sale."

The latter actually makes this Gen 5 1 TB drive cheaper than the Gen 4 1 TB Optimus GX PRO 850P in terms of current offered pricing on SanDisk's website. But, whatever. The best one can suggest in all this is that SanDisk knows where the market is headed and has decided to get out ahead of it with these hugely inflated MSRPs.

Presumably they'll look "normal" in a few months and while other drive makers are crank up their prices, SanDisk can style out some strictly true "discounts" at these remarkably high prices. Oh well!

Dave the Diver: In the Jungle's cutscenes are even hornier than they are in the base game

clivingston@pcgamer.com (Christopher Livingston) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:21:42 +0000

I've said it before and I'll say it again: cutscenes are the worst. There I am, sitting down to play a game, ready to tap some keys and wiggle some thumbsticks and click my mouse—when suddenly the game I'm playing decides it's actually a movie and all I can do for the next few minutes is watch.

You might think I'm too fidgety, too impatient, or that I simply don't have the attention span to sit there doing nothing while a cutscene plays. But you'd be wrong! It's the cutscenes that are the problem. They simply suck.

Except when they don't suck, of course, like in Dave the Diver, which is the only game I can remember playing where I was left wishing there were more cutscenes instead of zero cutscenes. Dave the Diver's cutscenes were so energetic, so fantastically animated, so surprising and funny and occasionally kinda horny that I loved every one of them and wished there were more.

Well, I got my wish. For the past week or so I've been playing Dave the Diver's new DLC, In the Jungle, which is not only completely rad but has some amazing cutscenes that are somehow even more wild, and more horny, than the cutscenes in the base game.

Rather than watching them, I'd urge you to actually play the DLC and discover them for yourself—but I'm not your boss, so sure, go and have a look below a few cutscenes I've selected from Dave's new adventure. First up, check out what a skeptical villager thought of the alligator tail meal Bancho cooked up for her:

I mean… Wow. That lady definitely had a massive orgasm while tasting that dish, right? It's not subtle, it's not subtext, that food was so good she straight-up nutted. That's not the only horny cutscene in Dave the Diver: In the Jungle, but it's definitely the horniest. It also made me realize I haven't really had a great meal in a long time. Maybe I need to try some new restaurants.

Aside from people climaxing while eating, there's a new character, Muna, sort of a gadget-maker who enjoys her work to an extremely high degree. From time to time Dave will have to approach her about upgrading his "jungle gun," which he uses to assassinate fish. Muna really dives into her work and her scenes are all incredibly animated and fun. Here's just one of several weapon upgrade scenes:

Dave's little shiver at the end. Do you think he… nah.

There are lots more excellent cutscenes in the DLC, which is surprisingly hefty for just a $10 price tag. There are naturally several scenes of Bancho dramatically enhancing recipes, there's a lovely boat ride scene at the start, a great car chase scene in the middle, and a rather dramatic cutscene near the end—but I won't show you any of those. I don't want to spoil any more than I have to!

OK, fine, here's one more of my favorites. I won't give you the context, all I'll say is you won't be able to guess what it signifies without playing the DLC, yet it makes perfect sense in the game itself. Enjoy!

Steam sale dates: When's the next event?
Epic Store free games: What's free right now?
Free PC games: The best freebies you can grab
2026 games: This year's upcoming releases
Free Steam games: No purchase necessary

GTA 6 pre-orders open next week, and to celebrate Rockstar has revealed its official cover art

Elie Gould — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:04:39 +0000

It may sound impossible, but the wait for Grand Theft Auto 6 is almost over. After a couple of delays, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has reassured fans that GTA 6 will release on November 19 this year, and now we have the pre-order date to prove it.

Rockstar just randomly—hold on a second, let me check what moon phase we're in—yup, randomly announced that pre-orders for GTA 6 will start on June 25, which is just a week away. Everyone, try to keep your composure.

Alongside the pre-order announcement came the official cover art reveal. It's nothing particularly surprising, as it follows the same design we've seen before with multiple fluorescent images spliced onto the cover. It's almost a shot for shot recreation of Vice City's cover art, with a couple of images swapped around.

This time we've got our main protagonists, Jason Duval and Lucua Caminos, a speed boat, a sports car, a helicopter, a hot chick, and then a couple of dudes with guns and motorbikes. Oh, there's also gator, because Florida—I mean Leonida.

Then, if you look extra close at the tattoo under the woman's bikini strap you can see it reads "Vice Baby". This checks out as GTA 6 takes place in the fictional state of Leonida, which is based off of Florida, and will let players return to the sunny streets of Vice City, the fictional city which is based off of Miami.

But aside from nitpicking at the details, players just seem elated to have any new information thrown their way, which is understandable considering we haven't had anything major since GTA 6's second trailer which came out over a year ago now. But now all we have to do is wait one week for pre-orders to open and then 21 more weeks for the game to release—easy!

GTA 6: Everything we know
GTA 6 map: Cruisin' Leonida
GTA 6 cars: The lineup
GTA 5 mods: Revved up
GTA 5 cheats: Phone it in
San Andreas cheats: All the codes

Gabe Newell buys $70.8 million mansion in Florida, and naturally it has a dock for his superyachts and a personal tunnel to the ocean

harvey.randall@futurenet.com (Harvey Randall) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:57:41 +0000

Gabe Newell, yacht enthusiast and the founder of one of the biggest videogame storefronts and developers on the planet, has just bought a big stonking house with his seemingly bottomless well of "I own Steam" money.

The news comes courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, which reveals that Newell has bought a property in Manalapan, Florida, for $70.8 million from Cindy and Ron McMackin. The home's previous owners certainly didn't get a bad deal, mind, having purchased it for $39 million in 2020. Ah, to be on the property ladder and to make almost $32 million just by living somewhere.

Anyway, the estate—which has about 20,000 square footage—is located on the Intracoastal Waterway and has a tunnel directly connecting the house to a slice of the ocean, as you can see in the video embedded above. It also, naturally, has a dock and boat lift. Likely for Newell's superyachts (or indeed, a smaller boat to ferry him back and forth) one of which he purchased for $500 million back in May.

It also enjoys a substantial outdoor pool, which is appropriately snazzy for a mansion that costs more than you or I'll likely see in our lifetimes. On the whole, it's an appropriate domicile for Newell, who has taken up a lot of scuba diving in recent years. Back in July of last year, Newell confirmed in a YouTube interview that his daily routine was the following:

"I get up, I work, I go scuba-diving, work some more, [then] either go on a second scuba dive or I go to the gym and work out. I live on a boat so I just hang out with everybody on the boat. Then I work."

So, yeah—snagging a mansion where you can live on both your big boat(s) and an actual demesne seems like a logical next step. I'm happy for him—and not at all jealous of his routine scuba breaks, which I tried to suggest as an expense for the team here at PC Gamer and was told "Harvey, we cannot afford a superyacht". Life is deeply and mercilessly unfair, sometimes.

We now have teardown pics of the Steam Frame controller and it looks like it could be pretty repairable

Jacob Fox — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:51:19 +0000

The FCC has just made public some exhibits for the left Steam Frame controller (via SadlyItsBradley). We've known the FCC ID 2AES4-1013 refers to the left controller for the upcoming Valve VR headset for a while, but we now have iFixit-style teardown pictures of it, courtesy of Valve itself.

Things could presumably still change, but the main takeaway is that it looks like the controller could actually be pretty repairable.

The pictures show internals made of multiple little PCBs, rather unlike the Index's giant, finnicky PCB chunk that requires a soldering iron for some repairs. It looks like the new controller will have plenty of threaded screws, too, and everything looks pretty easy to access.

This isn't too surprising, given we were very impressed with the new Steam Controller's repairability. Our Jacob Ridley did a teardown of the Steam Controller and concluded: "Valve has shown it cares about repairability in the past and that holds true for the Steam Controller... Many parts of the Steam Controller should be an easy replacement with minimal fuss, especially once spare parts are available to purchase."

Regarding the Steam Frame more generally, Valve has been sticking to its summertime launch goal, and a recent shipping manifest suggests that Frame imports are already arriving in Valve's US warehouse. The new FCC filings are just further evidence of a hopefully imminent launch.

Valve, FCC

We still don't know how the headset will be priced, however. One thing to note on this front is that it's a standalone device, meaning it has to have memory so it can, well, run games—16 GB of LPDDR5, no less. In other words, it won't be immune to the RAMpocalypse.

Still, every little helps, and not having to fork out for a whole new controller if anything goes wrong would be a nice way to potentially keep costs a little lower, even if indirectly.

D&D-inspired Critical Role's homegrown videogame is coming along well, says Laura Bailey: 'There's a lot of work being done'

harvey.randall@futurenet.com (Harvey Randall) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:28:19 +0000

Back in July of last year, Dungeons & Dragons livestream megafranchise Critical Role announced that it'd be working with AdHoc to make its very own video game based in Exandria—having already partnered with the company in the past to bring the very solid superhero management sim, Dispatch, to life.

It's a gambit I always knew would be coming down the pipeline, given how tremendously and immediately-wellfunded the studio's Amazon Prime series is—but it's gone from likely inevitability to actual reality in the past few years, with CEO (and current nama paladin) Travis Willingham celebrating the crystallisation of that dream back in 2024.

And judging by Laura Bailey's words in a recent episode of Mythical Kitchen's Last Meals, that project's coming along swimmingly. Bailey, who currently plays the pixie rogue Thimble (as well as Jester Lavorre and Vex'ahlia in past campaigns) tells Josh Scherer that while she's gotta keep things close to her chest, the project's moving and shaking. Which isn't just me paraphrasing:

"Things are shakin', they're movin', they're shakin', I can't say anything else other than that," Bailey says, though she does give us a morsel more info: "There's a lot of work being done and a lot of talks happening, and a lot of fun things I get to look at—and I can't say anything else."

And hey, listen—it's a crumb, but there's a lot of difference between announcing you'll be making a videogame and the actual pre-production (or even early production) process gaining steam.

We also happen to know, based on a Variety interview back in 2025, that the scale of said videogame aimed to be relatively humble—with a development time of a couple years planned. This is pure conjecture, but the fact we're now a year on that two-year timeline makes me believe that when Bailey says that things are moving and shaking? That means quite a lot.

It's also just nice to know it's coming along well. It's been a dire summer for videogames, and I've been an avid watcher of Critical Role since its first season—staying up late to watch its finale and weeping my rogue-loving eyes out. So the prospect of a fully-fledged Exandrian videogame has me more than a little excited, even if it feels inevitable.

Snap unveils AR glasses which CEO describes as 'highly wearable' in clip that visibly shows the chunky frames crushing his ears

Jess Kinghorn — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:27:30 +0000

Occasionally in hardware and technology reporting, I'm left to wonder if everyone else is in on a joke I'm not privy to. Today is one of those days. Snap, the company behind the instant messaging app Snapchat, has just unveiled its own augmented reality glasses.

Called Specs, the frames are pitched partially as an alternative to looking down at your phone screen all day, and a pair will set you back $2,195.

The goal was arguably to contain some serious hardware grunt inside a wearable, but the result is a pair of seriously chunky frames—not just to contain components but also likely to stop the whole thing from overheating. Let me set up the punchline: In this CNBC clip, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel describes Specs as both capable and "highly wearable," while the dorky-looking frames visibly crush down his ears.

Now that's a real howler. But before we completely dismiss this wearable effort, let's get into a few more choice details. For one thing, the lenses are apparently built to feel like "a 24-inch desktop monitor when you're working, or a 115-inch home cinema screen placed about 10 feet away when you're watching a movie." For another, the main selling point of Specs is that it's an all-in-one device, "with no puck and no tether," unlike some other major players' AR glasses projects we've seen recently.

Part of the frame's bulk can be attributed to the fact that it's housing not one but two Snapdragon processors. "One is dedicated to computer vision and the other is dedicated to running Lenses," Snap writes, "Together, they enable fast hand tracking, low latency, and responsive interactions that help digital content feel anchored in the real world. Specs deliver 7-millisecond motion-to-photon latency, verified through advanced robotic measurement systems."

@cnbc
♬ original sound - cnbc

In terms of battery life, you can expect a measly four hours of mixed use, "including audio and video playback, Lenses, AI assistance, Bluetooth notifications, and more." That said, the included charging case can offer four additional charges while out and about, holding a total of 20 hours of battery life. That's…still not great—though you could argue it avoids becoming yet another easy punchline.

What's perhaps less laughable for Snap itself is the hit its share price took when it revealed Specs. The original unveiling took place on June 16, and you'll notice a decline into today. This caps off six straight sessions of losses, according to Seeking Alpha. To be clear, I'm not faulting Specs' all-in-one ambitions on paper—it's more the fact that in practice, Snap is trying to deny a reality we can all see very obviously bearing down on its CEO's ears.

Valve upgrades AMD's 9070 XT GPU in the Steam Hardware Survey, finally allowing the credit it deserves

Jeremy Laird — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:22:31 +0000

Valve's Steam Hardware survey is no stranger to data anomalies. And yet it remains an undeniable source of interest and intrigue if you're into PC hardware. So, here's the latest twist. AMD's Radeon 9070 XT is subject to an implausibly big upgrade in terms of its user numbers in the latest survey for May, suggesting that there's been a change in the way the 9070 XT's data is collected or tagged.

In previous Steam Hardware Surveys, the 9070 XT has essentially been Sir Not Appearing in This Data. It simply didn't figure. But suddenly, here it is in the latest survey with 1.33% of Steam users, placing it 23rd among discrete GPUs.

Valve lists the top 100 entries, which currently reaches down to the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT on 0.17%. The point here is that it's highly implausible that the 9700 XT has gone from zero in previous months to suddenly representing 1.33% of Steam gamers. It's not like it's just gone on sale.

Now, you could write this off as another Steam data anomaly that's likely to vanish in future surveys, like the fairly frequent anomalies in the survey caused by Chinese Lunar New Year. However, there's another data point in the new survey that likely reveals what's actually going on.

The listing in the survey for generic "AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics" GPUs has dropped from 2.37% share in April to 0.90% in the new May data. That's a drop of around 1.47% and suspiciously close to the 1.33% the 9070 XT picked up over the same period.

The regular RX 9070 non-XT already factored in previous surveys. (Image credit: Future)

Odds are, then, that either Valve has made changes to the way it collects data to better identify AMD GPUs. Or AMD has tweaked its driver software to the same ultimate effect. In other words, 9070 XTs that were being lumped into that generic Radeon category are now being counted properly.

The slight remaining gap between the loss of share of the generic Radeon class and the 9070 XT's gains can be easily accounted for by several factors. There may be other GPUs that have also benefited from the data collection changes (though not the vanilla RX 9070, which was in the previous few surveys and has not leapt up the ranks this month).

At the same time, presumably not everyone with and AMD GPU has updated to the latest drivers. So, that could play a part. Whatever, this new survey data seems much more likely to be accurate.

For some time now, AMD's latest RDNA 4 GPUs including the RX 9070 XT have ranked highly in various sales charts, most obviously on Amazon where a Gigabyte 9070 XT currently ranks as the most popular, which is about as mainstream as it gets. So, the idea that RDNA 4 and the 9070 XT in particular had gained so little traction with Steam gamers was hard to understand.

That's true even if you operate under the assumption that most graphics cards are sold as part of pre-built rigs. Anyway, suffice to say that the 9070 XT has now been installed in something more closely resembling its rightful place in the Steam Hardware Survey and we can all relax. Until the next anomaly gets our data antennae twitching.

'Price increases are unavoidable' says Tim Cook, proving even Apple isn't impervious to the global memory shortage

Jacob Fox — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:16:37 +0000

Courtesy of the RAMpocalypse, companies are raising prices for their memory-loaded products left, right, and centre. Apple products, however, had previously remained mostly (though not completely) untouched. No longer, though, as the company CEO Tim Cook tells the Wall Street Journal.

"Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable. We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable."

This is not your usual shortage, he explains: "This is a hundred-year flood. I’ve never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years."

Cook told the WSJ that both storage and memory are problems, but regarding DRAM specifically, he said:

"There’s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases. We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. That’s the bottom line."

He also explained that the company is open to taking a hit to keep prices low:

"We’re willing to use our balance sheet to help be a part of the solution. Obviously, more capacity is needed."

That's one of the benefits of being a big company like Apple and having a sizeable profit margin: you can take supply cost increases on the chin and keep your products priced as they were. To an extent, anyway—it seems Apple is now finally admitting it cannot keep things as cheap as they were.

To be clear, the company hadn't managed to keep everything completely normal until now. Not too long ago, Apple discontinued its entry-level Mac Mini model, effectively raising the minimum price you could spend to get a cheap Mac desktop.

(Image credit: Future)

That being said, the actual prices for the models that were being sold stayed the same. And there was the launch of the MacBook Neo, of course, which is a cheap laptop compared to Apple's usual pricing, and seemed like a small bastion inside the wider PC market, which kept (and keeps) raising prices. One thing that's probably helped is the fact that Apple software makes very good use of memory, meaning not as much actual capacity is usually needed.

But the good times are no longer, and there's no silver bullet to fix it all, unfortunately. Cook also told the WSJ that it won't be trying to make its own memory and storage facilities: "We can’t do everything. We know what we’re good at."

At any rate, new fabs take a long time to spin up, even for players already in the chip fabrication game. And on that front, we've got a while to go until the big players finish their new ones. Until then, it'll likely be a game of 'grin and bear it.'

Final Fantasy 14 will give players in Japan a dog for paying their taxes

harvey.randall@futurenet.com (Harvey Randall) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:59:28 +0000

Final Fantasy 14 will give you a dog (among other rewards) for paying your taxes—if you're in Japan, that is. There's really nothing else I can say that isn't funnier than the truth of the situation, though I'm not pointing and laughing at Square here. It's a genuinely sweet incentive to have players contributing to other municipalities.

As reported by Famitsu, Square is partnering with the Shibuya Ward (which it has an office in) as part of Japan's "Furusato Nozei", a system whereby urban Japanese residents can voluntarily put forward some of their money to rural areas of their choice, such as their hometown—in exchange, they get gifts, such as travel tickets, gift cards, and so on.

If you do this for Shibuya, you'll get a dog. Specifically, you'll get the Megashiba mount if you donate 9,000 yen (the equivalent of $55)—or a bunch of other rewards, including five fantasia (used to change your character's appearance), the Collegiate Attire set, the Magitek Attire set, or a bunch of dance emotes, all with varying donation amounts.

The donation amounts are all far more expensive than their store prices. For instance, the Megashibu's usually around 2,530 yen (roughly $16)—but if you're a Japanese resident that's feeling particularly charitable with your money, it's a neat way to get some items while also contributing to the place you grew up.

Also, you can get a tax write-off if you're over a certain amount—which is the slightly more self-serving reason to do it. But hey, if you're paying a similar amount of yen in income tax anyway, it's a neat way to get a free digital dog out of the whole deal. If you happen to live in Shibuya yourself, you can go to the official collab site to sign up.

PC Gamer magazine's new issue is on sale now: Planet Zoo 2

robert.jones@futurenet.com (Robert Jones) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:31:00 +0000

This month, PC Gamer gets world-exclusive access to Planet Zoo 2, the ridiculously ambitious and impressive new management sim from Frontier Developments. For our huge, authoritative cover feature, PC Gamer travelled to Frontier Developments' Cambridge headquarters, got up close and personal with the game for multiple hours, and then interviewed seven key devs about all aspects of the game. The result is your ultimate one-stop shop for Planet Zoo 2 information, including stunning, never-before-seen images. This isn't just shaping up to be the best animal management game ever, but the best management sim full stop when it launches in October this year.

Issue 424 UK / 412 US

Cover story: Planet Zoo 2 | Secondary features: PC gaming's best FPS

This month, PC Gamer gets world-exclusive access to Planet Zoo 2. Plus, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve previewed, Forza Horizon 6 reviewed, Return to Castle Wolfenstein reinstalled, and webcams tested.

Buy this issue in print: $4.99 (US) | $16.49 (UK)

Buy this issue digitally: $4.99 (US) | $16.49 (UK)

There's another awesome feature in this issue of PC Gamer, too. The fountain of love for the FPS genre never runs dry here at PC Gamer. And, for good reason, too. The FPS was born on PC and, despite incursions by a few console-leaning series such as Call of Duty, still thrives first and foremost on PC, with a greater selection of top shooters available to play on it than on any other platform. As such, the PC Gamer team has come together to decide upon the FPS games that we recommend gamers should play today in 2026, ranging from immersive single-player adventures, to hyper competitive online milisims.

(Image credit: Future)

This issue comes loaded with a dynamite preview section, too. Leading the assault this month is the adrenaline-inducing action flight game Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. And, we're pleased to say that, after our dedicated hands-on time playing the game, this is truly looking like a thrilling experience, with hyper-detailed jet fighters dogfighting it out in some of the most luscious-looking skyboxes we've ever seen. If you've got the need for speed (and plenty of big explosions), then this is looking like a total treat. In addition, we also preview Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, Tides of Annihilation, Frontier Legends, Subnautica 2, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2, and Denshattack!.

(Image credit: Future)

Meanwhile, in terms of reviews, this issue features definitive judgments on Forza Horizon 6, Directive 8020, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, 007 First Light, Mixtape, and Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, among other games.

(Image credit: Future)

Cover feature: Planet Zoo 2

(Image credit: Future)

Written by: Robert Jones

Magazine exclusive: Until July 27th, 2026

What's in this month's cover story: For this issue's all-access, world-exclusive cover feature, PC Gamer travels to Frontier Developments' headquarters and interviews no less than seven key developers about its ambitious new animal management sim. If you like the idea of using an incredible suite of creative tools to build the zoo or wildlife reserve of your dreams, then this game is going to be like Christmas coming early.

Secondary feature

Future

Additional content in this month's issue

LEAD PREVIEW

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve

Our lead preview this issue sees us go hands-on with Bandai Namco's thrilling new action flight game, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, for multiple hours of explosive dogfighting and tactical strikes. And, we're pleased to report that if you've got the need for speed, then this is looking like the genuine Top Gun experience.

LEAD REVIEW

Forza Horizon 6

Our lead review this issue sees us pass judgment on the latest installment in the Forza Horizon open-world racing series. And while our reviewer finds it is very much business as usual in terms of overall quality, this game's Japanese setting really elevates the high-octane driving action. It's time to burn some rubber in and around Tokyo.

MOD SPOTLIGHT

Half-Life: Lemmings

Ever wanted to save more of the scientists in Half-Life's labyrinthian Black Mesa complex? Well, if so, then this is the mod for you. Half-Life: Lemmings reworks the original Half-Life, as well as the AI powering its beloved boffins, so that Gordon Freeman can help shepherd them to safety. We install the mod and report in.

REINSTALL

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Gray Matter Studios' Return to Castle Wolfenstein remains a cult-classic FPS for many in the PC gaming community, delivering plenty of Nazi-slaying, supernatural shooting action. However, is its reputation today overblown? We fire up our flamethrower and go fascist hunting to find out.

DIARY

Total War: Warhammer 3

In the dramatic final installment of our Total War: Warhammer 3 diary, PC Gamer's Matthew Elliott finds out what happens when you try to play this classic grand strategy game as an undead faction that, counterintuitively, you might think, protects humans at all costs, doesn't ally with other undead factions, and remains firmly in their home territory. Will it end in tears or triumph?

SPECIAL REPORT

How AI was tricked to help build bombs

This month's special report explores a fascinating study where academics at two Italian universities managed to repeatedly circumvent AI safeguards so that they could trick them into supplying information and instructions that could be used to build bombs.

HARDWARE GROUP TEST

Webcams

With video meetings, in-game streaming, and video content creation on the rise, looking good on camera has never been more important. That's why in this issue, the PC Gamer hardware team reviews and rates six of the most notable webcams on the market today, appraising them for image quality and features.

...and more!

Now Playing: The PC Gamer team writes about their adventures in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Bloodletter, Sable, and Crabmeat.

They're Back: Matthew Elliott re-reviews Resident Evil: Village, Bramble: The Mountain King, and Pendragon.

Making of: Rick Lane speaks to Nightdive Studios about how it went about reconstructing System Shock's iconic Citadel Station.

13 issues!

13 issue UK Annual subscription: $141.99 (Print) | $58.99 (Digital)

13 issue US Annual subscription: $36.95 (Print) | $20 (Digital)

Where else can you subscribe to PC Gamer?

UK: iOS App Store | Pocketmags | Zinio

US: iOS App Store | Pocketmags | Zinio

How many issues are in an annual subscription?

13 issues a year, including a special holiday issue in late December.

What's the difference between the UK and US versions of the magazine?

The UK edition of PC Gamer magazine has a slightly higher page count than the US edition, with extra content available.

Are PC Gamer subscriptions available outside the US/UK?

Yes, we ship PC Gamer magazine to many countries around the world. For a full list of destinations, please visit Magazines Direct.

What form does the digital magazine come in?

Digital editions of PC Gamer magazine are provided in PDF and EPUB format, readable through Pocketmags.

How to get the fishing rod in Dave the Diver: In the Jungle

clivingston@pcgamer.com (Christopher Livingston) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0000

There are tons of new activities in Dave the Diver: In the Jungle, from turn-based jungle combat against spiders and snakes to hunting game birds in the woods with a rifle. But one activity had me more excited than all the rest combined: fishing.

Weird to say it, but after catching hundreds of fish in Dave the Diver, Dave can finally do some fishing—not with a harpoon or net gun or an underwater shottie, but with a good old-fashioned fishing rod. Once you've got it you'll be able to fish in several ponds scattered around the jungle and start collecting new fish types you won't find anywhere else. But first, you've got to acquire a fishing rod, and that means bringing down a very mean fish.

How to get the fishing rod in Dave the Diver: In the Jungle

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

To get the fishing rod, you'll first need to do a favor for one of the villagers. Look for Basu, a friendly fellow who lives east of Dave's cabin, just on the edge of the lake. He's usually just outside his house, though he may be fishing off his dock, so you may need to enter his house and walk out the back door overlooking the water.

Talk to Basu and ask him about his favorite things. He'll start talking about Piraiba Catfish, requesting that you serve the fish in some form in your restaurant. He won't mention the fishing pole, but that's the reward for bringing him some Piraiba Catfish.

To find the Piraiba Catfish, go diving in the lake and start swimming to the right. You want to be at a depth of between 35-75 meters while you explore. The Piraiba Catfish will typically appear around the middle of the lake at that depth. It's dark gray with a white underbelly, it's about three times larger than Dave, and it's got long whiskers. Here's what it looks like:

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

The Piraiba Catfish is a tough customer, so make sure you have extra ammo as one of your hotbar items and spare oxygen (healing) as the other. It has a tendency to swim directly toward you and try to suck you into its mouth.

As it tries swallowing you, you'll have to beat a quicktime event to avoid it, and if you fail, you'll have to play another quicktime event to escape from its stomach. I'd recommend circling it while taking shots with the sniper rifle, switching to your shotgun when it's close up, and swimming either directly up or down when it's charging at you to avoid its mouth.

After you've killed the catfish, either summon your salvage drone to take it away or cut off some of its meat with your knife. Leave the lake and head back to Basu. Once you've delivered a piece of Piraiba Catfish to Basu, he'll give you the fishing rod. His shop also becomes available, where you can buy bait and fishing rod upgrades.

Now you can go fishing at any of the fishing spots in the game! They're all marked on your map with a fishing rod icon. There's a pond to the west of the village by the waterfall near the shooting range, and there are three fishing ponds on the jungle map. You can also fish off of Basu's dock next to the lake.

Dave the Diver: In the Jungle review

clivingston@pcgamer.com (Christopher Livingston) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Need to Know

What is it? DLC for Dave the Diver where you open a new restaurant.
Expect to pay: $10/£8.49
Developer: Mintrocket
Publisher: Mintrocket
Reviewed on: Intel i7 9700K, RTX 4070 Ti, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer: No
Steam Deck: Verified
VR: No

Oh, there's some new DLC for Dave the Diver where you do more spearfishing and restaurant management, but this time it takes place in a little village where you can do quests and win favor with the locals like it's Stardew Valley? And it only costs $10? Sounds like a cute little distraction, perfect for the weekend.

Except the weekend is long gone and I'm still playing. I've sunk more than 25 hours into the new "content pack" for Dave The Diver, called In The Jungle, and I'm happy to say I'm not finished yet. In addition to Dave's usual scuba diving and bartending, I've battled a half-dozen new bosses, hunted birds with a rifle, become an expert beetle manager, been in a car chase, and watched my friend get swallowed and regurgitated by an enormous frog. Heck, I've even gone fishing the old-fashioned way: with a rod and a reel. Imagine that! Finally, fishing comes to Dave the Diver.

Just like the base game, In The Jungle is packed to the gills with activities and swimming with quirky characters—and it's big enough it almost feels like it could be a standalone game.

Deep dive

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

In the DLC, Dave has been asked by his pal Dr. Bacon to investigate a remote village where a dead dinosaur has washed up next to a lake, and Dave, as he always does, agrees to help out. Bancho the legendary sushi chef comes along and sets up shop in the little village, where the locals are a bit wary of the newcomers. Soon, Dave is making routine dives to spearhunt and Bancho is cooking up his catches. There's no sushi this time (you can't serve freshwater fish raw), but that doesn't stop Bancho from dramatically researching and grilling dozens of new recipes.

The daily dives for dinner work like they do in the base game, though Dave has some new upgradable gear to play with like his "Jungle Gun" which can quickly switch between a sniper rifle, shotgun, net gun, and assault rifle. I know that sounds extreme for catching fish, but this lake is a dangerous place, filled with ravenous piranha and enormous crocodiles. The lake is just the beginning, as the deeper Dave dives, the more dangerous and bizarre the sea life gets.

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

What's more exciting this time around is the surface world, where the side-scrolling of the dives is swapped for a Stardew Valley-like perspective. You can explore the village and visit the homes of the more than 30 new characters stuffed into this DLC, running around in all directions instead of just back and forth. This perspective extends to Bancho's outdoor restaurant, meaning you have to navigate around tables and chairs while serving meals, grilling appetizers, and mixing drinks for your evening visitors.

In the Jungle makes it feel more like Dave is really living in the world than the original game ever did

This perspective shift adds a lot: the base game was segmented into the different gameplay sections, but here it all flows together. Walk from Dave's customizable cabin in the morning right out into the village, gather some resources like plants and herbs, chop down a tree and chip out some ore to make a bit of new furniture for the restaurant, stop and chat with a few locals, then stroll down to the lake, pop on your scuba gear, and dive right in. In the Jungle makes it feel more like Dave is really living in the world than the original game ever did.

Jungle gym

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

Then there's the jungle itself. You'll grab your trigger-happy pal Cobra and your new gadget-making friend Muna and carefully explore the branching paths of the jungle, which is filled with dangerous creatures like giant spiders, venomous frogs, vicious baboons, and massive snakes.

That's where another new system appears: turn-based combat. You control Dave and his friends as they battle, using their offensive and defensive skills against the threats, leveling up after wins to unlock even more abilities. There's a timing element to much of it, too, so tapping a button at the right time can mean doing more damage or blocking your enemy's attacks. It's a refreshing addition to the mix, especially Cobra's abilities, which involve flinging sticks of dynamite or using his incendiary sniper rifle on the monsters. Cobra is anything but subtle.

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

Why explore a jungle when you're supposed to be looking for lake monsters and running a restaurant? Well, there's an ancient temple hidden in there somewhere, and, yes, it's got even more new challenges like a series of ever-more intricate block-pushing puzzles. If Link ever quits the Zelda series, I'm starting to think Dave could fill in nicely.

What else? Well, you can manage a collection of horned beetles, battling them against each other in a rock-paper-scissors combat system. You can go bird hunting, which works just like the old Duck Hunting game for the NES. Fancy a bit of Rock Band? There's a minigame with the local musician. There's a block-stacking activity, lots of fishing to do in jungle ponds, and a mobile app that lets you use the distance you've walked and swam to level up a virtual flower…

I guess I should stop being surprised at just how many different activities Mintrocket packs into Dave the Diver, but I can't. Every morning you wake up in the DLC, you really have no idea where the day will take you and what new game or system it'll place in your path.

New in town

The restaurant will keep you busy in the evenings.Mintrocket

Fishing, with a rod and reel, at last.Mintrocket

Bancho has lots of new recipes to perfect.Mintrocket

One of many big, big bosses.Mintrocket

With so many new characters, a map showing their locations is a big help.Mintrocket

Learn the local customs and participate in the celebrations.Mintrocket

Collect and battle beetles, roshambo-style.Mintrocket

Up for some Rock Band?Mintrocket

Don't worry, Dave will win him over.Mintrocket

Motivating me beyond all the minigames is Dave's evolving relationship with the villagers. While they live in the jungle in modest huts far removed from modern society, they're anything but primitive. They read manga. They use mobile phones. One villager gave me his CD player because he streams all his music these days. Each has a disposition meter and the more you gently interact with them, the more you'll learn about their likes and dislikes and find ways to win them over.

What really makes it all work is that Dave is just such a lovable character. He's constantly risking his neck for others to take on fearsome sea creatures and horrifying jungle monsters, yet he's completely bashful when anyone tries to thank him, always deflecting the praise to give someone else the credit. Just like in the base game, Dave once again won me over with his humble charm, and that made it completely believable that he was capable of winning over the villagers by being so kind and selfless. It was pretty heartwarming when the prickliest of all the villagers eventually approached me with a small gift near the end of the game. And Dave, of course, was completely bashful in accepting it.

What else is there to say? In the Jungle is great, it's inexpensive, and just as filled to the brim with charm and activities as the base game. I was expecting this DLC to be a tasty snack, but turns out it's a big ol' meal.

Xbox's latest tactics display 'a basic misunderstanding of how the interactive entertainment world moves', says former PlayStation exec

shaun.prescott@futurenet.com (Shaun Prescott) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 02:48:00 +0000

Xbox is flailing again. Major studio closures loom, the AI boom continues to erode the affordability of console hardware components, no one seems to want those consoles anyway and, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella—a fierce advocate of the AI industry crippling the rest of consumer tech—the corp isn't making enough money from its first-party games.

All this, despite Microsoft having a market value of over $2 trillion, and owning some of the biggest games studios and IPs in the world, including Call of Duty and Minecraft.

What's going on? Everyone has an opinion, some more authoritative than others. Among those opining include Shawn Layden, a high profile former Sony executive who helped usher in the PlayStation 5 before his resignation in 2019. Overall, he spent 32 years with Sony.

Sony's PlayStation, of course, has troubles of its own, but Layden bowed out long before the worst of them manifested. He's criticized the industry's pivot to live service—which has proven a terrible tactical shift for Sony—and the continued reliance that major publishers and platform holders have on blockbusters. He also thinks industry consolidation is "the enemy of diversity", and that subscription services stifle creativity.

In other words: the beliefs he espouses would seem to put Microsoft firmly on his shit list.

In a LinkedIn post, game design consultant Tadhg Kelly reiterates some of the blunders, strategic shifts and curious tacks taken by Xbox since Asha Sharma took the reins in February. "The Xbox identity crisis will continue until morale improves," he writes. "We've had:

A new CEO after previous leadership was beheaded
A rebrand that was kinda just the old brand
A reaffirmation of expensive Helix
A claim that hardware can't be expensive to win
A claim that 30% margin is done
A claim that 3% margin is trouble
Matthew Ball and some new tech-industry hires
A claim about refocusing on core franchises
A showcase of new games
A killing of studios making those new games
A claim that gaming is important to Microsoft
A comment that gaming at Microsoft needs to stand alone

"And on and on and on," Kelly adds. "Strategy isn’t a collection of contradictory decisions that might matter. That's just tactics. Bob and weave. Let's just get through this. Sad times for Big Green."

Layden sounded off in the comments. "At the risk of sounding like a 'hater' (which, I'm really not), the moves evince a basic misunderstanding of how the interactive entertainment world moves."

He added: "Iykyk [If you know you know], which also means if you don't you don't."

Those are strong words. It'd be like a carpenter evincing "a basic misunderstanding" of how a lathe works, 25 years after their apprenticeship.

Reading this comment I can't help but remember the words of former Activision boss Bobby Kotick, who said in an interview last year that he once told Satya Nadella that he shouldn't be in gaming at all. "We [Kotick and Nadella] had half an hour together and he said: 'what can you tell me about gaming'? And I was like, dude, you shouldn't be in gaming. You're not a creative company. You should buy Workday or something, SAP. This is not a creative DNA company."

Kotick continued: "When he called to do the deal I said the same thing to him. You need us, because you're not going to figure out gaming with what you have. But is this really the priority?"

One thing's for sure: if Microsoft is, as Nadella claims, "not monetizing" its entertainment despite its clear advantages in terms of wealth and IP ownership, then it can hardly be labeled a smart or even halfway capable business. Certainly not one well-equipped to handle an existentially consequential technology like AI is proving to be.

Either that or, as a diabolically wealthy, publicly traded corp who makes the majority of its money from cloud services, it isn't fit to work in the creative industries.

Do you recognize these survival crafting games? Prove you're a real master of roughin' it with our latest quiz on base-building sandboxes

Andrea Shearon — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:49:27 +0000

If you ask me to name what genre of games I tend to gravitate towards the most, I'll tell you it's a good ol' fashioned, narrative-driven RPG. But if you were to look at my Steam history, I can see how you would assume it's anything and everything under the survival crafting tag.

More quizzes!

(Image credit: Future)

Want to keep testing your knowledge of gaming trivia? We've got loads more PC Gamer quizzes, on everything from healthbars to weird currencies to absurd patch notes.

Still, I maintain that I value story above all else; I just can't resist a good crafting loop and endless base building. There aren't many survival crafting games out there that satisfy with a good plot hook, but they're great little adventures when you've got a friend or two to tag along. I love setting up a server, clearing my weekend schedule, and using survival games as a sort of social campfire for the Discord gang to huddle around—even if I spend most of that time organizing chests.

That ritual is how I've wound up with hundreds of hours across several of the genre's staples. So, as a tribute to all of my time spent in the (often literal) mines, I've thrown together a survival crafting quiz for all of you sandbox sickos. Whether you're the building friend, the guy that's always fishing, or that person perpetually lagging behind the group, this one should be a breeze.

You've got 12 minutes to identify 20 survival crafting games by a pixelated screenshot. Good luck, and when you're finished, let me know how you did in the comments.

PlayerUnknown's survival game becomes free-to-own and offers Steam refunds 'without restrictions on playtime or how long ago you bought the game'

clivingston@pcgamer.com (Christopher Livingston) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:56:04 +0000

Normally a game leaving early access would be cause for celebration, but I daresay that's not the case for Prologue: Go Wayback! It left early access on Steam today, but it's also doing so in an unfinished state with no plans for further development.

The open world survival game from PlayerUnknown Productions launched into early access in 2025, but less than a year later announced it was halting development as the studio, founded by PUBG creator Brendan Greene, laid off staff.

"Today brings the final update to Prologue: Go Wayback! that our studio's game team has been working on," the studio said on Steam. "We announced recently that we unfortunately have had to make some hard decisions for the studio's future, and this included halting development on the game."

As for leaving early access, the decision was made "because it felt inappropriate to leave it in Early Access when we are not able to continue developing it," the studio said. "This wasn't the plan we had for a full release when we started with Early Access, but we felt this would be the best way to leave the game available on Steam without setting the wrong expectations from future store page visitors and players."

Prologue: Go Wayback! is also now free on Steam, so if you want to own it forever, all you have to do is download it.

As for players who spent $20 to buy the game in early access, they can get their money back, no matter when they bought it or how much they played:

"We will be offering self-refunds, without restrictions on playtime or how long ago you bought the game, for a period of 60 days until August 17, 2026," the studio said. "If you refund the game, it will be removed from your Library. If you want to keep playing but also want to request a refund, you are able to add it to your Library again at no cost now that it is available for free."

So if you bought it, you can request a refund through Steam—then go ahead and re-add the new version to your Steam library for free.

It's a shame it's coming to such an abrupt end: I played Prologue in early access and even though it clearly had a long development road ahead of it before it would feel complete, I enjoyed the harshness of the world and how it made simple tasks like building a campfire feel like a real accomplishment.

Prologue was also meant to be more than just a survival game: it was a test of PlayerUnknown Productions' game engine, Melba, which the studio is developing to generate earth-scale procedural worlds. You can still get a taste of that in PlayerUnknown's tech demo (also free and in early access), called Preface: Undiscovered World, and work on Melba will continue, albeit "with a smaller team."

There are some new additions in this final version of Prologue, like paths and trails, items like mobile weather monitors, and improvements to cooking, lighting, clouds, fog, and other systems. You can read the full patch notes and announcement here.

Hours after announcing a collab with Fortnite, Vampire Survivors dev suggests it may back out over Epic's touting of generative AI

Tyler Colp — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:43:29 +0000

Epic announced several upcoming Fortnite collabs earlier today, including one with Vampire Survivors. But a few hours after the presentation, Vampire Survivors developer Poncle left a Reddit comment suggesting that the partnership might not happen after all.

While the post is brief, Poncle seems to be reacting to a recent video which demonstrates how Epic artists use generative AI to assist with the design of Fortnite characters and locations, and perhaps also to today's reveal of generative AI features in Unreal Engine.

"Following today's news about gen AI usage by Epic to create all sorts of game assets, including Fortnite characters, we're currently 'reviewing' our collaboration with Fortnite," the developer wrote. "We'll let you know if anything moves forward."

At Unreal Fest today, Epic showed off a new experimental plugin feature that integrates generative AI models like Claude and Gemini with Unreal Engine. In a blog post about features coming to Unreal Engine 6, Epic said that these tools will act as "creativity and productivity multipliers so that teams can focus their efforts on essential creative and technical tasks of development rather than time on time–consuming manual tasks." During the presentation, it demonstrated using generative AI models to change the lighting or add objects to a scene.

The more immediate concern for Poncle, however, may be the video Epic posted earlier this week (embedded above) in which artists use generative AI to quickly develop character and environment concepts for Fortnite. Assets created for the Vampire Survivors collab could presumably be made in the same way.

I've asked the studio for more information on its concerns, and PC Gamer has reached out to Epic for comment.

It's unclear when Poncle and Epic made the collab deal. At the presentation, Epic announced several other collabs coming to Fortnite: Control Resonant, Phantom Blade Zero, and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.

'[It] is going to change a lot about how games are made': Epic merges Unreal Engine 5 with Unreal Engine for Fortnite to give game devs around the world Unreal Engine 6

Nick Evanson — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 20:56:22 +0000

It's been six years since Epic first launched Unreal Engine 5, and at its State of Unreal event in Chicago today (head to 1h 40 mins in the above video) and in a separate blog post, we got our first look at what the next major release will offer to games, film, TV, and more industries. And it turns out that the biggest direction for the changes in the new engine came from Fortnite and UEFN.

If you're unfamiliar with the latter, it's basically a version of Unreal Engine 5 that's somewhat simplified and pared back to allow anyone to make levels or entire games for Fortnite. It's hugely popular and honestly very simple to use. I introduced my partner to it a few months ago, and despite having no experience in game development whatsoever, she created a fully functional Fortnite map and game mode within a day.

The sheer usability of UEFN is core to the changes in Unreal Engine 6, and when I talked to Epic at last year's State of Unreal event in Orlando, it explained that the separation between UE and UEFN would eventually go, with the two combined into a single package and offering the best of both worlds.

In the words of Tim Sweeney, it's "UE 5 plus UEFN equals UE 6, plus some more cool stuff on the way." The idea behind the merge is to allow developers to create something and then ship across every possible platform/store at the same time, including Fortnite itself. The unification also involves bringing APIs and code together across all of the various additions that Epic has for UE, such as MetaHumans.

That said, Fortnite isn't really going to be the showcase for Unreal Engine 6; that honour goes to Rocket League, and the very first glimpse of it all was dropped last month at the Paris Major event of the RL Championship Series.

(Image credit: Epic Games)

Perhaps the most significant change in Unreal Engine 6 is the move to open standards for tools, code, APIs, etc. This isn't something that can be wholesale implemented overnight, and I suspect that not every element will be open in this manner, but the end goal is to give developers (games or otherwise) an easier path to getting content and code out to Epic's and external ecosystems.

Epic didn't say anything about specific features in the keynote, so no idea if there will be a major change to Lumen, for example, but it did say that UE6 is targeted for release at some point in 2027 ("2027-ish" was the exact phrase, though the blog post says "Early Access release at the end of 2027").

It also said a few things about Verse, the scripting language used in UEFN, and how the gameplay programming model in UE6 will be shifted to that language (though C++ will still be there underneath it all). Directly related to that will be something called Scene Graph, which will replace the current gameplay framework used in UE5. That will be built entirely on Verse, and with it, Epic plans to "build a full distributed software transactional memory system" for huge, interactive live worlds.

That won't mean anything to gamers, but for developers, it means that their "game code can be written as if it were running on a single machine without needing to coordinate custom networking code all over the place."

(Image credit: Epic Games)

And naturally, AI is going to become a bigger feature of Unreal Engine, with the first step being taken in the new UE5.8 release and its MCP server plugin. That system will let you set up any LLM you want to use and give it various tasks to perform, from simple code refactoring all the way up to generating a full 3D scene that you can then tweak as required.

There's more to all of this, of course, but there's not quite enough information yet to glean any insight as to whether the step from UE5 to UE6 will be as dramatic as the jump from v4 to v5 was. My feeling is that it won't be, from a PC gamer's perspective at least, but game developers will probably relish the thought of having an Unreal Engine that's easier to use and quicker at producing the content required.

Guild Wars 3 hopes to solve the problem that made me quit Guild Wars 2 after thousands of hours with the series

lauren@pcgamer.com (Lauren Morton) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 20:43:44 +0000

I'm thrilled by the announcement of Guild Wars 3, but there's a little voice in my head that keeps whispering "you know you won't have time for a new MMO." It's a fear that ArenaNet seems keenly aware of as it begins to set expectations for the sequel, which plans to begin beta testing in 2027.

In a blog post this week, ArenaNet laid out several things that it believes are the "core philosophy" of Guild Wars 3: no subscriptions, no pay-to-win, respecting your time, and evolving the MMO genre.

"Historically, MMO engagement has been viewed as an experience like a second job, where players spend large amounts of time preparing to have fun before they can actually engage in the fun parts," ArenaNet says. "Only have thirty minutes to play? Don't play an MMO; you'll need that time just to organize your inventory, figure out what content you're going to play, get your character set up, and—oh, no! Time's up, and you haven't even begun the gameplay yet."

The "preparing to play" problem, specifically inventory organizing, is exactly what made me drift away from Guild Wars 2 after its Path of Fire expansion despite having thousands of hours in the original Guild Wars and probably double that in GW2. Every time I logged in I would find my bags stuffed with Halloween tonics, miscellaneous currencies, and all sorts of other consumables whose purpose I couldn't recall. It felt like I needed to clean my room before I was allowed to have fun. Eventually I stopped logging in.

ArenaNet has gotten the message that managing a slew of currencies from the past decade of expansions and story updates is one of the biggest pain points for GW2 players, lapsed or otherwise.

"We want you to feel good about the time you invest, whether you're playing every day, only have an hour or two every week, or are coming back after a long break from the game," it says.

ArenaNet says it approaches MMO design by identifying a problem with MMOs as they currently exist and building a solution. It's true that my problem with most MMO options right now is that they're all trying to lay claim to the same precious few hours I've got between work and bedtime.

If ArenaNet's answer to that really is a snappier MMO with less homework, I'll be excited to see it. I can't help but think of the end of new content updates for Destiny 2, sometimes affectionately called a "dad game" for its (relatively) low-stress, drop-in qualities. I wasn't ever a Destiny gal, but I'd be psyched by the rise of a "mom MMO" equivalent.

Best MMOs: Most massive
Best strategy games: Number crunching
Best open world games: Unlimited exploration
Best survival games: Live craft love
Best horror games: Fight or flight

Capcom has heard feedback that Onimusha is too easy, says it's 'confident fans will be satisfied with difficulty' in the final game

morgan.park@futurenet.com (Morgan Park) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 20:06:10 +0000

A week removed from Summer Game Fest, one of the demos I can't stop thinking about is Onimusha: Way of the Sword. The behind-closed-doors demo was different from the one that's available on Steam—it took place slightly later in the game and showed off one of the game's "open areas" within Kyoto.

Several things stand out in Onimusha: The art, the methodical movement, the sword-wielding zombies, but most of all, it was the swordplay. For all of the comparisons to Sekiro that this reboot is likely to receive, let it be known its melee combat is in another league.

Slices and stabs connect with slow, bone-splitting followthrough. Blades clash, drag, deflect, and spark as if they're laced with fireworks. After years of a FromSoftware brand of floaty, spammy sword swinging dominating the action game, Capcom has dumped resources in the opposite direction: extravagant animations, feedback, counters, and cleaving limbs from their bodies.

It was a great demo—enough that I now can't wait to play the whole thing in September—but it was also too easy.

That was after going out of my way to play on "Action" mode instead of "Story," which my demoist advised against at first. Against the might of Musashi Miyamoto and his Oni Gauntlet, rank-and-file Genma troops weren't much of a threat. They went down quickly, didn't attack all that often, and rarely challenged me to counter instead of dodge. I didn't struggle much at all until the boss fight that ended the demo—a many-armed monstrosity that handed me my ass twice before I figured out his gimmick.

This is where I have to add that I'm not particularly skilled at this sort of game. So I wonder: Is Onimusha too easy? Many seem to think the same of the public demo, so I took the question to the source—game director Satoru Nihei—after my hands-on.

"Both the demo and also the version you've tried here today are early on in the game. So there is that kind of sense that a lot of basic enemies are going to be a bit easier just because of where it sits in the game," Nihei told PC Gamer through an interpreter. "But on top of that, especially with the demo that we released, Musashi comes fitted with a lot of skills and abilities that are not going to be accessible at the beginning of the game."

Nihei noted that the demo build I played in Los Angeles also had button reminders over enemy heads that don't exist in the full game. That's good to call out, because the specific advice offered by these in-world prompts made that final boss easier to solve. Capcom decided to juice Musashi's abilities in these demos so that players can get a "feel for the full range of action" in the final game. He's aware this caused issues with balance, but the team isn't concerned about the final product.

(Image credit: Capcom)

"We're quite confident that with the release version, especially with the progression, because abilities will be given gradually to Musashi and enemies will scale up in difficulty. For the [full] game, we feel more confident fans will be satisfied with the difficulty."

That said, don't expect a plethora of difficulty options at launch. Capcom confirmed that Way of the Sword will have just the two presets I chose between in the demo: Story and Action. Onimusha is out on September 24, one of a terrifying wave of games coming before GTA 6.

Looking for all the announcements at this year's PC Gaming Show? Visit the show's Steam page to wishlist your most anticipated games, or check out our full PC Gaming Show 2026 recap.

Rockstar faces legal setback as UK tribunal allows its fired workers to bring every one of their union busting allegations to trial

lincoln.carpenter@futurenet.com (Lincoln Carpenter) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 19:52:15 +0000

Rockstar has suffered a legal defeat as the ongoing dispute surrounding its October 2025 firing of 31 union members proceeds toward final trial. In a preliminary hearing, a UK employment tribunal has ruled against the studio, which sought to narrow the scope of its upcoming trial by seeking to have accusations of blacklisting struck from the case being brought against it.

By upholding the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain's right to present its claims of Rockstar's alleged blacklisting—the unlawful compiling of a discriminatory list of union workers and activists—the ruling ensures that every one of the IWGB's accusations regarding alleged Rockstar union-busting can proceed to trial on behalf of the 31 dismissed union members. Alongside the ruling came the dates for Rockstar's days in court: The final trial will begin on September 10 and run to October 15, ending barely over a month before the launch of GTA 6.

In an IWGB statement, Ellie Dunstan—one of the workers fired during Rockstar's alleged union-busting—called the ruling "a huge moment."

"Rockstar thought they could control the narrative," Dunstan said. "They're wrong, and we look forward to proving it. Our case will now be heard in full and put to the test as it should be."

Since Rockstar's abrupt October 2025 dismissal of over 30 workers and developers in the UK and Canada—all of whom were either union members or pursuing workplace organization—the studio has faced both internal and external scrutiny.

Within days of the firings, IWGB-organized protests coalesced outside of Take-Two and Rockstar offices in London and Edinburgh. IWGB initiated formal legal action against the studio soon after, while over 200 Rockstar employees delivered letters to company management demanding the reinstatement of the fired union members.

Before long, the escalating dispute had gained Parliament's attention, with Edinburgh West MP Christine Jardine beseeching fellow Ministers to "support workers who have lost their jobs, and stop this from happening again." By mid-December, even Prime Minister Keir Starmer was calling it "a deeply concerning case."

Spring McParlin-Jones, Chair of the IWGB Game Workers Branch, said this week's tribunal ruling is a setback for Rockstar's efforts to skirt accountability, which have continued "from the moment employees were escorted from their buildings without warning, and throughout every subsequent stage of the legal proceedings."

"The decision strengthens our case at a critical time as we prepare for the final stage of this David versus Goliath legal battle, which could shape the future of union rights across the games industry and beyond," McParlin-Jones said.

'It feels to many like a tidal wave is sweeping over the AAA game business,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney in his diagnosis of the industry's woes

tyler@pcgamer.com (Tyler Wilde) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 19:13:21 +0000

It is a "time of both crisis and opportunity" for the games industry, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said in his concluding remarks at today's Unreal Fest address, where the Unreal Engine and Fortnite maker demonstrated new features coming to its development tools.

The kids are playing more games than ever and Fortnite is growing again, Sweeney said, but "a huge number of the new releases of major games are failing."

"We're seeing often hundreds of millions of dollars of dev cost, followed by tens of millions of dollars of revenue, and the dev costs are continuing to grow," said Sweeney. "It feels to many like a tidal wave is sweeping over the AAA game business."

Sweeney's assessment of the problem echoed sentiments I heard repeatedly at the Game Developer's Conference back in March: Gamers want social online experiences, but it's extremely hard to break in and compete with the biggest platforms, like Roblox. Players go where their friends already are, and are more willing to buy in-game items in games they know will still be around in a year.

"One view of the future is that Roblox grows and eats gaming," Sweeney said. "A lot of people are saying this online, but you know, what you have there is a centralized platform with a single gatekeeper that commoditizes all content, takes more than 70% of revenue, and has 450 million users on board, and so that's a real challenge to game developers."

Epic believes in a "much brighter" future for developers, said the CEO, in which they rally around Epic's metaverse vision to collectively take on Roblox with a network of Unreal Engine games, "linking up our content, linking up our communities, and linking up our economies."

"We're going to need to build better games," Sweeney said. "We're going to need to build them more efficiently. We're going to need to design up front and build for connected games, where all of our playerbases are connected socially and our economies are connected, so that players, instead of seeing these as isolated products, see them as part of a global ecosystem that all game developers participate in together."

Rather than focusing on graphics tech, Epic is pitching the upcoming Unreal Engine 6 as an upgrade to efficiency (it's getting generative AI integration) and interoperability. Make a game in Unreal Engine, and not only can you release it as a standalone executable, but also as a game within Fortnite, or within another Unreal Engine product.

The ecosystem Epic currently offers up is generous compared to the Roblox example. Unreal Engine is free to use for game developers, and Epic collects a 5% royalty only when a game surpasses $1 million in revenue. The Epic Games Store offers a similar deal, waving fees for the first $1 million in revenue, and after that taking a 12% cut.

Sweeney has also been a vocal critic of Steam's 20-30% cut, as well as its requirement that games use its payment processor for in-game purchases, something he's famously gone to battle with Apple over. Developers are free to bypass the Epic Games Store's fee for in-game purchases by using their own payment processing solution.

Epic and Disney recently released the Star Wars toolkit, giving users access to Star Wars characters and environments in Unreal Editor for Fortnite. (Image credit: Epic/Disney)

A Roblox-sized network of games and players based on those terms—low fees, the freedom to publish across many platforms, and so on—does sound like a boon for developers of that kind of game. But the natural question I'm left with is: How do the games I like fit into this vision?

A "global ecosystem" of social experiences, where no one bats an eye if Darth Vader walks into a room next to Homer Simpson, would not seem appropriate for, say, The Witcher 4, which featured at the last Unreal Fest. Is the "tidal wave" of growing development costs really going to wash away the old-fashioned 'make a big RPG and sell it' model, turning even those games into hangout spaces optimized for brand partnerships and cosmetics sales?

Epic doesn't seem to think so—it, after all, funded Alan Wake 2 and the new Fumito Ueda game—but based on today's address, it's not where it foresees its next billions coming from.

Unreal Engine 5.8 launches with improved terrain and vegetation tools, a Lumen Lite option for faster global illumination, and for the times we now live in, an open standard plugin for LLM systems

Nick Evanson — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:55:10 +0000

It's probably fair to say that Unreal Engine is probably the most comprehensive tool around for creating games, animations, and video effects. And, with the launch of UE 5.8, it's becoming even more extensive and even a little bit more AI-friendly. Whether you're just an Unreal Engine hobbyist like me, or a full-time game developer, you can download version 5.8 right now via the Epic Games Launcher.

Even if you don't plan on using any of the new features (of which there are a lot), it's always worth trying out the latest release just for bug and performance fixes. But what's actually new? The headline acts in UE5.8 are the introduction of Mesh Terrain and Procedural Vegetation Editor (PVE). Both are experimental features at the moment, but the former should be of great interest to anyone creating big, open-world terrains, as the tool basically generates full 3D meshes for you.

PVE is somewhat similar, except that instead of creating landscapes, it produces vegetation (trees, bushes, reeds, grass, etc) from scratch, with the procedural system working in line with meshes already present in the world. For example, let's say you had a crumbled old archway in a forest, PVE will 'grow' trees around it, accounting for the natural source of light and competing vegetation.

Complementing these are MegaLights, which first appeared in experimental form in UE5.5 (but is now "production-ready"), an experimental fog screen space scattering feature, and perhaps most interesting of all, Lumen Lite. This is a mode for Lumen global illumination that Epic claims to be twice as fast as Lumen High Quality, while still preserving "much of the visual impact".

The release notes for UE5.8 specifically mention that "games that rely on global illumination for artistic purposes can run on Nintendo Switch 2 at 60 fps," so it's blatantly obvious what platform it was developed for. However, since it's also supported on PC, UE-powered games of the future could well offer this as a graphics option for low-end hardware users.

(Image credit: Epic)

Tucked away, almost at the end of the new version details announcement—which blessedly includes improvements to shader compiling—is one more experimental feature, an MCP plugin. With this, you can implement any LLM of your choice to "connect to and understand both the engine and your project." In other words, if you want to use AI to create assets or code, carry out tests or refactoring tasks, then you should be able to hand that over to the LLM easily enough.

Epic left the note about this feature after everything else, and I suspect that's because AI is hardly flavour of the month in the world of PCs and gaming right now. After all, Epic already has a section of PC gaming fandom that takes a dim view of Unreal Engine games, whether you believe that's the fault of Epic or a given game's developers themselves, and AI-use is another PC gaming bug bear.

Anyway, because of the consternation about AI in gaming—from being the primary cause of the horrendous price increases for DRAM and SSDs, as well as the endless controversies over its use in games—the inclusion of this plugin is likely to draw ire from some quarters.

(Image credit: Epic)

The thing is, many game studios will have to rely increasingly more on AI for certain workloads if they hope to stay afloat. With the likes of Microsoft and numerous other companies about to swing a sword of Damocles across all their gaming divisions, studio heads will be looking at every avenue that will result in them having a future.

I'm not suggesting that game devs must use AI, nor am I saying that the inclusion of the LLM plugin (specifically an MCP server) with UE5.8 is a good or bad thing; it's simply a sign of our times. One can argue that Unreal Engine's feature set is sometimes a little too far-forward in reach (console and mainstream PC hardware still isn't quite good enough to cope with an all-in Lumen and Nanite game at high fps), but this minor plugin is very much a 'here-and-now' thing.

Windows 11 Search will soon see through your typos and actually find what you're looking for

Jess Kinghorn — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:30:10 +0000

Whether you're coding or simply looking for an important file on your desktop, a single typo can create an outsized amount of frustration. Thankfully, Microsoft is working on a number of improvements for Search within Windows 11, including the ability to see through your typos.

The Insider Experimental Preview Build 26300.8687 for Windows 11 that dropped last week introduced the 'more forgiving' version of Search. Microsoft explained then, "Search is better at handling typos, dropped letters, extra letters, and partial words for apps. Queries like 'utlook' can still find Outlook" (via Windows Latest).

On top of that, Search will also prioritise local files over web results in the future. Previously, in response to a hastily typed query, Search had the mocking habit of returning a Bing result with the spelling corrected. Thankfully, Microsoft's partner director of design, March Rogers, said on X, "If you want you can turn off web suggestions entirely."

Most normie Windows 11 users would have to wait a bit before enjoying improvements first rolled out in an Insider preview build. However, I'm rocking OS build 26200.8655 (an older, non-Insider build that dropped earlier in June) and when I type something arcane like 'pwerp,' Search already knows I mean 'PowerPoint'.

That said, when I tried another of Windows Latest's typo tests, I found Search really wasn't sure what to make of 'tskm' in my version of Windows 11.

Search's improved typo parsing and more locally focused results are definitely small improvements in the grand scheme of things. But both contribute to making Windows 11 that much more usable, as well as Microsoft's stated recommitment to making the OS better.

User experience counts for a lot, after all. It's just as well Microsoft has decided to pump the brakes on answering every design question with features like Copilot, as I don't feel all that confident in the spelling abilities of AI.

All roads lead to philosophy, as this Wikipedia game proves

Jacob Fox — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:13:52 +0000

I'm feeling a little sheepish because I spent a decade in higher education studying philosophy and have also spent a lot of time online over the years, and yet I had never heard of the philosophy game, or more aptly, the Wikipedia philosophy phenomenon. I'll let the Wiki page explain it:

"The Wikipedia philosophy phenomenon, sometimes called the 'Philosophy Game', is the tendency that English Wikipedia articles' first hyperlink, when clicked in a chain, will end in a loop at the article 'Philosophy'."

In other words, go to any Wikipedia article, click the first link, rinse and repeat, and you'll end up at the article for Philosophy. Of course, you can continue from there, but you'll just end up taking a detour through language, communication, meaning, and so on, and then—you guessed it—looping right back to the philosophy page.

In Wikipedia's recent YouTube video where Matthew Prebeg demonstrates the phenomenon, it's explained as being to do with abstraction and categorisation. There are all kinds of complications with categorising things. For instance, many things can be considered of the same type despite individual members of the category not sharing a single feature—they instead have overlapping similarities, or family resemblances, which Prebeg explains.

He also explains how our categorisations can be to do with abstraction. For instance, "this exact chair, right now" is "a wooden kitchen chair", which is a "chair", which is "seating", which is "furniture", which is an "object", which is "matter." But the problem with this, as he explains, is that there are different ways to categorise things, and different ladders of abstraction to climb. For instance, you might instead abstract to 'sitting' and then to 'bodily movement'.

What's interesting is that the Philosophy Game shows us how, at least in the context of an online encyclopedia, we tend to do this in practice. And most importantly, to my biased brain at least, it shows that no matter how we decide to embed our understanding of concepts, it's always philosophy that underlies it.

Somewhat ironically, one philosophical debate is on the nature of philosophy—what philosophy is—but my own favourite definitions always involve fundamentality: philosophy deals with what is most fundamental. Often it's split into three or four areas: epistemology (the study of knowledge), metaphysics (the study of reality), ethics (the study of morality), and logic (the study of correct, formal reasoning). These four areas essentially underlie all other areas of knowledge or study, meaning they are more fundamental.

I like to imagine philosophy as a very annoying child that asks 'why?' to every answer you give them. Eventually, you'll reach points where you don't immediately have a good answer—say, 'Why do you believe the external world really exists?'—and then you've entered the domain of philosophy. Ie, a level where most people are content assuming there are no answers and it's all far too abstract.

With this in mind, it's not too surprising that (almost) all roads (on Wikipedia) lead to philosophy. Just think of each first link as the annoying child asking 'why?', or more aptly, 'what's that?' Eventually, it will end up asking something very fundamental and philosophical, and you'll be on that philosophy page once again.

Another interesting thing about the Philosophy Game is that it could be considered a kind of experimental philosophy. This is a new and somewhat controversial philosophical methodology that looks to use empirical research and data to come to philosophical conclusions. Philosophy is usually informed by empirical research and data, but experimental philosophy looks to make this contribution more direct.

At any rate, play the Philosophy Game at your own peril. You might be left asking the perpetual 'why?' like me.

Stellaris' Nomads expansion finally lets me live out my Battlestar Galactica fantasies, though its Wayline system could definitely use some work

Sean Martin — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:57:56 +0000

I've always loved starting a new Stellaris campaign. There's a special magic for me surrounding those initial years, as you explore the systems surrounding your home planet, discover anomalies, and just generally see the shape of the galaxy around you. Maybe your fleets run into a mysterious alien species, an abandoned mega structure, or a black hole that starts whispering to you.

For me, it's the most exciting time, before the sheer scale of the game overwhelms your ability to really focus on any individual solar system. I've always struggled with that aspect of Stellaris, balancing my desire to explore the universe with the demands of claiming territory and planets, chokepointing swathes of the galaxy against the equally hungry factions out there in the black on all sides.

So I've long wondered what it'd be like to play as a faction with no territory. Stellaris' Nomads expansion is pretty successful in that regard, giving you an Arkship for your spacefaring race (though sadly with just one visual variant), and a bunch of extremely fun origins to choose from. I picked and played through The Sacred Path, which saw my race of Arthropoid pilgrims tracking down sacred sites across the galaxy. But the Forever Cruise, which sees you pick a crew and a passenger race, also sounds very good.

You start off fixing your Arkship, but once that's done, you can go pretty much anywhere. Arkships are essentially a colony, shipyard, and battle fleet rolled into one, and they can ignore closed borders, meaning you carry what you need with you to explore. The main drawback with nomadic factions, I found, is the Waystation. Rather than holding territory, nomadic races build outposts that can harvest and stockpile resources.

When they're full, though, they need to be picked up by a logistics ship and delivered to your Arkship. So, theoretically, you can go wherever you want, but you'll make it increasingly difficult for your ships to ferry resources to you. There is an alternative, and that's harvesting resources with your Arkship directly from planets. The price is that planetary mining stations produce 75% fewer resources for a while, and the faction who owns the system really doesn't like it, so you'll want to pick unclaimed systems that don't have Waystations in them.

Yes, this does become increasingly difficult as the galaxy gets painted. The best way to survive as nomads seems to be to befriend a faction and agree a Wayline treaty with them so you can build inside their territory. Factions offer contracts to nomadic races, including remote research, transporting sightseers, or scanning systems, all of which are an incredibly easy way to acquire influence so you can construct more Waylines or form treaties.

Your nomadic faction also has a new resource combining Energy Credits and Minerals which is called Operational Reserves, but honestly, I'm really not sure why this was created because it's confusing as hell. Your reserve level (low, medium, high) confers various benefits or detriments to your Arkships. You can also choose the speed at which you consume your reserves to add further bonuses, but it doesn't really give you a proper breakdown so it's often hard to keep balanced.

For the most part, though, I had a lot of fun piloting my Arkship across the galaxy and slowly upgrading it into an unstoppable juggernaut, but the phrase "We're running out of sky" couldn't help but come to mind. As spheres of influence expand, it feels like you're almost obligated to befriend and support a faction, especially as completing contracts is so lucrative.

I do, however, really like the post-Nomads Stellaris galaxy. It's fun running into other nomadic factions and there are some great extra additions, too, whether it's new OST like Manduul Haan by Batzorig Vaanchig (which has a lovely bit of Mongolian throat singing you can listen to further up), or events like the Champion's Forge Live.

This TV station Arkship broadcasts a special free-for-all you can enter your fleets into, giving you a chance to square off against the rest of the galaxy to potentially win the grand prize, though sadly I didn't make the cut. Still, its additions like this that make Stellaris's galaxy so fun, and Nomads definitely contributes to that, even if playing as a nomadic faction isn't 100% what it should be right now.

Intel's 18A-P chipmaking process has started risk production and promises 9% improved CPU performance for the same power

Jacob Fox — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:47:49 +0000

Processors seem to be one product category, along with displays, where there are glimmers of hope for us gamers amidst the RAMpocalypse. From an Nvidia chip with good gaming performance to new handheld chips from Intel and even the promise of some Intel-Nvidia collab chips that could also be great for handhelds, there are definitely things to be excited about. And now we can add chips made on Intel 18A-P to that list.

Going by the Intel presentation screenshots shared by Hardwareluxx, Intel's next version of its 18A process, 18A-P, could deliver a nice chunk of extra performance—or power saving, depending on which way you go—essentially for free. Free, that is, in the sense that it's "backwards compatible to Intel 18A", meaning no need for new fabs, machinery, or even chip designs.

New logic Vt offering for #Intel18A-P:- ULVTLL (ultra low voltage low leakage) between LVT and ULVT.Via a thinner handling wafers, new materials and optimized EDA tool flow the thermal conductivity is improved.#Intel18A-P is currently in risk production pic.twitter.com/oQs4CjWgNTJune 16, 2026

The process is now in "risk production", which is essentially the limited production stage that occurs before mass production. It should be at least a few more months before mass production begins in earnest.

Intel's slides refer to 18A-P as "the first performance enhancement in the Intel 18A family" and describe the following highlights:

"18% lower power at iso-performance
9% fully routed block level performance at iso-power
20–40% improved thermal resistance
10–30% improved Via resistance at perf critical layers"

In other words, compared to the same chips on 18A, chips on 18A-P should deliver 9% improved CPU performance for the same power, or 18% less power consumption for the same performance. Plus improved thermal resistance and "Via resistance", meaning less performance impact from backside power delivery.

Intel's 18A process is used to make Panther Lake chips for laptops, and we've already been pretty impressed with those—thus why we're excited for new Arc G3-series chips for handhelds, which are Panther Lake-based.

It's unlikely 18A-P will be used for these mobile chips given they're already in full swing, but they could be used for future product lines. Perhaps a Panther Lake refresh—the same chips but with a slight bump to performance sounds nice. Or more reasonably, perhaps Intel's upcoming Nova Lake desktop chips, as it would make sense for the more power-hungry CPUs to use the new and more efficient process.

There's a chance it could all be timed well for that upcoming Intel-Nvidia collab, too. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Warning all weebs: Kaspersky says hackers are distributing malware via anime girl wallpapers on Steam Workshop's Wallpaper Engine

Jess Kinghorn — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:47:25 +0000

When it comes to desktop wallpaper, I often go with an illustration by Finnish artist Heikala. Making your own wallpaper, not unlike conjuring the visual arts, is a skill. As such, it's no wonder that many go looking for pre-made backdrops on Steam Workshop—though cybersecurity firm and anti-virus creator Kaspersky warns this has become yet one more avenue to be leveraged by bad actors.

Security researchers have found that malware is being pushed out in the guise of packages for animated desktop wallpapers. A Kaspersky press release claims that multiple infected Workshop wallpapers were downloaded thousands of times via Wallpaper Engine on Steam.

Now, I'm sure you're curious as to which wallpapers are affected—is there potentially a visual theme that unites them? Well, Kaspersky did include a number of screenshots involving blushing anime women, which perhaps says it all.

Wallpaper Engine offers a number of formats, including animated and interactive desktop scenes. Kaspersky adds, "The application-based wallpaper feature allows executable programs to run directly on a user's Windows computer, allowing attackers to distribute malicious software under the guise of legitimate content."

As for how the attackers snuck in their malware alongside the weeaboo wallpapers, Kaspersky highlights two different methods. One route involves bundling malicious executables inside the wallpaper package, whereas another sees bad actors hide "malware inside password-protected archives, with passwords embedded in archive names or configuration files." Once installed, the application-based wallpaper would automatically trigger the malicious payload inside.

(Image credit: Valve / KOMODO)

"For example, one of the malicious wallpaper samples discovered in December 2025 appeared to function legitimately at first, launching an embedded desktop game without any visible signs of compromise," Kaspersky elaborates, "In the background, however, the wallpaper deployed the DarkKomet backdoor and installed a modified library designed to target Steam users: it harvested account information and hijacked active Steam sessions."

Steam users based in China and Russia appear to have been the primary targets of the malware distribution campaign, though folks living in Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany, Vietnam, India and Canada have also been affected. As far as Kaspersky's security researchers can tell, the campaign is less of a coordinated effort and appears to be the work of "multiple independent threat actors." Be safe out there, my fellow weebs.

Don't Kill Them All make you keep orc calm so orc not smash resources—big smart, neat game, like demo much

harvey.randall@futurenet.com (Harvey Randall) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:29:52 +0000

It's a hard life, being an orc—you wake up, you smash puny creatures, you go to bed. But your warlord's mad at you. Why? Because you got a little too in the zone and broke all the things you were there to steal. That's a big problem, especially if you're trying to do things like agriculture or society—in the interest of smashing, obviously.

Don't Kill Them All makes this the main thrust—or club, whatever floats your boat. It's a delightfully clever little strategy game wherein you're having to conduct an easily-ragebaited band of marauding orcs so as not to raze everything that moves.

Fika Productions

It does this by looping everything into a central mechanic: rage. Your orcs can't die, but they CAN lose their temper—either by taking damage, or by witnessing the destruction of the resources you came to claim, which your enemies can also collaterally tear asunder. If all of your orcs crash out, your expedition's over and you lose all the resources you came for.

So you do need to do a bit of smashing, but it's calculated smashing. You'll be maneuvering your warband to avoid logs and rocks on the tile-based combat grid—or just shoving enemies out of the way so their attacks don't spoil your, well, spoils. If you've ever played Into the Breach, it's a lot like the collateral damage aspects of that game—just with pure resource-hoarding self-interest rather than the horrible loss of human life.

But where this system really shines is in how it interacts with your attacks. Orcs can theoretically smash as much as possible, but each subsequent usage of an ability (or the first use of an ability, in some cases) ramps up your rage. This means there's always a devil's bargain available to close off a combat.

The downside being, rage doesn't go away between encounters. You need to balance the knife's edge between gaining rage and pushing further on your expeditions—which themselves cost time, XCOM-style. Time you'll need for building your base, crafting bonus equipment, or calming your orcs down with a nice mud bath or some herbal tea.

It's already an extremely promising demo, and it helps that the general art style's really charming—marrying with the strong theme of "orc really gotta figure out resource management" well. Which is why the current low playercount (in the double digits) is kinda shocking to me, given how solid the core concept is. Orc heartily recommend hidden gem, orc think it gonna be good.

Civilization is the most iconic turn-based series of all time, but Sid Meier considered making it an RTS: 'It could have easily gone in different directions'

Fraser Brown — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:45:44 +0000

I am 41 years old tomorrow, and for most of my life I've had a game of Civilization in rotation. The first Civ arrived in 1991, popularising the nascent 4X genre and quickly becoming a PC gaming icon. But Civ could have looked very different. Instead of a slow, deliberate turn-based game, it was almost Age of Empires.

Back in 2017, I interviewed every Civilization lead designer for a magazine feature, The complete history of Civilization, which was later published on the site. Until recently, each game had a different lead, starting with Sid Meier and the OG Civ. This tradition continued until Civ 7.

Civ was born out of Meier and Bruce Shelley's desire to push the boat out after the success of Railroad Tycoon. Instead of running a company, how about running a nation, and eventually the world?

"We were young, and we had no fear," Meier told me.

But Meier started to worry that their ambitions were too grand. He needed to find a way to make this imposing challenge more accessible for would-be world conquerors. One of the accessibility solutions was ditching the popular hex-based map model for simple squares.

We were young, and we had no fear.
Sid Meier

"One of the reasons we used squares for mapping was we thought hexes were too geeky. We went with squares to make things accessible," Meier said.

That would continue until Civilization 5, which arrived in 2010.

An even more impactful accessibility decision led to Civ becoming turn-based. But that came after prototyping other options, namely making it an RTS. While testing it, though, Meier realised that the RTS model wouldn't give players the space to get to grips with the game's complexity.

"Development is a journey in itself," said Meier, "and it could have easily gone in different directions. There were a number of things we considered that we didn’t end up doing. Real-time is one of them. I think it’s great to look at Age of Empires, for example, because that’s how the game would have probably progressed if we’d continued down that route."

In the end, we got both versions of Civilization. Six years after Civ launched, Age of Empires appeared, with Bruce Shelly serving as game director. Beyond being real-time, one key difference was that AoE wasn't interested in charting all of human history—it was focused on the ancient world.

An RTS with Civ's scope wouldn't appear until 2003. That game was the exceptional Rise of Nations, from another Civ veteran, Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri's Brian Reynolds.

So while Meier ended up going down a different route for Civ, it still spawned Age of Empires and Rise of Nations. We got to have our cake and eat it too.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says we need to 'deal with social norms' surrounding AI but apparently that means 'just go engage it'

Jacob Fox — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:13:59 +0000

When the Nvidia CEO isn't busy basking in the adoration of fans at Computex Taiwan, it seems he might spend his time considering how to shift social norms. In what direction, you ask? Why, using AI more, of course.

That's what he told the Associated Press when the interviewer asked whether AI itself concerns people or "the absence of social structures to adapt to something happening so fast."

Jensen responded that "it's a combination of all that" but also emphasised that new social norms are needed: "You have to deal with regulation, technology, you have to deal with social norms."

He gives the example of automobiles and initial concerns over the harm they could do to people, especially children. But we changed social norms so that now kids are warned not to play in the street, there are laws surrounding speed, and so on.

However, when asked what social norm should be changed for AI, the answer isn't particularly satisfying: "The first thing is that I would advocate that everybody use AI. Just go engage it."

I'm not entirely sure that this response would traverse the analogy bridge over to automobiles very well. I can't imagine 'just use a car' would have been very convincing, back in the day. And I'm not sure how keen Huang would be on actually analogous shifts in norms and regulations, such as one akin to speed limits but for AI.

Huang says that, unlike pretty much any other technology, AI is free and easy to use, which is true enough on the surface. However, those 'free' tiers of AI aren't actually free. AI uses and inflates the price of technology that already exists. It's also subsidised by higher paid tiers, funny money inflating a ballooned market, and of course (and apologies for getting a little technical here) a metric s***ton of energy.

In other words, 'free' my arse.

I also can't help but wonder whether there's an element of worry in Huang imploring people to actually use AI. After all, if people don't actually use the technology, eventually that lack of end-user demand will catch up with AI companies, and in turn with the company that gives them their AI hardware: Nvidia.

As it stands, Nvidia is extremely profitable, but the companies that buy from Nvidia aren't. We'll just have to see how long it can last—markets are funny things.

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales review

Baxter Burchill — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:00:00 +0000

I always thought history was boring as a kid. Nuts to the past, I want cool tech, body mods, and lightspeed travel! But maybe I would have felt differently if I had a game like The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales back then. What better way is there to appreciate the past than violently cutting down a million monsters in a ye olde fantasy Philadelphia?

Need to know

What is it? Time-traveling adventure full of optimism and high-octane hack-n-slashing

Release date: June 18, 2026

Expect to pay: $60 / £50

Developer: Square Enix, Claytechworks

Publisher: Square Enix

Reviewed on: Intel Core i7-13700F, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, 16 Gig RAM

Steam Deck: Verified

Link: Official site

Centered around the—you’ll never guess—adventures of a guy named Elliot, this is a classic top-down action adventure through and through. I can taste a healthy smattering of Zelda in its recipe, a smidge of Ys, a dash of Quintet’s informal Gaia series. Traveling through time to explore the history of the magic city Philabieldia (no relation to the real magic city of cheesesteaks stateside), all the elements you’d expect of the genre are here: a condensed map, various tools to help uncover secrets, and plenty of puzzle-filled dungeons, all spruced up with Square Enix’s now-iconic HD-2D style looking the best it ever has. You’ve even got a little blue fairy friend yapping your ear off.

And boy does she talk.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

With her portrait sitting in the corner of the screen so she can mug gameplay and cutscenes alike like a hungry react YouTuber, Faie the fairy truly loves to yap. All I'm trying to do is fight my way through a tiny cave, and yet there she is complimenting me after every fight, pointing out every item that drops or chest sitting out in the open or immediately explaining how to solve the world's simplest block pushing puzzle the second I see it. Luckily for my sanity, there's an option buried in the menus to cut her rambling down significantly, turning her from borderline unbearable to a charmingly optimistic companion. It’s frankly baffling that’s not the default.

Besides making sure you’ve always got someone to listen to, Faie provides The Adventures of Elliot’s biggest addition to a style of turn-based RPG Square Enix has gotten comfortable with in recent years., She has an entire host of abilities of her own to experiment with. I can urn her into a body double to clear out a host of monsters while sitting safely in another room, or have her warp me past entire sections of dungeons. Faie specializes in producing moments that make me feel like a genius cheating the system.

Controlled with either the right stick or by a friend, taking full advantage of her freeform powers can be brain-breakingly busy (and sometimes left me gripping my controller in a monstrous double claw), but the satisfaction of whacking an evil elephant with a hammer into Faie right as she’s turned into a mini tornado to hurl them into a pit is incredibly satisfying.

Timed events

While a sword is your bread and butter, there are plenty of other weapons to take your enemies out with. (Image credit: Square Enix)

Not that I wasn’t swinging a sword plenty myself. The Adventures of Elliot is a lightning fast game. Classic JRPG electric guitar wails while I hop over boulders that are sinking into lava. As soon as I land in a locked room, half a dozen murderous monsters are beelining right for me. At its best it’s positively exhilarating, a total high-octane thrill ride. Many of the bosses especially, these gorgeous behemoths of detailed pixel work, call to mind the furious action of Ys, dashing and jumping and blocking and parrying in an endless back and forth ballet of violence.

And while there’s not many graphic options—mostly the prerequisite smattering of resolution sliders and depth of field toggles—the HD-2D style ensures a strong visual look while keeping the requirements humble, and on my rig it all ran at a perfectly constant 120 fps; ideal for a game that has a tendency to get chaotic.

It’s too bad, then, that the game is so obsessed with making sure I’m never without a rogue rodent to explode that the puzzles suffer. Most about as complex as pushing a single block left a couple inches. Worse, without any memorable puzzles or interesting layouts, the dungeons all lack a strong identity, slipping right out of the mind the moment they’re done.

Acting your age

The Adventures of Elliot will have you hoping through a handful of time periods. Here's what to expect.

Age of Budding

The earliest time you'll be visiting, when man and nature were close and magic still a mystery.

Age of Magic

You might be convinced you're playing some steampunk sci-fi jumping here, where magic rules alongside rapidly evolving tech.

Age of Reconstruction

We all have our bad days, and this is Philabieldia's: a dark, ruinous era where the sun hardly shines and everyone lives a moment away from death.

Age of Safekeeping

With Philabieldia's protective magic weakening, the present's JRPG fantasy land seems happy enough, but it could very well be on its last legs.

Link to the past

Still, it’s nice that the game treats its story with a similar sense of speed. You can easily hit the end of the of this adventure in under 20 hours, and while the narrative itself is mostly fine—every single beat is extremely familiar and wrapped up in a well-meaning if clumsy fantasy racism metaphor—it shows a real knack for connecting its mechanics to the story and endearing me to the cast with only a few lines of dialogue.

That cast gets plenty of love in sidequests. From helping a grieving widow find a way to remember her late husband to helping a researcher preserve the dreams of those who came before, they're all about the past, memories, and dreams, building out a sense of thematic unity and interconnectedness as Philabieldia's NPCs big and small see their stories cross in surprising ways.

There’s a refreshingly sincere (or corny and naive depending on your taste) optimism on constant display in The Adventures of Elliot.Square Enix

One of the game's highlights is its emotionally rich sidequests.Square Enix

Faie’s abilities have me salivating to see what madness speedrunners will get up to.Square Enix

In one of the stranger moves for the game, upgrades for your weapons are gained through a semi-gacha system.Square Enix

A foolproof plan to stop any catastrophe: amass an army of feline friends.Square Enix

It’s in that interconnectedness where the warm spirit of The Adventures of Elliot really lies. Setting the entire game in the same fairly small area across four time periods is a bold move, and one that pays off wonderfully. The game is deeply enamored with the very idea of history, with the joy and sense of adventure that comes with seeing how a single home or batch of trees might change with the years, with the way the past reflects the present and stories continue over generations. Just look at the world map to see the proof, each new age stacked up on top of one another exactly the same as the floors of its cavernous dungeons, layers of history peeled back as you dive deeper into the past.

Like that map, The Adventures of Elliot is built on a long and ever-evolving history of a genre. And while it might not stand quite as tall as its towering influences, its dedication to brevity, thrills, and a genuine passion for the past gives its own adventure a solid place to stand in time.

Forza Horizon 6's latest patch may have quelled Bowie Knife99's rage alongside making it easier for players to 100% regions

Elie Gould — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:57:24 +0000

Forza Horizon 6's latest patch released yesterday and with came a whole host of changes. But the ones that initially caught my eye were those concerning the AI drivatars, as they may go some way to curbing the rage of the infamous Bowie Knife99.

Under the subheading of 'AI' are the updates: "improvements to difficulty balancing" and "fixed an issue with drivatar race start behaviour". We're yet to see what this means, although there is some hope that it'll dial down the likelihood of a drivatar from sporadically t-boning you at the start line.

(Image credit: Xbox)

This likely won't, however, change the behaviour of drivatars for the rest of the week. Since Forza Horizon 6 released, there's been swaths of videos depicting Bowie Knife99 (among other drivatars) forcing players off the road, pushing them into trees, or flying through the air to then come crashing down on their heads. While there have been some players fighting back against Bowie Knife99's tyranny, it's still largely gone unchecked.

But the changes to the AI drivatars don't seem to be the most exciting part of this patch notes, instead players have latched onto the update which adds a "Roads Driven" percentage to the Region Overview. Players no longer have to blindly drive around regions attempting to complete all the roads available, or turn to message boards to help solve the puzzle.

"Literally was burning my eyeballs out of the socket staring at the map til I got the message in my mailbox that an update was out," one player says. It looks like the roads percentage overview will be a huge help to everyone trying to check off everything on their to-do list. While another mentions how they've been stuck on 670/671 roads completed for over a week now—no doubt this update will come as a godsend to many.

The DualSense can still drift, but Sony may be exploring magnetic tech for shape-shifting buttons in whatever comes next

Jess Kinghorn — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:43:49 +0000

As a console interloper hailing from the PlayStation side of the tracks, I have a soft spot for controller rumble and haptics. It would appear I'm in good company, as a wild Sony patent exploring a fresh avenue for tactile feedback right there in your gamepad has just been published.

The patent in question concerns reactive buttons that can both soften and harden (via Cheat Happens). In theory, this would offer different tactile sensations by altering button hardness in real-time, depending on either the in-game situation or, ahem, personal preference (steady on).

I've definitely complained about 'squidgy' controller face buttons and D-pads in the past, so what's the appeal here? Well, the patent pitches a couple of use-cases, including a terrifying 'finger grab' effect that could grip your thumb tip should you, say, get grabbed while wading across yet another poisoned swamp in a Souls game.

Alternatively, this feature could be used to hold your thumb in place and prevent slippage. I'm not exactly jazzed about potentially having to pry my thumbs away from my gamepad for whatever reason. That said, there's a potential accessibility argument here, with the adaptable buttons changing shape to accommodate palms, wrists, elbows, and so on.

The tech could achieve this shape-shifting effect either through fluid-filled membranes or 'magnetoviscoelastic elastomers'. Not completely dissimilar to magnetic tech you'll already find in your controllers and keyboards, this could cause the reactive buttons to soften or harden depending on the magnetic field strength.

(Image credit: Sony)

In many ways, the idea of reactive buttons feels like a natural follow-on to the DualSense's detailed haptics. While you can use the DualSense over both a wired and Bluetooth connection on PC, you'll be looking to sources other than Sony for haptic support. I wrote about just one of the unofficial options available, DSX+, yesterday.

Odds are, if we ever do see these reactive buttons on a DualSense successor, Sony won't be the party to bring it to PC; the company has doubled down on making the PS5's tentpole releases, like God of War Laufey, console exclusives, so it seems likely this reactive tech will follow a similar path into the walled garden of PlayStation.

It just keeps getting worse—Microsoft reportedly already had Ninja Theory in its crosshairs while pushing the announcement trailer for its next game

harvey.randall@futurenet.com (Harvey Randall) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:03:55 +0000

Perhaps the most shocking part of Microsoft's incoming rash of suspected layoffs and studio closures is Ninja Theory—a studio which had announced a Senua game at the Xbox showcase barely a week prior. At the time it seemed either a misalignment of strategy, the result of someone high-up not crossing their Ts or dotting their Is.

Turns out, that might've actually been the plan. According to an anonymous source speaking with journalist Stephen Totilo's Game File, Microsoft had already planned to part ways with Ninja Theory before the trailer dropped.

"By the time that game was revealed, Microsoft had already planned to sunset or split with the studio. The thinking was that the promise of a newly announced game would help draw investor interest in the studio … (it's unclear if anyone atop Ninja Theory was involved in this plan)."

If we really stretch ourselves thin and apply the most charitable lens we can, this could be construed as Microsoft giving Ninja Theory one last hail mary before deciding to axe it. But it's hard not to take the more cynical lens, especially given Microsoft's recent track record, that this is simply a company that cannot commit to a single goddamn thing.

I don't know about you, but I personally think that you should try to release games that you announce—or at the very least, you shouldn't shutter or eject the studio that's announced them less than two weeks later. And you definitely shouldn't as Totilo floats in possibility, avoid telling said studio this was your plan in advance.

The waste continues to shock me in its short-sightedness, and the tip-top of Xbox and Microsoft don't give me much faith, either. Totilo mentions he'd spoken to Xbox head Asha Sharma two months ago, where she'd praised South of Midnight developer Compulsion Games for getting a Peabody Award—guess who's also on the chopping block?

Or maybe we should look to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who thinks the issue is that these games aren't monetised enough. The written word doesn't have a suitable enough onomatopoeia for the noise I just made. Either way, I'm personally out of patience—Microsoft is either flying by the seat of its pants, astonishingly cutthroat, or both.

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Forza Horizon 6's latest patch may have quelled Bowie Knife99's rage alongside making it easier for players to 100% regions

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