We and our council of games industry luminaries ranked Helldivers 2 highly in our 2023 Most Wanted list, which is a small point of pride. The buzz around Arrowhead’s 2024 co-op shooter wasn’t nothing before it came out, but it was getting a whole lot less mainstream attention before it became PlayStation’s fastest-selling game ever…
First reported by Newsweek, Google Trends has revealed a completely predictable knock-on effect from the US state of Florida’s new ID requirement for accessing internet pornography: Everybody’s trying to get in on the VPN game. Newsweek specifically homed in on the search metrics for “free vpn” via Google Trends, which has spiked over each of…
After thousands of hours spent in combat with orcs, androids, and enemy militants, I’ll admit that it’s gotten harder to find novelty in videogame violence. While Steam overflows with trucks, farms, and city builders for when I’ve grown battle-weary, violence overwhelmingly remains the basic mode of interaction, even in AAA RPGs that tout player freedom….
X owner Elon Musk is facing renewed allegations that he is also the person behind Elon Musk-adoring fan Adrian Dittman. The claim came to prominence after screenshots posted by Dittman to 4chan (because of course it was 4chan) seemingly revealed that he has access to administrator privileges on X, although the authenticity of the image…
Against all odds our planet has made yet another shaky yet successful trip around the sun and it’s The Year Of Our Gaming 2025. Each year is a chance for a new beginning, even in gaming, so let’s quickly clean the stink of 2024 off us and start fresh. Scrub away the memory of the…
In July 2022 Ruja Ignatova, the self-styled ‘Cryptoqueen’ behind a pyramid scheme called OneCoin, was placed on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list. Accused of defrauding investors of an amount estimated at between $3.6 to 4.5 billion, the Bulgarian-born Ignatova disappeared in 2017. In June last year came a new development: The FBI increased…
The Witcher season 4—not to be confused with the also upcoming The Witcher 4 game—is likely headed our way this year. Filming on the season has reportedly wrapped, although all we’ve seen of the next leg of Geralt and Ciri’s continent-trotting adventures so far is a quick teaser of new star Liam Hemsworth taking over…
After sparking a fury by saying developers should “make good games, don’t make a contemporary political statement,” Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt now says he was referring only to commentary made “outside the theme of the game.” Pilestedt’s initial statement came in response to a user on X who urged him to “never add…
Publisher Hooded Horse has announced that Manor Lords has sold over 2.5 million copies, which makes PC Gamer’s best city builder of 2024 an undeniable smash hit. Speaking in a recent interview with the BBC, Hooded Horse co-founder Snow Rui says that, even though the publisher realised there was interest in the game’s pre-release trailers…
It’s a new year, and that means a new crop of iconic characters—some more than others—entering the public domain. According to Title 17 of the United States Code, once 95 years have passed since the creation of any “anonymous work, pseudonymous work, or work made for hire,” that work belongs to everyone. There’s something beautiful…