February 2024

Every February, Kickstarter holds a month-long celebration of tabletop RPGs called ZineQuest, featuring all sorts of crowdfunded zines. What’s a zine, you ask? It’s a short, self-published book, in this context usually an adventure, a supplement, or a small, self-contained game.  They tend to be a bit scrappy and weird, allowing creators to run with…

The Epic Games Store gave away more than 586 million games via its free games program in 2023, according to statistics revealed by the company as part of its year in review. The free games program featured 86 games that were freely downloadable for Epic Games Store users in 2023, amounting to a total redeemed…

Ubisoft’s long-awaited pirate adventure Skull and Bones is out today, and if you’re curious but put off by the unexpectedly steep price tag, I have good news: An eight-hour trial version is available, so you can see what it’s all about without paying a penny. I initially expected Skull and Bones to come in with…

Look who’s back, back again. AMDs Radeon Anti-Lag+ was released in September last year as the company’s latest attempt to reduce dreaded latency times in competitive gaming, but was quickly removed after it was found to draw the ire of some common anti-cheat programs.  Now, just three months later, it’s looking like it may well…

On January 24, a couple of weeks before I installed the spanking-new industrial printer that would kickstart my own (albeit fictional) newspaper business in News Tower, The New York Times ran the following headline: “The News About the News Business is Getting Grimmer“. A day later, CNN went with “News industry off to brutal 2024…

Palworld’s had a bit of a cheater problem recently, and  if you’re wondering why that matters in a PvE title, it’s because of the public servers. Item duping, one-shotting, and (according to a recent announcement) problems accessing the servers themselves have all become headaches for the game’s players and developers alike. “Currently, some users are…