‘S**t’s about to get real’: The first Steam sale of 2025 is live, and it’s all about strategy games
Shit is indeed about to get real, but separate from all that Valve has kicked off the first Steam sale of 2025 in the form of the Real-Time Strategy Fest, a week-long extravaganza of deals, demos, and free stuff in the Steam Points Shop, all of it geared at—you guessed it—real-time strategy games. It’s not […]
Vertical extraction shooter Exoborne holds its first playtest soon, and you can sign up now
We got some hands-on time with Exoborne, the new extraction shooter from Sharkmob, in August 2024, and it looked potentially very promising, particularly for more casual players interested in an experience that isn’t built to punish them at every opportunity. In February, curious shooter fans will have an opportunity to try it for themselves in […]
Streamers including Kai Cenat named in Drake’s UMG lawsuit for their reaction videos instantly respond with reaction videos: ‘The biggest Ls come from not knowing how to take an L’
Popular gaming-adjacent streamers including Kai Cenat And Mark Phillips have been named in musician Drake’s defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG), which accuses the music publisher of spreading the “false and malicious” narrative he is a pedophile via the Kedrick Lamar track Not Like Us. The Lamar song is a diss track, an established […]
The first multiplayer demo for my most anticipated RTS, Tempest Rising, is out now
There are a surprising number of RTS romps knocking about these days, but few of them have managed to leave a mark. Pessimism has overtaken me, but there are some exceptions. Tempest Rising—Slipgate Ironwork’s sci-fi throwback—is one of them. If you’ve ever dreamed of a reality where EA didn’t completely wreck Westwood’s Tiberium saga, this […]
‘You deserve better customer service’: Path of Exile 2 studio apologizes for long support wait times but with 545,000 emails received, it’s kind of understandable
Grinding Gear Games says it’s sorry for the slow response times to Path of Exile 2 customer support requests, but it’s dealing with an absolute avalanche of them—roughly 545,000 email requests since the game launched in November, far more than it was prepared to deal with. “In the lead up to the launch of Path […]
‘Who planned this garbage?’ Streamers unite in slamming the official Twitch Marvel Rivals tournament for last-minute rule changes and unbalanced chaos
Over the weekend, Marvel Rivals put on one of the first tournaments that the new hero shooter has seen in conjunction with Twitch, and while it was certainly set out to be a big success, some of the streamers involved had some not-so-nice things to say about it. Marvel Rivals tier list: Best characters for […]
TeamSpeak could finally be so back, since it can’t stop teasing a new makeover while sneakily encouraging you to delete your Discord account
Before there was Discord, there was TeamSpeak. I never partook in it myself, but I remember my college boyfriend being a die-hard TeamSpeak loyalist before reluctantly jumping ship to the newer, shinier, and crucially more user-friendly gamer platform. But TeamSpeak never went away, and it looks like 2025 may be the year of its triumphant […]
Samsung is working with a studio to ‘create an immersive 3D gaming experience without the need for 3D glasses’ using its fancy eyeball-tracking gaming monitor
Remember when we were all going to the movies wearing Michael Caine’s glasses? The promise of 3D cinema never really materialised in the way many had hoped (with some noticeable exceptions), but glasses-free 3D gaming? There’s a tantalising concept that’s been toyed with by various manufacturers for a while. Now Samsung has announced a partnership […]
The Witcher 3’s director says he has designed his new vampire RPG to explore ‘something in pop culture that nobody yet has done’ in videogames: ‘We will see how people like it’
For PC Gamer magazine’s upcoming The Blood of Dawnwalker issue I spoke directly to Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, the developer who is right now best known for being the game director on the legendary fantasy RPG, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Fast forward to 2025, and Tomaszkiewicz is now founder and leader of Rebel Wolves, his own […]
We may not have a roadmap or balance patch just yet, but at least Path of Exile 2’s bugfix patch notes are funny
If you’ve been spending all your time over the holidays playing the early access release of Path of Exile 2, you may be eagerly awaiting some substantial patch notes. We’ve all got our own gripes with the game, which despite an excellent skeleton still needs a lot of work. Thankfully, after weeks of radio silence […]
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided writer didn’t like the ending either: ‘Nothing is resolved’
The finale of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided wasn’t much-loved by fans, which was surprising because you’d think Deus Ex: Human Revolution would have lowered expectations. But it’s like the classic bad restaurant joke, where the food’s terrible and what’s worse, the portions are small. Mankind Divided’s climax wasn’t just an underwhelming battle against a guy […]
It seems like Square’s finally consistently taking the PC ports of Final Fantasy seriously
There may be no better use case for the reaction guys than the 2015 E3 announcement of Final Fantasy 7 Remake—screams, meltdowns, tears of joy—and the 2021 release of the stuttery PC version of that same game: screams, meltdowns, tears of bitter disappointment. It was a shamefully barebones release of what should have been a […]
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii looks more like a zany RGG take on Black Flag than I dared hope
Yakuza in Hawaii launches next month, and I for one am excited to punch up “suspicious men” on the streets of Hawaii as Goro Majima. Today Sega and Ryu Gotoku Studio published a 15-minute presentation outlining everything from on-foot combat through to naval scraps, while confirming that new game plus will feature at launch (and […]
The most important tool in Remedy’s new co-op FPS is the shower: ‘Saving water is essential’
When Remedy announces a new game, I expect three things: A protagonist wearing street clothes, third-person shooting, and a pistol. FBC: Firebreak, a first-person co-op Control spinoff, has none of that, and that’s incredibly exciting. We haven’t heard much about Firebreak other than its 2025 release window, but in a recent interview with GamesRadar, Remedy […]
If you missed it over the holidays, this noir Half-Life 2 mod turns you into a hardboiled detective in Prohibition-era Chicago
Hear me out. Let’s say instead of violent nerd Gordon Freeman wasting alien invaders in City 17, Half-Life 2 was actually about a gritty hardboiled detective fighting corruption in Prohibition-era Chicago. That’s the concept behind The Burton Equation, a Half-Life 2 mod you may have missed because it came out on Steam between Christmas and […]
Path of Exile 2 players are calling foul on Elon Musk’s high-level hardcore character after he streams his struggles with core game mechanics
As we’ve reported previously, despite holding executive roles in multiple major corporations and undertaking the busy work of burrowing himself in incoming political regimes, Elon Musk manages to find time to boast some impressive gaming laurels, claiming to hold high placements in Diablo 4 leaderboards and Path of Exile 2 hardcore league rankings. This week, […]
Alan Emrich, the game designer and writer who coined the term ‘4X,’ has died
Alan Emrich, a designer and writer of board games and videogames credited with coming up with the term “4X” to describe sprawling, empire-building strategy games, has died. Emrich’s death was reported by friends in a forum post on the wargaming community website ConsimWorld. Emrich was a notable figure in the world of boardgaming: His bio […]
Deadly LA fires lead to office closures for major game studios: ‘Nothing can be said to truly acknowledge the pain and suffering that we are witnessing,’ says Riot CEO
Recent updates Thursday, January 9: Serious wildfires continue to burn on Thursday. A total of five deaths have been reported, and the number of structures destroyed is now estimated at over 2,000. Over 100,000 LA residents have been ordered to evacuate their homes, and the city is struggling to breathe smoke-filled air. The disaster is […]
Track down a missing person in this ‘Geoguessr-inspired detective game’ set on an alien planet
There are a couple distinct vibes in the demo for Locator, a mystery puzzle game from developer Empty Exhibit. It’s got some DNA from Geoguessr, as you look at photos taken at ground level and try to suss out the locations they correspond to on a top-down zoomable map. It also gave me a big […]
Rule the talking movie industry in tycoon game Hollywood Animal
I’m not sure why there hasn’t been a business simulator where you could live up the glamorous, extremely vicious, exploitative, and horrible life of a movie studio owner in Old Hollywood. At least until now, that is, as Weappy Studio has announced Hollywood Animal for release in February 2025 as an early access game where […]
Here’s 20 delightfully isometric minutes of Underrail 2’s apocalyptic undergrounds
Isometric apocalypse sequel Underrail 2: Infusion is setting up to tee off in the coming years, and we’ve now got a first look at indie dev Stygian Software’s sequel to their first RPG. The new footage from an early alpha build is about 20 minutes showing off the new movement and combat systems developed for […]
PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best microphone of 2024
Gear of the Year (Image credit: Future) Check out more of the year’s best tech in our PC Gamer Hardware Awards 2024 coverage. I’m forever espousing the benefits of a good microphone. It’s one of those things that you don’t think you need until you try one for yourself, or hear an awful one over […]
Today’s Wordle answer for Sunday, December 29
However you want to win Sunday’s Wordle, we can help you out. Refresh your guessing tactics with our handy general tips, use the December 29 (1289) clue to bring some focus to your game (or finally make sense of some stubborn yellow letters), and if all else fails click your way to today’s answer. You’ve […]
If you ever wanted a game about digging a hole, A Game About Digging A Hole is a game about digging a hole
Hey, have you heard about this game about digging a hole that’s coming out next year? It’s called A Game About Digging A Hole and that’s pretty much what it’s about. You dig a hole in your backyard and find treasure and ores and you sell all that stuff and use the money to buy […]
Nearly 19,000 games released on Steam in 2024
Nearly 19,000 videogame products released on Steam this year—18,945 as of press time, meaning if 50-some things get dropped before January 1, 2025 my headline there turns into a lie but whatever I’m going for it. Where was it? Oh, right, what the hell? That is a lot of game releases. According to ever-reliable stat […]
Unlikely hit Nier: Automata has now sold over 9 million copies
Square Enix and Platinum Games say that Nier: Automata has sold more than 9 million copies, meaning that the androids-on-robots post-apocalypse is more popular than ever and going strong eight years after it first released. The NieR Series social media accounts announced the milestone by sharing an image celebrating “Over 9 Million Global Shipments & […]
Today’s Wordle answer for Saturday, December 28
Get your first Wordle of the weekend off to a flying start with a quick peek at today’s hint. It’s been written especially for Saturday’s puzzle, and is meant to give you a bit of something useful to work with, while still leaving the fun letter searching up to you. And if you need more […]
Some madperson briefly, beautifully recreated the corrupted blood plague in World of Warcraft Classic
Back in 2005 World of Warcraft was ravaged by a digital plague that once removed from the raid dungeon it spawned in infected some four million players, spread across servers as how to give it to others was discovered, and left cities barren, skeleton-littered wastelands for a month before developers Blizzard were able to fix […]
Don’t stress, Epic Games says you can still unlock Fortnite’s Xbox-exclusive Master Chief skin
Just in case you were worried you’d miss your chance to unlock Spartan John-117, also known as Halo’s Master Chief, aka John Halo, for use in Fortnite, please worry not: You can still do that into the indefinite and unbidden future simply by playing on an Xbox Series X/S console. So, yes, if you need […]
XDefiant’s final content patch is unexpectedly massive: ‘Not all journeys end well but we can all be proud of what we accomplished’
I had fun playing XDefiant when it launched: It was a free-to-play hero shooter with a lot of Call of Duty in its veins, and it was pretty good, but not popular enough to dodge the live service graveyard. Ubisoft announced this year that XDefiant will shut down in 2025, and executive producer Mark Rubin […]
The mother of all XCOM 2 mods just got its first update in a year, with 9445 words of patch notes proving it worthy of the Long War name
Since XCOM and XCOM 2 cemented themselves as the definitive PC strategy games of the 2010s, the Long War mods likewise became the definitive enhancements for both games. Longer, tougher, more varied, the Long War mods upped the complexity of some already impressively complex games, to the point we had XCOM expert John “Beagle” Teasdale […]
Steam Replay shows how your 2024 gaming habits compare to the average user
Like Spotify, Steam now gives us a recap of our gaming habits at the end of each year, and the 2024 Steam Replay is now available to digest. If you’re logged into Steam, you can’t miss the big button at the top of the store. This year’s Replay shows how you stack up to the […]
Project Zomboid’s new Build 42 update, 3 years in the making, is the biggest game release of 2024 for me—here’s why
Christmas came early for me yesterday. After previously announcing Project Zomboid’s long-awaited Build 42 would be out by the end of the year, developer The Indie Stone released the absolutely colossal update on Tuesday. In terms of the sheer number of features—from a total crafting overhaul to a considerable expansion of the already huge map—this […]
‘Gooner 9/11’ averted as Zenless Zone Zero’s butt-obfuscation technology is rolled back in the face of horny outrage
I’m really not sure where to begin with this one, so I’m just going to lay it out and then try to explain later: A recent update to Zenless Zone Zero made it impossible to get a good look at character’s asses, and the blowback was so fierce developer MiHoYo reverted the change less than […]
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director asks modders to avoid making anything ‘offensive or inappropriate,’ Final Fantasy 7 modding community says ‘yeah sure’
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is coming to PC in January, and you know what that means: nude mods. Game director Naoki Hamaguchi would really prefer if you didn’t do that, though, saying in an interview with Epic Games that he hopes everyone will keep it clean. There’s a whole host of mods available for the […]
‘We are beholden to the lore’: CD Projekt says there are ‘valid worries’ about Ciri as a witcher, but ‘the answers we want to give in The Witcher 4 are in line with this attitude’
So Ciri’s a Witcher now, taking the lead in The Witcher 4, and that has resulted in questions. Some of them are the predictable hue and cry about a girl taking over for Geralt—complaints about “wokeness” and DEI and all that sort of nonsense—but there are also legitimate questions about how it all fits with […]
Helldivers 2 players rip into Arrowhead for ‘straight-up ridiculous’ Killzone crossover prices, CEO defends the choice: ‘The more of this we sell, the more Illuminate-type stuff we can keep dropping for free’
Helldivers 2 takes two steps forward and one leap back. Less than a week after surprise dropping the Omens of Tyranny update at The Game Awards, Arrowhead has dropped another surprise, though this one isn’t as fun or exciting: Helldivers 2 just got a Killzone armor set, cosmetics, and a Helghast gun, which is kinda […]
Intel reveals the four fails of Arrow Lake in a new blog post, promising more performance fixes in January
If you’re a regular reader of our hardware news and reviews, you’ll know that Intel’s much-vaunted Core Ultra 200S series of processors not only failed to impress at launch but it’s seemingly been left to flag against the competition. In a new blog post today, which we’ve had early access to, Intel says that while […]
The director of Saw and Insidious is turning one of 2024’s best survival games into a TV show
One of film’s masters of horror has set his sights on adapting one of 2024’s spookiest survival games into a television series. James Wan, director of modern horror classics such as the original Saw film, Insidious, and The Conjuring wants to turn driving-survival game Pacific Drive into a TV show. That’s one hell of a […]
Soulframe shows off a new teaser trailer and a cool giant wolf to hang out with
I’ve been reliably informed that some people want nothing more than a really big wolf to ride around on. Behold: Soulframe answers, with its latest teaser trailer showing off Orengall’s new fable, which lets you forge a pact with the wolf. Which means big wolf. I mean, all wolves are big, but that one’s really […]
PowerWash Simulator gives us the free Christmas DLC we didn’t know we wanted
“Ho-Ho-Hold on to your PowerWashers, it’s about to get chilly in Muckingham❄️,” says developer FuturLab in their announcement for Ice Rink, the new, free winter seasonal relesae for smash hit PowerWash Simulator. “Put all your plans on ice, this is no rinky-dink clean up. With the grand reopening of the Ice Rink just around the […]
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is free on Epic, and so is Bus Simulator 21
Epic’s rolling out the holidays a bit early this year with Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga as a free game this week. The mammoth capstone to nearly 20 years of the Lego Star Wars series has a sprawling campaign that covers nine movies’ worth of story. It’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor and action […]
Life is Strange: Double Exposure developer Deck Nine lays off staff for the second time this year
Life is Strange: Double Exposure developer Deck Nine has shared a message to Twitter that it has laid off an undisclosed number of employees. Back in February, the studio let go of 20% of its staff, and the studio also suffered layoffs in 2023. “Today, we are sad to share the news that we must […]
Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is getting a gun that is also a bong, resulting in a backlash from players who are upset they got banned for toxic voice chat in a game that is ‘promoting using drugs’
Call of Duty-focused Twitter account ModernWarzone has shared a datamined clip of a gun that is also a bong you can smoke coming soon to Black Ops 6. That alone has me pondering the state of things, but the skin also seems to have sparked a heated debate in the comments: Why is it OK […]
Fortnite is getting a 5v5 FPS mode that’s basically Counter-Strike and launches in just a few days
Epic has just announced Ballistic, a new 5v5 FPS mode or “experience” coming to Fortnite on December 11. Ballistic’s early access phase will feature a single map and attacking/defending gameplay centered on planting/defusing a bomb (or more family friendly “Rift Point Device” here). The surprise mode is Epic’s first stab at the hardcore, competitive, asymmetric […]
Path of Exile 2 is already one of the top 20 most played games in Steam’s history even though it’s in early access and all the servers have been on fire
It’s safe to say Path of Exile 2 has been a victim of its own success in its first day of early access, with throngs of gamers and PCG editors all trying to fit through the same digital door like the Three Stooges as the game’s servers begged for mercy. But as pointed out by […]
Today’s Wordle answer for Saturday, December 7
Come click this way and read our hint for today’s Wordle. It’ll help straighten out a tough game if you need it to, or get you off to a flying start if you’ve only just begun. After all, it’s Saturday, you deserve an easy win. And don’t worry if those yellow letters are still causing […]
Marvel Rivals players discover a little shark lad can instakill the whole enemy team by eating them and hurling himself off a cliff
The game plan is gobble gobble. One of Marvel Rivals’ most lovable heroes is a support named Jeff the Land Shark, an apparent fixture of the West Coast Avengers who, in Rivals, spends his days spitting healing waters at his friends and lobbing the occasional water bullet at a baddie. On paper he’s the closest […]
‘We have more levels than players’: This indie dev’s game was a complete flop, but he’s powering through with his plan to release 20 seasons of new content anyway
I was initially attracted to Endlight, a weird indie game about getting hoops, by its intense, almost overwhelming trailer, but what hooked me were the less obvious but very clever bits lying beneath its sensory onslaught: Levels are punctuated by odd, sometimes very funny chunks of text that made me feel as though developer Jim […]
Former Little Nightmares developers sign a deal with Epic for an upcoming sci-fi action game
Section 9 Interactive, the studio founded in 2020 by veterans of Little Nightmares developer Tarsier Studios, has announced a publishing partnership with Epic Games that will see Epic fund the development and promotion of its in-development sci-fi action game. The deal with Epic will leave ownership and full creative control over the new game with […]
