Following the recent announcement of a grand restructuring plan, Ubisoft has confirmed that 40 employees have been laid off at its Toronto studio, according to a statement made to MobileSyrup. This most recent round of layoffs is part of the aforementioned restructuring and cost-savings plan that could eventually see up to 18% of Ubisoft's staff laid-off. Prior to the layoffs, Ubisoft Toronto was said to have roughly 500 staff, so the layoffs make up just shy of 10% of the studio.

Despite the recent game cancellations that came as a result of the restructuring—cancellations that included a hotly anticipated Price of Persia remake—Ubisoft Toronto clarified in the statement that the in-progress Splinter Cell remake was still being worked on. This is in addition to the development assistance that Ubisoft Toronto will continue to provide on other projects, like Rainbow Six Siege. Workers' unions across Canada and France have already spoken out about the sweeping changes recently announced by the gaming giant, going so far as to strike for three days in mid-February.

The Razer Viper V4 Pro has already shown up in previous rumors, with what is thought to be a camouflaged version of the mouse showing up at a Valorant tournament. Now, the successor to the Viper V3 Pro has once again been confirmed, this time by Valorant pro, Canezerra, in a livestream (via BestGamers on X). Allegedly, the Viper V4 Pro is also being used by two other Valorant players. Prosettings.net also lists League of Legends pro, Myrwn, as using the Viper V4 Pro.

The current consensus is that the Viper V4 Pro will use the same or similar internals to the DeathAdder V4 Pro, but with the symmetrical shape of the Viper V3 Pro. This means it will likely feature the new dome receiver of the DeathAdder V4 Pro with a Nordic 54 series MCU, Gen-4 Razer Optical Mouse switches, a Razer Focus Pro 45K Gen 2 sensor, a slight decrease in weight, and minor physical changes, like a new coating and slight shape tweaks. The current-gen Razer Viper V3 Pro was released in April 2024, while the DeathAdder V4 Pro was launched in July 2025; by that logic, we can expect the Viper V4 Pro to launch sometime in Q2 2026 or shortly after.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro is now live]

Spliced was started in 2023 as a remote-first AAA game studio that would avoid the burn-out and crunch associated with the gaming industry with flexible hours and by emphasizing work-life balance, the quality of output, and realistic project scope. Now, it seems as though NetEase has initiated redundancy proceedings at Spliced Inc, resulting in imminent layoffs at its UK branch—it's unclear if its US and Canadian branches will be affected as well. This is only the latest in a recent spate of layoffs and studio closures at NetEase and in the gaming industry at large, with Avalanche Studios recently closing down branches, Ubisoft announcing cost-savings that would see layoffs take place, and Wildlight, the developer behind Highguard, laying off swathes of developers. The Spliced Inc layoffs come just eight months after the studio started hiring for three new roles.

The news of Spliced layoffs come by way of recent LinkedIn posts by some employees, who say that "an ongoing redundancy process" is putting their positions at risk. While NetEase and Spliced have yet to make an actual announcement to the effect, three employees have posted about the incoming layoffs—Matt Johnson, a lead animator, Sergii Zlobin, senior 3D environment artist, and Kenji Shimomura, another senior environment artist who confirms that he has already been affected by the layoffs. The seniority of these positions suggests that at least one project that the studio was working on will be cancelled, although no projects have yet been announced. According to Shimomura's post, it seems as though Spliced may not be around much longer to complete those projects: "It's wild that a AAA Studio has died without showing anything."

ASUS is no stranger to gaming keyboards, but its previous mechanical and Hall effect efforts have been mostly focussed on the gaming realm. With the launch of the ProArt KD300, ASUS seems to be targeting the creator and office worker demographic that has previously been occupied by brands like Keychron, NuPhy, and Lofree. Despite this new target market, the ProArt KD300 seems to share the same basic hardware as the ASUS ROG Falchion RX gaming keyboard. The ProArt KD300 is a 65% keyboard, meaning there is a dedicated arrow cluster and a navigation column on the far right edge, but the F row is hidden in a secondary layer under the num row. It borrows the Falchion RX's touch panel and custom ASUS Red (linear) Optical switches, meaning there are no alternative keycap options. The switches have a middle-of-the road actuation force of 40-55 gf, and the keyboard is only available with linear Red switches.

The touch panel on the ProArt KD300 is moved to the rear of the keyboard, instead of the top panel, leaving the keyboard with a clean matte charcoal aesthetic—which ASUS calls Black Aerolite. The touch panel can be configured along with the rest of the keyboard's mapping in the Gear Link web app, and it supports gestures, media, brightness, and volume controls, and execution of features like mouse scrolling and clicking. The ProArt KD300 can connect both via a USB Type-C port or via Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz wireless, and those wireless connectivity modes are supported by a 4,000 mAh battery that ASUS says will last up to 16 months with the backlighting off in 2.4 GHz mode. The keyboard polls at 1,000 Hz in both 2.4 GHz and wired mode, with Bluetooth dropping the polling rate down to 133 Hz. There are also convenience features, like an OS selection switch to toggle Windows or macOS modes as well as a three-way toggle switch for Bluetooth, wired, and 2.4 GHz connection modes. It appears as though the case is injection-molded plastic, and the keyboard uses a tray mount, an aluminium plate, and a floating keycap design—the benefit of a plastic case is that ASUS could include built-in dongle storage and flip-out feet for additional 4.5° and 8° typing angles. The ProArt KD300 is not yet available globally, but it has launched in China with a retail price of RMB 999 ($145 converted), so international pricing will likely be close to that of its ASUS ROG Falchion RX sibling, which retails for $199.99 but is routinely available for $139.99 on Amazon.

Rémi Verschelde, maintainer of the open-source Godot game engine project, has recently taken to Bluesky to express his frustrations at the added burden placed on open-source project maintainers and developers by the increasingly common practice of submitting PRs with completely or at least mostly AI-generated code. The gist of his issue with this code is that it often contains errors and oversights that result in maintainers wasting time not only reviewing sloppy code but also discussing the code with the developers responsible for the contributions. In the post, the developer notes that in many cases where code is obviously written entirely by AI, the proposed changes "make no sense," and goes on to question whether the code was tested, if the contributor made up test results, or even whether they understood the changes they were proposing.

In addition to questionable code, the explanations for the contributions are also excessively verbose and difficult to understand, further adding to the workload for maintainers. This isn't the first time we've heard directly from developers that AI tools have been more of a hindrance to productivity than anything else. Shortly after EA announced its AI pivot, workers at the gaming giant claimed that the AI tools that had been pushed by management for a year at that point were costing developers time instead of increasing productivity. There have been similar discussions in the Blender development forum, where one user proposed implementing an AI contributions policy that would only allow AI-generated code in a limited capacity, only when disclosed, in cases where the developer takes full accountability for their submission, and when they understand the utility and functionality of the code.

Rocket League, the popular competitive vehicular soccer game, will soon be getting an anti-cheat implementation, nearly a decade after its original launch. Psyonix announced on the game's official X account that it would be implementing Easy Anti-Cheat in Rocket League in an April update. The justifications for anti-cheat is to prevent DDoS attacks, improve bot detection, and more effectively ban cheaters in games. The announcement comes with a few caveats, though—specifically relating to how the addition of anti-cheat will affect competitive gameplay, offline LAN multiplayer, and gaming on Linux.

Unlike many high-profile EAC implementations, Rocket League will maintain compatibility with the Valve Steam Deck, and by extension other Linux gaming PCs and the upcoming Steam Machine via the Proton compatibility layer. Players will be able to disable EAC for offline play, in cases like local LAN multiplayer, or split-screen multiplayer. Additionally, the EAC implementation will eventually allow players in custom tournaments to run tournament-specific mods, and players will be able to run custom community content with EAC enabled at launch. The announcement also mentions "custom mod-inspired content" coming to Rocket League in the same April update.

Highguard players recently noticed that the game's official website was offline, leading to widespread speculation that the ailing game was silently shutting down shortly after the studio laid off "most" of its development team. However, according to a response from one of the developers on Discord, the site being down isn't an indication of the future of the game, with the implication being that resources are being redirected towards the game content itself, while the site will be reworked and "simplified" before it is put back online.

"Not sure on the timeframe, but basically needs to be transferred and simplified. Low priority atm (reputational damage already done). Now we just need to focus on delivering updates and content to improve," explains the developer in a response to a question about the site being down, implying that the studio is still investing some resources into keeping the game alive, even if much of game's development team is no longer there. This isn't the first time we're hearing of planned new content, as a former developer at Wildlight revealed that the company had already been working on a lot of new, unreleased content that was to land post-launch.

Pricing for the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X has increased dramatically in Japan, according to recent reports by Automaton, likely indicating an imminent price increase for Western markets as well. The price increase sees the listed price jump by 21%, from ¥139,800 to ¥169,000 including tax. The increase only applies to the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X models, which are specced with 24 GB of LPDDR5X memory, as opposed to the regular ASUS ROG Xbox Ally, which uses 16 GB of regular LPDDR5 RAM. This has led to speculation that the reason for the price increase is the ongoing DRAM shortage, which has caused widespread price increases, delays, and general hardware shortages in the ailing PC market.

Hardware price increases often take place in Asia first, and this is hardly the first price increase we've seen occur in recent weeks. Acer Japan also just announced a price increase for both its laptops and desktop PCs in the same week as ASUS's price increase. For now, pricing for the non-Xbox-branded ASUS ROG Ally X remains stable, and pricing for the Xbox Ally X seems to have remained the same in the US on both the ASUS online store and third-party retailers, as well.

It's been widely reported that the next-gen Sony PlayStation 6 is in the works, with AMD once again in charge of the APU that will power gaming experiences, even if rumors suggest that the next-gen console launch may be pushed back as far as 2029. It's also common knowledge by now that RDNA 5 will power the PS6, but a new rumor that originated from prolific leaker, KeplerL2 on the NeoGAF forum, suggest that the architecture in the PS6 will not be the full-fledged RDNA 5.

The leaker does not expand on this further, other than to remind that the PS5 doesn't use the full RDNA 2 architecture either, but consoles have always used custom APUs, so the idea that the PS6 won't use the full RDNA 5 feature stack isn't unreasonable. Some have postulated that one feature that wouldn't make the cut is the NPU, since that may not get used in a modern console. It's also possible that certain productivity features or video encoders, although even a lot of the AI improvements in RDNA 4 have been marketed as gaming upgrades.

Darkhaven, a new multiplayer online ARPG that makes some pretty bold promises, has officially gone live on Kickstarter to raise its $500,000 funding goal, managing to raise $79,906 halfway through the first day of funding. Darkhaven's developer, Moon Beast Productions, explains that the game will have a fully procedurally generated, destructible sandbox world with "Diablo-style progression, skills, and itemization," and free, open exploration with a high degree of mobility in and out of combat. The Kickstarter will run until March 20, 2026, giving the developer a little over a month to garner funding. In addition to the Kickstarter, Moon Beast Productions has published both a development timeline and a pre-alpha demo on Steam.

The pre-alpha demo is touted as the foundation of the game, and it admittedly lacks polish and serves only as a way for players to test out the gameplay mechanics of Darkhaven. Moon Beast claims that the pre-alpha is an "unfiltered version of what we're building, not a watered-down teaser," suggesting players will be able to explore much more of the game world than a traditional demo would allow. The developer has also published a timeline explaining what it had been working on in the time the game has been in development as part of its Darkhaven timeline, in the process revealing that Darkhaven should launch in Steam Early Access close to Q4 2026. The studio also explains that the Kickstarter funding will go towards developing more character classes and skills, adding to the mob roster, building out the game's lore, NPCs, and quests, and adding more biomes and environmental events.

Giants in the gaming industry seem to be increasingly excited about the future of generative AI in gaming. Unity, who has previously toyed with AI for features like facial animations, just announced in a recent earnings call that it will be leaning further into the tech with what it calls "AI-driven authoring," a new tech that it is planning on introducing at the Game Developer Conference in March. Unity says that this new AI solution will allow developers to create entire casual games native to the Unity engine without ever needing to touch code. "At the Game Developer Conference in March, we'll be unveiling a beta of the new upgraded Unity AI, which will enable developers to prompt full casual games into existence with natural language only, native to our platform—so it's simple to move from prototype to finished product," said Unity CEO, Matthew Bromberg. It's telling that the CEO specifies that the model will be able to generate casual games, which are usually less demanding than a full-scale AAA game, for example, but it remains to be seen what level of complexity the AI will be capable of and what sort of human intervention will be required.

He explained that the natural language model will be "powered by our unique understanding of the project context and our runtime," and that this combination will "provide more efficient, more effective results to game developers than general-purpose models alone." Unity uses a mixture of first- and third-party AI models during different steps of the Unity AI pipeline, all of which is detailed in the Unity AI legal guidelines document. This announcement comes shortly after a State of the Game Industry Survey revealed that, while many game industry workers at large studios are using generative AI across multiple disciplines, most of those same workers agree that the widespread use of generative AI is a detriment to the industry. Workers at EA have previously noted that increased use of gen-AI tools has also come at the cost of time and efficiency. Despite this, EA's new owner will continue leaning into an AI pivot in the name of cost savings, which is a pattern we may see become increasingly common as game engines and other development tools continue to integrate AI tools.

The Gnome Project has officially announced the Gnome 50 public beta testing phase and API, feature, and UI freeze ahead of the desktop environment's official launch later this year. The freeze effectively means that the features that are part of the new public beta version will be part of the official release when that lands on March 18, 2026. The Gnome 50 beta brings with it a number of features that should make living with Gnome significantly easier, especially if you have gaming-grade hardware. Gnome 50 public beta can be downloaded as a live image or installed via Flatpak using the 50beta branch from Flathub Beta. The biggest changes coming to Gnome 50 and the public beta include making VRR and fractional scaling non-experimental in Mutter, Gnome's Wayland compositor library, where the aforementioned features were previously experimental and needed to be enabled in the terminal. Gnome 50 will also complete Gnome's transition to a Wayland-only desktop environment, a move that has been in the works since mid-2025—Gnome 49 was shipped with X11 disabled, while Gnome 50 will feature no X11 code.

There are also myriad changes to screencasting—namely HiDPI and monitor mode emulation—and improved support for multi-monitor setups. Many of Gnome's default apps will also move to the 50.beta version, bringing along with them bug fixes and an overall increased level of polish. Nautilus, the default file manager, gets case-insensitive path completion; Gnome's symbolic icons are more crisp; GDM gets bug fixes and initial support for unified authentication; Gnome Control Center gets a text size slider and a few extra options to tweak; the Gnome Shell gets the option for parents to extend screen time limits; Gnome software will also get a progress bar when installing or removing add-ons as well as a few bug fixes and translation updates. The list goes on, but in general, it looks like Gnome 50 is shaping up to deliver a more cohesive desktop experience when it eventually launches in stable form.

Ubisoft recently started a massive overhaul, which would see, among other measures, the company split into five so-called creative houses, each responsible for the funding, creative direction, marketing, and publishing strategies of its own games. While the actual structure and split of each creative house's IPs was previously decided, not much else has been revealed about how the new plan is coming along. Now, however, it has been revealed in recent financial filings that Ubisoft plans to hire external talent to lead some of the creative houses, with the first official hire being Charles Guillemot, the son of Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot. This hire is technically a carryover from before the restructure, but Charles has seemingly been grandfathered in as lead for Creative House 1, which is just Vantage Studios and is in charge of Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six—some of Ubisoft's biggest franchises.

According to the financial report, Ubisoft will start implementing its new operating model in April, which is likely when we will hear more about who is running the other creative houses. Additionally, Ubisoft says it has seen "the return of numerous skilled former Ubisoft employees in our studios over the recent years." Ubisoft's recent actions, specifically the cessation of its work from home policy, budget cuts, and recent executive and management priorities, have not been met favorably by Ubisoft employees, with thousands of Ubisoft workers arranging a strike and calling for the resignation of Yves Guillemot and for management to take responsibility for their part in the company's recent performance, which will apparently result in up to 18% of the company's staff being laid off.

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, the latest game in the Castlevania series was revealed as a 2026 game release currently in development as a collaborative project between Konami, Evil Empire, and Motion Twin—the latter two being behind The Rogue Prince of Persia and Dead Cells, respectively. Belmont's Curse is a 2D action-adventure game that follows Trevor Belmont's successor through 1499 Paris as she wields the classic holy whip for both combat and traversal through the looming castle and eerie Parisian streets. Based on the Steam Store page, Belmont's Curse will feature fast-paced combat, a variety of weapons and abilities to wield and develop, challenging environmental puzzles, and plenty of enemies to keep things fresh.

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse will see the return of a number of classic Castlevania tropes and mechanics, like secret chambers, buried items, and challenging boss battles, but the game also switches things up with colorful twist on the series's gothic art style, seemingly blending some of the Dead Cells aesthetic with that of the famous vampire-killing franchise. Belmont's Curse doesn't have a fixed release date just yet, but it is slated to launch in 2026 for PC via Steam, the PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series consoles via the Microsoft Store.

In a rather unfortunate throwback to the early days of the Hall effect gaming keyboard boom, it seems as though the new Haptic Inductive Trigger System in the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike gaming mouse is resulting in players getting permanently banned from Apex Legends for cheating. This is according to a new post on X by Iaroslav Mamalat, who shared a screenshot of an Apex Legends ban report that claims the player used gameplay enhancements.

An email received by the same player reads: "We observed: Gameplay enhancement. This means using unauthorized methods to enhance in-game performance by removing gameplay constraints or improving in-game abilities (e.g. weapon, movement, or item enhancements)." This potentially refers to the use of rapid trigger technology in the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike, but there are other reports in the replies to the X post that suggest it may simply have been a false ban, since similar has happened to other players who weren't using the new Logitech gaming mouse. Curiously, EA doesn't actually ordinarily ban rapid trigger keyboards in Apex Legends, but it isn't uncommon for game studios to ban SOCD, especially in competitive FPS games. Some theories online suggest that EA's anti-cheat may be using timing as a way to detect macro inputs, and that rapid trigger on the Superstrike may be resulting in click spamming that exceeds that timing threshold, resulting in a ban.

Valve has been on a roll, delivering handy UI changes and tweaks to the Steam experience in the name of a more cohesive user experience. The latest in the series of updates comes by way of a Steam client beta update that allows users to include their system specs when leaving a review. PC specs are already commonly mentioned in reviews where performance or optimization are a chief complaint, but the new Steam UI change would offer a standardized approach to leaving those specifications. Theoretically, it could also allow other Steam users with similar hardware to offer optimization tips in response to reviews with performance complaints, and it may help developers who don't collect user system information to optimize their games when performance problems become obvious.

In addition to the PC specs, the February 12 Steam Beta client update also includes the option to allow Steam to collect anonymized framerate data "without connection to your Steam account," but with hardware information included. Valve says it will use this data to "learn about compatibility and improve Steam," but the feature is still in beta and will focus on devices running SteamOS for the time being. This data could conceivably be used in the development of Proton and to optimize games and hardware for the upcoming Steam Machine and existing Steam Deck machines. Valve will also now allow Steam Deck users to optionally submit a reason for why they disagree with a Deck Verified rating when submitting such feedback.

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is an upcoming team fighting game that recently showed up in leaks ahead of its official launch. Most recently, however, Fighting Souls shown up at the Sony State of Play, where Arc System Works, the developer behind the game, announced its official launch date aand revealed some information about the game's narrative, characters, and team dynamics. First off, it has been announced that Marvel Token: Fighting Souls will launch on August 6, 2026 for both PC and PS5, and pre-orders will start on February 19, 2026.

The announcement also came with a team announcement trailer for the Unbreakable X-Men, which is comprised of Storm, Magik, Wolverine, and Danger. In the trailer, we got a small taste of each character's personality and fighting style, with characters like Magik and Wolverine getting up close and personal with a combination of melee and maneuverability, while Storm and Danger lean more into slightly more ranged attacks and abilities. The trailer also showed off a team-based finisher attack, which saw all four characters jump into the fray with a flurry of attacks.

Today's PlayStation State of Play has already seen a handful of exciting announcements, like the release date for Game Freak's upcoming Souls-like RPG, but fans of the God of War franchise are likely having an extra-special day, with two announcements coming out of the event. Firstly, God of War: Sons of Sparta, a 2.5D Metroidvania telling Kratos's origin story, has officially launched and is available for the PlayStation 5. Sons of Sparta follows Kratos during his days training as a warrior at the Agoge with his brother Deimos. Sons of Sparta was written by the same Santa Monica Studio team that was responsible for God of War 2018 and God of War Ragnarök, while the development was handled by Mega Cat Studios, a studio packed with experienced developers who have by now worked on a slew of Metroidvanias. The game promises dynamic combat with the classic Spartan sword and shield as well as a variety of "Gifts of Olympus," to spice things up.

Beast of Reincarnation is an upcoming story-driven Souls-like RPG from Game Freak that was previously shown off at an Xbox Developer_Direct earlier this year, with a cross-platform launch slated for late 2026. Now, thanks to a new PlayStation State of Play release date announcement trailer, the game date has an official PlayStation 5 release date of August 4, 2026. Previously, it was revealed that the game would launch cross-platform on day-one, so PC and Xbox Series players can expect to see the game on Steam and the Microsoft Store on August 4, as well. The release date announcement trailer also gave us a better look at the protagonist, Emma, her abilities as Purifier, and the various monsters gamers can look forward to facing off against in Beast of Reincarnation.

As was suggested in the previous announcement, it looks as though mobility and verticality will be an important part of both combat and traversal in the world—especially Emma's grapple ability, which features several times throughout the trailer. Similarly, coordinating attacks with your in-game companion, Koo, who seems to operate more or less independently during fights, also appears to be a central mechanic. It was also revealed that some monster fights will feature mid-fight evolutions—hardly surprising from Game Freak, a studio known for Pokémon.

The ASUS ROG Ally series is no stranger to issues, with early models of the ROG Ally suffering from issued with the microSD slot, due to its placement near the exhaust vent. Now, according to an automated message sent to a writer at Windows Central, ASUS is "experiencing high repair volumes" not too long after shipments started for the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally. This was discovered when Jennifer Young attempted to send in her five-month-old ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X for warranty repair after it spontaneously gave up the ghost, but was told that repairs could not be completed in the country of purchase, the UK, due to high repair volumes. Instead, select repairs will be processed in overseas repair centers, likely adding extra delays to the repair process.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X is now live]

High repair volumes aren't necessarily an indication of an issue with a device or any hardware at all—it could also indicate that the company sold far more devices than it had anticipated in a short timeframe. ASUS has previously had well-documented issues with its RMA and repair processes, however, and anecdotal Reddit reports also appear to indicate that the Xbox Ally X may have issues with the USB port, sticky buttons, and seemingly random motherboard issues. The reports of high repair volume come shortly after reports of software issues with the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally, although these seem to have been mostly caused by Microsoft itself, not ASUS.

Optical mouse switches have become all the rage in gaming mice these days, thanks to reduced latency and improved durability, but unless you're buying from Razer or Logitech, the only options for optical switches have been Kailh and Omron. Now, budget keyboard and mouse switch maker, Huano, looks to be entering the fray with the Huano Nuo optical switch, which has shown up in a Bilibili video review of the Xinmeng Zero 1 Pro gaming mouse.

According to the mouse's spec sheet, shared by @PhalangesCo on X, the Huano Nuo optical switches have a rated lifespan of 100 million clicks, which is higher than many Huano mechanical switch options but only on-par with the company's options typically found in budget high-performance gaming mice. The Zero 1 Pro gaming mouse the Huano Nuo optical switches are featured in is a hyper-budget gaming mouse, coming in at just RMB 39, or USD 5.65 converted, which is a good sign that the optical switches will also make it to other more affordable gaming mice in the global market.

It has been leaked on multiple occasions that Ubisoft is working on an Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake, and the game was said to be as soon as March 2026, although this was called into question when Ubisoft cancelled and delayed a slew of games earlier in 2026 over concerns of quality. Assassin's Creed Black Flag was thought to be pushed back as well, but a new Amazon listing suggests that this may not be the case.

An Amazon listing for a hardcover Assassin's Creed Black Flag Remake art book by Ubisoft currently shows list pricing of $54.48, with a 25% pre-order discount, but more interestingly, it also lists a release date of March 24, 2026. This is ahead of the previous assumed March 31 launch date for the game itself, so the launch date may just be a placeholder—after all, there is no cover art for the book on the site either—but it may suggest that the Black Flag Remake may still launch towards the end of March.

Pulsar is known for its high-performance, lightweight gaming mice, but also for having about a million colorways and special edition patterns for the aforementioned mice. In a new post on X, Pulsar has revealed six new colorways coming to a variety of CrazyLight gaming mice and confirmed the release date of the previously leaked Pulsar X2N gaming mouse. The X2N looks to be a tweaked version of the X2 and X2H with a slightly narrower front and a lower, slightly more forward hump design.

As for the rest of the Wildscape colorways, they are all exclusive to their respective mice: X2H gets the burnt red Volcano colorway; the X3 gets the sandy-brown Desert color; the X2 gets the green and yellow Forest; and the Xlite gets the gray and blue Rock. The X2N Ocean colorway will launch later in February, with the other new Wildscape colors launching throughout April. Pulsar previously revealed that the X2N will be available in both mini and medium sizes when it launches on February 24, 2026.

Highguard, the new free-to-play raid shooter from Wildlight Entertainment, launched in late January to high player counts that quickly dwindled after a lukewarm reception, despite bringing some unique concepts to the table. Since its launch, daily concurrent player counts have fallen from a peak of 97,249 players on Steam to around 2,000-3,000 concurrent players on a daily basis. According to an announcement from the official Wildlight account on X, the game studio has officially started laying off developers who were working to develop and support Highguard.

Another post on LinkedIn by Alex Graner, now-former level designer at Wildlight, confirmed that "most of the team" at Wildlight has been laid off, adding that there was a lot of unreleased content that the development team had been working on, which also makes it seem as though the layoffs were unexpected. Many attribute the game's surprise launch and lack of play testing and community feedback ahead of launch for the game's commercial failure. At launch, aside from performance problems, Highguard was widely criticized for poor pacing and a dearth of content in matches, largely owing to the oversized maps and small teams. Wildlight did attempt to address these complaints with a 5v5 game mode in a recent update, and, according to reviews, that helped make things feel more energetic, but it seems like it was too little too late. Wildlight will supposedly keep working on Highguard with "a core group of developers," although it's unclear what the studio's plans are for content in the long term.

The custom mechanical keyboard scene is known for high prices and exotic materials, but CannonKeys's latest announcement, a wood Bakeneko65 keyboard, takes this one step further with a $380 starting price for a bespoke wood case and PCB kit. The Bakeneko65 is an existing model from CannonKeys—and one of the more affordable kits, mind you—but the Wood Bakeneko65, as it's called on the site, is a collaboration between Seattle-based workshop, Functional.co, that adds a premium touch to an otherwise simple keyboard design. The design sticks to the traditional tray-mounted design of the Bakeneko65, but CannonKeys will include O-rings for mounting, and it will have an FR4 plate, and the wood will be finished with a Rubio Monocoat Pure 2C oil with a hardener. The keyboard will also come in a "custom wooden box."

The Wood Bakeneko65's case will be a two-part design, with an outer case and an inner case, the latter of which is sort of a bezel or frame for the keyboard itself. The outer case is made from maple, but users can choose between maple, walnut, purple heart, and paduak wood for the inner case. It will be available with both the wired and wireless Bakeneko65 PCB, and the kit will come in at $380 for the maple or walnut inner case or $410 for the purple heart or paduak inner case. Adding wireless functionality also brings the aforementioned prices up by $10. The Wood Bakeneko65 has not yet launched properly, but it will be available as a group buy on the CannonKeys website "soon."

With the increasing price of gaming memory and silicon in general, it was only a matter of time before we saw gaming laptop manufacturers lean into hardware rentals as a business model, for better or worse. HP seems to be leading the pack with a newly announced hardware subscription service, called the Omen Gaming Subscription, that offers gamers rentals of HP Omen gaming laptops and even gaming accessories, like monitors, headphones, microphones, USB hubs, and HyperX gaming mice. The subscription is charged monthly, but HP locks you into a 12-month minimum contract term, with cancellation fees between $549.99 and $1,429.99 after two months of use with a device return. If you want to keep the device, you'll need to pay a flat rate of $1,199 for the Victus 15 and $3,299 for the Omen Max 16, seemingly regardless of how long you've been subscribed to the service.

The subscription starts at $49.99 with the "Everyday Gaming with Great Performance" HP Victus 15 with an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, 16 GB of DDR5-5600, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU; the $79.99 "Immersive Gaming Experiences" plan gets you an Omen 17 laptop with a Ryzen AI 7 350, RTX 5060 8 GB Laptop GPU, 32 GB of DDR5-5600 memory, and 1 TB of PCIe storage; and the $129.99 "High-End Gaming with no Compromises" plan comes with an Omen Max 16 with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, NVIDIA RTX 5080 16 GB Laptop GPU, 32 GB of DDR5-5600, and 1 TB of PCIe storage. Subscription requires a soft credit check, and the service renews annually, with new hardware available with each renewal. HP also offers a 30-day trial and an ongoing warranty, all of which is very reminiscent of HP's infamous All-In printer subscription, which starts at $7.99 per month for 20 pages of printing with a two-year commitment. Needless to say, the whole hardware subscription model has largely been met with criticism in online spaces like r/pcmasterrace, with some users calling it a scam and others recalling the time when NZXT was ripped to shreds online for a similar business model.