Seekers of Skyveil, the MOBA—extraction shooter mashup, is shutting down less than a month after release: ‘We have no choice but to bring this short journey to an end’

Six years ago, a bunch of former BioWare, Blizzard, and Riot developers formed Elodie to work on a game that eventually became Seekers of Skyveil, a novel blend of MOBA action and the extraction format made popular by games like Escape From Tarkov. The team at PC Gamer had positive things to say about it,…

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Like a Dragon series director sums up why sidequests are essential to a great RPG with a single metaphor: ‘a good main dish alone will not earn you a Michelin star’

In a talk at San Francisco’s Game Developer’s Conference on Friday, Like a Dragon series director Ryosuke Horii said something simple out loud that I wish more big RPGs truly took to heart: the balance between the “main” narrative and its side stories is what it’s all about. Ask a dozen Like a Dragon fans…

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Bethesda marks Oblivion’s 19th with a sweetroll, a candle, and absolutely no happy birthday gift for fans eager for the still-unannounced remaster

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, the second or maybe third-best game in Bethesda’s long-running Elder Scrolls RPG series, turned 19 yesterday. In Canada, 19th birthdays are traditionally a very big deal: 19 is the legal drinking age in most of the country, and so you can imagine how the celebrations typically go. But in the…

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Valve’s DRM was inspired by an exec’s nephew, who ‘used a $500 check I’d sent him for school expenses and bought himself a CD-ROM replicator… he sent me a lovely thank you note’

One of this year’s most interesting GDC talks was delivered by Monica Harrington, a founding member of Valve and the company’s first chief marketing officer, who went over her history with the company that brought us Half-Life and Steam. There’s so much in Harrington’s career and memories to pick out, but a notable anecdote which…

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Helldivers 2 composer recalls stomping around his apartment and channeling ‘Super Patriotism’ to capture Arrowhead’s satirical vision in music: ‘The satire works because the music believes it’s a pure patriotic love without irony or criticism’

Almost every element of Helldivers 2 is dripping with satire. The voice lines, story, and even individual armor pieces parody patriotism while telling a story of what could happen if corrupt governmental systems ran amuck. Well, everything except the music. “It’s jingoism, but it’s amplified with uplifting modern synth productions, and without suggesting any nuance…

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REPO dev says it wasn’t actually inspired by Lethal Company, and started as a singleplayer cleaning game: ‘It was nice, but far from what REPO is now’

You’d be forgiven for thinking REPO is a lot like Lethal Company. Both games involve fetching precious objects, hiding from things that go bump in the night, working cooperatively as nigh-identical, disposable grunts, and hollering over voice chat when things inevitably go wrong. Both games are also overnight phenomena, with REPO scrambling to adjust to…

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‘We made one big mistake’: Destiny 2 developer reveals how a small team dedicated to player retention led to a 20 hour server outage and character rollback

Destiny 2 has had a turbulent history—it’s a game that, since its release in 2017, has seen many ups, downs, and outright blunders. So a GDC talk from one of Bungie’s developers titled “Rescuing a Playerbase from the Doldrums” could apply to any number of periods throughout the game’s life. At this talk specifically, though,…

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Logitech G PowerPlay 2 mouse pad review

The idea that you could have a mouse pad that keeps your wireless mouse charged is one that’s kept my interest ever since the launch of the first Logitech G PowerPlay wireless charging station way back in 2017. Unfortunately though, even all these years later with the release of this new version, it still seems…

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