But for the 2017-18 season, Valve announced today, the current Major system is being dropped. “For the next year we will be taking a more organic approach to growing the competitive ecosystem, working more closely with third-party tournaments. Instead of the previous Major system, we will be selecting many third-party tournaments to directly sponsor,” Valve wrote. The shift to third-party tournaments is especially interesting in light of our examination of the role the Majors play in the Dota 2

I am an Aldrich Faithful bastard, and I love it. That’s around the time when you first encounter the Aldrich Faithful. The Aldrich Faithful jogs away and finds a grassy patch to lie down in and watch the show. All of this, while being hounded by confusing Aldrich Faithful. Archdeacon McDonnell, the head of the Aldrich Faithful covenant, is found in a waterlogged basement guarded by two vicious monsters.

A new Game Informer podcast has a rundown of “lingering questions” about Assassin’s Creed: Origins, with answers provided by game director Ashraf Ismail. He said it’s hard to compare the cities of Memphis and Alexandria in Origins to those of previous Assassin’s Creed games, but he did enthusiastically extol the virtues of both. The monuments are incredible, they’re huge, they’re super-unique. I think Alexandria is slightly bigger, but slightly,” he explained. As for a specific comparison, he sa

Launched in December of 2014, the Netduma R1 router seeks to address many of the issues that gamers experience. Looking online found plenty of opinions on the Netduma R1, but a lack of metrics that could quantitate the performance. The Netduma router has a preferred list of games, including Call of Duty, Destiny, Halo 3, and FIFA 15. We decided to take a different approach to testing this Netduma R1 router. For good measure, we threw in some other router gear to get a clearer picture how the Net

I’m at our new @PUBATTLEGROUNDS office in Madison today. The team is working on our desert map. It’s a desert map—cacti, dry grass, dirt, and a generally arid feel—and along with a couple of ramshackle buildings there’a a train (drivable?) The images were tweeted by Brendan Greene (the titular PlayerUnknown) as he visited Bluehole’s new office in Madison, Wisconsin. You can check out the screenshots below, and click the upper right corner to enlarge them.

It tells the strange tale of a man named Ian, a “highly decorated ex-elite soldier” who is now in pursuit of the people who performed secret experiments on him in a dark prison in Europe. Those experiments left him with unique powers, including telepathy and telekinesis, but at the cost of his sanity. Topping it all off, the website at phantom8.com describes Past Cure as equal parts action, stealth, thriller, and horror, with “deep character [and] unexpected twists and turns packed into an actio

“There was another power that we cut because we just couldn’t make it work or make it fun, it didn’t hit our quality bar. It was a power that would directly allow you to fly around the space [station],” he explained. [The artists] were really happy when they cut that, you’re mostly constrained to the walls with the Gloo gun.” Free flight is a tricky business for any game, and this isn’t the first Bethesda game it’s been cut from. That wouldn’t have been an issue in Prey, since you’re stuck insid

ZeniMax has announced plans to draw players deeper into its Elder Scrolls Online MMO by offering a free trial of the ESO Plus membership program. ESO Plus is the program that replaced conventional Elder Scrolls Online subscriptions in early 2015. The ESO Plus promo event will begin at 10 am ET on July 5, and come to an end at 11:59 pm on July 9. To give it a shot, log into the game, head to the Crown Store, and select “ESO Plus Free Trial” in the featured category. During that same period, curre

If you haven’t spent all of your money on fireworks, beer, and burgers, then check out TigerDirect’s sale on AMD’s fastest Ryzen processor currently available. Just enter coupon code IUN166219 at checkout and it will drop the price from $420 to $400. Newegg has it on sale for $460, though several other sites have it marked down to $420 currently, including Amazon. In case you need a refresher, the Ryzen 7 1800X features 8 cores, 16 threads, 4MB of L2 cache, and 16MB of L3 cache. We suspect this

And then we went away from that and then eventually ended up saying: let’s just put an ‘L’ in there and then it’s the Gloo Cannon.” Unlike the game’s conventional weapons, the Gloo Cannon doesn’t have a real-world template to work from. There was no way we could do this and have it perform on console, and so one of the constraints early that we learned for the Gloo gun is that: we can attach gloo to most things, but we can’t attach gloo to gloo. My own mixture of choice involves pairing Lift Fie

Every Monday, Build of the week highlights a unique rig from the web’s most dedicated PC building communities. Clock me momma like a computer wheel / Clock me momma anyway you feel / Hey, momma, clock me. All seasoned PC builders know you can only pick one: a powerful graphics card or a motorized steampunk clock wheel. For more pictures and information on how this impossible thing came into existence, check out the official build log. The Wheel of the Star components:CPU: Intel i7 7700KMobo: MSI

Looking for a laptop to take your gaming on the go? Or maybe you’re looking for something light to replace your desktop entirely. The Acer Predator 17 G9-793-79D9 doesn’t have a catchy name, but it does have a lot of power inside. The price is normally up at $2,349 on Newegg, so you’re getting a nice saving of $350. Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links.

Gigabyte has fleshed out its expansive live of GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards with yet another SKU, one that comes with its own self-contained liquid cooler to keep overclocks stable. The new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Waterforce Extreme Edition 11G (quite the mouthful) is one of several models that Gigabyte is marketing under its Aorus brand for gamers. According to TechPowerUp, the WaterForce Extreme Edition 11G is based on the same exact printed circuit board (PCB) as Gigabayte’s air-cooled Aoru

Not only does Microsoft want the entire world to adopt Windows 10, it also wants to make sure everyone is running the latest build, which is the Creators Update. “Given the Windows 10 Creators Update provides the latest security protections to help keep you safe, we want to help update your device as soon as possible,” Microsoft stated in a blog post. Microsoft said it will begin sending notifications to these systems urging users to upgrade to the Creators Update. These are intended to prepare

StarCraft: Remastered (SC:R) was closer to a historical preservation project than a modernization effort. A few days ago, I had a chance to preview StarCraft: Remastered. When I asked about their dedication to preserving the feel of the original StarCraft: Brood War, they doubled down on how it’s their foremost priority. I don’t think that idea ever had legs.”Stilwell explained that feedback from the existing StarCraft: Brood War community was what decided the direction of StarCraft: Remastered.

This atmospheric adventure brilliantly weaves fascinating real-world history into its compelling story, with smart puzzles, a likeable hero, and a genuinely funny script. This classic adventure from Lucasfilm Games is full of colourful characters, absurd puzzles, and quotable dialogue, and is considered by many to be one of the finest examples of the genre. Solve a mysteryGabriel Knight: Sins of the FathersWhile there is some humour in this, the first Gabriel Knight adventure, it’s more serious

Full Clip Edition is good, because Bulletstorm is good. Duke Nukem is available to owners of Duke Nukem’s Bulletstorm Tour—a DLC ‘bonus’ given out to preorderers of the Full Clip Edition. The problem with Duke Nukem being in Bulletstorm is that Duke Nukem isn’t a character. At his best—in Duke Nukem 3D—he’s a soundboard of stolen action movie quotes. What’s frustrating is that Duke Nukem isn’t unsalvageable.

First teased during the Sony conference at this year’s E3, the Spider-Man: Homecoming Virtual Reality Experience is out now on Steam free-of-charge. Tied to the incoming movie that hits cinemas this Friday, Spidey’s so-called ‘VR experience’ promises a “fun and thrilling first-person look inside the world of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.” Steam reviews seem pretty split on whether or not that’s actually the case, but despite the game’s short lifespan, it’s free and, well, it’s nice to g

When our James got to grips with Middle-earth: Shadow of War at last month’s E3 he described it as a “violent Tolkien fan-fiction generator” whose “new tools at every level make for unpredictable, dramatic, and memorable encounters.” Developer Monolith held a livestream this weekend that showcased some of the above, and also offered a glimpse at the Shadow of Mordor follow-up’s PC settings. Most interestingly, the stream offers a quick peek at Shadow of War’s PC graphics settings around the 2.35

The Five Nights at Freddy’s creator Scott Cawthon has confirmed the next FNaF game has been cancelled—despite having spent the last month dropping hints regarding what it might entail. Cawthon highlights this move does not mark his departure from game development, nor does it mean he’s abandoning the Five Nights at Freddy’s series. In fact, the first game that I’d like to make would be something for you guys. Cawthon continues, suggesting the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy’s movie is in “amazing