There has been a lot of talk about the new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, since it was announced that she would be taking over from Phil Spencer, and she has even made a handful of statements about her intent for the future of the Xbox platform—even if some of those have simply led gamers and commentators to the conclusion that she is there to usher Xbox into the night. However, in a recent interview with Windows Central, Sharma and the new Xbox CCO (Chief Content Officer), Matt Booty, have commented on the immediate future of Xbox and what Sharma previously referred to as the "return to Xbox."

According to the two executives, the next steps revolve around the next-gen Xbox hardware platform, which is rumored to launch around 2028 as a PC-console hybrid, and Microsoft's first-party development efforts. Sharma said "For me, the spirit of 'Return to Xbox' is about returning to the spirit that the team was founded on... It's that spirit of surprise, it's the spirit of building something nobody else is willing to try," going on to explain that "I think that our core Xbox fans and players have invested up to 25 years of themselves in these universes and our console. I want to make sure everybody knows I'm committed to Xbox, starting with the console. We're going to keep meeting players where they are—the world continues to evolve and change. We're going to make sure Xbox is a great place for developers and players. We want to invest in reducing the artificial divide between different types of devices that they want to use with us. I think that's going to mean a lot more investment in breaking down the barriers, in helping developers build once and show up across different hardware experience."

Valve has steadily been adding features to SteamOS and the Steam Client since the release of the Steam Deck and leading up to the Steam Machine, but the latest Steam Deck Beta client update aims to address two main issues that have apparently been prevalent in the Steam Hardware Survey, which should result in more accurate GPU data reporting. The first change fixes incorrect VRAM reporting on some GPUs, although Valve doesn't provide any explanation about which GPUs are affected by this bug, while the second change makes it so that the Steam Client automatically detects the display adaptor with the most VRAM—therefore likely the most performant or the least likely to be an iGPU—when collecting Steam Survey information.

Aside from weird edge cases, like users running both a workstation GPU and a gaming GPU in one system, these changes should result in more accurate data from the Steam Hardware Survey. It's unclear how widespread these reporting issues were or how far back they go, but the changes are unlikely to have an effect before a wider roll-out, and it's unclear when the wider roll-out will happen. The beta client update also includes two minor updates to Steam Input. The update adds a multi-button selector for the button chord activator, which Valve says will improve compatibility with extra grip buttons on modern controllers. Valve has also changed the way the Gyro to Joystick Camera output works, matching the Gyro to Joystick Deflection behavior, which it says is useful for "identifying a game's internal joystick deadzone." Polishing both the Steam Hardware Survey results and Steam Input might be steps to prepare for the launch of the Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame.

Blizzard's recent rebrand of Overwatch 2 to just Overwatch also saw the game studio announce a series of new heroes coming in the first season of Overwatch's new era, one of which is Jetpack Cat, who quickly became a fan favorite. In a recent appearance on The Omnic Podcast, Overwatch's associate director, Alec Dawson, said that the popularity of Jetpack Cat, and other unorthodox characters, has led the development and design teams to consider more "oddball" heroes for future releases. Blizzard has promised to add one hero to the game every season for the first year—meaning a new hero every two months—but there was no word on whether the plan was to continue at this cadence indefinitely. In the podcast, though, Dawson clarifies that this is the goal as long as it's sustainable and there's no big gameplay event or similar to get in the way. He also says that this release cadence also gives the developers "a lot more opportunities to take some chances" on gameplay differentiation, different roles, and "something a little bit different" so that players can find characters they enjoy playing with or whose design they enjoy. He adds that the response to Jetpack Cat has been heard in the Overwatch team, and it "helps us think about what sort of characters and heroes we want to do in the future, as well."

At the same time, in a recent interview with PCGamesN, Dawson commented that Jetpack Cat is the most banned character in Overwatch at the moment, and that is a situation Blizzard would like to address so that she can be used more frequently in competitive matches. "We love the cat, but we are going to tone down a little bit of her aggression," he continued to explain that Jetpack Cat's ability to dive a backline will likely be somewhat suppressed in an upcoming nerf: "When she gets both her minor perk, Claws Out, and her major perk, Territorial, the combination allows her to be an absolute menace that's diving backlines and taking 1v1s. So we're going to tone that down just a little bit and see how that goes, but the cat won't be scratching as much as she is currently." He added that the hero ban feature has been helpful to guide the balance and development of heroes, which will likely only become more complicated with the new hero release cadence. Notably, Blizzard has also been responding to community feedback on topics like hero design, as was the case with another new hero, Anran, who was criticized for looking generic after her announcement.

The disappointing launch of Highguard has been well documented by now, but the game has just hit a new low, despite recent developer efforts to keep things afloat following a round of layoffs. According to SteamDB, Highguard's player count has continued to trend downwards, reaching a new low of just 743 peak concurrent players in the 24-hour period preceding publication. February 23 marked the first time the game dipped below 1,000 peak concurrent players in a 24-hour period—down from a launch peak of 97,249—and player counts haven't recovered since then.

No Man's Sky had a similar launch trajectory, releasing with a massive 212,000+ peak player count which quickly dwindled to just over 1,000 in 2018 before the game's surprise resurrection—it now sits at around 20,000 peak concurrent daily players. Highguard's dwindling player count is despite recent content updates reportedly bringing a bit more excitement to the gameplay—recent reviews show an uptick in positive feedback and a reduction in negative reviews.

One of the simpler solutions manufacturers have come up with to mitigate the ubiquitous 12v-2×6 GPU power connector meltdowns is colored cable terminations that simply give the user an indication that the GPU power connector is properly connected. According to a recent post on r/MSI_Gaming, those colored connectors are both doing their jobs and causing concerns among MSI PSU users. The original poster shared an image of the stock 12v-2×6 power cables of an MSI MPG A1000GS ATX 3.1 PSU that had slowly been creeping out of both the PSU and PNY RTX 5080 GPU connectors over the course of two months, exposing the colored yellow connector end that is meant to serve as a warning against thermal meltdown events.

While the slowly loosening connector had not yet resulted in a meltdown, it had seemingly started causing instability in the user's system during heavy gaming loads. What's more concerning is the multitude of comments in the Reddit thread echoing the OP's story, saying that they had properly connected both ends of the cable until there was a positive click, but despite this, the cable seemed to be creeping out at one or both ends. Some commenters hypothesized that part of the reason for these meltdown events that happen so long after the system was first built is that repeated thermal cycling causes the plastic connector to expand and contract, resulting in the cable slowly coming loose. The redditor was eventually told to request a replacement unit through Amazon, but if the number of similar reports in the same thread are anything to go by, the issue appears to be at least somewhat widespread with MSI's cables.

Sony's upcoming Horizon Hunters Gathering three-player co-op game was revealed earlier this month, but it seems as though Sony is deeper into development than it let on during the announcement, because the gaming giant is apparently already ready for its first Horizon Hunters Gathering closed beta test. Sony announced the beta test via a post on the game's official X account, linking to a website where you can register to try out the game ahead of its official launch. The Horizon Hunters Gathering closed beta will take place from February 27 to March 1 for both PS5 and PC players (via Steam).

The closed beta will be limited to three playable hunts—Axle, Rem, and Sun—two game modes—Machine Incursion and Cauldron Descent—and just one environment—Colorado Springs, and only players from the USA, Canada, and much of Europe will be eligible for the closed beta, and the US play test will be limited to 4 PM-7 PM PST, while EU players will be allowed to play at 7 PM-10 PM CET. Players will also be subject to selection by Sony, so applying via the PlayStation Beta Program will not guarantee access to the beta. PlayStation players will be allowed to bring along two friends, for a full party of three, but PC players looking to test the beta with friends will need to apply separately—no free invites for friends on Steam. The play test will also be under strict NDA, which means players will not be able to share any gameplay or opinions outside of Sony's beta tester Discord server, nor will they be allowed to share screenshots or stream gameplay.

Shortly after Discord announced a plan to expand its use of Persona age verification globally as part of its new "teen-by-default" account settings, it has confirmed in a recent FAQ page update that it will not require age verification for "90%+ of users" after facing significant backlash. The social media platform explains that it will be going ahead with its teen-by-default, but that most users just don't access age-restricted content or because the internal age verification systems will be able to automatically determine age without any user action. Discord's CTO, Stanislav Vishnevskiy, said in a blog post that "we knew this rollout was going to be controversial. Any time you introduce something that touches identity and verification, people are going to have strong feelings," but effectively explained that the original announcement was misinterpreted or explained badly. He goes on to say that Discord was evaluating Persona for biometric age verification data in an experiment in January, but has since decided not to proceed with the Persona partnership because it did not meet the bar of requiring on-device verification. He does, however, say that Discord will require age verification via k-ID in countries like Australia, Brazil, and the UK, where laws require it and do not allow Discord's internal estimation system. Discord will also be introducing a new "spoiler" channel option, which will allow communities to stop using age-restricted channels to avoid discussions about spoilers and politics.

At the same time, however, it was revealed in a post on Bluesky that Twitch has adopted Persona as an age verification system for Twitch Partners in order to receive payment. The age verification process required users to submit a selfie along with an image of a government ID card, passport, or driver's license. This report of mandatory Persona age verification on Twitch comes shortly after it was reported that hackers had discovered an exposed frontend for Persona that both demonstrated the platform's lackluster security and revealed ties to the US government and a potential mass-surveillance apparatus, although these were partially explained as an upcoming partnership with the government to verify the identities of remote federal workers. It's unclear how widespread Twitch's use of Persona is at this point in time, but a number of creators have made their voices heard via an open letter in Twitch's User Voices feature in light of the recent controversies surrounding Persona.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is slated to launch on March 19 for PC after almost nine months as a PS5 exclusive, and Nixxes and Kojima Productions just revealed the minimum PC hardware requirements, as well as the supported upscaling and graphical enhancement options, in a PlayStation Blog post. According to the blog post, the absolute minimum spec, which gets you 30 FPS as 1080p with low settings, requires an AMD Ryzen 3 3100 or Intel Core i3-10100, 16 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 or AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8 GB. Medium, or 1080p with medium settings, requires an RTX 3060 12 GB or Radeon RX 6600, and an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 or Intel Core i5-11400. Stepping it up to High (or recommended specs), which gets you 1440p at 60 FPS with high settings, requires an AMD Radeon RX 6800 or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X or Intel Core i7-11700. Very High, or 4K resolution at 60 FPS with very high settings, calls for an upgrade to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 or Radeon RX 9070 XT, while the CPU and memory specs remain the same as for the High tier. All spec tiers require 16 GB of memory, Windows 11 or Windows 10 1909 or up, and at least a 150 GB SSD.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach will also offer PC players support for both 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide aspect ratios, and players with 16:9 displays can simulate a cinematic experience by opting for a 21:9 aspect ratio with black bars on the top and bottom of the display—this option will also be introduced for PS5 at the same time as the PC release. PC players will also get support for upscaling tech from all three GPU manufacturers: NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 4, and Intel XeSS 2, with both frame generation and upscaling options available. These upscaling options can be used in conjunction with Dynamic Resolution Scaling, and players will be able to adjust upscaling quality. The game will also see the debut of Pico—Progressive Image Compositor—on PC. This is the upscaling technology used by Death Stranding 2 on PS5 and developed by Guerrilla Games for the Decima engine, and it can also be used alongside all available frame generation options and on all available graphics card manufacturers. The game will also offer native AA options for those not interested in upscaling.

Marvel's Wolverine has been on Sony's release roster for ages, with Sony having released a brutal trailer for the game as far back as September 2025. Insomniac Games, the Studio at the game's helm, just confirmed on X that Wolverine will launch on September 15, 2026, which is right in the middle of the previously promised "fall 2026" release window. Unfortunately, as expected, Marvel's Wolverine appears to be a console exclusive, at least at launch. There is no mention of a PC or Xbox launch date anywhere on the PlayStation Store or in the release date trailer.

Marvel's Wolverine will follow the titular character as he "searches for answers about his past," and the trailer reveals that players will revisit Logan's complex history as an anti-hero, fighting against and potentially alongside the likes of Sabretooth and Mystique, with scenes from the trailer teasing locations ranging from the American west to Japanese back alleys. The PlayStation Store page also confirms that Marvel's Wolverine will be single-player only and will feature offline play. Marvel's Spider-Man 2, another Marvel game developed by Insomniac for the PS5, initially launched on PS5 in October 2023, but only made it to PC in January 2025; if that game is any indication, it'll be a little over a year after launch before Marvel's Wolverine makes it to PC.

Shortly following the recent announcement that Phil Spencer would be leaving as the head of Xbox Gaming, the division's new CEO, Asha Sharma, released a long statement expressing her distaste for AI slop and her belief that, although "AI has long been part of gaming and will continue to be," games "are and always will be art, crafted by humans and created with the most innovative technology provided by us." Many gamers have been skeptical of these and similar statements now and in the past, but it seems as though industry veteran and founder of Xbox, Seamus Blackley, seems to be convinced that those are empty words, whether Sharma believes it or not. In a recent interview with GamesBeat, Blackley said about Sharma that he believes "her job is going to be as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night," going on to say that assurances like the aforementioned one by Sharma are "just what occurs to people to say when they bring in someone from an outside business into games."

In Blackley's view, Microsoft's bet on AI will result in a lot of the non-AI businesses being sunsetted, and that is what is happening to Xbox under the new CEO. He says that, just like AI has taken over "everything else," it will take over gaming as well, at least at Microsoft, going on to say that "Asha's background is entirely in software as a service and AI. The implicit thing here is that games is going to be AI-driven software as a service." Part of his justification for this belief is that, despite gaming industry veteran, Matt Booty, acting as Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer, Sharma is an outsider to the gaming industry and doesn't necessarily understand the industry. His concern is that such an outsider, especially one coming from an AI background, can only see gaming in an abstract way. That said, he does admit that there have been outsiders that have succeeded in gaming, but those that have understood that gaming is a content business. He also jokingly says that her statement about the future of Xbox "reminded me of that meme 'Hello, fellow kids!'" and that she would have to figure out what's interesting about gaming.

We previously covered how enterprising gamers managed to bypass AMD's FSR 4 restrictions to get Redstone frame generation tech working on older RDNA GPUs with OptiScaler. Now, it seems as though OptiScaler has managed bypass another one of AMD's limitations that restricted FSR 4 implementations to DirectX 12 games. According to the build notes uncovered by a Reddit user u/eduhfx, OptiScaler is testing adding Vulkan support in a new test build v0.9.0-pre10. Notably, OptiScaler is using a compatibility tool to work around FSR 4's lack of Vulkan support, similarly to how Linux translates DirectX, calls to Vulkan with DXVK or VKD3D. This also means that FSR 4 on Vulkan should work on Linux systems, as well, where games often run better under Vulkan than DX12—although at the time of writing, FSR 4 w/DX12 currently has issues running on Linux due to a Mesa issue that seemingly cannot be solved by the OptiScaler team.

Added Vulkan w/DX12 support - FSR 4 VK w/DX12, FSR 2.1 VK w/DX12

Currently, known issues:
FSR 4 VK w/DX12 has issues on Linux due to missing Mesa extensions
Not interested in reports as nothing we can fix on our side as far as we know

Just last week, we reported on the closure of Spliced, a newly formed NetEase game studio that suffered layoffs even before it had announced or released any games. Now, that same misfortune has come for TiMi Montreal, a division of TiMi founded in mid-2021 to create AAA, open-world, multi-platform games. The studio's closure was revealed in a now-removed LinkedIn post (via Game File) by a programmer at the studio, who said that "Today, TiMi Montreal is officially closing its doors," and goes on to lament the fact that the "the public will never get to experience what this team was capable of producing."

While TiMi Studio Group has been responsible for a number of high-profile mobile and cross-platform titles, including Call of Duty Mobile, Delta Force, Arena of Valor, and Age of Empires Mobile, among others, TiMi Montreal had not even announced any projects. The studio and its parent company, Tencent, also have yet to address the alleged closure, but several other employees sounded off in the comments of the original LinkedIn post, suggesting that the news of the closure is more than just hearsay. This news also comes shortly after Sony shuttered Bluepoint games, serving as yet another indication of an ailing gaming industry. Of course, without an official statement or more information, it's difficult to know how many employees were affected by the closure or how many will go on to work internally at Tencent or other TiMi studios, for example.

Shortly after news broke that Ubisoft is, in fact, working on "several" Assassin's Creed launches after its controversial Creative Houses reshuffle, the company has published an official Reddit post detailing the newly appointed lead for the Assassin's Creed franchise as well as giving gamers a taste of what's in-store for the future of the franchise. The most notable take-away from the announcement is that the Assassin's Creed franchise will be led by Martin Schelling as Head of Brand, Jean Guesdon as Head of Content, and François De Billy as Head of Production Excellence.

All three members of the Assassin's Creed leadership team have previously worked on Assassin's Creed games: Schelling was Producer and Senior Producer of Black Flag, Origins, Revelations, and Valhalla; Guesdon was Creative Director of Black Flag and Origins, among other franchise credits; and De Billy served in a number of roles on Revelations and Black Flag and as Production Director on Origins and Valhalla. Ubisoft says the new team "marks the beginning of an exciting and ambitious new chapter" for the franchise, although it will be picking up where previous leaders left off in the aforementioned Assassin's Creed projects Ubisoft already has in the works. Appropriately, given the history, it seems as though the first Assassin's Creed project that will be released after the new leaders take over is the Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake. That said, the remake is likely all but complete, especially when it comes to more meaningful gameplay and artistic elements, meaning the new team likely won't have contributed much to that, if anything.

A new patent application by Sony may provide players with an alternative to pausing a game that would ostensibly prevent halting gameplay execution by putting the game into an alternate gameplay state while players deal with momentary distractions or decide whether they want to fully pause the game to deal with something like a message. The patent, (US20260021411) filed with the USPTO, explains a number of potential ways to achieve this, seemingly with the idea that different games and genres could implement different versions of Soft Pause. Sony touts Soft Pause as particularly useful for VR use cases, in which a jarring pause and cut to a menu screen may cause nausea or dizziness

The Soft Pause concepts include everything from having the game slow down while the feature is active, making the game easier, guiding the player towards objectives or enemies, boosting player assist features—features like aim assist or stretching time windows for certain inputs—or even having a machine-learning tool take over from the player entirely while Soft Pause is active. It's unclear if that ML model would be trained on player data or if it will offer more generic support. It remains to be seen if or when this will be implemented at all, and, realistically, it could go either way. If it is implemented, it will also be interesting to see how each game implements it, especially in competitive games. Currently, being AFK in a competitive game can be disastrous, and, while something like Soft Pause might be able to provide something of a solution to short AFK moments, although games like Paladins already have an AI that takes over gameplay when players are disconnected. Other recent Sony patents include an adaptive controller of sorts that puts all controls into a touch interface.

With Marathon and its upcoming server slam event almost literally just around the corner by now, details have started to emerge about the game's server and anti-cheat configurations. In a new post on the @MarathonTheGame official X account, Bungie has explained the details of Marathon's anti-cheat system. Aside from both kernel- and user-level anti-cheat on clients, it was confirmed that Marathon will have server-side fog of war that will protect against wall hacks, ESP cheats, and loot revealers. The game will also use dedicated servers with authority on key combat and looting actions, meaning the servers will be protected against client-side interference. The anti-cheat announcement also mentions that in the case of a crash or connection loss, players will be able to rejoin the game as soon as the connection is re-established, although they will have to rely on teammates to protect their character.

Most notably, though, Bungie announced that any cheaters caught cheating in Marathon will receive a permanent ban from the game. While an authoritative stance has been well received by the community, there are concerns over BattlEye potentially tagging false positives and banning players who weren't guilty of cheating—an issue that was recently brought up by the Apex Legends community when a player was falsely banned after the new Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike seemingly triggered a ban threshold for gameplay automation.

Mozilla announced in early February that it had implemented its "AI kill switch" in a nightly build after severe community backlash, with the full release slated for Firefox 148. As of February 23, Firefox 148 is officially available for download via the download server ahead of the officially announced February 24 launch date. According to Mozilla, the AI features will remain disabled through updates once they have been disabled via the kill switch.

The AI kill switch isn't the only new change coming to Firefox 148, with Mozilla also slated to add features like a split view and HDR video streaming on Windows, with both features seemingly leaving experimental in build 148. Hardware acceleration is also expected to speed up PDF load times, and the sidebar will be getting a visual update with convenient access to bookmarks, history, AI tools, and the settings menu. As with other Firefox UI elements, the new sidebar is fully customizable in the settings menu.

The Stop Killing Games initiative announced not too long ago that it had accrued and validated the necessary number of signatures to be heard out by the EU parliament via the Stop Destroying Videogames EU citizen's initiative. According to a new video put out by activist and spokesperson for the movement, Ross Scott, key players in the movement have been hard at work in the background since that announcement, and that there has been progress since that update, although not all of it positive. The first important note is that the Stop Destroying Games citizen's initiative already has a date secured to present its case to the EU Commission, but despite this, it seems to have already had an impact on EU lawmakers.

According to Scott, in October, it seemed as though the EU was considering adding protections for videogames to the Digital Fairness Act, which is a new set of laws that aim to regulate digital ethics and consumer rights—however, it seems as though video game industry lobbyists had gotten to lawmakers first, since they parroted arguments about discouraging small indie developers, who would ostensibly have a hard time keeping games running indefinitely, but this allowed the movement to clarify to the EU that the movement doesn't seek to force publishers to maintain games indefinitely, but only to provide a way for gamers to play the games they have purchased after support is ended. Despite this, the representatives at the meeting seemed to think that the commission didn't favor adding laws surrounding gaming to the Digital Fairness Act.

It was revealed in a recent leak that the next-gen AMD Zen 6 Ryzen CPUs would be delayed until 2027, and it has now emerged, that the upcoming Intel "Nova Lake-S" Core Ultra Series 4 CPUs may be joining AMD for an early 2027 launch, when previous reports placed the launch in late 2026. The news comes by way of ubiquitous leakers, HXL on X and Golden Pig Upgrade on Weibo, who say that a CES 2027 launch seems likely for both new CPU generations.

Previously, we got a taste of what to expect from Nova Lake-S in a series of leaks and rumors, which pointed to increased NPU performance as well as core counts that range from 12 on the low-end (4 P-cores, 4 E-cores, 4 LP-cores) to 52 on the high-end (16 P-cores, 32 E-cores, 4 LP-cores). Obviously, these are early leaks, and the official launch is still a way out, so dates may still change, but it seems as though the current silicon and DRAM shortages may result in the lengthening of product launch cycles across the PC industry in general—an outcome that was previously predicted.

It was recently revealed that Xbox Gaming's long-time CEO, Phil Spencer, would be leaving Microsoft after nearly 40 years at the company, with Asha Sharma taking over as CEO of Microsoft Gaming after her role as chief of the company's CoreAI platform. Shortly after the announcement of his departure, Sharma released an internal statement with comments about the future of Xbox Gaming and her views on topics like AI, monetization, and art. In short, Sharma says she wants to prioritize creating "great games" with unforgettable characters, stories that resonate, and creative, innovative gameplay. In the latter part of the statement, she addresses the inevitable questions and concerns about a former AI leader taking over the gaming division. She makes a number of comments about AI and the future of gaming, stating that "As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or floor our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us."

Later, in a statement to Variety, Sharma reinforced these statements, stating that she wants to "earn the right to be trusted by players and developers," and noting that "AI has long been part of gaming and will continue to be." She again emphasized the importance of "deep emotional resonance" in games, and reiterated her stance that she has "no tolerance for bad AI." It's worth noting that CoreAI, the platform Sharma was previously in charge of at Microsoft, is a suite of AI-powered developer tools designed for "the AI era," with a significant focus on agentic AI. If Sharma's statements are to be believed, it seems reasonable to assume we will be seeing more AI trickle into first-party Xbox games, but it may not be the AI-first approach that companies like EA have recently adopted in the name of efficiency.

In late 2025, ASUS announced the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti Dual Evo graphics cards, which touted a slimmer, shorter design for improved compatibility with small form factor PC builds. Now, it has silently expanded the Dual Evo line with the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 5070 Evo and Evo OC, both of which stuff an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB GPU into a package measuring just 229 × 120 × 50 mm. ASUS has not yet publicly announced the GPUs, and they don't seem to be available via retail channels just yet, but the spec sheets and product pages are available in full on the ASUS site. As such, pricing is not yet available at the time of writing.

The OC model steps up the standard boost clock from 2,512 MHz to 2,542 MHz and the OC mode clock speed from 2,542 MHz to 2,572 MHz. Both GPUs feature the same 2.5-slot shroud and cooler design, and it seems unlikely that the OC Edition has any additional changes other than a slight vBIOS tweak to achieve the higher clocks, suggesting that you can likely get similar clock speeds with a bit of tuning in GPU Tweak III. This 2.5-slot design is thicker than the 2.0-slot design of the 5060 series Dual Evo cards, but still notably thinner than most other RTX 5070 models, like the 3.2-slot ROG Strix GeForce RTX 5070. The GPU shroud design is also somewhat more reserved than some of ASUS's recent designs, with just an angular, black, dual-texture shroud housing dual axial fans, while the GPU heat sink has a flow-through design for the rear fan. Much like the 5060 variants of the same series, the PCIe power plug is located almost centrally on the side of the GPU, instead of the traditional rearward position.

With the launch of Resident Evil Requiem merely a week away, it's expected that gameplay and story leaks would start to show up online and subsequently be shared online. Capcom, however, has taken to social media platform, X, to decry the early gameplay and story leaks, asking players not to share the leaks. The gaming giant says that it wants "everyone to enjoy the game's story and experience as much as possible." Capcom adds that its legal department is working to issue DMCA take-downs of any leaks posted online, "in order to preserve your day-one experience."

The gameplay leaks in question have revealed major plot points and twists, as well as potential endings to the latest installment in the Resident Evil franchise. One Reddit thread—which fortunately is covered with spoiler tags—has collated the vast majority of the leaks, including gameplay footage of part of the game's ending. It's easy to see why a game studio would want to keep a lid on such extensive leaks about a story-driven game. Another post in the subreddit was removed by the moderators, so it looks like Capcom's take-down requests or social media plea has had some effect already.

Given the similar form factors, it's unsurprising that many gamers turned to their Steam Decks to emulate Nintendo Switch games, but that era seems to be drawing to a close, as RetroDECK, a Linux emulation platform capable of emulating multiple game systems, has just confirmed that it will be removing support for Ryubing, a fork of the now-infamous Ryujinx Switch emulator, from its available emulators. The developer behind the emulator explained in a February 19 blog post that Switch emulation would be removed in a minor update. This comes after support for Ryubing was added in a November update.

The blog mentions two main reasons for the removal of Ryubing, stating that "Switch emulation has consistently been the source of the most issues within the project, generating the highest volume of warnings, bans, toxicity, and support tickets," and adding that the questionable legality of emulators like Ryubing and Nintendo's aggressive protection of its intellectual property exposes the volunteers and community involved in the RetroDECK project to undue legal exposure. As of an upcoming update, indicated in an edit to an old blog post to be 0.10.4b, Switch emulation will be removed from RetroDECK "forever," and discussions about Switch emulation will also be banned from all of RetroDECK's communities and social platforms effective immediately.

Yves Guillemot recently made an appearance in an interview with Variety, in which the Ubisoft CEO spoke about both the ongoing cost-cutting measures and in-development projects at the French gaming giant. When asked about upcoming projects in the Assassin's Creed and Far Cry franchises, Guillemot responded that there are "several" Assassin's Creed titles in development at Ubisoft, and that those titles will involve both single-player and multiplayer gameplay. Similar is true for the Far Cry franchise, in that Ubisoft currently has two Far Cry projects in development, although Guillemot declined to specify any further on what those projects were. One of the upcoming Assassin's Creed projects is almost certainly the much-rumored Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake that is slated to launch sometime in 2026.

This interview and the promises of new Far Cry and Assassin's Creed games comes the same week as Ubisoft confirmed a round of layoffs at its Toronto studio as part of its heavily criticized company-wide restructuring and cost-savings plan that will likely see up to 18% of the company laid off in order to save €200 million in five years. That same plan has seen Ubisoft divide development efforts into five creative houses, each of which will be responsible for a handful of IPs. When asked about this and the necessity for the cost reduction, Yves Guillemot blamed rapid post-COVID growth and flat-lining demand where continued growth had been anticipated. He goes on to say that "our priority today is to build a more focused, agile company, with stronger teams that strike the right balance between senior expertise and young talent and who are well positioned to deliver the highest quality games." If recent game cancellation trends at Ubisoft are anything to go by, nothing is set in stone, and the projects that have been in the pipeline for the longest seem to be the most likely to be cancelled or delayed, as was the case with the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake.

Thermal Grizzly announced its TG Delidded CPUs, which would see the company sell delidded AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs for enthusiast use with direct-die cooling solutions. The program started with the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and has since expanded to include the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, with the latest addition being the recently released AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D. The delidded 9850X3D comes in at $876.33 on the Thermal Grizzly store, which is a marked increase over the $500 MSRP, but it also includes a warranty in the case of any manufacturer defects or issues that might arise during the delidding process. The aforementioned warranty is valid for two years and covers material defects of the CPU and even extends to overclocking within manufacturer spec, as long as adequate cooling is provided. It does not cover any physical or liquid damage to the silicon, SMDs, or the PCB.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D is now live]

Roman Hartung, aka Der8auer, famous overclocker and CEO of Thermal Grizzly, published a YouTube video demonstrating the delidding process and documenting potential performance and thermal improvements as a result of delidding and direct-die cooling. In the video, Hartung tests the 9850X3D in Cinebench R23, demonstrating a 90.2° C peak temperature on one CCD, with the average die temperature getting as high as 88.1° C with a peak power draw of 182.35 W in the 10-minute CPU benchmark run. Individual peak CPU core temperatures ranged from 78 to 88.2° C, whereas after applying liquid metal and a direct-die cooling solution resulted in peak CPU core temperatures of 66.1-75.3° C and a peak average CPU temperature of 75.3°C—temperatures were down around 15° C across the board following the delid. Power draw was slightly lower during this test, at 178.09 W peak package power, although the same settings were applied in BIOS ahead of the tests. Hartung also goes on to test the overclocking capabilities of the delidded CPU on the direct-die cooling solution, which can be seen in the video below.

Wildlight Entertainment, the studio behind ailing free-to-play raid shooter, Highguard, has had a rough time since the game's launch and middling reception, with mass layoffs casting doubt on the game's future, despite the studio's assurances that there is content planned for the future. In a recent post to X, Wildlight announced that it will soon be releasing the first content update for the game since the aforementioned layoffs. The update, which is slated to launch the same week as the announcement, will almost certainly include bug fixes and changes to the game, but Wildlight has highlighted two important new pieces of content coming to the game.

The first bit of content is a new base, Cloudreach, which is an airship base with an airship docked high above the ground and the Anchor Stone target inside the airship itself. Players will face off in and around the airship, where gameplay will range from long-ranged sniper engagements to close-quarters combat in tight corridors. The update also introduces the Lockpick, a new Raid tool that fires darts at doors and windows to open them, temporarily disable them, and give control to your team. The Lockpick will use a new ammo type, Darts, and the tool itself can be equipped in the start loadout menu or found in red chests.

Hot on the heels of the MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Lightning Z launch, it seems as though the hardware maker is planning yet another special edition GPU launch. MSI recently teased in a Bilibili post on its official GPU account that it is planning a limited edition launch in collaboration with popular fantasy anime, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. It may also be the case that the GPU is part of a special edition bundle, although there's no evidence to back this up. Given that it is a limited edition, it seems reasonable that the GPU will be an RTX 5090 or 5080.

Not much else is known about the upcoming launch, although speculation suggests that the new GPU will be based on one of the brand's designs with a white shroud and a Frieren-inspired theme, purely because white is a consistent color for the character in the anime. It's also almost guaranteed to be an NVIDIA GPU, since MSI only makes GeForce GPUs. This is hardly the first GPU design or collaboration to lean into non-gaming properties, with the recent ASUS x Hatsune Miku Astral GPU and hardware series being a notable example of one such collaboration. Frieren has also been featured in a Starforge prebuilt PC design, which was also an almost entirely white build.

PMM is a mouse mod maker that provides commercially available custom ultra-light shells for popular gaming mice, like the Razer Viper V3 Pro and the Endgame Gear OP1 8K, often shaving off upwards of 15 g from the stock weight. The latest mouse on the PMM mod radar is the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike, which weighs in at a hearty 60 g in stock form. The custom shell designer revealed in a post on X that an ultra-light G Pro X2 Superstrike shell is in development, asking for community feedback on a target weight and design in the process.

Throughout the thread, there are implications that the mouse modder may be able to get the mouse weight as low as 35 g, with PMM going so far as to comment that 39 g may even be possible with a solid shell with no weight-reduction holes. Replies to comments also indicate that a final weight as low as 29 g—over 50% reduction from stock—may be possible, if somewhat challenging, while 33 g would be "ambitious" while also retaining the battery. PMM also suggests that a mod kit with a different battery position could solve the forward weight bias that some users have complained about. It will likely be a while before PMM actually launches a mod kit for the Superstrike, since the design process involves 3D scanning an existing mouse and then optimizing the design from there.

Slay the Spire is a beloved single-player indie roguelike deck-builder that debuted on Steam in 2019 and has somehow maintained an active community of over 24,000 concurrent daily players, even seven years after its initial launch. The game's sequel, Slay the Spire 2 has been hotly anticipated, and, according to an update to the game's Steam Store page, the developer will be adding four-player co-op to the game. The updated Steam Store page also revealed that the game now has a launch date of March 5, 2026 and a new Early Access trailer.

The original game's format and unique hand-crafted world will make a return in the sequel, but the world has evolved for the second installment, offering new monsters, characters, abilities, and secrets to discover. The four-player co-op mode is likely the biggest change to come to the game, though, and according to the description of the multiplayer features, there will be team-specific cards and team synergies to explore and test out. Of course, the classic single-player mode will also be an option for players who prefer to go alone or simply need to play at their own pace. The total roster of playable characters will also grow to five, offering players some added flexibility in how to approach the gameplay. Slay the Spire 2 will be launching in Steam Early Access initially, so expect the game to change as community feedback is submitted.

It's no secret that GPU prices have skyrocketed lately as a result of increased AI data center demand. This has been especially true for any GPU featuring more than 8 GB of VRAM, like AMD's Radeon RX 9060 and 9070 series. However, while AMD GPUs were previously seen as a viable alternative when NVIDIA GPUs were unaffordable or unavailable, that increased demand resulted in price spikes of up to 40% by December 2025. This is based on Japanese data collected by Gaz:Log, who also found that, since that massive price hike, reduced demand has forced retailers to drop prices for both the RX 9070 XT and RX 9060 XT 16 GB GPUs by as much as 15% and 20% respectively.

Obviously, this is just one market, and it can't be guaranteed that events will play out similarly in other regions, but it is an indication that hardware pricing may be reaching a tipping point, after which we may see prices stabilize or fall slightly in response to reduced demand. It's also worth noting that AMD and NVIDIA have both been rumored to be planning to effectively increase MSRP in early 2026, which would result in price increases of at least 10% across the board. This is on top of a late 2025 price increase of $20-40 on both 8 and 16 GB GPUs.

In late 2025, screenshots surfaced of a cancelled multiplayer, live-service God of War game that had been in development at Bluepoint Games, the studio responsible for a number of high-profile remakes, like Demon Souls and Shadow of the Colossus. It seems as though that game's cancellation may have been a sign of the times for the Sony-owned studio, as the gaming giant recently confirmed that it has closed Bluepoint Games. According to Bloomberg, this studio's closure will affect 70 employees, who will be laid off at the time of the studio's closure in March 2026. This news comes amid a slew of closures and layoffs, including 40 workers at Ubisoft Toronto losing their jobs to cost-cutting measures and NetEase closing an entire studio before it had even released or announced a game. Game Developer reports that Sony confirmed the studio's closure and issued a statement explaining that the decision to close the studio was made following a business review.

"Bluepoint Games is an incredibly talented team and their technical expertise has delivered exceptional experiences for the PlayStation community. We thank them for their passion, creativity and craftsmanship." -Sony via Game Developer.

The melting and burning 12V-2×6 connectors on high-end NVIDIA—and some AMD—GPUs is well documented at this point, and although there is mounting evidence to support the fact that the new connector standard itself is partially to blame, there is still the idea that high power draw is to blame for these meltdowns. This is not necessarily the case, according to one user of the Mobile01 forum. According to the forum post about the incident, the top row of pins in a Gigabyte Aorus Master Ice RTX 5090's GPU power connector has melted down, despite the user having implemented a steep undervolt and power limit.

When installed, the user had limited GPU power to 500 W and dropped the voltage limit down to 0.9 v—that's a reduction of 100 W and 0.205 v compared to stock settings. It's worth noting that the GPU in question was connected to the PSU using a 16-pin adaptor, and the connector melted at the GPU side, not the PSU side, and the first indication of the meltdown was frequent crashing during gaming sessions. Both connector ends at the GPU side seem to be affected, but it's entirely possible that the GPU would have suffered even more damage had the power limit been higher. Currently, independent research seems to indicate that the 12V-2×6 cable itself seems to suffer from an unstable or inadequate connection, which increases the current and temperature across individual pins. Unofficial adaptors also seem to exaggerate these contact issues.

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.

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.

Update Feb 23rd: It has been confirmed by a Respawn team member in the r/apexlegends subreddit that this was a false ban, although it was seemingly still the result of the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike triggering a minimum threshold.