British MPs are comparing one another to Cliff Bleszinski’s dead live-service FPS LawBreakers to score points as videogame debate comes to UK Parliament

Remember LawBreakers? I have to be honest: I didn’t. Or rather, I didn’t until the game was suddenly resurrected in—of all places—the UK Parliament. If you suffer from the same defect of memory I do: LawBreakers was Cliff Bleszinski’s ill-fated competitive FPS from 2017—the first game the developer made at his studio Boss Key Productions…

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Civilization 7’s latest update brings a sweeping balance pass and a broadside of naval mechanics, while Firaxis offers Blackbeard for free as a ‘special thanks’ to players

Firaxis’ attempt to right the ailing vessel that is Civilization VII continues, with its latest update bringing a major balance pass for all civs, plus a bunch of new systems designed to enhance oceanic play. And if you’ve already picked up Firaxis’ latest and most divisive entry in the series, you have the opportunity to…

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‘The world became stupider’ when Internet Archive’s Open Library was hit by a lawsuit: ‘We survived, but it wiped out the library’

Internet Archive, a non-profit library dedicated to archived websites, music, books, apps, and all kinds of information on the internet, has been subjected to multiple lawsuits since its foundation in 1996. And one aimed at its library has reportedly had a major effect, according to what its founder told Ars Technica. Internet Archive might be…

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Where to find mushrooms in Arc Raiders

Mushrooms are oddly one of the trickiest foods to find in Arc Raiders, but what Scrappy wants, Scrappy gets. By this point, you’ll have already been sent to track down everything from lemons and apricots to prickly pears, olives, and a cat bed, yet somehow mushrooms—fungi you’d have thought would overrun old buildings in the…

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As if being a gas station attendant in Roadside Research wasn’t stressful enough, I’m also an alien who has to research humans while trying not to poop goop everywhere

If there was an award for grossest sounds per minute, I’m positive that the Roadside Research demo would take it. It’s like any other shop/restaurant/venue simulator on the surface: buy goods, sell goods, make customers happy, make a profit. Except every step I take causes an unsettling squelching noise to ricochet through my ears, and…

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I’ve been playing with the ‘world’s first’ glasses-free 3D handheld PC and my early impressions are that the $1,500 Abxylute 3D One is absolutely huge, annoyingly clunky and a little bit silly

Weary-eyed, desiccated, seen-it-all cynicism is something of an occupational hazard for a hackneyed hardware reviewer such as I. But just occasionally something lands on your desk that’s genuinely surprising. And the Abxylute 3D One, a new glasses-free 3D handheld gaming PC, is just such a device. But maybe for all the wrong reasons. We’ll have…

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‘Gamers deserve clarity’: UK Parliament debates videogame ownership while also beating the dead horse named Concord

Yesterday, the UK Parliament conducted a small debate on an e-petition that had been raised by concerned constituents about consumer law and videogames. In layman’s terms, it was all about how frustrating it is when players don’t have ownership over their games and get left hung out to dry by big studios, unceremoniously ending support…

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The 25th anniversary of the ISS operationally in orbit reminded me the ESA once challenged an Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry dev to get DOOM running on a satellite

When the original Doom launched over 30 years ago, you needed a pretty beefy PC to run it well. Fast forward three decades, and Id Software’s classic can be powered by a TI-84 calculator (with 100 lbs of potatoes), a USB charging station, and even an Apple Lightning dongle. Beating them all for sheer out-of-this-world…

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EA pinky promises to ‘maintain creative control’ in its post-buyout era, but the list of ‘cultural values’ it plans to keep doesn’t mean much at all

The $55 billion buyout of EA—the largest leveraged buyout in private equity history—has plunged the future of the corporation into uncertainty. It’s gotta find some way to deal with the $20 billion of debt its buyers have lumbered it with, and some fear that its new owners—featuring Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment fund and Jared Kushner’s…

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