Elite Dangerous’ Beyond—Chapter Four kicks off next week, with destructible asteroids and “significant additions” to its exploration, mining and multiplayer. Last night, community manager Will Flanagan, exec producer Adam Woods and senior level designer Adam Bourke-Waite uncovered more on the latest update’s Scenarios. Likewise, specific Scenarios grant players Background Simulation rewards—such as increasing the security status of a particular faction. Elsewhere, the stream explores the incomin

Two Point Hospital debuts its Sandbox: Freeplay mode at TwitchCon today, which will roll out to all players next week. Marked as the “first in a line of planned Sandbox updates for Two Point Hospital”, Sandbox: Freeplay lets players rename hospitals and unlock every option—which allows you to “make it rain”, so tells the narrator below. As outlined in the video above’s description, Sandbox: Freeplay is unlocked by playing through the main campaign’s first three levels. After that, you’re free to

If you pre-ordered Fallout 76 on PC, you still can’t play it yet—the Fallout 76 beta doesn’t begin for PC until October 30. However, you can now pre-load it in advance of next week’s beta. All that Fallout 76 data, downloaded and swirling around your computer’s innards (that’s how computers work, right, there’s a lot of swirling?) In the meantime, you can check out the Fallout 76 system requirements, which Bethesda posted yesterday, and read some impressions of the first Xbox One beta, which I p

Edge Case Games has announced that the Infection update to the free-to-play MOBAttlestar game Fractured Space will be its last. Servers will be kept online for “the foreseeable future,” but there will be no new content, updates, or patches released. “After long deliberation, the very hard decision has been made for us as a studio to move on from further development of Fractured Space; this will enable us to look towards new projects,” the studio said in the “Sun Sets” announcement. The Infection

If you’re skeptical about the future of GitHub, you’re not alone. Microsoft says not to worry though, saying it will “retain its developer-first ethos, operate independently, and remain an open platform.” In a separate blog post, Friedman doubled down on Microsoft’s promise not to mess things up. The first is making GitHub the best place to run productive communities and teams, which many would argue it already is. How this plays out obviously remains to be seen, but at least Microsoft is saying

Reclamation Day for PC players is right around, with Fallout 76 being available to beta test on PC starting October 30. For those of you who are running on Radeon hardware, the new driver is optimized for the upcoming beta. There are still a few known issues that AMD is working to sort out, and that are not addressed by the the 18.10.2 driver release. The last Adrenalin driver release to support 32-bit OSes was 18.9.3 WHQL. That’s just over 2 percent, with the catch-all “other” category accounti

For primary storage chores, we’ve ditched the mechanical hard disk drive (HDD) and have moved on to faster solid state drives (SSDs), but don’t go writing the HDD’s obituary. Companies are still cranking out bigger capacities HDDs, none more capacious than Western Digital’s new 15TB Ultrastar DC HC620. Instead, WD has its sights set on cloud and hyperscale datacenters that need the kind of massive storage drives like these provide. The 15TB drive WD just released uses shingled magnetic recording

The worldwide flash memory storage is coming to an end, and we’re finally starting to see decent prices on PC RAM. Newegg currently has a stick of G.SKILL Aegis DDR4 RAM for $53.99, which is around $20 cheaper than what most other 8GB DDR4-2400 kits are currently going for. In fact, two of these would be cheaper than most other 16 GB (2 x 8GB) RAM kits. This specific RAM module has a starting speed of 2400MHz, and a voltage of 1.2~1.35V. If you’re one of the many people who had to stick with les

Esports organization Virtus Pro has terminated its relationship with “individuals who’ve been managing VP social media” following a tweet of an image of its Dota 2 team standing behind an anonymous woman that asked, “Who’s gonna ‘ride’ the Mercedes this year?” We’ve also implemented additional internal protocols to ensure things like this never happen again,” Virtus Pro general manager Roman Dvoryankin tweeted a day after his initial response. Based in Russia, Virtus Pro is a significant force i

Year of the Dragon, a Half-Life mod that replaces Gordan Freeman with Spyro the Dragon, has finally entered early access. You can download and play the Office Complex demo over on ModDB and glide, charge, and breath fire all over the early-game Half-Life level as a talking cartoon dragon instead of a boring MIT graduate. While modder Magic_Nipples (nice) isn’t necessarily going to recreate the entirety of Half-Life to work with Spyro’s original moveset, they’re at least making it possible for ot

Blizzard has rolled out a new mobile esports app for Android and iOS devices called—wait for it—the Blizzard Esports Mobile App. The app provides schedules, news, and scores from Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, StarCraft, and World of Warcraft events from around the world, and will also serve up notifications of announcements and upcoming competitions. It’s all very thorough, but my favorite part is the built-in Twitch linking. Any event that’s being broadcast has a red “Live” tag o

Fortnite is getting Funko Pops, because of course it is, and it’s also getting the Monopoly treatment. On top of all that, a Nerf Fortnite AR-L Blaster is coming next year, too. The Fortnite Nerf Blaster was actually announced last month, but this is our first opportunity to actually see what it looks like. The slightly cartoon-like design looks very much like the real deal, and in case there’s any doubt it says “Fortnite” on the side. It comes with 20 Elite darts, runs on 4 AA batteries—not inc

Snapchat just revealed and launched Snap Camera, an application that allows users to apply Snapchat’s love’em or hate’em filters via any webcam connected to their PC. Snap Camera is compatible with any application that uses your webcam, so it’s not strictly for Twitch, though it has been rolled out alongside a bespoke Twitch extension. Streamers are able to restrict certain lenses to specific tiers of viewers and create special lenses that activate whenever new users subscribe. You can bet we’ll

Twitch announced a new feature today at its convention: Twitch Sings, a community karaoke game that’s going into closed beta soon. “Built from the ground up for live streaming, [Twitch Sings] has hundreds of songs and features that streamers and their communities can use to make amazing, one-of-a-kind performances together,” Twitch said. “In chat, viewers can request songs, cheer to activate light shows on stage, and give their favorite streamers challenges to tackle.” Cheer integration means th

Exceedingly popular streamer Ninja announced today that he has partnered with Red Bull to livestream for 12 hours on New Year’s Eve, as reported by Variety. The stream will start at 4 pm Eastern on New Year’s Eve and run to 4 am. Earlier this year, we talked to Ninja about his rapid rise to fame, which has reached a new height with this announcement. I’m not a big Ninja viewer, but if I had to choose between his New Year’s Eve stream and watching Ryan Seacrest and Jenny McCarthy on ABC, I’d pick

I love Monster Hunter World’s Palicos. My feline companion rides with me into battle, heals me when I need healing (sometimes), and occasionally even puts a monster to sleep. There are three things I love about this mod. The fact that the dogs still kind of look like cats, which just makes the whole thing even funnier. Check out our full guide to the best Monster Hunter World mods here, which are mostly more practical additions.

Austin billed Ni no Kuni 2 as “one the best JRPGs on PC”. Named ‘The Lair of the Lost Lord’, things kick off when a mysterious gate appears inside the Rubbly Ruins that leads to a Labyrinth. Bandai Namco says the new DLC also equips players with a new battle ability, The Martial Method, which is obtainable from memories of people met during the journey. Moreover, the DLC packs 80 pieces of equipment that promises to “elevate the team to new heights”; whereas a returning enemy seeks a “final rema

Last year, For Honor dived into Halloween with its Feast of the Otherworld event. This year, it’s back for seconds—The Return of the Overworld is live now through November 8. With it comes armies of skeleton warriors, challenges, quests, rewards, and a man whose head is transformed into a pumpkin that he then lifts off and splatters over the floor. As with previous events, a bundle will be available that contains special event customization items. Ubi adds that last year’s Howl at the Moon emote

I don’t have a widescreen monitor, so the trailer above is a wee bit wasted on me. I mean, it’s nice to see more of Just Cause 4, in any event. And I’m guessing loads of you lot have widescreen monitors, so this doesn’t feel like an entirely wasted exercise. “Tailored to a giant, ultra-widescreen display on the Square Enix booth at Paris Games Week, this incredible 4K panoramic trailer gives players a glimpse of the beautiful South American inspired Island of Solís and a taste of what they can e