As reported by The Verge, Xbox Chief Operating Officer Helen Chiang is leaving the company after three months in the role⁠—though Chiang had previously been a Microsoft employee for 21 years. Xbox had not previously operated with a COO in its hierarchy, and the role was created as part of CEO Asha Sharma's controversial brand "reset."

Sharma announced the personnel change in an October 23 internal memo, and did not offer an explanation for Chiang's departure. "Her immediate responsibilities are being split up between other Xbox leaders for now," Sharma wrote. "We'll share more on COO leadership as plans are finalized."

Microsoft shared a boilerplate statement on the departure to Eurogamer: "We don't discuss individual personnel matters. We're grateful for Helen's years of service and wish her well." However, an anonymous source within Microsoft also told Eurogamer that Chiang was "terminated for policy violations."

According to Sharma's original reset announcement, the COO was tasked "with end-to-end P&L [profit and loss] responsibility across content, hardware, platform, and services." Given Xbox's current focus on cost-cutting and maximizing revenue, that sounds like a fairly key role in Sharma's project.

It's hard to imagine Chiang's departure having any significant impact on Xbox's strategy or its execution, but it hardly inspires confidence to see such a quick turnaround in an executive-level position, particularly given the overall instability and uncertainty at Xbox.

It seems like there's a new slightly-humorous-for-its-incongruity collab between game devs every other week at this point, and the latest in this sacred lineage is a team-up between Super Meat Boy 3D and Mouse: P.I. For Hire.

The latter game's titular mouse detective has been squished into a cube-like shape and sent to navigate a hellish labyrinth full of sawblades for the rest of his miserable existence. Oh, and the screen goes all black-and-white when you play as him, just like the FPS he comes from.

This might all seem downstream of cynical money devourers like Fortnite, but at least these games share something in both being indie(ish) cartoony pastiches with a gore-slick twist. Besides, Meat Boy is an OG when it comes to invasions of strangers' videogames.

You could play as him in the Bit.Trip games, and in turn CommanderVideo cameoed in Super Meat Boy. If you're too Gen A to understand a single word I just said about the halcyon days of 2010s indie gaming, that's okay. I'll just go lay down and die.

But if you want to jump up and die, spectacularly and repeatedly, that's what Super Meat Boy 3D is for. PC Gamer Australian Editor Shaun Prescott wasn't exactly head over heels for it in his impressions—he said it had "no vibe," lacking the skeezy-yet-tasteful tastelessness of Edmund McMillen's touch—but still felt pretty good as far its running and jumping and exploding were concerned. Seems like that's enough for some, as the game currently sits at a Very Positive rating on Steam.

Meanwhile, contributor Phil Iwaniuk said Mouse: P.I. For Hire was a "bona fide classic" in his 86% review for Mouse, adding that there's more to it than "just an eye-grabbing art style." Normally these crossovers go both ways to some extent, but I'm not sure how Super Meat Boy would fit into a noir detective story. Cause of death: giant sawblade? Seems pretty open-and-shut.

The Japan Actors Union, an org consisting of around 2,600 actors and voice actors, recently announced a series of measures to protect the rights of performers in the industry with regard to generative AI (reported in English via Automaton Media).

It's been a hot topic both in Japan and here in the west, with Leon Kennedy actor Nick Apostolides arguing AI voice acting was something of an oxymoron: "AI can speak lines, but there's nothing human behind it," he said.

Rather than a full-on ban or tight regulation, the union's proposed guidelines push for consent at "every stage." Companies would have to disclose when an actor's voice will be used for training, and they would also be required to negotiate compensation with actors. In other words, agreeing to have your voice generated for a short-form advertisement or whatever would be like licensing your likeness to go on a cereal box.

These consent guidelines would also apply to AI-translated performances, and in a more restrictive way to the mimicry of deceased actors, such as Tupac's controversial "appearance" in the upcoming Stranger Than Heaven.

The guidelines would ban using AI to copy a dead actor's voice unless consent had been obtained prior to their death. They would also require consent from the actor's living family, estate, or other administrative org, as well as royalty payments to those parties.

"It protects the dignity, honor, and legacy of deceased performers from commercial exploitation," said the union (auto-translated from Japanese). "We respect the wishes of the person during their lifetime to the greatest extent, and when generating AI, strict permission from the family (or administrator) who inherits the rights is mandatory to prevent desecration of the deceased."

Given the AI-related catastrophes we've seen in this field of the voicework world, like a facsimile of James Earl Jones slinging AI-generated slurs in Fortnite, these guidelines seem fairly gentle and reasonable. Time will tell if these pushes for actors' rights will take hold on a larger scale within the Japanese entertainment industry and otherwise.

Well, here's a headscratcher. Paolo Pedercini, developer of Future? No Thanks! recently admitted to using generative AI in his ecosocialist satire while also referring to the technology as "a technofascist, anti-human and anti-art project." Now, the developer has removed several AI generated voice lines from the game, following a backlash to his use of the very technology which the game lampoons.

You might remember Future? No Thanks! from another recent controversy, whereupon the game was briefly delayed after Steam held up its release while it reviewed some fleeting nudity in the game. Pedercini—who also goes by Mollieindustria—received considerable support during that debacle. But the reaction to Future? No Thanks' AI use has been rather less supportive, prompting Pedercini to rework the game and respond to the backlash.

Pedercini originally revealed his AI use in a blog post (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun). Apparently, the game contained several voice lines generated using text-to-speech, which Pedercini claimed, "used to be an uncontroversial technology and an early application of neural networks" before "AI bros started commercializing AI voices". Alongside this, the game also includes "a tiny fraction" of AI generated code, which Pedercini said he used for things like "fixing a shader I didn't write which broke after an update" as well as "finishing touches and minor debugging."

In this blog, Pedercini defended his AI use by pointing out that Future? No Thanks! "satirizes generative AI and the careless ways it can be used," adding that the "100% no-AI stance" adopted by many game developers "is very recent, and the game was being developed before a consensus emerged." He also cited his role as an academic and game design teacher, stating "I have to look into these tools which most of my students use, and I was trying to figure out if there are non-brain-rotting ways to do so."

Yet it seems these arguments failed to convince Pedercini's audience, as yesterday he published another blog post revealing he has now removed the offending TTS voice lines, replacing them with lines by human actors. Apparently, these lines were "recorded earlier this year," but Pedercini opted not to use them because he "thought the actual uncanny text-to-speech was funnier in that context."

Although Pedercini has removed the lines, he's clearly not happy about it. In the second blog, he stated that he believes that "the game is worse not, but only, like, 0.001% worse." He also included a "personal update" through which he responded more broadly to the backlash.

"Somebody from Bluesky (the Twitter/X clone) dragged me due to a post disclosing what I foolishly thought a minor use of generative-AI in Future? No Thanks!" he explained. "I gave versions of that statement multiple times before, whenever asked by festivals and events." He also pointed out that, per Valve's updated AI disclosure rules, "Steam doesn't require disclosure of generative AI for things like code assistance, so many people assume their favorite indie games don't use AI at all just because the developers stay mum".

The post then took a weirder turn. Pedercini admitted that his original blog "was not a good post," and that he thought "nobody would read it", before claiming that his AI disclosure resulted in "more insults than the time at the height of GamerGate when Adam Baldwin unleashed his half million followers on me." He followed this by linking to a list of game developers that reject generative AI, claiming that "all studios" who haven't disclosed genAI use are "using it for coding in some capacity" and began his signoff with "I drank from the chalice of blood. Nothing will ever redeem me and my cursed little game."

As for what to make of all this (at least, the bits that aren't about drinking blood), I can sort-of understand Pedercini attempt at deploying TTS voice lines for satirical purposes, and he's correct in saying that TTS has a history that goes back further than modern LLMs. If that was all the genAI in the game, it would be more defensible.

But the fact he's also used generative coding tools for clearly non-satirical purposes is much harder to defend. Also, if you're making a game that satirises generative AI, the primary audience for which is going to be people who are avowedly against generative AI, it's probably prudent to ensure that the creation of said game is as far removed from generative AI as possible.

Yet among the references to gamergate and accusing the entire industry of secretly using AI, Pedercini did make two other points worth noting. First, he said that players who bought Future? No Thanks and "feel betrayed" by his use of AI can request a refund by emailing their Paypal or Venmo information to him. Second, he promised that his next project "will be completely hand-coded", as he had already determined that "AI-assisted programming is bad for me."

The death of BioWare has provoked a whole lot of tributes, memorialisation, and plain old nostalgia as all sorts of people come together to remember the bangers the erstwhile king of RPGs put out in its prime. CD Projekt Red, imsim founding father Warren Spector, and we here at PCG have all been trading BioWare memories (and sometimes lamenting the influence of EA, which acquired the studio back in 2007).

But the BioWare classics were big enough bangers to transcend videogames in their influence. Over on Bluesky, award-winning sci-fi and fantasy writer Nora Jemisin (better known as NK Jemisin) has been mourning the studio too.

"RIP Bioware. The [Mass Effect] and [Dragon Age] games were a literal inspiration, and I can't count how many times I've replayed my faves," Jemisin wrote. "I made lifelong friends on ME3 Multiplayer. I still think Jennifer Hepler is the best game writer I've seen, and Jennifer Hale's the best VA."

Hepler was a long-time Dragon Age writer who "was pretty much in charge of the dwarf origin story" in Origins, and also shaped much of the setting's dwarven culture in general. Jennifer Hale, meanwhile, is Jennifer Hale: Dynaheir, Mazzy Fentan, Bastila Shan, the female Commander Shepard, and plenty else. Many people, myself included, first became aware of Hale through her contributions to BioWare's RPGs.

"Watching what's happening to the game industry [right now] is so frustrating," Jemisin continued. "It was the goose that laid the golden eggs, guys. All you had to do was not kill it." Alas, every new year brings bigger and more expensive games that demand bigger and more dramatic returns. When they fail to bring them in? It's devs who suffer, as evidenced by the swingeing bout of layoffs that have afflicted the industry over the last several years. Rarely ever touches the executives, though. Funny how that works.

The whistle has blown. The belts have stopped. The furnace is silent and cold. After 14 years of continual development, Factorio has received its final major update.

Developer Wube Software revealed that update 2.1 would be the last significant patch for its genre-defining factory building sim back in May, with the team deciding the game had "reached a good place to conclude active game development". The decision comes two years after Wube released Factorio's remarkable Space Age expansion, which lets players take their industrialisation efforts into the stars and across four wildly different alien planets.

If you were hoping Wube might sign off on Factorio on a similarly spectacular note, you may be disappointed. In its latest Friday Facts blog, the developer reiterates that 2.1 "isn't about new planets, enemies or research trees," and instead delivers "a big collection of quality of life, small features, polish, and the things we wanted to for 2.0 but didn't have time for."

This doesn't mean 2.1 has nothing of interest, however. Quite the opposite. The primary changes revolve around the space logistics introduced by Space Age, with Wube making it easier to ferry goods up into space and between planets. Rockets, for instance, can now carry multiple different items rather than just one thing, making it considerably easier to get space platforms built. On top of that, platforms can also transfer items between one another in orbit and automatically import items from all available locations.

Also on the space logistics front, Wube has added a constructable unloading bay that can be attached to landing pads, allowing inserters to pull out items and place them directly onto belts, into trains and so forth. This should make interplanetary logistics a bit easier.

There are also a bunch of non-Space Age related changes. Most interesting is an overhaul to the Biters that attack your base. Wube has altered the game so that biter expansion grouping scales with evolution, to ensure that clearing out biters poses a "meaningful challenge rather than lots of tiny annoying nests." Biters will also "choose more natural locations" to build new habitats and will expand their territory regardless of whether the player chooses to explore the map early.

Elsewhere, the update reintroduces fluid mixing prevention, makes some tweaks to Space Age's Quality system, and adds snazzy new graphics for assembling machines, oil refineries, rocket silos and heat exchangers. Finally, the patch adds a new rendering system that makes it easier for pumps to connect to rail fluid wagons. This might just be the thing I'm most excited about, because setting up fluid pumps is always an enormous faff.

While we may see some smaller patches in the future, 2.1 marks the definitive end of development for Factorio. As for what Wube's plan is going forward, the studio said it was working on some new prototypes back in May, but it stressed that "there will not be anything to share for a long time." For now, we'll just have to settle for playing one of the greatest games ever made.

I'm beginning to wonder whether Star Wars Galaxies Restoration can still be considered accurately named, given the community-driven revival project has gone so far beyond keeping SOE's 2003 MMO up and running. Previous updates have already added huge features like a new Jedi system and a galactic civil war. Now, the latest patch overhauls numerous aspects of the game, including a massive upgrade to its visuals.

Star Wars Galaxies Restoration: A New Dawn differs slightly from those previous updates. Where earlier patches have centred around one big new feature, A New Dawn is composed of various ideas suggested by members of the Restoration team. "We've expanded our team, adding 13 new team members to our project" the Restoration team wrote in a press release. "We asked everyone: work on something that they loved about Galaxies, and showcase that to the world."

This approach has produced an array of changes both large and small. The headline update is a game client upgrade that adds support for DirectX 12. This enables a bunch of snazzy graphical enhancements, including volumetric fog, clouds and atmosphere, a new water shader, greatly improved terrain distances, and support for upscaling tech like DLSS, FSR, and XeSS.

Beyond these visual changes, two major features of Galaxies have been overhauled. The first of these is the planet Kashyyyk, home to the Wookiees. The forest planet—which was the setting for Galaxies' second expansion Revenge of the Wookiees—has been given "new and revamped instances" as well as a rebalance to everything that was introduced back in 2005. The second feature (or to be more accurate, features) getting a rework are the Scout & Ranger professions, which have been given new traps, advanced creature tracking, and "expanded camp functionality" that includes a whole new prestige system.

Elsewhere, the Restoration team has given pets and mounts some TLC, including the implementation of mounted combat (both melee and ranged), while creature taming is more interactive. Player cities can be improved to a higher tier, while the Doctor profession should now be a little less passive. Finally, the Restoration team has introduced a drag-and-drop interface for moving furniture, so you no longer have to adjust your space sofa's position by typing in coordinates.

A New Dawn is being released today. If you fancy checking it out, Star Wars Galaxies: Restoration is completely free to play, and can be downloaded via the project's website.

Electronic Arts shuttered BioWare earlier this week, and that sucked. A concept trailer for the Mass Effect game the studio had in development subsequently leaked, and that made everyone feel even worse because—keeping in mind that it was an early-development concept piece—it looked really good.

YouTuber Dantics has now revealed more about what BioWare was actually working on, which he claims to be aware of because he was part of the Mass Effect community council, meaning he "saw what BioWare was building, and provided feedback during development."

We haven't directly confirmed Dantics' role on the council, although others on social media have vouched for him, and BioWare community councils are definitely a real thing: The studio has referenced them in past updates, and they can also be seen in credits for games including Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Members of the ME5 council aren't known, but Mass Effect veteran Michael Gamble, the project lead on the next game, follows Dantics on X.

So, suitably caveated: Dantics said in a post on X that the next Mass Effect game was set 600 years after the Reaper War, and would put players in the role of a customizable N7 agent who would be "a cross between John Wick and James Bond." The galaxy in this future timeline was divided into three major factions: Humans, Batarians, Krogan, and others in one alliance, the "Council Races"—Asari, Salarians, and Turians—forming the second bloc, and the Geth emerging as the galaxy's third superpower. Instead of an existential crisis like the Reaper invasion, the new game would take place amidst a "galactic Cold War."

Dantics also said there would be connections between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, that there would be "brutal close-range executions"—certainly something I want from my heroic space opera RPGs—that "romance wasn't being sanitized," which in the wake of Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 I assume means the full monty, and that Liara would return as a powerful Asari matriarch.

In a separate video, Dantics said the new game was being designed to accommodate all three Mass Effect endings, rather than committing to one of them as canon: 600 years into the future, the Reapers are "outdated tech," and thus not nearly the danger they were back in Shepard's day, and advances in cybernetics, which would be in common use, fit the synthesis ending. And if your Shepard opted to just blow everything up and survived the war, well, he didn't survive the passage of 600 years, although his "legacy" would have lived on.

I'm always a little iffy on fictional settings that extend themselves centuries into the past or future, and yet don't seem to meaningfully change: It bugged me in KOTOR, and it bugs me here. 600 years is a long time, but everyone's still walking around wearing the same clothes, shooting the same guns, and flying the same ships. Six centuries of technological evolution, and what did we get? The Normandy with aftermarket ground effects.

(Forgive the resolution, the trailer is only 720p.)

Anyway, with that off my chest, Dantics' rundown of BioWare's plan for the game sounds pretty great: Similar enough to the Shepard trilogy to bring back fans put off by the poisoned well of Mass Effect: Andromeda, yet distant enough to enable BioWare to do new things. Not all that terribly new, obviously: There's big trouble in the shadowy corners of the cosmos and we're sending our best super-shooter to clean it up (with a little help from his friends), well, that's just Mass Effect. But Mass Effect is what we want, and sometimes you just have to admit that 'more' is good enough.

Alas, it's almost certain there will be no more. Unless EA is willing to offload the Mass Effect property to someone (the government of Canada, perhaps?)—and at this point it's shown no interest in doing so—then this is as close as we'll ever get to it.

One of the big topics of conversation around Onimusha: Way of the Sword when it released last month—and even before that, when Capcom first put out a demo of the game—was whether it was too easy. Viral clips of early game enemies standing around doing nothing gave the impression of a woefully easy game for action fans coming from the likes of Sekiro, Nioh or Ninja Gaiden. Once I played the full game, I found those fears mostly unfounded, but it's true that Onimusha's basic enemies pose little threat compared to its bosses, and mostly serve as fodder for you to cut through as you explore.

Way of the Sword's harder difficulty option being locked behind beating the campaign didn't necessarily endear the game to hardcore action players, either, so I'm not shocked that one of the most popular downloads on the game's Nexusmods page is one that amps up enemy aggression.

But I still mostly loved Onimusha, and didn't find myself craving the brutal difficulty of Sekiro or Nioh while I was playing it. With more than a month of hindsight to see how players have studied the blade, Capcom also seems pretty happy with the level of challenge it settled on.

"We've been looking at the data that comes back from people playing, so we can see where people are struggling and how they're progressing through the game. What we've seen in the trends in the data is that it's close to what we set out to achieve, in terms of difficulty," director Satoru Nihei said in an interview with PC Gamer.

Nihei elaborated that Capcom has observed players being able to progress through the story, but not entirely without friction.

"There are points where they do stumble, they do die, they do get defeated. But they're able to overcome that and progress. That was what we set out to achieve in terms of pitching the difficulty for the game: We wanted players to be able to progress through the story, but also have some challenge to it, so they get a sense of satisfaction from defeating enemies. It was never an intention for this game to be a particularly difficult game, like those other games you mentioned. We think it's hit the right spot in terms of the difficulty, in terms of where we wanted to place it."

My biggest criticism of Way of the Sword was its length, rather than its level of challenge. Its swordplay feels so good that I don't mind being able to run into a group of hapless enemies milling around the hub world of Kyoto and cut them down in a few seconds, but I did tire of Kyoto's generic sidequests, samey streets and how many times the game ultimately trotted out repeats of some of its boss fights.

Nihei said that Capcom has noted that feedback from other players, too. Ultimately the size of the game came from the priorities the dev team set out to meet early in development.

"We really wanted to have a game that was around the 20 hour mark. We didn't want to have a title that would be too small, but also looking at open world games that are 40 hours-plus, we didn't want to drag it out to that extent. So from the beginning there was this clear goal of … a mostly linear experience, and then we have the exploration elements for people who want to engage with them. That was what we set out to shoot for in terms of giving players enough volume to enjoy."

As for how many times you fight bosses like Byakue and Dohatsu-ten?

"We understand that some people might find fighting the same bosses to be a little draining, and it would've obviously been nice for us to be able to make a greater variety of bosses," Nihei said. "But also, at Capcom we want to make these very engaging, fun encounters that people can enjoy fighting again and again and again, so that was what we were aiming for when we created those bosses. But we've definitely heard the feedback."

Arkane Lyon may soon be facing closure, according to a new report by French site Le Monde, which says a deadline to find a buyer for the studio will land on November 13, at which point Microsoft could close the studio outright. Microsoft has since extended that deadline by a month, however, so it can continue to pursue alternative options.

Arkane Lyon was caught up in this year's vortex of Xbox layoffs, announced in July, which will see roughly 3,200 people put out of work. Xbox also dumped four studios: Double Fine, Compulsion Games, and Undead Labs all went independent (and almost immediately laid off large numbers of employees) while Hellblade developer Ninja Theory appears to be closing outright. Because Arkane is based in France, Xbox couldn't just drop the hammer on it. Instead, it began a legally-required consultation process "to review potential strategic options."

The Le Monde report says that on July 16, 10 days after the Xbox layoffs were announced, Arkane management informed employees that Xbox intended to close the studio. France's "Florange Law," however, requires companies with more than 1,000 employees who want to close a facility to undertake a search for a buyer first.

The deadline for that requirement in Arkane's case is November 13, after which Xbox will presumably be free to close the studio. That option is definitely on the table: The Le Monde report says documents signed in July and published on a French government website on August 10 specifically reference "the plan for the complete and permanent cessation of the company's activities" and "the subsequent plan for the dismissal of all employees for economic reasons."

The report also says the Printemps Écologique and the Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo (STJV) unions were seeking to have the November consultation deadline extended to allow for redundancy negotiations and the buyer search to continue, and that has now happened.

"We have extended the consultation period by one additional month as we explore options, including finding a partner to support the studio through the development work still ahead," a Microsoft representative told PC Gamer, referring to the Marvel's Blade game currently in development at Arkane. "This is a defined extension, and we remain committed to keeping the Works Council informed throughout the process."

Regarding the documents referencing the planned closure of Arkane should a buyer not be found, the rep said that they "are part of the required consultation process and do not represent a final decision."

The Le Monde report says 217 people are employed by Arkane. Sources close to the studio say that despite being announced three years ago, at the 2023 Game Awards, Marvel's Blade still has years to go before development will be complete.

I'm always on the lookout for a new daily game I can play on my phone because, quite honestly, I'll do just about anything to delay getting out of bed for just a few more minutes in the morning. If you're into games like Wordle but are looking for an interesting new twist, here's a pitch:

Wordle, but it's about pricing used cars

Congratulations on your new job at The Daily Lowball, a used car lot where you have to prove to your boss that you know how much second-hand vehicles are worth. Each day in the puzzle, you're served up five real cars complete with photos and stats: the make and model, what year it's from, how many miles it's got on it, and how much it sold for when it was new.

Then you enter a guess how much you think each used car was sold for on the date shown. You're graded from A-F on your guesses by your virtual boss, and if you want to keep your daily streak intact, you'd better be accurate. Perform poorly enough on any given day, or string a few bad days together, and you're fired—you'll have to start your streak over.

It's an easy game to grasp but boy, we here at PC Gamer sure stink at it. My first day on the lot wasn't so smooth after I completely misjudged the resale price of a 2014 Audi Allroad Quattro and utterly biffed my guess on a cherry red 2005 Dodge Neon SRT-4. I did a little better on the 2008 Mercury Grand Marquis and the 2001 Porsche Boxter, and actually nailed the 2001 GMC Yukon. That gave me a C average for the day, so at least my streak has begun.

The other members of PC Gamer I sent the puzzle to didn't fare that well, either. I won't name and shame but there were two Ds and one F among my coworkers. If I'm the lone car guy at PCG, we're all in trouble.

Turns out it's fun to peer at used cars and try to figure out what they're worth, or at least what some real-world person thought they were worth when they bought them. And questions abound while I played a few more past puzzles, like "How does someone only have 8,000 miles on their 1985 Mazda RX-7? What, do they live in a walkable city or something? Insanity."

The site has a few other daily car-based games, like "Steal or Bad Deal" where you judge whether someone paid an acceptable amount for a used car or got ripped off, "Higher or Lower" where you're presented with two cars and have to guess which is more expensive, and a licence plate slot machine game where you try to roll a rare plate every day. Check out The Daily Lowball for yourself, and feel free to share your results in the comments.

Excitement over the Total War: Shogun 2 remaster turned to a very different emotion when it launched and turned out to be quite bad—so bad that Sega pulled it from sale just a couple days later. Now, Roger Collum, vice president of Total War at developer Creative Assembly, has posted an update on the situation in the Total War subreddit (via RPS), saying that the studio, like the fans, are "angry and disappointed" about the state of the game—which he says is not really CA's fault.

"This was not a Creative Assembly developed game," Collum wrote. "It wasn’t subject to our same internal reviews and quality assurance. We took our eyes off its external development, with all our teams focused on our next big projects. However, whatever the development arrangements, Total War is our franchise and our name is on it.

"The studio is full of craft people who care deeply about the experiences we give to our players. Shogun 2—CE did not meet that bar. We have to own that and we have to fix it."

Collum also addressed complaints about the apparent use of generative AI in the remaster, saying that Creative Assembly is a "craft studio," and that while it uses AI tools for tasks like "analysis, debugging, or speedy prototyping," it does not use generative AI to create in-game assets. "We demand the same of any external developers we work with," he wrote. "The situation with Shogun 2: Complete Edition is being investigated."

Collum didn't name the external developer of the Shogun 2 remaster, but the Steam page lists Warsaw-based Mataboo as the second studio on the project. Mataboo's website says it provides "complete end-to-end game development support," with services ranging from design and tool development to porting, optimization, compliance Q&A, and maintenance, on both PC and consoles. The studio has previously worked on games including The Blood of Dawnwalker, Silent Hill 2, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, The Medium, and numerous others.

Collum's statement doesn't appear to be going down perfectly smoothly among Total War fans. Many responses say that Creative Assembly is ultimately responsible for the game that goes out the door, and that the issues in the Shogun 2 remaster aren't small, intermittent, or otherwise easy to miss. Others point out that Creative Assembly's promotional efforts included a pre-launch livestream in which employees enthused about the game, apparently without having played it to any meaningful extent.

Collum concluded by asking fans not to direct their anger at individual developers. "As a team, we want to be transparent with our communications as much as possible, but that cannot be at the expense of the safety of our people," he wrote. "Please help keep Total War’s community spaces constructive and safe for everyone.

"I’ve said it before: when the team does well, it’s all about them. When we get it wrong, it’s on me. You absolutely have the right to be mad, and to criticise us, but direct it at me. We know we must earn your trust by making good games, and crucially, by how we respond when we get things wrong. We’re human, we will get things wrong, and I promise as long as I’m here, when that happens, we’ll hold our hands up and try to make it right."

"A small team of senior developers" from Creative Assembly are now working with Sega and the unnamed external studio to figure out where to go from here.

If you spent much time online this week, you likely noticed how it briefly felt like the end of days as government websites, game marketplaces, and furry image boards alike were pulled offline in a scramble to address newly-discovered security vulnerabilities in PHP—a scripting language used by roughly 70% of the world's websites, according to some estimates.

It was a harrowing incident, revealing flaws in foundational internet infrastructure that might have turned some of the most popular web destinations into attack vectors. And in an interview with Reuters, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says we should expect to see similar episodes on a regular basis in the years ahead as LLM technologies accelerate the discovery of exploitable security vulnerabilities.

Prince said that Cloudflare—a major cloud networking and cybersecurity provider that a number of websites rely on—is aware of "a bunch of additional severe vulnerabilities that are present in other pieces of critical software" like those that triggered the PHP panic earlier this week. And as both cybersecurity experts and bad actors task LLMs with identifying previously unrecognized weaknesses in the core technologies of the internet, there will likely be more to follow.

"I think we're going to have a couple years where every single week it's going to feel like the sky is falling," Prince said.

Previously, the rate at which exploitable flaws in software could be identified was limited by the finite number of experts able and willing to devote the necessary time and attention. Likewise for those seeking to weaponize those flaws.

For a user directing a workforce of LLM agents, however, those limitations are less relevant. Wiz Research, one of the firms that identified the recent PHP exploits with the assistance of LLM tools, wrote in a blog detailing its findings that "the economics of both discovery and exploitation" have changed.

"Frontier models were critical to making this process practical, enabling us to develop and adapt working exploits across multiple applications in hours," Wiz Research said. "As the time and expertise required for this work decrease, complexity may no longer provide a meaningful barrier, changing how we define what is vulnerable in practice."

But while Prince expects busy months ahead for those whose job it is to address the rising tide of LLM-empowered exploits, he said it will—in the long term—lead to more secure software as those newly-identified vulnerabilities are patched.

"The reality is, we're going to get a lot of this stuff cleaned up," he said.

In the short term, however, my advice is to stay on top of your browser and app updates. In the years ahead, some extra paranoia won't hurt.

Early BioWare

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Dragon Age

Mass Effect

Archetype Entertainment has unveiled a new look for the protagonist of Exodus, its upcoming sci-fi RPG. We at PCG didn't love Jun Aslan's original face, but it sounds like there was more widespread discontent over his supposedly homely mug.

After a brief intro by studio GM Chad Robertson, we got a brief cinematic trailer of the new Jun⁠—with a little cameo by Matthew McConaughey, in case you forgot he's lending his voice to this game. And, I mean, yeah: Jun's a real prettyboy now. My man's looking like an industry plant. Cheekbones that could cut glass.

Previously, Jun was, perhaps, a little schlubbier, but only really by the standards of showbiz. I contend that he realistically could have been someone's workplace crush. He was an LA 6.5, but a Chicago 9. Prettier than most people you know, I'd wager. I didn't love Jun's original look, but I figured, hey, it's an RPG. I'll just mess with the sliders.

But it sounds like we're restricted to one face per sex in Exodus, based on the new trailer's description: "You can play Jun Aslan as male or female, and options like hairstyles, hair color, facial hair, and tattoos let you add your own personal touch." That sounds reminiscent of the facial presets from Baldur's Gate 3, but with only two characters instead of that game's two dozen or so.

I like making a cutie pie RPG character as much as the next guy, but now that he's gone, I find something endearing about the way Jun looked before he got his work done. You were beautiful just the way you were, honey. On a more meta level, I wish studios would double down when there's a backlash over minor aesthetic stuff: I don't even have a horse in the s&box race, but I prefer that game's original, controversial, sausage character model to the new realistic ones.

At the same time, as a clear attempt at a Mass Effect successor, Exodus has to live up to the generational good looks of Dutch Model Mark Vanderloo⁠⁠—BioWare based the default male Commander Shepard face on him. Even with a full character creation suite, it's hard to justify a custom Shep who always winds up looking like a potato man when the real Handsome Squidward is right there for the taking.

What do you think? Should Jun have kept his original face, or does his new look suit him? Sound off in the comments (and we've got a poll after the newsletter block).

I was genuinely surprised by the re-release of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D earlier this year. A chip I thought long dead was back in 10th Anniversary form, after a resurrection process AMD's David McAfee described as "very hard, actually" to our Dave at Computex 2026.

Now AMD's Travis Kirsch has spoken to Japanese outlet Tech+ about more of the thinking behind the re-release, and it seems the idea started at the very top. "Originally, several years ago, I believe Lisa [Su, AMD CEO] was one of the people who suggested reviving the Ryzen 7 5800X3D."

"It was like a final gift to our loyal users who had used our AM4 for almost 10 years, giving them one last chance to upgrade their PCs using DDR4 systems," Kirsch continues. "However, this required restarting the production lines, which took some time. In short, this was planned before the changes in the memory market occurred, and it was not considered as a solution to the DDR5 shortage."

That may be the case, but the timing still worked out pretty well for AMD. DDR5 prices had been surging since October 2025, while the chip's eventual release date of June 25, 2026 put it right in the middle of a difficult year for PC gamers. Many of whom may well have been looking to upgrade older, AM4 rigs without making the switch to the DDR5-only AM5 socket.

Kirsch was also asked about the current shipment ratio of AM4 to AM5 processors. "I cannot give you the exact ratio," he says. "But I can say that AM4, which supports DDR4, remains very strong."

"As you know, AM4 shipments were very stable until we started to see fluctuations in memory prices, while AM5, which supports DDR5, continued to grow," says Kirsch. "In terms of AM4, it continues to perform well. As for AM5, recently we have seen growth in models equipped with 3D V-Cache."

Well, you didn't expect actual figures, did you? And as for future platforms, Kirsch remains similarly cagey about any talk around the AM5 socket's eventual replacement:

"I cannot answer when AM6 will be released, or whether it will even be released at all. However, I would like to explain our strategy. Platform lifespan is paramount for end users. It is important to have the option to simply upgrade the processor three years after purchasing a platform.

"We understand that constantly refreshing the platform is not good for our partners or end users," says Kirsch. "So, when that time comes in the future, we will introduce a new platform, but we don't know when that will be."

AMD's next-generation Zen 6-based CPUs will use the existing AM5 socket, and rumours suggest they'll be pushing clockspeeds to new heights later this year. And as for the chips after that? We're probably looking at 2029 or later. So, there's plenty of time for AM5 to stick around, and who knows—maybe it'll be just as long-lasting as AM4 in the end.

Whether you dismiss it as 'fake frames' or embrace the tech as a real game changer, frame generation has fast become a headlining act of this GPU generation. We've since discovered that not all frame gen (FG) tech is created equal, but AMD has promised to address a key criticism of its own FSR FG.

Earlier this week, AMD's Jack Huynh announced that FSR 4.1 would be shipping early to RX 6000 graphics cards, though that wasn't all. Huynh also announced that improvements to FSR's frame pacing were on the way, too.

Personally, I'm more familiar with Nvidia's approach to FG—especially after unlocking Multi Frame Gen on my RTX 4070 Super earlier this year. AMD's FSR has often been criticised for how it struggles with frame pacing in comparison. Ie, you may have lots of frames , but not every one of them is displayed for a consistent amount of time, making for gameplay that's a different flavour of choppy.

The issue can affect frames both traditionally rendered and generated, and it's been a stumbling block since at least FSR 3. For example, CD Projekt noted gamers may experience micro stutter back when Cyberpunk 2077 got official support for the tech in 2024. As recently as August this year, Hardware Unboxed's testing demonstrated that pacing is still an issue in games that support both FSR 3.1 and FSR 4 (via Videocardz).

It's good to hear that AMD is focusing on this issue, but without a solid timeline or a list of hardware set to enjoy these frame pacing improvements, this week's announcement amounts to little more than, 'We know, and we're working on it!'

Also conspicuously absent was any mention of Multi Frame Generation on AMD GPUs. Currently, AMD's Frame Generation generates one intermediary frame, though third-party developers have managed to crank that far higher. We already know MFG is on the way for AMD hardware, the question is more 'how soon?'

Here's hoping AMD's officially supported frame pacing improvements for FSR arrive before an enterprising third-party can show them how it's done.

Writing (and reading) about PC hardware news at the moment can be downright depressing. Massive price rises. AI everywhere. Disappearing graphics cards. It's just a bit much, you know?

So come and bask in something deliciously old school with me: the release of a good-looking new product you might be able to buy without selling a kidney. Philips says its new 36M4C5500P display is the world's first 36-inch gaming monitor with a 260 Hz refresh rate. Lovely.

This ultrawide's got a curved, 1500R VA panel. Oooooh. A 3440 x 1440 resolution. Ahhhh. And an overclockable refresh rate that makes sense for casual and competitive gamers alike. Stone the crows and call the fire department, it actually looks pretty decent.

Sure, VA panel tech is nothing fancy. And many a curved ultrawide has passed the doors of PC Gamer Towers over the past few years. But a 36-inch panel size is something interesting, filling the gap between your standard 34-inch ultrawides and the more desk-dominating, 39-inch-and-up models.

The specs aren't exactly earth-shattering, but I'm hoping they might push it towards the more affordable end of the market. It's got Display HDR400 certification, dual HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 connectivity, and a tilting stand. Everything you might reasonably need. There's no word on pricing yet, but I've got my fingers crossed.

I even thought we'd make it through the press release without a mention of AI, but no, this display has "AI-enhanced gaming features" including Shadow Boost, Smart Crosshair, Smart Sniper, and Smart MBR sync. Most of which you can likely ignore. No product launch is complete without them, though, I'm sure you'll agree.

In these topsy-turvy times, it's downright refreshing to write about a new gaming product that simply looks nice, without having to bring up the global state of affairs. Many gaming monitors are actually very affordable right now, so if you're scratching around for something to upgrade without breaking the bank, it's products like this that I'd be keeping a close eye on.

There. A properly positive article, and I didn't mention the memory crisis once. Curses!

According to hardware outlet ChannelGate, the wholesale spot prices of several RTX 50-series graphics cards are on the rise once again in China, which is an ominous indicator for consumer pricing worldwide.

The 16 GB RTX 5080 is said to have increased by around 2000 CNY, which equates to around $300, while the RTX 5070 Ti has seen an increase of around 600 CNY ($90). In the RTX 5080's case, that puts the current wholesale spot price at around 14,500-15,000 yuan, which equates to a truly stunning $2,171-$2,246 range when converted to US dollars.

Retail graphics card pricing has already gone bananas in recent months, with US prices surging to hitherto unthinkable levels. The cheapest RTX 5080 we can currently find is a wallet-aching $1,850, while a mere $70 separates the RTX 5050, RTX 5060, and RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB on our GPU deals page.

Yes, that means the cheapest RTX 5050 we can currently find is $400. That's a silly price for Nvidia's slowest gaming GPU of the current generation.

While the 16 GB RTX 5080 has seen the largest jump in price so far (exacerbated by its reported discontinuation in favour of a 24 GB version), ChannelGate also says that Asus has just updated its pricing policy across the stack.

This amounts to a 1000 yuan ($150) increase for the RTX 5080 16 GB, a 200 yuan ($30) increase for the RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5070, and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, and a 100-300 yuan increase for all AMD cards.

While some of those increases may seem small, they're an indication that we might be looking at an even grimmer winter for anyone who wants to upgrade their graphics card for reasonable cash. And without a major change, likely a grim 2027, too.

But hey, ChannelGate does give us some info on the expected wholesale price of the mooted RTX 5080 24 GB. The outlet says it could potentially reach 19,999 yuan. That's, err, just under $3,000 at the current exchange rate.

Well, this is all very depressing news. The global memory crisis continues to bite, working alongside GPU production shortages to create a graphics card market that looks increasingly ridiculous as the months go on. At least gaming monitors are still pretty cheap? Silver linings, and all that.

The Genshin Impact 7.2 livestream codes have arrived, providing a bit of bonus currency to use when wishing on the new characters coming in this version. For those who don't know, Hoyoverse runs a livestream every six weeks for its games, showing off the new content coming with the update, but as an added sweetener, it also provides three livestream codes.

Banner wise it looks like we have electro character, Mitya, and also electro, Valeriy. As usual, I'll put the codes down below as they drop during the stream. Make sure to redeem them asap, since livestream codes usually expire within a day or so.

Genshin Impact codes: All current livestream Primogems

• HourOfRuin - 100 Primogems and 10 Mystic Enhancement Ore
• ExpertMitya - 100 Primogems and five Hero’s Wit
• PhotoTime - 100 Primogems and 50,000 Mora

How to redeem Genshin Impact codes

You'll need to reach Adventure Rank 10 to redeem your Genshin livestream codes, but this is relatively easy to achieve if you've just started playing. Once done, there are two methods to claim your codes.

The first is through the game:

1. Launch Genshin Impact
2. Open the in-game menu
3. Select Settings and then Account
4. Click Redeem Now and paste a code into the box
5. Claim your Primogems from the in-game mailbox

Or you can redeem codes online through the redemption website:

1. Navigate to the Genshin Impact code redemption website
2. Enter your info and select character region
3. Place a code in the box and click redeem
4. Grab your rewards via the in-game mailbox

I reported on a missing shipment of RTX 5090s earlier this week, with two pallets worth of the highly-prized graphics cards presumably stolen from a Brazilian airport. Now new details of what looks to be a heist have emerged, and one of the GPUs has reportedly ended up on a second-hand marketplace.

GMC Online reports that Brazilian news channel Jornal da Band spotted the graphics card for sale on OLX, an online marketplace for used wares. The serial number of the card is said to match one of the missing units, with the price set at R$32,000, equivalent to around $6,400 (via Videocardz).

The broadcaster has revealed new information on the missing cards, said to be obtained from a Brazilian police report. According to the outlet, two outsourced forklift operators removed the pallets from an airport warehouse on September 21, while a third employee allegedly helped to move them through electronic security controls.

The shipment of GPUs belongs to Brazilian electronics distributer Oderço. The CEO of the Oderço Group, Oderço Matos, has previously spoken on the company's Instagram account about the missing GPUs, calling for more clarification from the authorities as to what exactly happened to the company's cargo.

GMC Online reports that Guarulhos International Airport has responded to the outlet, confirming that it had notified the authorities of the incident and is now in contact with the importer's representative.

Representatives from the airport say the investigation is now the responsibility of the appropriate authorities, and that it has provided guidance for initiating the compensation process.

The Oderço Group CEO has stated that the missing GPUs were worth R$2.5 million ($495,000) at cost, so we're not talking about pocket change here. RTX 5090s have become extremely difficult to find in recent months, although Nvidia GeForce chief Jeff Fisher has insisted that the ultra high-end consumer card is still in production.

Regardless, we've stopped tracking the card on our graphics card price watch page, as the market is full of ludicrously priced listings from third party sellers. Even a single card is worth a huge amount of cash these days—but by the looks of things, shifting two pallets worth of ill-gotten GPUs without someone picking up on it may prove to be an impossible task.

If you're an enlightened sort, who has sought out the sunny uplands of a Linux operating system for your gaming rig in these exciting days of almost seamless game compatibility, then you might want to have a think about migrating your OS onto a beta branch for a while. A list of as-yet unpatched Linux kernel vulnerabilities has been sent out to a public mailing list by accident, and some of these issues score as high as 9 on the CVSS security-scare-o-meter.

The incident was reported by Phoronix yesterday, where Michael Larabel noted that overnight several new vulnerability reports had gone to a public rather than private security mailing list. The reports had seemingly come from Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative—an initiative set up to promote extended vulnerability reporting (.pdf warning) with a bug bounty system extending to a group of external researchers.

I guess sometimes a group can be too extended.

Anyways, the list of vulnerabilities was jumped on by what Phoronix calls Linux's second-in-command, Greg Kroah-Hartman, who maintains the stable branch of the kernel. Kroah-Hartman responded to each of the reports individually asking them to fix their submission process.

Mostly because none of these vulnerabilities have been patched on the main kernel yet, and remain open to attack. And those attack vectors have just been made public. Eep. The more positive news, however, is that some of the cases are undergoing testing or are at least queued in beta or '-next' branches.

So there is a chance that your chosen distro might have those patches in place for the security conscious if you opt-in to a beta branch for an update. Worth a check, eh?

Phoronix lists these vulnerabilities as:

• ZDI-CAN-33549 as a CVSS 9.0 scored vulnerability for SMB Direct remote code execution vulnerability due to integer underflow. For this one there is a patch in a Git branch of code intended for Linux v7.5 but now presumably will be expedited for getting to mainline.
• ZDI-CAN-33774 as a KSMBD race condition that can lead to remote code execution. Another CVSS 9.0 rated vulnerability.
• ZDI-CAN-33367 is a vulnerability for skbuff skb_zerocopy in the network code that can lead to local privilege escalation. For this one Linux kernel developers received a security report from another source last week over the same issue and a patch is expected to be posted soon.
• ZDI-CAN-34068 as a VMWGFX VMware graphics driver bug with an out-of-bounds write leading to local privilege escalation.
• ZDI-CAN-34076 an uninitialized resource in the NVMET code leading to information disclosure.
• ZDI-CAN-32005 was also posted to the mailing list a day prior for a search-domain TCP query stack buffer overflow leading to local privilege escalation.

There's nothing I like more in a Fallout game then stumbling across some weird little settlement filled with oddball characters. So when I saw that this mod for Fallout 4 added a whole new town called Detour that's built on top of an overpass near Bedford Station, that was an instant download.

Better yet, the mod features new quests and over a dozen new characters voiced by real people—no AI was used!

But there's something better than that, even. I was delighted to discover that the town of Detour has its own gang. It's a small gang, sure: the overpass Detour is built on isn't particularly big and the town itself is pretty tiny, so there's not a whole lot of room for different factions to spring up. But that doesn't stop the members of the Detour Degens from occupying one little corner of the town where they hang out in matching jackets, smoking cigs, chugging from beer bottles, and looking tough.

Sort of. Look, the Detour Degens are no Tunnel Snakes, that's for sure. But they live on an overpass. They're doing their best.

There are a few different types of missions you can do to raise your reputation with the town of Detour, and besides helping out the sheriff with bounties and recovering stolen goods for a few of the merchants, you can also get in good with the gang. The two members of the Degens I met told me that the third member, their leader, was locked up and they wanted me to spring him.

Yeah, there's a total of three members of the gang. Like I said, they're doing their best.

It was sort of amusing because the gang leader was locked up maybe 15 feet away from the gang's turf in an itty bitty jail cell in the cramped sheriff's office. But in keeping with Fallout tradition, there are a few ways to get the Degen's leader out of the clink.

Another gang mission was to tag various places around town with the Degen logo, which was also kinda cute. I don't really know why you'd need to advertise your gang in a town that small: surely, everyone knows you by now.

But I still did it because I wanna be in the smallest gang in Fallout history (except for maybe Maud's Muggers). Once I tagged the town (it took maybe two minutes) they invited me to join them in a proper criminal quest. I won't spoil it, but like all good heists it went a little wrong in the middle and turned out fine in the end. Plus, the Detour Degens now have a new member, bringing the roster up to four people! I'll wear my new leather jacket proudly from now on.

You can download the Detour mod here, and I'll just point out again that it's been made without the use of AI, something that feels less and less common in the modding scene these days.

Unreal Engine maker Epic Games is running a game jam in November with thousands of dollars in prizes up for grabs. Contrary to so many art contests which ban the use of AI, participants in Epic's event are highly encouraged to use AI.

The theme of the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam will be revealed on November 11, and participating individuals and teams will then have from November 12–15 to produce their games with the help of AI tools.

Some will work in-person at a San Francisco event space, and there will be daily livestreams with progress updates. The winners in three categories will each receive $7,500, with smaller cash prizes for second and third place winners, as well as additional categories like "best team." Also on the table are "Development Continuation Grants of up to $50,000 per team."

Epic extended the invitation with a reference to The Matrix's 'red pill' scene, presenting red-pilled AI-driven development as an opportunity to "ship awesome games in a weekend," while old-fashioned blue-pilled development would have you "wait months to prototype." The hand offering the red pill features an extra finger, a reference to the common mistake made by AI image generators.

The choice follows a recent pattern from Epic of aloofness and defiance directed at AI critics. Last week, the company referred to its new Epic Games Store launcher as "vibe coded," sending the message that it's not ashamed to rely heavily on AI for software development.

Following a report that Epic directed a team working on a Star Wars and Marvel crossover to pivot to "AI first" development, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said that the company is "moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration."

The CEO is bullish on AI not just for coding, but for other fields as well, saying that he expects creative work to become more about "direction" than manual creation.

"Developers who are getting value from AI should speak up," Sweeney posted recently. "There's safety in numbers. MOST developers are doing it and loving it—and if they're not talking about it it's mostly out of fear for haters attacking them, their product, and their company."

Sweeney and Epic have received support for their AI positivity on X, but despite the platform's concentration of Grok users and aspiring AI entrepreneurs, substantial resistance also shows up in the replies.

"So do yall think you invented the concept of a game jam or what?" said one poster in response to the AI MegaJam announcement. "The ludum dare game jam was only 24 hours in 2002, so like, a quarter of the time as your game jam. but you want to make it look like its only possible with AI with this 'wait months to prototype.'"

The closure of BioWare is a tremendous loss, not just for gamers but for Canada: The Edmonton-based studio was named one of the country's best places to work multiple times over the years, even after the Electronic Arts acquisition that ultimately spelled its doom. It's not entirely surprising, then, that its shutdown caught the attention of one of the country's top politicians, who had some harsh words for Electronic Arts about it.

"This is private equity, this is what it does. Buy up businesses, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for short-term profit," Avi Lewis, leader of the New Democratic Party—traditionally Canada's third-largest political party, although it's run aground a bit over the past several years—wrote on social media.

"The developers at BioWare know how to run the studio. They know how to make the games we all love. They should be given the first opportunity—and the federal support—to buy it and run it themselves. And if we want to avoid the Mass Effect effect in Canada, we should be keeping private equity out, not welcoming it in."

The NDP are a center-left party, although the ol' Overton window has resulted in a more centrist style in recent years—a drift Lewis was elected specifically to correct. He's been fairly forceful on that front, speaking out in support of anti-fascist causes and calling for the nationalization of vital industries in Canada that have been swallowed up by larger international interests. Predictably, that led some of his followers to jokingly (I think) call for BioWare to be nationalized.

This is private equity, this is what it does.Buy up businesses, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for short-term profit.www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...

— @avilewis.ca (@avilewis.ca.bsky.social) 2026-10-22T21:26:28.216Z

While the "Mass Effect effect" line is a bit of a clunker, Lewis showed off his gamer cred in response to an inquiry on X: When asked who he romanced in Mass Effect 2, he replied, "If I'm honest, I'm a Mass Effect 1 on the PS3 type of guy."

Get ready to start talking about Half-Life 3 again, folks, because it's that time of year: Winter is closing in, The Game Awards are coming, and somebody at Valve said "HLX."

HLX, for those who haven't been following along, is a rumored codename for Half-Life 3, or Half-Life something, the near-mythical new Half-Life game that Valve may or may not be working on.

It first appeared in early 2024 as part of a data string inside a Counter-Strike 2 update that bore a very strong resemblance to "HLVR," Valve's codename for Half-Life: Alyx—a revelation that had PC Gamer contributor Rick Lane "vibrating with excitement."

Sadly for Rick, nothing came of it: No new Half-Life game, 3 or otherwise, followed, and HLX was filed away with all the other myriad Half-Life 3 rumors, hoaxes, and leaks. That is, until Valve composer and audio artist Mike Morasky brought it up completely out of the blue during a GameSoundCon panel on "Valve's Approach to an Open and Flexible Audio Engine."

In response to a question about managing voice counts—essentially the maximum number of sounds that can play simultaneously—Morasky touched on some of the variables involved, before mentioning the role played by Valve's HDR system in optimizing audio. "Deadlock has their own version of HDR," Morasky says. "HLX has its own version, and so on and so forth."

Adding fuel to the fire, co-panelist David Feise, seated next to Morasky, immediately turned to him after the HLX comment and whispered "nice work," or possibly "nice one," obviously suggesting, hey man, you're not supposed to talk about that. Feise then quickly puts an end to the answer as Morasky laughs nervously, saying Groups, which Morasky had been talking about leading up to the HLX remark, "is its own one-hour talk, so come talk to us about that afterwards."

There's no question that Morasky said HLX, and that Feise reacted. In fact, at the end of the panel Feise leaned in and said, "Good job, you only said HLX once." Because this isn't the first time he's done it: Morasky appeared oh-so-close to saying "HLX" in 2025, although he was able to catch himself midway and shift gears, awkwardly, to "Alyx."

So HLX does seem to be a thing, but exactly what type of thing is anyone's guess. Maybe he's tripping over Half-Life: Alyx, or referring to some bit of internal tech, or maybe the whole thing is all just a put-on—Valve devs having a little fun with us. Or maybe it really is Half-Life 3! Nobody knows.

It is interesting, though, that PC Gamer editor Tyler Wilde—a man who does not indulge in the frivolity of baseless rumor and speculation—said in 2025, as the previous round of Half-Life 3 rumors was heating up, that he does think Valve is working on a new Half-Life game (although not necessary Half-Life 3), and that "it's not unreasonable to believe that a new Half-Life game will be announced within the next year or so." Here we are, a year later—and a year closer? We'll see.

"Valve's Approach to an Open and Flexible Audio Engine" panel can be seen in full on Vimeo.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword has received universal praise for its combat animations, which somehow manage to look natural and fluid no matter what angle or direction hero Miyamoto Musashi has to swing his sword to parry an incoming blow. In a post-launch interview, I asked Capcom how—beyond doing a ton of work across Onimusha's lengthy development—they managed to raise the bar for this sort of action game.

"Starting the project six years ago, we felt it was important to have that detail to sell the power and the excitement of the action, so it's something we really focused on," said director Satoru Nihei.

"Even at that starting point, we knew it was something that Capcom, as a company, have as a great strength: We have a lot of assets and tech available to us that allow us to create these varieties of actions. That's something we really felt we could leverage to make the game really stand out that a lot of other places can't really copy. On top of producing a lot of animations and motion capture, we have to give a lot of credit to the programmers for taking that data and putting it in a form that we can have them make these very smooth transitions, with these physics-based calculations, to go from one animation to another. It was a big team effort in getting the animations to look how they do."

PC Gamer actually got a behind-the-scenes look at that process when we traveled to Osaka this summer to see Onimusha: Way of the Sword wrapping up development.

The effort put into Onimusha's animations is even more impressive within the scope of the final game and its roster of intricately choreographed boss fights. Despite being the third of Capcom's three big releases this year, following Resident Evil: Requiem and Pragmata, Onimusha features some fancy samurai dismemberment tech new to the publisher's in-house game engine. Rather than factoring into the more scripted boss fights, it comes into play when Musashi chops weaker enemies into pieces with dramatic finishers like the lightning fast Issen strike.

"One particular piece of technology that was added specifically for this title that we couldn't have done before is what we call the dynamic dismemberment system," Nihei said. "If you slash enemies with certain attacks they get cut in the exact path that a sword passes through. While that's something that has been done in the past in other games, one of the challenges and things we built on that was brand new with Onimusha was having that happen along with enemies still being animated as they're dying and dropping.

"In lots of other games you'd cut them, they'd kind of freeze when you do the cut and then fall apart. We had to have the programmers add to RE Engine to be able to enable that to really sell the impact of moves like the Issen. That was something brand new added to the engine."

This isn't the first time Nihei has talked about Onimusha's dismemberment system, but I followed up by contrasting it with other action games like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which go a bit more freeform with their chopping. Nihei said that the Onimusha team knew they didn't want to go that route even early in development.

"In other games where you have that ability to cut up anything—just because of the tempo and style of game we wanted to make, it wasn't something we considered for Onimusha. Choosing exactly which direction and how you want to cut, we didn't think it was a good match for this particular title. Rather, we wanted to have something that happened reactively to how you're playing, to show off the power of the abilities."

Now that Onimusha's dynamic dismemberments are bedded into RE Engine, I hope they'll show up in Capcom's future games. Surely next time Leon blows a zombie in half with a shotgun its guts will be slipping and sliding all over the place.

After EA's announcement this week, PC Gamer reached out to BioWare veteran David Gaider to ask for his reflection on the closure and his memories of the studio. Gaider joined BioWare in 1999 to work on Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn and went on to be lead writer on the early Dragon Age games, leaving BioWare in 2016 and co-founding Summerfall Studios in 2019.

Gaider on BioWare

The loss of a legacy hurts

The closure of BioWare and layoff of roughly 400 people at Electronic Arts is being rightly excoriated as an example of the corrosive effects of capital on pretty much everything good. But that same sort of thing happens, maybe more often than we'd like to think, on smaller scales, too. Case in point: Gamepires, creator of open-world survival game Scum, which announced last week that it's putting people out of work.

The bad news came via an unattributed message posted on X: "A difficult decision has been made to reduce the size of the Gamepires team, which means saying goodbye to colleagues who've helped shape Scum and the studio. This step is necessary to help Gamepires adapt to challenging market conditions and long-term sustainability."

It's all very bloodless and generic—the sort of statement that could've come from just about any game studio making layoffs over the past six months or so.

What makes this particular case feel so egregious, though, is that Gamepires was acquired by Splash Damage Group, in a deal backed by Emona Capital, just eight months ago. And that acquisition was made just three months after Splash Damage made major layoffs of its own, so it could "remain agile and adaptable in what has been a very challenging market." And those layoffs came just two months after Splash Damage was acquired by then-unnamed private equity investors.

Splash Damage hasn't released a game since Gears Tactics in 2020: Its planned next big thing, Transformers: Reactivate, was cancelled in 2025. Gamepires' survival game Scum, meanwhile, is still ticking over nicely on Steam, where it's being regularly updated with hotfixes and content updates.

In fact, Splash Damage said when it acquired Gamepires that "bringing the teams together around Scum gives Splash Damage Group immediate, meaningful work to focus on," adding, "That stability has been important for protecting roles and giving the studio a solid foundation for its future. Splash Damage Group is currently just under 150 people, and we will be working closely with Emona to grow the group over the next few years."

Yet here we are, eight months later.

So, to recap:

• Splash Damage gets bought up by private equity
• Splash Damage lays off employees
• Splash Damage, backed by private equity, acquires Gamepires
• Gamepires lays off employees

The number of people put out of work wasn't revealed, but in response to our inquiry Splash Damage issued the following statement:

"Gamepires is part of Splash Damage Group and has reduced the size of its team in response to challenging market conditions and to support the studio’s long-term sustainability.

"These redundancies have affected colleagues we work closely with, whose work has helped make SCUM what it is today. We know this is difficult news for those leaving. We have great respect for their work and the contribution they’ve made to both the game and the studio.

"Development of SCUM will continue, and we’ll keep working with our colleagues at Gamepires to support updates and new content."

The day after the closure of BioWare and cancellation of the next Mass Effect game, a purported trailer for Mass Effect: Universe has surfaced on Reddit. The authenticity of the trailer is unknown at this point, but at the very least it sure looks legit.

Straight to it, here's the video:

Man, that looks like Mass Effect—and sounds like it, too. The music is right, and at least two PC Gamer employees are pretty sure that's Liara's actual voice. Shepard's out, but the new guy seems suitably Shepard-like, although I can't help but notice the absence of the N7 logo on his uniform. Maybe the new guy was meant to be a rawer, rougher kind of troubleshooter—more of a housecleaner than a world-saver—or perhaps the ascent to the rank was meant to be part of the character's progression, which would've been cool.

There are no obvious AI telltales here, at least none that I can see, and adding to the trailer's "real deal" potential, a redditor claiming to be an EA employee said yesterday that a trailer for the new game had been produced and suggested that it was not as early in the development process as was widely believed.

Not long after the trailer came to light, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg said on Bluesky that it is indeed real, and that BioWare had been working on the game until its closure.

Whatever the case—and we're still working on verifying its provenance—the trailer is also just the right blend of sexy, violent, and corny: Even if this isn't a real trailer for what BioWare was working on (and at this point it seems pretty certain that it is), it's a Mass Effect we would definitely play.

If you care about retro PC gaming hardware, there's a good chance you've heard of the now-defunct 3dfx. And if you know 3dfx, there's an even better chance you've heard of the 3dfx Voodoo graphics card. Well, according to one of its founders, its success is owed at least in part to the legendary shooter Quake.

Ross Smith recently spoke to our friends at Club386 in celebration of the first 3dfx Voodoo turning 30 years old, and he talks about the 'Quake effect'.

Effectively, though Quake launched in June 1996, it didn't get GLQuake, which allowed for 3D hardware acceleration, until the start of 1997. John Carmack reportedly reached out to 3dfx, which then worked on an API called MiniGL that could run the game. In its implementation, 3dfx cards could then run the game at a better resolution in greater detail with a wider range of colours.

Smith says, "I would certainly give id, John, and Quake a great deal of credit for our overall success—we probably sold millions of boards because of that game, and it was magnificent. That’s the last game I’ve gone all the way to the end on, and I was exhausted after doing that. It was well crafted, beautiful, dark."

It makes sense why developers would want to work with the likes of 3dfx because better compatibility makes their games look better. And a developer is more likely to sell a game if it can wow an audience.

This symbiotic relationship was key to 3dfx development at the start. 3dfx reportedly reached out to developers to show games pre-rendered on 3dfx Voodoo cards, and "they loved it".

Smith argues this relationship to developers was quite unique at the time. "Most other companies, like S3 or others, saw game developers kind of as a necessary evil, not as the lifeblood of a company that’s focused on gaming. So we flipped the whole thing around.”

This is a relationship that might seem familiar nowadays, with the likes of Nvidia, Intel, and AMD working directly with developers to improve software. Nvidia and 3dfx famously took each other to court for various patent infringement complaints in the late '90s and early '00s, and Nvidia acquired many of 3dfx's assets after it filed for bankruptcy in the early 2000s. So in a way, we have 3dfx to thank for parts of Nvidia's successes in the following years, too.

And 3dfx was unique in a few ways. The Voodoo cards had great 3D acceleration because it was designed specifically for 3D acceleration as a co-processor alongside a 2D card, letting the CPU do other background work at the same time.

It was just one of many steps towards hardware that was specifically designed for gaming rigs. "We did something revolutionary there," says Smith, "we didn’t have a VGA. That was partly down to our lack of design experience, and partly down to my concern about profitability and compatibility. Being compatible with a million apps is really hard—being compatible with 200 games is much easier.”

Yesterday, EA announced that it's closing BioWare, the studio behind beloved RPG franchises like the original Baldur's Gate games, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. Alongside BioWare's closure—and the cancelling of its next Mass Effect project—EA is reportedly laying off around 400 people in an effort to "align talent and investment" in the wake of its record-breaking private equity buyout.

While recent years have brought no shortage of high profile studio closings and game cancellations, the news of BioWare's shuttering has prompted an outpouring of sympathies and frustrations from the fans, fellow developers, and former studio staff. Among those mourners is former BioWare game director and ex-general manager Casey Hudson, who reacted to the news on X to say that BioWare's influence will continue even if the studio itself doesn't.

"This is sad news on multiple fronts—for those of us who worked there, for our friends and colleagues at BioWare who are impacted, and for fans who were looking forward to the next Mass Effect adventure," Hudson said. "I started my career at BioWare and will forever be grateful to the founders, Greg and Ray, for inviting me to join in BioWare's legendary journey. Its legacy will live on through those who were part of it and continue to create games through a passion for unforgettable stories, worlds, and characters."

During his tenure at the studio, Hudson had a major influence on some of BioWare's most-loved releases, working as project director on both Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Mass Effect trilogy. After leaving BioWare in 2014, Hudson returned in 2017 as its general manager—before ultimately departing a second time in 2020, following the troubled development and launch of Anthem, the studio's ill-fated live service shooter.

Since then, Hudson's been acting as proof of his own assertion about BioWare's lasting influence in game development. Following the 2021 founding and subsequent 2024 closure of his NetEase-acquired studio, Humanoid Origin, Hudson announced in 2025 that he'd started yet another new company: Arcanaut Studios. There, he—and a team stacked with other ex-BioWare devs—are currently at work on Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, a "narrative-driven action RPG" that Hudson has called a "spiritual successor" to KotOR.

Hudson's far from the only developer who's reaffirmed BioWare's continuing impact on game development since the news of its closure broke. CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski noted how BioWare offered crucial support during the development of the Witcher 1, while Larian CEO Swen Vincke wrote on X that the studio "led the way in making RPGs big."

Legendary immersive sim developer Warren Spector offered a more blunt reaction to BioWare's shuttering, calling the closure "utter bullshit."

In spite of a bloodletting that saw the end of BioWare—a lion in winter, sure, but still a studio with a rich legacy—and around 400 employees laid off, EA seemingly still has videogame irons in the fire. Per a report from Variety, the corporation is working on a new Battlefront game, said to be in the hands of Respawn and DICE.

This is not officially confirmed, of course. In its gore-flecked letter to staff and rubber-neckers in the wake of yesterday's BioWare news, EA only said that its future involved "bringing together our Respawn and DICE studios to collaborate on a future project."

This, it boasted, would allow it to "balance our resources, and leverage the technology to deliver a shooter portfolio that unlocks growth." Which certainly gets me excited about things to come.

Nevertheless, multiple sources tell Variety that the "future project" is, indeed, a third Battlefront. Which is probably a good idea, in all fairness. I don't think either of the previous two modern Battlefront games have quite lit the world on fire—in fact, the second one's lootboxes were so bad it sparked an uproar that made it all the way to the Belgian Gambling Commission—but the notion of a big boisterous shooter filled with Star Wars stuff feels like something that could be pretty cool, right?

And hey, Respawn's done a good job on those Star Wars Jedi games to the point that we all now go around referring to them as the 'Star Wars Jedi' games like that's not an absurdly bad name. Meanwhile, DICE rather pleased our resident FPS czar Morgan Park with Battlefield 6; he scored it 82% in his Battlefield 6 review and called it "automatically one of the best shooters of the year." So sure, sign me up to see what the two can do with a Battlefront game together.

If you have a Capcom ID, you may want to check your email to see if you are one of the 11,774,247 caught in the latest Capcom data breach.

Capcom has issued a public apology (via Notebook Check), declaring that "unauthorised access by a third party occurred to our online membership service 'CAPCOM ID', resulting in the leakage of some customer information. "

The 11 million figure is the number of email addresses with system-specific identification information (like account creation time, last login, and client IP address on last login) that were leaked. 43 accounts had additional information exposed, including the date of birth, gender, country/region, and nickname on the account.

196 Capcom accounts have also had their login passwords illegally changed, though the company says "No leaks of passwords set by the customers themselves have been confirmed". It also says, "The passwords for these accounts have already been reset, and we are continuing to investigate the extent of the impact of the unauthorized access."

Capcom states that no credit card information was included in this breach, and it has reportedly "completed the implementation of emergency measures and the identification and response to the attack methods".

Capcom claims it originally caught the breach on October 19, 2026, and blocked access as soon as it was discovered. On October 20, a task force was created to gather information and prevent any further damage. On October 21, the breach was reported to the police and the Personal Information Protection Commission.

From here, those affected should receive an email from Capcom declaring that their data was in the breach, and the company urges users to be extra vigilant in watching their emails. Capcom suspects that those caught up in the breach might receive suspicious emails impersonating Capcom or similar companies, attempting to get access to their accounts or phish them.

Though hackers did not gain access to customer-made passwords in this breach, it's probably a good reminder to set up different passwords for different accounts, and also a good reminder to use a password manager, too.

We prattle on about GPU prices so much nowadays that even we're getting sick of it. Yet for as long as the memory crisis rages on and prices keep rising, we'll keep bringing it up. We'll also keep trying to spot the best prices for graphics cards, which is exactly how I spotted these specific pricing horrors.

The RTX 5050, RTX 5060, and RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB are now only separated by a mere $70. That's not between each card—the jump from an RTX 5050 to an RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB is just $70, down from nearly double that at their intended MSRPs.

'What's the big deal, then?' I hear you ask. 'Surely that means less cash for a better card?'

It is a big deal, and no, it doesn't.

This is due to dreadful circumstances: the cheapest RTX 5050 that I could find is this one currently $400 at Best Buy. It's not only far in excess of the MSRP—which should be a mere $249—but it's actually in excess of the MSRP of the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB at $379.

The cheapest RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB I could find is $470, and the cheapest RTX 5060 is $420.

Moreover, if you look beyond the 8 GB options at the bottom of the stack, to the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, that card jumps up to $789. That should be around the $429 mark MSRP-wise—should.

What's even worse is the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB is currently the same price as the RTX 5070. That card is also $789.

It's pretty terrible anywhere you look. Our own in-house tracking shows prices are currently spiking once again, not the least bit the high-end market.

Lowest price per GPU

We've been measuring the lowest available price of each current-gen GPU since August 14, 2025.

Lowest pricing (Price, $)

Week

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GREAMD RX 9060 XT 16 GBAMD RX 9060 XT 8 GBAMD RX 9070AMD RX 9070 XTIntel Arc B570Intel Arc B580Nvidia RTX 5050Nvidia RTX 5060Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GBNvidia RTX 5060 Ti 8 GBNvidia RTX 5070Nvidia RTX 5070 TiNvidia RTX 5080

Lowest pricing Data

Timestamp (Week)	AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE (Price, $)	AMD RX 9060 XT 16 GB (Price, $)	AMD RX 9060 XT 8 GB (Price, $)	AMD RX 9070 (Price, $)	AMD RX 9070 XT (Price, $)	Intel Arc B570 (Price, $)	Intel Arc B580 (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5050 (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5060 (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5070 (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5080 (Price, $)
1	N/A	370	280	600	700	230	260	250	300	430	368	550	780	1100
2	N/A	370	270	600	700	230	260	250	300	430	340	550	750	1099
3	N/A	370	280	550	700	230	250	250	291	430	370	524	750	1000
4	N/A	370	280	550	695	230	250	250	296	430	345	546	750	1000
5	N/A	350	270	600	670	230	250	250	300	430	340	481	749	1000
6	N/A	350	270	600	670	230	250	240	289	379	340	499	749	929
7	N/A	350	270	550	650	230	250	240	299	430	350	520	750	999
8	N/A	350	270	550	650	200	250	250	299	430	342	500	749	980
9	N/A	350	270	560	650	220	250	250	299	430	323	500	750	999
10	N/A	360	270	550	600	210	250	250	299	430	340	480	730	989
11	N/A	340	250	550	600	200	250	230	280	400	320	489	699	990
12	N/A	350	275	530	600	200	250	220	279	400	320	500	730	989
13	N/A	350	280	530	600	200	250	220	279	420	342	527	750	1000
14	N/A	370	280	530	600	202	250	220	279	420	313	540	750	1000
15	N/A	380	288	530	600	202	240	200	279	430	350	499	749	1000
16	N/A	380	288	530	620	202	240	200	270	430	350	499	750	1100
17	N/A	390	310	580	660	200	250	235	260	430	330	549	750	1230
18	N/A	390	310	580	700	200	250	240	290	450	330	540	829	1268
19	N/A	400	310	580	720	200	260	240	299	450	330	549	899	1380
20	N/A	440	310	600	720	200	290	240	299	520	330	620	1000	1350
21	N/A	440	350	590	730	250	290	260	299	520	351	620	950	1365
22	N/A	400	346	630	730	250	300	260	299	520	360	620	950	1365
23	N/A	440	346	630	730	250	300	260	340	520	360	630	950	1290
24	N/A	440	346	620	730	250	300	260	340	520	360	625	950	1290
25	N/A	440	346	610	730	250	300	260	349	550	360	630	950	1250
26	N/A	440	340	610	730	250	300	290	349	550	360	604	950	1260
27	N/A	440	340	630	730	250	300	290	349	570	360	640	950	1290
28	N/A	440	346	620	720	250	290	290	349	515	390	630	900	1250
29	N/A	449	350	620	710	250	290	290	349	500	390	636	990	1290
30	N/A	440	350	620	710	260	290	290	330	500	390	630	990	1290
31	N/A	440	350	620	670	260	290	290	330	500	380	599	990	1290
32	N/A	430	360	620	710	260	290	290	310	515	380	599	990	1290
33	N/A	430	360	600	710	260	290	290	349	490	400	599	980	1290
34	N/A	440	360	620	710	260	290	290	349	550	380	599	980	1270
35	N/A	430	360	600	700	260	304	290	350	550	380	599	900	1290
36	550	440	360	600	700	260	300	290	340	550	370	599	980	1250
37	550	440	350	600	700	250	304	290	340	570	370	599	980	1250
38	550	440	350	600	700	250	304	290	340	570	370	599	980	1250
39	500	400	360	600	700	250	298	290	340	570	330	599	920	1250
40	500	430	360	600	700	260	291	290	340	565	330	599	955	1250
41	500	430	360	600	700	250	290	290	339	560	330	560	900	1250
42	550	450	360	635	690	260	290	290	350	570	380	550	950	1250
43	500	470	370	650	720	260	310	299	359	650	420	755	1030	1290
44	500	470	400	650	720	260	310	299	N/A	780	420	763	1088	1479
45	530	460	360	630	730	260	310	299	359	773	389	800	1150	1550
46	530	470	400	650	740	260	310	299	359	570	389	759	1150	1550
47	520	470	409	650	740	260	310	299	359	570	389	725	1150	1450
48	500	470	430	650	760	260	330	N/A	359	780	389	779	1150	1450
49	570	500	450	667	760	260	330	310	380	780	488	779	1150	1653
50	550	520	400	700	800	290	330	310	439	789	470	779	1150	1654
51	570	520	400	700	830	290	330	400	N/A	789	470	789	1200	1800

If you were in need of a graphics card right now, I'd probably buy an RX 9070 GRE for $570—that's only $20 over MSRP.

That's about as good as it gets.