The new and vastly improved Steam chat client that Valve rolled into beta testing in June, with support for group chats, multiple channels, voice chat support, and inline multimedia, is now fully operational and live for everyone. The new Steam chat is a big step forward, not least because it looks and acts like Discord, the current king of the game-centric chat client ring. Persistent group chats are “built for gaming,” as players can see which of their regular cohorts are online, invite them t

The Occupation begins with a terrorist attack that leaves 23 people dead and spurs the creation of The Union Act, a controversial piece of law-and-order legislation that threatens the civil liberties of the British people. The Occupation was revealed in March 2017, and today developer White Paper Games and Humble Bundle announced it will be out on October 9. It’s an interesting setup, but what makes The Occupation particularly distinctive is that it unfolds in real time. Artist Scott Wells-Foste

World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion, Battle for Azeroth, is all about reigniting the longstanding conflict between the mighty Horde and noble Alliance. Horde players will participate in the offensive while Alliance players work to slow their progress and buy the Alliance time to muster a defense. It’s disappointing since, as players are pointing out over on the WoW subreddit, the last pre-expansion event was so damn good. But Battle for Azeroth’s pre-expansion event feels skeleton-thin by com

The No Man’s Sky Next Upate has arrived, giving us both co-op multiplayer and a third-person perspective. It’s also given us something new to consider: how we look to ourselves and others. The Traveler race, in particular, has some weird heads to consider. Also, keep in mind that playing as a Gek, for example, won’t let you become instantly fluent in the Gek language. If you want to converse with aliens, you’ll still need to pick up the language the old-fashioned way.

An unexpected update to Metal Gear Solid 5 enables players to take on FOB missions as Quiet, the steady-handed sniper who wears a skimpy bikini into battle not for reasons of jiggly titillation, but because she breathes through her skin. Quiet is a master sniper who can take long shots with minimal shake, and she also moves very quickly and can jump over objects that other characters would require a ladder to traverse. Standing still “will make her stealthy,” and she has a dash ability that enab

We mostly tend to avoid refurbished deals, unless it happens to be one that is too good to ignore. Harman Kardon is having a sale on some of its speaker products, one of which is the SoundSticks Wireless with Bluetooth connectivity for just $129.99. That’s $100 less than its MSRP when sold new, or around $70 cheaper than its street price on Amazon. As a refurbished product, we like that it’s being sold by Harman Kardon directly. Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through

There are rumors that Nvidia’s next series of GPUs will launch over the next few months, but the GTX 1080 won’t be obsolete anytime soon. Right now you can get EVGA’s GTX 1080 FTW card for just $449.99 on the company’s eBay store. Performance of the GTX 1080 remains excellent, and it’s typically a bit faster than AMD’s top-tier Vega 64. While the GTX 1170 will likely be a faster solution in a couple of months, it will also likely cost more than the $450 EVGA is asking. You can buy the GTX 1080 F

(Image: © Intel)Several weeks ago, Intel published a pair of documents on its website that referenced a handful of 9th generation Core processors, spanning the 4-core/4-thread Core i3-9000 on up to the 6-core/6-thread Core i5-9600K. One of them is the rumored Core i9-9900K, an 8-core/16-thread chip that, if real, would be Intel’s burliest mainstream processor to date. According to the thread, the Core i9-9900K will have a 3.6GHz base clock and a tantalizing 5GHz single-core boost clock, along wi

A note chart that dwarfed everything I ever accomplished in my peak Guitar Hero days. Stream heroAcai tells me he fell in love with Guitar Hero like everyone else did during the music game’s golden age in the mid-aughties. Music game mania hit its fever pitch in 2007, with the dual release of Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band. This was his personal Guitar Hero golden age; sitting in his bedroom, downloading bootleg files, playing through them with Slash. In 2015 he started streaming Guitar Hero on Twi

Forsaken, the 1998 “supreme 360-degree multiplayer deathfest,” is coming back next week via Nightdive Studios, whose previous resurrections include Turok, Turok 2, and System Shock. The remastered version of Forsaken will support widescreen and 4K monitors, with a variety of updated graphical options including MSAA and SMAA anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, motion blur, and “enhanced and improved” particle effects. It’s a good pickup by Nightdive: There’s an element of name recognition to it, bu

A new expansion for World of Warcraft always means a ton of new equipment to collect, but I really wasn’t expecting one of them to be a floppy fish. But, alas, a player by the name of Stan has dug out this incredible find from the Battle for Azeroth beta. It’s name is the Stinkrot Smasher and it’s a one-handed mace (yes, that means you can duel wield it!) that’s actually just a floppy fish. Battle for Azeroth is out on August 13 for North America and August 14 for Europe.

After a bit of a delay—we were expecting the update to arrive at 6 am Pacific—the No Man’s Sky Next update has arrived and can be downloaded on PC. While you’re waiting for it to download, you can take a look at the patch notes to see what Next includes. The Next update includes third-person perspective and multiplayer—still described as playable with a ‘small group of friends’ rather than stating the specific number of players. As for running into other players randomly, the notes say the follo

GTA Online’s much-anticipated After Hours update rolled out on PC today. He tells me he’s partied, performed fetch quests to improve his nightclub’s reputation, and been killed by other players while trying to finish said fetch quests (because this is GTA Online). As you can see, the Blêuter’d Champagne Diamond costs GTA$150,000. You might also have spotted bottles of Blêuter’d in GTA 5’s 24/7, Limited Service and Rob’s Liquor stores; and you might even have smuggled crates of it in GTA Online’s

The new Stream Deck Mini offers the same functionality as its bigger sibling, it just has fewer buttons and costs a sliver under $100. Whereas the full-size Stream Deck has 15 buttons for streamers, the miniaturized version sports six. “Stream Deck Mini is every inch a Stream Deck. The Stream Deck Mini is available now from Amazon or direct from Corsair (which recently acquired Elgato’s gaming division) for $99.95. That’s $50 cheaper than the 15-button Stream Deck.

One way to finance a new PC is by putting the purchase on a credit card, but then you have to contend with potentially high interest fees. The online retailer is letting some customers spread out major PC purchases over the course of five months, with zero interest. It’s not clear how many people Amazon is inviting to participate in the new program, or what the exact criteria is to qualify. However, for those who are invited, there are “no finance charges, no interest or hidden fees, and no cred

Can you imagine if videogames were designed to soak up as much money as possible using cheap tricks and not-so-cheap paywalls? But that was very much the norm for the quarter-hungry arcade games of the 80s and 90s, and few games devoured allowances as ravenously as Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace, ex-Disney animator Don Bluth’s laserdisc hits. Luckily, you can now get Dragon’s Lair, Dragon’s Lair 2: Time Warp and Space Ace on GOG for a set price of $20. The original Dragon’s Lair cost $0.50 per play

Schratt0r’s Project Phoenix for Fallout 4 is another of those. It’s out now, with a three-part quest, 14 new locations and a new faction in tow. Unlocked North-West of the Poseidon Reservoir, as outlined in the footage above, Project Phoenix follows the tale of an unhinged, wealthy chap who fancies himself as dictator. Across its wealth of new locations and three-part quest, expect to spend around an hour and half with Project Phoenix. Here’s the mod’s opening 15 minutes:More information on Proj

By ditching its old software for a clean slate, Logitech was able to make G Hub a lot more flexible. Depending on what hardware you have, G Hub will download the appropriate modules to let you customize them. It’s an easy feature to ignore if you don’t want it, but the presentation is much nicer than it was with Logitech’s old software. Either way, it’s a cool feature that’s still a bit barebones, and we’ll likely see it grow as G Hub spends some time in beta. From what I’ve seen, there’s no rea

Last week, a Fortnite player by the name of Chappadoodle managed to strand himself at the bottom of a cliff. YouTuber Muselk happened to be in the neighborhood and tried to rescue Chappadoodle, but one thing led to another and he accidentally killed Chappadoodle with a golf cart instead . The hilariously botched rescue mission captured the attention of the Fortnite community, and it looks like developer Epic Games enjoyed it as well: as Reddit user StoreBrandEnigma noticed, a new Easter egg dedi

Last month, Baldur’s Gate lead designer James Ohlen left BioWare after 22 years of service. Speaking to Game Informer (via gamesindustry.biz), Ohlen says he thinks EA sees BioWare as a “long-term” part of the company. “I think EA really respects what BioWare brings to it,” Ohlen tells Game Informer. “BioWare is a lot different than all the other aspects of its business, so even if Anthem doesn’t do as well—and I think it’s going to be great—but if it doesn’t do gangbusters I don’t think that’s t