After months of complaining about Zach Cregger's Resident Evil film, the internet has finally broken him. In a recent interview with IGN, he admitted how naive he was to think that everyone would be excited, and apologised for not creating the specific vision that those who are unhappy with the film's direction have. Instead, Cregger relied on his own instincts as a renowned director and writer—the nerve.

"I was naive," Cregger says. "I thought that fans of these games, like me, would be thrilled that somebody was coming along and turning Resident Evil into a survival horror movie." It's not naive to think that some fans of the games would be excited for this film, because they are—myself included. But there's nothing on this earth that can unite an internet full of bots, rage baiters, and those whose favourite hobby is being pissed off.

"I didn't really appreciate the sentiment that [players] have been waiting forever for Leon's story, and I appreciate that," Cregger continues. "And I'm sorry that that's not the story that I'm bringing here. I understand the frustration." That's very nice of Cregger to say, but I don't know a single Resident Evil fan that actually thinks Leon's story should be explored via a live-action film. Because that would suck.

Yes, we always want more Leon—that's one of the few certainties of this life. But it would be nigh impossible to cast an actor as Leon and have the community actually accept him. The only solution would be to do an animated series, but again, that's not without its pitfalls. If we do get more Leon, I would want it to be through DLCs or standalone games, because the best part about Leon Kennedy is getting to play as Leon Kennedy.

"I understand [the frustration] so well because I haven't seen the earlier movies, because they don't look like the Resident Evil I love," Cregger adds. "So how could I be frustrated with fans who have that same attitude? My only hope is that they will see the movie, regardless of their scepticism or their disappointment and that they will feel seen when they do watch the movie and they will recognise all of the love for the games that is in this movie. Because it is there, and this is not just me telling a story and slapping Resident Evil on it so I can get a budget. This is me telling a Resident Evil story."

It seems like Cregger is just trying to be nice—which is admirable, but ultimately pointless on the internet. Some people will like the upcoming Resident Evil movie and some people won't, there isn't much else to it. But I doubt many will change once they've made their mind up about it either way—even if Cregger is making it "from a true place of love".

I don't envy the position of being a game developer—especially not an encounter designer in something as complicated as an MMO. You might have an idea of how a mechanic's gonna go, but there's just absolutely no way it survives contact with 40 motivated, mid-2000s era hardcore WoW players.

Former game director at Blizzard Wyatt Cheng, whose delightful TikTok channel has been giving free wisdom and anecdotes for some time now, says that exact agony happened to him around 20 years ago with the release of Ahn'Qiraj. Particularly with The Prophet Skeram boss, which splits into illusions at 75%, 50%, and 25% health.

"There's one part I never got right," says Cheng. "I really wanted the only way to tell the difference between the real Skeram and the copies to be that the copies have half the health. So under even DPS rates, the illusions would drop in health faster."

"I pictured raids spreading their DPS and calling it out on [Ventrilo]: Which two are going down quicker?" The idea being, if you didn't kill the illusions first, you'd knock the main Skeram over into his next health threshold and take on additional copies before you're ready: "Now there are five Skerams, and you wipe."

Alas, "that is not how it went. There were so many easy ways to spot the real Skeram. My first version literally had 'Pet of Skeram' written under the copies' names. Oops! In testing, we found more, like UI mods reading creature IDs, or mismatched localisation strings."

While Cheng doesn't remember the exact play-by-play, what followed was an arms race where he was "constantly trying to describe the real Skeram." However, "looking at guides online now, I see sending a hunter pet after Skeram before the split results in the pet staying locked into the real one. Or some people mana-burn him, because the copies spawn with full mana, and he doesn't! Ugh! All that work, and there was still an instant tell."

Still, he's humble about it, saying that while "if it's a real bug or an exploit, sure, we'll fix it. But players outsmarting the designer? That's just one for the history books."

Ah yes, melty cables. We've been dealing with them ever since the RTX 4090 pushed the 16-pin 12VHPWR connector (now the 12V-2x6 connector) to its limits. Since then, we've heard of numerous cases of melting GPU connectors—check out Uniko's Hardware on X for many examples—and plenty of attempts at dealing with them.

Now, some modders have said 'screw it' to the new 12V-2x6 design, instead modding an RTX 5090 to run on standard 8-pin connectors (via Wccftech). The modders at TecLab fitted three 8-pin connectors to the back of the PCB using "copper plates, cut by hand", and hooked these up to the front via 24 cables (3x sets of 8).

Once everything was also unlocked to operate at higher power levels, the graphics card was put to the test. And while this was just one batch of tests with one card (and don't try this at home, folks) the results were fantastic.

Even before pushing it as far as it eventually goes, the modders were thrilled with the results (machine translated): "It's getting warmer. It's still colder than a 12VHPWR connector. It's colder than the original connector, guys. Where is Nvidia? Call Nvidia, guys. Put the raw footage out there for people to see, otherwise they'll think it's a lie. This looks like a lie."

Don't worry, TecLab, we've got you. You can see the full footage below.

They even manage to get the GPU running over 3,300 MHz in Port Royal benchmark with just two 8-pin cables, showing that a three-cable setup isn't necessary. (For reference, the stock RTX 5090 boost clock is around 2,400 MHz.) And when it's running at a slightly lower clock speed than this the cables stay very cool.

This is especially important because one of the reasons why the 12VHPWR cable was deemed necessary by many is because it apparently helped prevent having too many standard 8-pin cables connected. But having said that, I'm currently looking at an RX 9070 XT with 3x 8-pin cables and it doesn't seem too overboard to my eyes.

Even with one cable, TecLab gets it running at over 3,200 MHz. Though that single cable does hit 91–92 °C, there's still no melting to be seen.

Saying all this, the modders do push the cables above their recommended spec. Each should have a limit of 150 W, which should mean a maximum power draw of 450 W total. The RTX 5090 has a TDP of 575 W.

But TecLab shows that by unlocking this, the 8-pin cables remain not only stable, but cooler than the 12VHPWR cable, even when they're pushed above spec. They say, "A connector that the industry determines is 150 W but actually it doesn't have a firm specification."

The point here isn't anything to do with the actual overclock they achieved, rather that they managed to push out more power to the GPU than was needed through 8-pin cables—fewer than three of them, in fact—and still have the cables remain cooler than the usual 12VHPWR cable.

Naturally, Nvidia might not want to overrun the official 150 W spec for 8-pin cables. But when there are melty problems with the alternative, and 8-pins seem to be able to step up without issue, at least if this mod is anything to go by, then why not? "Call Nvidia" indeed.

There once was a time in which, if you were a fan of a videogame, you might get asked which of said games in the series you had played. Now, I'm not saying we need to bring this era back—it was an obnoxious period full of gatekeepers—but Sega president and COO Shuji Utsumi's recent words on the subject are a surprising sign of the times.

Speaking to Nikkei Gaming (thanks, IGN), Utsumi explains that (via machine translation): "For example, the 'Yakuza' series has been doing exceptionally well in merchandising, with 60-70% of its buyers being women. They've become fans of the 'Yakuza' world, story, and characters after watching our YouTube channel and popular YouTubers' streams. And among them are many people who have never actually played the game."

I'm assuming that Utsumi has stats to back that up, rather than just assuming that women don't play videogames (they do, I work with several of them), but it's indeed true that videogames have been enjoying a wider secondary audience thanks to let's players and streamers.

"Even people who have never played games are considered fans and 'gamers' by us," he adds, "transmedia's strength lies in increasing the entry points and contact points for people to become interested in IP. In some cases, their engagement is even higher than that of fans who actually play the games."

That buzzword—transmedia—essentially just means merchandise, movies, comics, and so on. Videogames might be a cornerstone for Sega, but it's using that as a foundation to build up a heap of other points of sale and advertising opportunities: "For example, if there are overseas users who are interested in the scene where a character eats a beef bowl in Yakuza, even a beef bowl can become merchandise. I think that's what merchandising is all about these days."

You heard it here first, folks—we're merchandising beef bowls, now. Maybe if it'd come out six years later, we'd be getting Ichiban-branded bread. It did look good for prison food.

In news that will surprise very few, manufacturers are reportedly planning to raise their GPU prices in China again later this month. This could have a knock-on effect on global pricing for both Nvidia and AMD cards.

Asus looks set to raise the price of its RTX 5070 cards by between 150 and 300 RMB (roughly between $22 and $45) in mainland China, according to Taiwanese outlet United Daily News. Gigabyte has reportedly already raised the price of its RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU by 200 RMB ($30).

AMD has increased prices for a number of cards as well; the RX 9070 XT is up by 200 RMB, the price for both 16G and 8G versions of the RX 9060 XT has increased by up to 250 RMB, and the RX 7650 GRE is up by 400 RMB (about $60). This follows reports in July that AMD would be raising the price of its GPU and VRAM partner bundles by 10%.

Your nemesis and mine, the memory supply crisis, is in part to blame. Nvidia has also been reducing its gaming GPU production for some time now, most recently trimming its shipping forecast by between 15% and 20%.

It would be reasonable to assume the company is shifting production capacity to manufacturing even more AI GPUs. For on thing, Nvidia's data centre segment made $89 billion last quarter alone. Nvidia also just announced it plans to acquire AI development platform Hugging Face for an eye-watering $13 billion.

However, the full production picture may be a bit more nuanced. German outlet 3D Center shared some further insight on X, claiming Nvidia isn't producing fewer 4nm GB20x Blackwell chips, but is in fact simply shifting its stock towards the "professional segment" instead.

At the risk of oversimplifying, these Blackwell chips are going towards enterprise products rather than consumer GeForce graphics cards—presumably because the 'professional segment' offers higher profit margins (Is now a bad time to mention that apparently 100,000 Nvidia GPUs were used to train OpenAI's latest model?). As a result, there will be fewer chips to go around for new GeForce cards, meaning shorter supply and higher prices.

Nvidia has done the risk assessment and has determined this is the most sensible way to weather an incredibly volatile hardware landscape. For you and me, though, yes, it's likely going to remain cheaper to fly internationally to QuakeCon or PAX West to pick up a 50-series card rather than buy a bleeding-edge Nvidia GPU anywhere else.

Marvel Rivals' massive hero roster and regular character additions are some of its defining features. So it comes as a huge surprise that NetEase has decided to forgo tradition for the sake of focusing on improving its foundations.

For the first time in eight seasons—that's 17 months—Marvel Rivals will just be getting one hero, Gorr the God Butcher, in a season. "We're locking our crosshairs on just Gorr the God Butcher," creative designer Guangyun Chen says in a dev diary. "In the first half of the season we'll be rolling out one new hero and one new map. In the second half our focus will shift to phase 3 and phase 4 of the Path to Doomsday events. These will feature two brand-new game modes, with specific details dropping closer to the start of season 10.5."

Marvel Rivals doesn't have a creative block when it comes to inventign new heroes—it's got a huge backlog of characters at its disposal. But two new heroes per season does put considerable strain on the game's balance. Traditionally, new heroes are completely busted when they're first added to Marvel Rivals. This is due to NetEase's "fun first" approach, but also because of the serious backlog of fixes that preoccupies the devs.

Only adding one new hero in season 10 will hopefully ease this strain a bit so the team can focus on polishing existing heroes, without worrying about anyone new for at least half a season. It also gives the devs a chance to focus on improving other areas of the game like adding more game modes for variation's sake.

It's a good move from NetEase, but Chen stresses that this isn't a permanent change: "We want to reassure the community that a single-hero season isn't the new normal." In fact, they've already decided what two new heroes will be coming to Marvel Rivals in season 11.

The devs are not waiting until the second half of season 10 to get stuck into the balance, however. Marvel Rival's lead combat director, Zhiyong, runs through the list of hero changes for this season, which is so vast it involves "about 70% of the roster". The current changes aren't groundbreaking, with Strategists still getting their ults faster than everyone else, and many heroes only getting minor tweaks, but it's a start.

There's also a significant change coming to Marvel Rivals' competitive ban system. "The opposing teams will now take turns banning and revealing heroes in the following order," Zhiyong explains. Bans in competitive Gold 3 lobbies and above will now take the following structure:

The first team bans a hero, it is revealed. The second team bans two heroes which are revealed. The first team bans two heroes which are revealed. The second team bans one hero which is revealed.

Double banning heroes will also no longer come into play as "regardless of which team bans them, that hero will become unplayable for both sides for the rest of the match." This means players will get six hero bans for each game. "We hope this adjustment adds more strategic depth to the banning phase," Zhiyong adds.

Hopefully, this small pause on new heroes will give the devs a little bit of breathing room to get stuck into some of the more complicated pain points like power creep and the Strategist's massive healing output. If Marvel Rivals could get its balance under control, then it could actually stop what has been a muddled few seasons.

As a mighty Viking warrior you've fought your way to the Deep North in Valheim 1.0—but now you're facing an enormous door that requires an Intricate Key to unlock. But what is an Intricate Key in Valheim, and how can you get one? Truth is, you'll eventually need more than one Intricate Key to triumph in the Deep North, so here's a quick guide that'll walk you through the steps to find them.

How to craft an Intricate Key in Valheim 1.0

As you explore the Deep North, keep an eye out for small, snow-covered villages. Look for the largest building in the village, a multi-story dwelling, seen in the image above, then head inside.

Now for the trickier bit: you'll need bloodgold to craft a cast of the Intricate Key, and bloodgold comes from defeating and destroying Gammeltrolls.

If you haven't already met a Gammeltroll, just go exploring and one will eventually find you. You'll know one when you see one: they're huge. But first, prepare an item you'll need at your base:

Whew! That's a lot of work, but now you've got everything you need to craft an Intricate Key.

Valheim 1.0 is here, so that sound you hear in the distance is scores of eager Vikings stringing their bows, sharpening their axes, and piling onto their longboats to explore the open world survival game's final biome: the Deep North.

But before you set sail for some chilly thrills in the frosty new biome, you might be wondering if you should create a new character and generate a new world for Valheim 1.0, or just keep playing with your current Viking and world. Veteran Valheimers will know that updates can conflict with existing worlds: any areas you've already explored, for example, won't be overwritten with new terrain and features, which can sometimes cause problems.

So, should you start fresh or continue from where you left off?

Let's begin with what the devs advise:

"As usual, your world will receive new content even if it was created before the update, although biome generation will only work properly on areas that have not yet been explored," says developer Iron Gate in its Valheim 1.0 FAQ. "However, we always recommend that you start the game over from scratch to get the best possible experience."

In other words, if you've already explored the areas to the far north of your world, those areas won't generate updated terrain and features of the Deep North. That's why starting a new world is in your best interest if you've already taken a few trips to the upper edge of the map.

There are other things to take in consideration for 1.0, says Iron Gate:

"The achievement system will begin to track statistics from the moment you download the 1.0 version. This means that an achievement connected to killing Eikthyr, for example, will require you to kill Eikthyr again, even if you’ve already killed him 500 times previously."

Starting from the beginning has an additional benefit that's a bit of surprise, story-wise:

"To establish the world of Valheim and welcome seasoned and new Vikings alike, Iron Gate have worked together with Brikk Animation to create a brand-new cinematic that will usher players into the world of Valheim," says Iron Gate. "Additional cinematics will also play once players have slain key bosses throughout the game."

I've seen these anime sequences and while I wouldn't say they're essential to the experience, they are pretty cool and if you don't play through the whole world again for 1.0, you won't get the chance to see all of them for yourself (except on YouTube, probably).

As for PC Gamer's advice, having played Valheim 1.0, we also recommend you start a new character and world, both for the reasons cited by Iron Gate but also because that's what several of us did. I started from the beginning again for the review, even though I'd already played for a hundred or so hours in early access, and I'm glad I did. It was a great way to rediscover the magic of the game and see just how much it has changed and improved since 2021.

That's our recommendation! Look at it this way: you've already waited this long for the Deep North, and delaying your journey to the final biome just a little bit longer to replay from the start will be worth the extra time.

Viking survival crafting has changed quite a bit since the days of early access, and though Valheim's biome order remains mostly the same in 1.0, there's plenty of new details to keep track of for lapsed players. If you want to make it to the new biome as soon as possible, I've got a handy progression guide to hold your hand all the way from the Meadows to the Deep North.

Meadows

The shrine you spawn at is always located in Valheim's most peaceful biome, the Meadows. Since it's relatively chill compared to other zones filled with creatures desperate to kill you, I lump it in with the Black Forest as Valheim's beginner zone. Your main goal here is to set up a small base, gather leather for armor, and get a Deer Trophy to summon Eikthyr.

Feel free to tiptoe along the edge of the Black Forest for extra goodies and upgrades, but don't stray too far. Bears and Trolls make quick snacks of low-level Vikings.

Black Forest

You'll spend a lot of time running back and forth from your Meadows base to the Black Forest for new materials, so bring Eikthyr's head back to the spawn shrine to receive the deer god's buff. Use the Hard Antlers from Eikthyr to make the Antler Pickaxe and mine as much Tin and Copper as possible—you'll need a ton of ore to smelt into ingots. I always prioritize making a Bronze Pickaxe as my first upgrade so the process goes faster.

Be careful about picking fights with Trolls or Bears, and start hoarding materials from dungeons to build portals. When you're done here, we'll make a boat and set sail for muddier waters.

Black Forest dungeons

Swamps

Trudging through Valheim's Swamps can be a real pain in the ass, so pace yourself and brew plenty of poison resist potions. I tend to blow through Surtling Cores when I reach the hostile waters here, making portals for easy travel and extra bases to process Iron Ore.

Above all else, try to be patient. It's easy to get caught in a cycle of repetitive deaths, and if you aren't careful, your viking will rack up serious skill level losses.

Swamp dungeons

Deep North

Deep North dungeons

Valheim 1.0 changed a ton about viking survival, but some things remain the same—like my tendency to repeatedly die to fall damage in the Mistlands. A new item helps traverse all those foggy marble mountains and steep drop-offs, but I didn't find it until I was ready to leave the biome. I'll save you from a similar fate with a quick explainer on how to get the Grappling Hook in Valheim.

Where to find Hooks in Valheim

Find Hooks to unlock the Grappling Hook blueprint

You can find Hooks in the Infested Mines, the Mistlands' bug-riddled dungeons that are just as difficult to navigate as the rest of the biome. I cleared out several dungeons before stumbling upon one with a hidden stone door that I almost skipped, but realized those glowing blue glyphs must mean something.

The Hooks were inside a Dvergr Treasure Chest sitting beside other valuables, like Black Cores. I scoured a few more dungeons later and found a couple stacks of three Hooks, but you'll only need one per craft to make the Grappling Hook.

How to make the Grappling Hook in Valheim

I imagine a lot of people never really bother with Windows Recovery options. But for people like me who test different systems and mess around with different software pretty often, a quick and easy reset can be incredibly useful. That is, assuming it is actually quick and easy, which in my experience hasn't always been the case with Windows. A new Windows Recovery option, however, looks incredibly promising.

The latest Windows 11 Beta Preview Build—version 26220.9343, for Insiders—has added the option to "cloud rebuild" your Windows 11 operating system.

"We're introducing Cloud rebuild, a new recovery option that restores a Windows 11 PC to a clean, known-good state by performing a full OS reinstall, even when Windows won't boot. Unlike Reset this PC, Cloud rebuild downloads both the target Windows image and the device's drivers from Windows Update, so the device comes back fully functional without USB media, without a custom image, and without depending on the health of the currently installed OS."

Now, of course, for many Windows Reset use cases this won't be necessary, because if you can boot into Windows and don't need a completely fresh install then you can just use the standard reset method. But if you've run into boot issues, or if you want to ensure everything in the underlying OS is squeaky clean, you might currently be out of luck unless you have some Windows installation media on a USB drive.

This can be especially important to do if, for instance, you're worried your Windows partition might be corrupted, or if you're concerned that malware might have embedded itself into the operating system files.

Now, Insiders—and presumably, down the line when the feature launches in the main branch, everyone—will be able to reset Windows with a completely fresh install via the recovery environment, no USB needed. That is, assuming you have a working internet connection to download Windows through. In the Recovery Environment, 'cloud rebuild' can be selected via Troubleshoot > Recovery and uninstall.

This is yet another change to Windows 11 that gives me (tentative) confidence that Microsoft is putting the OS on the right track. Microsoft's newfound commitment to genuinely improve the operating system in ways that most people actually want does, for now, seem to be bearing fruit.

Both reporting on and reading about the raging memory supply crisis has meant a procession of bad news. So when someone actually has a win to share, I'll gladly take it. Case in point, purveyor of modular laptops Framework is actually lowering the price of some of its memory products.

"We have a positive update today on LPCAMM2 pricing!" The company wrote on X, "We were able to source a limited quantity at lower cost, and are retroactively reducing prices for orders that shipped at higher price, as well as offering the lower price to orders through Batch 10."

In a blog post, Framework explains that it's been able to secure a limited supply of Micron 32 GB and 64 GB LPCAMM2 memory modules at a lower cost than before.

The company adds, "We are committed to passing on savings whenever we can and keeping computers as accessible as possible in the current environment, so we are rolling out price reductions across both already shipped and a subset of currently pending pre-orders."

These modules were previously the subject of bad news back in July, when Framework shared that its supplier's memory prices were 'more than double' its previous shipment. Framework admits that the pricing of this latest, lower-cost batch of memory is still "above our original pre-order launch baseline," but that "they are lower than the last cost update that drove our current pricing for new pre-orders."

If you were eyeing an upgrade for your own Framework Laptop 13 Pro, now is the time to scoop one as the lower price stock likely won't last. Framework wrote in a follow up post on X, "We have a limited quantity available, so are offering this first-come, first-serve to customers through Batch 10. If we're able to source additional quantities or have remaining inventory, we'll open it to later batches and then to new pre-orders."

Similarly, if you'd just placed an order, Framework should've automatically refunded you the cost difference—even if it's already shipped. What's more notable is that folks who have already received their DIY Edition Framework 13 Pro can reach out via this contact form if they'd like to switch to a 32 GB or 64 GB memory module at the new reduced price.

Framework appears to be going out of its way to pass on the benefits of this cost-reduced stock. It doesn't feel all that dissimilar to the tariff refund situation with Panic, where those who bought the company's Playdate handheld at a higher price due to US tariffs received a refund. To paraphrase Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser, perhaps Framework also feels that any savings it makes on this latest LPCAMM2 memory shipment is just not its money to keep.

Double Fine has ducked out of the way of Microsoft's falling axe, going independent after the new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced layoffs totalling 3,200 people earlier this year. The studio itself has had a bit of a troubled discography after the win of Psychonauts 2, with neither 2025's Keeper or 2026's Kiln doing much to move the needle.

Tim Schafer pretty much pins his studio's voluntary exile from Microsoft on Sharma in a conversation with Bloomberg, saying that the storm clouds first started gathering when she visited the studio in "listening mode"—but it was clear that, when she started talking about shifting Xbox's vision, it was bad news.

"We had a mutually beneficial mission," says Schafer, "Which is just to put great games on Game Pass, and then their mission changed. I can't imagine any amount of profitability—unless we had a breakout, Minecraft hit that year—would've saved us."

You're reading this article because Double Fine didn't do that, though Schafer doesn't seem to have any major hard feelings about it: "The games industry is full of terrible things, and I can't change most of them. It's like I'm a captain of a little fishing boat. And it's like worrying about whether the ocean is fair. Not much I can do about it. Just keep this little boat afloat, keep trying to see if that's a reef, or is that a bunch of fish? Is that money over there?"

As a matter of fact, Schafer seems galvanised by the whole process: "You're like, 'Wait a second, we're not going out like this.' Some people said: 'I'm checking out, this is one too many battles for me.' But for the rest of us, it's like a creative awakening."

That's not to say Double Fine came out unscathed. Just a few months after its departure, Schafer laid off 23 people to ensure "the survival of our studio". Mind, the attempt to keep those people employed for the three months beforehand—leaving the decision to let them go to fall squarely on Schafer's head—at least seems preferable to the brutal sweeping cuts from Microsoft.

That feeling of personal responsibility is expressed to Bloomberg in some lively terms: "No one puts Double Fine out of business except for me. Asha's not going to shoot my dog. I'm going to shoot it. But I'm not going to shoot it because it's going to do great. A lot of people want to walk the dog."

I'm not so sure about that last bit. While we rather quite liked Keeper, giving it a sterling 90 in our Keeper review, Kiln had an all-time peak of 193 players on SteamDB. There is, at the time of writing—and I swear I am not kidding—exactly one person playing it on Steam. Now, that's not indicative of the wider numbers, Kiln was a game pass joint, but still—Schafer stays optimistic.

"We never actively tried to make a game we thought was going to lose money. I think people would say, 'Oh, Keeper looks like this art house thing that no one expects to be a hit.' But to me it's the kind of game that someone who doesn't play games would love. I really think there's a mass market appeal to Keeper. If we could just get to those people, we could have them catch Lighthouse Fever."

Microsoft has benefited from its services being used by many different governments and state agencies around the world. In many places, it's become ubiquitous. Some aren't happy about that, however, not least because it keeps you locked into an ecosystem that Microsoft can dictate the price for. As such, some states around Europe have been moving away from Microsoft services and towards open-source ones, and Switzerland now looks to be the latest in considering this.

The Federal Chancellery in Switzerland recently studied, as a proof-of-concept, whether it's feasible for its Federal Administration (part of the executive branch) to function with open-source software instead of Microsoft 365 and concluded yes, it can (via International Cyber Digest). As such, It's going to launch a follow-up program to trial it.

For the study, the whole software caboodle was tested: "document editing, email, calendar, contacts, tasks, file storage, audio and video conferencing, chat, and identity and access management."

Despite "technical, operational, and organizational hurdles that prevent widespread productive use", the study concludes that "the tested browser-based solution is fundamentally suitable for core standard processes."

In other words, while there might be other reasons preventing widespread adoption for now, the study shows it doesn't cause any fundamental problems when switching from MS 365 to other open-source options.

Here is the different software that was tested:

The follow-up program will make such software available for thousands of employees.

According to the Swiss Federal Council, "From the end of 2027, around 3,000 employees should be able to use sovereign workplace software with core office functions. Funding will come from resources that Parliament has approved for the development of a sovereign Swiss open-source platform for office automation."

We've already seen a handful of other European countries start to move away from Microsoft services for the sake of "digital sovereignty." France is even moving away from Windows in favour of Linux, "accelerating the reduction of its extra-European dependencies." I don't doubt that saving money is a factor, or at least a nice extra benefit, too.

As I reported earlier in the year, the EU itself has been getting serious about open source, encouraging teams in the EU to move towards open source software and promote adoption elsewhere in Europe.

For my part, thinking for a moment just about the operating system and not different software and services, I've actually been pretty happy with the direction Windows has been going over the last few months. But I'm also a big proponent of all things open source, and it does make sense for state actors to lessen reliance on a single software ecosystem, especially if it can save them money in the long run.

Exophase, a site dedicated to tracking achievements for games across all major platforms including Steam, appears to have been flooded with a bunch of achievements lists it really shouldn't have yet. These include a huge—and importantly, yet to be unverified—list of major forthcoming games including Persona 6, Deus Ex Remastered, Horizon Hunters Gathering, Judas, Kingdom Hearts 4, and many more.

Among those, possibly the biggest surprise is Persona 6. It doesn't even have a release window yet, but its achievements list—assuming it's as legitimate as it looks—is rife with plausible spoilers. You have been warned: there is a lot in there, considering Atlus hasn't even shown gameplay footage yet.

Meanwhile, the achievements list for Kingdom Hearts 4 may reveal a lot about the 2027 instalment that Square Enix no doubt wants to keep under wraps. For example (huge spoilers ahead), Reddit fans have gleaned from the achievements which worlds from Disney's extended universe are most likely to appear, including the corroboration of a widely-believed rumor. Again, you've been warned.

The torrent of listings even includes Steam games that haven't been announced or named in Steam's backend yet. Among the more interesting examples are a possible Balatro follow-up (update: it's not a real one) and seemingly verified rumors that the forthcoming Thief: The Dark Project Remastered will come with a new campaign called The Tarnished Mirror.

It also looks like Squadron 42, the singleplayer campaign component of Star Citizen which was delayed to Q2 2027 last week, may make its way to Steam.

It certainly has the makings of a smaller version of the infamous 2021 Nvidia leak, if it's all actually real (and it appears to be). Other achievements leaked for known games include Attack on Titan 3, Kena: Scars of Kosmora, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Stranger Than Heaven, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, and Control Resonant.

I've reached out to Valve to see if they have a statement on the matter. This story is definitely developing: if the leaks are real, more titles are likely to come to light in the coming hours.

Last week at IFA 2026 TP-Link announced two new Wi-Fi 8 routers—the Archer 9 Ultra and the Deco 8 Ultra—though the actual price and release date aren’t yet known, other than availability being later this year.

While TP-Link claimed these are the first Wi-Fi 8 routers to be revealed, this isn't quite the case: Asus showed off its Wi-Fi 8 ROG Rapture GT-BN98 at Computex in June, and we were there having a proper gawk. This is a premium gaming router that’s loaded up with features and game optimisations, and with classic completely-OTT ROG looks.

Asus also showed its more mainstream ZenWiFi BN12 at Computex for normal people. Pricing and availability have not yet been announced—though review samples of the ROG Rapture GT-BN98 are expected to be available very soon, so it’s not far off.

Wi-Fi 8 isn’t so much about boosting speed over Wi-Fi 7: stability under heavy load is the main objective of the new standard, as we continue to saturate the Wi-Fi airwaves with ever more demanding uses.

Compared to Wi-Fi 7, the new Wi-Fi 8 standard is far from being a premium speed boost for the sake of it like past Wi-Fi iterations, and is more of a user experience enhancement that addresses some of the issues that can hamper Wi-Fi 7 and its predecessors in the real-world. It’s more reliable, faster at long distance and even improves the performance of existing older/weaker networked devices. Its technologies facilitate almost double speed at mid-to-long range, almost double IoT network coverage, deliver lower latencies in crowded Wi-Fi environments, and better handling of heavy network traffic across multiple connected devices.

Which all adds up nicely for a modern gamer’s device or stream-congested home.

The ROG Rapture GT-BN98 Pro Wi-Fi 8 is pitched at gamers, and besides the standard Wi-Fi 8 gains it packs in the usual suite of ROG gaming router enhancements.

Its AI-powered Adaptive QoE technology actively analyses packet content and behaviour patterns in real time, and automatically identifies the requirements and priorities of each application and dynamically allocates network resources using bandwidth monitoring techniques. For gamers that means prioritising game and related traffic, and preventing unwanted bandwidth hogs from interrupting your game at an inconvenient time.

It also includes a much more intuitive interface with intensive details covering both the environment and all your connected devices.

It’s got dual 10Gbps ports (one with preconfigured game optimisation settings) and 2.5Gbps W/LAN ports. So, no compromises for Ethernet-connected PCs and devices.

The more pedestrian Asus ZenWiFi BN12 will be available as a standalone router or multi-node mesh system, with MLO backhaul between nodes that banishes the huge performance drop-off associated with many mesh networks. Each node sports dual-10Gbps and triple-2.5Gbps ports.

Both models provide a plethora of network monitoring tools, VPN integration, multi-SSID operation and server functionality. Both also include Asus’ triple-level network security with AiProtection including parental controls, for free, without an ongoing subscription.

But should you upgrade as soon as these become available? If you’re on Wi-Fi 7 definitely not, as Wi-Fi 8 client devices such as phones or laptops—or even PCIe or USB adaptors—will likely follow actual router availability by weeks or even months before being widely available.

But if you're due for a router upgrade soon, Wi-Fi 8 offers all the benefits of Wi-Fi 7 (and then some), so upgrading to one of the new Wi-Fi 8 routers makes more sense in terms of future proofing.

If you were alive and sentient in the nineties you probably harbour some fondness for the "big box" PC games of yore. Back then, rather than buy an ephemeral digital license for a game, you'd head to a store to buy a huge box bedecked in lavish art, inside which you'd find a handful of 3.5-inch floppy discs or a CD-ROM, usually a substantial glossy manual, and if you were lucky, maybe even some extras like stickers or drink coasters.

There's been renewed interest in the ye olde big box PC game, especially in the wake of Sony's announcement it will discontinue physical PlayStation games. Some proactive folk have gone viral for manufacturing their own physical Steam games. Now GOG has offered its own alternative: printable big boxes based on scans of real commercial packages from the golden era of game packaging.

In collaboration with Big Box Collection—which is a fan-operated trove of big box 3D scans—GOG is now offering those 3D scans with five entries in its GOG Preservation Program. These include the newly added Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Armikrog, while games already in the Preservation Program including Descent, Hitman: Codename 47, and Myst will also receive the treatment.

"We’re delivering flat, printable versions of the same box art, so you can cut, fold, and glue your own physical big box at home," reads GOG's announcement. "A proper papercraft project for anyone who misses shelves full of PC game boxes."

It's a neat idea for people who long for the days when they could display their collection on actual shelves. As the capriciousness of so-called digital ownership becomes clearer with time, and as streaming platforms become more cynical, exploitative and AI-flooded, people in their droves are returning to physical media. Revenue from CD sales, for instance, have jumped 58% in 2026 compared to 2025. That's a pretty good result for a format long considered dead.

The elephant in the room here is that obviously GOG isn't selling physical discs. But of all the major PC games platforms, it's best positioned to offer this service: GOG is DRM free, so there's nothing stopping you from burning the game files onto a CD or DVD, all the better to archive on your physical shelves.

With more than one million copies sold just a few days after its release, a "very positive" rating on Steam, and an enviable 83% review score from PC Gamer, vampiric horror RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker is a hit. And less than one week after its debut, developer Rebel Wolves is already planning what comes next.

Unsurprisingly, "what comes next" is more Dawnwalker: Jakub Szamałek, narrative director at developer Rebel Wolves, wrote on LinkedIn (via Dexerto) that "we're not resting on our laurels," but are already thinking about where to take the game from here.

"I'm looking for a lead writer to help me and the narrative team craft the next chapter in the Dawnwalker saga," Szamałek wrote. "We're looking for someone who, to put it bluntly, writes EXCEPTIONALLY well, has a track record of excellence and experience in team management."

The job listing provides more detail about what's involved and it's heavy stuff, with responsibilities ranging from writing in-game documents and dialog to collaborating with the narrative director—that's Szamałek—and other team leads, and managing the entire writers team. You'll also need "a minimum of six years of experience as a writer/narrative designer in the video game industry with a track record of outstanding achievement."

That might sound like a lot for a studio that's only got one game under its belt, but remember that Rebel Wolves was founded by veterans of CD Projekt: Szamałek himself was principal writer on Cyberpunk 2077, Thronebreaker, and the standalone release of Gwent, and before that earned writing credits on The Witcher 3 and its expansions. In fact, numerous CD Projekt personnel took time last week to offer congratulations on the game's launch.

In Thousand Hells: The Underworld heists, I've sort of taken on the role of the dad in that one tweet about feeding cats to coyotes. But rather than serving up pets to jackals, I'm dutifully feeding bands of doomed adventurers into the psychological, corporeal, and spiritual wood chipper of the "tactical narrative" game's bespoke hellscapes.

Those hellscapes—from the primordial twilight taigas of the Midnight North, to the melting fever-dream dominion of the Hell of Nightmares—form a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of abyssal imagination. Made by the developer behind the phenomenal King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages games, its pedigree is obvious as each game guides my hand-picked party of hell raiders through encounters rich with the implied culture, tradition, and history of their respective afterlives.

I just wish I weren't spending quite as much time feeling like my efforts are futile.

A game of Thousand Hells, designed for quicker, more repeatable sessions than developer A Sharp's prior work, begins in the Eternal City, a metropolis where the thousand worlds conjoin, and from which daring (or foolish) heroes can embark for their thousand associated underworlds. After a quick character creation process, I'm given a task by a benefactor—reclaiming the spirits of two murdered princes, for example—that I'll need to embark into one of four hells to complete.

If I hope to have any chance of survival, however, I'll need a party, gathered through a team-building process in which I'm cobbling together an incomplete picture of my potential recruits' talents and traits. Those traits will serve as Thousand Hells' basic gameplay mechanic: As my party and I embark for more demonic climes, I'll be playing our traits as game tiles during the randomized set of turn-based trials we'll encounter.

The better those traits match the task at hand, the better my dice roll will be for surpassing a challenge. If my party finds itself being forced to navigate a storm-tossed chthonic undersea, I'll have better odds nominating our sailor or scout to direct us than our streetwise poet with a profound fear of water.

When I find myself with a well-rounded party, Thousand Hells feels like the unfolding of my own personal mythological epic, weaving together heroics and improvised cunning with a tapestry of otherworldly creatures and crises. My parties have hewed the head from a titanic eel on the banks of an ocean that has never known the light of day. I've bartered for my safety with a swarm of brain-bats by offering the pickled thinking organs of a renowned philosopher. I've looted the tomb of a tyrant-king after breaking the spell that kept his murdered slaves in ages of spectral servitude.

More often than I'd like, however, starting a new game will ultimately mean watching with growing frustration as my party is slowly ripped apart by a series of consecutive defeats when their randomized traits don't prove applicable to their particular quest's encounters.

The main issue is that, despite leaving the Eternal City with a party of four, I can only nominate one of my characters to do most of the work in any given encounter. They'll be able to randomly draw on one trait from each of their comrades, but it often means an unlucky initial shuffling of talents leave me with the sour-tasting suspicion that a run wouldn't have been doomed if just one of the skills that was wasted on my shaman was possessed by my cutpurse instead.

Even if I've picked a warrior well-suited for a duel with a bronze-skinned guardian demon, that doesn't mean the talents most crucial for my champion's victory will present themselves when I need them. He might be combat trained, but if I keep drawing tiles tied to his ugliness and religious devotion when all I need is his sword arm to swing, that demon will be free to dismember him without much trouble. And his injuries will only make his chances worse if there's something else that needs stabbing later in our quest.

Thousand Hells boasts some truly best-in-class procedural storytelling, but it's content to subject me to back-to-back miseries without recourse. Its hellscapes are worth the price of admission—but it's a price with a punishingly sharp edge.

Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists is available on Steam now.

One of the biggest videogames of 2025 was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a French JRPG that sold millions of copies, won armloads of awards, and earned not just one but two separate shout-outs from French President Emmanuel Macron. It must've made an even bigger impression on him than it first appeared, as over the weekend Macron announced a new "international videogame festival" that will take place in France.

Macron made the announcement during an address at the Lumiere Summit (via GamesRadar), a conference where governments, businesses, creators, and "cultural institutions" can collaborate on the future of "cinema and the moving image." I assume that last bit is a just-missed translation of "motion picture," because that's clearly what the conference is about, but regardless, Macron used the moment to reveal his ambitions for a related-but-different effort.

"I firmly believe that videogames are part of our culture," Macron said (Google translated), adding that games should be considered part of France's cultural heritage, just as movies and "other creative endeavors" already are.

"Therefore, we will create an international videogame festival conceived from the outset as a major global event for creativity, innovation, gamers, and the industry. The great global successes of French videogames remind us of the richness of this creative endeavor, this creativity, which is also an industry. We must further celebrate it and strive to gain everyone's support."

Macron didn't mention Clair Obscur by name, but that has to be at the top of his mind. There's really no bigger outwardly French videogame of the moment, and as I said, he's called it out publicly at least twice in the past.

But there are an awful lot of other really good made-in-France videogames out there. Ubisoft, headquartered in Saint-Mandé, France, makes quite a few of them, and there's also the Plague Tale series, Rematch, Jusant, Chants of Sennaar, Sifu, Stray, and casting a little further back, the biggest and best of them all (and this is not up for discussion), Another World.

Details of Macron's proposed new showcase weren't shared, but he did offer some insight into what he called "profound upheavals" in film, television, animation, and videogames, including artificial intelligence and the advent of platforms—I imagine a reference to things like Roblox, Netflix, and Paramount if it ever manages to complete the Warner acquisition—that "are transforming our habits."

"Faced with challenges that know no borders, no nation can act alone. That is why, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France and South Korea—two great nations of creation committed to cultural diversity and their sovereignty—are bringing together those who create, produce, finance, distribute, innovate, and decide. Our ambition: to forge new alliances between creators and technologies, public and private actors, cinema, television, platforms, and video games. So that this revolution opens up new possibilities without homogenizing our imaginations."

France already has one big videogame festival, Paris Games Week, but it's possible Macron is envisioning something more in the way of a cultural exchange program rather than a business-oriented event. We'll have to wait and see for that, just as we're now waiting to see what Clair Obscur developer Sandfall Interactive gets up to next.

An amazing scene played out over the weekend at a Breaking Benjamin concert in Holmdel, NJ, as captured by Reddit user im_all_ears (embedded above).

Band frontman Benjamin Burnley spent over four minutes imploring the audience to download his Fallout 4 mod in an effort to stick it to another modder who Burnley says bullied him over the quality of his work.

"There was a modder in the community that was really mean to me and bullying me, saying, 'Oh, your mod is shit. You don't know what you're fucking doing,'" said Burnley. "So I'm doing this every fucking night, and blowing his fucking downloads out of the water."

That was a mere two minutes into the four-and-a-half minute rant. Someone behind the scenes at the venue even joined in, putting the mod's details up on screens.

"Even if you fuckin' don't play that game, go and download it. It's on Nexus Mods," said Burnley. "Tomorrow I better see all my motherfuckin' downloads going up."

One attendee shouted: "Play some music!" Others in the crowd were loving it. Burnley kept going, telling the audience to wait for his new update to drop before downloading the mod.

"When you post a mod, you're supposed to be able to grow and learn and make it better," Burnley said. "And right off the bat, this fucking asshole was shitting on my mod."

Sure enough, the mod, which is called 'True First Person,' was last updated on Sunday. Here's how Burnely describes the mod on its Nexus Mods page:

"Fallout 4's vanilla first person shows a pair of floating arms. This mod replaces that with a True First Person perspective where your player character's full body is rendered and visible in first person. Look down and you'll see your body, legs, clothing and equipped gear as part of the same character you see in third person. Your perspective also stays in first person during interactions that would normally force the camera out, such as workstations, power armor, etc."

The mod is tagged "AI assisted," so presumably an amount of vibe coding went into it. The comments are now full of fans reacting to the concert, so actual assessments of how well it works are hard to come by, but Burnley has posted a video of the mod in action.

"Brother I'm at your concert right now. You have my download," reads one post on the mod's page. Burnley, whose Nexus Mods username is "killemloud," thanked the poster that same night, after the show.

Breaking Benjamin was formed in 1999, and has a previous connection to gaming: the single "Blow Me Away," which it recorded for the Halo 2 soundtrack.

Last week, The White House, the seat of power in a country that really has better things to be doing, rolled out a virtual arcade containing five very bad videogames, including one based on the famed block-stacking game Tetris. Unlike what we've seen in past instances where videogame properties were used without permission in White House propaganda, The Tetris Company quickly called it out, warning, "We take copyright infringement very seriously."

And now, that game—called Build the Wall—is gone.

Most of the games in the White House Arcade promote various elements of US president Donald Trump's agenda: Rio Run promotes racism and xenophobia, Supply Line focuses on the virtues of science denial, and Trump Savings Tycoon extols the upsides of corruption. Build the Wall was all about stoking fears of immigration: Stacked blocks represented a wall keeping people—very specifically Mexicans, described by the game as "the coming horde"—from entering the US.

It was a very bad game that didn't seem to work entirely correctly, but nonetheless it was undeniably a Tetris clone, and it prompted a response from The Tetris Company on Instagram: "At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them. To our fans everywhere: We love you, we see you, and we're grateful to have you in our community." The Tetris Company also clarified that it was not involved in the making of the game, and issued that indirect but hard-to-miss warning about copyright.

When exactly the game was removed isn't known, but its absence was first noticed today by This Week in Video Games; the Internet Archives' Wayback Machine indicates the game was still present on the site as of around 9 pm ET on September 7.

What makes Build the Wall's removal so interesting is how The Tetris Company's response stands in such contrast to the silence of other companies whose properties have been used in the White House's prolific social media posting. Halo, Destiny 2, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Pokémon have all featured prominently in such posts; more recently, the White House has used Xbox, Nintendo, and Sega logos to promote its new arcade.

The Pokémon Company said it hadn't granted permission for the use of its characters in the posts, and Japan's Foreign Ministry has reportedly asked the US government, behind closed doors, to please stop. But as far as I know this is the first time anyone has explicitly called out the White House's unauthorized use of intellectual properties in public, and implied the possibility of action over it.

Of course there's no confirmed connection between The Tetris Company's insinuation of trouble and the sudden takedown of the Tetris clone from the White House Arcade, and it could just be a coincidence that the one company to push back on this sort of garbage is the one company to get action on it. But it could be that there's a lesson to be learned here, too. I've reached out to The Tetris Company and the White House to ask if it's a coincidence or something more, and will update if I receive a reply.

Resident Evil is one of those series which rewards nosey players. There's always notes, recordings, and pictures hidden in the cracks and crevices, all of which give players more info. Whether that be the structural integrity, of Mr. X's trench coat or the fact that Grace Ashcroft has absolutely zero social life.

But it's not just all about notes—there's also a great deal of information given in Resident Evil games via their seemingly throwaway voice lines. So, with that in mind, one leaker has just found the motherlode.

Notable community modder Keff0 has posted two videos to YouTube over the last week. One goes through over 600 cut voice lines from the Resident Evil 4 remake, and the other explores nearly 400 cut voice lines from Resident Evil Requiem.

The Resident Evil 4 remake deep dive into the scrapped voice lines is certainly interesting, as we hear more from Leon, Ashley, Luis, and the Merchant. Hearing more from Leon is always a win, but the prize for 'most notable cut voice' line has to go to the Merchant, as he sneaks in a reference to Resident Evil Village.

"Ah, I see you're no stranger to villages," the Merchant says in a cut line from the RE4 remake. "The Duke? Lad shows promise." This is likely referring to The Duke from Resident Evil Village, who acts as the resident merchant and something of a guide to Ethan Winters.

Funny thing is, The Duke has also mentioned RE4's Merchant before, saying "What're ya buyin?" to Ethan before joking that it was "just something an old friend of mine used to say."

Both characters are also similar in that they seem omnipresent, omniscient, and unkillable, popping up at random across the map unscathed and knowing far more about what's going on than they perhaps should. Although the Merchant may not be as immortal as he once seemed, as Keff0 also uncovered unused animations for their death scene, suggesting that at one point during development players were able to kill him.

The cut voice lines for Requiem may not hold any connections to different Resident Evil games, but they do have masses of information about its characters and, crucially, the infected.

We already knew that the strain of the T-virus in Requiem was slightly different, in that it allowed infected to retain some memories of their past life and repeat some familiar actions like scrubbing the floors, eating, or singing. If you listened closely as well you could also hear the infected crying and asking for forgiveness.

But thanks to the cut voice lines found by Keff0, we now know that it could've been so much worse. Burning zombies would beg for water while screaming about how much the flames hurt. The huge Chunk would plead that he didn't want to die and cry about how stressed he was. Some infected would even thank you once you put them out of their misery.

The lines we did get were certainly enough to hammer home just how tragic it all was. But I can't help but feel a little sad that we missed out on some of these. I think I would've actually felt sorry for Chunk had I heard him whining about how stressed he was—it's certainly relatable.

Then there's Leon's cut lines. Most of them are just his usual grunts and groans along with some spider-themed quips—there's so many spider quips. But the most interesting line comes towards the end of the game, when he's really starting to suffer the effects of his infection and multiple monstrous fights: "I promise I'll make it home."

It may not seem like a lot. But given how sombre Leon's been ever since Resident Evil 2, it's actually quite significant that Leon came back to Raccoon City not as some hail mary mission to save Sherry and redeem his previous shortcomings, but with the intention of moving on and living his life away from its shadow.

Sadly, we were never going to be able to have all of these lines in Requiem or the Resident Evil 4 remake—there simply isn't the space to fit them all in. But at least we got to see what could have been.

The reception to Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail's story has been as much of a journey as the expansion itself. It was never going to be easy, being the first expansion to build a brand-new arc following a decade of excellent storytelling, and unfortunately it didn't quite land initially.

Criticisms around its core narrative have largely abated over the last few patches, though, as we near the next expansion Evercold in January. And with its final batch of quests now unleashed upon players I'm here to declare: this might be the greatest final MSQ patch we've ever received.

Spoilers ahead for Patch 7.56 of Dawntrail, if that wasn't already obvious.

Dawntrail's final quests serve as less of a light teaser for what's to come in Evercold, and instead feel like a straight-up prologue to the expansion. That's wildly different from what I've come to expect from these patch quests. Sure, we usually spend a few patches building up to what's next, dropping little hints and then using the final patch quests to introduce a new character or setting as a fun little hype-builder.

But this felt… different, somehow. Almost as if we were playing the first few quests of Evercold. The patch already goes ahead and drops us straight into the ice-clad Fourth—that's the reflection we'll be spending our time in during the expansion—and almost immediately into an encounter against foes we'll undoubtedly face in the future.

Our character introduction teaser comes in the form of Visna, an adorable young catgirl with her wits about her and a dab hand with a crossbow. Oh yeah, that's the other thing: this patch seems to be straight-up showing off the currently unrevealed physical ranged job. Creative Studio 3 still seems to be keeping its cards somewhat close to its chest with it, though. Visna doesn't have many animations, aside from one move where she cleaves clusters of enemies and calls out to her falcon.

But just being able to see it, without even knowing anything about it, is the exact sort of pre-expansion hype I'm a total sucker for. Coupled with Visna charismatically explaining what the Fourth's all about: Differently-branded folks confined to certain homes, all of which happen to be gigantic airships on account of the surface being completely frozen over for the last 500 years. Get too close to someone with a different brand? Well, according to Visna, there's a good chance one or both of you will die for it. It's a great opportunity to info dump in advance, already letting us know what we're in for.

The whole thing builds up to getting us ready to head to Evercold's first location, Naglfar, while cleverly confining us to a tiny, separate area that still gives us a glimpse of what sort of vibe we can anticipate. The real thing'll come with Evercold itself, naturally, but it felt like I was already able to dip a toe into the expansion even while restricted to a singular floating platform.

Everything ends right before we plan to set off to Naglfar, leaving Evercold in the perfect position to throw us straight into the action. Not that I mind a little new-expansion-preamble, but Creative Studio 3 slapping it in the previous expansion is a great way to get the ball rolling on the next one even quicker than it might usually be able to. It was all incredibly refreshing in a way I simply had not expected, and I could feel myself getting those new-expansion fuzzy feelings even with Evercold four entire months away.

I think it's an excellent direction for Dawntrail's final moments to take—especially in an expansion that has been largely disparaged on the narrative front—setting the stage in a way that feels a little bit different to expansions past. It's still difficult to tell what sort of expansion Evercold is going to be based on a relatively short batch of quests, but I'm incredibly excited to find out.

The Wooting 80HE has been out for a while, but we reckon it's still the best gaming keyboard on the market. It looks great, isn't too diminutively sized, has fantastic and very customisable software, and, of course, Hall effect switches for adjustable actuation and rapid trigger. All for a pretty reasonable price, mind you. And now it's getting an upgrade

Wooting has just announced the Wooting 80HE+, available for pre-order on September 17. That's a week on Thursday.

There are a number of changes coming to the new 'Plus' version, including of course the addition of a BIG KNOB, but also some less visible but arguably more important changes.

Specifically, I'm talking about the inclusion of the same Lekker Tikken switches that you'll find in the Wooting 60HE V2. Our Jacob Ridley has really taken to this keyboard and its switches, as it's much more stable and generally pleasant-sounding and -feeling than the Lekker60 V2 switches in the original 80HE. Combine this with the new FR4 plate inside the 80HE+ and you can almost certainly expect a wonderful typing experience.

The other addition is another of our Ridley's faves: a split spacebar module. this gives you extra keys by splitting the spacebar into three.

With the original 80HE costing about $200, I'll be expecting similar for the 80HE+, And Wooting does say the pre-assembled versions will be "almost the same price". It's an expensive keyboard, for sure, but if you want the competitive benefits of Hall effect, despite the prevalence of cheaper options, we've not found a better overall choice the original 80HE. Hopefully we'll be able to say the same about the 80HE+ before long.

Razer had a bountiful display of products to show at Gamescom 2026, many of which come with substantial price tags. However, my eyes lit up when I saw the new Razer Reclusa X Mini 65% keyboard, especially as it's got a $50/£60 MSRP.

I picked it up and twisted it around in my hands, expecting it to bend like a piece of cardboard thanks to some budget materials. Nope, it seems like a very solidly-built device—which is pretty impressive given the affordable price tag.

The doubleshot ABS keycaps, in combination with Razer's Gen-3 orange tactile switches, feel downright high-end. It makes a good noise, too, producing the sort of weighty thock I normally associate with much more expensive keebs. I've used enough $50 boards to know that you usually don't get a whole lot for your cash, but this one feels like a proper enthusiast offering—even if it does come in a shrunken 65% form factor.

The switches are hot-swappable, with both 3-pin and 5-pin models supported. The orange ones it comes with are designed to deliver a "crisp, satisfying tactile bump without the click," according to the press release, and I can confirm this to be true.

I hate overly-clicky tactile switches, but these are rather nice. They're specced out with a 3.5 mm travel distance and 50 g of actuation force, which combines with the keycaps to make for a satisfying typing experience. At least, for the brief time I got to play with it. It was torn from my hands eventually, as there were more RGB-lit sights to see. Shame.

The Reclusa X Mini 65% also supports Snap Tap, Razer's version of the somewhat-controversial SOCD tech, which uses the most recent input when two keys are pressed for faster counter strafing. It also supports Snap Flex, which can be used to bind two key inputs into a single press. Nothing revolutionary there, but it's probably enough to keep the competitive gaming crowd interested.

That being said, as someone that primarily likes a good keyboard for its feel underneath my fingertips, not necessarily for its esports-like credentials, I'm more interested in the build quality combined with the price tag.

As PC component costs skyrocket, any cash you can save on decent peripherals means more in the kitty for your next graphics card. And while the market is full of well-priced gaming keyboards, a lot of them are pretty uninspiring affairs. This one? I've got high hopes.

A review sample is winging its way to PC Gamer Towers as we speak, so I'll give it a proper test once it's arrived. In the meantime, enjoy some of the pretty pictures I took above. Everyone loves a good-looking keeb for reasonable cash, right?

As the spawn of two IT professionals, my childhood home is still steeped in a whole lot of old hardware. It's amazing what my folks have lying around—but I very much doubt they've got a horde of RAM they've just neglected to tell me about.

One Redditor recently revealed they have roughly $10,000 AUD (about $7,200 USD) worth of RAM squirrelled away in their garage. The stash appears to contain multiple 64GB DDR4 sticks. The poster said in a follow-up comment that this small fortune came from "an old work server that they let me keep." Some hardware professionals get all the luck.

PC gamers should be no strangers to how much memory servers can gobble up, with at least some of the blame for our present memory crisis moment resting on the shoulders of AI data centres. Worse still, not all server memory will be compatible with your rig; modern desktop PCs tend to use UDIMMs, whereas servers use RDIMMs—Corsair breaks down the differences here.

Basically, if the AI bubble bursts tomorrow, leaving lots of server memory floating around in its wake, that wouldn't automatically be great news for your gaming rig.

Today, if you happen to stumble upon a windfall of server memory yourself, leveraging runaway memory pricing to your advantage and selling the stash is the most practical option. The Redditor who shared their stash hasn't yet said what they plan to do with it—though folks in the comments are already asking if they could be sold a stick or two. I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures, such as commenting on a Reddit thread.

There are reports today that Nvidia is going to be releasing a new variant of its GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card with a cut-down GB203 GPU instead of the GB205 chip it originally launched with. Could this be good news for consumers? Well, no and maybe.

The idea behind using bigger chips to fill out the inventory of smaller cards basically gives manufacturers something to do with graphics processors that don't have enough functional units to power a bigger card. Here we're talking about the same GPU as that used in the far more powerful RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 graphics cards.

The RTX 5070 doesn't currently use the full GB205 die, but its complement of 6144 CUDA cores isn't far off the maximum of 6400 the full chip can offer, so it already has some failsafe headroom built in. Compare that with the GB203 used by the RTX 5080 and that card is using the full silicon package of its chip. That could maybe be seen as quite a gamble on the yields coming from the TSMC 4N process, but it is mature, and Nvidia already has the RTX 5070 Ti, with its 8960 CUDA cores to mop up any GPUs that don't quite fit the full RTX 5080 bill.

But what's a GPU manufacturer to do if there a a bunch of chips from a wafer that can't fit into even an RTX 5070 Ti's cut-down CUDA core requirement? That's where this proposed new RTX 5070 would come in, taking that bigger core, chopping it down to 6144 cores and giving it a new badge.

So yes, don't expect that because it's using a bigger chip that the corresponding RTX 5070 would be any quicker or more powerful, or have a bigger memory bus. Nvidia has done this sort of thing in the recent past—the RTX 5060 has its own GB205 variant—and hasn't given it any greater performance for the privilege of having higher quality silicon at its heart.

GPU price tracking

I've been tracking the lowest price of each GPU in this generation since August 14, 2025

Lowest pricing (Price, $)

Week

Nvidia RTX 5070Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB

Lowest pricing Data

Timestamp (Week)	Nvidia RTX 5070 (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB (Price, $)
1	550	430
2	550	430
3	524	430
4	546	430
5	481	430
6	499	379
7	520	430
8	500	430
9	500	430
10	480	430
11	489	400
12	500	400
13	527	420
14	540	420
15	499	430
16	499	430
17	549	430
18	540	450
19	549	450
20	620	520
21	620	520
22	620	520
23	630	520
24	625	520
25	630	550
26	604	550
27	640	570
28	630	515
29	636	500
30	630	500
31	599	500
32	599	515
33	599	490
34	599	550
35	599	550
36	599	550
37	599	570
38	599	570
39	599	570
40	599	565
41	560	560
42	550	570
43	755	650
44	763	780
45	800	773
46	759	570

The recent price spike for both the RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB make it tough recommendation against the relatively new RX 9070 GRE.

And just because it's using cast-off GPUs don't expect it to be any more affordable, either. With the RTX 5070 currently retailing for around $800 you can see why Nvidia would be keen to ensure there's good supply of this fourth-tier card when its retailing for so far beyond its $549 MSRP.

Is there any benefits for us PC gamers? If you wanted to be very, very optimistic (as is my wont) then you could say that at least this is going to deliver more supply of the RTX 5070 into the channel. But pricing is unlikely to trend downwards, so there will just be more cards to spend $800 on.

Given that, I wouldn't be surprised to see a variant of the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, another ~$800 graphics card, coming out soon using some more of the sweepings off the original RTX 5070 factory floor. If it's good enough for an RTX 5060, it's good enough to turn into an RTX 5060 Ti, after all.

The Elder Scrolls 6 is hotly anticipated—and has been for a full eight years following its announcement at E3 2018 and complete silence on it ever since. Instead, Bethesda worked very hard at trying to push Starfield which, for a studio that was once the pinnacle of open world RPG makers, just wasn't quite up to snuff.

The setting was a little dull and boilerplate, the procedurally-generated planets didn't have much on offer, it looked a touch dated, and so on. It was left out to dry at The Game Awards, was thrashed by reviews on Steam, and it had the misfortune of coming out in the same year as Baldur's Gate 3, which is one of our highest-scoring games of all time.

According to Bethesda veteran Kurt Kuhlmann, most of the developers at the studio were surprised to be working on Starfield instead of The Elder Scrolls 6. And it's not as though Kuhlmann was some small fry who wasn't in the know: He joined the company in 1996, wrote the main questline of Oblivion, and was the co-lead designer on Skyrim before leaving the studio in 2023.

Speaking with Frvr, Kuhlmann says that "we all expected [The Elder Scrolls 6] to be directly after Fallout 4. Why wouldn't it be? That's what we did, and that was kind of the expectation. And then Fallout 76 came along."

Fallout 76 sidelined the studio for some time, as the project "wasn't originally supposed to involve our whole studio. But then, I mean, what we were supposed to be working on next—it wasn't ever that we were about to suddenly work on TES 6, even though that's what I think most people wanted."

He then describes Todd coming in with the Starfield-shaped steel chair: "Todd was like: 'No, we're doing Starfield. I got that approved. It's going to be a new IP. It's going to be this ambitious [game]. It's going to be the greatest space RPG ever made.'"

Kuhlmann, who it should be noted left due to a "tough conversation" wherein he was refused a lead role on TES6, theorises that Todd Howard "had maybe the opportunity and the ability to go to the people running ZeniMax and say, 'I want to not do TES 6'" after the successes of Fallout 4. "Which seems like a pretty hard sell, right? And it must have been."

Kuhlmann, understandably, "would've much rather have been making TES 6 instead of [Fallout] 76 and Starfield, personally. And I think that would probably be true for the majority of the studio. That's what most people wanted to do, you know?

"It wasn't like Starfield was this big internal like, 'Hey, we all want to make this space game, Todd.' It was very much, 'Guess what, team? We're making this space game.'"

This picture of Howard as an accidental force of nature in the studio does track with other accounts from former Bethesda employees, including character artist Dennis Mejillones, who said—while comparing him to George Lucas—that "a lot of people were afraid to say no to Todd, and I think that hurt him."

After a day-long battle with one of Valheim's big bosses, I return to my modest cabin in the woods to recover. I'm exhausted, my weapons and armor are mostly broken, and I've burned through my meager supply of food and arrows. I don't even have a spare torch left to light my way home. Even though I was victorious, the cold and rainy night doesn't put me in the mood for a celebration.

Then I spot a shadowy figure in the gloom, leaning on a walking stick, one blue eye gleaming from beneath its hood. Odin. It's frickin' Odin himself, y'know, Thor's dad? He's visiting the exiled tenth world of Valheim to peep me in person. Suddenly my mood lifts and I feel like a complete badass. Odin knows who I am.

This isn't my first visitation from the ancient god: I've been playing Valheim since its early access release in 2021, and I've seen Odin a few times before. But darn it, it's still a thrill whenever he appears to silently approve of my valor. And after a long wait, I can finally prove myself worthy: Valheim 1.0 is here, and even though I've been playing this game for five years, it's still got plenty of magic.

Ragna rocks

I'm a fallen norse warrior, delivered via Valkyrie into a cursed world to vanquish Odin's enemies. But this is no RPG, it's a survival game, and those always start with a lot of backbreaking work: chopping down trees, shattering boulders, hunting deer, and constructing a base where I can sleep and do some crafting. There's no rest for the dead.

The procedurally generated world of Valheim is a massive disc, separated into biomes and split by oceans, and the deeper you explore from your starting point at the disc's center, the more dangerous the world becomes. Originally with six biomes (including the ocean), more were added over the past several years, culminating in the deep north: the frozen final realm where you finish your work for Odin. And yes, rare as this is for a survival game, there is an actual ending, though you can continue playing in your world once you've seen it.

For such a massive world, there are no quests in Valheim, not really: early on you'll stumble across an altar that will summon the first of several boss monsters, each which drop an item you'll need to survive and thrive in the next biome. But other than an occasional marker on your map, Valheim is a self-guided tour that leaves progression to your discretion and motivation.

In that, it succeeds wonderfully: I've spent nearly 150 hours in the game and I've never felt a need for NPCs to fill my ears with exposition nor wanted a quest log to give me direction. Valheim 1.0 does add animated dream sequences after each vanquished boss, and while they're pretty cool, the game was perfectly fine without them. The world is beautiful and mysterious and the urge to explore it comes simply from wanting to discover what's across the sea or on the other side of a mountain range.

Hearth and home

Most survival games have a cozy element to them, but I find Valheim the coziest of all. I've never been much of a builder, but I still love my creaky, crude little bases: one in the meadow, one in the forest, and even a small stone hut I built in one of the more dangerous biomes just so I could grow a particular crop. The horrors of the world, from the icky monsters of the swamps to the almost comically hellish swarms of furious skeletons in the ashlands makes for a nice contrast with how relaxing it is to be at home after a long, brutal adventure.

There's a real joy to puttering around my base, tweaking and decorating the structures I've built, doing some farming and animal breeding and putting off the next dangerous expedition until I'm good and ready for it. I especially love cooking: searing enormous lox drumsticks over the roaring hearth, baking bread in my huge stone oven, and brewing mead in my distillery—which takes multiple in-game days. Hey, fine. I'm in no rush to leave my comfy little homestead.

The food system of Valheim is still one of my favorites in any game (and has inspired similar systems in other survival games that have launched since 2021), where your stomach functions like a three-slot inventory: stuff a mushroom, a blueberry, and some cooked meat down there and your health and stamina bars will be fuelled until you digest them. Simple, at first.

I still remember the first time I ate a proper meal in Valheim. I'd left my starter island on a tiny raft, sailing across the sea to unknown lands in the middle of the night, to eventually find a rotting town full of undead Vikings. After barely escaping with my life and a handful of entrails dropped from the few draugr I'd managed to kill, I sailed cautiously back home. In my kitchen I stuffed the entrails with boar meat and thistle and cooked my first sausages in my cauldron, then chowed down—watching wide-eyed as my heath bar abruptly grew twice as tall as it had ever been. I had no idea I could be that strong. From then on, downing draugr was a snap and I never left home without a pocketful of sausages.

In Valheim, eating meals made from your enemies gives you the freedom to boldly tread in extremely dangerous places, and every new recipe unlocked is a chance to take on tougher challenges. Food is as important, if not more, than your armor, making your kitchen the mightiest crafting station in the game. In any forum post where a player complains that they keep getting their asses kicked, the first question Valheim veterans ask is always the same: "What are you eating?"

Where Valheim gives you a break in some aspects of survival—as important as food is, for example, you can never starve to death—it restricts you in other ways. Even when you build fast-travel portals around the world, letting you teleport to different biomes in an instant, you can't pass through them carrying precious metals like silver or iron (at least not until much later in the game).

I'm grateful for that restriction because it's led to so many great adventures. In co-op, we spent hours sailing our longboat across the ocean while battling sea serpents (their meat makes for a fantastic stew, btw), enduring blizzards as we fended off werewolves and ice-spitting drakes on a mountainside, all to mine silver from one of the biome's frozen peaks.

Then we loaded up as much ore as we could into a cart, had a chaotic time trying to safely steer it down the nearly-sheer side of the mountain while still intermittently battling monsters, transferred it all to our ship's hold and had a tense trip back across the stormy sea to our little island base. It's so much damn work, so much time and effort, just to gather a bit of silver, yet so incredibly satisfying to succeed. Enduring hardships is what survival games are all about, and even on a little resupply mission, Valheim always makes you feel like you've been through a major trial.

Norse north

And so five years after my journey in the Norse afterlife began, I finally sailed to Valheim's final biome, the deep north. My ship slowly smashed its way through ice floes as I noted the wreckage of dozens of similar Viking vessels, until I stepped onto the new continent, crossing slippery ice to stand waist deep in blinding white snow.

Truthfully, I found the deep north a bit disappointing at first, especially because there's a quite a bit there that feels like recycled material: more greydwarfs, those squat little dummies we've been mindlessly massacring since our starter biome, more narrow underground tunnel networks to fight through, and yet another iteration of the blob-type monsters that always felt like a placeholder for something better.

But there's also a rather surprising overland enemy that's genuinely exciting to see every time you fight it, some new underground structures that are shocking in their size and scope, and a new type of crafting bench that operates differently than the ones we're used to.

And I love (but won't spoil) the method of gaining access to Valheim's final boss. Talk about hardships to overcome: if I can cross mythologies for a moment, it's a Herculean task, as if Odin wants to be sure you've really mastered the world of Valheim before you do your final round of ass-kicking. I didn't particularly care for the final boss battle itself, but the journey to reach it was a real adventure.

Odinson

There are things I don't love about Valheim, like the swamp biome, where mining its precious iron requires spending ages in dank and cramped underground corridors smashing a pickaxe into a bland heap of metal, a task with zero enjoyment. I don't like the mistlands, either, one of the biomes added in early access, which combines the ickiness of the swamp with fog so thick that just walking around is a frustrating endeavor.

I'd also hoped certain elements of Valheim would have evolved alongside the survival genre it's been so inspiring to. Somehow, there's still no way to craft directly from storage chests, despite it being a pretty common feature in most survival games these days. And despite fans begging for years for armor to have dedicated equipment slots so it doesn't take up precious inventory space, that's still not a feature—though in 1.0 there is finally a way to increase the size of your inventory by a couple of rows, at least.

But my few complaints don't stack up to much. I love this game, and it's going to be one I return to again and again. Whether it's looking up during a terrible thunderstorm and spotting Thor speeding across the sky in his chariot, or seeing my health bar double because I've eaten a powerful new meal for the first time, or catching a glimpse of Odin's glowing eye watching me on a cold and gloomy night, these are moments that never lose their thrill. As familiar as the world of Valheim has gotten over the past five years, it's still filled with the same magic that enchanted me the first time I played it.

The fact that world powers are engaged in a technological arms race is now pretty common knowledge. AI capabilities are starting to serve as national and international litmus tests for soft and hard power, but these capabilities depend on the physical hardware underneath them. And while China has been lagging behind the West in this regard, it has very quickly been playing catch-up.

It's not all as simple as east vs west, however, as much of China's hardware is still, in fact, bought from the Western company ASML. The Financial Times reports that, "according to a person with knowledge of the matter", [Chinese memory makers] CXMT and YMTC have managed to stock up on enough DUV machines from western machine-maker ASML to support their next three years of expansion plans.

This is despite the push—not just from the Chinese government but also from companies such as Huawei, as the FT also reports—to back domestic production and eliminate foreign tech from China. Domestic alternatives are still said to be a few years behind ASML machines' productivity levels.

Deep ultraviolet (DUV) machines aren't the latest and greatest ones—extreme ultraviolet (EUV) ones are—but they're still what a lot of chipmakers, even in the West, still use. It's recently been confirmed that Samsung and TSMC will be moving to high numerical aperture (high-NA) EUV production by 2028 and 2030, respectively, and these two already use low-NA EUV, but the older DUV tech is still very widely used for chip production even by these companies.

There's been a rumour for some time that China has its hands on an EUV machine, and there have even been concerns that the country might have its hands on one made by ASML despite the newer tech being banned for sale and export to China, though the Dutch machine maker denies this.

At any rate, even without EUV capabilities, China can still play a mighty quick catch-up with DUV. CXMT and YMTC having three years' worth of machines for their planned chipmaking expansion will certainly help. China is reportedly making its own DUV machines, but buying some ready-made from ASML will do the job.

The former company has been quickly and steadily increasing its market share of late, and while its memory is still almost solely ending up in domestic products, that's not guaranteed to always be the case. Plus, Chinese customers keeping away from Western memory still puts competitive pressure on Western memory makers and manufacturers.

CXMT's memory has even started to adorn RAM kits that match our preferred specs for gaming PCs here in the West, which gives us a particularly concrete idea of how far the Chinese memory industry has come. And with plans for ever-more fabrication plants, it's all to play for.

Last month I got to take a look at what SteelSeries calls the "world’s first dual-dock controller built for PC and Xbox": the Aeon Pro. Its dual-docking claim to fame is that it allows you to switch between PC and Xbox gameplay seamlessly, without re-pairing. That's thanks to dual USB inputs on the base station, one connected to PC and the other to Xbox.

The thing is, that feature itself sounds pretty niche to my diminutive ears, given there probably aren't tons of PC gamers also using Xbox (though I am open to being corrected on that). Instead, I'm much more interested in what else the controller has to offer, and for what cost.

On this front, we're looking at a *gulp* $260/£230/€260 price tag, which places it firmly in top-end territory at least as far as its pricing is concerned. Having had my hands on it—albeit only briefly—I can say it does feel like a premium controller, with pretty solid build quality, great grips, and comfy button presses.

I'm not a fan of the ABXY buttons, however, as they feel slightly mushy for my tastes, but only in the same way that some other premium controllers are and that others seem to not mind. For me, it feel like there's a bit of slow pre-travel before the button 'clicks'. This is unlike on the Scuf controller I like, the Valor Pro, the ABXY buttons on which have barely any pre-travel and immediately click down.

In addition to the dual connectivity and general feel, you're getting a whole bunch of other features—everything but the kitchen sink, it seems. We're talking four back paddles, Hall effect thumbsticks and triggers, the ability to switch the triggers to instant click actuation, replaceable thumbsticks with a place to put them in the dock, hot swappable batteries which can charge in the base station, and an OLED screen.

Aesthetically, I'm not very keen on the grey-and-white combo, but the black version looks lovely. It also reaches up to 1K polling on PC, which is fine by my books for a controller, but is a little behind some of the recent 8K competition.

All of this would be fine if it wasn't for that price tag, which does put a pretty big dampener on things. Our James recently reviewed the $220 Scuf Omega and found it difficult to justify for that price tag given the competition in the likes of the $220 Raiju V3 Pro, the $200 Razer Wolverine V3 Pro, and the $90 GameSir G7 Pro 8K.

I'd have to spend more time with it to know for sure, but I worry the SteelSeries will face the same fate by pricing itself so high, especially without 8K polling. Though for those who use both Xbox and PC, some might consider it worth the cost for that dual connectivity feature alone, though given pairing isn't the most difficult thing in the world, even then I'm not so sure.

The price of Intel CPUs may be about to increase by a further 10%. Processors, as with almost all things hardware, have been steadily climbing in price since the end of 2025. This latest price increase for Intel CPUs looks set to take effect from October 5, this year.

A number of lower-core product lines will also be nearing end-of-life, according to supply chain sources that spoke to DigiTimes. It remains unclear which processors will be impacted in either case. This follows last month's report of a desktop CPU sales slump for both Intel and AMD.

The most recent Intel price increases affecting PC gamers were for the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and the Core 5 250K Plus. Part of the continuing upward trend can be blamed on increasing prices for PCBs, which is also having a knock-on effect on motherboard prices. The memory supply crisis also doesn't help. But additionally, sources say Intel CEO Chen Liwu is looking into the CPU segment of the business anyway, reviewing pricing and profit.

Speaking of restructuring, though, DigiTimes' sources also claim that there will be further layoffs at Intel. It's rumoured the company could lose between 5 and 10% of its current work force, and that these job cuts could shrink the company's global workforce to around 70,000. This would allegedly be in addition to the most recent layoffs affecting Intel's data center group.

That said, supply chain sources told DigiTimes that Intel's own chip fabs are prioritising making CPUs for servers. This is likely due to the AI boom, and because Intel stands to make a wider profit margin on these products (for instance, the cost of the 36 CPUs in a single Nvidia Vera Rubin rack approaches $180,000 alone).

Fab capacity is in short supply, so if Intel wanted to continue to ramp up its production of server processors, it may look to enlist the help of TSMC. But more importantly for you and me, if Intel maxes out its own fab capacity making server CPUs, that will inevitably crowd out PC processors. Fewer PC CPUs getting made could mean a limited supply in the future, and that could lead to further spiking prices.

But that doom and gloom may be a touch premature. For one thing, if the rumbles about a Raptor Lake re-refresh in 2027 are anything to go by, then Intel is unlikely to pack it completely in on the consumer PC market any time soon. Besides, Intel said last month it intends to keep Raptor Lake CPUs around for 'years to come' as a cheaper alternative to DDR5-compatible chips.

Then we also have the upcoming Nova Lake processors at the high-end. These should be coming later this year, with AMD X3D-rivalling levels of cache and gaming performance. Still, whatever actually comes next may not be so kind on the PC gamer's wallet.

Don't Nod, best known as the developers of Life is Strange 1 and 2, has been having a rough go of it, lately. In 2024, its games Jusant and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden sold "well below expectations", causing it to pause development of two further games. Then, in 2025, it laid off several employees after Lost Records didn't quite make up the difference.

Based on this financial update (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz), its third-person adventure game Aphelion didn't pull things back from the brink, either. The developer reported a 56% decrease in operating revenue year-on-year, "amid systemic pressures in the video game industry, characterized by highly selective financing."

This also presented as a €3.5 million decline in sales in the first half of 2026, "driven primarily by sales and the recognition of a portion of PS+ and Game Pass revenue from Bloom and Rage, initial sales of Aphelion, and the back catalog", as well as an increase development costs to the tune of €2.6 million because of an as-yet-unannounced collaboration with Netflix for "a narrative game based on a major Netflix intellectual property."

This is a dire forecast, as it means there's a "material uncertainty regarding the company's ability to continue as a going concern beyond January 31, 2027." In other words, Don't Nod is running out of money, and fast.

As a result, the studio's looking to reduce the amount of plates it's currently spinning: "Don't Nod is refocusing its operations in France around a single production line, bringing together the expertise required to launch new projects before the completion of current productions."

To do this, it'll be undergoing a hefty restructure that may well lead to layoffs. Or, in corporate speak, a "workforce adjustment in France that may involve the reduction of up to 90 positions." The project to do so has already been approved by its board of directors, and negotiations are in place with its union.

Like a crack of thunder in a distant stormcloud, this is yet another grim piece of news after an already-severe year for the industry—one spearheaded in 2026 by Microsoft, which has laid off 1,600 workers and is soon to lay off 1,600 more. It is, as lead services programmer Chris Hayes at id Software put it, a sign that "there's something wrong."

We're just a month away from Arc Raiders' major update Frozen Trails which promises new arcs, maps, and a movement overhaul. It sounds pretty impressive, and I'm excited to have a new reason to head Topside. But before we can enjoy the tundra Embark has one more small update for players, and it's live right now.

"Update 1.45.0 is going live right now and with it a number of fixes, a new Raider Project, the start of the fifth Expedition, the Hornet Hunter Set and changes coming to Cred," a blog post reads. "This will be our last Live Update before October 8, but we won't be going quiet in the meantime, a smaller update is still planned before then."

The new Raider Project sees players help Apollo continue work on an experiment which will let us follow the mystery phantom arc signals over the mountain range and beyond the perimeter for the tube system. Completing the required tasks will allow Apollo to finish his work.

This slots into the following Frozen Trails update as the new map is actually located over the mountains just beyond any raiders' current reach. When players get there they'll be able to track down the exact location of the arc signals and find out if Shani's concern was warranted or not. It's probably going to be warranted.

Other than a new project players will also be able to enjoy all the new community-made rubber ducks. There's a colourful confetti duck, one dressed as a very smart penguin with a bowtie, and an X-ray duck. You can grab these in the usual places in Bird City and display them in your den.

The most important part of this update, however, isn't the new project or ducks (debatable), it's actually the heads up about Arc Raiders' changing Cred system.

"We are retiring Cred as a currency, as we’ll be introducing a more expansive reward system launching with the Frozen Trail Update," the post explains. "All existing Raider Deck rewards will also be available in the new system. You will keep any rewards you have already claimed at the time of the update."

Cred will remain usable up until October 8, though, so if you have any spare lying around Embark encourages you to "use any remaining Cred before then". Come October 8 any remaining Cred on your account will expire and will become unusable. So the message is: use it or lose it.

Samsung is set to use ASML's latest high NA EUV machines for "volume manufacturing" by 2028, and TSMC is set to do the same from 2030, according to the world's sole EUV machine maker (via Bloomberg).

'High NA EUV' stands for "high numerical aperture extreme ultraviolet", and refers to the tippity top-end chipmaking technology found in ASML's most advanced machines. The technology has been in active use by Intel and SK hynix for a short while. It allows for faster production and higher yields thanks to how it simplifies the chipmaking process, removing some production steps. It also produces more dense wafers.

According to Bloomberg, ASML will also be working with Samsung, TSMC, Nvidia, and Apple to move from 6-inch photomasks to 12-inch ones, though I can only see official ASML announcements for the first three. These are the designs the EUV optics shine through to stencil chip designs onto wafers, and upping the mask to 12 inches will mean more of a wafer can be covered with each EUV shot, meaning fewer shots need to be fixed together and, well, performed at all, meaning cheaper and more efficient production.

ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet says, "We expect the adoption of High NA EUV to increase progressively along the device scaling roadmap, first using current 6-inch masks and then further supported by 12-inch masks, which enable greater scanner productivity and allow the industry to meet the demand for smaller, faster and more energy-efficient chips. We are pleased by the strong initial support of semiconductor manufacturers, mask suppliers and partners for this initiative."

According to ASML, "This effort aims to establish a 12-inch mask pilot line by 2031, paving the way for 12-inch High-NA lithography systems to enter advanced node production by 2033."

So, 2033 looks to be the goal for chip production using 12-inch photomasks. But before then, the big players are expected to be in the full swing of high NA EUV production. Which, in its absolute simplest terms, means in the next two or three years we should see widespread chipmaker adoption of technology that was previously only tentatively being adopted, with many chipmakers staying primarily on low NA EUV and even less advanced 'deep ultraviolet' (DUV) tech.

All this obviously goes to show the industry's confidence in the chipmaking market, which isn't surprising given the AI boom. Demand for memory is still expected to outstrip supply beyond 2030, and processors are also in great demand by the AI and server industry, even if that isn't matched in the client CPU market.

So, on the one hand, it's great that the industry is committing to new technologies. On the other hand, the fact that they are isn't surprising given the massive ongoing demand from an AI industry which seems to be slowly bleeding the client side dry.

A release date for the Steam Frame has not yet been officially announced. However, data mining by VR leaker Brad Lynch has unearthed a reservation system in Valve's back-end, suggesting the hardware may not be far off.

Lynch shared a look at the definitely not yet live reservation system on X. "Expect nothing. It isn’t ready," he posted, accompanied by a screenshot of a lottery drawing notification email claiming the draw results would be revealed on the placeholder date of 31 December, 1969. Obviously, Valve aren't time travellers, and this date was likely chosen to avoid any part of this system going live before it's meant to.

Lynch wrote that the reservation system "is already up in Steam's backend for these two SKUs" in an earlier post, but shared no further hardware details. The data miner then added, "Before you ask: No. You can’t do anything with this information to beat the lottery system."

A reservation system isn't all that surprising, as Valve had these in place for both the Steam Machine and the new Steam Controller. The queue appears to have shortened for the Steam Machine since its June release, but Valve likely won't catch up on new Steam Controller reservations until 2027.

Uncovering a similar reservation system for Valve's VR headset is significant mainly because it implies a Steam Frame release could be close enough to touch. It also suggests stock may not be abundant to begin with—at least, not to the point that a reservation system wouldn't be necessary.

Atlus will probably remake Persona 1 and 2 one day, according to a new interview with series producer Kazuhisa Wada conducted by Rock Paper Shotgun.

"For me, I think a remaster or remake is some kind of cultural preservation," Wada said. "As a creator, it’s your duty to take the things you’ve done and make sure they’re not lost, and are still around in the modern day. From that same perspective, Persona 1 and 2 are something we’ll probably eventually do too.”

Persona Revelations was released on the original PlayStation in 1996. It's actually been lightly reissued before, in 2009 for the PlayStation Portable, and surprisingly, there's even a 1999 PC port that was never released in the west. While it focuses on a cast of school students, the social links system—arguably the series' best trick—wasn't introduced to the series until Persona 3. It's the Persona game that feels closest to the older Shin Megami Tensei games, since it has first-person blobber-style dungeon exploration, though overworld exploration is conducted via an isometric third-person perspective.

Persona 2: Innocent Sin released in 1999, also for the original PlayStation. It replaces first-person dungeon crawling with third-person exploration.

Both games are definitely worth saving from obscurity: I wouldn't necessarily advocate for full-scale remakes, but reissues with a bit of spit and polish would definitely be welcome, especially if, as Wada says, the motive is preservation.

But I'm once again puzzled why Atlus and Sega haven't exhumed some of the brilliant PS2-era Shin Megami Tensei games that remain locked to antiquated consoles. We do have a fairly flimsy port of Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne (you need to use a mod to unlock its 30 fps lock) and, confusingly, standalone curio Raidou got a very thorough remake last year; Atlus went as far as revamping its combat, among upgrades.

But where is Digital Devil Saga and its sequel? For anyone who can't get enough of Atlus's Press Turn combat system—and I fancy there are a lot of us—these can't come soon enough. And then there's the huge, oxygen-stealing elephant in the room: Shin Megami Tensei 4 remains a Nintendo 3DS exclusive. SMT 3 and 5 are both available on PC—and are both great, especially the latter—but this fourth instalment remains in utmost obscurity.

The Persona series is undeniably great, but there's a surreal sci-fi severity to the Shin Megami Tensei games that I really, really love. And since those PS2 games will probably scrub up better, and faster, than the Persona games, I'm begging Atlus to address their reissues in this order, please:

• Shin Megami Tensei 4
• Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 (perhaps together)
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon

After that, feel free to do what you like, Atlus.

The fidelity of Grand Theft Auto 6's world makes random violence look considerably less silly than it did when the characters had boxy claws for hands, but Rockstar isn't stopping players from doing what they want in Vice City and its environs.

We know that because we've seen the GTA 6 leaker shoot up a nudist party, murder the residents of a homeless encampment, and beat a delivery driver to death—quite a contrast with the mission-focused gameplay in the official reveal.

A little devil icon in one of the leaked videos did lead us to wonder if GTA 6 would judge us for antisocial behavior, a la Red Dead Redemption 2's Honor system, but the details that have come out since the reveal suggest that 'Criminal Profiles' aren't quite like that.

According to a preview from TGG on YouTube (embedded above), Rockstar doesn't want to punish players for how they play, or create a situation where they have to grind their reputation up to a 'better' level in order to progress.

Here's the short version of what TGG learned on his trip to Rockstar North:

• There are four main Criminal Profile states: Professional, Aggressive, Violent, and Psycho
• There's also a fifth 'shattered' state where the meter cracks and can't be changed; TGG got the impression that this is for players who clearly don't want to engage with the system
• You can turn off Criminal Profile notifications
• Jason and Lucia can have different Criminal Profile states
• Staying in the Professional state is about "restraint and control" and "not killing or injuring anyone unless you have to"

This all aligns with IGN's learnings, but adds a few new specifics. What neither source came away with are specifics about how or how much Criminal Profiles will affect the story—will it lead to different endings, or just slightly change how NPCs interact with us?—but a comment from GTA 6 co-studio head Rob Nelson suggests that we will notice the effects of our actions.

Asked what he's most proud of in GTA 6, Nelson told TGG that it's "the way the whole thing works together."

"We've got a lot of very complicated systems working in an interconnected way," said Nelson. "You can forget it's a game that has been designed to try and work this way. I think it allows you to sort of roleplay as heavily or as lightly as you want to.

"The idea that you have a fair amount of choice now in terms of the way you can approach situations. You can still cause as much carnage as you can imagine. How does that make you feel if it has an impact on certain things? Do you still want to do it? Do you want to do it more? Do you want to do it less? Do you care at all? It's up to you and what matters to you."

Samurai adventure Onimusha: Way of the Sword notched over a million sales on its launch day, Capcom has announced.

The success is deserved, per our reviewer Wes, who said that Way of the Sword "whips ass" in his 83/100 review. (And if the demo had you worried that it wouldn't be much of a challenge, Wes says not to fret too much: "I died plenty, particularly to bosses that ruthlessly punished my poor parry timing or overeager button mashing.")

According to Capcom, the one million launch day sales for Way of the Sword has put the Onimusha series as a whole at 10 million lifetime sales. The last new game in the main series was Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, which released 20 years ago.

"In addition to regularly releasing major new titles each year, Capcom is focusing on re-activating IPs that haven't had a new title launch recently," the developer said. "The company is working to further maximize corporate value by leveraging its rich library of content, including this title."

New Lost Planet game when?

It's become a cliche to say that Capcom's on a bit of a run lately, but here's yet another mile marker in the developer's 2020s streak, which has included a pair of well-liked Resident Evil remakes, two new Resident Evil games, Monster Hunter Rise and Wilds, Pragmata, Street Fighter 6, and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, among other games.

OpenAI has officially acknowledged the 'wiki incident,' which involved a number of the company's AI agents breaking containment and hijacking an obscure German website.

The AI agents had been tasked with looking up something online, though originally did not have the ability to write anything outside of the testing environment. But as far back as May, the AI agents bypassed OpenAI's security measures, hijacked the communally editable German webpage, and began using it like a forum, trading tips on how to cheat on tests. Researchers first drew wider attention to the agents' 'forum' on September 4.

OpenAI now says it needs to be more transparent about when its agents 'go rogue', writing on X, "It’s past time for us to define standards for when and how we share misalignment incidents, not just misalignment properties of our models."

The company had known about the 'misaligned' rogue behaviour for weeks before writing this post, according to Reuters, though only acknowledged the incident publicly this past Saturday. This statement follows shortly after the agentic attack on Hugging Face's servers.

"Historically, we have treated misalignment largely as a research question, which gets communicated in research publications such as systems cards," OpenAI writes. "This year, we’ve started to see misalignment cause new types of real-world impact."

To recap, 'misalignment' broadly describes rogue AI behaviour; an AI is 'misaligned' when it pursues goals that diverge from human intents or values—such as deleting your entire email inbox when you very much did not tell the AI agent to do that. It's a soft word for AI behaviour that could have serious consequences.

OpenAI says it did not communicate publicly about the 'wiki' incident specifically because the company felt it was similar to other instances of "agents using the internet in unintended ways" that it had already shared. The Hugging Face incident has caused the company to re-evaluate more than just its comms approach.

"Our misalignment disclosure practices need to expand for this new phase of model capabilities," OpenAI writes. "We and the larger AI community do not yet have a clear standard for how to report misalignment that shows up during training, evaluation, and deployment, including examples that don’t look like traditional security incidents but could provide insight into AI behavior and future risks."

"We’re working on a framework and will share it in upcoming weeks, and in parallel we're working with dozens of government regulatory agencies worldwide on these issues."

However that future framework shakes out, right now this all still works as great marketing for the company—breaking programming and going rogue means these must be awfully capable models, right? If an agent is so good it needs regulating against, it probably deserves some investment, eh? How terribly convenient.

Despite a cloud of doom and gloom hanging over Riot's mysterious MMO in the wake of 2XKO's closure–including well-founded concerns from our own Harvey Randall—its co-founder seems confident in its ongoing development. At least, that's what I'm parsing from his relative non-answer when pressed about it during a panel at PAX West over the weekend.

Marc Merrill dropped a mention of the MMO while answering a different question during the panel, which was immediately chased up by host Greg Miller with half-joking prompts for further morsels of information. Merrill mostly laughs it off, but does give a somewhat half-answer that at least indicates development of it is moving along at… some sort of pace. Though Merrill's description of creating an MMO makes it seem like it's giving Riot a bit of a hard time.

"We know what players' hopes and dreams are," he said. "And it's on us as a team—can we exceed in the execution, you know? But what a worthy quest. We jokingly call it 'the grail' internally because we're like 'Fuck it, you know, many a brave knight are going to die on the grail quest. But fuck it, it's the grail, so let's go.' That's the mindset that we really try to cultivate and that is incredibly hard to do at scale. But I think we're doing a reasonable job and I think the future's incredibly bright."

I mean, I've never developed an MMO but… yeah, I suppose it's probably an absolute task and a half to undertake. I don't know if I necessarily would've gone all in on the grail and dying knight terminology since, y'know, that kind of makes me think about the layoffs. But hey, Merrill at the very least seems jazzed about the direction things are going in.

As for any sort of name (even a project name, damn), progression estimate, release date, or, well, any news of substance? Unfortunately, Merrill has absolutely nothing to offer us in that department. I'm just hoping we actually see this game manifest at some point in the future. And that Riot doesn't cut and run quite as quickly as it did with 2XKO if it isn't able to find its footing from day one.

OpenAI began rolling out GPT-6 Astra access to a limited number of organisations earlier this week, with wider subscriber access planned to soon follow. According to Jensen Huang via X, the model was trained on "~100K+ Nvidia Grace Blackwell NVLink72" server racks, and there are already plans to get 400,000 GPUs online in anticipation of whatever comes next.

Greg Brockman, the co-founder and president of OpenAI, told Stratechery that this was "the first run that we’ve trained on more than 100,000 GPUs." That's a staggering amount of hardware (and perhaps leaves little doubt as to how we ended up in a memory supply crisis). But the thing that gives me more pause about Astra's announcement is the Nvidia CEO's assertion that "AGI has arrived."

To recap, 'Artificial General Intelligence' is used to broadly describe an AI model that either matches or surpasses human capability on complex cognitive tasks. Even Brockman admits that "People do have their own definition of AGI, it’s almost this blurry thing." Still, in that same interview he later goes on to add, "Maybe it was the previous model, maybe it’s Astra, maybe it’s the next model, but somewhere in there, I think we’re going to cross most people’s AGI threshold."

According to OpenAI, GPT-6 Astra is "state-of-the-art" on a number of AI benchmarks, including "FrontierMath Tier 4, ARC-AGI 3, and TerminalBench-4.0." A slickly produced trailer attempts to present this performance in more accessible terms, showing scenes of conversational, spoken prompts being used to create presentations, eBay listings, and .STL files for 3D printers. All of the actors in the trailer speak with pretty clear-cut American accents, though personally I'd love to see Astra tapdance for its life against a gorgeous Geordie accent.

As I've already said, access to GPT-6 Astra is limited for now, so it's difficult to look into these 'AGI' claims myself. The timing of this claim isn't lost on me, though—for one thing, rumours continue to swirl that OpenAI's initial public offering isn't that far off. For another, the debut of Astra—a model the company describes as its "most aligned"—follows mere weeks after 'an agentic collective' broke out of OpenAI's isolated testing environment and attacked Hugging Face's servers.

Brockman says, "So much of [Astra's] compute goes into safety and alignment, and we have so much security work that’s gone around it. I think that we’ve done a huge amount of work to deliver this model safely."

Still, I'm not sure I'll be giving GPT-6 Astra access to my eBay account—let alone anything else—for the foreseeable future.

In recent years, Scuf controllers have lost some of their purpose to me. I distinctly remember wanting a Scuf controller to play Call of Duty as a teenager, as they were one of the only brands making solid pro controllers with distinct visuals and partnership deals with pro players.

Now, you can get a pro controller from most major gaming brands, like Asus, Turtle Beach, and Razer, and you can even get cheaper pro controllers from the likes of GameSir.

As such, it's no longer good enough to just offer a few extra buttons; you need to do something truly unique… or truly affordable.

The Scuf Omega attempts the former and gets no way near the latter. Its central selling point is dual compatibility with PC and PlayStation, plus some extra triggers on the grips. But things have changed in recent years, and it needs strong build quality, great feel, and a host of other features to really justify that price.

Features

Perhaps the most notable thing about the Scuf Omega is the fact that it's sort of a Sony DualSense controller. Being officially licensed by Sony, it has a PlayStation button slapped on the front of it, and its curved sides, shape, and touchpad are all reminiscent of Sony's pad. Triggers and buttons sound different, but in the hand, it feels very familiar. Well, except for the five buttons down the bottom, the two buttons on the sides of the controller, and four paddles on the back. Oh, and also you can take the faceplate off. Okay, maybe it's closer to the DualSense Edge, actually.

With the Scuf Omega, you also get most of the modern trappings of a pro controller. TMR sticks? It's got 'em. Extra buttons? You betcha. 8,000 Hz polling? Well, no. The Omega only goes up to 1,000 Hz on PC, and is locked to 250 Hz on PS5.

It's true that the average gamer does not need 8,000 Hz polling, as reaction time isn't great enough to actually justify it. That goes doubly so for wireless devices, which will see a reduced battery life the higher the polling rate goes. It's also true, though, that when you are paying up to $200 for a controller, you should probably expect competitive-level specs.

And that's strange, as all the extra buttons are intended for a more hardcore audience. If you can click buttons more efficiently, you can click them quicker. So, in some ways, it feels like a competitive device, and in others it doesn't.

Scuf has kitted the Omega with Omron mechanical switches, which allow for snappier, more responsive controls, and it has five 'G-keys' at the bottom of the controller that can be customised to do whatever control you like.

With around 15-20 hours of battery life, the Omega is better than Sony's offerings but offers less than the pro controllers from Razer and GameSir.

In the box, you get the controller's 2.4 GHz connector, a carry case, a 6 ft braided cable, plus three extra thumbsticks and blanking plates to replace the inner paddles and side buttons. That means the Omega can look like a relatively standard controller with some light tweaking.

Ergonomics

I really quite like the Scuf Omega in the hands. It's light, comfortable, and its buttons are easy to press. It's the closest I've ever seen a competitor get to Sony's pads in size and feel, and that's not a bad thing. If it weren't for the DualSense's habit of getting stick drift, I'd use them much more than I do now.

I spent a few weeks trying to get the most out of all the Omega's buttons, and I give myself a pass on that test. The buttons on the side default to the bumpers. This control scheme means you can keep your fingers on the bumpers indefinitely and control both by squeezing on the controller.

In this position, I struggle to get purchase on the controller to hit the very bottom paddles. The side triggers didn't make their way into my regular rotation, but I did find myself using the bottom four buttons for games like Fortnite, and even as a quick-fire parry button in Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy.

The problem with having so many buttons is I could never quite find a way to hold the controller where I could comfortably hit them all. But then again, there are so many buttons that you can afford to miss some and have backups in other places. It requires a little fine-tuning and customising, but I did find myself to be a tad quicker on the Omega than a traditional controller without any spare buttons.

Performance

Sony locks polling down to 250 Hz for non-official controllers on PS5, so that's the max there, but the 1,000 Hz polling feels like a noticeable miss on PC, given many high-end gamepads have now stepped things up to 8K. The controller has competitive intent with all those buttons, but you can find other options like the GameSir G7 Pro offering the same polling, plus stick drift-resistant sticks, and it even comes with a charging dock, too. The battery life on the Omega is okay for a controller, but a smart charging system would fit it much better.

As well as this, it has dual connectivity with Sony and PC, but only comes with one connector. The likes of the Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 and Stealth Pro II come with two connectors to seamlessly swap between devices, and I wish Scuf went in the same direction here. You also swap connections by taking the faceplate off, which adds even more time to the process.

Buttons do feel smooth under the fingers, though; the D-pad is well defined and clicky, while the triggers feel snappy and consistent in both the linear and long-press mode. Scuf's Omicron mouse-like switches make snappy shooting in the likes of Fortnite super easy, and the TMR thumbsticks are easy to use.

I played the entirety of Onimusha: Way of the Sword on the Scuf Omega, and the abundance of buttons plus the comfortable feel made parrying, attacking, and running a breeze.

Build quality

Though I'm not afraid of breaking the controller if I squeeze it too hard, I do find this gamepad to be notably behind Razer's pro controller offerings in its firmness. It just doesn't have the same strength of materials. It also has a light rattle if I shake it. Admittedly, I don't spend much time shaking controllers, but it contributes to the controller feeling a little cheaper than its competitors.

Aesthetics

The Scuf Omega I've been testing is the Smoke model, and apart from the RGB strip down the bottom, it's pretty understated. There's a block pattern on the touchpad, and some light branding on the grips, but nothing too loud, especially when considering the other Omega options. And, in fairness, the RGB serves a purpose here. The five buttons at the bottom are a mute button, a volume up and down button, and two customizable keys, so the RGB lighting helps signal which button is which.

The Smoke model is like a cross between black and grey. It's semi-transparent so you can kind of make out the internals, but it's not so transparent that it's reminiscent of the see-through console trend that was popular in the 2000s.

There's no hiding the mass of extra buttons on the controller, but Scuf has done a decent job blending them into the natural shape of it. The only part that feels odd is the two most central paddles on the back of the controller. I do quite like that you can take off the faceplate, meaning you could feasibly replace it, but there are no Omega faceplates on the Scuf store as of the time of writing.

Software

Scuf's software situation has always been a bit confusing to me. It does have software, but only software you can customise on its mobile phone app. So, if you want to toggle something for it while playing on your PC, you have to take your phone out and customise it from there.

The app lets you customise brightness, change polling rate, set SOCD, update firmware, and adjust calibration. The app itself works really well. It pairs your phone to your controller very quickly, is intuitive to use, and didn't falter during my time with it.

Value

The Scuf Omega is a mighty tough sell. If you specifically want a PC and PS5 pro controller, the Razer Raiju V3 Pro is the same price, offers stronger build quality, and a higher polling rate on PC. The Omega does have two buttons on the side, and five extra on the bottom that the Raiju doesn't, but my grubby mitts would be reaching for the textured grips of the Raiju instead.

Then, if you simply want a strong pro controller with extra buttons, I'd be picking the Wolverine V3 Pro and its 8,000 Hz polling rate for the lower price of $200.

Finally, if you simply want something well built with a few extra buttons, I'd go significantly cheaper and pick up either the GameSir G7 Pro or GameSir G7 Pro 8K for $70 and $80 respectively. These two GameSir picks also include a charging dock.

At 70% of its current cost, Scuf could have been on to a real winner here, but it's simply too expensive for a good but not great pad.

After years of development, a shaky launch, and layoffs a mere three weeks later, the inevitable came for Riot's tag fighter 2XKO in August: shutdown of future development after this year, and refunds for everyone who had made in-game purchases up to that point.

In its announcement post, Riot admitted that it was unable to find the momentum to keep 2XKO sustainable, a sentiment that co-founder Marc Merrill echoed during a panel at PAX West this weekend. When asked about mistakes the developer has made over the years—while tangentially mentioning the tag fighter—Merill responded: "Well first of all, I wouldn't characterise 2XKO as a mistake."

Merrill says that following a meeting with EVO founders and 2XKO developers Tom and Tony Cannon , he and fellow Riot co-founder Brandon Beck "thought that there were a lot of opportunities in and around the competitive scene; thought that there were going to be benefits to the free-to-play model; thought the League IP could be incredibly cool both for League players and players in the FGC. And we delivered a game that's beautiful, that took risks with the tag system, all sorts of stuff."

But by Merrill's own admission, getting a live service game out there with moderate attention is a big ask. "One of the challenges with free-to-play games and/or the live service model in general is unless you do something so incredible—especially in a really competitive world where 20,000+ games are launched on Steam and there's an infinite amount of social media content and there's an infinite amount of stuff to go watch on YouTube—you're not just competing against games, you're competing against everything."

Merrill continued: "What we're doing is competing for people's attention and time and that's a really high bar, and you have to get so many things right to get enough critical mass to build the community and really have it turn into something that can be sustainable over the long term. And 2XKO unfortunately, um, didn't do that."

It is a bummer to see 2XKO fall so hard on its face—though perhaps a fate anyone who's spent enough time in the FGC could see clear as day, and I for one still do not understand what Riot was exactly expecting from a niche within a niche—but Merrill maintains that it's "a great game," and that "it doesn't mean that the intention and desire to serve the FGC was not utterly in the hearts of the Cannon [brothers] and Rioters and us the entire time. But we're not going to bat a thousand, we're not going to get everything right."

At the very least, Riot's swing-and-a-miss with 2XKO apparently hasn't deterred the developer from experimenting and expanding. "It doesn't mean that we're not going to take big swings. I know a lot of people are like, 'Oh my god, I'm concerned about what this means for all sorts of other games.' And it's like, well, you shouldn't be." At the very least, it doesn't seem like development on its mysterious MMO hasn't ceased, so at least there's that eh?

Final Fantasy 7's remake trilogy has, at the very least, given us a trio of pretty solid RPGs—I had a great time with the first, and I'm soon to buckle up and finally give Rebirth a go. But I can't help but wonder, quietly, whether or not Final Fantasy has fallen into the same 'fear of new IP trap' as other games.

That's not to say that the FF series isn't getting new games. Final Fantasy 16 came out in 2023 and snagged a solid 79 from us in our Final Fantasy 16 review. And yet, a small part of me wonders what new and exciting games we might've gotten if Square Enix had devoted the Remake team to making new final fantasies, rather than spending three entire big-budget titles and over half a decade rehashing a classic.

And yet, Square seems reluctant to release its grip over the FF7 cast. That's per a PAX West panel (thanks, GamesRadar+) wherein director Naoki Hamaguchi said (via translator): "We want to make this a work that creates new fans 20 or even 30 years from now," a game that can "move beyond being a classic of the past and shape it into an IP with an ever-evolving future."

And listen, I don't want to be a grumpy old git about this, but… that's just what Final Fantasy is in general, surely?

It does seem weirdly backwards that Square Enix has invented a franchise that allows for the best of both worlds—a recognisable, strong brand with recognisable mainstays and iconography that, nonetheless, allows the developer to make a new world with a new cast of characters with every entry.

In other words, Final Fantasy is… already meant to have an ever-evolving future. Will there be other ever-evolving futures within that ever-evolving future? Like a constantly ever-evolving matryoshka doll?

That's not to say Square Enix isn't going to stop trying or making new FF games, obviously. But after three full-length remakes following Cloud, I can't help but feel bone-tired at the idea that we'll be hearing more out of him in the immediate future. Let the blonde twink rest, for heaven's sake.

A developer has vibe-coded a new ReShade add-on file that offloads the DLSS Neural Rendering workloads to a second GPU, almost negating the otherwise massive DLSS NR performance hit. Given the original DLSS 5 shots we saw when Jen-Hsun first showed off the feature around GDC and GTC in the Spring were running on two graphics cards, that's not wholly surprising, but this mod certainly does open the the potential for keeping your old GPU around for neural coprocessing in the future.

Like almost all of the current DLSS 5/Neural Rendering implementations we've seen where the user gets to pick the game, the model, and the weight of the effects, the Neural Coprocessor add-on file—mgpu_bridge—is designed for ReShade, an app used to inject different visual effects into PC games. The files exist on Github, can be downloaded and added into a game that's already been modded with DLSS 5 support, and could dramatically improve the performance.

This is, for me, the biggest issue with both the homebrew mods for DLSS Neural Rendering and the only release implementation we've seen from Nvidia and the developers themselves: the hefty performance penalty from turning it on.

Nvidia itself has touted a 50 - 60% frame rate hit as a blanket figure—regardless of game and how much AI filtering it's doing—as what it is expecting to see from enabling DLSS NR. Andy benchmarked NBA 2K27 ahead of launch and found that sometimes the frame rate impact can be even higher than that.

I mean, it's not as bad as when you try and run DLSS NR on AMD GPUs, but I've noted these kinds of performance hits when you run the new feature through ReShade, too. But Marcelo Guibout has coded a ReShade add-on file that allows a second GPU—here an RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB—to take the final finished frame and perform the neural rendering pass on that GPU and output on its own monitor. That means it doesn't have to hand the frame back, which adds its own performance hit and latency.

They initially used a local model—Qwen3.8-27B-Q6_K—running on LM Studio using the same pair of RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB cards they eventually tested the feature on. This created the "initial add-on scaffold" which they then took into Claude to write most of the C++ core, though Anthropic's AI "also produced several confident, well-formatted, wrong diagnoses along the way."

Looking through the Github documentation Guibout makes it clear this is not a production-ready add-on, and is mostly presented for further research and development. They note it has been run on exactly one machine with three games, and encourage everyone to read the source code before running the files. But it's still a really interesting development in the DLSS 5 modding story.

"The reason it is worth doing: neural post-processing saturates whatever device it runs on," writes Guibout. "Run it on the render GPU and lowering your render resolution just frees capacity the neural stage immediately eats, so upscaling stops paying for itself. Move it to a second GPU and the render GPU is genuinely freed."

DLSS NR on AMD

AMD GPUs running DLSS 5 looks great, but runs horribly.

DLSS NR Off

DLSS NR On

This is almost certainly the reason behind Nvidia originally running the feature on two GPUs for the original demos, and the fact that it can get it running on a single GPU is still impressive from a technical perspective, but having a coprocessor handling the load should give you the best of both worlds.

Though there are obvious caveats to this.

The first being that it's expensive enough to buy one graphics card right now. You look at this mod and the fact it's been created and tested on a pair of RTX 5060 Ti cards and think that's kinda mid-range. They are the fifth-tier cards of Nvidia's RTX Blackwell stack. But those are two GPUs that now cost something around $800 apiece, so we're still talking about needing $1,600 worth of graphics silicon to get this working.

The other caveat is that we're running on with two monitors here as a necessity. Guibout notes in the Github readme file that, "The second monitor is a requirement, not a nicety - the neural output is displayed by the card that produced it. Headless works and is meaningfully slower."

The third caveat here is that this ReShade implementation is a final step process. It is handled after the final frame has been rendered and works with none of the depth and motion vector information the official Nvidia implementation runs with. That means the second-GPU is going to have to be more tightly integrated into the actual rendering process. Not quite as tightly bound as with SLI, perhaps, but it will surely still need to get involved before the final post-processing is done.

But I could potentially see this as a way to do something useful with your current-gen card when you next upgrade. And, on a purely mercenary level, it might be a smart thing for Nvidia to actually make as a feature as it would have the effect of locking someone into the GeForce ecosystem even more securely.

Though times have changed and SLI and CrossFire have died, and so motherboards are even less likely today to have multiple PCIe x16 sockets available to stick secondary GPUs into. Especially if you've got multiple NVMe SSDs taking up precious PCIe lanes.

I'm loving the rate of development happening outside of Nvidia now that the feature has fallen into the hands of the community at large. And regardless of how you feel about the technology, I would encourage you, if you have the hardware, to take a look at how even just the ReShade implementation looks, and how you can alter it. It gives a fascinating insight into the technology, into its limitations as well as its unwelcome excesses.

Though it's not always easy. I've spent the morning trying to get this ReShade add-on working with the test rig, because I was interested to see if it could be run asymmetrically, as I don't have a pair of RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB cards. Sadly, with an RTX 5080 and RTX 5060 Ti as the neural coprocessor, I could not get the add-on to arm when in Cyberpunk 2077. So, I've got more work to do to get this thing running.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of 'I'd do anything for an Nvidia RTX 5090 at MSRP, but I won't do that.' This time, 'that' is hopping on an international flight from the UK to Seattle, Washington in the US, so I can buy a 50-series card at PAX West.

Nvidia's self-described GeForce Evangelist Jacob Freeman wrote on X, "Hello PAX West! VPA IRL is here! Come find me if your looking for a GeForce RTX 5090, 5080 or 5070 AT MSRP! While they last."

Unlike QuakeCon earlier this year, there didn't appear to be a Nvidia booth or any boxed Founder's Editions purchasable at the event itself. Instead, Freeman explained that he was giving out cards with "a code that you use to purchase from the Nvidia web store." For context, 'VPA' stands for Verified Priority Access, which in the past has been used as a draw system that only granted gamers the chance to buy a full-price GPU.

Now, it's a little late for me to hop on a plane as PAX West ran from September 4 until September 7. But if I'd gotten my act together, hopping on a short-notice flight to the West coast for approximately £1,000 (about $1,352), plus grabbing the most expensive PAX day-pass for $89, then picking up the RTX 5090 for $1,999 MSRP would have totalled $3,440—and that's still significantly cheaper than the $5,500 price tag we've most recently seen at Best Buy as part of our graphics card price watch.

That is a ridiculous state of affairs, but given that Freeman was out of 5090 and 5080 cards by the end of day three, clearly the maths is maths-ing for some. I barely remember the last time Nvidia mentioned gaming at all in an earnings call, but this runaway pricing doesn't appear to be hurting the company.

For a start, Nvidia's AI profits completely overshadow what it makes from gaming. In fact, the company is dining so well on AI's demand for hardware like Vera Rubin, that it recently announced its intention to acquire Hugging Face for $13 billion. Purchasing this development platform will likely further shore up the company's prime position within the AI industry.

It's old news, but Nvidia hasn't been a gaming company primarily for some time now. As such, it can kind of do what it likes with its gaming business (Notwithstanding the memory supply crisis). As such, I suspect we're far from seeing the last of 'VPA IRL' stunts like those at QuakeCon and now PAX West. Meat Loaf, anyone?

When Cookie Clicker and Candy Box both released in quick succession in 2013, I remember them being received mostly as a joke, or else as an amusing parody of "watch numbers go up" RPG gameplay. Then something weird happened: all my colleagues became fixated on Cookie Clicker. So did I. Lots of people on the internet, on Twitter and in various forums like Reddit, confessed to having become addicted to it.

Cookie Clicker did have an antecedent in Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker, which was a very deliberate satire. But Cookie Clicker wasn't presented as satire. And yet, it was so transparently meaningless that people doubted it could be anything else. You click a cookie repeatedly to generate more cookies. Once you earn enough cookies, you can invest those cookies into various ways of expediting the cookie making process. You click and watch numbers go up. It's stupid.

Fast forward more than a decade later and idlers, also known as incremental games, are massive on Steam. Last week, 54 games with the tag "idler" released. In total, there are 4,314 games with that tag on Steam.

Some of these look pretty good as far as idlers go. Next Reign: Kingdom has pretty handmade pixel art, atmospheric music and strategic elements. We Need More Humans! Has a novel premise—you have to become increasingly proficient at abducting humans—and, as far as this genre goes, a distinctive art style. Zad Archery's art style, on the other hand, is very generic but it has nearly 700 "mostly positive" reviews, so it must be doing something right.

None of those listed above are likely to rival genre heavyweights like Bongo Cat (currently being played by 135,803 people), Task Bar Hero (66,292 people) and Banana (3,628). But they have at least managed to rise above the onslaught of idler AI slop. The vast majority of the idlers that released on Steam last week have an AI disclosure.

And many of them look oddly, almost uncannily similar. Compare the UIs in the gallery below:

There's a special fondness for a roughly similar shade of blue, isn't there? They are not pleasant UIs. What is going on here? Why do these games all look roughly the same?

A quick look at their AI disclosures may be telling. Vespera has "AI generated images and other AI made components". Nexus: "Some assets were created using AI. I'm not as [sic] artist lol." Brainrot Clicker, fittingly, has "some pre-generated visual assets, written content, and development-related creative work", while Path of the Idle Cultivator used AI "for UI and some translations".

These are just four examples: browse the raw unfiltered list of Steam idler games and you'll find many, many more examples of games with loosely the same approach to UI, both in terms of layout and that gravitation towards a dark blue background colour.

The amount of games bearing the idler tag spiked dramatically last year, according to SteamDB. In 2020 there were 100, in 2024 there were 647, last year there were 1033 and this year—so far!—there are 1811. There are 1119 coming soon and 380 "TBA".

I don't mean to be too dismissive of the idler as a genre: there are decent examples. But the whole situation feels almost implausibly silly: Steam is being flooded with thousands of mindless "numbers go up" games developed primarily with the aid of generative AI. It's got to be the quintessence of brainrot.

If you'd told me in 2013 as I dumbly clicked on cookies that this was the future of the idler genre, I wouldn't have believed you at first. Then, maybe five minutes later, after giving it some thought, I'd probably have to admit to the inevitability of it.

Top Steam games by revenue (August 25 - September 1)

Star Wars Zero Company tops the list, which wasn't necessarily guaranteed: yes, it's a Star Wars game, but it's also a strategy RPG in the style of XCOM. Unfortunately, the offices at Bit Reactor probably aren't thrumming with post-launch elation: 80 percent of its workforce has reportedly been furloughed.

The Blood of Dawnwalker and Onimusha both released after the period tracked by this chart, but for what it's worth—and perhaps that's not much—The Blood of Dawnwalker's pre-orders had it at 17, while Onimusha came in at 28. Given The Blood of Dawnwalker has already sold a million units just three days after release (across all platforms) but we don't know how Onimusha has done.

Elden Ring Tarnished Pack came in at 29, which is quite low considering it's Elden Ring DLC. Most reviews suggest it's not worth the $5: "Not worth the money," one Steam user wrote. "Should have been free as it is a very small update made to promote the launch of the game on the Switch." A lot of reviews are in agreement.

Last week's Steam deep cuts

The early access RPG Entropy is a very different beast to its developers' previous work. Dread Delusion was a shockingly good homage to first person RPGs like King's Field or The Elder Scrolls, while this new game is distinctly JRPG-inflected, nailing a lot of the feel and intangibles of something like Final Fantasy 10 or Lost Odyssey.

But you can't just put it into the JRPG bin and call it a day. Entropy boasts a large party size for tactical battles, permadeath, locational damage, as well as an approach to reactivity and storytelling that feels more PC gaming than PS2 gaming. When I spoke to lead developer James Wragg recently, he told me that's very deliberate.

"In many ways, if Dread Delusion was my take on The Elder Scrolls, then this is my take on Fallout," Wragg said. "The original Fallout, Fallout 1, is one of my favorite games, and we're riffing on that quite a lot with Entropy."

Having played Entropy's demo and a bit of early access, I immediately got what he meant. Part of that inspiration is visible in the locational damage system, similar to OG Fallout's called shots (what would eventually become VATS in the 3D games).

You can incur a penalty to accuracy to target a specific limb or zone on an enemy, to the benefit of greater damage or inflicting a debuff. Wragg provided the examples of how it might work in more advanced battles: disarming a foe with an especially powerful weapon, or shredding the bulbous Resident Evil weakpoint of a mutated enemy.

Entropy's specific flavor of post-apocalypse also rhymes with Fallout 1—it's desolate and in your face in this similarly striking way, with what little levity there is feeling like a remnant of the pre-collapse world, such as the play in Entropy's opening scene. Another major inspiration for Wragg: Mordheim, a small-unit tactics spinoff of Warhammer first published by Games Workshop in 1999.

Old school

"What I love about tabletop is, it's just pen and paper," Wragg said. "You can house rule stuff as much as you want, so we've got a bunch of custom rules in our [Mordheim] campaign. It really encourages creativity because you make your little guys and you customize them based on how you load out your character.

"Something like Mordheim has so much character customization⁠—almost beyond most video games⁠—because it's tabletop. The developers never actually had to code in the graphics of swinging all these different weapons, and I think that freedom I found really inspiring."

Wragg noted that Entropy's low-fi graphics allow for a similar level of leeway: His team can implement a large number of unique weapons and statuses without each one requiring (or having to seamlessly mesh with other) labor-intensive assets and animations. "I think if we were working in more high fidelity, we would have had to rein in that ambition a bit" said Wragg.

This more tabletop-oriented style of RPG seems to be something of a full circle moment for the developer. He told me that, as part of his earliest hobby-level development on what would become Dread Delusion, he began seriously boning up on tabletop history and how it influences digital RPGs.

"I just found myself being like, why? Why do RPGs do these things?" Wragg told me. "If you're designing an RPG, you have to go back to the source on tabletop games because so many of the systems that exist within modern AAA RPGs, they originated with Dungeons & Dragons and all those other spin-off games and war games.

"It just comes from the core of wanting to understand how games tick. It just feels natural to go back to the roots of tabletop role playing games if you want to work on a role playing game, because they really haven't deviated all that much from them, even at this point."

Entropy is available now in early access on Steam, and it also has a substantial free demo. Elsewhere in our conversation, Wragg talked about how he and his team just love sidequests too much to make a game with a smaller wordcount like they originally planned.