We now know his warning was dead-on: Perfect World has also shut down Torchlight 2 and Hob developer Runic Games. In a statement to Kotaku, Perfect World said:”Perfect World Entertainment recently closed the Seattle office of Runic Games as part of the company’s continued strategy to focus on online games as a service. We’re grateful to the team for all of their hard work bringing incredible experiences like Torchlight, Torchlight 2 and Hob to life. Runic Games will remain a part of Perfect Worl

A new Overwatch cinematic debuted today at BlizzCon, this one telling the origin story of Reinhardt—a sad tale of friendship, teamwork, and honor. As we’ve come to expect, this is another outstanding cinematic that expands upon the stories around the characters that make the Overwatch backstory so interesting. Young Reinhardt was arrogant, flashy, and impetuous—and not originally chosen to join Overwatch. Circumstances changed all that, and made him into the warrior he is now: One who hears the

Blizzard has just announced World of Warcraft: Classic, a return to the glory days of Vanilla WoW. “This is a larger endeavour than you might imagine,” said Blizzard vice president J. Allen Brack. The trailer for World of Warcraft: Classic is short and sweet, and Blizzard offered no details as to what this actually means. I’m sure you have a ton of questions, which is why you should go and read our interview with Blizzard vice president and executive producer J. Allen Brack. Blizzard isn’t offer

Blizzard is making official Vanilla World of Warcraft servers. “We would have to run Classic WoW, and then current WoW [at the same time]. Classic WoW and current WoW really don’t work the same way any more. Classic WoW has all kinds of bugs and problems, it has all kinds of exploits and hacks that everyone knows about. We’re only saying that we’re doing it, that we’re committed to creating and releasing Classic servers.

healer in Moira, shown off in a new trailer at BlizzCon 2017 today. Here’s the description, and the full breakdown:Moira’s biotic abilities enable her to contribute healing or damage in any crisis. Biotic Grasp: Using her left hand, Moira expends biotic energy to heal allies in front of her. Her right hand fires a long-range beam weapon that saps enemies’ health, healing Moira and replenishing her biotic energy. Coalescence: Moira channels a long-range beam that both heals allies and bypasses ba

Announced at Blizzcon 2017 today, the next Overwatch map is modeled after a fictional Blizzard theme park (for a second I thought a real Blizzard theme park was coming) called Blizzard World. It’s a hybrid map—part assault, part payload—with World of Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft-themed areas. Blizzard World is coming next year, and to the PTR “very, very soon.” Apparently, it’s now canon that Blizzard, the games company, exists in Overwatch’s world. But has it made a game called Overwatch in

At BlizzCon 2017 today, Blizzard announced officially that Overwatch’s Hanzo and World of Warcraft’s Alextrasza are the next heroes coming to the MOBA, along with a new event, Dragons of the Nexus. Alextrasza is a “versatile ranged support who manipulates her life energy to heal her allies,” and can transform into a dragon with her ‘Dragon Queen’ ability. In addition, general improvements are coming to HotS in 2018, including “performance-based matchmaking,” which takes into account individual m

But I’m willing to make an exception for Kobolds & Catacombs, the underground-themed expansion for Hearthstone which was announced today at BlizzCon. mode (note these aren’t collectible) Image 2 of 15 Cards from the Dungeon Runs! mode (note these aren’t collectible) Image 3 of 15 Cards from the Dungeon Runs! mode (note these aren’t collectible) Image 4 of 15 Cards from the Dungeon Runs! mode (note these aren’t collectible) Image 5 of 15 Cards from the Dungeon Runs!

Wired has a story about a company in Munich called HolodeckVR that’s made the ‘killer app’ for VR: VR Pong. I don’t know much about making games, but VR Pong doesn’t seem like the next big leap. It’s safe to say that virtual reality needs significantly more development time than everyone thought. Facebook knows this and it’s precisely the reason why the social media giant is pouring billions into creating a compelling social VR experience. Removing the cablesNo current generation of VR headsets

BlizzCon 2017 just got underway and Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime has already dropped one big piece of news: StarCraft 2 is going free to play. The change will make the Wings of Liberty campaign completely free for everyone, while Heart of the Swarm will be given free to anyone who already owns it. Unranked and Versus AI modes are also free, while Ranked can be unlocked with ten “first wins of the day” in either of them. The Kerrigan, Raynor, and Artanis commanders are completely free, and all othe

With so many games on the horizon, you can expect a frantic pace of new GPU driver releases from AMD and Nvidia. Today it was AMD that released a new Crimson ReLive 17.11.1 driver package for Radeon graphics card owners, with an emphasis on Call of Duty: WWII performance. AMD didn’t produce any other stats, though we imagine the optimizations yield minor gains at other resolutions, and for other Radeon graphics cards. The new driver release also adds support for running the Radeon RX Vega 56 lin

The two OSes effectively swapped places, with nearly two thirds of Steam gamers now using Windows 7, and just over a quarter of gamers rocking Windows 10. Are gamers ditching Windows 10 in droves? Bluehole has sold more than 13 million copies of PUBG globally, with growing interest from Chinese gamers. We’ve also previously reported on review bombing, and how the influx of Chinese players on Steam are creating an influential new contingent. Our guess is the massive drop in share for Windows 10 o

The PC Gamer Weekender is returning for its third year on 17-18 February 2018 at the Olympia in Kensington, London. Like the last two years, you’ll be able to play great PC games before they’re released, attend developer talks on some of the biggest games around, join workshops on PC hardware and tons more. You can expect our full suite of 2017 content with a load of fantastic new things for 2018. ESPORTS BOOTCAMPCheck out the eSports Academy at the PC Gamer Weekender and learn from pros first h

The BlizzCon opening ceremony starts today at 11 am Pacific, and you can watch it all in the YouTube player above or on Twitch. This is where all the big announcements are made, and we expect lots of World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, StarCraft, Overwatch, and Heroes of the Storm news. If you miss the stream, keep an eye on our news feed for all the stories. The BlizzCon 2017 opening ceremony and esports streams are free, though if you want to see absolutely everything, you’ll need a Virtual Ticket

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ anti-cheat service is banning as many as 42,000 players a day but it’s still not enough, with some matches plagued by hackers. It’s a fact that the development team apologised for earlier today, adding that it is introducing new measures to catch players that are ruining the game for everyone else. The team will roll out “additional measures” today designed to detect “unusual gameplay patterns”. Our development team is doing their best to detect and ban those who u

Instead, the region defied all expectations and made its mark on the 2017 World Championship in a truly astonishing way. (Image: © Riot Games)Setting the stageAs we headed into Worlds, Europe seemed to be beaten down. As we headed into Worlds, Europe seemed to be beaten down. At the Mid Season Invitational in the same year, Fnatic took SKT T1 to a nail bitingly close game five. G2 Esports had struggled at international events before, and this was seen as their last chance.

Dozens of games published by Daedalic Entertainment are on sale on Steam this weekend. The publisher’s weekend sale is now live, with several discounts cutting as deep as 90 percent. The star of the sale is the Daedalic Publisher Weekend Bundle, a hand-picked selection of five games. There’s also the Daedalic Entertainment Artist Selection Bundle. Finally, there’s the Daedalic Gigantic Bundle, which includes a mix of 14 adventure games, strategy games and RPGs.

Apparently the recently announced GeForce GTX 1070 Ti is not the only new card Nvidia has been working on. Today the GPU maker released a short video on YouTube that teases yet another new card, a Titan X Collector’s Edition. The entire video is only 13 seconds long, and it’s at 11-second mark that the Titan X Collector’s Edition makers a super brief appearance. Nvidia’s last Titan card was the Titan Xp, based on its current Pascal architecture. We will have to see if the Titan X Collector’s Edi

Gun-slinging MMO Wild West Online will enter non-Steam Early Access on November 15, offering early purchasers the chance to shoot their way through 100 quests. The Early Access Alpha will also include PvP combat and two public events, Artifact Hunt (fairly self explanatory) and Golden Road, of which little is known. To take part you’ll have to buy the game here: three versions are available, the cheapest of which is $29.99. If you want to learn more about the game, read James’ piece after his ha

The next For Honor season is starting on November 14, and with it will come two new heroes. In slashes the Aramusha, a dual katana-wielding Samurai Hybrid who’s fast and good at dodging attacks. Both heroes are free for Season Pass holders and will unlock on November 14. You can earn Steel by playing the game or buying it with real money: 11,000 Steel costs $9.99 while 25,000 Steel costs $19.99 (there’s no option to buy 15,000 or 30,000 Steel). For Honor will have a free weekend from November 9