Month: September 2024

Dungeons & Dragons owner Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has put out a statement in response to the still-ongoing uproar over its handling of the Open Gaming Licence (OGL). A post by D&D executive producer Kyle Brink offers an apology for the way WotC has handled the controversy so far, and promises a more “open and transparent” approach to a new OGL that seeks to incorporate community feedback.

The furore was originally sparked by a draft version of a new OGL which seemed to make the licence significantly less open, requiring royalties to WotC from successful creators and handing the company more control over third-party works produced under the licence. It would also have stopped creators from using the current, more open licence, in direct contradiction to previous promises from WotC that licensees would be able to use older OGL versions if new ones weren’t to their liking. But it now looks like the company is backpedalling from all of that.

“We are sorry. We got it wrong,” reads Brink’s post, before continuing to say that WotC’s draft OGL failed to “[protect and cultivate] an inclusive play environment,” and that the company’s silence over the matter had “hur…

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Manor Lords isn’t open for Early Access yet (that’s scheduled for next week, April 26), but some lucky players have gotten a first look at the city-building and management game through early playtests, and some have already figured out one way to break the game. 

The primary aim of Manor Lords is to raise a town and progress it into a bustling city for you to manage and watch grow—but while navigating social situations and waging war are quite important, nothing tops the need for money. One gaming YouTuber, P4wnyhof, decided to take this rule one step further and create an infinite money economy that would completely break the game, with the help of 112 sheep and 52 lambs. 

Sheep can technically produce an infinite amount of wool, and with the help of three shepherds, P4wnyhof was able to obtain a staggering 772 wool and counting from one single sheep farm. With the help of a couple of weavers’ workshops, which can create yarn and eventually clothes that sell for eight coins, the sheep farm was able to bring in an endless supply of money.  

You’d have to spend your first couple of upgrade points on trade logistics and better deals, as this …

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Update (January 31): It was initially unclear whether Pokimane was leaving streaming entirely, or just Twitch. That’s now clear: Pokimane has announced that she’s participating in her first YouTube stream on February 1.

On why she’s leaving Twitch, Pokimane said in a podcast episode that her exclusivity contract expired, and that any new deal she could sign wouldn’t be as lucrative as the deals being offered a few years ago. More to the point, though, the streamer said that she’s lost interest in Twitch streaming, which she feels has “regressed” politically in the past two years, and doesn’t want to be tied to any one platform.

“Months ago, I had already personally decided I don’t want to re-sign with Twitch, and I don’t want to re-sign exclusively with any streaming platform,” Pokimane said. “It’s time for me to be free as a bird.”

She does say, as an aside, that she’ll “still be on [Twitch] sometimes, though.”

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Original story: Popular streamer Imane “Pokimane” Anys says she’s done streaming on Twitch, where she has 9.3 million followers, calling it “the end of an era.”

“Twitch has been my home for a decade,” wr…

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It’s wild to think that Dead Island 2 may only be a few months away. A sequel to the 2011 holiday in someone else’s misery was first announced in 2014 with Yager at the helm, then in 2016 it was announced that Sumo Digital had taken over, and now Dambuster Studios will be bringing it over the finish line, having started development from scratch four years ago.

In a recent quickfire interview with Game Informer (via the NME), Dambuster’s lead narrative designer Khan and creative director James Worrall answered 86 questions about Dead Island 2, covering its Los Angeles location, attention-grabbing trailer, and how the skill system will work, among other things.

The original Dead Island had skill trees for each character, with three branches covering Combat, Survival, and Fury abilities. Asked if the sequel would also have a skill tree, Khan replied, “There’s a skill deck, which is even better.”

Expanding on that, Worrall described the skill deck as, “A collection of slots that represent all kinds of different abilities and you swap the cards in and out on the fly, however you want, whenever you want.” Don’t expect something like Midnight Suns then, where you’re r…

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Ten years ago, Nvidia was a successful graphics card company, with a pretty impressive market capitalisation of $10 billion. Now, thanks to huge revenue and profits, all driven by the tech world’s desire to have everything and everyone infused with AI, Nvidia’s share prices have reached such a point that its market cap is now an astonishing three trillion dollars—higher than Apple, Google, and Amazon.

Only Microsoft has a larger market cap, though the margins between it, Nvidia, and Apple are all very narrow. Well, if one can call tens of billions of dollars ‘narrow.’ For those unfamiliar with the term market capitalisation, it’s a relative measure of how valuable a company is on stock markets, with the figure determined by a simple multiplication of the number of company shares by the current share price.

At the time of writing, Microsoft’s shares sell for around $420, whereas Apple’s are roughly half that figure. Nvidia, though, is deemed so valuable right now that buying just one of its shares will set you back over $1,200. That’s almost enough to buy its best graphics card, the GeForce RTX 4090, though you’ll still be short by $40…

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One of the mechanics coming to Magic: The Gathering in the western-themed Outlaws of Thunder Junction set is called Crime. It’s a way of rewarding outlaw behavior, with Crime specifically defined as using your spells or abilities to directly target an opponent, anything they control, or even their discards. When you do so, that’s called committing a Crime, and it’ll trigger effects from all your other criminal-themed cards in play. 

For instance: Magda, the Hoardmaster pays you a treasure token if you commit a crime that turn, and will eventually let you spend three accumulated treasures to summon a 4/4 scorpion dragon. The Freestrider Lookout lets you scout out the top five cards of your deck when you commit a Crime, while the Hardbristle Bandit untaps, so you can use them to block after an attack if you’ve done Crime that turn.

It’s all about rewarding aggressive play. You’ve got to act boldly in a western, goshdarnit. Cowboys are supposed to shoot first, and Outlaws of Thunder Junction rewards them for doing so.

To make it easier to commit Crimes—and easier to realize when you have so you remember to collect your rewards—Outlaws of …

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Sonic, please forgive me for all the times I’ve poo-pooed your games. Because holy hell, you sure do make for a cool-ass Lego set.

Yep, the blue blur has teamed up with Lego to create four new sets that are due to release this August. It’s not the first time the two have collaborated—the toy brick brand released a Green Hill Zone set back in 2021. We’re actually getting another Green Hill Zone set with this new batch of releases, but if you ask me this new rendition is significantly cooler. The “Loop Challenge” set comes with—as the name suggests—a loop, as well as other pieces to create a course. A hamster-wheeled Sonic can be strapped to a spring catapult and launched across the kit and straight into a meched-up Dr. Eggman. 

It’s easily my favourite—and I imagine it’ll be the favourite of many others—but cool contraptions come at a price. It’s the most expensive of the four coming in at $99.99 / £94.99. It does come with a fair few character figures, though: Sonic can be freed from his hamster ball chamber, Dr. Eggman can be pulled from his mech, and Amy is included, too. It comes with a few creatures too, like a flicky, poc…

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The latest trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader emphasizes choice and consequence, highlighting its equivalent of alignment—the conviction system. “While exploring you will be met with a great number of hard decisions,” the trailer says. “Do you try to save the population of a dying world? Or burn it all with the intent of containing heresy?”

Owlcat’s CRPG tracks your response to dilemmas like this on three axes, with five ranks to measure how far you go along each. The Imperialis conviction measures your fire-and-brimstone dedication to the God-Emperor, while Hereticus goes up when you prioritize power over morality and give in to the temptations of Chaos. Benevolentia increases if you act like individual human lives actually mean something—a controversial belief in the Imperium of Man. Ranking up convictions can unlock dialogue options, events, and abilities, as well as affecting how NPCs relate to you.

The trailer goes on to introduce Inquisitor Xavier Calcazar, who seems to be consequence personified. “All these decisions will affect the whole subsector, attracting the uncomfortable attention of Inquisitor Calcazar,” the trailer’s gruff narrator…

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With more than a little braggadocio, Valve has announced that it’s permanently banned over 40,000 Dota 2 accounts for cheating. In a post to the official Dota 2 blog yesterday, the company revealed that it had constructed a cunning trap to catch thousands of players that were using “third-party software” to “access information used internally by the Dota client that wasn’t visible during normal gameplay,” lending them an unfair advantage in-game.

It worked like this: Once it became aware of the exploit, Valve released a patch that created “a section of data inside the game client that would never be read during normal gameplay, but that could be read by these exploits”. Valve says that every single one of the accounts banned yesterday had read from that secret data, giving the company “extremely high confidence that every ban was well-deserved”.

Valve’s whole announcement has the air of a warlord mounting their enemies’ heads on spikes as a warning to the rest. The studio says that (and feel free to read this in Batman’s voice, if you prefer), “While the battle against cheaters and cheat developers often takes place in the shadows,” it wants “to make this example vis…

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It’s the tiniest of teases and opens up a whole trunk full of questions, but in a recent online interview, Mark Papermaster was asked what the year has in store for AMD. The CTO’s response was all focused on AI, naturally, but he also mentioned a curious little tidbit: its gaming devices are to get AI-based upscaling and 2024 is likely to be the year we’ll see it.

The discussion with YouTube channel No Priors (via Videocardz) is mostly about AMD’s position and thoughts on machine learning, cloud computing, and other big-money sectors. It’s a good chat between the hosts and Papermaster, although a little dry if you’re not interested in those specific topics.

However, the CTO’s closing remarks on AMD’s plans for 2024 are certainly of interest to gamers, all thanks to the brief comment on how the chip giant is bringing AI upscaling to its gaming devices.

“Well, this for us is a huge year because we have spent so many years developing our hardware and software capabilities for AI,” Papermaster begins. “We’ve just completed AI enabling our entire portfolio: Cloud, edge, PCs, embedded devices, our gaming devices. We’re enabling our gaming devices to upscale using AI …

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Back when it was first revealed, the hope was that Cyberpunk 2077 would revolutionize the genre, and maybe even gaming as a whole. That’s not quite what happened, in part because the launch had more bugs than Starship Troopers. Performance issues, cars running into stuff, getting softlocked in the tutorial, weird children. It was a mess.

Thankfully, the redemption arc for Cyberpunk is real. With multitudes of bug fixes, content updates, and the transformative patch 1.6 behind us, as well as the massive success of the Cyberpunk anime, it seems as though things are finally getting in order for the game. So it’s with a certain amount of tentative excitement I look toward CD Projekt’s only planned DLC, Phantom Liberty.

We haven’t heard much since a pretty sick trailer at the Game Awards last year, but the official Cyberpunk Twitter account revealed the “exciting news” today that we’ll learn more about Phantom Liberty in June.

Now an announcement of future announcements is kind of like your dad telling you he’ll tell you about something when you’re older—deeply unsatisfying, and only serves to make you more curious. It’s not exactly a big surprise that we won’…

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It is now official: In a farewell message to employees, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has confirmed that he will be leaving the company.

Kotick’s future with Activision Blizzard came into question almost as soon as Microsoft announced its intention to acquire the company back in January 2022. The decision appeared to be all but made after that deal was finally closed, as Kotick said Xbox boss Phil Spencer had asked him to stay on as CEO “through the end of 2023,” which isn’t generally the sort of timeline you announce if you’re expecting to stick around. But today’s message makes it a done deal.

“As my last day leading this company inches closer, I marvel at how far the talented people at our company have come toward realizing the great potential of games,” Kotick wrote. “You have transformed a hobbyist form of entertainment into the world’s most engaging medium. It has been the privilege of my lifetime to work alongside you as we broadened the appeal of games.

“Perhaps the most important part of my job has been to help bring talented people together, provide the best resources possible, and foster an environment that encourages inspiration, creati…

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Turn every game of Wordle into a winner with our help. We’ve got general tips to help you improve every guess you make, a clue written especially for the March 31 (650) puzzle, and the answer to today’s Wordle, only a quick click or scroll away.

That was tense. Every guess today seemed to throw up more problems than answers, my screen filling with grey boxes. The situation was looking grim: the few letters I had found just didn’t go together—until my next guess finally made sense of them. It was a close thing, but I finally, happily, stumbled into today’s Wordle answer.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Friday, March 31

This word describes all of the items or people in a particular group, or an event that occurs regularly: something that happens _____ Wednesday, for example. There’s just one vowel today. 

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Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

Yes, a vowel is used twice in today’s Wordle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

A good starting word can be the difference between victory and defeat with the daily puzzle, but once you’ve got the basics, it’s m…

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Update 1/7/24: In the days following this story, Wizards of the Coast acknowledged that the Magic: The Gathering promo image was indeed made using AI tools. You can read our latest story on the controversy and its aftermath.

Original Story: In December, Wizards of the Coast committed to not using AI art in Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, saying it requires its artists, writers, and other creative contributors “to refrain from using AI generative tools” to create its products. Despite that, MtG fans are accusing the company of using AI to create the backdrop for a promotional image of new cards—something WotC flatly denies.

Wizards shared the image on Twitter on January 4, writing, “It’s positively shocking how good these lands look in retro frame.” And frankly, I think it does look pretty good: The Edison bulbs, the old-timey pressure gauge, the out-of-focus books and pipes and stuff on the walls in the background—there’s definitely a vibe going on, and I dig it.

An awful lot of other people feel differently, though. Almost as soon as the image was posted, people began questioning whether AI was used …

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