• User After-Cartoonist-196 on the German-language PCBaumeister subreddit claims to have bought a CPU secondhand, but that it carried the previous owner's Valorant ban.
• Extreme surveillance measures have been adopted by esports devs in recent years to combat and punish endemic cheating in their games.
• Riot support allegedly told them this ban is now associated with all of their other PC components, and there is nothing the company can do to lift the ban.
• Riot anticheat head Phillip Koskinas asserts that the company's hardware bans last four months, and cannot "infect" other components when inserted into a new system.

After-Cartoonist-196's original post was reported on by PC World, and has independently made the rounds on social media as well. They say they bought the CPU on September 21, and that the original owner's ban was logged on August 12.

On Twitter, Koskinas said he was unable to find a support ticket matching After-Cartoonist-196's details, and that the story is "pretty unlikely." Koskinas pointed out that Riot hardware bans have a four month maximum duration, and that Riot support is required to provide the remaining duration of the ban when responding to a ticket.

That does leave much of the original story intact still: If the ban began on August 12, it will not hit the duration limit until mid-December. Koskinas firmly debunked one aspect of the story, though: He denied, in two separate posts, that a system's other hardware is blacklisted when detected alongside a banned component.

We reached out to After-Cartoonist-196 after the PC World article was published, but before Koskinas' public response. The core of the story⁠—that this player inherited another's hardware ban⁠—still seems plausible, and while not as drastic as initially presented by After-Cartoonist-196, it would certainly be an aggravating, Kafkaesque ordeal to get locked out of your favorite game in such a way, no matter the duration.

Assuming the original Reddit account is fully truthful, my theory would be that a shoddy support response resulted in the system ban miscommunication—whatever the official policy cited by Koskinas, Riot is a large company with many divisions and external contractors.

The story speaks to the invasiveness of the most advanced anticheat measures in effect today. I'm not a fan of kernel-level anticheat, myself, but competitive game developers swear by it. Your mileage may vary: I just don't really play this kind of esports-centric competitive game anymore for this, and a host of other reasons.

Just 1 day remains to VOTE in Round 1 of the FPS mode tournament. Four days in, here's where the polls stand in each bout. Many of them are still really close, so let your voice be heard!

• Team Deathmatch 75% // FFA 25%
• Battle Royale 52% // Extraction 48%
• Conquest 68% // Domination 32%
• Bomb Defusal 85% // Hostage 15%
• Payload 52% // Gun Game 48%
• Infection 61 % // Prop Hunt 39%
• Capture The Flag 91% // VIP 9%
• Attack & Defend 52% // King of the Hill 48%

Want to play Arc Raiders but don't want to pay for it? Sorry to say, this is not your lucky day—but October 8 will be. From then until October 12, Arc Raiders will be free to play on all platforms to mark the launch of Frozen Trail, the biggest Arc update since the game's launch in 2025.

The freebie offers full access to the game, including the new content added in Frozen Trail—a new map, enemies, weapons, gadgets, and more—with no limits beyond the calendar. If you dig it enough that you decide you do want to pay for it (and I'd say there's a good chance you will, it's pretty great), Arc Raiders is also on sale for half-price—that's $30/£26/€30—during the Steam Autumn Sale, which also ends October 8.

Another unexpected twist in the Bungle tale:

That's the latest move from Bungie, which recently un-cancelled Destiny 2 following a massive fan backlash over the decision to put the game in maintenance mode. It seems odd to me—I would think that now, with the seeming rebirth of Destiny 2 at hand, is exactly the time you'd want that storefront up and operational. Regardless of the need for a new storefront, taking the old one offline for months while it's being made feels counterproductive.

Also interesting is that the Marathon storefront, which lives on its own subdomain, is not being taken offline while the "new home" is being built. They look effectively identical, so I have no idea what to make of that.

Here's a little comparison of the two:

At a guess, I'd say the most likely outcome here is that the Bungie Store will be integrated into Sony's own storefront—rather like Bungie's own absorption into Sony after the wheels came off the whole "independent subsidiary" thing.

Some followers hope that will lead to lower shipping costs, which would be a positive outcome of sorts, although Sony taking control of the whole endeavor could mean a more limited selection of stuff going forward. That's entirely speculative, but that's also the whole Bungie/Destiny 2 situation in a nutshell: Something is happening, but exactly what we just cannot pin down at this point.

What we can pin down is that the Bungie Store as we know it will close on October 19, while digital downloads and emblem codes will remain accessible until December 31. Get 'em while you can.

In a surprise move, Bungie is bringing a bunch of stuff back to Destiny 2. All the campaigns, destinations and raids that were removed from the game back in 2020 will return at some unspecified point in the future.

It's a big attention grabbing move—one that's welcome, but that also acts as another frustrating reminder of how many unforced errors Bungie made across the length of Destiny 2's active, live-service run. For some, removing paid-for campaigns was the line in the sand—an unforgivable move that poisoned the well for how the wider gaming community viewed the game.

Right now, it's hard to say what any of this means for the future of Destiny. Rather than speculate, I'm going to focus on what bits of these returns I'm actually excited for. Not the campaigns—honestly they range from 'fine' to 'not very good'. No, I'm more interested in the small, hyper-specific parts of Destiny 2 that I've missed over the years—the little moments and memories that still live rent free in my head.

Here are seven such moments. Jump into the comments to let me know yours.

What's going on?

• System Shock 2 is an excellent videogame and all-timer immersive sim.
• Nightdive's 2025 remaster is exquisite.
• It's free on the Epic Games Store until October 8.
• You will have to remember your password and dig out a 2FA code probably. Sorry.

Is this really worth logging in for? Do you know how long it takes to log in to a thing?

Organized FPS scrimmage is a time-honored tradition of PC gaming. Countless battles have been waged, friendships forged, and "GGs" exchanged in the name of contested territories, stolen flags, and almost-exploded explosives. FPS is my favorite genre because it's a canvas that accommodates endless modes of fun—formats that can happily coexist under the same banner to serve the current mood or group.

But if you had to choose just one, which would be the greatest FPS mode of them all?

That's what we're here to decide. We're pitting the greats against each other in a single-elimination tournament, voted on by readers like you. Round 1 starts now. Go go go!

The Bracket

Round 1 - Vote!

Read up on the matchups below and vote for your favorite. Round 1 voting closes on Saturday, October 3 at 11:59 PM PDT. The more votes we get, the more interesting the results, so tell your friends! Next week we'll be back to share the results and begin Round 2.

Team Deathmatch or FFA/Deathmatch?

AKA: Team Slayer (Halo) // Slayer (Halo)

Would you rather fight alone or with a team?

Battle Royale VS Extraction

AKA: BR // Extraction Shooters

Two modes so large and complex that they've spawned vibrant subgenres.

Conquest VS Domination

AKA: Warfare (Hell Let Loose) // Territories (Halo), Domination Control Point (Team Fortress 2)

Large-scale point capture with vehicles and control point respawns popularized by Battlefield, or small-scale point capture with random respawns popularized by Unreal Tournament and Call of Duty?

Bomb Defusal VS Hostage

AKA: Bomb (Rainbow Six Siege), Plant/Defuse (Valorant)

The single-life elimination showdown. Bomb is historically the more competitive mode, but many have a soft spot for escorting NPCs out of buildings.

Gun Game VS Payload

AKA: Arms Race (Counter-Strike), Escalation (Valorant)

Selfishly race to kill with every gun in the game, or push a cart down a track with a coordinated team?

Infection VS Prop Hunt

AKA: They're pretty much always called Infection and Prop Hunt.

Two asymmetrical party mode greats, but only one is moving on.

VIP VS Capture The Flag

AKA: VIP Escort (Call of Duty)

Two legendary objective modes in which one person becomes the most important, yet vulnerable member of the team.

Attack & Defend VS King of the Hill

AKA: 2CP (Overwatch), Breakthrough (Battlefield) // Headquarters (Call of Duty)

I expect this one to get spicy. Take turns attacking and defending on a singular front, or fight over one moving control point?

A few notable quotes from Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer's latest Wardogs discussion video on X, in which he reacts to a video from YouTuber JbowenDaMan.

Wardogs continues to be one of my favorite games of the year, but almost three weeks into early access, I understand why developer Bulkhead was anticipating agita as players got deeper into its progression. The 100-player FPS has a serious XP grind, and some say they were having a better time before the most dedicated players started unlocking the highest tiers of vehicles, armor, and weapons.

Brammer's insights on player feedback and the studio's philosophy on balance are a useful lens into how Bulkhead sees its game—first and foremost a sandbox shooter where no two matches are the same, and not a competitive FPS that requires perfect balance.

"Sometimes in our game, we're going to be OK with something being a bit overpowered for a season and then underpowered next season, to keep it interesting," he said. "That doesn't mean I think level four armor is working, or that our balancing is great. I think the endgame is a bit sh*t."

It can be quite discouraging to face heavily-armored players with a pea shooter, or get smacked around by the strongest vehicles, so I'm curious what Bulkhead is considering to improve the endgame. Many think the thicker armors should go away entirely, and I admit I've had the same reaction when my killers shrug off six bullets to the chest, but that would rid the game of valuable build variety.

Wardogs firefights are asymmetrical by nature, and I wouldn't want to change that. While I'm unlocking stuff slower than the best players, the truth is that I'm also playing like a cheapskate—buying level two armor and cheaper guns because I don't want to risk a $20k loadout. Going into fights at a disadvantage is its own thrill, because I can still eat a bigger fish by getting the drop on them, and then become the bigger fish by looting their stuff.

Top of my mind is the changing playstyles of Wardogs week-to-week. Recently I've had a lot of matches where very few teammates want to do my favorite thing—push the Hot Zone and fight—and instead choose to focus on building or attacking FOBs. It can be frustrating to the point of not wanting to play, but as Jbowen and Brammer note, Wardogs is more fun when you're willing to adapt what you're doing to the current shape of the match. Instead of getting annoyed, I could try to pivot to hunting FOBs, learning anti-air, or practicing my pilot skills.

Brammer also reminded folks that Wardogs' planned metagame features will affect progression in the future. Bulkhead plans to add Tarkov-style skills that are improved through repetition, like tactical sprint duration and staying in-scope when cycling a sniper rifle bolt. Skills will be persistent, not wiped from season to season. In addition to cash and XP, a future "intel" resource will be used for unlocking gun parts and attachments that go beyond the current crop of grips, scopes, and muzzles.

"You're playing 25% of the game," as Brammer put it.

Sounds intriguing and intimidating. I really like how approachable Wardogs is right now, and my experience with full gunsmith systems in Battlefield 6 and CoD have me worried players will optimize guns until they're boring, but maybe Bulkhead's approach will be different.

All other games writers are cowards. Wealth and power have conspired to intimidate them into silence, to concern themselves with trifles instead of things that actually matter. Not me, though. I'm brave, and strong; my voice won't be quieted. I don't care about the consequences that come for speaking the truth. Here is the article no other outlet dares write.

Here is how the main characters of Crime and Punishment would fare if they had to survive the plot of Halo 1.

How bad is the Blue team in Wardogs? We scored 1 point. I have never seen a score this low until this moment, and of course it was Blue. I've seen enough to accept that Blue team is cursed, and I think it has more to do with experienced players actively avoiding the color than anything else. Winning isn't really important in Wardogs, so it's not a big deal to get stomped, but this was tough enough beating that I had to take a break with Red and Green for a while.

Just want to do an enthusiastic PC Gamer shout out to Villager97liam on the cyberpunkgame subreddit. They painstakingly recreated one of the dystopic foods of R. Talsorian Games' grim future: kibble and locust pizza.

The nasty, processed treats I found strewn across Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 were always one of my favorite bits of worldbuilding, and Villager97liam went to painstaking lengths to approximate one of the most stomach-roiling in our own, slightly less dark future: Dehydrated locusts ordered online, an Aldi frozen pie, and homemade tofu-kombu-plankton "kibble."

"I brought it to my friend's and my Cyberpunk Red game, and they hated it, as did I!"

I love when people do little 4D experiential touches for their tabletop games—tea-soaked and singed "parchment" maps, physical coins, incense, music, silly voices—but homemade kibble and locust pizza is a new all-time champion in my book.

I've had this goal in the back of my head to unlock all the Medic gear in Wardogs so I can become the best sawbones on the server. There's only one piece I still don't have—a medical bag that can both revive and heal teammates in one item. It's unlocked at Medic level 24, which doesn't sound so bad, since I've already reached level 18 over my first 30 hours of Wardogs.

But this week I noticed my steady Medic rise had slowed considerably. I had been ranking up every one or two rounds, but now I'm lucky to climb a rank over a whole night of play. I'm doing just as well in matches—better than ever, actually, with the addition of defibrillators and stronger medkits—so that's not the issue.

For the first time, I made note of the XP thresholds for leveling up and compared where I'm at to my goal. I wish I hadn't. So far I've gained 17 levels with 177,619 Medic XP. Level 24, just seven ranks later, will require 337,000 XP. So while it looks like I'm gaining on that useful medicine bag, I'm actually just 52% of the way there.

So this is the brutal Wardogs grind I've been hearing about. Bummer.

The mountain

I was curious how that last 48% will translate to playtime and matches—maybe it'll go by faster than it sounds—so I did an unscientific test: I played an average match with my typical focus on revives and healing. For the record: I'm an OK player at best. To maximise XP gains, I also brought an SMG and purchased stims to administer to teammates.

Over a 50-minute match on the winning team, this was my scoreline:

A pretty low kill game, admittedly. Our team repeatedly pulled the zone to our walled-off FOB, so there was a lot of time spent dragging bodies away from mortar barrages. If I keep playing like this, I'd unlock the medicine bag in 16 more matches, or ~13 hours of playtime.

I reckon that, depending on who you are, that either sounds surprisingly reasonable or totally deflating. It's disheartening for me, because these days I only play games for two or three hours on the nights that I play anything at all. By my standards, I've been going hard on Wardogs these past two weeks and yet I'm still at least a week away from unlocking this singular item.

Is this mountainous XP climb exactly what Bulkhead had in mind, and if so, is it good? It's a question the Wardogs community is grappling with every day, and opinions are all over the map. Some think the XP milestones increase too quickly, others think the grind would be fine if not for the planned seasonal wipes, and some firmly believe that Wardogs needs its massive XP grind to stay interesting.

It's an issue of degrees. To what degree is Wardogs meant to accommodate players with limited time, and how much should Bulkhead cater to the diehards racking up hundreds of hours? Complex multiplayer games have a way of splintering into differing perceived states depending on the beholder's skill and commitment level.

Changing the state of XP and cash is both a philosophical and balancing consideration: If it takes less XP to get my precious medicine bag or RPG or attack helicopter, that also affects how quickly powerful items become prominent in matches throughout a season, and Wardogs' meta progression flattens. But if nothing changes, then a player at my level may never unlock some items before the next wipe—fair, but not fun in the long term.

Bulkhead is taking in all the feedback around grind, and has alluded to future features that will shake up the grind from season-to-season, but hasn't commented on specific changes yet. Its first major patch since early access launch is still a few weeks away—season 2 begins October 15, and will wipe everyone back to level 1. Back to the base of the mountain.

In the wake of Microsoft gutting Halo Studios to a skeleton crew and passing off the series to Activision, new reports from insiders tell a believable story about what was happening in Halo Studios as the plug got pulled. The accounts come from The Verge's Tom Warren (longtime Microsoft beat writer) and YouTuber Rebs Gaming (whose sources within the Halo machine are often accurate).

Rebs' source also claimed that Halo Studios is now around 30 people, with Warren noting that they'll be servicing existing Halo games Infinite and Campaign Evolved. Meanwhile, Activision is building a new studio dedicated to the future of Halo.

Acknowledging that there's always more to a story than a handful of sources can cover, the picture they paint sounds very Halo Studios: slow-moving, scattered, and with one foot firmly in Halo's past. We all assumed that more remakes were in the cards, but that's looking less likely now—considering the many ways Campaign Evolved was a step back from the original, I can't decide if this is a relief of a missed opportunity.

It is sad that these people won't get a crack at Halo 7, because for all its delays and live-service fumbles, Halo Infinite grew into the best Halo since the Bungie days, and even outshined its original makers in some respects. I hope some of that talent can be aimed toward this next Halo venture.

Oh good, it looks like Marathon players might have to fight a Gundam: In its developer insight video explaining Marathon's upcoming pivot away from full-on extraction focus, Bungie offered a brief glance at an internal Miro board showing concepts for potential enemy additions. One of those concepts was labeled "UESC Mecha (BOSS)," a behemoth that looks like it's sporting its own Deep Striker-tier weapons arsenal. Best of luck, runners.

Warzone is trying something new

• In Warzone, a "cosmetic toggle" that will disable legacy character skins at a client level
• With this toggle, players will instead see operators from Modern Warfare 4, making the game stylistically cohesive
• This toggle only exists within Warzone, as Modern Warfare 4 itself won't carry forward any cosmetics from past games.

This time last year, Call of Duty had to look itself in the mirror and admit that all the ugly crossover skins had gotten out of hand. The company committed to a clean break with Black Ops 7: No old skins would carry forward, and future cosmetics would have to fit the Black Ops universe to make the cut. That lasted for about three months, when a CoD x Fallout collaboration arrived and all bets were off again.

This new toggle is, without a doubt, a positive change for CoD that I personally never expected to happen. If I were a Warzone diehard, I'd turn this on from day one and never look back. It's a shame, though, that this toggle appears to be only a temporary vacation from tacky outfits.

Since, according to this blog post, skins from Modern Warfare 4 aren't filtered out with the toggle, Warzone players will still be subject to whatever future attire is destined for the new game. So Warzone will only be stylistically cohesive for as long as Modern Warfare 4 is. By the time Season 6 rolls around, we might have Timothée Chalamet in Dune gear or Travis Kelce running amok in Warzone, and the toggle would be rendered pointless.

That is, unless Infinity Ward makes its own commitment to non-goofy cosmetics between now and launch, or expands the toggle to exclude all store outfits. I've reached out to Activision for clarification on how this will work.

After nine years, Quake Champions is a live-service game no more: The free-to-play arena shooter is now even more old school as a regular $10 product on Steam. All champions are unlocked from the jump, so you don't have to buy characters piecemeal like way too many games were asking us to do in the mid-2010s. Recently purchased premium currency will be refunded, but if you spent years dropping cash on skins, it might be a little awkward that everybody else now gets those at no additional cost.

This is a nicer ending than I expected for id's live-service experiment, which has received mostly cosmetic updates in recent years for the few hundred people that continue to love it. Though no longer free, it's easily a better game with its loot boxes and store tab gone, and one I'll be happy to fire up occasionally for a few rounds of instagib.

Also, these classic skins for Quake Ranger and Doom Slayer come stock now, so that's good stuff:

Microsoft has given up on Halo Studios, the team it formed and recently renamed for the express purpose of making new Halo games. Another victim of the Xbox Reset, the studio has been slashed down to its bones as part of another (but not final) wave of layoffs, and what's left of Halo Studios will now oversee the franchise in nebulous-sounding ways. Indeed: Halo Studios is no longer making Halo.

Now Activision is in charge, and as both a Halo and Call of Duty fan, the pairing isn't exciting.

Though I've been a vocal critic of Halo Studios' take on Halo over the years ("Halo Studios has no discernably new take on Bungie's landmark FPS" -Me, 2026), Halo Infinite eventually grew into a strong multiplayer FPS that I sunk hundreds of hours into, and Halo: Campaign Evolved was the team's best effort yet to embrace the series' quirky traditions while keeping an eye toward evolution. Ripping that work away from them a few months after shipping a Halo remake is a drastic move.

Let's take a moment to account for Halo Studios' history.

You can see why Microsoft thinks Activision is suited to fix some of those mistakes—Call of Duty can still produce a decent campaign. While the industry struggles with longer development cycles, Activision has maintained a steady pace.

That pace has come with real compromise—like never knowing if this year's CoD will be embarrassingly bad or merely good enough—and that's why I question if it'll be a worthy steward for what was once among the most celebrated and unique shooters in history. Despite its shortcomings, Halo Infinite stood out by doing things differently than Call of Duty with a slower pace, hipfiring guns, mirrored loadouts, power weapons, and vertical maps that had more in common with classic arena shooters than the 'boots on the ground' generation that Modern Warfare created.

I don't think that the outcome of this is going to be Halo becoming more Call of Duty-like, but I don't trust the Call of Duty machine to be a good influence on Halo, especially as Activision juggles two titanic franchises simultaneously.

No doubt that Activision is eager to put Halo back on the map, but I hope they'll be able to match the attention to detail of the Halo Studios staffers that Microsoft just fired. Say what you will of their final products, but they were massive fans of Halo: This is the studio that didn't stop improving The Master Chief Collection until it was a gold standard of preservation; the studio that allowed community members to rummage through the records and publish an unfinished Halo 2 E3 demo on Steam Workshop; that cared enough about the minutiae of Halo's jump physics and grenade bounces to literally run 15-year-old Halo Reach code under the hood of Campaign Evolved.

Activision will be put in a very challenging creative position: presumably to put some new spin on Halo that will work better than the last few releases, but also to earn fans' trust by preserving whatever aspects of the franchise it deems sacred. How will that play out? Call of Duty is famous for changing up its setting, tone, characters, and gameplay as it bounces from studio to studio. Fans have adapted to the whiplash over the years, but the series' inconsistent identity is a tradeoff that Activision either accepts as part of cranking out annual releases or has chosen to embrace. I don't want something similar to happen to Halo as its makers seek to restore its relevance.

Because honestly, the things I love most about Halo—its streamlined weapon sandbox, emphasis on vehicles, uncomplicated modes, social lobbies, and community-driven custom games—aren't in vogue anymore. If the goal is to transform Halo into one of the most-played multiplayer shooters in the world, I'm just not sure how a studio achieves that while simultaneously preserving what makes Halo great, 25 years later.

Humvees are a nasty threat in Wardogs. They're fast, have thick enough armor to withstand multiple RPGs, and usually come with a machinegun nest that can easily mow down a squad of infantry in a single reload. But they have a pretty huge weakness that, two weeks in, many players in my matches are unaware of:

Shoot the tires. Like, with anything.

Popping just one tire will cut the Humvees max speed by over half, and popping two will slow it to a crawl. This won't destroy the vehicle or even interrupt the gunner, but it will make it easier to get an unarmored angle on the gun nest and force the driver to make a tough choice: limp out of danger or go for a very risky repair.

As YouTuber Min Max Lab helpfully tested, it takes just eight 5.56 bullets (the ammo used by Wardogs' free starter rifle) to pop a tire, so even a single soldier can deal enough damage to ruin a driver's day. I haven't managed to ruin two tires by myself, but popping one is often enough to convince the Humvee to disengage for repairs.

Be sure to watch that whole video below for more useful data, like which guns are best for tire destruction (shotguns are quite good), which direction you should shoot from to increase damage (the front) and just how bulletproof a Humvee's windows are (it depends on the window).

CS2 players begging for an anticheat overhaul.

Valve:

You'd think the most exciting thing to happen in Counter-Strike 2 today would be its new Rush Hour update, complete with a new "fast-paced" mode, or perhaps the fact that you can now silent reload. But you would be wrong, because Rush Hour has been overshadowed by pet chickens.

Chickens aren't new to CS2, they've been clucking around some maps for ages now, you could even walk up to them and get them to follow you. But this is different. You can now get an egg in your weekly drop that's untradeable and will consume both of your allotted drops for the week.

After a week of the egg sitting in your inventory it should hatch into a chick. But I know what you're thinking: "All you get is a pet chick that you can inspect? That doesn't sound very CS2" you would be right, except for the fact that if you look after your chick and feed it chicken feed it can grow up into a chicken with various skins with different levels of rarity; now that's CS2.

There's a normal brown chicken, a white non-bearded silkie, and a tan polish chicken. But it doesn't stop there because there's also apparently 35 various rarities of these chickens which come in different skins. There's bright blue, purple-yellow, blue gradient, nuclear red, toxic green, and much more.

You can inspect these grandiose skins as you would a gun, and your little chick and grown chicken can learn tricks. They can run around in a circle (adorable), flap their little wings and fly up a little ways (outstanding), and do a little karate kick (absolute cinema).

After hatching you can name your chick, take it to the photo booth, and let it sit on your shoulder in the loadout screen. When it grows up you'll be able to take it into lobbies and will eventually leave you when it's fully grown, but it's photo will stay on your profile.

It's a little strange considering the chickens aren't mentioned at all in the patch notes, but it's also oddly on brand for Valve to add something like pets instead of, I don't know, trying to fix CS2's anticheat.

Over the past couple of months, my Destiny 2 Fireteam has given me a tour of the Destiny 2 content I missed when I hopped off the train following the pandemic. When you play all the dungeons back-to-back, it's a buffet of delights—a concentrated dose of amazing and frequently obtuse FPS level design that you simply can't find anywhere else. A reminder that Bungie, pre-layoffs, was the very best at what it did.

And yet, no game has had more caveats in its lifespan. There was always an amazing experience inside Destiny 2 somewhere, but recommending it to any normal person was out of the question. The onboarding for rookies was rough. Hoovering up all the expansions and dungeons was pricey and confusing. And after the release of The Final Shape, Bungie pissed off its player base repeatedly until the game was no longer sustainable. At what point would you ever advise a new player to jump in?

Still, none of those issues compared to the content vault, first introduced in 2020. In removing entire campaigns from the game, not only did Bungie break players' ability to understand the complete story of Destiny 2, it also raised questions about the ethics of deleting content that you thought you'd paid for. It cast a shadow over the game for the rest of its lifespan.

Now, three months after its supposedly final update, Bungie's decision to unvault Destiny 2's oldest content may have been the only move left on the board to keep the studio going. While this is only really a first step to winning players back, it's a savvy decision that has reignited a sensible amount of hope in the game's community. It also means the developer isn't solely dependent on the dicey fortunes of Marathon to keep going.

When the content vaulting began, I sympathised with Bungie's effort to keep the Destiny 2 file size reasonable and the experience streamlined. The thought of having 200GB of storage dedicated to one game I'd never delete was not appealing.

But it quickly created many more problems for Bungie than it solved: if you wanted the complete Destiny 2 story, which was already pretty confusing to follow, tough luck. The original Red War campaign from 2017 has now been unavailable for well over half the game's lifespan, and the whole point of that experience was to give players a solid entry point to the wider universe of the game. If you came to Destiny after playing the highly scripted Call of Duty single-player campaigns, it made you feel at home.

Unfortunately, much of the content that defined the game's early years and cemented its appeal was gone by 2022, including its signature raids that showed Bungie's masterful level designers at their best. And that permanently broke trust in the studio.

Now Bungie has chosen the last possible moment to reverse course on this, which, along with the tone of the update posted on Bungie.net, is how you know the studio is not in a good place.

The smart tactic in Bungie's announcement is that it promises a mix of short-term changes (expanding the remit of what Marathon can offer players), mid-term changes (unvaulting Destiny 2 content, which doesn't sound like a small job) and long-term things to look forward to (all-new Destiny content in an unspecified form). That's a clever strategy because it all seems actionable on paper—it doesn't overpromise, which is vital for the studio to start rebuilding trust.

Drastic action

The Marathon piece of this feels slightly less optimistic. We know the next major update is now coming in December with a permanent PvE mode, and that the studio aims to turn the game into a "deeper survival experience" and shed its "genre constraints" as a hardcore PvP FPS.

The merits of Marathon are well-documented on this website, and it's still one of my favourite games of 2026. But even that game has been dogged by Bungie's perpetually strange decision-making in its short life, like divisively wiping progress each season or time-limiting the PvE experiences that might expand its appeal. That's the sort of flex that only makes sense when you have ten times the number of active players.

Pinning all of the studio's hopes on Marathon probably wasn't going to work.

All of this leaves you with the sense that Bungie had to do something drastic—that the unvaulting and revival of Destiny is an emergency maneuver to save the studio either from closure, or simply becoming a downsized incubator for game projects you won't get to play for 10 years (if ever).

Combined with the recent delays in seasonal content rolling out, Bungie is now in the strange position where one of its games is having an identity crisis while the other has unexpectedly come back from the dead.

FPS buffet

Still if you're able to divorce Destiny 2 from the drama of studio machinations and the live-service woes of its final years, there's an undeniably positive story in here. Unvaulting everything may leave us with the richest treasure trove of first-person shooter content in history, or at least since The Orange Box. That would be quite a turnaround, and well worth celebrating, especially with some kind of future for Destiny on the horizon. But will it be enough?

The big caveat with all of this, of course, is that Bungie has already laid off many of the staff who made those individual pieces of Destiny 2 special. To blindly accept that any future Destiny content could reach the same standard without those esteemed designers and artists would be giving the studio leadership too much credit. Based on the tone of the letter to the community, they surely know this.

Still, Bungie gets credit for finally reversing the biggest self-own in its history. And some of the stuff sitting in that vault is pure gold.

I spent some of my darkest pandemic days roaming the platforms of New Pacific Arcology on Titan while listening to podcasts—I can't quite believe I'm going back there. The wretched sparrow race in Scourge of the Past will soon be playable again, too (and I'll once again fail to reach the finish line). Maybe I'll even fight my beloved Callus again on Leviathan, if I can overcome near-the impossible odds of finding three additional friends who still play Destiny 2.

These were foundational Destiny 2 experiences for me and many other players. It will be grand to have them back.

The ArmA family tree

This TikTok from Biffmatic (recently reshared by Bohemia Interactive) reminded me just how different PC gaming would look today if not for Arma, the long-running milsim series that's still going strong.

Pretty much everyone knows that DayZ, one of the important PC games of the previous decade, began as an Arma 2 mod. The idea of PvPvE survival—the kind where you never know if you can trust the fella running down the road—was brand new, and it was such a hit that Arma developer Bohemia teamed up with DayZ creator Dean Hall to make a standalone version. DayZ went on to inspire a vibrant survival genre that's also given us Rust, Ark, and countless others.

Did you also know that PUBG—and the entire battle royale genre, for that matter—is another Arma offspring? Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene developed the first version of PUBG as a mod to Dean Hall's DayZ mod. It was genuinely a mod of a mod, which Greene soon ported over to Arma 3. That mod was simply called "PlayerUnknown's Battle Royale". It was my first introduction to the mode, and remains the mode I played most in Arma 3. Greene also consulted on H1Z1: King of the Kill before joining Bluehole to create PUBG: Battlegrounds, which Epic quickly replicated within Fortnite in 2017.

But did you also also know that Wardogs, the new 100-player FPS dominating Steam, is the spiritual successor to a separate Arma 3 mod? It was called Arma 3: King of the Hill, and Wardogs developer Bulkhead worked with its creators when translating the mode into the new game. The basis of three teams, one central zone, and buying gear comes straight from the Arma 3 iteration.

OK, even I didn't realize that NoPixel, the gigantic GTA 5 roleplay community officially backed by Rockstar, got its start as a roleplay server within Arma 3. I remember trying a different version of Arma 3 roleplay (Altis Life) when it was new and getting repeatedly arrested by corrupt police officers for minding my own business. Judging by what I've seen of NoPixelV, it's still as goofy as those days.

The legacy of Arma is astounding, and it's only possible because Bohemia has always treated its milsim like an open platform (it even runs annual modding contests, with prizes)—a grand military sandbox where genuinely innovative multiplayer ideas can find a home and eventually blossom into their own games.

I'm a simple man. I like first-person shooters and making jokes about AI before a combination of data center-enabled climate change and Skynet leads to the end of humanity.

Beautiful Freaks of the Desert then, is poised to make me a very happy man indeed. Beautiful Freaks of the Desert's debut trailer, shown for the first time at the PC Gaming Show, does a great job of showing what the speedrunning FPS is about, using all 50 seconds to showcase intense blasting, striking title cards, and an anti-Data Center sentiment that warms my heart. Give it a watch, the trailer really does have to be seen to be believed.

The speedrunning shooter should remind people of Neon White with the clean aesthetic, which channels the golden days of the boomer shooter—a term that's slipped into general usage despite the fact I get at least one angry email every time I use it—and sets it against the backdrop of a seemingly endless war between squabbling technology corporations. There's something charmingly lo-fi about the trailer, which gives me a similar irreverent vibe to the cult classic Cruelty Squad, although this promises to be less of an immersive sim and more a game about jumping around exploded spiders and other enemies with a variety of weaponry.

The game promises 50 bite-sized levels, six different weapon systems, and an open world desert that connects the levels that you can explore on foot or by bike.

If that all sounds like a bit of you can wishlist the game here, or go to the PC Gaming Show Toyko Direct Steam page to see every game from today's show. There are some real crackers in there, don't be shy, take a look. You can also read our roundup article which includes every announcement from the show in the order it aired.

On the list of activities that could feasibly be described as "wholesome", sniping is probably close to the bottom. While I enjoy ventilating skulls from improbably long distances in games like Battlefield 6 and Wardogs, it wouldn't be the first activity that I would consider sharing with the family.

Which is why I so admire Sniper Dan's attempt to turn sharpshooting into a positive experience on both sides of the scope. Developed by Autonauts creators Denki, Sniper Dan smashes together hidden-object games and first-person shooting, and in doing so produces a surprisingly effective symbiotic relationship.

The loose premise sees Dan—a crack-shot armed with a hunting rifle and an entrepreneurial spirit, venture out into his local community hellbent upon projectile-based problem solving. Each mission is like a 3D, animated wimmelbilderbuch, scattered with dozens of people, animals, and inanimate objects which may or may not require bullet-based assistance.

In play, Sniper Dan couldn't be simpler. You spy a problem, shoot the problem, and solve the problem. What makes it interesting is the wacky array of problems that require your assistance. You might be asked to help blow away piles of leaves in the local park, open a jammed suitcase by shooting the lock, or plant a seed by blasting it into the ground, shooting the pile of soil to cover it, and puncturing the watering can to ensure the soil is sufficiently doused.

I took Sniper Dan for a quick spin this morning, and it's a straight up Good Time. You don't need to worry about things like bullet-drop or wind-direction as you might with more serious sniping simulators. Solving a problem typically rewards you with a daft animation and a handful of coins. You can spend these on upgrading your rifle or decorating your office with various cosmetic items. Amusingly, Dan also selects the items at a market stall by shooting them.

All told, Sniper Dan is a shockingly pleasant way to spend a Sunday. If you're tempted to pull the trigger on Sniper Dan, it's currently available at a 20% launch discount, which drops the price to $10.39 (£8.79). That discount ends on October 1.

There exists in classed-based military shooters an understanding: Never count on a random medic to care about you.

You'd think in games where players have to opt into the support role, it'd be as simple as "There's a medic nearby, they'll try to get me," but any Battlefield player will tell you how often trained doctors trample over their corpse, more hungry to end a life than save one. So you learn to assume that you're on your own, and when a real medic does go out of their way to help you, they're the exception that proves the rule.

Wardogs is different. Help is so abundant in this 100-player, three-team milsim that, when I die, I can be confident a second, third, or even a fourth chance is coming. It's the only FPS I've played where multiple medics will actually race to give me first-aid, drag my body to safety, or pop a smoke grenade to cover a revive.

I've also played shooters where support play is taken more seriously than in Battlefield—Squad, Hell Let Loose, Isonzo, Arma, and other games on the "milsim" spectrum come to mind—but Bulkhead has successfully crafted a medic role so accessible and appealing that damn near everyone in Wardogs wants to help. Official stats from Wardogs' first weekend reveal that players earned 123 million kills and 61 million revives for an overall resurrection rate of nearly 50%. As a lifelong medic main, that's astounding.

How does Wardogs do it? I think a lot of factors contribute:

Money, obviously

The big one is Wardogs' unique, cash-infused incentive structure. Unlike an extraction shooter, where money is earned primarily through kills and selling valuable loot, Wardogs will make you rich just for doing useful, nonviolent things for the team: killing, capturing, transporting, spotting, building, and healing.

On top of the fuzzy feelings I get for helping out, Medic is a very profitable playstyle in Wardogs. A single revive pays almost as much as a kill, and that's before you factor in tips from grateful patients and automatic assist payouts when those patients go on to get more kills. If I go the extra mile of buying spare bandages to heal folks back to 100, I get even more cash and tips.

Battlefield 6 also showers dedicated medics with XP, and really good ones end up near the top of the scoreboard, but Wardogs' cash prizes feel more impactful because it's the currency that fuels everything you do. Going on a 50k profit run in a single life can mean I've taken a big step toward unlocking an expensive upgrade, or it can mean that I get to splurge on my next loadout with a bigger backpack or vehicle. It's smart stuff.

Anyone can revive

You don't have to invest in medic gear to lend a hand. Anyone can drag bodies and revive friendlies, and the vendor gives away a single-use quick-revive tool once per life. There's a world where this design choice could've been controversial in Wardogs, because if anyone can revive, what do you need proper medics for? But Bulkhead has threaded the needle perfectly by making manual "hand" revives—where your soldier literally rubs their hands together for ~20 seconds like they're charging defibrillators paddles—extremely slow.

Teammates can and will try to save you this way, but upgrading to proper defibrillators (unlocked at medic level 11) is a dramatic upgrade. A kitted-up medic can have a full squad back on its feet in the same time as a single hand revive. And even though there are no enforced classes in Wardogs, defibs are expensive and take up your one "specialist" tool slot that could hold an RPG or binoculars instead. It's possible to carry more than one specialist tool, but you need a huge backpack to accommodate that playstyle (which is even more expensive). This ensures that anyone can heal, but not everyone can be a proper medic.

It's not that dangerous to be a medic

I have found that going for a revive in Wardogs is not as risky as in similar games. Often (but not always) when I sprint toward a dead body out in the open, I'm able to drag them behind cover without drama.

I suspect this has to do with how spread out the action is in Wardogs: a three-team structure means there's no singular front where all of the death happens, which also means there's not a single pile of dead bodies that enemies are staring at, waiting for medics to make a move. No, most of my Wardogs skirmishes have been smaller in scale—confrontations with two or three clustered enemies or a showdown with a single sniper I can't even see.

It's a stark contrast to Battlefield 6, where some maps are so congested (and the time-to-kill so short) that the three seconds it takes to equip defibs and use them is enough for someone to sprint around a corner and shoot you in the face. Wardogs' pace is far better suited for support play.

Bribing is fun, but not as important as I thought

The bribes help. As Sean highlighted last week the ability to bribe nearby medics up to $500 to pick you up can grease the wheels in desperate scenarios. For the first few days of Wardogs, I'd max out my bribe every time because it was cheaper than losing a whole loadout, but I've noticed lately that many players will attempt a revive regardless because, as we've covered, the base pay for a revive is incentive enough.

Dead players don't give up, because dying costs time and money

Wardogs is unique in its commitment to death costing time. There are no Battlefield-like squad spawns, no rally points, and not even FOBs themselves are respawn beacons. There are only two ways to get back in the action: Use your team's one APC (a mobile respawn vehicle with a long cooldown after use) or hitch a ride for the 3km journey from HQ.

Both options are more expensive, and often significantly slower, than just waiting for a revive. I can't overemphasize how important that is, because it means that dead players choose to be patient and give medics a chance. There's nothing I hate more as a support player than folks giving up on me as I'm trying to stick my neck out for them, but so far in Wardogs, this has happened exactly once.

It's still really early days for Wardogs, and the game itself keeps changing as players unlock increasingly elaborate tools, but I'm impressed with how well its rules, scale, gadgets, and incentives coalesce around cooperation. The medic role might be the best example of that synergy in action.

As reported by IGN and Gabe Follower on X, Backrooms director Kane Parsons shared an Instagram story from Valve's Bellevue, Washington headquarters on September 16. The director has previously said that Portal was extremely influential on his work, inspiring hopes for a Parsons-led adaptation or some other collaboration with the studio.

There's more circumstantial evidence in favor of this being more than just a friendly visit: Parsons previously told The New York Times in May that making a Portal feature film would be his "dream." What's more, this isn't the first time Parsons has been seen at Valve HQ. His Instagram story commemorating a visit in June has been preserved by user eugen3 on the Valve subreddit.

Those are encouraging signs that we could have a Portal movie from a guy who'd do a great job on it to look forward to, but there are some caveats. Parsons also told the NYT in May that he doesn't want to move on from Backrooms until it reaches some kind of conclusion, and he is already engaged to direct a sequel for A24.

There is also the matter of J.J. Abrams' seemingly-abandoned Portal movie project. He last spoke about it on the record in 2021, but there could be some standing contracts or agreements to consider.

I find I'm not particularly excited about a videogame adaptation unless the right director's involved, but there's been a lot of that going around recently. Zach Cregger's Resident Evil is looking like a slam dunk, even if some people are grumpy it's not about Leon Kennedy, and I find myself increasingly excited for Alex "The Guy Who Wrote Dredd" Garland's upcoming Elden Ring movie.

Parsons has already shown himself to be a master of the sort of abandoned corporate surrealism that defined Portal⁠, and his passion for the subject matter would also be cause for excitement. Gaming also runs in Parsons' family: His father, Michael Parsons, was a longtime technical artist at Telltale during its legendary 2010s hot streak.

Have you heard the rumor that Bungie is looking to somehow merge Destiny and Marathon into a single series? I'll admit that I hadn't, until Marathon creative director Julia Nardin took to X to say flat-out that it's not true.

"As someone who's worked on both Destiny and Marathon, I can confirm that the 'leak' about us merging the two IPs is fake," Nardin wrote. "They share a lot of the same Bungie DNA, but like siblings they're also their own independent entities. Please don't believe everything you read online."

Nardin should know: Prior to taking up the creative director mantle on Marathon earlier this year, she worked on the narrative for multiple Destiny 2 expansions, and served as associate narrative director on the free-to-play mobile shooter Destiny: Rising. Nardin's message was also reposted by Bungie comms lead Dylan Gafner, better known to the community as dmg04.

The message appeared to be in response to a lengthy "leaks" post on 4chan, subsequently posted on the Marathon subreddit, which makes claims ranging from basic gameplay changes to a move to a free to play—and, of course, the merge: "There has been some vague testing the waters internally to rework Marathon and Destiny into a single IP with Marathon representing the beginning of Mankind's Golden Age and to foreshadow more threats to be used in a future Destiny project."

I suppose that would be workable—it's not too much of a chore to mash up disparate properties via the passage of time and weird shit happening in the background—but the obvious question is, why would Bungie bother? What's the payoff?

Lots of Destiny 2 fans are unhappy that their favorite game has reached its end, but I don't think they're suddenly going to come trucking to Marathon because of some meaningless narrative twist. And that's Bungie's real problem: Marathon numbers are sagging badly and efforts to turn that around haven't gone anywhere.

That's a concern with caveats because Marathon, unlike Destiny 2, isn't free to play, but Bungie's been going hard since the game's launch to find its footing: With the Destiny 2 team gone and no new projects imminent, Bungie needs Marathon to work. The studio recently delayed the game's planned September content update into December, preceded by a smaller seasonal refresh in October, and also abandoned its "strict seasonal schedule," as part of its plan to turn Marathon "into a more alien and dynamic survival experience."

Relentless optimists may note that Nardin didn't address any of the other leaks in her post: The free-to-play transition, for instance, or that K-pop crossover skins are happening. And who knows? Maybe some of the predictions it makes will come true. Personally, though, I think Nardin's final bit of advice is good: Don't believe everything you read on the internet. (And my own personal addendum: especially if it comes from 4chan.)

Overwatch has over 40 heroes at this point, each with their own legion of fans. Blizzard can't make everyone happy when it comes to releasing new skins, but its most recent skins have fans convinced it's playing favorites.

Heroes who have already been swimming in skins, like Kiriko and Genji, keep getting more and more while other heroes are left with scraps.

Blizzard has started to drop Mythic skins for heroes who already have them, upsetting those who've waited years to see their favorite heroes get their first one. These fancy skins have customizable parts and change the visual effects on abilities. They're also the most expensive skins in the game at around $70, or 80 Mythic Prisms, a currency acquired by completing tiers on the battle pass or purchasing directly from the shop.

Only two Mythic skins come out every season, which is why many players are frustrated seeing some heroes get more while others have none. The ire around repeat Mythics comes up every time another one comes out, but has grown more intense as the trend continues. The recent Mythic Void Widowmaker skin—her second Mythic—saw an overwhelmingly negative response because it arrived in the same season Genji got his second Mythic skin.

In an interview with PC Gamer, art director Dion Rogers said the team never intentionally leaves out certain heroes from Mythic discussions. "It's just more of what the team is excited about in the moment, or the very cool ideas sitting in front of us basically," he said. Some heroes are easier to get to than others, he added.

But Rogers said the team has seen the feedback about repeat Mythics and is going to work on spreading them out better in the future. Specifically, he said it'll be "the number one thing" the team will start to conceptualize next.

"We've done recently a big blue-sky sketch, like hit as many as these guys as possible and see if something jumps out," he said.

Skins presumably take a while to come together, so I wouldn't expect to see a wider variety of Mythics for several months, but it's promising to hear that some of the less conventional heroes might finally get their own time to shine soon.

Update 9/16/26: Responding to coverage of his controversial comments about crunch, Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer has told Eurogamer that crunch is not mandatory at the studio. He had previously stated, "I expect people to crunch. I own that. I don't try and hide it."

"In June 2026 we were late for the Wardogs beta build," Brammer told the publication in a new statement. "In this instance I apologised and said the only way I thought we could get the game into beta, was by working an extra 2 hours a day Monday through Thursday, for 4 weeks (16 working days total). We admitted to the staff that this was crunch; we clearly stated that we needed to crunch. It was optional; four people opted out, nothing happened to them and nothing will. But I can admit that maybe the social pressure within a very tight-knit team might make those individuals feel less than great."

To prevent confusion, we've updated this article's headline, which previously referred to crunch as mandatory, to reflect Brammer's new statement.

Eurogamer also pushed Brammer on Bulkhead's practice of screening the social media accounts of potential applicants to check if they're "constantly tweeting anti-crunch messaging," and if this could potentially violate UK employment law.

"We understand your concern, but I was speaking informally about our culture and the kind of environment we have at Bulkhead, rather than setting out our formal recruitment process," Brammer said.

"Where we do consider publicly available information as part of recruitment, it is done in line with applicable UK employment and data protection law. We don't access private accounts or carry out covert or intrusive checks.

"My comments were really about being upfront about the kind of studio we are and making sure it's the right fit for both sides."

The original story follows.

Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer is catching heat from industry colleagues for his studio's stance on crunch. In the latest episode of The Game Business Show (as covered by Game Developer), Brammer and host Christopher Dring chatted about Bulkhead's journey as an indie studio and Wardogs' big success before the conversation turned to work culture and crunch.

Brammer was upfront that crunch does happen at Bulkhead, and if you're not OK with that, you're probably not getting hired.

"A lot of people who may have an issue with crunch—rightly so, I understand that issue, we always try and avoid it, but we don’t hide that this is going to happen at some point—they often don't make it in the door. Because we want to be known for that: this is a place you come to work hard. If you care about the work you’re making and the result of what you make here, you'll feel really valued. If you don't, you will feel slave-driven," he said.

"We check people's socials, and if you're constantly tweeting anti-crunch messaging: 'This should never ever be a thing', we know that and go, 'Look, you're not going to be happy here, so we're not going to go with you.'"

Brammer acknowledged that this is a controversial policy in game development, which has made strides to eliminate or limit mandatory crunch following years of reporting detailing the industry's labor exploitation, burnout, and the human cost of a work culture that says you only "care about what you're making," as Brammer says, if you're willing to stay late.

"For the last three months, Wardogs has been more important than a lot of [our team's] family lives. But now, Bulkhead and I have to acknowledge that it needs to go the other way. Everyone’s pushing us to get [the console version] out earlier, and we’ve said, ‘No, that's not how it’s going to work. We can't push them more."

The CEO believes Bulkhead balances the scales by offering bonuses and incentives to some (but definitely not all) of its staff.

"If we're going to be a company that says 'We do crunch,' then you have to get something for it," Brammer said.

On Bluesky, Brammer's game industry colleagues aren't so convinced he's cracked the code.

"There's an endless mountain of peer reviewed, double-blind studies that show this shit doesn't work and *negatively impacts profits* but the facade of looking like you're a big tough special boy is more important," wrote game dev bplane.

"Tell me you need a producer without saying you need a producer," said producer and consultant Nazih Fares.

"Imagine being proud of your attitude towards crunch and calling it 'hard work.' Crunch is a result of bad planning and poor management," wrote Studio Gobo's Michael Howe. "This [interview] stinks of lies and excuses to drag devs through the grinder, may this kind of lead never find me."

How outwardly does Bulkhead embrace crunch? Back on Wardogs launch day, Brammer posted studio tours on X that included a room full of air mattresses for employees working overnight to fix Wardogs' troubled servers.

Here's a neat thought: One of the most popular multiplayer games on the planet right now has no matchmaking button. FPS fans are flocking to Wardogs for its fresh ideas around teamwork, economy, and "all-out warfare." It's pulling in the largest crowds this sort of round-based, milsim-y FPS (a category that also includes Squad and Hell Let Loose) has ever seen.

It's very much filling the Battlefield-shaped hole in my game time, and that's in no small part due to its server browser.

Man, is it nice to press play on a main menu in 2026 and get options like this:

Check out that beaut: A complete list of official servers in my region, sortable by players, ping, rulesets, and maps. And would you look at that: A prominent community section featuring persistent servers rentable from third-party vendors.

No forced matchmaking. No skill-based algorithms. No disbanding lobbies (in community servers, at least). This is exactly the sort of convenient, community-forward setup that still appears regularly in niche milsims and indie shooters, and one that fans have been begging Battlefield to get back to.

It was around this time last year that EA was making a big to-do about Battlefield 6's community server support. Devs insisted that the Portal server browser, which doesn't support third-party server providers and instead allows players to spin up one semi-persistent lobby at a time, would "tick every box" for a proper server browser.

It did not: At launch, Portal servers were buggy, dominated by XP farming lobbies, and buried under a pile of Netflix menu tiles. As plenty of us predicted, interest in the Portal browser as an alternative to official matchmaking quickly died out, and now it's only good for goofy minigames and, somehow still, XP farming.

When asked at the time why Battlefield 6 couldn't just have a real browser—the kind that lets you see all of the official servers as well as community-hosted ones—DICE lead producer David Sirland offered an answer that, in retrospect, is pretty weak sauce.

"Matchmaking servers spin up in seconds (get filled with players), and spin down after the game is over. That couple of seconds, plus when servers lose a lot of players, mid-game is the only time you can join, which makes it a tricky combination (and full of queuing to join issues)."

And yet, here we are: Wardogs has millions of players, and they seem to be navigating those "issues" just fine. Even the supposed drawbacks of manual browsing are barely a thing in Wardogs. There are currently so many official and community servers that finding one with a few spare slots takes seconds, and players cycle in and out of the 100-player matches so often that queues are rarely a long wait.

Meanwhile, the benefits are obvious: Community servers have admins that can punish cheaters and griefers faster than automated tools, and when they're allowed to flourish, these servers can be recognizable social spaces with regulars and customs. Developer Bulkhead isn't doing anything unique here, just what most PC shooters did 20 years ago.

The reality is that pulling off a server browser really comes down to will. Battlefield 6 doesn't have a real, prominent browser because EA doesn'tdon't want one. DICE built it like a console game (really, like Call of Duty) with algorithmic factors that get thrown off when folks can just hop into whatever server they want. So Portal was the compromise—a walled garden with restrictive, fake-persistent access to dedicated servers. It was a miscalculation about where the wind is blowing in the FPS scene, and it's still hurting an otherwise great game.

Wardogs' server browser is far from flawless. Basic features like favoriting and tiered queueing are still on the way, joining a server as a group is harder than it should be, and server admins are missing crucial tools—but it's a strong start for an early access game, and immediately more legitimate than Battlefield 6's sorry excuse for community support. In more ways than one, Battlefield could learn from Wardogs and smaller shooters like it.

Embark Studios announced a "pause" on Expeditions in Arc Raiders until early 2027 so it can rework the system to address longstanding issues and complaints that can't be handled with "incremental fixes." In a recent interview with PCGamesN, though, Arc Raiders executive producer Aleksander Grøndal said the studio might go even further by ditching Expeditions entirely.

Expeditions are essentially Arc's equivalent of prestiging in Call of Duty: High-level players invest time and resources into a "caravan" that ultimately—within the context of the game's fiction—enables their character to leave the Rust Belt forever. Practically speaking, it's a full reset of levels, skills, and inventory, in exchange for certain unique benefits conferred upon the player's new character. It's a major undertaking, and many Arc players haven't been happy with the amount of grind involved for a relatively minor payoff.

Announcing the pause in August, Embark said many of the issues raised by players, "like the tight departure windows, the reward structure, and accessibility for new players, need more than incremental fixes. They call for bigger changes." The fifth Expedition, set to depart at the end of September, will be the last until Embark has the overhaul finished—or just cans the whole thing, as the case may be.

"Was the system perfect? No, probably not," Grøndal told PCGN at Gamescom. "We want to make some significant changes to the Expedition system. But I think right now we're focused on, 'Yeah, they are what they are,' but the intent is to have them change.

"Maybe we'll scrap the whole system altogether. That is on the table, too. Right now, the team is trying to figure out what the next steps for Expeditions are."

When Embark will make its final decision on the fate of Expeditions remains, well, undecided, although nothing's going to happen until the Frozen Trails major update drops in October. But whatever happens, it seems clear that players should expect major changes.

Last night, a buddy and I were stuck on the team selection screen in Wardogs. Manticore (Green) and Valkyra (Red) were 100% full, but Lonestar (Blue) had plenty of vacancies. Yet, there we sat—locked in a stalemate with a dozen other players desperate to not join blue.

"Anything but blue," we chanted, spamming left-click over Green and Red.

It is, for some reason, understood in Wardogs that Blue team kinda sucks. It seems like a silly claim to make in an FPS where teams are scrambled every match and everyone starts with the same exact resources, but Blue's infamy began during Wardogs' closed betas and has only cemented since launch. If you're a Wardogs player, you immediately knew who this article was about.

"The battle before the battle," reads one top-upvoted post on the Wardogs subreddit, depicting a team select screen with a sparse Blue roster. Another post renames each faction according to difficulty: "Easy" for Green, "Normal" for Red, and "NIGHTMARE MODE" for Blue.

Even the devs are acknowledging Lonestar's bad rap.

"Lonestar actually did it," Bulkhead co-founder Howard Phillpott posted on X today in response to a Lonestar win screen.

To a degree, the Blue team hate is a joke that the community and devs are having fun with. Most aren't taking it super seriously, but some definitely are.

"They literally are the dumbest people on the planet," wrote one aggrieved Redditor, citing counterproductive behavior on his Lonestar teams, like "using the respawn vehicle to just drive circles in the FOB, not realizing no one can spawn because they keep moving it."

Last night was the first time I actively avoided Blue, which delayed me getting to play by a few minutes. In more extreme cases, an entire match can be delayed by folks dragging their feet with Lonestar.

"The server would boot up, the first 40 or so players would sort into teams, and then the match start would come to a complete halt as people refused to pick Blue," recounted Reddit user PogoMarimo. "These would be 80+ pop servers and they would go 10 minutes without launching because not enough people were willing to pick Blue to get the match to the starting population needed."

"I, of course, was one of those refusing to choose blue, because I had already done Blue duty twice that day and saw awful things happen. I'm not ashamed to admit it."

Anecdotally, I have witnessed some truth to the Lonestar hate. Of the three matches I played last night, the two I played on Blue team were undeniable stomps—the sort of matches where Red and Green have sturdy FOBs and drill towers controlling the hot zone, while it took 45 minutes for our Blue base to construct a complete wall.

My last match of the night was on Red, and the difference was dramatic: Within 15 minutes, a squad of dedicated building specialists had constructed a super FOB with reinforced walls, barbed wire moats, enclosed sniper towers, mortar emplacements, and a maze of doors and alleys meant to deter infiltrators. Green had a similar setup on the other side of the map, while Blue was just sort of… there.

So if there is something about Blue, what is it, exactly?

One popular theory is that Lonestar is the worst team because it has fundamental disadvantages. The blue pants and patches that all members wear allegedly make them easier targets in forested areas. I think there's some truth to this, especially the blue jeans of it all, but none of the factions camouflage particularly well out in the open (an intentional bit of design, I reckon). But perhaps Lonestar has it worse than the others.

The other theory is that Lonestar beginning in the southernmost corner of the map, while Manticore and Valkyra begin in the West and East, sets the Blue faction up for a two-front war. I think this could have some merit—it is notable that the headquarters aren't lined up a perfect 120 degrees around the circumference of the zone, but it's hard to say for sure if this actually translates to a Blue team sandwich with any consistency. This talking point is coming up enough that I expect Bulkhead will chime in someday soon with data that supports or disproves it.

Another, less talked about possibility, is that Blue team's infamy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Folks have one bad night with Lonestar and decide to believe the reputation, or hear it's the team to avoid, or notice everyone else actively avoiding it, and you end up with a Blue team full of less experienced players. It's a fascinating problem—if it even qualifies as one yet—unique to Wardogs' three-team format. Maybe I should try to buck the trend and go Blue. At least I know there's always a free seat.

Bungie is changing how it updates Marathon going forward, saying it is "moving away from a strict seasonal schedule to give the team more flexibility to build, test, and improve features before release." As a result, the content planned to launch as part of this month's seasonal refresh has been delayed into December, and will be preceded by a small update in October "that resets progression and the in-game economy, refreshes rewards, and improves the live game."

The Nightfall refresh, launching on October 6, will give all Marathon players "a fresh starting point," something Bungie said was necessary after issues with the season "accelerated some players into the endgame while leaving others behind."

We’re making changes to Marathon’s update plans and how we deliver new content.We’re moving away from a strict seasonal schedule to give the team more flexibility to build, test, and improve features before release. (1/2)

— @marathonteam.bungie.net (@marathonteam.bungie.net.bsky.social) 2026-09-14T18:19:57.929Z

"This made Extraction more difficult to engage with and prevented the reset from working as intended," Bungie wrote. "October gives us an opportunity to apply what we learned and establish a healthier progression experience."

The October refresh will also see the Vault Breaker PvE mode brought back for a limited time, and there will be other "gameplay experiments" between the October refresh and Symbiosis update in December as well. That's the big one: PvE will finally be made a permanent mode, and there will be a new Runner shell, a "social space with a firing range," an experimental Team Deathmatch mode, and various other improvements.

"[Symbiosis] is only the beginning of what we’re working toward. As players spend time with these updates and share their feedback, we’ll continue refining and expanding Marathon," Bungie wrote.

"We’ll share more about that future through Dev Insights videos and regular development updates. Our first blog about Marathon’s future plans is scheduled for later this month where we will share how we will be evolving Marathon into a more alien and dynamic survival experience."

That sounds promising—I've said before and I'll probably say again that Marathon looks like a game that could really pull me in with a singleplayer mode that allows me to explore and play at my own pace—but some players aren't too happy about the considerably longer-than-expected wait for new content.

Memories of Destiny 2, which scrapped its own seasonal model in favor of "episodes" a few years ago—a move which did not save it—likely also loom large, particularly given that Marathon's concurrent player numbers on Steam continue to sag: A shakeup like this, especially for a game so relatively new, has a certain 'last ditch effort' vibe to it.

Still, there is some excitement about the prospect of a more well-rounded Marathon emerging from all of all, with a properly fleshed-out singleplayer mode and more social interactivity—which could, ironically, make Marathon much more Destiny-like. Bungie comms boss Dylan Gafner, aka dmg04, said on X that players can "expect more comms from the team over the next few weeks (and months)." We'll see how it goes.

No one knows how to haunt the narrative quite like Overwatch's two misfits, Roadhog and Sombra. When these heroes are strong the game sucks for everyone else, but when they're nerfed for the sake of everyone else there's almost no reason to play them. This has meant that both characters are in a perpetual state of buff/nerf; it's tough out here to be a hog.

So it comes as absolutely no surprise that the two characters picked to undergo yet another redesign over at Blizzcon were the dynamic duo Hog and Sombra. But it wouldn't be an Overwatch balance change without at least a little bit of upset.

Hog's new look seems sound enough—especially with the much-needed addition of Trash Compactor which works as a de facto shield. But Sombra's change to the Support role has players up in arms.

Much of Sombra's previous kit has stayed the same, with her primary fire, EMP ult, and translocator ability all left intact. But she also has two new abilities and passives:

• Hotfix heals an alley for a set amount of health over time and lets her freely hack health packs.
• Cyberspace is just a biotic grenade mimic.
• The Conspirator passive means that Sombra can now see whenever enemy ultimates are fully-charged.
• The Tactician support subrole means she can store excess ult charge and beef it up.

Change can be difficult, but I actually like this new look.

Sure it's annoying that Sombra can't hack heroes out of their ult, but she still has EMP for that. And it'll be frustrating for flanker DPS mains that they now have one less hero to use against Widowmaker, but Tracer can get that job done. If used correctly, I think this can turn Sombra from an outlier to a standard pick.

There's only one issue: Overwatch players are stubborn as all hell.. First up, Overwatch players don't like playing against Sombra, and her ban rates in competitive are ingrained into the psyche of some players, so I don't think this restyle will help change her public image all that much at first.

Then there's the fact that in all likelihood a great deal of players will play Sombra in her old fashion as a flanker, instead of a support who's new role is to stick with her team and tank. If there's one thing that pisses me off it's support players who justify DPS joyrides as another way to support their team.

If you're not in Masters or above then that just isn't true. While healing isn't the whole role of a support, there's facilitating engagement and boosting ally's kill-potential, the main goal of a support should always be self and team sustain. So having one support off on the other side of the map spawn camping the enemy team's Mercy will probably be a commonly frustrating experience.

But these issues are just growing pains. I'm sure overtime Sombra's new role will settle itself into the muscle memory of players. I have a feeling she'll become a valued member of her new role much like Doomfist and Symmetra.

"That was a game that did not come together, and we never should have been working on a games-as-a-service game, to be honest," says Harvey Smith, former creative director at Arkane Austin, now CEO of Black Pony Immersive. He is, of course, talking to us about Redfall—a rare black mark on Arkane's otherwise impressive record.

Redfall is a bit of a tragedy. Some of the most impressive game designers around, the masters of immersive sims, ended up working on a vampire-themed open-world multiplayer shooter. It was poorly received, and a year later Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin. Almost 100 people lost their jobs as a result. At the time, the team was still working hard to salvage it. Development then ceased, for the most part.

The developers "begged" Microsoft to let them come back and finish 1.4, and it actually happened. Despite being laid off, the devs briefly returned and finished the final update.

"There were highlights, and if you play the fully patched version, 1.4, some people get something out of it," Smith adds. "And I believe that little section was written by [co-director Ricardo Bare] for somebody he loves and cares about, and so it was simultaneously Ricardo switching gears and being a writer, and also thinking about what is the nature of love and community, and what separates a human from a vampire in the metaphorical sense."

Redfall also fell foul of the console war—a PS5 version was planned, but Microsoft cancelled it after it acquired Bethesda. Sony fans were then able to weaponise its less-than-glowing critical reception, wielding it as an example of Xbox's failures.

"It's fair for people to have their reactions based on all those factors," says Smith, "and you learn what you can from it and you shelter your team as much as possible, and then you hopefully try to get back to the thing that you really love, which is what we're doing with Black Pony."

Black Pony executive producer Ben Horne also worked on Redfall and tells us that "there were many things that seemed to converge all at once when Redfall was releasing". There was the $70 price, for instance, and the initial absence of a performance mode for Xbox at launch. "We held [it] back because we had noticed it maintained a good framerate, but there were dips that were noticeable, and we thought, 'Let's hold this to make this better,' which turned into a huge thing that people came and said, 'Oh, how come this isn't 60 FPS at launch?'"

Horne acknowledges that the biggest issue, however, was the team was "working on something that was just outside of our expertise". These were imsim experts working on a live service shooter. It was always going to be a challenge. "Getting back to what we do best was the number one priority, for Harvey and myself, for the folks at Arkane and now at Black Pony, this is what our focus is."

Black Pony hasn't revealed its first game yet, but you can be certain it will be an immersive sim.

The last time an Overwatch hero captured my heart like this, I ended up maining an old sniper for almost a decade, so I think I'll be seeing a hell of a lot of Overwatch's newest hero: Doctrine.

Unveiled at Blizzcon over the weekend, Doctrine is the newest addition to the Support roster (alongside Sombra), but he's unlike anything we've seen before. He's got some usual mechanics like a shift similar to Moira or Anran's—with a Sandevistan twist—a primary fire that can heal and damage, and an AOE ultimate which heals allies and reduces the health capacity of enemies. That's all standard stuff, and not particularly exciting—the juice of Doctrine's build comes from his second ability and right click.

Doctrine's second ability, Invigorating Drones, attaches to an ally and boosts their attack speed and healing. It is a nasty ability to tag onto a hitscan hero like Soldier: 76, Sojourn, or Sierra, especially if a Kiriko ult is in the mix.

As a support main, I'm always looking to support my team in more ways than just healing (although that should always be the priority), and helping teammates with an attack boost is something I didn't know I needed. I had so much fun over the weekend treating all DPS heroes as if they were pawns who I could buff just at the right time to instigate some impressive enemy team wipes. But even this isn't the star of Doctrine's kit.

The real hero is his right click, Infuse. This adds powerful effects onto whatever piece of kit he uses next:

• He moves faster when shifting and has vertical reach with the added benefit of Fly.
• Invigorating Drones can be used on himself buffing his attack speed and passive healing.
• Primary fire changes to a charged hit which deals more healing and damage.

It doesn't seem like a lot, but this one mechanic raises up Doctrine's skill ceiling dramatically by giving him so many options to support his team in both healing and damage and provide great engagement and disengagement possibilities.

Doctrine is testimony to just how creative and innovative Team 4 continues to be. Since the rework earlier this year, they've been on something of a generational run when it comes to its new heroes. Each one has felt exciting in new ways, and offers up different approaches to the FPS, but Doctrine is the best I've seen so far.

Following the announcement of a new StarCraft game at BlizzCon's Opening Ceremony, GM and creative director Dan Hay (best known for Far Cry 3-6) spoke to Korean media about the open-world shooter.

Based on Inven Global's transcript, it sounds like StarCraft will be a shooter along the lines of the Far Crys, though with a customizable lead character, and not a live service multiplayer game.

"If I were to describe the overall structure we currently envision, it's a 'box product,'" said Hay. "It is a narrative-driven open world shooter where players create a character, name them, and follow that character's story. The story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

"You can roam around and explore a rich open world, but our story has a definitive ending. Think of it as purchasing a standalone boxed game, playing it, and experiencing its story. We hope players enjoy it, love it, and return to us later. At the very least, what we are building right now is not a seasonal game."

That's not what I expected to hear after seeing the cinematic trailer, which depicts a confident young soldier progressing through training before being unceremoniously turned to mush by Zerg. It projected Helldivers more than "standalone boxed game," and I'm still not 100% convinced that some kind of co-op or shared world multiplayer feature isn't going to appear between now and 2030.

Later in the conversation, Hay reveals a little more about StarCraft's structure, distinguishing between "serious missions" with narrative consequences and open world exploration, saying that "if a certain mission feels too difficult, you can return to the open world and engage in other activities at your own pace."

"If you lack adequate gear, you can head out into the world, scavenge for what you need, deck out your armor, and try again," Hay said. "... I like wandering around slowly, exploring, discovering new things, and encountering unexpected turns."

Hay also said that StarCraft is set 70 years after the events of StarCraft 2, which freed them up narratively.

"Thanks to that, we can build new stories, adventures, and characters," he said. "Factions that looked a certain way in the past might have shifted their perspectives over 70 years, disagreed with each other, or fractured into splinters. These changes provide ample room to forge new narratives. It's crucial to tell a new story while preserving StarCraft's signature dark, gritty mood and space western atmosphere."

StarCraft isn't scheduled to release until 2030. Following the announcement, Blizzard published several related job listings.

As was revealed in today's Blizzcon opening ceremony, Overwatch's newest hero is on the way: Doctrine, a vampire with a cyborg arm and mechanical bats. He was debuted via a story trailer that reveals a connection to Doomfist, the game's resident punch man.

A hero trial is active now, in case you want to try him out, and it will remain live through the weekend. While his exact release date has not been announced, the game is keeping up a rapid pace for the addition of new heroes—D. Mon released just last month on August 11.

That's not all Blizzard teased, though. Reworks are on the way for two of the game's prickliest characters, Sombra and Roadhog, both of whom have already received countless tweaks since they joined the game. Precise details weren't shared during the opening ceremony, but Sombra's going to become a support and Roadhog should be less "frustrating" to deal with.

The new act of the game's year-long story will bring a new map as well—Grímsvötn—and the next Overwatch Spotlight teasing what's to follow is scheduled for Feb. 2027. The last time one of those happened, five heroes were revealed and released all in one go. Time will tell if something that huge is set to happen again.

You can keep up with the rest of today's Blizzcon news via our live blog.

The rumors were true: A new StarCraft game is incoming. It's just called "StarCraft," it's an open world shooter, and Blizzard doesn't plan to release it until 2030.

The game was revealed at BlizzCon with a cinematic trailer, but no gameplay was shown, which isn't surprising given how far off it is.

The trailer showcases the training and gearing up of a Terran Dominion Space Marine, with an inspirational speech about killing Zerg over the montage. It ends with our anonymous hero doing battle with the Zerg, then a cut to his broken and bloody armor getting cleaned and repaired without him back on a Dominion ship.

This isn't the first time Blizzard has attempted an action-forward StarCraft spinoff. StarCraft Ghost was a legendary, Duke Nukem Forever-tier bit of vaporware that Blizzard teased, demoed, and reworked for much of the 2000s. Its titular Ghost, Nova, eventually got the consolation prize of being a secondary character in StarCraft 2 and the protagonist of a few tie-in novels. This new shooter appears to borrow little, if anything, from that earlier effort by Blizzard.

There was some speculation before the show that Blizzard might announce a new StarCraft RTS, but there's no sign of such a project, if it exists. It'll be interesting to see how fans react, as well as the esports scene. Excited for new StarCraft anything? Disappointed that it's not an RTS?

All signs have pointed to Wardogs being a hit for a while now. Its beta weekend in August was rapturously received, with half a million players lining up to check out its prerelease playtest. When the game launched into early access last week, so many people rushed to get on board that it collapsed the game's servers.

Now, developer Bulkhead has released its initial sales figures for Wardogs, and they are unsurprisingly very strong. The multiplayer FPS sold 1.25 million copies within 24 hours, and that number is likely to be much higher by now.

Bulkhead played it cool while announcing the milestone, simply thanking players and reassuring them that the studio is "watching everything, monitoring servers, and enjoying watching you play". That middle point is likely made in response to the flurry of negative reviews Wardogs received in the wake of its server troubles.

Nonetheless, it's heartening to see an unambiguous hit in the multiplayer FPS sphere after what has been a difficult year for new competitive shooters. 2026 started badly when Highguard ran directly into a brick wall in January, launching to initially high player counts that quickly plummeted to an unsustainable level—resulting in the game shutting down mere weeks later.

In March, Bungie released Marathon, which is one of my favourite games of this year and a real triumph of both art and game design. Yet despite its qualities, it's pretty clear that Marathon has not been the success that either Bungie or Sony hoped. Despite numerous experiments to revive the game's fortunes, its concurrent player numbers are now significantly lower than those of Destiny 2—which Bungie rather suddenly wrapped development on earlier this year.

Other promising shooters that failed to attract an audience include Last Flag and Empulse. The former was a fun take on Capture the Flag that sadly never really got off the ground, while the latter was the latest in a rather chaotic run of FPS experiments by Splitgate 2 devs 1047 Games—a spiritual successor to Titanfall which, despite some cool ideas, failed to generate sufficient revenue to justify ongoing development.

All of which makes it reassuring to see Wardogs rush out of the gate so strongly. As for the key to its success, I think it lies in the fact that, despite being a blend of ArmA and Battlefield, Wardogs is actually quite laissez-faire in how it lets you play. You're free to approach its massive 100-player battlefields however you like, and instead of forcing teams to work together, it incentivises cooperative play through using cash as a mechanic. You can offer monetary rewards to other players for all manner of different things, ranging from getting a helicopter ride into battle to bribing medics to revive you when downed.

The big question of course, is whether Wardogs can maintain this momentum. There's a lot of big games still to release this year, including Grand Theft Auto 6, which is likely to suck up attention on all fronts, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, a more direct competitor to Wardogs. Then again, the fact we can say CoD and Wardogs are in competition at all indicates just how well the latter is doing.

In a brief teaser on YouTube, Nightdive Studios acknowledged the new Thief campaign that was leaked in the recent Steam achievements fiasco. The studio confirmed its name, The Tarnished Mirror, and promised that we would learn more on November 2.

The video is a bit of good natured "aw, shucks," showing a pileup of posts about the leaked campaign (including one of PC Gamer's). It ends with the remaster's new key art of Garrett by artist Alexandru "Dominus" Negoita and a logo for Thief: The Dark Project Remastered - The Tarnished Mirror paired with audio of Garrett saying "Huh, not so secret anymore." I'm 99.9% sure that this is a pre-existing line from the games, and not a new recording by legendary voice actor Stephen Russell.

When achievement-tracking site Exophase somehow got its hands on a trove of 'cheevos for unreleased (even unannounced) games, most attention fell on the likes of Persona 6. But I lost my shit at the reveal of a number of Thief Remastered achievements referring to the yet-to-be-revealed Tarnished Mirror expansion. Exophase has since cleaned up the most spoilery stuff, but you can still see the original list in all its glory on The Wayback Machine.

I was already excited for this remaster of one of my all-time favorite games, but the fact that it's coming with a new, official expansion after 28 years is next level. Granted, there are already more great fanmade levels for Thief than time to play them in this life or the next, and the best of the best, like The Black Parade campaign, stand proudly alongside the original games.

But Nightdive's got the right stuff: A new, original campaign made by the mostly remaster-focused studio is an event in my book. Nightdive's bottom-up remake of System Shock 1 is one of the best immersive sims of the 2020s, and I've been eagerly awaiting more original, non-remaster work from the developer ever since. The fact that it's a new Thief campaign is more than I could have hoped for.

2026 has shaped up to be a quiet boom year for surprise expansion packs for old games: The Tarnished Mirror joins The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past and Quake: Dawn of the Machine. Thief Remastered has a Winter launch window, and I continue to hope the release will fall on the earlier side of it.

So you've just been shot in Battlefield and now you're lying in a mass of other players' bodies, all of you hammering the 'REVIVE MEEE' request button as medics buzz about, helping everyone but you. If only there was a way to show them how important you are, that your life is clearly worth more than Skidz69 over there. How about money?

Wardogs is a Battlefield-style shooter where you can pay for just about anything, from a fancy loadout, to a literal taxi ride to the conflict zone. Earning cash for doing what you want is a really smart way of incentivising the whole battlefield role fantasy, whether you're building fortifications and sure-ing up your faction's forward operating base, or dragging downed players out of the fire and rezzing them.

Though factions can win and lose, Wardog's only true language of success is profitability, more cash to buy fancier hardware, which you use to earn more cash. It's a wonderfully fitting and nihilistic approach to all-out warfare—each life is an investment in what you're going to do that run. Whether it pays off is where the true play comes in.

And since cash is king, you can use it to grease the wheels a little when you've been downed. Simply offer a bribe by tapping F1 when you're corpsified and you'll place a number over your head, showing how much extra money the medic will get if they prioritise rezzing you over your comrades.

Personally, I love immediately maxing out the cash reward for my revive and watching as multiple medics come running, braving enemy fire, and even battling each other to get that $500. I had one medic literally drag me away from another who was about to rez me, like a seagull snatching a half-eaten sandwich.

It reminds me of Trauma Team in Cyberpunk 2077, like there's something hilariously bleak about getting injured in battle and holding up a gold card which gives you precedence for medical care. Either that or getting in a bidding war with another downed comrade as you both vie for a medic's attention.

Being a medic in Wardogs is pretty profitable, though, especially if you offer a post-revive heal for a tip, and you're good at scrounging up extra medical supplies from corpses and backpacks. The icing on the cake for me is that the revival animation is rubbing your hands together, surely in anticipation for the big bucks you're set to earn from each new casualty.

Though Wardogs' launch yesterday was a bit shaky server-wise with 300k players hopping in (despite this being an early access), it's easy to see why so many people are really gelling with the game, including me. Its whole economy system is such a smart way of encouraging the battlefield role fantasy that's so appealing in all-out warfare games.

It may be early days, but it's not hard to imagine how Bulkhead will be able to scale this concept during the game's time in early access.

Wardogs is pretty approachable for a milsim, but very complex for a military shooter. The 100-player king of the hill FPS is somewhere between Battlefield and Squad in terms of realism, but it's also got elements of Counter-Strike and extraction shooters. It's a weird game, but very fun.

If you have experience in both, you're already ahead of the game, but if you've never played an FPS with dedicated driver and logistic roles, then let me ease you into it. These are my best beginner tips for understanding Wardogs, including its unique economy systems and transportation.

When you're done reading them, it's also worth checking out my guide to making money fast in Wardogs.

Never leave spawn without these

If you're about to jump on a heli without any of these, turn around:

• Two extra magazines
• 3-5 bandages
• A dot sight (unless you really like iron sights)
• A class gadget, like binoculars, a hammer, or RPG

Yea, it all costs a few extra hundred bucks, but you'll make that back by simply standing in the zone for a few minutes. Better to be prepared.

Don't buy 5 magazines, buy loose ammo

Wardogs' streamlined vendor makes it easy to buy extra magazines, but it doesn't explain the value of loose ammo. Loose ammo can be purchased in stacks of 100 that only take up two inventory slots. When your magazines run empty, you can press C from the inventory screen to automatically replenish magazines from your stack of loose ammo. Filling magazines takes time, but the inventory and wallet savings are worth it.

Never drive to the zone if you don't have to

There are very few scenarios where it makes sense to drive from spawn to the zone. It's a 3km journey that can take 4-5 minutes depending on the car, so you're almost always better off waiting for a transport chopper. Typically, every team has volunteer helicopter pilots eager to ferry people back and forth to the action (the job pays pretty well). Even if you have to stand around in spawn for 30 seconds to a minute waiting for the next chopper, it's way faster than buying a set of wheels.

Hold Shift to steady aim

You can momentarily reduce aim sway with any gun by holding Shift while aiming. This will also slightly zoom in your view—great for firing in controlled bursts from dozens of meters away.

Use the rebuy button

If you want to buy the same loadout you had last time, press the "Re-buy Loadout" button in the bottom left of the vendor. You'll be shown a list of the gear and its total cost, and you can make last minute subtractions if desired. The button will go away if you purchase something before pressing it.

Don't just sit at your FOB (unless)

Helicopter pilots will often drop you off at the nearest friendly FOB (forward operating base) by default, but you shouldn't stick around there unless you have something to do, like build, snipe, or use artillery. Leave the FOB and go do something productive, like capture the Hot Zone (yellow circle), disrupt enemy FOBs, capture towers, blow up enemy vehicles, whatever really. The FOB is a safe place to get your bearings, but you don't need to stand around and defend it constantly (unless there's an active siege, of course).

Loot bodies

You can loot any dead body and pilfer all of its gear. You should do this constantly to replenish ammo, bandages, and swap out your banged-up armor for a fresher set. Bodies themselves will disappear once the player "gives up," but a lootable backpack will remain for several minutes.

Don't snitch on your medic

If you go down around enemies, read the room before calling for help. Enemies can hear every word you're saying over mic. If you can see a teammate is nearby, assume they're coming for you but don't want to reveal their position by running straight toward you. Calling out their name or even saying "thanks" as they're reviving you could tip off nearby enemies. Play it cool and make sure the coast is clear. If you want to tell nearby friendlies where enemies are, use the team text channel.

Target the enemy APC

Each team gets one boxy, rectangular APC painted the color of their team (red, blue, or green). This is a mobile spawn point for that entire team, and blowing it up is both strategically helpful and very profitable. If you see one, pelt it with RPGs, IEDs, or C4.

When in doubt, bring binoculars

If you don't have any other class gadgets unlocked and don't want to build FOBs, just buy binoculars. They're cheap and incredibly powerful: Looking through them makes it easy to spot enemy players, and holding LMB over them will reveal their position to the whole team. This earns you a bunch of XP, money, and extra assist cash when spotted targets are killed. This is one of the easiest ways to help the team by far.

Wardogs, a 100-player milsim FPS that launched today in early access, is an immediate hit. It's currently Steam's global top seller and has so far peaked at over 300,000 players. Unfortunately, you might not be able to play it right now.

Servers are getting slammed, players are stuck in the login queue, and as of this writing, developer Bulkhead has taken servers offline entirely to work on a fix.

"We are actively working towards getting as many of you in game as soon as possible. Apologies for the disruption," the Wardogs account posted on X. "This is due to an issue that wasn't present in the previous beta."

Trying to log in currently serves up an error, and when Wardogs does come back online, you should probably expect to be stuck in a login queue for a while. In a video posted today, Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer seemed to suggest the long queues are partially due to being "rate-limited by Valve."

"Ideally we'd be on a triple-A tier for some of this stuff, but we're not. So we're talking to them, trying to get that sorted out. It is what it is. I wouldn't leave the queue, I'd just stay in."

The disruption isn't a huge surprise, given the Wardogs' popularity, but it is disappointing. Players had the impression that the numerous closed betas held right up to launch would mean a smooth launch day. Bulkhead seemed confident that they were in a good place, too: The final closed beta held this past weekend invited players to "obliterate our servers."

But the day is still young. Hopefully it all gets sorted sooner than you're reading this. I'll update this story when servers are back up.

Juggernaut is a forthcoming free-to-play boomer shooter clearly styled after Wolfenstein engine FPSes of yore. It's about shooting huge waves of zombies in flat, pixellated arenas. As far as modern retro shooters go it looks unremarkable, though it will be released alongside the Juggernaut Assets Maker, a paid tool for making your own levels and adding your own assets. "Make it more Japanese" the Steam page promises. "Make it sexier".

It's the work of Mages Inc, a Japanese studio best known for the Steins;Gate series of visual novels; it has also worked on recent iterations of the Corpse Party series. Mages Inc generally specialises in visual novels, though it has released at least one Xbox 360 action game that was never released outside of Japan.

But to what extent Mages Inc can actually be credited (or blamed) for their first foray into the first-person shooter genre is ripe for debate, because here's Juggernaut's AI Disclosure:

AI Breakdown
Source code: 100%
Graphics: 60%
Sound: 50%
Effects: 100%

In other words, this FPS is entirely vibe-coded, and its assets are overwhelmingly the work of generative AI. The Juggernaut Asset Maker, which will cost money, carries a similar disclosure: "The source code for this application was generated using generative AI".

Mages Inc isn't the best known studio in the world, but it's been around for over 20 years and has issued a handful of games that most enthusiasts would have heard of. Steins;Gate has nearly 6,000 "overwhelmingly positive" reviews on Steam; the recent Steins;Gate Re:Boot, which was released on August 20, already has nearly 600 "very positive" reviews.

So it's surprising how heavily they're leaning into generative AI with Juggernaut. Some Steam users have taken to the Juggernaut discussions board to air their grievances: "If you don't care enough to make a game why should I care enough to buy it?" one user asks.

Games with AI disclosures count for nearly half of all games released on Steam every week, though few are as upfront as Mages Inc has been with its loose stats-driven approach. Games that are (or appear to be) predominantly the result of generative AI are generally all but invisible to Steam's discovery algorithms, especially the recent wave of similar-looking incremental games. Is this the first completely vibe-coded game from a renowned studio?

Playing Wardogs is a bit like playing Battlefield, except you have to buy every gun, magazine, helmet, and kevlar vest yourself. It's a milsim FPS that runs on a personal wallet—doing useful things for the team makes you money used to unlock permanent upgrades and temporary gear.

Wardogs is designed in a way that lets you play any role you want and still be a profitable teammate. But especially early on, it can be tough to make enough cash to consistently fund unlocks, and the game doesn't spell out some of the most lucrative playstyles. Based on dozens of hours in closed beta tests, here are some early tips for making money fast in Wardogs.

Bulkhead has stated the economy of the beta will change for the early access release, so some of these figures might change at launch. I'll be sure to update figures once we know them.

Spot, spot, spot with binoculars

The safest, simplest, and surprisingly efficient way to make money in Wardogs from minute one is to buy a $75 pair of binoculars. Binoculars (and its fancier variants) allow you to spot enemy soldiers, vehicles, and structures, temporarily marking them on the map and in-world for teammates.

On top of just doing a nice thing for your team, each successful spot (holding left-click over a visible target) earns you a small cash prize immediately, and when a teammate kills that target, you get an assist worth hundreds. The nice part of this strategy early on is you don't have to stick your neck out and risk your loadout before you understand the game: just perch up on a hill with a few of the Hot Zone or enemy FOBs, lay down, and be your team's eyes and ears.

Build a FOB

Another extremely safe, profitable playstyle is to grab a hammer, buy a FOB module, and build a base for your team in a strategically useful location. The default FOB spot at the start of the match is the tower nearest to your spawn. Ask your heli pilot to load up with FOB supplies (or do this yourself), and head to a tower. Once you're there:

1. Place the FOB
2. Build it by holding LMB with your hammer (hitting the yellow X's makes it go faster)
3. Use FOB supplies to build a perimeter of walls, gates, and Hesco blocks

Every productive swing of a hammer earns cash ($15 in the beta), and completing a build can be worth more than getting a kill ($1,200 to $1,500).

Revive others quickly and often

My favorite non-lethal way to make money while staying in the action is revives and heals. Reviving teammates is worth $900 (in the beta), and you can do it without buying any additional equipment. The problem is that the default revive speed is annoyingly slow, which is where resuscitators come in. The one-use revive items are cheap to buy in introductory levels, so if you want to become a human ambulance, you could:

1. Buy the biggest backpack you can
2. Fill it with resuscitators and bandages
3. Follow teammates in the backline
4. Quickly revive anyone who goes down for $900
5. Get extra assist cash when they go on to get kills
6. Heal teammates with bandages for $200 a pop

That's what I did during beta weekends until I reached Medic level 11 and unlocked the defibrillator. Defibs are a larger investment at $1,600 (and $150 batteries), but they're the quickest way to revive teammates and each battery is good for five revives.

Drive the spawn vehicle to the zone

This won't always be an option, as only one person can do the job at a time, but driving your team's spawn vehicle (the APC with a satellite dish on top) from HQ to the zone is a quick gig that pays royalties. You can drive the APC to a FOB, leave it there, and make money every time a teammate uses it.

Be a taxi

The best way to get from spawn to the zone in Wardogs is the spawn APC. When that's not an option, everyone needs a taxi. The cheapest way to earn cash as a virtual uber is to practice flying a helicopter in the firing range, then ferry people back and forth to the zone. Not only do you get direct cash for dropping people off in the zone, but nice people will give you tips, and you'll also get assist cash if they go on to get kills.

You have to be in the mood to do this job well: Helicopters aren't cheap for a new player, and you have to be good enough at flying to not crash or get blasted out of the sky by an RPG. Plus, you're essentially ignoring the shooting part of this shooter, which won't appeal to everybody. The reward is a steady stream of money and happy teammates.

Be a cheapskate

Not much to this one: Buy the cheapest guns, fill them with the cheapest ammo, paper-thin armor, and go get a kill. It's not the most exciting playstyle, but it can be if you treat it like a free loadout in an extraction shooter. Get a kill, loot that enemy corpse, and steal all of their better gear. Saving money while making money.

Play the Hot Zone

If you hadn't already noticed, you passively earn money for simply standing in the Hot Zone—hundreds of dollars by the minute, actually. You don't even have to shoot anyone, but you will earn extra for killing and assisting in the Hot Zone. If you want to get in the action, there's no better place to be.

Call of Duty has joined Microsoft's bid to reinvigorate interest in Xbox consoles, today announcing a Modern Warfare 4 gun skin that you can only see if you're playing on an Xbox.

You read that right: The Inner Circuit blueprint is an M4 skin granted to those who pre-order Modern Warfare 4 on any platform, but the gun looks totally different on the Xbox version.

The Xbox 25th anniversary edition of the skin is designed after the green translucent plastic of the original Xbox console—it also features an Xbox logo and "Xbox 25" branding on the magazine. It looks, I must admit, pretty cool. Too bad these pictures are as close as I'll ever get to seeing it, as I don't own an Xbox.

Platform-specific incentives are nothing new for Call of Duty—for years, a Sony partnership meant PlayStation players got extra double XP, and Xbox used to get first dibs on map packs—but what's strange here is how this cosmetic isn't just exclusive to one platform, but only perceivable by it as well. If an Xbox player wants to show off their green M4 to a friend on PC, all they'll see is a boring-looking grey gun.

In a dedicated Xbox gun blog post, Activision clarified that in all ways other than appearance, the weapon blueprint is the same across platforms: "Both versions use the same attachments and perform identically in-game."

That's certainly one way to make pre-orders for a preferred platform more attractive, though this approach strikes me as more confusing than simply giving Xbox players a unique skin that everyone can see. At least that way I would actually know when the guy who killed me is trying to show off their fancy Xbox gun in a killcam. Instead, non-Xboxers who don't read Activision's blog or this website won't even know the difference. Strange!

And to think: This time last year, my PC was an Xbox.

Welcome back, FPS enjoyers, for a locally-networked edition of FOV 90.

I turned 30 this past weekend, and when my fiancé asked me how I'd like to celebrate, I had exactly one idea: Use the occasion to convince my friends to haul their heavy PCs across town and have an actual, honest-to-god LAN party in 2026.

See, I missed the boat on LAN parties when they were a thing that still regularly happened, save one cherished memory of my uncle including 7-year-old me in a Halo: CE party with eight system-linked Xboxes. What little I know about the joys of local PC play I've absorbed from pictures and stories from my PC gaming elders.

We lightly themed our party around the 2000s, but the only plan was to play whatever sounded fun as a group. We ended up playing tons of Halo, a lot of Battlefront 2 (Classic), and a few rounds of Left 4 Dead 2 Versus, among other favorites. Drinks were drunk, pizza inhaled, grass smoked, and Mountain Dew Code Red respectfully included in mixed beverages.

It was comfortably the best birthday party I've had as an adult. I was worried at first that going to all this trouble to play stuff that we could more easily set up over Discord would end up feeling pointless, but that was quickly disproven: Everything about playing shooters with your buds is more fun when they're actually in the room emoting, reacting, and trash-talking to your face. I want to make this a more regular thing, but honestly, it wasn't a smooth ride. We had issues both technical and logistical—some self-inflicted, some harder to predict. We really could've used a LAN veteran on the scene.

So while I wholeheartedly recommend you also get off of Discord and throw a LAN party with the people you care about, here are some tips to make sure it goes well:

✅DO: Consider renting tables

My original non-plan was to have everyone set up their PCs wherever they would fit in our apartment. This would've been a disaster, as our tiny dining table and coffee table could accommodate three monitor/tower setups at the most. We ended up renting two six-foot tables and setting them side-to-side for one long battle station. We let everyone claim a spot as they arrived, and it worked out perfect for our mix of towers, laptops, and various Steam Decks.

❌DON'T: Skimp on chairs🪑

We thought we'd save a few bucks by not renting chairs and asked everyone to bring some sort of camping chair instead. We ended up with some people in fairly comfortable seats and others suffering on back-less stools, which wasn't ideal. Next time, I'm renting some chairs.

✅DO: Make a list of games to play

I shared around a doc of games that we could play and had everyone add to it. This was a bit harder than it sounded, as lots of games are good for two-to-four people, but nine is a tall order. We prioritized shooters with great local multiplayer or co-op, but the list also included indie classics like Castle Crashers and Golf With Your Friends. You can also just play online games together, too—Overwatch, League, CS2—but we figured we'd best avoid games that could genuinely piss us off.

❌DON'T: Forget to download them ahead of time

If you can bug everyone to download the largest games ahead of time, you'll save yourself a huge headache. We ended up with a few friends who had to download large chunks of the Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Not a huge deal on a normal day with 300mbps down internet, but the influx of devices slowed things down.

✅DO: Order a giant pizza🍕

This 28" pie from a Bakersfield, California mainstay, Cataldo's, was enough to feed nine people and leave a lot of leftovers. Along for the ride was 2lbs of potato wedges, jalapeno poppers, and like 10 ranch cups. You don't need me to tell you that pizza and wedges is a perfect party food, but, you know: it is.

❌DON'T: Transport it like this🛻

The gigantic pizza came in an even larger pizza box that simply did not fit in the backseat of my friend's truck. So… we improvised. If you have to transport a pizza in a truck bed, do not weigh it down with random pieces of IKEA furniture (but this will get the job done).

✅DO: Provide surge protectors & ethernet🔌

Kind of a "no duh," but you'll need a few power strips for a LAN party, and it's best to spread their usage across multiple power outlets to avoid overloading breakers. These surge protectors I picked up on Amazon did a great job.

I also bought a few 6ft ethernet cables, and two things about this:

1. Wifi ended up working fine for the majority of us, and
2. 6ft cables meant anyone who needed ethernet had to huddle near the router, so go longer

❌DON'T: Forget about extension cords

I bought power strips, but not the extension cords that would make it easy to place them in central positions on the table. Rookie mistake, but we ended up scrounging some cords together from elsewhere in the apartment.

✅DO: Sweat💧

Even with the AC cranked, it's gonna get hot in a room full of PCs during the Summer. Expect to get a little sweaty, and use ground fans to help circulate the muggy air.

❌DON'T: Be sweaty😓

Realize that your friend group includes varied skill levels, and regulate your tryhardiness accordingly. Instead of camping the rocket launcher spawn, tell the room where that spawn is. Don't pretend to be bad, but don't try to be the greatest. Your friends are not a pub stomp server.

✅DO: Include your online friends

Speaking of friends, if you have online ones that can't attend the LAN party, include them anyway. We had a Discord channel open all day with a webcam feed that folks could drop in our out of.

❌DON'T: Bother with a "room mic"🎙️

As far as audio goes, my plan to plunk my Blue Yeti mic in the middle of the table and call it a day was, predictably, poor. There were echoing issues and noise filter hurdles that made it tough for remote attendees to hear us. Next time we'll just use headset mics and push-to-talk.

✅DO: Take pictures📸

For fun.

❌DON'T: Only play videogames

Our big break away from the PCs was pizza time. We flipped on some Simpsons and while we ate, then got back to it. In retrospect, it would've been nice to also play some stuff on the couch for a while, like Mario Kart or Smash Bros, watch a movie, or get some fresh air at the park.

But I am just one humble LAN party novice. What are your best LAN party memories? What did you play, when, and what best practices did I miss that could've improved the day? Leave a comment below or send me an email at morgan.park@futurenet.com (I always respond to nice people).

The Wardogs release date fast approaches, following its super popular beta last weekend before it enters early access. As our own FPS aficionado Morgan Park notes, it's a "100-player milsim that's inspired by Arma but plays like Battlefield," and its formula of cash-earning, all-out warfare is definitely appealing to a cross-section of game-hungry shooter crowds. Here's when you can expect to play the game in your timezone.

Wardogs release times for each region

The Wardogs release date is September 10 for most regions, though it'll drop on September 11 in certain territories due to timezones and its simultaneous release. Here's when you can expect to play (confirmed by Steam):

September 10

• West Coast US: 9 am PST
• East Coast US: 12 pm EST
• UK: 5 pm BST
• Europe: 6 pm CEST

September 11

• Australia: 2 am AEST
• New Zealand: 4 am NZST

If you're unsure whether you can run Wardogs, you can check its requirements on the Steam page.

Can you preload Wardogs?

Yes, there is a preload for Wardogs and it's currently available. The download is 41.7GB, though the download footprint is slightly higher—simply load up Steam and install the game to get it started before launch.

Immersive sims like Deus Ex and Dishonored are among the hardest kinds of games to make, so I always try to be supportive when an indie developer takes on the absurd challenge of creating one. Yet while there have been some good examples in recent years like Skin Deep and New Blood's early access Thief-like Gloomwood, a lot of the experiments in indie imsim design have been simply too janky for me to enjoy.

Part of the problem is I'm a highly tactile player, and my primary concern when playing any game is whether it feels good beneath the fingers. If a game falls at that initial hurdle, then it's likely (though not inevitable) that I'll drop it pretty quickly. Fortunately, I had the opposite experience with Deficit, an indie imsim with such a strong sense of physicality that I kept playing the demo despite some clear issues.

Developed by Item42, which previously created the cooperative shooter Perish, Deficit sees you play as a freelance spy in a dilapidated, dystopian world. You're tasked with infiltrating a sprawling fortress known as Hadrian's Wall to steal a device called the Interpolator, on behalf of a nameless client known as, well, The Client.

The premise is very Deus Ex, and Deficit involves a mix of sneaking and shooting similar to Ion Storm's cyberpunk classic. But Deficit's more specific inspiration is The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, the surprisingly great tie-in game to David Twohy's mediocre Pitch Black sequel. Your character's melee attacks, which include wild swings of your fists and overhand jabs with makeshift knives—are hugely reminiscent of Riddick's brawling style in Starbreeze's cult 2004 hit.

While I'd need to go back to Butcher Bay to verify this, Deficit's brawling seems more physical than that of Butcher Bay. When you thwack a guard with a hammer, you can almost feel the impact shudder up your arm. Enemies are pleasingly reactive to being mercilessly beaten about the head too, stumbling and staggering before eventually collapsing in a pile of physics-powered limbs.

There's more to Deficit than just fisticuffs, though. You can throw objects to distract or damage guards, use batteries to activate and deactivate objects like doors and robotic sentries, lay traps using mines or laser tripwires, or shoot enemies with 3D-printed guns. The world is highly reactive too. Nearby explosions won't just hurt you, but physically push you around, as I discovered when I got blasted backward through a doorway that I didn't know was behind me. Moreover, when I accidentally threw an object at a nearby wall, it bounced back, hit me in the face and dealt damage. Immersive sim confirmed.

Deficit definitely has potential. But there is one big problem—stealth. I can't tell whether the stealth system is broken or just incredibly hard to read, but I was constantly being spotted by enemies without really understanding why. They seemed to see me regardless of elevation and sometimes rumbled me despite there being an obstacle between us. As far as sneaking goes, Deficit needs a lot of work.

The good news is that Deficit is fun even with busted stealth, because playing aggressively is viable and satisfying to boot. There's no release date for Deficit at present, but you can play the demo right now, and I imagine we'll see the full version sometime next year.