Indie horror game rejected by Steam releases for free instead: ‘This is our response to being censored, and our rejection of the idea that horror can be defined as acceptable or not’

Indie horror game Vile: Exhumed launched today as a free donationware game under a Creative Commons license, following the cancellation of its planned release on Steam in July, reportedly over the presence of “sexual content with depictions of real people.” Vile: Exhumed had been listed on Steam, and was slated for release on July 22—the…

Read More

After next week’s Grafton Farmhouse rework, Phasmophobia is getting what I can only describe as ‘haunted Waffle House’

Phasmophobia’s haunted dwellings are undergoing a few renovations as developer Kinetic Games continues to overhaul the horror game’s oldest maps. Grafton Farmhouse is the next in line for a makeover on August 12, and a new small map, Nell’s Diner, launches later this year. It’s all part of Phasmophobia’s 2025 and beyond roadmap—which kicked off…

Read More

‘Touch grass, read a book, throw a ball, get tackled once in a while’: Epic Games art director and OG System Shock 2 artist says the best-looking videogames are designed by people who don’t just look at videogames

Nate Wells, Epic Games art director and former artist on Looking Glass Studios classics like Thief: The Dark Project and System Shock 2, said in this week’s episode of the Nightdive Studios Deep Dive podcast that the ecosystem of games artists where he started his career is extinct. In its place is a landscape of…

Read More

Search sucks

Tyler Wilde, US EIC (Image credit: Future) This week: Had an infuriating audio driver troubleshooting experience, but was soothed by goofy dance music. I have more digital stuff than ever before. My work email account is nearly 20 years old. My personal email is even older. I have gigs and gigs of old photos and…

Read More

‘We didn’t vote for ChatGPT’: Prime Minister of Sweden admits he uses AI chatbots for ‘second opinions’ and an awful lot of people are not happy about it

In a recent interview with Swedish site Dagens industri (via The Guardian), Ulf Kristersson, the Prime Minister of Sweden, said he regularly consults with AI chatbots including ChatGPT and the French service Le Chat to get a “second opinion” on decisions. Unsurprisingly, that turned out to be an admission he probably should have kept to…

Read More

Kingmakers, the medieval combat sim with tanks and M16s, warns that guns don’t always win knife fights: ‘Not all of your bullets will have an easy time taking down all enemy types’

Kingmakers, the game that asks ‘What if you brought an M1 Abrams main battle tank to a knife fight,’ is set to enter early access on October 8, and with that date slowly grinding nearer developer Redemption Road has released its debut dev blog—which I’m sorry to say is not about M1 Abrams main battle…

Read More

No more deploy beacon clown cars for recon players in Battlefield 6—the assault class will get them instead: ‘We’re intentionally redefining it as a teamplay tool for frontline flanking’

Ever played a Battlefield game and watched, haplessly, as some jerk with a sniper rifle makes a camp in a hard-to-reach building and turns it into a clown car? Well, that’s not gonna be how Battlefield 6 does it anymore. That’s according to an X post from the Battlefield Comms account ahead of the Battlefield…

Read More

Intel’s bad news year rolls on as new 18A chip manufacturing node is reportedly in trouble with 10% yields and doubts over profitability of the Panther Lake CPU

Last week, we reported on a claimed 18-month deadline for Intel to win customers for its next-next-gen 14A chip node, else the company would have to give up on cutting-edge chip manufacturing. This week, it’s Intel’s actual next-gen node that’s in the news for the wrong reasons, as 18A is apparently in trouble. Reuters says…

Read More