Gaming

As a big Elden Ring person with an additional 600 hours in Nightreign, the FOMO of FromSoftware's next multiplayer experiment, The Duskbloods, being a Switch 2 exclusive was hitting me hard. That is, until I actually played it: I spent the majority of the closed network test held over the weekend confused about what the hell was going on, and even when I finally learned, I wasn't particularly impressed.

To be fair, the network test wasn't built to make a great first impression. It was limited to one map, six playable characters, no build customization, solo queue only, and seemed to only have a portion of its intro tutorial. I also experienced borderline unplayable input lag from the Switch 2's docked and handheld modes, which meant I was fighting the basic controls for longer than I'd like.

Assuming the final game will have all of that fixed and more, I might end up liking The Duskbloods in the end. Elden Ring Nightreign didn't click for me for close to 20 hours, and when it did, I dug it so much I spent the first half of this year playing it daily, even climbing to the highest level of its ranked mode. The Duskbloods might reveal itself to be a masterfully created vampire multiplayer game, but as it stands right now I think it's an aimless mess of intriguing systems that don't cohere into anything worth PC gamers buying a $500 (for now) console for.

Vapor World: Over The Mind is a Soulslike Metroidvania with an evocative, painterly art style reminiscent of Lies of P and the narrative platformers of Playdead. According to Korean studio Alive Inc, the game had 100,000 wishlists just before its early access launch on August 19, mostly on the strength of a demo available since January 2025.

But what should have been a triumphant early access launch went pear shaped very quickly. At launch, few talked about the quite distinctive worldbuilding or the parry-heavy combat. Instead, all focus was trained entirely on something absent from the popular demo: very obvious AI use.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/74416381

The relevant section is blunt. "The Software is licensed to you, not sold," the EULA states. "You are granted a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and personal license to play or use the Software for your private, non-commercial use on the system or device it was intended for."

The terms also restrict renting, modifying, or obtaining games through unauthorised means. Nothing in there is new, technically. Sony's EULA has always said this. The timing is what makes it land differently right now.

Remember dialing into a BBS just to play 10 turns of Trade Wars and spending the whole day wondering what your rivals were plotting? That was multiplayer, decades before Wi-Fi.

The #GTA6 leaker is defying Take-Two & Microsoft legal subpoenas, dropping 2 more gameplay clips to promote a crypto scheme! Full chaos inside Rockstar.

Days after Deus Ex director Warren Spector announced that he was quitting the business, another former Ion Storm developer, Harvey Smith, has revealed Black Pony Immersive - a new studio dedicated to the creation of "imaginative first-person action RPGs set within well-realized worlds, where players create their own memorable experiences with expressive, emergent game systems." The announcement features the maxim: "through the looking glass, we’re chasing a dream of mystery, meaning, and creative play." Hey, I understood that reference! Sure sounds like an imsim shop to me.

Black Pony are based, or at least, "centralised" out in Austin, Texas. Smith - former creative director for Dishonored 2 - is joined in the cockpit by a couple of other former Arkane developers, Ben Horne and Ricardo Bare. The studio's wider workforce are located around the United States, and include people who've spent time at Spider-Man makers Insomniac, Fortnite wranglers Epic, Just Cause inventors Avalanche, and Saints Row... bejanglers Volition.

It's a hopeful turn of events because it wasn't long ago that Microsoft closed Arkane Austin, creators of the very good Prey 2017 and the sadly not very good Redfall. Nic (RPS in peace) had thoughts. Microsoft are currently taking the axe to what's left of Arkane in Lyon – as of writing, the developers are haggling out the terms of their sale, closure or buyout with the Xbox team. Smith alludes to this in a forgiveably buzzwordy press release.

How a simple human error exposed GTA VI and changed game dev security forever

Jacob Geller plays with Expert Controls and So Can You

Resident Evil Requiem sold 5M copies in a week. So why does half the fanbase call it overhyped, undercooked slop? The marketing worked. The game? Debatable.

RetroSpace launches October 1st! Disco-punk space horror where you can be a sneaky chap or a mutant action hero as you try to survive on a space station swall...

Mrwhoistheboss says that margin rose from 30 to 80% for memory companies and that the playstation price may increase from 400 to 1000. Does that really add up?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo5w2S-h5dI

Back in June, RuneScape studio Jagex held its first live event outside the UK (and its biggest to date): Deadman All Stars, an Old School RuneScape PvP tournament. I had the chance to talk to OSRS creative director Kieren Charles at the event, and he explained his philosophy on running the 13 year-old fork of the 25 year-old MMO amid its new lease on life.

"The game's bigger now than it was in 2007," Charles said of RuneScape's overall health, while OSRS is now older than RuneScape was when Old School began in 2013. Last August, Old School hit an all-time player count record eclipsing any era or version of the game, and Charles estimated upwards of one million active subscribers just for Old School.

Charles himself was part of the original RuneScape phenomenon, but as a player, one of the core mid-to-late millennial cohort that made the game ubiquitous in middle schools during the golden age of MMOs. "I grew up with the game," Charles told me. "I was 14 in the school library playing RuneScape. I was just the one who never quit."

But why choose the 2007 iteration of RuneScape as a starting point? The game first launched in 2001, and had already undergone major revisions like the "RuneScape 2" update in 2004. Charles joined the OSRS team a few years after it started, but looking back, he characterized the choice as "kind of arbitrary, but based on what players deemed the sort of golden [age]."

"Players actually wanted the 2006 version, but we didn't have a copy of that version of the game," revealed Jagex senior communications manager Danni Amos. "A [Jagex employee] found the 2007 server in their desk drawer, and we had to boot it up, see if it works."

"It’s time to sue Sony," game preservation advocates Stop Killing Games have declared, as the group throws its weight behind a Dutch lawsuit targeting the PlayStation Store’s alleged monopoly and "Sony Tax" on digital games.

While the case originated back in 2024, as part of an effort by Dutch consumer group Stichting Massaschade & Consument, the core complaint – that Sony wields monopoly power by only making digital PlayStation games available through its own store – has been compounded by the recent reveal that Sony plans to ditch physical games entirely in 2028, effectively cutting out its only source of competition. Allegedly. For Stop Killing Games, it’s also the latest in a string of non-preservation-specific causes the organisation have amplified, possibly indicating a widened advocacy mandate after failing its key goal of securing new European Commission legislation to keep discontinued games playable offline.

I'm looking to get into driving games and would like to buy a wheel. Budget is not that much of a constraint, but it doesn't need to be expensive for no reason.

Things that are important to me are:

• Should be fixable to a desk without drilling through the desk, but still hold on tight even when force is applied.
• Should be sturdy and have the feel of a real steering wheel of your average consumer car or racing car.
• Should have buttons such that I can hold it with both hands and still use the hands for throttling and breaking, i.e. at least two thumb-reachable buttons. (I am not aiming at getting pedals right away)

Do you have any recommendations? Do you use a wheel yourself that you can recommend, even if it does not fit my points above?

Any input would be appreciated!

Sharing because Kayin's talk about achievements made me think about why do I even accept them in games at all so I disabled them in Steam (the only way to do this is by disabling the whole overlay =_=) and found that I don't miss them at all.

What's you opinion on RetroAchievements, and achievements in general?

I’ve been writing about accessibility and the disabled perspective for nearly 7 years. I’ve had the absolute privilege and immense responsibility of breaking some of the biggest stories in the gaming industry, holding powerful organizations accountable, and even helping disabled players process uncomfortable truths about a community that doesn’t always have their best interests at heart. For almost 7 years, I’ve been pushing myself to be a better journalist, not for myself, but for disabled individuals that deserve to have a voice in the gaming space. But for the past six months, I’ve realized that things need to change.

When I began writing for Can I Play That in September 2019, I sought to produce high quality journalism exploring the relationship between disabled players and the gaming industry. I wanted readers to understand that accessibility and disability reporting is not only essential, but capable of sitting alongside the same daily beats that regularly fill the pages of standard gaming publications. This sentiment still rings true. The work that I and other disabled reporters do can be both timely and evergreen. And it’s still true that publications struggle to understand this fact. I’m not here to convince you that the work disabled reporters do matters. I’m here to tell you that unless this style of reporting is consistently supported, the industry risks losing coverage of a beat that will only grow in necessity as time goes on.

I am personally of the opinion that because Jared Kushner (Trump's son-in-law) is involved we will see a MAGAfication of EA sports titles. It is one of the few mediums Project 2025 hasn't been able to crack and to reach a younger audience this will be their mechanism.

This is a rant!

For the first time in a long long time I went and bought physical games (I don't game too much and haven't for over 12months). I wanted to play FPSs, I am in the mood. So I buy a couple CoD games (for better or worse). Holy fk. The worst. Now... I know there's gonna be a download and an update... But this... Black Ops 3 or whatever 36gb update after the install?! For features I'm not going to use but have to have?! Fuck off. So I skip that with fingers crossed. I pop in MW3. 5hrs worth of install & update time. Okay, Rest Mode. Got it. Finally sit down to try and play and I have to make an Activision ACC?!! Fine, so do that. Now I'm fucking confused because ALL of the COD games are on screen, why? (I feel old) AND FINALLY there's MW3 and I have to FUCKING DOWNLOAD THE FUCKING GAME?!?! 60 ODD GBs?! ANOTHER 6HRS DOWNLOAD.

FUCK. THESE. GAMES.

TLDR; I feel old and PS CoD games are complicated to install for literally just the campaign. Are all games like this now? Is this modern console gaming? I hate it.

Edit: I finally finished downloading MW3 and it didn't even come with the campaign. I have to DL that separately, apparently. Another 30GB and 3.5hrs. Rest Mode again. Taking the absolute piss.