HP is launching a bug bounty program that will pay up to $10,000 for… printer exploits? It’s true: you can earn a bundle of cash by hacking HP’s printers, and perhaps one day we can rest easy with the knowledge we are one step ahead of these nefarious devices. “HP is committed to engineering the most secure printers in the world,” Allbright said. As for the bug bounty program, award amounts start at $500. HP told ZDNet that it would consider paying awards to external researchers who discover b

Yesterday we reported on two games being used to pawn counterfeit Steam Community Market items: Abstractism, which was being used to peddle fake Team Fortress 2 items , and Climber, which was doing the same thing but with fake Dota 2 items . Since those scams were discovered, Valve has instituted new trade protections to protect Steam users from scams like these. A GitHub archive of the Steam Database (spotted by Reddit user wickedplayer494 ) shows two warnings which now appear during “suspiciou

The rumors of a next-gen GPU launch have been heating up, however, and Nvidia added to them by teasing a GeForce Gaming Celebration just ahead of Gamescom. If that weren’t enough, Nvidia also promised “spectacular surprises” at the event. “The event will be loaded with new, exclusive, hands-on demos of the hottest upcoming games, stage presentations from the world’s biggest game developers, and some spectacular surprises,” Nvidia said. Perhaps we’ll get it—Nvidia has formally invited anyone and

It was difficult to program inspiring flames on a Commodore 64, and the less said about Doom’s pepperoni pizza take on lava the better. But that started to change in 2008, with the release of Far Cry 2 and its unprecedented wildfire mechanics. With that, here are some PC games that excel in the art of pyromania. I remember this thing being a little bit overpowered, mostly because of its ridiculous range, but frankly any good flamethrower should be. Far Cry (series)We talked about Far Cry 2 above

Logitech announced plans to acquire Blue Microphone, a maker of studio-quality mics, as it looks to expand its reach into a growing market segment. Blue Microphones is a respected outfit in the audio category, and its product line fits nicely with Logitech’s own collection of webcams. And secondly, it sounds like Logitech will be keeping the Blue Microphones team intact. Blue Microphones offers a range of products, from the $60 Tiki on up to its most expensive mic, the $4,000 Bottle. Looking ahe

T’was the week before Christmas, when all through the houseNot a launch date was stirring, in Mode 7’s house. Last December, a few days before Santa’s visit, Mode 7 pushed its lovely-looking, once-due-in-2016 Frozen Synapse 2 back to an undermined date this year. We’re still without something concrete, but the developer tells us today that “Frozen Synapse 2 should come out in August.” For more Frozen Synapsing, revisit the time Frozen Synapse 2 spilled murderous techno factions all over the PC G

Yesterday we looked at some weird discoveries players have been finding while playing No Man’s Sky Next, but today we want to celebrate some of the alien creatures we’ve spotted on our travels as well. I like him because it looks a bit like he’s got a bushy moustache below his beak. Below are the rest of the best creatures we’ve discovered since No Man’s Sky Next was released. I killed the predator and started feeding the little joggers, who began following me around on their wee little hooves.

As we reported earlier, superstar DJ Solomun brings Los Santos to the world in his latest Grand Theft Auto 5-set official music video (see above). Today, he’s got company, as GTA Online welcomes Italian duo Tale of Us to the Big Smoke. Live in LS now, Tale of Us debuts new and exclusive music from their latest album Afterlight—which will feature on Apple Music, Spotify and Los Santos’ newest radio station Los Santos Underground Radio in the coming weeks. “Kicking things off this week is an LSUR-

The first big Sea of Thieves update hits today. Free to all players, Cursed Sails adds skeleton ships (finally, ships to fight that might actually have loot on ’em), player alliances, as well as the Brigantine, a new ship built for three players. Also coming today are player alliances, which allow you to split loot with other crews. Due to performance issues with the Cursed Sails update, Rare has temporarily disabled skeleton forts and the kraken, opting to get the big update out on schedule rat

Phantom Doctrine is a bit of an enigma. With a secret base you build across a campaign and turn-based combat on an isometric grid, it walks and talks like an XCOM set in the Cold War. Instead of soldiers, you build a roster of agent-operatives, who populate a world map filled with enemy agents. Unlike XCOM, both your spies and your enemies can be captured, put under the influence of each other’s brainwashing, then released back into the world for later instruction. A new video given to us by Cre

Planet Alpha began life in 2013 as a side project of then IO Interactive person Adrian Lazar. It popped its head above the parapet earlier this year—under the collective banner of Planet Alpha ApS Game Studio and Team17—and it’s now got a release date: September 4, 2018. Through its puzzles, stealth, platforming, and, clearly, survival mechanics I’m getting Inside, Limbo and even Earthworm Jim vibes from the above. “Planet Alpha is the work of passion of a small but very ambitious team. We are b

Part of its v5.10 Content Update—which is “all about jetpacks, explosives, and complete cartoon chaos”—the weapon joins its new Fly Explosives limited time mode. From back to front, Fly Explosives is an “explosives only” outing that equips players with Jetpacks—before blasting their foes from above. Floor Loot spawners will occasionally offer Jetpacks, explains the update’s patch notes, which have increased fuel regen and decreased burn rates against their default counterparts. Moreover, Jetpack

Humble’s Indie Mega Week sale is live now through Monday, August 6 at 10am PST / 6pm BST. There are loads of great games going cheap and, as always, I’ve stuck a few of my favourites up there in the headline. It also lets me cut to the chase and tell you Playdead’s Inside is on sale for £6.74/your regional equivalent, with a 55 percent reduction. Likewise, Frictional’s wonderful space horror ’em up Soma costs £4.59 (-80 percent); and Red Hook’s Darkest Dungeon is going for £5.69 (-70 percent). C

The influence of Mark Frost and David Lynch’s cult series is felt in every game he writes, from the Pacific Northwestern folk horror of Alan Wake to Max Payne 2’s Address Unknown. Remedy sometimes takes its stories a little too seriously, but Max Payne 2 is self-aware: particularly in the way the events on the TV shows Max catches snippets of reflect his own story. Weirded outWhile I love Max Payne 3, it couldn’t be more different from Remedy’s entries in the series. I don’t know what the studio

REINSTALL Reinstall invites you to join us in revisiting PC gaming days gone by. I can’t think of another game which looks like BioShock—and given gaming’s love of aping what’s influential, that’s surprising. I can see why it’s the standout of the game in terms of being the level which does something different. Dumpster divingPlaying BioShock also helped me make a bit more sense of BioShock Infinite. With the added context of a BioShock playthrough I assume the developers were treating this loot

World famous techno DJ Solomun entered GTA Online last week, as part of its After Hours update. As I mentioned here and here and here, the Bosnian superstar’s music is banging—and his latest track, named Customer is King, brings Los Santos to the world. I’ll dive deeper into ToU’s arrival in a separate post, but know that the duo joins GTA Online alongside its new LSUR radio station. “Watch Solomun as he puts in a hard day’s work making deliveries across Los Santos while trying not to get caught

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is getting a battle royale mode called ‘Blackout’, but we don’t know much about it yet: we don’t know what its player count will be, and we don’t know what tweaks and changes to the COD FPS formula are needed to accommodate it. But thanks to a new teaser in the trailer below, we do know, at least, that it’ll have choppers in it. Check it out here (the footage starts at 1:25):That footage wraps up a new trailer advertising a multiplayer beta taking place next month. Earl

Due to a bug introduced in a recent update, the matchmaking system for Destiny 2’s quickplay PvP mode is currently not following the game’s usual skill-based formula. According to PvP design lead Derek Carroll, the bug “results in much faster—but lower-quality—matches than normal.” But according to many Destiny 2 players, the bug results in a better PvP experience. Ordinarily, quickplay players are grouped according to their Crucible stats and their connection strength. The Destiny forums and su

Plaid Hat Games has announced the next game in the Crossroads board game format: Gen7. Popularized by Dead of Winter, the Crossroads series features semi-cooperative games that emphasize moral choice. Dead of Winter, set in a bitterly cold zombie apocalypse, has been a popular game since its release in 2014. Looking over the Gen7 rules posted on Plaid Hat’s website, there’s a lot going on that’s new compared to Dead of Winter. The game rules take special care to note that certain systems—presuma

An awful-looking game called Climber recently vanished from Steam after several Dota 2 players reported they’d been scammed by Climber users pawning lookalike items. The scam revolved around a Dota 2 item called the Dragonclaw Hook. However, the Dragonclaw Hook these players were offered was a carefully crafted fake. According to its Steam reviews, it’s a shoddy $1 game that instantly gets you thousands of Steam achievements. Earlier today, Valve removed a game from Steam after its developer, Ok