Stellaris celebrates 10 years (and a new DLC) with a free weekend and a 70% discount

This GTA 5 filmmaker is livestreaming every step of machinima production, from location scouting to live debugging when the game inevitably crashes

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my life watching Grand Theft Auto machinima over the last decade. And while I can certainly appreciate the amount of editing and effort that goes into each video’s production—I don’t always think of that toil when gawping at the finished article. According to filmmaker Jordy Veenstra, however, that polished…

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WoW’s got the right to close private servers—but in this industry layoff hellscape, I also feel like I’m watching the MMO genre’s future get snuffed out

Terminally Online (Image credit: Future) This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very own MMO column. Every other week, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we’ve all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice. Inside…

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The creator of Ultima is reportedly reclaiming the series’ rights back from EA, and it could happen as soon as next year

Ultima is one of PC gaming’s most important cultural touchstones, with Richard ‘Lord British’ Garriot’s roleplaying series blazing trails across numerous genres. The mainline CRPGs received critical acclaim for their rich, dynamic worlds, while spinoffs like Ultima Underworld and Ultima Online were key texts in the evolution of immersive sims and MMOs. Ultima’s influence still…

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After losing over 30 pounds exercising in VR for six months, I can say it’s worth the effort (and sweaty faceplates)

James Bentley, hardware writer (Image credit: Future) This week I’ve been: Enjoying and bearing the British summertime in equal measure, whilst playing too many deck builders (Here’s looking at you, 2 fights in 2 tight spaces and Moonsigil Atlas). There’s part of me that feels like I’ve somewhat fallen for the sunk cost fallacy of…

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Microsoft researcher builds goat-powered neural network in Age of Empires 2 to show why we should ‘stop assuming that LLMs behave like humans just because they were trained with natural language’

Since large-language models like ChatGPT can generate natural language responses that appear human-like in tone, this has led to considerable discussion over whether LLMs might themselves be sentient. At present, there are far more reasons to conclude that AIs are not and will never be conscious. But the idea persists regardless. This is partly because…

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