Epic’s State of Unreal keynote is being livestreamed this morning at 9.30PDT from GDC 2019 in San Francisco. Still, as Google’s Stadia announcement yesterday showed, you never know what kind of interesting stories will come out of GDC talks. Especially as Epic itself has teased “loads of announcements” on Twitter. Tune in to https://t.co/WMspyOoBAy at 9:30AM PDT for loads of announcements and live demonstrations! We won’t have long to wait, but given how busy Epic’s been the last few months, it’

Peaky Blinders, the BBC period crime drama, is getting a game adaptation for PC and consoles. There’s even an IPA, if you fancy drinking Peaky Blinders instead of watching it. Publisher Curve Digital and developer FuturLab are putting the gangster romp together, which will apparently feature an ‘innovative’ story-driven design where you’ll be able to play as various characters as you explore Peaky Blinders’ digital Birmingham. A narrative adventure seems likely, but who knows—maybe we’ll get a P

After three years, Oculus is retiring the Rift headset and replacing it with the Rift S, redesigned with the same inside-out tracking technology it’s using for the Oculus Quest. The Rift S has a new strap system reminiscent of the PSVR, and it’s definitely easier and faster to slip on. I tried the Rift S back-to-back with the all-in-one Oculus Quest, and the RIft S was noticeably lighter. Oculus hasn’t given a date for the Rift S, but it’s out this spring. So if you already have an Oculus Rift,

The hack-and-slash MMO Guardians of Ember, which was delisted from Steam more than a year ago for review score shenanigans, is now back in action (but not on Steam) in open beta. Guardians of Ember is now under the control of publisher Gameforge, which acquired the game from Insel following its delisting last year. “Guardians of Ember has been available in English, Spanish, and German throughout the Closed Beta. More information about Guardians of Ember, and a signup link if you’d like to try th

Konami has confirmed a trio of Anniversary Collections to celebrate its 50th birthday, taking in Castlevania, Contra, and a broader ‘Arcade Classics’ package. Eight games will also be coming to the Castlevania and Contra collections, though four have only been confirmed in each package thus far. Castlevania includes the NES original, Castlevania III Dracula’s Curse (NES), Castlevania II Belmont’s Revenge (Gameboy) and Super Castlevania IV (SNES). Meanwhile, the Contra collection includes the ori

The big news out of GDC today is Stadia , the cloud gaming service that Google says will launch later this year with support for 4K resolution at 60 fps. In fact, developers can take advantage of one half of that partnership right now, as Epic has announced that Unreal Engine support for Stadia is already available. “We’ve been building our support for Stadia to ensure that developers using Unreal Engine can hit the ground running and be successful on the platform,” Epic senior platform engineer

The latest patch to Overwatch heralds the arrival of the combat medic Baptiste, who comes to the fight with a big gun, some sweet footwear, and a unique array of abilities that enable him to protect and heal allies from a distance. Baptiste’s Biotic Launcher fires a three-round burst with “significant damage output,” while the alt-fire mode launches grenades that will heal allied players. Exo Boots enable Baptiste to clear obstacles that would be insurmountable to other players, and his ultimate

Intel via Walden Kirsch. (Image: © Intel via Walden Kirsch)Kyle Bennett is leaving HardOCP and joining Intel as Director of Enthusiast Engagement. The site he leaves behind will not be sold, nor will it continue to publish news or reviews. HardOCP has been around for a long time and is one of the original enthusiast sites for PC news and reviews. Intel wants to be an integral part of the enthusiast community like it was years ago,” Kyle wrote.

Id Software announced during today’s Google conference at GDC that Doom Eternal will be released on the Stadia cloud-based platform, with support for 4K resolution and 60 fps. That promised 4K res doesn’t show up in this mobile-captured footage—sorry about that—but it’s running well, and I’m pretty sure it’ll look a lot better when you’re not seeing it through Bo’s phone. The level design looks wild, and I like the music, too. It’s definitely Doom, and if Google can deliver this level of perform

Ubisoft and EA veteran Jade Raymond announced last week that she had joined Google as a company vice president, but her specific role at the company wasn’t known. Today she revealed at GDC that she will head up Stadia Games and Entertainment, Google’s first-party development studio, which will make games exclusively for the company’s new Stadia platform. “As the head of Stadia Games and Entertainment, I will not only be bringing first party game studios to reimagine the new generation of games.

After a pretty rough month, BioWare GM Casey Hudson has written an Anthem post-launch update, acknowledging some of the shooter’s issues but putting on a brave face when it comes to the game’s future. BioWare’s actually been pretty communicative since launch, even if it doesn’t always have good news, and Hudson’s analysis of the launch seems sincere, even though it understates some of the problems. He also promises more world events, story and new features that will culminate into the upcoming C

Valve has released a companion app for subscribers to Dota 2’s premium monthly subscription service, Dota Plus. The app lets you keep track of match and tournament results, as well as keeping you informed about your favourite players and teams. The Dota Pro Circuit app, available for iOS and Android, will let you make ‘predictions’ on upcoming matches in the pro circuit, wagering your own shards—the Dota Plus exclusive in-game currency—in the hopes of adding to your pile. All the information you

Ubisoft has patched a bug in The Division 2 that’s been plaguing players since the weekend. Certain skills—that is, your abilities in the game, like turrets, or the robot bee-spitting hive—were vanishing after deployment, before replenishing in the player’s inventory 15 seconds later. Yesterday, Massive dropped in on Reddit to explain that it’s been solved, following another brief maintenance period. Remaining issues with this side of the game will apparently be addressed later this week. After

If you’ve got a World of Warcraft account and you’ve not checked into Azeroth for a while, Blizzard is inviting you back for a few days. From March 21 through March 24, all inactive accounts will be upgraded, letting you return for free this weekend. WoW changes dramatically with every expansion, so you’ll have a lot to catch up on if you’ve missed a few. Battle for Azeroth also introduced allied races—twists on existing races that have to be unlocked before you can create a new character. And i

Oddworld Inhabitants showed off a sneak peek from an Oddworld: Soulstorm cinematic at Unity’s GDC keynote. Soulstorm is a direct sequel to New ‘n’ Tasty, itself a remake of the original Abe’s Oddysee. Here’s what Oddworld Inhabitants’ Peter Chapman told us last year:Soulstorm is a brand new game. Check out our full Oddworld: Soulstorm interview for more details. If you want to know how the cinematic was put together, Oddworld Inhabitants also put together a video deconstructing it, which you can

Megacity is a very flashy tech demo designed by Unity to show off the engine’s entity component system and burst compiler. It’s available for download now, and you can see it in action in the above video from last year. “In Los Angeles, there was a lot of interest in ECS and the Burst Compiler,” says Unity. “Building on the Nordeus demo from Unite Austin, our Game Code and FPS Sample teams produced Megacity, a dynamic futuristic cityscape. Futuristic megacities seem like brilliant video game fod

Gearbox has a lot going on, enough to sustain a week’s worth of near constant social media teases. That announcement seems related either to Bulletstorm or Duke Nukem, perhaps even both. Gearbox Tweeted this today:“Time to tease another game for PAX!” pic.twitter.com/iSe5PTBwMiMarch 18, 2019You may recall that when Gearbox issued its re-release of Bulletstorm in 2017, Duke Nukem was available as a DLC playable character. Hence the ambiguity regarding this tease: does it mean more Bulletstorm, or

When it released in January, Q2VKPT offered a real-time ray traced version of Quake 2, demonstrating how a broad range of associated techniques could improve a 22-year-old game. Created by Christoph Schied, it used an RTX technique known as Path Tracing in order to create more lifelike lighting effects, and the results are impressive (there’s a video at the bottom of the page). Nvidia has been paying close attention, announcing today a collaboration with Schied (himself a former Nvidia intern) o

Getting Over It By Bennett Foddy is an infuriating game. As a man stuck in a cauldron, one must reach the apex of a bizarre mountain strewn with even more bizarre objects. Spoilers below:Foddy: When players finished Getting Over It, players could join a chat room where Bennet would congratulate them IN REAL-TIME. Some examples:#GDC19 pic.twitter.com/2OXTrwP3JfMarch 18, 2019As the images embedded in that Tweet suggest, those who manage to beat Getting Over It are thrown into a chatroom hosted by

Shortly after this post went up, McVicker deleted the video containing the “five years or so” tease, saying on Twitter that two people have confirmed to him that the email was actually a fake. As of now, two people were confirmed by Gabe that the “5 Years” E-Mail was faked. In a new video, McVicker shares a number of user-submitted email replies from Newell, some of them silly meme fodder and others more serious. Is it possible that a new Half-Life, be it Episode 3 or HL3 or whatever, arrives at