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Guild Wars 3 is 'significantly more' of an MMO than the first game, but that doesn't mean it's like GW2: 'All three of our games can coexist as different experiences'

Justin Wagner — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 21:44:20 +0000

Guild Wars 2 is one of the biggest MMOs going, but it's a sequel to a game that's just barely an MMO—the original Guild Wars is more of a mission-based ARPG with shared town hubs that feels like an MMO due to its huge roster of character classes and /dance emotes. When a game like Guild Wars 3 gets announced, an obvious question follows: will it be an MMO or not?

According to a blog post from ArenaNet studio head Colin Johanson that went up earlier this week, the answer is yes, but with an asterisk. In the post, he lays out the studio's taxonomy for the first two games. The first Guild Wars game, Johanson reckons, was a "cooperative online RPG," but when everyone started calling it an MMO, ArenaNet followed suit. The second is a true-blue MMO that was always intended to toy with the genre's conventions.

As for the third? It "lands near the middle of the MMO spectrum … While it fits the definition of an MMORPG significantly more than Guild Wars Reforged does, it doesn't try to replicate the large-scale gameplay pillars that so uniquely define Guild Wars 2."

"This ensures that all three of our games can coexist as different experiences on different timelines, telling different stories about the world of Tyria," the post explains.

Johanson concedes that this declaration is "broad and vague," and it's true that we only have the roughest idea of what Guild Wars 3 might look like at this point. That said, social media is ablaze with prospective players trying to guess at exactly what sort of game GW3 will be—speculation has ranged from a New World-like to a GW1 successor to a singleplayer game—which I suppose is what happens when the only two games in your series hardly play like one another.

If nothing else, we know it's an MMORPG of a sort, or at least an MMO-like, which somehow feels like a relief. It's like stumbling onto an oasis at a time when, as PC Gamer's Harvey Randall put it, "loving MMOs … is an exercise in frustration, grief, and moving on."

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Path of Exile 2 director says players exploiting system to become in-game millionaires 'ruined Christmas for me' and joked that he's 'lost all sympathy' for everyone who took advantage of it

Tyler Colp — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 19:19:50 +0000

Path of Exile 2's player trading economy crumbled in its last season the moment word got out about a clever technique that would net you so much loot you could become an in-game millionaire in a few days. It was so catastrophic that developer Grinding Gear Games had to interrupt its holiday break to fix it.

This was the season the "temple" was introduced to the game, giving players the ability to create their own dungeons by connecting various rooms together on a big grid. The system was mostly meant to be a way to fight a new boss and find temple-exclusive loot, but players quickly figured out how to make it the most lucrative system in the game for all loot.

Part of the strategy involved locking a character in the campaign and repeatedly resetting a level to gradually grow your temple into a money-making machine. By linking specific synergistic rooms together in an endless snake, you could avoid having them deleted after running the dungeon and guarantee heaps of valuable loot—way more than you're intended to get anywhere else in the game.

PoE 2's co-director Mark Roberts said having to deploy emergency patches to fix some of this "ruined Christmas for me" in a recent interview. "We now—because of this bloody temple—have way more active stats for checking how many items are dropping in certain instances," he added.

Roberts said this moments before another developer showed him what players were doing with the temple that same day. "It says, 'TEMPLE SHENANIGANS T1 ISSUE AFTER INTERVIEW' in capital letters," he said looking just off-screen. A few hours after the interview, a patch went out to address a temple strategy that, while far less egregious than the first one, still threatened to destroy the economy.

"I don't care if it's a mid-league nerf, I've lost all sympathy for that bloody temple and everyone running it," Roberts said. "No, I'm being extreme, I don't want to actually just make it bad, but it's left some trauma."

Typically, the developers try not to touch anything major a few weeks into a league, but the temple exploits were too severe to ignore. PoE 2 is technically an early access game, but most people treat it like they would PoE 1 and expect GGG to be on top of balancing it so nothing sours the experience for them.

Making as much in-game wealth as you can ends up being the primary goal of PoE 2 players who wish to upgrade their builds with the most powerful items. You can always opt out of having to play the economy game with the solo self-found mode (no multiplayer allowed), but then some of the rarest items won't be feasible to get within a single league.

I wonder if this debacle will convince GGG to avoid ever dropping a new league right before the holidays. Players are always searching for ways to break the game and they're certainly not going to respect that you're on vacation. It seems like someone has to be on-call to stop whatever absurdly powerful exploit they inevitably find.

Nobody needs to grind for 100 hours to see how Path of Exile 2 has redefined the action RPG loot hunt

Tyler Colp — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Path of Exile 2 has taken the throne. Not only is it a worthy sequel, its latest update earns it the right to have "next-generation action RPG" in its official description. I've played obscene amounts of these types of games and have never seen one quite so ambitious. Certainly not one that is still in early access and doesn't even have a finished campaign yet.

Even if developer Grinding Gear Games says it will be finished by the end of the year, PoE 2 is already one of the best action RPGs I've ever played and absolutely worth the price of admission (before it goes free-to-play for 1.0). It's one of the only games that has figured out how to follow-up its campaign with an endgame loot grind that barely feels like a grind at all.

The result is an experience that blends the eerie worldbuilding and irresistible loot chase of Diablo 2 with the challenging combat of Elden Ring. PoE 2 is a game where a giant gorilla can smash you into pieces with a stone pillar and a game where that same gorilla can drop an item that transforms your entire character. In fact, one of its many classes specializes in taming monsters, and I bet you can guess how cathartic it is to watch that giant gorilla smash someone else apart for a change.

PoE 2 is full of ideas stretched further than any other game in the genre has pulled off. The only roadblock is its staggering complexity. Ask anyone if they remember the first time they witnessed the might of its sprawling skill tree and you'll know if that sounds like a rabbit hole you want to dive into. As someone who still has much to learn, I think it's absolutely worth the plunge.

(Image credit: Tyler C. / Grinding Gear Games)

PoE 2's excellent campaign is the sole reason it's actually playable for normal people compared to PoE 1. While the Return of the Ancients update didn't add a new chapter of the story, it did clean up some of its worst parts. Experienced players will notice how much faster it is to navigate some of the most labyrinthine levels, which makes replaying the campaign every season seem much easier.

New players just benefit from tighter pacing and the heaps of items you get from the latest league, or season mechanic. These side activities are the focus of each league and eventually get added permanently to the game. This time, there are stone shards scattered throughout Wraeclast that drop valuable items after defeating a few waves of monsters.

Bonus loot like that is essential for helping you survive the campaign's most brutal bosses, like the man who goes full Bloodborne and turns into a mutated wolf. We're already well past the early days of PoE 2 when the campaign was so stingy that you could play for 10 hours before getting your first necklace. Now, you'll have power spikes that let you trivialize certain sections before the enemies catch back up and start drawing blood again. Unlike other action RPGs, like Diablo 4, PoE 2's campaign feels like a journey rather than homework to finish before the real game begins.

(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

Before, when PoE 2 presented you an endless endgame world map filled with little nodes representing levels to clear, your only goal was to see what you could find. Unless you frequented Reddit or YouTube, you'd have no idea what you're supposed to be doing. And now, that's no longer a problem.

The new version of the map surrounds your starting position with each major endgame activity, letting each one lure you in its direction. In the south you might see a patch of land warped by the bright green cracks of the hordes of Abyss monsters crawling out of their domain deep below the earth, or a pale garden of twitching purple hands where Breach monsters have invaded.

(Image credit: Tyler C. / Grinding Gear Games)

As you explore each of these areas, you'll run into characters who explain what's going on and direct you to a main hub for their associated mechanic. I met the ghost of a woman who opened a hole in the ground leading to an unsettling boss fight in the pitch black domain of a god. Later, I met a man standing next to a shattered mirror who spoke in riddles until I broke his curse and learned about the psychic damage (and piles of loot) Delirium encounters can bring you.

By filling the world with strange points-of-interest, PoE 2's endgame has abandoned the monotonous grind for a series of compelling investigations into its bizarre world. And the best part is there's a satisfying sense of completion as you finish each thread and clear out the map—which also means you have a solid stopping point if you're not interested in grinding until the next league.

PoE 2 is now packed with juicy secrets and powerful loot to find, creating an endgame experience that barely feels like an endgame at all.

Bobby Prince, the legendary composer behind Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, has died

Justin Wagner — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 18:47:25 +0000

Composer and sound designer Robert Caskin Prince III, more commonly known as Bobby Prince, died June 16 at the age of 81. The news came in the form of an obituary which was posted to Legacy. "Those closest to Bobby knew him not only for his extraordinary accomplishments but for his kindness, humor, humility, generosity, creativity, and deep love of family," it reads.

"Whether composing music, telling stories, playing guitar, sharing laughter, or offering encouragement, he approached life with gratitude and an open heart."

Prince developed sound effects and music for dozens of classic PC games, including Doom, Doom 2, Wolfenstein 3D, and more. His music for Doom in particular remains one of the celebrated videogame soundtracks in the medium's history, making it into the US Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. It's full to bursting with homages to the day's en vogue heavy metal: bands like Metallica, Judas Priest, and Diamond Head.

RIP Bobby Prince. this 1993 clip of him explaining the Commander Keen menu music is amazing. worth a watch even if you don't give a rip about Keen. source link below.
— @jaytholen.net (@jaytholen.net.bsky.social) 2026-06-19T18:46:58.450Z

His work can be found all over the games put out by id Software, Apogee, and 3D Realms in the '90s. Lesser known examples include Blake Stone, Bio Menace, and certain episodes of the Commander Keen platformers, and he worked alongside composer Lee Jackson on both Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of the Triad.

Jackson posted about Prince's passing on Bluesky, saying Prince was "a teacher, a mentor, and a friend."

"We worked together so well on Duke Nukem 3D that we could anticipate what the other was going to do next," he said. "If it weren't for him, I'd probably be stuck in a tech room somewhere still. Au revoir, Bobby. You're definitely missed."

Co-founder of id Software, Tom Hall, also said a few words on Bluesky: "His music legacy will live on, making inspired music for Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, countless others. A true legend. And such a nice man, great musician, wonderful, fun-loving man, nothing but happy memories of him. A loss to the world."

Everyone at Romero Games is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Bobby Prince. He left an incredible mark on games and on my life. pic.twitter.com/xy7XBMR3n4June 19, 2026

If you like puzzle platformers, multi-dimensional traversal, and ducks—I have the game for you

Elie Gould — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:38:52 +0000

I have played my fair share of platformers—although, the last one I played was Hollow Knight: Silksong, and thanks to the ass-kicking I received in that game I haven't been able to look another one in the eyes since. But you know what helps subdue the fear of getting stomped on? Ducks in hats.

Dodo Duckie has just that. It's a cute platformer where you play as a duck called Dodo who's trying to rescue his kidnapped chicken friends from some greedy aliens. But the catch with this platformer is that you have to play in different dimensions—I'm not talking about a multiverse—I mean 3D and 2D, which you can cycle between with the help of a very stylish magical propeller hat, courtesy of Capie the capybara.

BornMonkie

You can flip between 2D and 3D whenever you want. Exploring the world in 2D allows you to traverse greater distances, jumping from one terrain to another, while 3D lets you discover more secrets hidden in the map and let you line yourself up for your next jump.

There's also plenty of puzzles scattered throughout the map in which you'll need to utilise both 2D and 3D perspectives to complete. Sometimes—to get from one area to another—you need to use a stone cube and place it on a weighted slab. The catch is that you can only pick the cube up while in 3D and you can only jump in 2D, so there's some juggling dimensions to do to figure the puzzle out.

It can sound a little complicated, but dealing with both dimensions is welcomingly straightforward. Even just over the course of the short demo I was switching between the two instinctively whenever it was warranted. The platforming itself is also quite forgiving, meaning you can focus on changing perspectives, solving puzzles, and taking pictures with all the cute capybaras found across the world—it's certainly a welcome break from the horrors of Silksong.

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Sony deletes mention of PC from annual strategy report in favour of a gushing about AI

joshua.wolens@futurenet.com (Joshua Wolens) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:37:32 +0000

Man, there was a while there where we could all be real smug about being on PC, right? Sony exclusives—save the obvious—all got eventual releases on our desktops, Xbox stuff was a given even while its console fanbase gnashed their teeth about seeing Starfield on a PS5, and Nintendo… well, Nintendo is Nintendo, but those unofficial Zelda ports are very impressive.

Now? Well, we're still smug. Rightly so. But Sony decided we were living high on the hog for too long, and resolved that its splashy singleplayer blockbusters would no longer be available anywhere but its own consoles. Now, just to drive that point home, it's nixed PC from a discussion of its "business environment and strategy" in an annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (via Game File). Even worse: it's replaced it with a great big paean to AI.

In the 2025 version of the same report, Sony wrote that it would "continue its efforts to deploy its first-party titles to multiple platforms such as PC." That's now completely gone in the 2026 version. Instead, you get this: "Sony is utilizing AI to unleash the creativity of studios and further enhance the PlayStation experience."

Which is deeply dispiriting all by itself, but wait! It goes on: "Sony aims to improve productivity through the use of AI powered tools, allowing development teams to reinvest their time into building richer worlds and gameplay experiences. In the platform business, Sony is working to leverage AI to route transactions more efficiently, and to personalize and recommend content for individual users in the PlayStation Store. Sony also aims to push visual fidelity forward and deliver higher quality gameplay experiences through continued investments in AI and machine learning."

Certainly gets me excited. I've never gone gaga for Sony's first-party games, but they're good-looking things. Spider-Man's New York looks and feels amazing; The Last of Us is very unpleasant; God of War's giant snake guy? Love him. Love that my subwoofer kicks into overdrive whenever he opens his mouth.

Perhaps there is a way to deploy AI that both enhances productivity without drowning all this good, human-made art direction under a tidal wave of slop, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it and I'm not making any bets. I guess it's relatively immaterial to me as a player—I don't have a PlayStation and, well, we're not seeing a Sony singleplayer game on Steam any time in the near future.

The greatest FPS mode of all time is endangered

morgan.park@futurenet.com (Morgan Park) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:36:12 +0000

FOV 90

(Image credit: Future)

Welcome to FOV 90, an FPS column from staff writer Morgan Park. Every other week, I cover topics relevant to first-person shooter enjoyers, spanning everything from multiplayer and singleplayer to the old and the new.

FLAG STOLEN. FLAG DROPPED. FLAG STOLEN. FLAG DROPPED.

So sang the anthem of capture the flag, a cornerstone mode of the multiplayer FPS that has persisted for over three decades. The mode is almost as old as the genre itself, but it was first popularized by the Threewave CTF mod for Quake by Dave "Zoid" Kirsch. It was impossible to be an FPS fan of the '90s or '00s without a version of these words burning a permanent hole in your brain. Though the frequent updates from the announcer could be tedious, hearing them now elicits nothing but joy.

Two teams. Two flags. Two bases on opposite ends of a map. It's a dynamic game of close shaves, stalwart defenses, and upsets. There is no image more powerful in multiplayer gaming than a flag dropped mere feet from its destination—proof of a late hero who braved enemy lines and almost made it home.

I try not to throw around "perfect" lightly, but CTF really earns the superlative. Every FPS mode falls somewhere on a spectrum of casual and competitive. Way over on the casual end is team deathmatch, a timeless classic that I also consider perfect. On the other end is bomb mode—the apex of sweaty, tactical, and endlessly repeatable objective play.

CTF is special because it does both, and it does them extremely well. At times, heisting the enemy flag is a gripping team effort that rewards coordination, stealth, map knowledge, and pure skill. Other times, the objective blurs into the background of a lobby that's more interested in blowing each other up.

(Image credit: Valve)

There is no image more powerful in multiplayer gaming than a flag dropped mere feet from its destination—proof of a late hero who braved enemy lines and almost made it home.

It's normal and natural for not everyone among a lobby to be locked in on the objective, and CTF is happy to accommodate. There are other great objective modes that work with minimal participation—king of the hill and Battlefield's conquest come to mind—but they tend to work because the goal is as simple as standing in certain spots for a while. You can participate in conquest by accident, but playing CTF takes intention. It's a playstyle all its own, and in fact, the best flag carriers can harness a disorganized lobby. All it takes is a small splinter group, or even just one fearless individual, to sneak into a base and get out with the flag before anyone notices.

It's a format that's only as sweaty as the people playing it—it's poker night, it's pickup basketball. It's social, it's competitive, but only so serious. Doesn't that embody what the FPS genre used to do so well? Before matchmaking made strangers of us all, the multiplayer FPS was a place. Servers were hangout spots with friends, regulars, and established house rules.

Where did CTF go?

CTF was the perfect pastime. So it's a shame that the mode has become a rarity. Look around at the popular shooters of today and you won't find many flags, but it's understandable why: CTF was born from the arena shooter, a genre that's been effectively dead for a long time. The mode's waning presence coincided with the rise of multiplayer service games built around single modes with purpose-built maps. Hero shooters, extraction shooters, and battle royales don't offer the variety that was once expected of a Quake, Tribes, or Halo.

Similarly, Counter-Strike 2 and Rainbow Six Siege are so hyper-focused on bomb that alternate modes tend to die on the vine or not exist in the first place. Even Call of Duty, an enduring bastion of mode variety, doesn't always make room for CTF. The last time it appeared at all was as a late-season arrival in Modern Warfare 3 (2023). The last time it was included as a core launch mode was 2017.

You could build a whole game around CTF, but you won't get much love for trying to bring back a classic, as the developers of Last Flag and Highguard learned just this year. And it's been like this for a long time now. Tribes: Ascend, whose CTF mode stood out for its speed and difficulty, got its last update in 2016.

No, I reckon CTF needs to be one great option among many to truly thrive, and there just aren't many folks making shooters like that anymore. The one popular FPS where CTF is still prominent is Team Fortress 2, which swaps flags for intelligence briefcases. I think every day I've ever played TF2 has involved at least one embattled round of 2Fort—a legendary venue for CTF whose discreet tunnels and swiss-cheese interior were built with the mode in mind.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

It's a format that's only as sweaty as the people playing it—it's poker night, it's pickup basketball. It's social, it's competitive, but only so serious.

But when I think of CTF, I think of Halo. You can still play it through the Master Chief Collection or Halo Infinite as a core Arena mode, and I suggest you do, because I don't believe there has ever been a more successful marriage of game and mode. It's large, spacious maps make flag runs intense, and the measured movement speed of players means you usually have plenty of time to react to a stolen flag before it scores. I don't know if Halo was the first game to do this, but I also think it was genius to make the flag carrier have to actually carry the flag. Not only are teams encouraged to guard the vulnerable carrier, but the flag itself becomes a deadly and memorable last-ditch melee weapon.

Halo accommodates CTF at every scale and permutation. You can be a stealthy infiltrator who picks up active camo and disappears the flag along with it. You can barge in and Terminator your way into a possession. But the inclusion of vehicles is when Halo really shines. You'll never feel closer to total randos in a shooter than you will after joining a three-person Warthog crew, raiding the enemy base, and burning rubber with your buddy white-knuckling the flag in the passenger seat.

But hey, I'm turning 30 this year, so of course my ideal version came from the mid-2000s. For other perspectives, I suggest reading this fun r/gaming Reddit post in which dozens of people just start naming CTF games they dug. The thread has 98 comments, yet just 12 upvotes, which feels appropriate for our underappreciated mode. CTF doesn't enjoy the spotlight anymore, but for many, it never got better.

Epic says the 'ground-up rebuild' of its launcher offers 5-6.5x improved performance, and the Epic Games Store is getting a big redesign

Jacob Fox — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:27:10 +0000

If we did one of our weekly polls on which game platform/store is your favourite, I would be very surprised if anything other than a miniscule minority of readers selected the Epic Games Store. I barely ever use the thing and even I know it's not the most enjoyable experience. But that might not be the case for much longer, as there's a big update coming.

We first reported on plans for a technical overhaul of the Epic Games Store in February. Epic Games Store GM Steve Allison told us at the time that the improvement is "pretty profound."

New slides out of Unreal Fest, posted on X by Pirat_Nation, describe a complete redesign of the launcher, and the big claims are that the "ground-up rebuild" will lead to a "5x faster cold start (average)" and "6.5x faster systray restore to library (average)." In other words, much quicker to boot up, either from the system tray or cold.

I thankfully have a small enough library on the platform that it isn't too sluggish, but I've heard some real terror tales from colleagues with bigger libraries. Our Jacob (different Jacob) wrote about the phenomena back in 2023 when comparing to the Heroic Launcher.

I have no reason to doubt him, either, given the general difficulty I have using the app. For example, launching games on-press rather than displaying more info, and popping up a separate window for downloads.

Other changes shown on the slides include:

Personalised game recommendations on the home page
Quick-access categories for easier single-page browsing
Product detail pages tailored to each player, "connecting players to the game's community, story, and their own progression"
Patch notes on the game's storefront

We reported in February that there are plans to test "community and forums around some of the top games on the store" and add player profiles, avatars, private messaging, voice chat, and game-independent parties.

According to Pirat_Nation, the Epic Games Store will also get cross-region game gifting, publisher-funded coupons, and a tool to check how games will run on your system.

(Image credit: Future)

A lot of this of course sounds very similar to how Valve does things on Steam, and that's not a bad thing in my books. For one, most PC gamers use Steam and it's what they're used to. And second, well, it's just a better design. If you click a game page, for instance, you want to be able to access anything relevant to that game, whether it's patch notes, reviews, or whatever else.

Let's just hope the new rebuild lands before too long and follows through on what its promises. I'll be particularly keen to see how actual in-app navigation feels in terms of snappiness. Launchers are tools after all, not products in themselves—they should keep out of the way as much as possible.

Don't be put off by its name—Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key to My Heart is actually a very fun dungeon crawler with a unique spin

Mollie Taylor — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:26:35 +0000

I should have known straight away that Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key to My Heart was from the same team behind Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. Ridiculous name? Check. Deeply brainrotted humour? Double check. Ridiculously fun to play despite its relatively simple premise? Check, check, and check.

Rizz Dungeon (eurgh, I'm still getting used to the name) is chronically online girlypop deluxe—unironically using "chat" to address the room despite not being anywhere near a Twitch stream, silly little sleepovers, and constantly flirting with all the other girlies you cross paths with. It's as if a nightclub bathroom was actually a series of dungeons filled with cute monsters. I mean, sometimes it is like that, but you get my point.

(Image credit: Snoozy Kazoo)

Instead of being put in the shoes of some battle-hardened dungeon crawler, I'm instead piloting Taffy—a ditzy flirt who's much better at hitting on monsters than she is at fighting them. She can "rizz" her way through encounters, using pick-up lines and honing in on what each monster girl likes in order to recruit them and have them fight on her behalf. Make love not war, and all that.

Girldom is forever finicky, though, and I love Rizz Dungeon's little systems that all play off each other. Certain monster girls will sulk if they're not placed where they like to be in the party—lowering their stats—while some will either become jealous or empowered if they witness you hugging another monster girl in front of them.

Figuring out what each monster girl likes and how that directly interacts with and influences the others seems like it's going to be a ton of fun when it comes to maximising party synergy. I only got to play with it a teeny bit during the demo, but finding ways to give everyone a stat boost right from the get-go with choice placements and interactions was ridiculously satisfying.

(Image credit: Snoozy Kazoo)

And at the end of a long day dungeon crawling, you can initiate sleepovers with your recruited monster girls. Gossip away to build friendship or romance—you know, as all the girlies do. I did find some of these dialogue choices frustratingly obtuse in both the sleepovers and battle encounters—I fumbled the baddies on multiple occasions because the context clues weren't quite loud enough for me to pick up on, with the text "L rizz bozo" flashing across the screen, taunting me.

Although Rizz Dungeon's demo is just a small snippet of what's to come, I'm already obsessed with its take on what is usually a brutal and occasionally unforgiving genre. With its colourful pixel art and cutesy decorations, it's very much the opposite of what I've come to expect from dank and dark dungeon crawlers.

Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key to My Heart is currently slated to release on September 17.

'London is ready to level up and lead the world in esports': Mayor of London wants to use big events to stimulate economy and create opportunities for young people

Jess Kinghorn — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:22:34 +0000

As a Brit, I know London for many things: the always slightly too warm but no less incredible 'tube' transport network, all the times I've overheard my fellow Brits mistake the Houses of Parliament for 'a big church,' and black snot. Okay, maybe that last one was oversharing. Anyway the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, wants to add esports to that list.

Khan has been in Tokyo, Japan this week and visited the Red Bull Gaming Sphere alongside London-based esports company Fnatic yesterday. The Mayor expressed he wants to make London the "the esports capital of the world" in a post about the visit on X.

The Mayor also wrote, "London is ready to level up and lead the world in esports." A London Assembly press release goes on to elaborate on these ambitions, explaining that "Esports has grown into a multi-billion global industry over the last decade, and is predicted to grow from $2 billion to nearly $10 billion by 2033."

London itself has already seen big wins from esports events, with the 2024 League of Legends World Championship Final at the O2 apparently contributing £12 million to the local economy, and the 2025 Blast Premier London Open at OVO Arena Wembley generating £30 million. As such, London City Hall has commissioned a report to explore how exactly the capital can get a slice of that lucrative pie.

London also wants to leverage esports as a way to increase "opportunities for young people" too, of course. In addition to persuading more big events to bring their money to London, the report recommends "expanding access to esports careers through schools, apprenticeships and training providers," and "bringing together universities and employers to build partnership and talent pipelines."

London is ready to level up and lead the world in esports.At the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in Tokyo with Fnatic and Sony, I set out my ambition for London to be the esports capital of the world. pic.twitter.com/dLqAF7XEuwJune 18, 2026

Okay, let me dispense with the badly veiled cynicism: As much as I want to bring as many people into games as possible, I feel conflicted about the city going all-in on esports when I know there are plenty of young people in London (and the wider UK) whose basic needs are simply not being met. Obviously, PC gamers can care about more than one thing at a time—we are pro-multi-taskers, after all—and it's entirely possible we can enjoy a bit of esports as a treat while we also make efforts to eradicate child poverty.

But looking to the niche industry of esports as a good source of opportunities for young folks feels short-sighted at best. For one thing, many esports stars enjoy shorter careers than other sports professionals, with many retiring in their 20's. With 1.01 million people aged between 16 to 24 neither in education, employment, or training in the UK, I'm not completely convinced that esports is the play to make at this point in the game.

MrBeast is co-writing 'the book event of the year' to 'get a whole generation psyched about reading again'

joshua.wolens@futurenet.com (Joshua Wolens) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:01:17 +0000

YouTube's glassy-eyed ever-king MrBeast (real name James Donaldson) has partnered with prolific thriller author James Patterson to write a book about a version of his Beast Games show where it sounds like people probably die? Yes, that is accurate. That's the world you and I live in now. We both let it come to this and did nothing to stop it.

The book is called The Most Dangerous Games and was announced a while ago, but its cover and release date have just been revealed. The deluxe edition, available for preorder now for $33, has a cover which boasts that it is co-authored by messrs James Patterson and—up top, in a larger font—"MrBEAST". It is said to be "The book event of the year."

"In a world on the brink of collapse, one hundred players face off in a ruthless, high‑stakes competition with everything on the line," goes the blurb. "The reward? The chance to save humanity—and one billion dollars. The stakes couldn't be higher… You’ve seen MrBeast break the internet. But nothing could prepare you for a competition this wild."

Donaldson—who recently became the "first individual creator" to hit 500 million subscribers on YouTube—put out a statement to accompany the book's announcement: "Growing up, I thought books were boring. As I got into my 20s I realized I was just reading the wrong books and they can be exciting if it’s the right match. Writing this book with James—who’s literally one of the greatest storytellers on the planet—was an opportunity to create a story that I would’ve been obsessed with as a kid.

"I wanted to make something that would draw young people in and get a whole generation psyched about reading again. I think we pulled it off, and I’m so proud of what we made. I hope our fans love it." I am quite curious as to what books Donaldson would put on his personal top 10. He's so associated with a plasticky pursuit of fame that I want him to secretly be an expert on Water Margin or something.

It's worth mentioning that Beast Games is essentially a copy of the concept behind Squid Game, the popular South Korean thriller about contestants risking their lives for money. Squid Game is, itself, inspired by Battle Royale, the film and novel about Japanese teenagers forced to fight to the death on a secluded island. It all makes The Most Dangerous Games feel like a copy of a copy of a copy, which probably means it will be… really good? I think that's how that works.

Patterson, meanwhile, is an extremely prolific author (though, as Polygon notes, he does cop to utilising a whole stable of co-authors to keep the pace up) that I mostly associate with thrillers, though he writes across genres. "Jimmy has the best storytelling instincts of anyone I’ve worked with," said Patterson, "and we had a great time working in collaboration, going back and forth with ideas, making the novel better and better every step of the way."

The Most Dangerous Games releases on September 1.

Palworld studio says 'gamers don't want' AI in their games: 'It feels like everyone who is super gung-ho about it isn't from the industry'

Justin Wagner — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:54:36 +0000

It's been a big moment for AI disclosures. Games with such labels have been flooding Steam as of late, and whenever the parade of summer trade shows rolls around, the inevitable question quickly arises: how many of these games were made with the controversial tech? The answer doesn't always go down easy as we saw with the new Crazy Taxi game, for example.

Speaking with GamesRadar, Pocketpair's head of publishing and communication, John Buckley, compared the advent of AI to that of "early crypto stuff," saying "It feels very intrusive. It feels like everyone who is super gung-ho about it isn't from the industry. They're, dare I say, outsiders looking to get rich quick." The article states he noted AI's value as a "search tool or coding assistant" was less easy to dismiss, saying that was "a very different conversation."

(Image credit: Pocketpair)

Buckley elaborated specifically in regard to AI-generated artwork and assets in a follow-up article from GamesRadar. "We have a lot of artists in-house," he said. "They like doing stuff themselves. There's no reason to get rid of them for the sake of an AI doing it. Just seems pointless."

He added that it hardly seems worth triggering the backlash on social media, with which he empathized. "Even I, who is in the industry, I just felt like a natural, ugh, why? The rest of your game looks fine. Did you need to? I think that's going to be the attitude for quite a while. I think people will look at it and say, did you need to do that? Couldn't you just do it yourself?"

"Gamers don't want it," Buckley said. "And if the gamers don't want it, I guess that's it, right? Not much of a conversation to be had." All this affirms what Buckley said last year regarding Pocketpair's refusal to publish games made with generative AI.

He also posited that a potential future where games are marketed by their authenticity, where disclosures exist not to denote games containing AI but those without it, are "a bit dystopian … that's kind of sad to think about." Given the resistance to AI disclosures by industry figures like Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, as well as the fact that multiple big games have been caught with undisclosed AI "placeholders" slipping into release versions, such a future doesn't feel out of the question.

Logitech G305 X Superlight review

James Bentley — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:37:08 +0000

For years, Logitech's egg-shaped G305 has been a budget beast, offering a comfortable feel, decent sensor, and solid shape at a reasonable price. It was so good, in fact, that it was our pick for the best budget wireless gaming mouse until the copycat Mchose G3 V2 Pro showed up. Incredibly, it claimed a spot on top of the budget gaming mouse hill for eight entire years.

Almost as if it were perturbed for losing that spot, Logitech has just launched a refresh, the G305 X Superlight, with an upgraded sensor and ever so slightly different look. Now it's got RGB that shines through a translucent patch in the base, to match the look of the G316 X 98 gaming keyboard.

But, in return for those upgrades, you are paying more money now, so it doesn't just need to be better to actually be better. It instead needs to be better for the money. Okay, I'll stop saying "be better".

That's all before mentioning that, like almost every bit of PC gaming gear, the competition has gotten fierce over the years. Logitech doesn't just need to compete with itself; it has to throw hands with a dozen other mouse brands to come out victorious.

Logitech G305 X Superlight specs

(Image credit: Future)

Sensor: Hero 44K
Connectivity: Wired (USB Type-C), wireless (2.4 GHz and Bluetooth)
Switches: Not stated
Polling rate: 1,000 Hz (up to 8,000 Hz with optional dongle)
DPI: 44,000
Acceleration: 40 G
Speed: 678 IPS
RGB: Yes
Weight: 59 g
Battery life: 130 Hours
Price: $80 | £70

At 59 grams, the G305 X Superlight has a pleasant feel to it. It's not very weighty at all, but there's certainly enough that it gives some resistance as I use it. The skates give resistance, too, and I'm not a fan of them. They catch just a little, sticking more to my mouse pad than I'd like. It definitely feels like more of a subjective thing, but I would like a light mouse to glide more in use, especially in snappy first-person shooters.

As well as this, I can hear a defined scratching sound with the mouse skates (we had the same problem with the Protoarc EM25 recently), which doesn't appear to do damage but can be quite annoying. Once I really started to take note of it, the mouse actively annoyed me, which is a bad sign for long-term use.

I even found myself cautious of making wide motions because it was loud enough to distract. You should be able to fix this by replacing the skates with after-market ones, but that's something you really don't want to have to do with a mouse just to get it feeling okay, especially a budget one.

Future

One thing that I do appreciate about this mouse is its tiny visible screws on the bottom. You can get in there and replace the battery, should you want to, and easy access is a good thing, as far as repairability is concerned.

Speaking of internals, Logitech's Hero sensor is still potent. You are getting a max DPI of 44,000 here, and it's snappy and responsive enough to handle high DPIs well. It also technically supports 8,000 Hz polling, but you have to buy an optional receiver to actually use that. If doing this means getting a cheaper mouse, I actually think making 8,000 optional is a fairly smart play. It's a niche polling rate that most won't see the benefit of.

In shooter Mouse: PI for Hire, I had no problems blasting away all the baddies, and the easy-to-access DPI switch on the top of the mouse means I can flit between sensitivities with ease. The switches are satisfying to click and produce a rather loud noise in response.

Future

I almost never found myself double-clicking, though I think part of that is the comfortable shape. It's a sturdy shell (get it? Because of the egg thing), and though it's plastic, it's certainly strong plastic. The round base means that I am often encouraged to squeeze the sides with the bottom of my palm. It's a comforting hold that feels very natural in play. I'd say it's better suited to small hands, thanks to its tiny frame, but I didn't particularly mind it with my fairly big hands, either.

At just under 60 grams, it's relatively light, though again, those skates just let it down somewhat. On a heavier frame, I can see the appeal of more catchy skates, but I really want the G305 X Superlight to feel breezy in use.

I didn't realise until I'd swapped mice how much the skates impacted my enjoyment of the G305 X.

One thing I always try to test with gaming mice is Counter-Strike 2, as its short time to kill makes precise, quick aiming so important. For the most part, the G305 X performs admirably here. The sensor never cut out, and shots are easy to make.

The G305 X's specs are almost approaching competitive esports level, and that's certainly nice to have at this price point, though there will always be some compromises. For instance, moving from it to my daily driver, the 8BitDo Retro R8, it has a better sensor but worse polling, and the R8's skates gave me instant relief when I swapped. And the R8 does all of this, with an included charging dock and great aesthetics, for $30 less. I didn't realise until I'd swapped mice how much the skates impacted my enjoyment of the G305 X.

Future

The G305 X is impressive in more than one way, though. Its 35-hour battery life is certainly quite strong. It's also the type of mouse you can just throw in a bag and bring places. I know, as I've done that. It's sturdy, light, small and comes with a small compartment on the bottom for the 2.4 GHz connector. This means it's a very neat little package.

And that package is partly so neat because of its subdued aesthetic. I've had my hands on the black one, and outside of the RGB strip at the top, it's all very understated. It looks clean on a desk and doesn't distract much from the screen. Its rounded base is not only comfortable but looks neat too.

Buy if…

✅ You simply want the G305 but better: This is a very similar mouse, with slightly different RGB, an upgraded sensor, and a battery for wired charging

Don't buy if…

❌ You want a budget egg-shaped mouse. The Mchose G3 V2 offers a very similar shape and smoother skates for half the price tag.

But Logitech aren't even the only one doing that egg shape anymore. I recently had the chance to test out the rather impressive Mchose G3 V2, which comes in at less than half the price, and honestly, I'd be picking that instead if it were my cash. The 12,000 DPI in the G3 V2 is lower, but you get the same base polling, a stronger battery life, the exact same weight, and its Omron mechanical switches are very pleasant too.

That's before mentioning the G3 V2 Pro, which is around ten dollars more than the standard G3V2, comes with an upgraded sensor, and packs a 26,000 max DPI. Mchose's mouse feet are also substantially better, to me.

The G305 X Superlight does seem like a noticeable improvement over the standard G305 on paper, and in practice, it's a solid mid-range device with strong stats, a solid feel, and a clean look. However, the G305 has partly stood the test of time because you'd always find it on sale, and thanks to a price bump, the G305 X doesn't actually feel like a no-brainer upgrade, especially when the market is more vibrant, varied, and interesting than ever before.

The US is worried China could have a top-spec chipmaking machine despite export restrictions, but the machine maker ASML denies it

Jacob Fox — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:34:58 +0000

The Dutch company ASML is the only company to make the world's most advanced chipmaking machines. Those machines have only ever gone to US or US-friendly companies such as TSMC, Intel, Samsung, and so on. The Chinese chipmaking market hasn't had access to them—perhaps until now, that is.

According to the US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, there are concerns that one of ASML's best machines might have made its way into China (via Bloomberg). Those are, reportedly, concerns that Lutnick has raised to the company's senior leaders in private meetings.

ASML, however, denies this, saying that none of its EUV machines—extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, which use high-frequency light to trace circuits onto silicon wafers—are in China.

Bloomberg's anonymous senior US administration officials say they have evidence that ASML isn't being completely truthful here; evidence such as, for instance, that EUV tools have been exported to China. This evidence was not shown to Bloomberg.

The semiconductor machine company tells Bloomberg: "ASML regularly engages in transparent and open dialogue with government leaders globally. We recognize the national security considerations behind export control regulations in the US and the Netherlands, and we’re fully committed to complying with all applicable regulations."

ASML also says it has previously "refuted several unfounded rumors regarding non-compliance with export controls concerning China which were inaccurate and damaging to our reputation."

(Image credit: Bloomberg Creative - Getty Images)

It would be a big deal if China did have an EUV machine from ASML, because this would move them a lot closer to the chipmaking ability of companies in the Western market like TSMC. ASML's CEO had previously said that China was 10–15 years behind the West in its chipmaking capabilities (via Tom's Hardware). The country had been blocked from getting new ASML machines because the US made sure the Netherlands restricted exports of them.

That hadn't stopped China from trying to play catch-up, though. For instance, late last year, Reuters sources reported that China now has a prototype EUV machine thanks to ex-ASML workers reverse-engineering ASML ones. These sources, however, reportedly said that China's machine is crude compared to ASML's, and it's doubtful there will be a working chip produced from it for at least the next couple of years.

Given ASML's reported adamancy that there is no EUV machine from the company in China, a small part of me wonders whether this prototype machine could be responsible for the mix-up. At any rate, with none of the US gov's supposed evidence in the open, it's hard to say.

WoW's quest to add variable difficulty to just about everything continues in Midnight patch 12.1's Mythic world bosses, though there's a catch

harvey.randall@futurenet.com (Harvey Randall) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:33:35 +0000

Patch 12.1 is on the horizon, and it looks like we were right—that ominous monologue Zul'jan had during World of Warcraft: Midnight's main story quests was absolutely a setup for the next major patch. Curse of Ula'tek is going to take us to The Coiled Isle, where we'll be digging further into the troubled history of the Amani trolls.

One surprise from the patch is the inclusion of Mythic+ world bosses via lairs, as explained in the overview video below.

Essentially, a lair is a one-boss delve-like instance that plucks out the usual world bosses that'd be prowling a patch zone like this and places them in an instanced, delve-like arena with some variable difficulty settings, all the way up to "flexible Mythic" 15-25 man groups, which'll presumably have the same bite as the other Mythic content in the game.

I'm of two minds about this, honestly. On the one hand, I think it's really neat that WoW's continuing to add varying difficulty to all of its activities—using the whole buffalo is the smartest way for MMOs to design their encounters, and I was a huge fan of the Prey system on launch for making my open world activities spicier.

And yet I'm not too excited about them being instanced. Part of the appeal of a world boss is… well, that it's a boss in the world, and the MMO feeling of piling onto some schmuck with a gaggle of strangers in a chaotic melee of spells is more appealing than this alternative from a community perspective.

The patch also includes, naturally, more story quests, an in-zone talent tree, a new dungeon, delves, a raid—all that good major patch stuff. As well as some much-needed brush-ups to the cooldown manager, the ability to add pets to housing (score!) You can read the full details on the official website,

This 1986 Japanese adventure game showing up on Steam in 2026 guarantees it makes my GOTY list—you've really got to play it

Kerry Brunskill — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:10:00 +0000

Pasokon Retro is our regular look back at the early years of Japanese PC gaming, encompassing everything from specialist '80s computers to the happy days of Windows XP.

Developer: Bothtec Released: 1986 PCs: MSX, PC-88/98, Sharp X1, X68000, FM-7 (Image credit: D4Enterprise Co.,Ltd.)

The contrasting blue/yellow tones often make it look like an optician's colour blindness test, the frame rate is what I would generously describe as "present", and the hardware it was designed for is now old enough to have a mid-life crisis. In spite of these admittedly tough-to-love qualities, the unexpected appearance of the thoroughly ancient action-adventure Relics on Steam today is definitely one of my PC gaming highlights of the year.

A lot of games are very good at showing me a strange land, but few are as capable of convincing me I’m actually standing in one as this one does. The slim manual spends more time talking about how mysterious everything is than it does saying anything useful. There's the briefest bit of vague introductory fluff about the cosmic struggle between two forces, and after a quick skim I start the game and appear as a humanoid shadow floating within… I honestly have no idea.

A crumbling wall to the left reveals the shining sunset behind as an effective approximation of waves crashing against rocks plays over my speakers. There's a hole in the floor. Everything I can see is all I know.

With all guidance deliberately withheld, I have no choice but to stumble about and see what happens, "spirit riding" from body to body as I go. I am a skeletal rabbit inspired by H.R. Giger. I am an armoured soldier with a gun. I am a sorcerer clad in gold. I am perpetually bewildered but never annoyed, because I can see there's a consistent if alien sort of logic at work here, a bigger story I'm glimpsing a tiny part of, told in fragmented notes guarded by potentially deadly statues and by powerful beings who disappear without warning or explanation.

D4Enterprise Co.,Ltd.

Happily, most of these messages are in English (and have been since Relic's first release in the '80s), and the few that aren't are written in an English cypher I must puzzle out using an in-game key and good old-fashioned pen and paper.

Shifting from body to body doesn't just grant me new attacks or tougher forms but also offers a little abstracted insight into how everything I see interconnects, allies and enemies determined by an ambitious tangle of relationships and behaviours. So that nightmare bunny I started out as is viewed as an annoying pest by the soldiers, something to be eradicated if it doesn't "GO AWAY" when yelled at. Soldiers stop to greet each other with a relatively friendly "NO TROUBLE", as equals stuck in the same weird boat. If I possess one of their superiors a "SIR" will appear at the end of that greeting, as a sign of respect… or perhaps fear, after experiencing officers attacking soldiers who refuse to return to their positions when gruffly requested first hand.

The combat that can follow these encounters is as unexplained and intricate as everything else I'm pleasantly puzzled by. My health is always ???, vaguely represented by a beating organ that is neither quite a heart nor a brain. The number of beings I have to kill in cold blood to reach one of the game's multiple endings is zero, making violence an active choice on my part. And I'd rather not fight, because my opponents are so reactive and well animated (for the era, of course), that it does feel uncomfortably messy and brutal.

Heavy blows can cause either of us to stumble, to the point of getting caught off-balance and ending up on our hands and knees, attempting to crawl away or get back up. They can decide they'd rather not fight at all, and try to run away, and whether I chase them down or not is left up to my conscience. Sneakily attacking an enemy's knees from behind brings them down faster than hitting them from the front. That's positional attack damage in a decades old game whose everything is smaller than most modern screenshots—singular.

(Image credit: D4Enterprise Co.,Ltd.)

I'd expect that sort of mechanic in a modern FPS, not a game old enough to buy its own beers (or be sold on cassette tape).

The game only gets weirder and more impressive the longer it goes on. People shout at me in code before sprinting across a room lined with golden figures, ready to fight. There's a woman held in some kind of stasis pod, who I may or may not free from her imprisonment. Hell's covered in organic pulsating walls. I barely have time to register the five screen high statue of something as I drop down a hole, but whatever it is looks a bit like an exposed skull-like face with a single teal eye, and holds a sword as tall as a house. I have no idea why it exists—but I do know I can't stop thinking about it.

Under these strange circumstances the game’s, ahem, “interpretive” graphics help rather than hinder the mood, presenting another fascinating inkling of a truth I can’t quite grasp even though the object in question is right in front of my face.

(Image credit: D4Enterprise Co.,Ltd.)

Exposing myself to these barely comprehensible wonders/horrors inevitably leads to many, many deaths, forcing me to restart the technically quite short game (it can be comfortably cleared in under an hour if you know what you're doing) from the beginning every time—and run headfirst into another of the game's many clever tricks. Unless I'm very careful, no two runs are alike. Depending on a wide variety of silently noted factors directly linked to my curiosity and behaviour, what were once mortal enemies might appear on their hands and knees, seemingly willing to be possessed, or not appear at all. Sometimes key items just don't show up. Attacking people who need help or would give their assistance freely always has wider, unspoken consequences beyond altering who wants to hit me back.

And the brilliant thing is that my repeat runs and fatal mistakes are all part of the game's master plan. There is no such thing as a perfect, complete run here. It is by design impossible to learn everything I need to succeed in one deathless go and then head directly for the best ending—I'm expected to prod and poke and piece it all together, a code learned in one "life" used in the next cycle, a document I risked everything for one run completely ignored the next, a map jotted down and kept safe for later use.

(Image credit: D4Enterprise Co.,Ltd.)

Beautifully, the game ends exactly where it begins, the entire experience forming a flawless loop. I was already in the right place, I just wasn't the right person back then. I didn't know who I could be or what I could do. The journey was the important bit. The journey made it special.

The journey still makes it special. Don't be put off by Relics' looks or its language warning. Give it a try now that it's on Steam, and you may be shocked by what the developers pulled off with 4 MHz, a handful of colors and a couple hundred kilobytes.

AMD is said to be holding talks with Samsung about making some of its future chips to offset TSMC's constrained supply of cutting-edge wafers

Nick Evanson — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 14:37:33 +0000

AMD and TSMC have enjoyed a very close working relationship ever since the former spun off its chip-making facilities into a separate business in 2008. Its latest Ryzen desktop processors, which comprise two or three chiplets, are made entirely by TSMC, but if one report is to be believed, future CPUs could well be made by the Taiwanese firm's biggest rival: Samsung.

That's according to Nikkei Asia (via Jukan on X), which claims that "AMD…is in talks to build some future CPUs with Samsung from 2028." Although the report says this snippet comes from "one source with knowledge of the situation," the publication explains that the discussions are due to capacity constraints.

As things currently stand, AMD employs various TSMC node options for its products. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D, for example, has two chiplets under its heatspreader: a Core Complex Die (CCD) that's made on N4P and an Input/Output Die (IOD), which is fabricated on the cheaper N6 node.

The former node is heavily used by AMD, with all of its Ryzen AI 300 and 400-series laptop APUs also being fabricated on N4P, as well as its latest Radeon GPUs, but it also uses TSMC's N3 process to make some of its Zen 5c chips.

What we do know for sure is that AMD will be using TSMC's cutting-edge N2 process node for its next generation of Epyc server-grade processors, and while this is no guarantee that all Zen 6 chips will spring from these wafers, Nikkei Asia's remark suggests that this could well be the case.

AMD's Epyc server processors use a lot of chiplets (Image credit: AMD)

Given its higher cost and relative newness, TSMC's N2 will probably be more restricted in capacity than N4, for example, and rather than limit its supply of consumer-grade processors to meet the demand of the AI market, it would seem that AMD is exploring the possibility of using the next best thing, i.e. one of Samsung's process nodes.

The question to consider here is just what processors the South Korean chip giant would make. To my mind, there are two main contenders: low-end APUs and the IOD for Zen 6 processors.

Budget-level CPUs are often just rebadged older products, occasionally with a mild architectural tweak or two, so they don't need to be made on the very smallest and most expensive of process nodes. AMD's IODs house a lot of analogue circuitry (to handle the interchiplet Infinity Fabric, DDR5 memory, PCIe, USB, etc), which doesn't scale particularly well with process node shrinks.

In other words, both are suitable to be used on a 'bigger', and thus cheaper, process node, and Samsung's 4LPP system would seem to be an ideal candidate. But why not just use TSMC's N4? After all, once Zen 6 launches in force, surely the demand for that process node will reduce in favour of N2?

Nvidia's massive Blackwell AI chips take up a lot of TSMC N4's capacity (Image credit: Nvidia)

Well, possibly not, because Nvidia uses it for all its Blackwell AI chips and while it wants everyone and their grandparents to be using its Vera Rubin products, the current generation of megachips will still be in high demand by the time AMD releases its next series of processors.

However, the talks might not be about older process nodes at all, as rumours were floating around last year that AMD might use Samsung's 2 nm system, in conjunction with TSMC's similarly named node, for its future chips. We could possibly see two 'types' of Zen 6 CCDs: cutting-edge TSMC ones for Epyc processors, cheaper and slightly slower Samsung ones for Ryzen CPUs.

Then again, it might not actually be about wafer capacity and instead just be a simple matter of cost. With the global memory crisis causing DRAM and NAND flash prices to rocket through the stratosphere, the PC industry is somewhat in decline at the moment, with a reduction in shipments across every sector bar data centers (which is very much doing the opposite).

Cheaper than a 64 GB kit of DDR5 memory (Image credit: Future)

AMD and all its rivals will be considering every possible option to reduce the cost of making processors, and if Samsung is broadcasting that it can significantly undercut TSMC, you can certainly see why chip firms would be lining up to discuss using their services.

For PC gamers, none of this really matters, of course. Regardless of how potent or poor the next generations of CPUs or GPUs turn out to be, they're not going to be cheap enough to offset the fact that DDR5 memory kits and SSDs are now between three and five times more expensive than they were this time last year.

The best cosy cleaning sim I've played has just gone into playtest—if you like PowerWash Simulator, then this is the next game for you

Elie Gould — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 13:44:13 +0000

I have been waiting to be let into Reshine's playtest for weeks now, each day more eager than the last. Because after stumbling across a short video of what it would be like to restore an old trinket in this cosy sim, I was convinced that this may be the best cleaning and restoration game I've ever come across.

Thankfully, I was let into the playtest yesterday, and after immediately jumping to download it I was greeted with an hour of pure bliss as I worked my way through tidying up three old yet beloved items.

Quite OK Games

Set in a cosy, slightly dusty attic studio, you've got your work bench and all the tools you need to restore antiques and beloved toys. The first project I started was a seriously rusted butcher knife in the shape of a fox, it was in such bad shape that I didn't actually know what it was meant to be at first.

But that didn't matter. I started by disassembling the knife, removing the nails from the handle so I could separate the wood from the metal. Then I got to work dusting, sanding, and polishing all the materials with the various tools present in the studio.

This part is perhaps the most satisfying. Like other cleaning simulators, you work slowly and methodically in Reshine to remove the grime, dust, and rust from each section. Some dust comes off with just a blast of air, but other marks are more ingrained and need a sharper, more precise tool. It's not a guessing game, though, Reshine always arms you with the right gadget for the task.

Quite OK Games

After cleaning it up I set about popping a base layer of paint on the wooden handle, then I chose a deep red for the overcoat—it's meant to be a fox's tail after all, so I thought it was the right colour for the occasion.

The next tasks I had in my workshop was refurbishing an old rotary telephone and a cute little wooden toy in the shape of an elephant. The elephant was pretty easy going, all it needed was a bit of sanding and a fresh coat of paint, but the telephone was a bit more complex.

Alongside having several little parts to dissect and clean individually, each needed various tools to get the job done. Alongside the sand blaster, polisher, and air blower, the phone also required a laser to get all the deep rust off. But all of that just meant I had more time to relax and clean up some old treasures.

The cosy attic location, the slow cleaning process, and the calming and soft music all make Reshine an incredibly rewarding and mindful game to play. I knew I'd love it from the first video I saw, and I was right. There's only three tasks available in the playtest right now, but I can't wait to head back up to the attic and get to work restoring more antiques.

Players have uncovered a mistake with GTA 6's cover art and we've got a re-run of the same old jokes: 'pre-order cancelled'

Elie Gould — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:39:21 +0000

I got pretty excited when I saw the gator on the recently announced Grand Theft Auto 6 cover art yesterday, besides from being an icon of Florida, they're also just cute lil guys. But it seems that I'm not as big of a fan as I thought, because there's something not right about that gator.

"Something seemed off with the number of teeth the gator on the cover had (of course it did—why didn't I think of that) so I did a count and it seems the gator has 60 teeth," ITehJelleh says in a Reddit post. For those of you who are thinking "So what", first off, you're just as uncultured as I am, and secondly that's a big difference to how many gators are meant to have.

gta6 from r/GTA6/comments/1u9tdlr/mistake_with_the_gta_6_cover

"Alligators normally have 74-80 teeth so this is way below the normal amount," ITehJelleh adds. Gators do also go through something called continuous replacement, which sees them constantly lose and regrow teeth, they can apparently go through 2,000 to 3,000 teeth in a lifetime. So maybe this gator is just having a rough one, or just a juvenile .

On the flip side, it could just be a silly mistake—but one that has rocked players to their core. "Unplayable," one fan jokes. "This is just going to be another Cyberpunk release." Others join in voicing their disappointment with Rockstar—"pre-order cancelled"—and who can blame them? Gators are sacred.

But how could Rockstar make such a simple mistake? Well, ITehJelleh thinks it could all be part of something bigger: "Could it potentially have a meaning?" Yeah, ok, I'll play ball. What if we're getting another trailer in 60 days, on August 17, or maybe there'll be 60 different dirt bikes to collect in-game. What if the game opens with you having to fight 60 gators? Not sure of any of that really sticks though, maybe it really was just a simple error. Anyways, I'm just going to stick with the moon for all my GTA theories.

GTA 6: Everything we know
GTA 6 map: Cruisin' Leonida
GTA 6 cars: The lineup
GTA 5 mods: Revved up
GTA 5 cheats: Phone it in
San Andreas cheats: All the codes

Slay the Spire 2 patch fixes RNG bug after a fan's '8 hour descent into madness' proves it exists—alongside heaps of other updates and a new Act 3 boss

harvey.randall@futurenet.com (Harvey Randall) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 10:58:34 +0000

Slay the Spire 2 just released a major balance patch—and aside from forcing me into an update for my Silent Ascension 10 guide in the near future—it's delivered a whole heap of changes to the game, including one fascinating RNG bugfix discovered at the hands of a determined player.

RNG can always be a nightmare to figure out, mostly because human brains just don't perceive games of chance all that well. If you've ever missed on a 99% chance shot in XCOM, you know this feeling—a 1 in 100 chance is unlikely, but not impossible. And yet your brain tells you that some great and unforeseen injustice has visited you if it happens.

Anyway, one player spent about eight hours trying to prove they weren't crazy. User tckmn on the subreddit released a manifesto that's credited in the patch notes, an "eight-hour descent into madness", without which "we wouldn't have caught the issue."

The problem in question relates to Neow's Bones, a starting option that allows players to take on two starting relics in exchange for a curse—which could either be a non-event, giving you a curse that's just a dead card. Or you could get something like Debt, which could utterly spoil the economy of your run.

Turns out, you could tell if certain runs were more likely to give you Debt than others—specifically, if you started in the Underdocks, Neow's Curse was 54% likely to give you the Debt curse.

As the devs themselves explain it: "Most games, including STS2, use pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs). A PRNG is fed a seed value, and given the same seed value, a PRNG will always generate the same sequence of random numbers.

"Since we fed different seeds to each PRNG, we expected their results to be completely unrelated. But we were wrong, and it turns out that our strategy allowed players to predict outcomes given knowledge of unrelated parts of the game."

The issue was that the decimals which governed which Act 1 you got also happened to correlate to your Neow's Bones curse: "For example, if our act roll is >0.5 (we’re in the Underdocks), then it’s highly likely that our Neow’s Bones curse roll will be <0.5, which cuts the potential curses you can obtain in half."

But rest assured, "your suffering is now truly random!" Mega Crit's swapped to a system that's far less predictable.

The patch itself also has a ton of other changes—balance adjustments for instance, which impact the Regent most of all. It's swings and roundabouts, with some cards like Monarch's Gaze getting a bump, and others, like my darling Reflect, being nerfed slightly.

The Doormaker has also been laid low: "As we said in the patch notes of the beta patch that brought this change: while Doormaker had interesting micro decisions in the fight, he was over the complexity threshold of what we want and had lingering issues. We decided that starting over fresh will let us hit what we actually want for an Act 3 boss."

He's now been replaced by the Aeonglass, a fearsome boss that's a bit of a DPS race, pumping Wither curses into your hand that deal damage to you, ramping rapidly whenever the boss upgrades them. You can view the full patch notes on Steam.

Full list of The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature cheats for editing Fairy Sims or mastering their Apothecary skills

Andrea Shearon — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 02:44:32 +0000

The Sims 4 painted the town green with its outdoorsy, fairy-themed expansion, but if you don't want to work your way up the faefolk rankings to get to the good stuff, you can use Enchanted by Nature cheats for an easy shortcut. Some fairy features don't have their own code, but here you'll find cheats for most Sims 4 careers, skills, and traits that were added with the expansion.

If you need extra guidance, check out our main list of The Sims 4 cheats for a refresher on the basics. And if you're looking for other expansion commands, we've got lists for Businesses & Hobbies cheats and Life & Death cheats.

Enchanted by Nature career cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Enchanted by Nature added one new career to The Sims 4 with the Naturopath. It's a handy career for curing ailments, and you can even take things a step further with branching career paths as a Lifestyle Coach or Apothe-curist.

Career	Cheat code
Naturopath	careers.add_career Naturopath careers.retire Naturopath careers.promote Naturopath careers.demote Naturopath

Career

Cheat code

Naturopath

careers.add_career Naturopath

careers.retire Naturopath

careers.promote Naturopath

careers.demote Naturopath

Enchanted by Nature skill cheats

The Sims 4 received two new skills with Enchanted by Nature: Apothecary and Natural Living. Sims skilled in Apothecary will learn how to make cures for ailments, while Natural Living sims learn how to thrive outdoors.

Use the testingcheats true command before setting a skill level via cheat code.

Skill	Max skill cheat
Apothecary	stats.set_skill_level Major_Apothecary 10
Natural Living	stats.set_skill_level Skill_NLS 10

Enchanted by Nature trait cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Sims get three standard traits in this expansion: Disruptive, Mystical, and Plant Lover. There are Enchanted by Nature cheats for all three, but you can always add them via Create-a-Sim by:

Using testingcheats true in the cheat console
Using cas.fulleditmode in the cheat console
Clicking your sim and selecting "Edit in CAS"
Find both in the "Social" traits section

You can also add or remove traits in the console with the codes below. Traits marked with the fairy emoji 🧚 are exclusive to the occult sim.

Personality traits

Trait	Cheat code
Disruptive	traits.equip_trait trait_Rogue traits.remove_trait trait_Rogue
Mystical	traits.equip_trait trait_Mystical traits.remove_trait trait_Mystical
Plant Lover	traits.equip_trait trait_Plantlover traits.remove_trait trait_Plantlover
🧚High Fae Lineage	traits.equip_trait HighFaeLineage traits.remove_trait HighFaeLineage

Reward traits

Trait	Cheat code
Nature’s Best Bud	traits.equip_trait NaturesBestBud traits.remove_trait NaturesBestBud
Well-Balanced Practitioner	traits.equip_trait trait_NaturalMeds_HealsWithPills traits.remove_trait trait_NaturalMeds_HealsWithPills
Into the Everdew	traits.equip_trait trait_FairyStories_Initiation_IntoThePixieland traits.remove_trait trait_FairyStories_Initiation_IntoThePixieland
🧚Happily Harmonious	traits.equip_trait LightPath_LightPixie traits.remove_trait LightPath_LightPixie
🧚Delightfully Discordant	traits.equip_trait DarkPath_DarkPixie traits.remove_trait DarkPath_DarkPixie
🧚Problem Fairy	traits.equip_trait trait_ProblemFairy traits.remove_trait trait_ProblemFairy

Enchanted by Nature death cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

Enchanted by Nature adds two overdramatic deaths for fairy sims, Death by Emotional Starvation and Death by Emotional Overload, but there's only a cheat for one.

Fairy death cheats

Death	Cheat code
Death by Emotional Starvation	traits.equip_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation traits.remove_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation

Death

Cheat code

Death by Emotional Starvation

traits.equip_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation

traits.remove_trait trait_ghost_EmotionalStarvation

How fairy sims die from Emotional Overload

Fairies can detect and absorb other sims' emotions, but consuming Overload Moodlets can lead to Death by Emotional Overload. Here's how to get the process started:

Use Detect Emotion on other sims to find overload emotions (look for an exclamation❗)
Use Absorb Emotion until it triggers Enraged, Hysterical, or Mortified
Continue until triggering Death by Anger, Death by Laughter, or Death by Embarrassment

Sims have been able to die from extreme emotions for a while, but the fairy sim option is still a new way to experience all three possibilities. If you're trying to avoid death or bring someone back, refer to our main list of Sims 4 cheats.

Enchanted by Nature fairy cheats

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

As Enchanted by Nature's occult sims hone their magical abilities, they'll also improve their fairy ranking. There are five ranks to work (or cheat) your way through, each with their own perks and special manipulation magic.

There's no cheat to directly equip the fairy rank to your sim, but you can use an XP shortcut to accomplish the same thing.

Fairy rank	Cheat code
Faint	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 0
Glowing	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 500
Glimmering	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 1500
Brilliant	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 3000
Radiant	stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_FairyOccult_FairyXP 4500

Is there a cheat for turning a sim into a fairy?

No, unlike other occult sims, there is no Enchanted by Nature cheat to turn a regular sim into a fairy sim. But that doesn't mean you can't edit them directly with the same Create-a-Sim cheat from before:

Enter testingcheats true in the cheat console
Enter cas.fulleditmode in the cheat console
Click your sim and select "Edit in CAS"
Set their occult status to "Fairy" in the top left corner of the Create-a-Sim menu

Steam Controller demand is so high that new reservations won't be fulfilled until 2027

shaun.prescott@futurenet.com (Shaun Prescott) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 01:26:31 +0000

Valve is struggling to meet demand for its Steam Controller. The trackpad-equipped gamepad quickly sold out when it released in early May, and ever since there's been a reservation system similar to the one once used for Steam Deck.

And people have been using it, to such an extent that Valve has needed to upgrade the system to manage expectations regarding when you'll actually get one. "When we launched Steam Controller last month, we quickly saw that initial demand exceeded our expectations," Valve writes in an update.

"We have no plans to stop making Steam Controller. But as we look at the current demand compared to how many we know we can make by the end of the year, we want to manage expectations as much as we can with regards to when folks can expect to receive their order."

To get to the point: if you're not in the queue already you probably won't get a Steam Controller until 2027. One of my colleagues based in the United States joined the queue today and their "estimated order availability" is 2027. It's the same for me in Australia.

According to Valve the reservation page now shows one of three estimated shipping windows, including "by September 2026", "by December 2026", and "in 2027", with more specific timing for the latter to come later. If you joined the queue already you can revisit the page and it'll show you which of those three categories you fit in.

Still, I do wonder how many of those in the queue have decided they're definitely going to buy a Steam Controller. It's possible to reserve your place without placing a deposit, so there's really no harm in registering your interest even if you're not committed to making the purchase. When something is in such hot demand, it's probably smarter to make the reservation than to not, because what if you change your mind between now and next year? What if the Steam Machine proves so mindblowing that the Steam Controller becomes an essential piece of kit?

Whatever the case, once your ticket is called you have 72 hours to make the purchase before you lose your place in the queue. With Steam Machine and Steam Frame seemingly imminent, I'd be very surprised if we don't see the same situation with those.

Steam Next Fest's top played games include only 1 of over 500 demos with an AI disclosure

shaun.prescott@futurenet.com (Shaun Prescott) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:26:46 +0000

Valve has revealed the ten most played Steam Next Fest demos, and based on the hours I've spent browsing the more than 4,000 demos, I'm not super surprised by the results. Bandai Namco's forthcoming Sword Art Online RPG, Echoes of Aincrad, is grabbing a lot of expected attention, and so is the offroading sim by the creators of Art of Rally. There's a Soulslike extraction RPG, a new 6v6 Titanfall-like by the Splitgate studio, and a cheerful looking dollop of friendslop.

Here's the full list, which is provided in no meaningful order:

Echoes of Aincrad - Anime third-person ARPG set in the Sword Art Online world
Mistfall Hunter - An extraction RPG, supplanting the usual shooting with Soulslike third-person combat
over the hill - Chill but gruelling offroad adventuring by the Art of Rally devs
IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator - A heavy turret simulator
EMPULSE - A 6v6 shooter by the creators of Splitgate that kinda looks like Mirror's Edge blended with Titanfall
Dust Front RTS - A vintage-looking RTS for '90s PC gaming heads
The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu - Four-player co-op about scouring a dangerous, slightly sci-fi jungle for treasure
Embers of the Uncrowned - Nexon's next big dark fantasy MMORPG
BOMBANANA! - Whimsical friendslop about monkeys defusing bombs
Casualties: Unknown - A survival platformer about exploring a murky, dangerous subterranea

There's some decent stuff in there: I'm especially keen to try Casualties: Unknown and Over the Hill. Mortal Shell 2's absence is notable, and I'm surprised that Valor Mortis—the new first-person Soulslike by Ghostrunner devs—isn't listed. Half of these games are multiplayer, and only one of the games listed have an AI disclosure.

That one's Embers of the Uncrowned, the next Nexon MMO which, ironically, appears to have the biggest budget of the lot. "During the development and live service of the game, AI-based tools may be utilized to support in-game visual content creation, marketing materials, live chat translation features, and partial in-game dialogue and script localization," reads the disclosure.

"In all such cases and regardless of the workflow, the final product is a reflection of our own development team's creativity and artistic expression."

The latest Next Fest has plenty of games with AI disclosures. Of the 4,397 products listed as Next Fest demos on SteamDB, 551 have the AI Content Disclosed user tag attached. Of course, user tags on Steam can be exploited, but assuming there's not some widespread concerted effort to tarnish non-AI games with the AI tag, that's a very high figure. Last week over 300 games were released on Steam, and 120 of them had AI disclosures.

The floodgates are open but that doesn't mean we're wilfully drowning. I think a new Nexon MMO—or any big budget MMO, really—is going to attract a lot of curiosity no matter how it was made. But I've noticed this week while browsing Next Fest that I've fallen into the habit of scrolling directly to where the AI disclosure normally sits on a Steam store page, without reading the description, watching the start of the trailer, or looking at a screenshot. It's not a brilliant user experience, and given how common antipathy towards AI in games seems to be, it's probably about time Steam included a filter.

The devs of EVE Online's survival spinoff are on a 'side quest' to get it on Steam Deck: 'Our goal is to get this to as many players as possible'

ted.litchfield@futurenet.com (Ted Litchfield) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:02:01 +0000

At this year's EVE Fanfest, the developers of EVE Online sister game Frontier were touting its new driving controls and gamepad support⁠—features that have already resulted in a vastly different game than Fenris Creations' (formerly CCP Games) original MMO.

As a big Steam Deck sicko, I was naturally curious whether Frontier's gamepad support opened up any portable PC possibilities, and it turns out some members of the team have been on a "side quest" to make it happen, to quote game director Sæmundur Hermannsson.

Frontier product manager Scott McCabe has been personally experimenting with the game on Valve's handheld. "I wanted to get on the Steam Deck," said McCabe. "I have one at my desk, and we're just kind of testing it out, dipping our toes in the water."

"Anything that runs on [Linux compatibility layer] Proton can basically be squeaked onto a Steam Deck," McCabe said, pointing out that, at that point, there's little separating the Deck from a normal PC aside from power and performance considerations.

The original EVE Online, by contrast, has been playable on Steam Deck for some time, but is a much less obvious fit for handheld play with its more mouse and keyboard-centric control scheme. "As soon as you start having a control system that works with a game pad," said McCabe, "There's absolutely no reason you can't put it onto these types of devices."

McCabe cautioned that Steam Deck support was not on any official development roadmaps, but that "it makes such obvious sense with the manual controls now." Hermannsson was even more bullish on the prospect when I asked him about it the following day.

"It's a no-brainer," the game director said, joking that "I don't know if the marketing people will punch us or whatever" for over-promising. Hermannsson echoed McCabe's point that making Frontier gamepad-friendly in the first place was a far bigger challenge than anything specific to the Deck.

"We already have experiments running on Steam Deck," said Hermannsson. "We just couldn't get it in time⁠—we want to focus on the gamepad stuff instead. The biggest problem we ran into was actually the launcher. It's not the game itself, it was just like some config files."

A number of high-profile multiplayer games are unplayable on Deck due to their anticheat being incompatible with Linux, but EVE Frontier sidesteps this issue by eschewing traditional anticheat altogether. Frontier is being built to be highly moddable⁠—eventually open source⁠—but with guardrails baked into the game to prevent cheats or exploits, something the team at Fenris refers to as "digital physics."

Hermannsson said he was less personally invested in Deck compatibility as he wasn't much of a handheld PC gamer, but he sees it as a way of broadening the appeal of the complex, experimental game as much as possible. Frontier development director David Bowman put it succinctly when I asked him about Deck support: "Our goal is to get this to as many players as possible."

Trump says Apple has agreed to build chips with Intel in the USA

Jeremy Laird — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 23:21:18 +0000

This is not the first time the idea has been mooted. And the source here is either about as authoritative as it gets or as unreliable as humanly possible, depending on how you look at it. But President Trump says that Apple has agreed to make chips with Intel in the USA.

Specifically, in a Truth social post Trump said, "First, we helped bring in Nvidia, and they agreed to build their first level Chips with Intel. Next, Elon agreed to build his TerraFab, the largest Chip Factory in the World, designed together with Intel’s Technology team. And, finally, Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build its Chips in America."

It should be said that there is, as yet, no official confirmation of any of this from the companies concerned. Indeed, that includes not only Trump's claim that Apple has agreed to make chips with Intel, but also with Nvidia.

Nvidia and Intel are very much on-the-record about a collaboration. But thus far, that's about combining Intel CPUs with Nvidia GPUs. Exactly how those chips get made hasn't been detailed. Nor, inevitably, are there any specifics regarding chips Intel might make for Apple.

That said, there have been rumours for some time that Apple could use Intel's fabs to make certain chips. Much of the coverage suggests that Apple could choose Intel to make lower-cost chips, perhaps for mainstream iPhone and MacBook models, while the really high-performance, cutting-edge stuff for Pro models remains at TSMC.

Soon to be powered by Intel silicon (again...)? (Image credit: Apple)

Almost any deal with Apple would clearly be a huge win for Intel and its nascent customer fab business. Unsurprisingly, Intel's stock price leapt up 7% following Trump's announcement on Truth Social.

Equally unsurprisingly, Trump called out Intel's stock price gains of late, saying, "We decided to help Intel in exchange for 10% of their shares. Is that too much or, too little? They were worth around 100 Billion Dollars when we made our offer. Now they are worth over 600 BILLION DOLLARS! Nine months, and they’ve increased in value over HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS. America’s stake is now over 60 Billion Dollars. When was the last time a President made America money?"

For now it's unclear what, if anything, Intel and Apple have agreed. If there is an agreement, it will no doubt be years before the first Apple chips flow from Intel's fabs. Any deal may well be contingent on the performance—or yields—of Intel's new 18A and 14A nodes. If it's not good enough, Apple may have an exit written into the deal.

So there may be a deal. But it doesn't necessarily follow that there will definitely be chips. As ever, watch this space.

Instead of wishlisting its game, the developer of my favorite Next Fest demo wants you to play anyone else's: 'There are some genuinely great creators in this fest who deserve the attention'

lincoln.carpenter@futurenet.com (Lincoln Carpenter) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:54:09 +0000

Of the thousands of demos on offer during the current Next Fest, I've far and away been most fond of About Fishing, The Water Museum's downright Lynchian "fishing mystery game" of surrealist, psychological angling that's eerie, absurd, and endearing in equal measure. My tackle box has a conspiracy board inside it, the town church has a prison ward in the basement, and I can commune with caught fish to retrieve submerged clues from waterways.

It's magnificent, and it is entirely, precisely my shit. But despite it being the traditional goal of Next Fest participants, About Fishing developer The Water Museum doesn't seem particularly concerned about whether I wishlist the game or not.

(Image credit: Playstack)

In a Steam news post that coincided with the start of Next Fest earlier this week, Water Museum developer Kevin said it's a great time for players to try the About Fishing demo. But then he made an unconventional ask:

"After you're done—you don't have to wishlist it," Kevin said. "Just promise me you'll find another demo that looks interesting and give it a go. There are some genuinely great creators in this fest who deserve the attention. Take your time with it."

Kevin continues to suggest we then turn off the computer, go outside, and maybe enjoy a nice tree. (Having gone on a lovely walk this morning, I can personally confirm the efficacy of the looking-at-tree meta.)

(Image credit: Playstack)

Considering that wishlisting is conventionally understood as one of the most valuable things a potential customer can do ahead of a Steam launch, The Water Museum's declaration that we should actually just find another cool game is a surprising act of developer solidarity. It probably helps, however, that About Fishing has already secured an audience of eager players: On June 11, The Water Museum announced via a Steam post that About Fishing had lured 100,000 users into wishlisting.

Get it? Lured. Like in fishing.

While The Water Museum might be too pure to tell you to wishlist its game, I urge you to try it for yourself if you think you'd enjoy seeing its unsettlingly detailed textures stretched over entirely too few polygons, doing Wanted-style bullet curving on your fishing hook mid-cast to execute hyper-precise angling, or being told by your ethereal grandfather that "the fish around here might've been the last witnesses to a murder."

(Image credit: Playstack)

If not, then check out one of the 4,400 other demos. As Kevin said, there are plenty of playtests worth your attention.

About Fishing is set to launch sometime later this year.

World of Warcraft players will never have to leave the MMO once Blizzard adds Discord chat for guilds in the next update

Tyler Colp — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:50:30 +0000

Life is about to get much easier for World of Warcraft players tired of having to track down guildmates to get a group together for a raid. Blizzard is officially acknowledging that Discord is the most convenient solution to this problem and will be integrating its chat directly into the MMO in the next update.

Blizzard announced that patch 12.1, Curse of Ula'tek, will bring cross-platform chat between Discord and WoW guild chat. Messages will show up in the MMO and in Discord, and can be set up so it's all-in-one combined chat or separated into individual channels.

The only requirement is to link your Battle.net and Discord account and have a guild leader or officer adjust how they want the chats to work. Once that's done, you'll be able to see people chatting directly from Discord with the logo next to their messages in-game.

This is big news for guilds with hundreds of players across different time zones. WoW's in-game chat just isn't equipped for that, especially without an easy way to scroll through an archive of messages across multiple days. I have two monitors so it's not particularly hard to swap between Discord and a game, but I'm sure solo monitor and laptop players will be relieved to hear they don't need to stop doing their dailies to answer a ping.

This does make me wonder if we're about to see Discord chat show up in more games as a replacement for developers having to build a guild or clan chat system. It's not just MMO players who need to wrangle people together; I could see this being useful in other multiplayer games, like Arc Raiders or Overwatch.

All of this might be moot by the time Discord gets around to rolling out its extremely unpopular global age verification, which is supposedly happening sometime before the end of the year. If that goes awry, WoW players might be back to juggling chat apps trying to see if enough people are online to run some Mythic+ dungeons.

The director of all six Sharknado movies has a new film, and it's a Dave the Diver live-action short

clivingston@pcgamer.com (Christopher Livingston) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 19:17:31 +0000

I've got some exciting news for fans of Sharknado, Sharknado 2: The Second One, Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, and The Last Sharknado: It's About Time.

Anthony C. Ferrante, the director of all six Sharknado movies (and the upcoming Sharknado prequel, Sharknado Origins, coming soon to probably-not-a-theater) has a new film out, though it's surprisingly both shark and 'nado free. It's the official live-action film for Dave the Diver: In the Jungle. It's about 10 minutes long and you can check it out below:

Yes, it's silly. It's cheesy. The casting is pretty good, but the production values are on par with mid-range cosplay. And that's fine! Look, you don't go to Asylum, producers of proudly bad-good shark flicks, unless you want your movie to be goofy and, dare I say it, shot quickly and affordably.

Instead of sharks, the film is mostly about Dave and his pals fighting Sulong, an enormous crocodile that serves as one of the expansion's bosses. And don't worry, though Ferrante has mainly focused on sharks in his movie-making, gators are still well within his wheelhouse: he co-wrote the song "Meth Gator" for the Asylum film Meth Gator, which is about a gator on… let me check my notes… yep, meth. You can even hear the song Meth Gator in the Dave the Diver film credits. Gotta say, it kinda slaps.

(Image credit: Asylum/Mintrocket)

I'm fully on board with the cheesiness of the Dave the Diver short, with one exception: I took a bit of psychic damage from seeing the mighty Bancho depicted with a glued-on beard from Party City. I know the Asylum specializes in low-budget offerings, and that's completely fine: I've only seen the first Sharknado movie but I thought it was hilarious.

But I can't forgive that dollar-store beard. Do not disrespect Bancho again, Anthony C. Ferrante, or you will answer to me.

A small band of Nightdive rebels united to make the System Shock remake after it 'ran out of money' midway through development

joshua.wolens@futurenet.com (Joshua Wolens) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:23:47 +0000

Although my mental conception of time is convinced it came out perhaps three weeks ago, Nightdive's System Shock remake is three years old. The game released in 2023 after a long and winding road through development, consisting of various course corrections and reboots. All in all, it was eight years between the game's announcement—originally as a remaster—and players getting their hands on it.

Which is a long time, but it could have been longer! In the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine, Nightdive producer Daniel Grayshon revealed that, for a while there, odds were decent we would never get the System Shock remake at all.

By 2018, Grayshon had already been at work on various iterations of System Shock for a while, crafting and recrafting areas in accordance with whatever the project's direction was at the time. "I did feel like maybe some people—who were then with us—were trying to focus more on selling the game to a publisher to get more funding rather than actually build the game," he recalls, and after several years of wheel-spinning, things came to a head.

"The project had run out of money [in 2018]," says Grayshon. "I remember being so devastated internally. This was the big project that I was working on." But the devs weren't going to let it lie there—some of them formed La Résistance—a "small Discord group" of guerillas dedicated to getting "this game out come hell or high water."

Which wasn't the easiest gig in the world, especially for Grayshon. He was tasked with building System Shock's Citadel Station—its entire setting—in an engine he had no experience with: Unreal Engine 4. "I was going onto websites, finding tutorials, finding whatever I could just to get a foot in the door."

Not to spoil the story, but he pulled it off in the end, and the System Shock remake came out to much acclaim, albeit with a few tweaks from the original game to make things make sense in a modern engine, like doors that were no longer "paper-thin" or staircases that, well, made sense in physical reality. "It’s still very faithful to the original game," says Grayshon, "but it has a lot more staircases in it, and lot more of a spaced-out feel to it … because it just mathematically wouldn’t work [otherwise]." But it nearly wasn't anything. Thank god for that band of Nightdive System Shock die-hards, eh?

Snapdragon Reality Elite chip aims for 'up to 60% higher GPU performance, up to 30% increase in CPU performance' in VR gaming

Jess Kinghorn — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:22:31 +0000

Though I do wear glasses and I'm intrigued by the idea of techie wearables on paper, I'm far from all-in on AR glasses. Still, depending on how Qualcomm's fresh chip geared towards augmented and virtual reality headgear is implemented, I can see myself changing my mind.

Qualcomm has just revealed the Snapdragon Reality Elite, a SoC it pitches as enabling "longer-lasting, sleeker, and cooler devices." The Reality Elite will debut in the Xreal Project Aura, offering "better optical see-through, improved power efficiency, and better hand and head tracking" on the Android-based XR wearable.

But Qualcomm doesn't just have its eye on smart glasses with this chip, citing a number of performance boosts for VR headsets specifically. Compared to its XR2 Gen 2 chip that you'll find inside the Meta Quest 3, the Reality Elite purportedly enjoys "up to 60% higher GPU performance, up to 30% increase in CPU performance, and up to 160% higher NPU performance, giving developers greater flexibility to push immersive XR experiences further."

A Reality Elite-based VR headset could offer gaming at "up to 4.4K per eye at 90 frames per second," while a more straightforward XR wearable will enjoy "enhancements to video see‑through (VST) [that] reduce latency and improve image quality, helping digital content blend more naturally with the physical world." Valve's VR headset, the Steam Frame, might feel just a little bit underpowered in comparison.

Now, this wouldn't be a tech announcement in 2026 without an AI angle. The Snapdragon Reality Elite doesn't buck that trend, instead touting "up to 48 TOPS" (that's 'trillions of operations per second,' and Qualcomm further breaks it down as a measurement of AI performance here).

In the press release, Qualcomm says the beefed-up performance will "enable everything from photorealistic avatars with Gaussian Splatting and LLM‑based agents to real‑time large vision model (LVM)–driven object generation that brings dynamic digital content into the user’s environment," allowing an XR experience to supposedly respond to a user in real-time.

Besides maxed out machine-learning, the Snapdragon Reality Elite also takes aim at more practical aspects of XR wearables. For one thing, the chip aims to deliver "up to 20% longer battery life," while also being an "up to 12 degrees Celsius cooler chipset under load." In theory, that should allow for thinner, lighter, and cooler smartglasses frames. Snap's just announced Specs uses two unnamed Snapdragon chips, though perhaps those bulky frames should've been left to cook just a little bit longer.

Melgeek Real81 review

James Bentley — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:54:15 +0000

I recently had the chance to test two different Melgeek keyboards at the same time. They are the space-themed Centauri 80 and the black and gold Real 81. Though they're made by the same company, they couldn't be more different in approach.

The Centauri 80 is heavy, flashy, with a built-in OLED screen, and it costs $360. The Real 81, on the other hand, is more practical at $140, or at least as practical as you can get from a competitive gaming keyboard.

If I could compare it to keyboards I've tried before, I'd say it's a similar feel and design to Lemokey, specifically the Lemokey L4. It's small but blocky and a little chunky. It's the type of keyboard you could throw into a backpack, but you probably wouldn't want to because it's pretty heavy. Still, I don't think I'd fear it breaking on the train.

It also comes with many of the features you would want out of a competitive keyboard. It can go all the way up to 8,000 Hz (should you have the reaction speed for that to matter), and its keys are all rapid trigger capable, which means they can register presses and unregister presses based on a specific actuation. In practice, this means being able to stop walking quicker or button bash more effectively.

MelGeek Real81 specs

Switches: Honey magnetic switches
Keycaps: Transparent
Lighting: Yes
Polling rate: 8,000 Hz
Connection type: Wired
Layout: 81 keys
Weight: 1.1 kg
Price: $139

Immediately, it's a more attractive package for the average gamer than the Centauri 80. Where the Centauri shows up in the looks department and feels impressive, the Real 81 is simpler in approach. It doesn't have any gimmicks and comes in at a reasonably competitive price.

Naturally, I still wouldn't call $140 cheap, or even budget, but the Gamakay x NaughShark NS68 sits in a league of its own for 8,000 Hz pricing. And Gamakay give up build quality in return for that super cheap price point. $140 feels about right for the keyboard I've had my mitts on, factoring specs and build.

Future

In the looks department, the Real 81 has a few flourishes, with a gold trim and a small LED bar down the bottom right, but it's not too flashy either. It's all black otherwise, and the keys have a dark gold lettering.

Unfortunately, like the Centauri 80, the Real 81 is quite hard to make out in a dark environment. If I don't have at least a light on in the room, I have to rely mostly on feel to make out where the keys are. This isn't a huge problem for me, as I'm fairly familiar with where to put my hands, but it's still an odd issue to have. Keys are, thankfully, well spaced and easy to get to, though.

Future

The RGB underneath keys does look pretty good, and that's because its keys are translucent. It even has per-key RGB, which can be adjusted in Melgeek's own software. That software can also be used to set custom controls, which does help make up for the lack of any media buttons on the keyboard itself. You can download that software, or use it on the web, and the web app is super solid. I like that customisation is straightforward and easy here. The Real 81 is simple to use out of the box and doesn't even require software, past the first update.

As far as typing feel is concerned, the Real 81 performs okay. Keys are a tad springy for my liking, and are less smooth than I would have hoped. I feel like I'm simply putting in a little more effort than I expect when trying to bash them down in a flurry for a piece of news. Mine came equipped with Melgeek's Honey magnetic switches, and Honey is an apt name, as they just feel a tad sticky. The space bar and caps lock also have an uncomfortable clack feeling, which is less nice than the somewhat muted sounds of the rest of the keyboard. I wouldn't say it's bad, as far as sound is concerned, but just inconsistent.

Melgeek employs a 5-layer sound-dampening gasket mount to help flatten that sound, and it's mostly rather satisfying. The majority of keys have a 'tick' sound that's just quite enough that it hasn't bothered my partner on a late night when inspiration has suddenly struck me. The feel of the keys would certainly send me to bed before the sound would, anyway.

Future

In games, the Real 81 does perform pretty well, though. Keys are responsive and super quick in Counter-Strike 2, and I can stop walking nearly instantaneously. Your reticule is smaller when standing still in Counter-Strike 2, so this feels like a boon to me. I'd say competitive games overall perform quite nicely. The slightly tougher keys are actually pretty solid in the likes of Battlefield, where a stray misclick is rather common.

Buy if...

✅ You're a competitive player who wants a chunky board: Thanks to 8,000 Hz polling and snappy rapid trigger switches, the Real 81 is a solid competitive pick. It's also blocky, heavy, and with little flex, so you could theoretically throw it around the room.

Don't buy if…

❌ You type a lot: Though not awful, I found the honey switches to be a tad cumbersome to use, and not as smooth as I'd want for a day of typing

❌ You can't touch type: In the dark, the Real 81's keys are genuinely quite tough to make out.

In more casual single-player games, I find the Real 81 does its job, but it's less comfortable to use after a few hours than other keyboards I've had my hands on. That's because the springy keys just require a bit more effort. Longer gaming sessions feel ever so slightly tiresome.

I noticed this after a few hours with roguelite city builder Super Fantasy Kingdom, where I just wished I could control it all from my mouse, as the combination of its hardy keys and my leaned posture made it feel like a little more effort than necessary.

Most keyboards have to make compromises, but I can't help but feel like Melgeek's compromises are by accident here. It's a solid set of competitive keys, but not amazing for everyday typing. It has vibrant RGB and gold lettering…which you will struggle to see in the dark. It has a solid dampening solution that works well… but not on every key.

The Real 81's monkey paw curls on almost every good side, and there's certainly enough good to outweigh the bad points, but there's still far more bad than I was expecting. Or hoping for.

Apparently some of the best gaming mice aren't staying at the right DPI when moved slowly

Jacob Fox — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:24:16 +0000

According to one PC peripheral YouTuber, some of the best gaming mice on the market that use the latest sensors aren't sticking at the DPI they're set to (via MouseCast). At least, not when moved at a very slow speed.

An X user noted the problem a couple of years ago, pointing out the problematic feature in the firmware for some popular mouse sensors: the PixArt PAW3395, PAW3950, and PAW3399. Designed to prevent stationary cursor jitter, the 'DPI downshift' feature (as the X user phrased it) apparently works by throttling higher DPIs down to a lower one for when velocity is very low.

The potential problem with this is that one might intentionally be moving the mouse very slightly and very slowly, in which case the DPI will be lower than you've set it to and you'll get a slower movement than you might expect.

The YouTuber, pandahling, explains that there are three kinds of DPI downshift you might see. One that's binary, where it downshifts to a threshold (usually 7,500 DPI) when above this DPI and at very low velocity. The second type is caused by a profile switch in the firmware which changes things somewhat but still means that most DPI settings will be subject to downshift at low velocities.

The third kind of DPI downshift is much more slight, but apparently affects every these sensors at every DPI setting, not just at high ones. The YouTuber notes that all four PAW3950 mice they bought recently suffer from this one, as well as the Viper V4 Pro, the best gaming mouse on the market, which uses a newer, custom PixArt sensor.

The mice tested were found to have a 2–5% downshift in DPI, except for the Viper V4 Pro which was found to have a much higher 8–10% downshift. All only when at very low velocity, of course.

(Image credit: panDAHLING @ YouTube)

The graph above, from Pandahling's video, shows MouseTester results for the Viper V4 Pro at 800 DPI and 8K polling.

The vertical line on the left represents when the mouse moves quickly, and the slope on the right represents it moving the same small distance but very slowly. As you can see, there are fewer 'counts' of deviation from a stationary position when the mouse is moved slowly, which means there are fewer inputs registered by the mouse.

In other words: very slow movement means a decrease in DPI. That's why the slope ends lower on the right than it started on the left. The same distance has been travelled, but there were less dot/count registers on the slow return journey, and MouseTester therefore assumes that it hasn't returned to its starting spot.

I use a mouse with a PAW3950—the Zowie EC2-DW—and haven't noticed any problems, even when making small and slow micro-adjustments when holding an angle in Counter-Strike. But I only play at a low DPI of 800—if it's good enough for CS2 pros then it's good enough for me. And the PAW3950 seemingly doesn't suffer quite as much as the Viper V4 Pro reportedly does from this third type of DPI downshifting that occurs even at lower DPIs.

I must say, I'm not sure just how much of an effect such slight downshifting would have in practice given I don't tend to move my mouse gradually at a very low velocity—I'll have to try it out once the Viper V4 Pro is back from its merry travels at the PC Gamer offices. But one recommendation for those with an affected sensor, unless the manufacturer has fixed it in a firmware update, might be to keep your mouse DPI at least below 7,500 to make the first two types of more dramatic DPI downshift less likely.

My quick test of Lumen Lite shows that it's probably good news for ray-traced gaming on handheld PCs, but I suspect that it will be used everywhere because of the pressure developers are now under

Nick Evanson — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:14:33 +0000

At its State of Unreal event in Chicago, Epic Games officially unveiled Unreal Engine 5.8, and one of its key new features is Lumen Lite: a scalability setting that targets the use of ray-traced global illumination for the Nintendo Switch 2, with the goal of 60 fps. As the feature also works for PCs, I thought I'd dive in and check out just what the fuss is all about. Or if indeed any fuss ought to be made.

By default, the Unreal Engine editor gives developers a simplified way of checking out various graphics settings to see how they affect performance and visual quality. There are 11 separate options that can be tweaked, but the new Lumen Lite mode only affects global illumination (GI) and reflections, as these are the main things that Epic's ray tracing system affects.

In older versions of UE, switching to 'Medium' GI and reflections fully disables Lumen, but in the latest release, the same setting enables Lumen GI, though reflections are still screen-spaced, i.e. SSR. Ray-traced global illumination is normally the preserve of the 'High' or 'Epic' settings, so to make it more performant for low-end GPUs, Lumen Lite replaces a key stage in the lighting process with something quicker but lower in quality than the usual system.

I first caught a glimpse of this in action via Skydek's YouTube channel, earlier this year, and the end results looked really promising, as Lumen Light was giving up to 40% more performance for very little difference in visual quality. But watching the demo, set in a fairly simple environment and using software Lumen, I kept wondering how much of a difference it would make when hardware Lumen is used and in a graphics-heavy scenario.

To that end, I fired up Unreal Engine 5.6 and 5.8, and used Epic's Electric Dreams Environment demo to see Lumen Lite in action. Now, as I'm merely a UE hobbyist, I did nothing more than install all the assets for each UE build and check out the performance in the viewport.

This is very much a 'worst-case scenario' or, if you prefer, a 'Nick is rather lazy' scenario, as the displayed performance is not even remotely representative of how it would all be in an actual game, and I've just clicked a few buttons, rather than directly adjusting the code for the graphics settings and then building the full demo.

Anyway, let's set the scene, as so to speak, by seeing everything in action in Unreal Engine 5.8, using Epic scalability and materials. It's not the very highest setting you can use, but in the case of Lumen, it's for targeting consoles at 30 fps. I've used a Core Ultra 270K Plus with a GeForce RTX 4080 Super, so not console-like at all, but as you can see, it certainly looks great, albeit with a rather low frame rate.

Now, let's take a look at the same situation and settings, except with 'Medium' used for GI and reflections, i.e. Lumen Lite. The first thing you should notice is that the performance is roughly 25% better, and the overall lighting is pretty good. Only the screen space reflections spoil the picture somewhat, but that's what you get for not using ray tracing in those areas.

Before you get your pitchforks out over the fact that Epic says that Lumen Lite is "twice as fast as Lumen High quality", it's worth noting that only the GI and reflections processing is twice as fast. What we're seeing here is that everything else in the UE editor viewport demo is exceptionally heavy, which is why there's only a 25% uplift, rather than a 100% one.

I was keen to compare UE5.8 and Lumen Lite to UE5.6, as that iteration was notable for targeting more performance across the board, and since 'Medium' GI and reflections in this version just disable Lumen altogether, I'd expect to see a big difference in the frame rate for a notable loss in visual fidelity. Well, that's exactly what I got. In fact, it's quite remarkable just how bad it looks compared to using Lumen, with heavy flickering across almost all objects.

So I tried it all again, switching to 'High' GI but leaving reflections SSR-based by using the 'Medium' setting. Notice the immediate improvement in how it all looks? More importantly, can you see that the use of Lumen GI doesn't hurt the performance too much?

Of course, this is all on a high-end gaming PC, not a Switch 2 or a handheld device like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally. The former has more than enough resources to hand for the ray tracing part of the whole rendering chain to not be a problem, as demonstrated by the difference between Lumen Epic and Medium quality above.

But it did make me wonder whether Lumen Lite is a little bit unnecessary, and that a healthy dose of good old-fashioned optimization will be just as good. If I were a Switch 2 developer, I'd probably say, "No, Lumen Lite is very necessary and a great idea," because I only have to worry about two hardware configurations: docked and handheld mode.

When it comes to making PC games, it's a whole different kettle of fish, and while Lumen Lite might be useful as the default mode for 'Steam Deck' settings, every other hardware config really needs careful tweaking to account for the differences between the numerous models of AMD, Intel, and Nvidia GPUs that can support Lumen (software or hardware).

If a studio is going to dedicate the necessary time and resources to doing all of that, then they probably won't use Lumen Lite and instead will fine-tune things by hand, so to speak. However, now that we're in a period where many studios are being shut down and hardware costs are ballooning, any game devs using UE5.8 will probably just stick to the basics because of time and cost constraints.

Epic almost certainly added Lumen Lite on the basis of feedback from developers, looking for a quick and simple solution to ray-traced lighting on the least capable hardware. Well, they've got exactly what they asked for, and it is genuinely useful. I just fear that the 'one-click solution' is going to be heavily used instead of what we'd all like to see.

Valve's latest SteamOS is out with 'initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware'

joshua.wolens@futurenet.com (Joshua Wolens) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:01:44 +0000

After a standard spell in beta, the latest iteration of SteamOS—Valve's Arch-based Linux distro for use on Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame—has hit the big three-eight. Or, well, three-point-eight. SteamOS 3.8 is out, is what I'm saying, and if you turn your face to the wind and inhale, you can detect the first notes of upcoming hardware.

Specifically, the Steam Machine, for which SteamOS 3.8 brings "initial support," as well as support for waking a SteamOS device from sleep via a connected Steam Controller. Alas, no word on the Steam Frame in these patch notes, but consider me as eager as ever to get my hands on Valve's living room box, presuming the RAM crisis has not made it cost $5,000 dollars.

But this is a pretty big release even excluding the GabeCube stuff. I'll stick the full patch notes down below, but there are a number of tweaks and new features that leap out to me as a longtime Deck user. Chief among them is that yer Deck now defaults to Wayland rather than X11 in desktop mode.

Those are two different display servers for Linux desktops—the gubbins that make your GUI function when you're not working straight in the virtual console like god intended. To cut to the chase: X11 is the old one (and as such, tends to have greater compatibility and work better for some particular tasks, at least for now) and Wayland is the new one (though it's been out in some form for nearly 20 years)—it's more secure and generally a bit more dextrous for most tasks.

So swapping to Wayland-by-default means that SteamOS has reduced "several cases of reduced performance in Desktop Mode compared to Game Mode" on your Steam Deck, desktop mode also has better scaling on TVs, support for external HDR displays, and support for VRR displays. The kind of stuff you might care about if you were making an OS for a device that's expected to live underneath people's TVs.

There are also new BIOSes for the LCD and OLED Decks, which will be installed as part of the general 3.8 update when you run it. The LCD one, sorry to say, isn't too exciting, save that it adds preliminary support for device hibernation. OLED, though? Valve's updated the Deck so that the charging LED now respects your device charging settings. If you set your Deck to top out at 80% charge for battery health reasons, then the LED will turn green—meaning fully charged—when it reaches that point, rather than remaining standard 'charging' white for eternity.

All good stuff, then. Here are the full patch notes for your perusal.

General

Updated Arch system base
Initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware
Added support for waking from sleep via connected Steam Controller
Substantially improved speed of future OS updates on high-speed connections
Improved support for screen casting in Game Mode (e.g. OBS/Discord)
Fixed dropdown menus not appearing in some games
Fixed excessive trackpad sensitivity on certain early Steam Deck LCD models
Improved support for games that attempt to open PDF files in external viewers
Fixed an issue where video output could become frozen while using Remote Play
Fixed a possible session crash when using Game Recording with certain "Maximum video height" settings
Fixed an issue affecting certain titles (such as "SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide") where the game window could have an incorrect position
Fixed closing certain titles (such as "STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor™" and Starfield) resulting in a session crash
Improved support for certain USB racing wheels and USB devices that boot in a non-standard mode
- Frequently these are devices that appear as USB storage devices with a driver installer, and must be switched to their normal mode by the OS
Steam Deck controller firmware updates now display update progress on the splash screen
Fixes issue on specific Steam Deck revisions where firmware updates could render the left controller inoperative for that session
Numerous stability and security updates

Display / Performance

Updated graphics driver with performance and stability fixes
Added preliminary support for HDMI VRR for devices with native HDMI output
Fixed an issue where "Allow Tearing" wouldn't have the intended effect in certain configurations
Improved VRR frame pacing
Fixed FSR badge remaining off in the performance overlay, even if it was actually active
Fixed a case where per-app performance settings would intermittently fail to apply when launching a game
Added missing graphics features needed for titles such as "Crimson Desert"
Fixed an issue on certain TCL TVs where the display may remain blank using the Steam Deck Dock when VRR is enabled (requires a Dock firmware update)

Bluetooth / WiFi

Fixed a case where WiFi performance could become degraded until the device was put to sleep or manually reconnected
Re-re-enable Bluetooth Wake for Steam Deck LCD
- Fix for more spurious wake issues that were present in earlier attempts

Audio

Detect HDMI channel count and expose surround configuration if available
Add a setting to allow using Bluetooth headset mics (Bluetooth playback quality will be worse while capture is active)
Restore internal audio device on reboot if set to "Off" in desktop mode
Increase suspend timeout for HDMI devices so initial audio isn't cut off after a few seconds of inactivity
Fixed a bug with switching input devices when a wired headset is plugged in
Fixed an issue where audio underruns could be experienced after sleep/resume
Fixed a bug on Steam Deck OLED where rebooting would occasionally cause a loss of speaker output until rebooted again
Fixed a case where FPS limits would fail to apply when downscaling games from a higher resolution

Accessibility

Added an option to force mono audio output

Desktop Mode

KDE Plasma updated to version 6.4.3 from 6.2.5, and now uses wayland by default
- Fixes several cases of reduced performance in Desktop Mode compared to Game Mode
- Improved support for rotated displays
- Better scale factor out of the box on TVs
- Adds support for external HDR displays
- Adds support for VRR displays
- Adds support per-display scale factor
- For more information, see Plasma release announcements
Keyboard layout and language are now obeying Game Mode settings
Improved windowing behavior for games running in Proton
Fixed a bug in Desktop Mode causing previously open applications to not be remembered when using the 'Return to Gaming Mode' shortcut to logout
Fixes for experimental nested desktop mode
Fixed Desktop Mode night color settings inappropriately remaining active when switching back to Game Mode

System Firmware

Includes Steam Deck LCD BIOS v133
- Security updates
- Added "Memory Power Down" setup option
- Preliminary support for hibernation
Includes Steam Deck OLED BIOS v114
- Security updates
- Charging LED now changes color when charge limit is reached, rather than only at 100%

Non-Deck

Improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms
Greatly improved video memory management on discrete GPU platforms
Fixed a compatibility issue with the SteamOS chainloader that could cause a boot failure on some desktop systems with recent UEFI firmware
Power button short and long presses now supported across a wide variety of devices
Improved controller support for OneXPlayer F1 series, GPD Win 5, GPD Win Mini, Anbernic Win600, OrangePi NEO, and Lenovo Legion Go
Added controller support for OneXPlayer X1 series and Lenovo Legion Go 2
Added system and controller firmware update support for the Lenovo Legion Go 2
Added preliminary charge limiting support for Legion Go, Legion Go S, and Legion Go 2 - currently only accessible in Desktop Mode
Added controller RGB LED color settings for the Lenovo Legion Go 2
Added controller, TDP control, and speaker audio support for the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally series
Reduced handheld controller input latency from 5-8ms to 100-500us
Night mode, color vibrance, and color temperature sliders in Steam now work on Z2E and later AMD APUs
Seamless boot fixes for Z2E and later AMD APUs
Automatically handle internally rotated display for some third-party handhelds
Improved motion control support for handhelds with BMI260 IMUs
SD card reliability improvements for some third-party handhelds, including ASUS ROG Xbox Ally, Legion Go 1, Legion Go S, Legion Go 2, and MSI Claw
Fixed washed out colors for Zotac and OneXPlayer handhelds with OLED
Fixed some GPU hangs on Phoenix APU devices (Tales of Arise, Octopath Traveler II)
Fixed ASUS ROG Ally power consumption from fingerprint reader while shut down
Fixed trackpad losing functionality after sleep/resume on the Legion Go
Fixed spurious wake-ups when using a Logitech Bolt receiver
Add controller support for MSI Claw devices (A1M, 7 AI+ A2VM, 8 AI+ A2VM, A8 BZ2EM)
Add controller support for OneXPlayer APEX and X1 series.
Improved gyro response for devices that use AccelGyro3D (Legion Go 1, Claw A1M)
Fixed a system crash on international Asus ROG Xbox Ally models
Fix Bluetooth not working on some Intel handhelds
Add initial firmware for upcoming Intel handhelds

Developer

Desktop Mode now uses Wayland by default
- X11 support may still be selected via Steam developer settings, or via `steamosctl`
Updated Linux kernel to 6.16
Steam now uses steamos-manager to query available desktop sessions and trigger desktop session switching
Added support for setting the desktop password in developer settings
Initial support for running as a Virtual Machine guest (virtio guest drivers)
Added support for third-party devices to trigger the SteamOS boot menu via EFI variable
Added `custom-update` verb to `atomupd-manager` for easier testing of specific builds
System reports now include more audio debug information
Initial support for LAVD CPU scheduler via `steamosctl set-cpu-scheduler lavd`

'Many people want to use VPNs for privacy—that is important—but we know that some children use them to get around restrictions': UK government considering VPN ban

Jess Kinghorn — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:53:22 +0000

In the UK, the Online Safety Act now requires that websites verify the age of its users through checks often carried out by third-party vendors. Personally, I'm trying to avoid handing over either scans of my government ID or face as long as possible and, so far that's resulted in me being locked out of my Bluesky DM's. Though not ideal, it's easily remedied by hopping onto a VPN—though future restrictions could mean I'll have to rethink that strategy.

The UK government is considering an Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying that the ban could take effect as soon as spring next year. As for the much nearer future, Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told BBC Breakfast earlier this week, "We will make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions."

To be clear, no specific restrictions have yet been announced and Kendall sounded somewhat cautious about an outright ban during a parliament debate that took place the same day. "I have commissioned further research about their usage. There are really important issues to balance here," she says. "Many people want to use VPNs for privacy—that is important—but we know that some children use them to get around restrictions. I will come back to that in July in our response to the consultation."

So, we'll have to wait until next month for anything definite, but it's hard not to feel like a full ban on VPNs is already on the table. If that does come to pass, more than the contents of my Bluesky inbox will be at stake.

Utah in the US has already tried to implement a full VPN ban (though this was postponed until September after Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, challenged the law in court). The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticised the Utah's proposed ban back in May, saying, "The legal risk could push the site to either ban all known VPN IPs, or to mandate age verification for every visitor globally. This would subject millions of users to invasive identity checks or blocks to their VPN use, regardless of where they actually live."

'We will make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions'Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told #BBCBreakfast she will outline more details next month about the social media ban on under 16s in the UK - as well as additional restrictions on Virtual Private… pic.twitter.com/QvRVFGeOIPJune 16, 2026

In other words, the UK could just be the next domino after Utah, potentially setting off a chain reaction that affects users around the world. Obviously, VPNs are used for more than getting around age verification checks to clap eyes upon your direct messages or 'adult material.' As a journalist, VPNs can also be a hugely valuable tool to protect my privacy online.

Age checks themselves can be a privacy nightmare in themselves, with the security breach that exposed the personal info of 70,000 Discord users last year being one case in point. To quote Evin McMullen, co-founder of age verification provider Privado ID, many age verification methods "are over exposing data to prove a simple point." Our Jacob spoke to McMullen as well as a number of other age verification specialists to explore some of the alternatives to our current privacy nightmare.

On one hand, I do understand some of the thinking behind the UK's planned ban more broadly—I won't pretend that having completely unfettered internet access in my youth was only ever beneficial. However, as I've written about before, I'm sceptical that age verification checks or other attempts to seemingly quarantine children online is the route to take. To echo the words of my wider PC Gamer colleagues in this group piece, instead of locking the kids out of online communities, perhaps world governments should make any attempt at all to better regulate social media giants.

SanDisk's latest Optimus gaming SSDs start at $799 MSRP for the 2 TB model and you don't even get Gen 5 speeds for that

Jeremy Laird — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:44:08 +0000

That we're in something of a crisis when it comes to PC storage and memory prices isn't news. But the pricing and specifications of SanDisk's new gamer-focused SSDs for PC and console are still pretty shocking.

The dubious fun kicks off with the SanDisk Optimus GX 7100X. It's a PCIe Gen 4 M.2 drive rated up to 7,250 MB/s for reads and 6,900 MB/s for writes. And it has a list price of $800 for the 2 TB config. The only other model is a 4 TB drive for $1,580. Ouch.

The drive is at least based on TLC NAND, rather than cheapo QLC memory, and comes with a five-year warranty. But still. Currently, SanDisk is offering the drive at a "discount" on its website, with the 2 TB model slashed to $630.

That's quite a bit off the MSRP, but it's still very silly money for a 2 TB Gen 4 M.2 drive, even in the current climate. Currently on our Prime Day SSD deals page, you can snag a 2 TB WD Black SN8100, which is an uber-fast Gen 5 drive, for $386, making the SanDisk drive look hopelessly over priced.

Is there anything that justifies the incredible $800 sticker price and still-silly $600-plus sale price? Well, it's "officially licensed" for the Asus ROG Xbox Ally consoles. But to the best of my knowledge, a generic Gen 4 SSD works fine in the Xbox Ally, so I'm not really clear on the real benefit there. I don't think there are even warranty implications for the Ally.

You really don't want to know how much the SanDisk drive for the PS5 costs... (Image credit: SanDisk)

As if this wasn't bad enough, I give you the SanDisk Optimus GX PRO 850P. This little beauty, another M2.2 SSD, kicks off at 1 TB. So, you might hope it's a bit more accessible. Yes, and yet no.

The 1 TB model has a list price of—wait for it—$475. The 2 TB model? That's $950. And this, ladies and germs, is still a Gen 4 drive, rated at 7,300 MB/s for reads and 6,600 MB/s for writes.

Again, there's a lower current "sale" price for the 1 TB model of $380. But that is still bananas for a 1 TB Gen 4 drive. Yes, that pertains even now in the AI-fuelled memory and storage crisis. And again, our Prime Day SSD deals page shows the way forward here, with the WD Black SN7100 1TB yours for $189.

The Optimus GX PRO 850P is also "officially licensed", this time for the Sony PS5 console, which still doesn't carry much more meaning given the PS5 should work with any 4-lane PCIe Gen 4 M.2 NVMe drive in capacities between 250 GB and 8 TB.

It has a chunky looking heatsink which is presumably optimised for the PS5's thermals. But, still, it's very hard to fathom where the money is going. For the record, SanDisk will do you an Optimus M.2 drive with PCIe Gen 5 support, the Optimus GX PRO 8100. That lists at a scarcely believable $525 for the 1 TB model, $350 on "sale."

The latter actually makes this Gen 5 1 TB drive cheaper than the Gen 4 1 TB Optimus GX PRO 850P in terms of current offered pricing on SanDisk's website. But, whatever. The best one can suggest in all this is that SanDisk knows where the market is headed and has decided to get out ahead of it with these hugely inflated MSRPs.

Presumably they'll look "normal" in a few months and while other drive makers are crank up their prices, SanDisk can style out some strictly true "discounts" at these remarkably high prices. Oh well!

Dave the Diver: In the Jungle's cutscenes are even hornier than they are in the base game

clivingston@pcgamer.com (Christopher Livingston) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:21:42 +0000

I've said it before and I'll say it again: cutscenes are the worst. There I am, sitting down to play a game, ready to tap some keys and wiggle some thumbsticks and click my mouse—when suddenly the game I'm playing decides it's actually a movie and all I can do for the next few minutes is watch.

You might think I'm too fidgety, too impatient, or that I simply don't have the attention span to sit there doing nothing while a cutscene plays. But you'd be wrong! It's the cutscenes that are the problem. They simply suck.

Except when they don't suck, of course, like in Dave the Diver, which is the only game I can remember playing where I was left wishing there were more cutscenes instead of zero cutscenes. Dave the Diver's cutscenes were so energetic, so fantastically animated, so surprising and funny and occasionally kinda horny that I loved every one of them and wished there were more.

Well, I got my wish. For the past week or so I've been playing Dave the Diver's new DLC, In the Jungle, which is not only completely rad but has some amazing cutscenes that are somehow even more wild, and more horny, than the cutscenes in the base game.

Rather than watching them, I'd urge you to actually play the DLC and discover them for yourself—but I'm not your boss, so sure, go and have a look below a few cutscenes I've selected from Dave's new adventure. First up, check out what a skeptical villager thought of the alligator tail meal Bancho cooked up for her:

I mean… Wow. That lady definitely had a massive orgasm while tasting that dish, right? It's not subtle, it's not subtext, that food was so good she straight-up nutted. That's not the only horny cutscene in Dave the Diver: In the Jungle, but it's definitely the horniest. It also made me realize I haven't really had a great meal in a long time. Maybe I need to try some new restaurants.

Aside from people climaxing while eating, there's a new character, Muna, sort of a gadget-maker who enjoys her work to an extremely high degree. From time to time Dave will have to approach her about upgrading his "jungle gun," which he uses to assassinate fish. Muna really dives into her work and her scenes are all incredibly animated and fun. Here's just one of several weapon upgrade scenes:

Dave's little shiver at the end. Do you think he… nah.

There are lots more excellent cutscenes in the DLC, which is surprisingly hefty for just a $10 price tag. There are naturally several scenes of Bancho dramatically enhancing recipes, there's a lovely boat ride scene at the start, a great car chase scene in the middle, and a rather dramatic cutscene near the end—but I won't show you any of those. I don't want to spoil any more than I have to!

OK, fine, here's one more of my favorites. I won't give you the context, all I'll say is you won't be able to guess what it signifies without playing the DLC, yet it makes perfect sense in the game itself. Enjoy!

GTA 6 pre-orders open next week, and to celebrate Rockstar has revealed its official cover art

Elie Gould — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:04:39 +0000

It may sound impossible, but the wait for Grand Theft Auto 6 is almost over. After a couple of delays, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has reassured fans that GTA 6 will release on November 19 this year, and now we have the pre-order date to prove it.

Rockstar just randomly—hold on a second, let me check what moon phase we're in—yup, randomly announced that pre-orders for GTA 6 will start on June 25, which is just a week away. Everyone, try to keep your composure.

Alongside the pre-order announcement came the official cover art reveal. It's nothing particularly surprising, as it follows the same design we've seen before with multiple fluorescent images spliced onto the cover. It's almost a shot for shot recreation of Vice City's cover art, with a couple of images swapped around.

This time we've got our main protagonists, Jason Duval and Lucua Caminos, a speed boat, a sports car, a helicopter, a hot chick, and then a couple of dudes with guns and motorbikes. Oh, there's also gator, because Florida—I mean Leonida.

Then, if you look extra close at the tattoo under the woman's bikini strap you can see it reads "Vice Baby". This checks out as GTA 6 takes place in the fictional state of Leonida, which is based off of Florida, and will let players return to the sunny streets of Vice City, the fictional city which is based off of Miami.

But aside from nitpicking at the details, players just seem elated to have any new information thrown their way, which is understandable considering we haven't had anything major since GTA 6's second trailer which came out over a year ago now. But now all we have to do is wait one week for pre-orders to open and then 21 more weeks for the game to release—easy!

GTA 6: Everything we know
GTA 6 map: Cruisin' Leonida
GTA 6 cars: The lineup
GTA 5 mods: Revved up
GTA 5 cheats: Phone it in
San Andreas cheats: All the codes

Gabe Newell buys $70.8 million mansion in Florida, and naturally it has a dock for his superyachts and a personal tunnel to the ocean

harvey.randall@futurenet.com (Harvey Randall) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:57:41 +0000

Gabe Newell, yacht enthusiast and the founder of one of the biggest videogame storefronts and developers on the planet, has just bought a big stonking house with his seemingly bottomless well of "I own Steam" money.

The news comes courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, which reveals that Newell has bought a property in Manalapan, Florida, for $70.8 million from Cindy and Ron McMackin. The home's previous owners certainly didn't get a bad deal, mind, having purchased it for $39 million in 2020. Ah, to be on the property ladder and to make almost $32 million just by living somewhere.

Anyway, the estate—which has about 20,000 square footage—is located on the Intracoastal Waterway and has a tunnel directly connecting the house to a slice of the ocean, as you can see in the video embedded above. It also, naturally, has a dock and boat lift. Likely for Newell's superyachts (or indeed, a smaller boat to ferry him back and forth) one of which he purchased for $500 million back in May.

It also enjoys a substantial outdoor pool, which is appropriately snazzy for a mansion that costs more than you or I'll likely see in our lifetimes. On the whole, it's an appropriate domicile for Newell, who has taken up a lot of scuba diving in recent years. Back in July of last year, Newell confirmed in a YouTube interview that his daily routine was the following:

"I get up, I work, I go scuba-diving, work some more, [then] either go on a second scuba dive or I go to the gym and work out. I live on a boat so I just hang out with everybody on the boat. Then I work."

So, yeah—snagging a mansion where you can live on both your big boat(s) and an actual demesne seems like a logical next step. I'm happy for him—and not at all jealous of his routine scuba breaks, which I tried to suggest as an expense for the team here at PC Gamer and was told "Harvey, we cannot afford a superyacht". Life is deeply and mercilessly unfair, sometimes.

We now have teardown pics of the Steam Frame controller and it looks like it could be pretty repairable

Jacob Fox — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:51:19 +0000

The FCC has just made public some exhibits for the left Steam Frame controller (via SadlyItsBradley). We've known the FCC ID 2AES4-1013 refers to the left controller for the upcoming Valve VR headset for a while, but we now have iFixit-style teardown pictures of it, courtesy of Valve itself.

Things could presumably still change, but the main takeaway is that it looks like the controller could actually be pretty repairable.

The pictures show internals made of multiple little PCBs, rather unlike the Index's giant, finnicky PCB chunk that requires a soldering iron for some repairs. It looks like the new controller will have plenty of threaded screws, too, and everything looks pretty easy to access.

This isn't too surprising, given we were very impressed with the new Steam Controller's repairability. Our Jacob Ridley did a teardown of the Steam Controller and concluded: "Valve has shown it cares about repairability in the past and that holds true for the Steam Controller... Many parts of the Steam Controller should be an easy replacement with minimal fuss, especially once spare parts are available to purchase."

Regarding the Steam Frame more generally, Valve has been sticking to its summertime launch goal, and a recent shipping manifest suggests that Frame imports are already arriving in Valve's US warehouse. The new FCC filings are just further evidence of a hopefully imminent launch.

Valve, FCC

We still don't know how the headset will be priced, however. One thing to note on this front is that it's a standalone device, meaning it has to have memory so it can, well, run games—16 GB of LPDDR5, no less. In other words, it won't be immune to the RAMpocalypse.

Still, every little helps, and not having to fork out for a whole new controller if anything goes wrong would be a nice way to potentially keep costs a little lower, even if indirectly.

D&D-inspired Critical Role's homegrown videogame is coming along well, says Laura Bailey: 'There's a lot of work being done'

harvey.randall@futurenet.com (Harvey Randall) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:28:19 +0000

Back in July of last year, Dungeons & Dragons livestream megafranchise Critical Role announced that it'd be working with AdHoc to make its very own video game based in Exandria—having already partnered with the company in the past to bring the very solid superhero management sim, Dispatch, to life.

It's a gambit I always knew would be coming down the pipeline, given how tremendously and immediately-wellfunded the studio's Amazon Prime series is—but it's gone from likely inevitability to actual reality in the past few years, with CEO (and current nama paladin) Travis Willingham celebrating the crystallisation of that dream back in 2024.

And judging by Laura Bailey's words in a recent episode of Mythical Kitchen's Last Meals, that project's coming along swimmingly. Bailey, who currently plays the pixie rogue Thimble (as well as Jester Lavorre and Vex'ahlia in past campaigns) tells Josh Scherer that while she's gotta keep things close to her chest, the project's moving and shaking. Which isn't just me paraphrasing:

"Things are shakin', they're movin', they're shakin', I can't say anything else other than that," Bailey says, though she does give us a morsel more info: "There's a lot of work being done and a lot of talks happening, and a lot of fun things I get to look at—and I can't say anything else."

And hey, listen—it's a crumb, but there's a lot of difference between announcing you'll be making a videogame and the actual pre-production (or even early production) process gaining steam.

We also happen to know, based on a Variety interview back in 2025, that the scale of said videogame aimed to be relatively humble—with a development time of a couple years planned. This is pure conjecture, but the fact we're now a year on that two-year timeline makes me believe that when Bailey says that things are moving and shaking? That means quite a lot.

It's also just nice to know it's coming along well. It's been a dire summer for videogames, and I've been an avid watcher of Critical Role since its first season—staying up late to watch its finale and weeping my rogue-loving eyes out. So the prospect of a fully-fledged Exandrian videogame has me more than a little excited, even if it feels inevitable.

Snap unveils AR glasses which CEO describes as 'highly wearable' in clip that visibly shows the chunky frames crushing his ears

Jess Kinghorn — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:27:30 +0000

Occasionally in hardware and technology reporting, I'm left to wonder if everyone else is in on a joke I'm not privy to. Today is one of those days. Snap, the company behind the instant messaging app Snapchat, has just unveiled its own augmented reality glasses.

Called Specs, the frames are pitched partially as an alternative to looking down at your phone screen all day, and a pair will set you back $2,195.

The goal was arguably to contain some serious hardware grunt inside a wearable, but the result is a pair of seriously chunky frames—not just to contain components but also likely to stop the whole thing from overheating. Let me set up the punchline: In this CNBC clip, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel describes Specs as both capable and "highly wearable," while the dorky-looking frames visibly crush down his ears.

Now that's a real howler. But before we completely dismiss this wearable effort, let's get into a few more choice details. For one thing, the lenses are apparently built to feel like "a 24-inch desktop monitor when you're working, or a 115-inch home cinema screen placed about 10 feet away when you're watching a movie." For another, the main selling point of Specs is that it's an all-in-one device, "with no puck and no tether," unlike some other major players' AR glasses projects we've seen recently.

Part of the frame's bulk can be attributed to the fact that it's housing not one but two Snapdragon processors. "One is dedicated to computer vision and the other is dedicated to running Lenses," Snap writes, "Together, they enable fast hand tracking, low latency, and responsive interactions that help digital content feel anchored in the real world. Specs deliver 7-millisecond motion-to-photon latency, verified through advanced robotic measurement systems."

@cnbc
♬ original sound - cnbc

In terms of battery life, you can expect a measly four hours of mixed use, "including audio and video playback, Lenses, AI assistance, Bluetooth notifications, and more." That said, the included charging case can offer four additional charges while out and about, holding a total of 20 hours of battery life. That's…still not great—though you could argue it avoids becoming yet another easy punchline.

What's perhaps less laughable for Snap itself is the hit its share price took when it revealed Specs. The original unveiling took place on June 16, and you'll notice a decline into today. This caps off six straight sessions of losses, according to Seeking Alpha. To be clear, I'm not faulting Specs' all-in-one ambitions on paper—it's more the fact that in practice, Snap is trying to deny a reality we can all see very obviously bearing down on its CEO's ears.

Valve upgrades AMD's 9070 XT GPU in the Steam Hardware Survey, finally allowing the credit it deserves

Jeremy Laird — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:22:31 +0000

Valve's Steam Hardware survey is no stranger to data anomalies. And yet it remains an undeniable source of interest and intrigue if you're into PC hardware. So, here's the latest twist. AMD's Radeon 9070 XT is subject to an implausibly big upgrade in terms of its user numbers in the latest survey for May, suggesting that there's been a change in the way the 9070 XT's data is collected or tagged.

In previous Steam Hardware Surveys, the 9070 XT has essentially been Sir Not Appearing in This Data. It simply didn't figure. But suddenly, here it is in the latest survey with 1.33% of Steam users, placing it 23rd among discrete GPUs.

Valve lists the top 100 entries, which currently reaches down to the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT on 0.17%. The point here is that it's highly implausible that the 9700 XT has gone from zero in previous months to suddenly representing 1.33% of Steam gamers. It's not like it's just gone on sale.

Now, you could write this off as another Steam data anomaly that's likely to vanish in future surveys, like the fairly frequent anomalies in the survey caused by Chinese Lunar New Year. However, there's another data point in the new survey that likely reveals what's actually going on.

The listing in the survey for generic "AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics" GPUs has dropped from 2.37% share in April to 0.90% in the new May data. That's a drop of around 1.47% and suspiciously close to the 1.33% the 9070 XT picked up over the same period.

The regular RX 9070 non-XT already factored in previous surveys. (Image credit: Future)

Odds are, then, that either Valve has made changes to the way it collects data to better identify AMD GPUs. Or AMD has tweaked its driver software to the same ultimate effect. In other words, 9070 XTs that were being lumped into that generic Radeon category are now being counted properly.

The slight remaining gap between the loss of share of the generic Radeon class and the 9070 XT's gains can be easily accounted for by several factors. There may be other GPUs that have also benefited from the data collection changes (though not the vanilla RX 9070, which was in the previous few surveys and has not leapt up the ranks this month).

At the same time, presumably not everyone with and AMD GPU has updated to the latest drivers. So, that could play a part. Whatever, this new survey data seems much more likely to be accurate.

For some time now, AMD's latest RDNA 4 GPUs including the RX 9070 XT have ranked highly in various sales charts, most obviously on Amazon where a Gigabyte 9070 XT currently ranks as the most popular, which is about as mainstream as it gets. So, the idea that RDNA 4 and the 9070 XT in particular had gained so little traction with Steam gamers was hard to understand.

That's true even if you operate under the assumption that most graphics cards are sold as part of pre-built rigs. Anyway, suffice to say that the 9070 XT has now been installed in something more closely resembling its rightful place in the Steam Hardware Survey and we can all relax. Until the next anomaly gets our data antennae twitching.

'Price increases are unavoidable' says Tim Cook, proving even Apple isn't impervious to the global memory shortage

Jacob Fox — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:16:37 +0000

Courtesy of the RAMpocalypse, companies are raising prices for their memory-loaded products left, right, and centre. Apple products, however, had previously remained mostly (though not completely) untouched. No longer, though, as the company CEO Tim Cook tells the Wall Street Journal.

"Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable. We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable."

This is not your usual shortage, he explains: "This is a hundred-year flood. I’ve never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years."

Cook told the WSJ that both storage and memory are problems, but regarding DRAM specifically, he said:

"There’s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases. We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. That’s the bottom line."

He also explained that the company is open to taking a hit to keep prices low:

"We’re willing to use our balance sheet to help be a part of the solution. Obviously, more capacity is needed."

That's one of the benefits of being a big company like Apple and having a sizeable profit margin: you can take supply cost increases on the chin and keep your products priced as they were. To an extent, anyway—it seems Apple is now finally admitting it cannot keep things as cheap as they were.

To be clear, the company hadn't managed to keep everything completely normal until now. Not too long ago, Apple discontinued its entry-level Mac Mini model, effectively raising the minimum price you could spend to get a cheap Mac desktop.

(Image credit: Future)

That being said, the actual prices for the models that were being sold stayed the same. And there was the launch of the MacBook Neo, of course, which is a cheap laptop compared to Apple's usual pricing, and seemed like a small bastion inside the wider PC market, which kept (and keeps) raising prices. One thing that's probably helped is the fact that Apple software makes very good use of memory, meaning not as much actual capacity is usually needed.

But the good times are no longer, and there's no silver bullet to fix it all, unfortunately. Cook also told the WSJ that it won't be trying to make its own memory and storage facilities: "We can’t do everything. We know what we’re good at."

At any rate, new fabs take a long time to spin up, even for players already in the chip fabrication game. And on that front, we've got a while to go until the big players finish their new ones. Until then, it'll likely be a game of 'grin and bear it.'

Final Fantasy 14 will give players in Japan a dog for paying their taxes

harvey.randall@futurenet.com (Harvey Randall) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:59:28 +0000

Final Fantasy 14 will give you a dog (among other rewards) for paying your taxes—if you're in Japan, that is. There's really nothing else I can say that isn't funnier than the truth of the situation, though I'm not pointing and laughing at Square here. It's a genuinely sweet incentive to have players contributing to other municipalities.

As reported by Famitsu, Square is partnering with the Shibuya Ward (which it has an office in) as part of Japan's "Furusato Nozei", a system whereby urban Japanese residents can voluntarily put forward some of their money to rural areas of their choice, such as their hometown—in exchange, they get gifts, such as travel tickets, gift cards, and so on.

If you do this for Shibuya, you'll get a dog. Specifically, you'll get the Megashiba mount if you donate 9,000 yen (the equivalent of $55)—or a bunch of other rewards, including five fantasia (used to change your character's appearance), the Collegiate Attire set, the Magitek Attire set, or a bunch of dance emotes, all with varying donation amounts.

The donation amounts are all far more expensive than their store prices. For instance, the Megashibu's usually around 2,530 yen (roughly $16)—but if you're a Japanese resident that's feeling particularly charitable with your money, it's a neat way to get some items while also contributing to the place you grew up.

Also, you can get a tax write-off if you're over a certain amount—which is the slightly more self-serving reason to do it. But hey, if you're paying a similar amount of yen in income tax anyway, it's a neat way to get a free digital dog out of the whole deal. If you happen to live in Shibuya yourself, you can go to the official collab site to sign up.

PC Gamer magazine's new issue is on sale now: Planet Zoo 2

robert.jones@futurenet.com (Robert Jones) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:31:00 +0000

This month, PC Gamer gets world-exclusive access to Planet Zoo 2, the ridiculously ambitious and impressive new management sim from Frontier Developments. For our huge, authoritative cover feature, PC Gamer travelled to Frontier Developments' Cambridge headquarters, got up close and personal with the game for multiple hours, and then interviewed seven key devs about all aspects of the game. The result is your ultimate one-stop shop for Planet Zoo 2 information, including stunning, never-before-seen images. This isn't just shaping up to be the best animal management game ever, but the best management sim full stop when it launches in October this year.

Issue 424 UK / 412 US

Cover story: Planet Zoo 2 | Secondary features: PC gaming's best FPS

This month, PC Gamer gets world-exclusive access to Planet Zoo 2. Plus, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve previewed, Forza Horizon 6 reviewed, Return to Castle Wolfenstein reinstalled, and webcams tested.

Buy this issue in print: $4.99 (US) | $16.49 (UK)

Buy this issue digitally: $4.99 (US) | $16.49 (UK)

There's another awesome feature in this issue of PC Gamer, too. The fountain of love for the FPS genre never runs dry here at PC Gamer. And, for good reason, too. The FPS was born on PC and, despite incursions by a few console-leaning series such as Call of Duty, still thrives first and foremost on PC, with a greater selection of top shooters available to play on it than on any other platform. As such, the PC Gamer team has come together to decide upon the FPS games that we recommend gamers should play today in 2026, ranging from immersive single-player adventures, to hyper competitive online milisims.

(Image credit: Future)

This issue comes loaded with a dynamite preview section, too. Leading the assault this month is the adrenaline-inducing action flight game Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. And, we're pleased to say that, after our dedicated hands-on time playing the game, this is truly looking like a thrilling experience, with hyper-detailed jet fighters dogfighting it out in some of the most luscious-looking skyboxes we've ever seen. If you've got the need for speed (and plenty of big explosions), then this is looking like a total treat. In addition, we also preview Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, Tides of Annihilation, Frontier Legends, Subnautica 2, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2, and Denshattack!.

(Image credit: Future)

Meanwhile, in terms of reviews, this issue features definitive judgments on Forza Horizon 6, Directive 8020, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, 007 First Light, Mixtape, and Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, among other games.

(Image credit: Future)

Cover feature: Planet Zoo 2

(Image credit: Future)

Written by: Robert Jones

Magazine exclusive: Until July 27th, 2026

What's in this month's cover story: For this issue's all-access, world-exclusive cover feature, PC Gamer travels to Frontier Developments' headquarters and interviews no less than seven key developers about its ambitious new animal management sim. If you like the idea of using an incredible suite of creative tools to build the zoo or wildlife reserve of your dreams, then this game is going to be like Christmas coming early.

Secondary feature

Future

Additional content in this month's issue

LEAD PREVIEW

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve

Our lead preview this issue sees us go hands-on with Bandai Namco's thrilling new action flight game, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, for multiple hours of explosive dogfighting and tactical strikes. And, we're pleased to report that if you've got the need for speed, then this is looking like the genuine Top Gun experience.

LEAD REVIEW

Forza Horizon 6

Our lead review this issue sees us pass judgment on the latest installment in the Forza Horizon open-world racing series. And while our reviewer finds it is very much business as usual in terms of overall quality, this game's Japanese setting really elevates the high-octane driving action. It's time to burn some rubber in and around Tokyo.

MOD SPOTLIGHT

Half-Life: Lemmings

Ever wanted to save more of the scientists in Half-Life's labyrinthian Black Mesa complex? Well, if so, then this is the mod for you. Half-Life: Lemmings reworks the original Half-Life, as well as the AI powering its beloved boffins, so that Gordon Freeman can help shepherd them to safety. We install the mod and report in.

REINSTALL

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Gray Matter Studios' Return to Castle Wolfenstein remains a cult-classic FPS for many in the PC gaming community, delivering plenty of Nazi-slaying, supernatural shooting action. However, is its reputation today overblown? We fire up our flamethrower and go fascist hunting to find out.

DIARY

Total War: Warhammer 3

In the dramatic final installment of our Total War: Warhammer 3 diary, PC Gamer's Matthew Elliott finds out what happens when you try to play this classic grand strategy game as an undead faction that, counterintuitively, you might think, protects humans at all costs, doesn't ally with other undead factions, and remains firmly in their home territory. Will it end in tears or triumph?

SPECIAL REPORT

How AI was tricked to help build bombs

This month's special report explores a fascinating study where academics at two Italian universities managed to repeatedly circumvent AI safeguards so that they could trick them into supplying information and instructions that could be used to build bombs.

HARDWARE GROUP TEST

Webcams

With video meetings, in-game streaming, and video content creation on the rise, looking good on camera has never been more important. That's why in this issue, the PC Gamer hardware team reviews and rates six of the most notable webcams on the market today, appraising them for image quality and features.

...and more!

Now Playing: The PC Gamer team writes about their adventures in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Bloodletter, Sable, and Crabmeat.

They're Back: Matthew Elliott re-reviews Resident Evil: Village, Bramble: The Mountain King, and Pendragon.

Making of: Rick Lane speaks to Nightdive Studios about how it went about reconstructing System Shock's iconic Citadel Station.

13 issues!

13 issue UK Annual subscription: $141.99 (Print) | $58.99 (Digital)

13 issue US Annual subscription: $36.95 (Print) | $20 (Digital)

Where else can you subscribe to PC Gamer?

UK: iOS App Store | Pocketmags | Zinio

US: iOS App Store | Pocketmags | Zinio

How many issues are in an annual subscription?

13 issues a year, including a special holiday issue in late December.

What's the difference between the UK and US versions of the magazine?

The UK edition of PC Gamer magazine has a slightly higher page count than the US edition, with extra content available.

Are PC Gamer subscriptions available outside the US/UK?

Yes, we ship PC Gamer magazine to many countries around the world. For a full list of destinations, please visit Magazines Direct.

What form does the digital magazine come in?

Digital editions of PC Gamer magazine are provided in PDF and EPUB format, readable through Pocketmags.

Dave the Diver: In the Jungle review

clivingston@pcgamer.com (Christopher Livingston) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Need to Know

What is it? DLC for Dave the Diver where you open a new restaurant.
Expect to pay: $10/£8.49
Developer: Mintrocket
Publisher: Mintrocket
Reviewed on: Intel i7 9700K, RTX 4070 Ti, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer: No
Steam Deck: Verified
VR: No

Oh, there's some new DLC for Dave the Diver where you do more spearfishing and restaurant management, but this time it takes place in a little village where you can do quests and win favor with the locals like it's Stardew Valley? And it only costs $10? Sounds like a cute little distraction, perfect for the weekend.

Except the weekend is long gone and I'm still playing. I've sunk more than 25 hours into the new "content pack" for Dave The Diver, called In The Jungle, and I'm happy to say I'm not finished yet. In addition to Dave's usual scuba diving and bartending, I've battled a half-dozen new bosses, hunted birds with a rifle, become an expert beetle manager, been in a car chase, and watched my friend get swallowed and regurgitated by an enormous frog. Heck, I've even gone fishing the old-fashioned way: with a rod and a reel. Imagine that! Finally, fishing comes to Dave the Diver.

Just like the base game, In The Jungle is packed to the gills with activities and swimming with quirky characters—and it's big enough it almost feels like it could be a standalone game.

Deep dive

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

In the DLC, Dave has been asked by his pal Dr. Bacon to investigate a remote village where a dead dinosaur has washed up next to a lake, and Dave, as he always does, agrees to help out. Bancho the legendary sushi chef comes along and sets up shop in the little village, where the locals are a bit wary of the newcomers. Soon, Dave is making routine dives to spearhunt and Bancho is cooking up his catches. There's no sushi this time (you can't serve freshwater fish raw), but that doesn't stop Bancho from dramatically researching and grilling dozens of new recipes.

The daily dives for dinner work like they do in the base game, though Dave has some new upgradable gear to play with like his "Jungle Gun" which can quickly switch between a sniper rifle, shotgun, net gun, and assault rifle. I know that sounds extreme for catching fish, but this lake is a dangerous place, filled with ravenous piranha and enormous crocodiles. The lake is just the beginning, as the deeper Dave dives, the more dangerous and bizarre the sea life gets.

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

What's more exciting this time around is the surface world, where the side-scrolling of the dives is swapped for a Stardew Valley-like perspective. You can explore the village and visit the homes of the more than 30 new characters stuffed into this DLC, running around in all directions instead of just back and forth. This perspective extends to Bancho's outdoor restaurant, meaning you have to navigate around tables and chairs while serving meals, grilling appetizers, and mixing drinks for your evening visitors.

In the Jungle makes it feel more like Dave is really living in the world than the original game ever did

This perspective shift adds a lot: the base game was segmented into the different gameplay sections, but here it all flows together. Walk from Dave's customizable cabin in the morning right out into the village, gather some resources like plants and herbs, chop down a tree and chip out some ore to make a bit of new furniture for the restaurant, stop and chat with a few locals, then stroll down to the lake, pop on your scuba gear, and dive right in. In the Jungle makes it feel more like Dave is really living in the world than the original game ever did.

Jungle gym

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

Then there's the jungle itself. You'll grab your trigger-happy pal Cobra and your new gadget-making friend Muna and carefully explore the branching paths of the jungle, which is filled with dangerous creatures like giant spiders, venomous frogs, vicious baboons, and massive snakes.

That's where another new system appears: turn-based combat. You control Dave and his friends as they battle, using their offensive and defensive skills against the threats, leveling up after wins to unlock even more abilities. There's a timing element to much of it, too, so tapping a button at the right time can mean doing more damage or blocking your enemy's attacks. It's a refreshing addition to the mix, especially Cobra's abilities, which involve flinging sticks of dynamite or using his incendiary sniper rifle on the monsters. Cobra is anything but subtle.

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

Why explore a jungle when you're supposed to be looking for lake monsters and running a restaurant? Well, there's an ancient temple hidden in there somewhere, and, yes, it's got even more new challenges like a series of ever-more intricate block-pushing puzzles. If Link ever quits the Zelda series, I'm starting to think Dave could fill in nicely.

What else? Well, you can manage a collection of horned beetles, battling them against each other in a rock-paper-scissors combat system. You can go bird hunting, which works just like the old Duck Hunting game for the NES. Fancy a bit of Rock Band? There's a minigame with the local musician. There's a block-stacking activity, lots of fishing to do in jungle ponds, and a mobile app that lets you use the distance you've walked and swam to level up a virtual flower…

I guess I should stop being surprised at just how many different activities Mintrocket packs into Dave the Diver, but I can't. Every morning you wake up in the DLC, you really have no idea where the day will take you and what new game or system it'll place in your path.

New in town

The restaurant will keep you busy in the evenings.Mintrocket

Fishing, with a rod and reel, at last.Mintrocket

Bancho has lots of new recipes to perfect.Mintrocket

One of many big, big bosses.Mintrocket

With so many new characters, a map showing their locations is a big help.Mintrocket

Learn the local customs and participate in the celebrations.Mintrocket

Collect and battle beetles, roshambo-style.Mintrocket

Up for some Rock Band?Mintrocket

Don't worry, Dave will win him over.Mintrocket

Motivating me beyond all the minigames is Dave's evolving relationship with the villagers. While they live in the jungle in modest huts far removed from modern society, they're anything but primitive. They read manga. They use mobile phones. One villager gave me his CD player because he streams all his music these days. Each has a disposition meter and the more you gently interact with them, the more you'll learn about their likes and dislikes and find ways to win them over.

What really makes it all work is that Dave is just such a lovable character. He's constantly risking his neck for others to take on fearsome sea creatures and horrifying jungle monsters, yet he's completely bashful when anyone tries to thank him, always deflecting the praise to give someone else the credit. Just like in the base game, Dave once again won me over with his humble charm, and that made it completely believable that he was capable of winning over the villagers by being so kind and selfless. It was pretty heartwarming when the prickliest of all the villagers eventually approached me with a small gift near the end of the game. And Dave, of course, was completely bashful in accepting it.

What else is there to say? In the Jungle is great, it's inexpensive, and just as filled to the brim with charm and activities as the base game. I was expecting this DLC to be a tasty snack, but turns out it's a big ol' meal.

How to get the fishing rod in Dave the Diver: In the Jungle

clivingston@pcgamer.com (Christopher Livingston) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0000

There are tons of new activities in Dave the Diver: In the Jungle, from turn-based jungle combat against spiders and snakes to hunting game birds in the woods with a rifle. But one activity had me more excited than all the rest combined: fishing.

Weird to say it, but after catching hundreds of fish in Dave the Diver, Dave can finally do some fishing—not with a harpoon or net gun or an underwater shottie, but with a good old-fashioned fishing rod. Once you've got it you'll be able to fish in several ponds scattered around the jungle and start collecting new fish types you won't find anywhere else. But first, you've got to acquire a fishing rod, and that means bringing down a very mean fish.

How to get the fishing rod in Dave the Diver: In the Jungle

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

To get the fishing rod, you'll first need to do a favor for one of the villagers. Look for Basu, a friendly fellow who lives east of Dave's cabin, just on the edge of the lake. He's usually just outside his house, though he may be fishing off his dock, so you may need to enter his house and walk out the back door overlooking the water.

Talk to Basu and ask him about his favorite things. He'll start talking about Piraiba Catfish, requesting that you serve the fish in some form in your restaurant. He won't mention the fishing pole, but that's the reward for bringing him some Piraiba Catfish.

To find the Piraiba Catfish, go diving in the lake and start swimming to the right. You want to be at a depth of between 35-75 meters while you explore. The Piraiba Catfish will typically appear around the middle of the lake at that depth. It's dark gray with a white underbelly, it's about three times larger than Dave, and it's got long whiskers. Here's what it looks like:

(Image credit: Mintrocket)

The Piraiba Catfish is a tough customer, so make sure you have extra ammo as one of your hotbar items and spare oxygen (healing) as the other. It has a tendency to swim directly toward you and try to suck you into its mouth.

As it tries swallowing you, you'll have to beat a quicktime event to avoid it, and if you fail, you'll have to play another quicktime event to escape from its stomach. I'd recommend circling it while taking shots with the sniper rifle, switching to your shotgun when it's close up, and swimming either directly up or down when it's charging at you to avoid its mouth.

After you've killed the catfish, either summon your salvage drone to take it away or cut off some of its meat with your knife. Leave the lake and head back to Basu. Once you've delivered a piece of Piraiba Catfish to Basu, he'll give you the fishing rod. His shop also becomes available, where you can buy bait and fishing rod upgrades.

Now you can go fishing at any of the fishing spots in the game! They're all marked on your map with a fishing rod icon. There's a pond to the west of the village by the waterfall near the shooting range, and there are three fishing ponds on the jungle map. You can also fish off of Basu's dock next to the lake.

Xbox's latest tactics display 'a basic misunderstanding of how the interactive entertainment world moves', says former PlayStation exec

shaun.prescott@futurenet.com (Shaun Prescott) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 02:48:00 +0000

Xbox is flailing again. Major studio closures loom, the AI boom continues to erode the affordability of console hardware components, no one seems to want those consoles anyway and, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella—a fierce advocate of the AI industry crippling the rest of consumer tech—the corp isn't making enough money from its first-party games.

All this, despite Microsoft having a market value of over $2 trillion, and owning some of the biggest games studios and IPs in the world, including Call of Duty and Minecraft.

What's going on? Everyone has an opinion, some more authoritative than others. Among those opining include Shawn Layden, a high profile former Sony executive who helped usher in the PlayStation 5 before his resignation in 2019. Overall, he spent 32 years with Sony.

Sony's PlayStation, of course, has troubles of its own, but Layden bowed out long before the worst of them manifested. He's criticized the industry's pivot to live service—which has proven a terrible tactical shift for Sony—and the continued reliance that major publishers and platform holders have on blockbusters. He also thinks industry consolidation is "the enemy of diversity", and that subscription services stifle creativity.

In other words: the beliefs he espouses would seem to put Microsoft firmly on his shit list.

In a LinkedIn post, game design consultant Tadhg Kelly reiterates some of the blunders, strategic shifts and curious tacks taken by Xbox since Asha Sharma took the reins in February. "The Xbox identity crisis will continue until morale improves," he writes. "We've had:

A new CEO after previous leadership was beheaded
A rebrand that was kinda just the old brand
A reaffirmation of expensive Helix
A claim that hardware can't be expensive to win
A claim that 30% margin is done
A claim that 3% margin is trouble
Matthew Ball and some new tech-industry hires
A claim about refocusing on core franchises
A showcase of new games
A killing of studios making those new games
A claim that gaming is important to Microsoft
A comment that gaming at Microsoft needs to stand alone

"And on and on and on," Kelly adds. "Strategy isn’t a collection of contradictory decisions that might matter. That's just tactics. Bob and weave. Let's just get through this. Sad times for Big Green."

Layden sounded off in the comments. "At the risk of sounding like a 'hater' (which, I'm really not), the moves evince a basic misunderstanding of how the interactive entertainment world moves."

He added: "Iykyk [If you know you know], which also means if you don't you don't."

Those are strong words. It'd be like a carpenter evincing "a basic misunderstanding" of how a lathe works, 25 years after their apprenticeship.

Reading this comment I can't help but remember the words of former Activision boss Bobby Kotick, who said in an interview last year that he once told Satya Nadella that he shouldn't be in gaming at all. "We [Kotick and Nadella] had half an hour together and he said: 'what can you tell me about gaming'? And I was like, dude, you shouldn't be in gaming. You're not a creative company. You should buy Workday or something, SAP. This is not a creative DNA company."

Kotick continued: "When he called to do the deal I said the same thing to him. You need us, because you're not going to figure out gaming with what you have. But is this really the priority?"

One thing's for sure: if Microsoft is, as Nadella claims, "not monetizing" its entertainment despite its clear advantages in terms of wealth and IP ownership, then it can hardly be labeled a smart or even halfway capable business. Certainly not one well-equipped to handle an existentially consequential technology like AI is proving to be.

Either that or, as a diabolically wealthy, publicly traded corp who makes the majority of its money from cloud services, it isn't fit to work in the creative industries.

Do you recognize these survival crafting games? Prove you're a real master of roughin' it with our latest quiz on base-building sandboxes

Andrea Shearon — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:49:27 +0000

If you ask me to name what genre of games I tend to gravitate towards the most, I'll tell you it's a good ol' fashioned, narrative-driven RPG. But if you were to look at my Steam history, I can see how you would assume it's anything and everything under the survival crafting tag.

More quizzes!

(Image credit: Future)

Want to keep testing your knowledge of gaming trivia? We've got loads more PC Gamer quizzes, on everything from healthbars to weird currencies to absurd patch notes.

Still, I maintain that I value story above all else; I just can't resist a good crafting loop and endless base building. There aren't many survival crafting games out there that satisfy with a good plot hook, but they're great little adventures when you've got a friend or two to tag along. I love setting up a server, clearing my weekend schedule, and using survival games as a sort of social campfire for the Discord gang to huddle around—even if I spend most of that time organizing chests.

That ritual is how I've wound up with hundreds of hours across several of the genre's staples. So, as a tribute to all of my time spent in the (often literal) mines, I've thrown together a survival crafting quiz for all of you sandbox sickos. Whether you're the building friend, the guy that's always fishing, or that person perpetually lagging behind the group, this one should be a breeze.

You've got 12 minutes to identify 20 survival crafting games by a pixelated screenshot. Good luck, and when you're finished, let me know how you did in the comments.

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Dave the Diver: In the Jungle review

Deep dive

Jungle gym

New in town

How to get the fishing rod in Dave the Diver: In the Jungle

How to get the fishing rod in Dave the Diver: In the Jungle

Xbox's latest tactics display 'a basic misunderstanding of how the interactive entertainment world moves', says former PlayStation exec

Do you recognize these survival crafting games? Prove you're a real master of roughin' it with our latest quiz on base-building sandboxes