It’s that time of the month again, where we reveal the newest game that’s available to Legendary members of the PC Gamer Club. As the headline up there says, Violet Cycle is the latest entry—a self-proclaimed “hyperkinetic neopoly roguecade” endeavour, which in practice delivers a lovely-looking hack-and-slash isometric roguelike. PC Gamer Club Legendary members get a game code sent straight to their inbox. Becoming a Legendary member is simple: head in this direction , select the appropriate he

At the beginning of last year, esteemed game designer Hideaki Itsuno—who is best known for directing the likes Dragon’s Dogma and Devil May Cry 2, 3 and 4—announced plans to “exert [himself] in order to announce a new game” at some stage in 2017. That’s according to the man himself, who took to Twitter to update those interested in his as yet unannounced game. Alongside his sentiments, Itsuno assured prospective players that work at that point was “progressing smoothly.” Last month, we learned t

I’d been given eight hours notice that the zombies were massing to the south, then completely forgot about them. At regular intervals in They Are Billions you get to choose a new mayor. They Are Billions is in Early Access but the fully playable survival mode encourages exactly the kind of turtling I dreamed of. Even with just survival mode, it’s a good time. The only thing that really bugs me about They Are Billions is that the unit barks are annoying.

It’s searchable by code, and there are codes for nearly everything: ladders, toys, blenders, escalators, Christmas tree lights, mattresses, air conditioners, bread makers—even robots. And, of course there’s a code for computers, which includes computer equipment and electronic games. Here’s what a look through the data from 2007-2016 shows us: ten years of computer-related emergency room visits, including direct quotes from the emergency room staff. The NEISS is filled with emergency room visits

They’re all called things like ‘catbot 1574’, and they’re a nuisance. Anybody with ‘catbot’ in their Linux username (yes, not their Steam username), will now find themselves with an automatic VAC ban, regardless of whether they’ve actually booted up TF2 or not. Now, I don’t know how many Linux users have ‘catbot’ in their username, but there is at least the potential for friendly fire here. On the GitHub thread where the issue was uncovered, one user said that their Steam account was VAC-banned

The Infinite Forest at the heart of Destiny 2’s Curse of Osiris DLC is, as Tim wrote last month, “infinite in name only”. An amateur developer and Destiny 2 player called Pheonise felt strongly enough to have a crack at fixing that, cobbling together a concept for a truly infinite forest in just two days. Pheonise’s system creates a series of procedurally generated levels broken up by random events—that might be a boss fight, a horde defense or a puzzle to solve. Completing these events will net

GOG may have the best collection of DRM-free games, but Valve has, well, PUBG again. Ruling out obvious fantasy, like a DRM-free release of Half-Life 3, here’s what we hope PC gaming’s de facto leader does in 2018. Valve confirmed back in April that they’re working on giving CS:GO the same treatment, but so far this update has yet to materialize. Maybe it’s just become part of the Dota life: you wake up, see if Valve has done something, and then continue with life. Of course, we’re also talking

Steam has released its annual list of the highest-earning games of the year, and it includes one or two surprises. Among the 12 games that generated the most revenue in 2017 sits Ghost Recon Wildlands, for example, which I wouldn’t have expected. The overall biggest earners also include evergreen titles like The Witcher 3, Rocket League and Counter Striker: Global Offensive. To compile the list, Valve looked at game sales, in-game transactions, and DLC. If you’re interested, Valve wrote a blog p

The streamer that controlled Winston using nothing but bananas has put together another ludicrous creation: a fidget-spinner controller for Genji. You can see it working in the clip above, where Rudeism manages to de-mech a D.Va and kill the opposition’s Genji just by twirling away. The encoders can detect which way the spinners are rotating, and whether or not they’re being pushed down (like a regular button). By pushing the spinners, Rudeism can trigger Genji’s abilities, jump, or ask for heal

Need for Speed Payback fans have had their calls for an online free roam mode (belatedly) answered: it will be added to the game in 2018. Online Free Roam coming 2018, Happy New Year from everyone at Need for Speed! 🎆 pic.twitter.com/Ht8cRsvQQAJanuary 1, 2018It’ll be free for all players, and there’s no release date yet: the game’s Twitter account said it’s “still being worked on”. It won’t fix the structural and narrative issues with the game that Phil outlined in his review last month, and I r

Bayonetta and Vanquish developer Platinum Games is working on two self-published games—its first stab at going it alone. Head of development Atsushi Inaba told GameInformer that in 2017 the company encouraged game pitches from all its staff, which has yielded “two designs that we’re genuinely focused on”. Given the quality of its previous games, and the fact that it told PC Gamer in April that it would like all its games to release on PC, that’s something to be excited about. From the sounds of

We’re proud to be joined by the Universities of Sunderland and Suffolk at the PC Gamer Weekender, both of which will be there to give you all the information you could ever want about tackling an undergraduate computer course at their institutions. More information on Sunderland University can be found on the institution’s site or on its Facebook page, and you can follow the uni on Twitter if meme-based education is your jam. You can also find out more about the University of Suffolk’s games cou

After Andy played Beholder last year he described it as a cross between Papers, Please and gloomy East Berlin police drama The Lives of Others, which sounds about as bleak as a game could get. You can expect more moral dilemmas like that from Beholder 2, which developer Warm Lamp Games has announced with a teaser trailer, above. The trailer gives little away other than the fact there’s stacks of paperwork, but the Steam page suggests it will be pretty free form. Beholder 2 will be out in the sec

When an update video for Dead Cells—the slick Early Access Metroidvania—popped up on Steam, I was hoping that we’d get a release date. The Motion Twin team said they are still “far from finishing the game”, which has been up on Steam since May. The Foundry Update made a couple of major additions, namely a more customisable upgrade system that lets you re-spec your character on the fly, new custom difficulty settings and a revamped weapon upgrade system. When the game entered Early Access in May,

It’s free-to-play and receives a constant stream of updates, the latest of which, Chronogenesis, came out this week. As well as adding 138 new cards—some of which Andy took a peek at last week—Chronogenesis adds a new class called Portalcraft, led by Yuwan. His trademark mechanic is Resonance, which activates certain abilities when you have an even number of cards left in your deck. On top of that, the update adds a new play format called Rotation, which only allows you to play with cards from t

Last year, for instance, we absurdly predicted that “after 12 long months of waiting, we’ll finally get a new Call of Duty game.” This one wasn’t exactly tricky, as we had already been hearing rumors about a Destiny 2 PC release before we made the prediction. Does it count as a correct 2017 prediction if it doesn’t close until 2018? We said: “Red Dead Redemption 2 will be officially announced for PC, right before the announcement that it’s been delayed until 2019.” New prediction: It’ll be delay

Both Mass Effect 2 and 3 had some cracking DLC—the sneaky spy sequences of Kasumi’s Stolen Memory and the rip-roaring Citadel are my two personal favourites. Things just got a bit easier, because DLC bundles for both games have just popped up on Origin. Both packs contain all the major single and multi-player expansions, plus extra weapons, armour, digital art books, comics and soundtracks. The Mass Effect 2 bundle is $24.99/£21.99, while the third game’s bundle is $29.99/£26.99. I wouldn’t surp

Firefly Studios is bringing its “rock hard” dungeon crawler MetaMorph to the PC Gamer Weekender, showing off the shapeshifting action that allows players to shunt between different souls (abilities, basically) to crush their enemies. Expect exploration, tactical arcade combat and customisation—this is one that’s looking to be an interesting take on the dungeon crawler genre. You can find more details about Metamorph over on the game’s official site, or via its social media presence on Twitter an

PC Gamer’s best features of 2017 explored everything from how Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are hurting gamers , to the Skyrim sex modding community where almost no taboo is off limits . It goes without saying that we’re proud of the longform work we produced this year, however 2017 also brought with it a bucket-load of entertaining news stories. With 2018 almost upon us, here’s a look back at PC Gamer’s ten biggest news stories from January through December, 2017. Playerunknown bans popular PUBG

These were the more disappointing moments of 2017, according to our PC Gamer global team. Samuel Roberts: Horror showI thought I’d love Resident Evil 7. If anything, the boss fights and set pieces were less interesting than Resident Evil 5, which seems to have gained the reputation of taking the series in the wrong direction. As a big Mass Effect fan, I found very little to like about Mass Effect: Andromeda. It was relied upon for dozens if not hundreds of mods as it allowed GTA game files to be