In a developer update Thursday afternoon, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan addressed a number of popular topics in the community. First up, Kaplan talked about the ongoing toxicity issues that plague the game, saying that minimizing toxicity is a major initiative for Blizzard and the Overwatch team. To get into specifics, Kaplan brought up the Mercy and Junkrat changes currently being tested on the Overwatch PTR. “As a lot of you know, we’re experimenting with changes to Mercy. Having said th

It’s been seven years since the “magic realist adventure game” Kentucky Route Zero successfully completed its $6500 Kickstarter campaign. It appears that the work might finally be approaching completion, as the studio dropped a tweet today that leads to a surreal trip inside a tiny independent television station somewhere deep in the Bluegrass State. It all comes off as very true to the spirit of public access television, leavened with Kentucky Route Zero’s supernatural undertones. There’s no ha

Tired of the same crummy settlements that look a bit like they were cobbled together from rotting wood and rusted metal because they were? Wait no more: here’s a mod for Fallout 4 that let’s you build a big damn skyscraper, and a functioning one to boot. You can’t use this blueprint, called Elysium Tower, just anywhere: you’ll have to build your skyscraper in Starlight Drive-in. Note: this isn’t one of those mods that’s a simple one-click install. There are 24 different plugins (listed on its pa

You’ve got RGB keyboards, RGB gaming mice, and RGB headsets. Every company these days has its own take on proprietary software that you use to download drivers and adjust settings. Logitech Gaming SoftwareLogitech hits you with annoying notifications to install its Gaming Software whenever you plug in a Logitech G peripheral. The software itself does everything I want it to, and does so without requiring an account/profile login or internet connection. At least the drivers don’t require you to l

At the top of the list is Masterwork armor, which will bring a big change to Destiny duds when it’s rolled out next week. In most ways, Masterwork armor will function in the same was as their weapon counterparts. But there is one significant element: Masterwork armor can be reworked to a different stat package—Heavy, Light or Restorative. Raid armor will drop with unique and powerful perks that function whilst aboard the Leviathan, via mods that can be applied to both new and existing pieces of

Earlier this week, over 6,100 pilots piled into the star system of 9-4RP2 to engage in the biggest battle in EVE Online’s history. And nothing gets EVE players (and the wider gaming community) more excited than a massive, galaxy-shaping battle. He says that whenever EVE Online has a massive battle like this, it’s all hands on deck for the developers. Early into the fight, players started complaining that the game was crashing or they were stuck in loading screens. Twitch streamers broadcasting t

Instead, the PC has long been the domain of Dragon Ball fangames—fighters like Hyper Dragon Ball Z , made in the free 2D game engine MUGEN. As far as I can tell, it’s the oldest Dragon Ball PC fangame ever. Could this really be a canceled Dragon Ball PC game from the 1990s? Even if it’s not easily playable today, Nalwan’s Dragon Ball game has earned a small but noteworthy place in fangame history. As far as I can tell, it’s the oldest Dragon Ball PC fangame ever, or at least the oldest available

Cryptocurrency mining is so wildly popular right now that even boutique builders are allocating graphics cards to the cause. Case in point, Maingear has partnered with Unikrn, an esports betting company, to sell purpose-built PCs for mining. But before people get mad and say Maingear is contributing to the scarcity of graphics cards for gamers, we spoke to Wallace Santos, Maingear’s CEO, about the specifics. There will be two versions, the Advanced Crypto Miner (ACM) and ACM Pro, both designed t

I’ve been keeping a close eye on Kingdom Come: Deliverance ever since I got the chance to see its branching questlines, complex armor system, and AI-driven combat encounters for myself. While some folks are mourning the ‘death of the immersive sim,’ Deliverance is set to keep the genre kicking, albeit under a much more realistic guise than most. To keep things realistic without sacrificing the modern conveniences most games come with nowadays, Deliverance even gives the immersive sim staple of q

Credit: Christopher HorvathEarlier this week, Facebook and Oculus released a new unit of time: the ‘flick,’ which is short for ‘frame-tick’ and represents a 705,600,000th of a second. In other words, flicks can be used to describe exact frame durations in whole numbers without the rounded fractions you’d get when using metric measurements. For example, 1/30th of a second, a single frame of 30hz video, lasts .033 seconds or 33.33 milliseconds, rounded. Using Horvath’s unit, however, one frame of

Dedicated servers won’t be available until sometime later in the season: Ubisoft said the dedicated server testing in December was “successful,” but specific rollout plans are still being finalized. “Of course, changing our online infrastructure while the game is running is a major undertaking and we will closely monitor the situation once the Dedicated Servers are implemented in the live environmen,” Ubisoft wrote. The changes to the fighters in season five are meant to “reduce the gap between

The Mind’s Eclipse is a visual novel about exploring a sci-fi station called The CORE. Everyone you find is dead and answers come from rummaging through the debris and downloading fragmentary conversations from computers and corpses. It’s the kind of thing we’re used to seeing in immersive sims like System Shock 2 or Prey, reinterpreted in visual novel form. “It’s an extension of our fascination with mortality, but projected onto locations,” explains Donald Campbell (no relation to the game’s pr

Cerebrawl is a 2v2, four-player fighting game that builds on the established tag-team system by letting players control both roles. Chiefly inspired by Marvel vs. Capcom and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike (with at least a hint of Skullgirls), Cerebrawl is all about working together with your partner. The benched player can jump in for a quick jab, for example, an entire combo or a finisher. The active player can also forfeit their super to allow the benched player to use theirs. You can sample t

Blizzard added more than 100 new cosmetic items to Overwatch’s base loot box yesterday, many of which you can get a closer look at here. The Loot Box odds have not changed.January 24, 2018That’s pretty hard to misinterpret, but Blizzard expanded on the topic a little further in a follow-up tweet. “These items went into the pool of all available items in the base Loot Box.” Overwatch loot boxes contain a randomized series of items—skins, sprays, emotes, and all that—in Common, Rare, Epic, and Leg

Sony’s DualShock 4 wireless controller is top pick among game controllers. It’s also on sale today for $40 at Best Buy, though only in red. Actually, make that “Red Crystal,” not to be confused with “Magma,” which is less translucent. The DualShock 4 comes in a variety of color options—seven different ones on Best Buy’s website—but only the Red Crystal version is on sale. And timing—yesterday we posted a heads up on Microsoft’s Xbox One wireless controller being on sale for the same price at Ama

The latest episode, “Architects of the Obscure,” focuses on the environments and music which color Vampyr’s London nightlife. The connecting theme is, as always, Jonathan’s internal struggle, the gulf between his responsibilities as a doctor and his urges as a vampire. This struggle influenced Vampyr’s music as well, composer Olivier Deriviere says, which led Dontnod to work with solo celloist Eric-Maria Couturier. You get a good taste of Couturier’s heavy strings in the second half of the episo

The folks at AnandTech posted an interview with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su, who talked a little about AMD’s future plans. Instead, Dr. Su talked about the recent partnership with Intel to infuse Radeon graphics with Intel’s Core processors. In this particular case, the way we looked at it is whether it would expand the market for Radeon,” Dr. Su said. Obviously there are areas that we are going to continue to compete very fiercely, and in this area, we are going to partner,” Dr. Su added. Dr. Su also a

Choose the right drop location in Fortnite Battle Royale and your inventory will soon be bursting with weapons and ammo. Drop late if you want peace and quietMost players will impatiently drop earlier in the Battle Bus’s journey because they don’t fancy waiting around. Without further ado, here are 12 drop locations that will set you up nicely for a Victory Royale. Then, clear out the buildings to the west (they’re the same buildings you’ll come across in the large tree drop I mentioned earlier)

DeepCool has released another case with an integrated liquid cooling solution. Called the Ark 90, this is arguably a better looking chassis than the Baronkase Liquid it launched last month, which itself also came with its own liquid cooler already mounted. In this case, it’s a specially designed Captain series liquid cooling system with a 280mm radiator. DeepCool includes four RGB fans with the Ark 90—three 140mm fans attached to the liquid cooler, and another one more in the rear. The case also

The Humble Store is offering a sweet deal on two of the most frightening, disturbing videogames ever created. For the next two days, the Amnesia Collection—The Dark Descent and A Machine For Pigs—is completely free. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is famously scary, to the point that it became staple fare for reaction video freakouts on YouTube. The Amnesia Collection will be available until 1 pm ET on January 27. Take note that the individual games are still full price, so if you want them free, the