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.

The latest move in Epic Games's ongoing fight against cheaters in Fortnite sees the gaming giant implement hardware-level security in Easy Anti-Cheat implementation, at least for those players looking to participate in tournaments. As of February 18, 2026, tournament players will need to enable TPM, Secure Boot, and IOMMU in order to participate in competitive matches. Fortnite is only the latest game to require TPM and Secure Boot, with both Call of Duty Black Ops 7 and Battlefield 6 calling for the hardware security measures.

Fortnite may be one of the first mainstream games to adopt the IOMMU, which is a memory integrity feature that is generally used to prevent direct memory access—although some competitive gaming platforms have also required the memory security tool as a safeguard against cheating. Gamers who do not meet the new anti-cheat requirements, which Epic Games says make up less than 5% of PC players, will still be able to access regular Fortnite matches, but they will not be able to participate in competitive tournaments. With the renewed crack-down on cheating and increased reliance on kernel-level anti-cheat, it's safe to say that Fortnite will not be getting Steam Deck support anytime soon. There have also been reports that enabling IOMMU can cause performance degradation in some games running on Windows, although the impact seems to vary from build to build.

In our previous reviews of Zowie gaming mice, like the EC3-C, we praised the company for its low click latency, but the company recently released a firmware update to its DW-series wireless gaming mice, adding an optional performance mode to the relevant gaming peripherals. Performance mode can be enabled by holding down the left mouse button while turning the mouse on, and by all accounts, there are measurable improvements to click latency thanks to the new firmware.

AimAdept, a popular mouse reviewer, tested the new firmware mode on his Zowie ZA13-DW in 4 kHz polling mode with an Xlat latency tester and measured a click latency as low as 0.468 ms compared to 3.898 ms on the previous firmware with "Fast response" mode enabled. Whether this will make a measurable improvement to in-game performance is questionable, but at least Zowie users will know that it's not their mouse click latency causing them to miss headshots. This new firmware comes shortly after Logitech officially released the new G Pro X2 Superstrike, which uses inductive switches that can reduce click latency by a claimed 30 ms compared to traditional mechanical switches.

Mesa 26.0.0, the latest update to the open-source Linux graphics driver stack, has officially been released, and the new release promises a number of improvements to stability and performance, especially for gamers on AMD Radeon GPUs via Vulkan ray tracing in the RADV driver. There has also been done to the open-source NVK driver for NVIDIA GPUs, Intel Iris and ANV drivers, and support for the Qualcomm Adreno Gen 8 graphics for Snapdragon X2 SoCs has been added. In a recent blog post ahead of the official driver release, Natalie Vock, a developer working on Mesa, explained the more technical aspects of the update and their implications.

The most notable mentions include changes to shader compilation and function calls that make RADV work more efficiently in ray tracing—a change especially notable on Unreal Engine games, according to the developer. The developer notes that in Ghostwire Tokyo, RT passes have been sped up by more than two times. While this won't translate directly to a 200% performance increase, and the effect won't be identical across all games, it means that the ray tracing experience on Linux is catching up to Windows. There are also improvements to Unreal Engine 5 performance, specifically relating to Lumen ray tracing, where a number of tweaks and workarounds effectively make the driver work more efficiently with the feature set.

Discord recently announced its age verification system, which would set all current user accounts to a teen-appropriate account mode by default unless the user's age is verified by an inference model or by submitting a selfie video or government ID. The backlash in online circles was notable, with some decrying the move because of privacy concerns after Discord's age verification partner already suffered a leak in October 2025. The announcement also reportedly resulted in a surge in searches for alternatives to the platform.

According to Google Trends search analytics, the search volumes for "Discord alternative" skyrocketed immediately after the announcement of the new age verification policy on February 9. Popular related searches also show a rise in search popularity for alternatives like Matrix, Root, Stoat (previously Revolt), Ventrilo, and even TeamSpeak, while a post in r/pcmasterrace on Reddit suggesting that gamers need a "proper Discord alternative" has 16,000 upvotes and over 2,000 comments, with most commenters in agreement, and many suggesting Stoat for its open-source development. Others have chimed in lamenting not only the age verification requirements but also the decline in quality of Discord and the aggressive monetization that has become popular on Discord lately.

Blizzard recently announced a bunch of new heroes alongside a slew of structural and gameplay changes coming in a new update at the start of 2026's season 1. One of the characters announced to be landing in the season 1 update, Anran, received some backlash from the community, who called her design generic and samey. Compared to a previous appearance in the character trailer for her younger brother, her character design had objectively been softened from the blunter, bolder facial features shown—a change that was criticized by the character's voice actor, who posted a video on X in which she said the character's design "Ozempic chic" and said that it had let down an audience who was expecting a character who breaks the mold.

In a recent response to the community backlash, Overwatch game director, Aaron Keller, has said that Blizzard would be working on Anran's design to make her "look and feel more like the fierce older sister that we all envisioned her to be." Keller clarifies that he believes Blizzard can make the character even better than she is in her current iteration, but he does not have any specific details regarding what changes will be made until testing has been done. While many celebrated the commitment to community feedback, not all Overwatch fans were pleased by the announcement, with some users on X saying that the move is capitulation to manipulative culture and that the announcement of a redesign has caused them to lose interest in the game.

Marathon is slated to launch on March 6, 2026, but a handful of influencers in China have apparently already been testing the game out ahead of the official launch, according to a post on Reddit and UCG on YouTube. The post and YouTube review detail some of the reports from the hands-on testing, revealing both in-game content and some first impressions about gameplay. First off, it's notable that the game has received a massive visual overhaul in terms of assets and UI, which is something the Marathon dev team has already shown off in previews and gameplay teasers, but the game world is overall much darker and more mysterious. The first-hand experiences in the post claim that there is deep world-building with a focus on the narrative and personalities in the game. The PvE is reportedly "extremely challenging," with enemy AI proactively calling in reinforcements to keep up the pressure, offering players little rest between combat encounters.

That's not to say players should expect to be getting buddy-buddy with other players, since the loot game pushes players to see each other as an easy way to grab loot. The reviewer also suggests that Marathon will seemingly emphasize the late game experience rather than encouraging early PvP and combat. Players are instead encouraged by the game systems to focus on completing missions, levelling up base stats, and upgrading gear before heading into combat situations. According to the reviewer, there will be decent variety when it comes to weapons and skills, and the skill balance is well tuned between the seven different character classes we know of so far. There are apparently 28 guns in the game, each with at least two skins, and the ability to change the gun model in some cases. Some additional information posted in the comments from the Chinese game event claim that there will be "more verticality than players expect," and that completing faction quests can unlock permanent map shortcuts between zones. There is also apparently an in-game creature called the Anomaly, which will be able to reshape the map mid-game. One source also claims that, in one game, there were three teams of six players each, bringing it up to 18 players per match.

On February 28, Monster Hunter Wilds will celebrate its first anniversary, and Capcom will be marking the occasion with a sizeable new content update that will introduce performance improvements and a slew of in-game events throughout February and March. Update 1.041, which lands on February 18, delivers the new missions, monsters, weapons, and rewards, alongside the aforementioned anniversary events. Monster Hunter Wilds producer, Ryozo Tsujimoto, announced the new update in a video posted on the official Monster Hunter YouTube channel. Tsujimoto also announced that Capcom is working on a new expansion for Monster Hunter Wilds that is on the same level as Iceborne and Sunbreak for Monster Hunter Worlds and Rise. Given the direct comparison, it's likely that this will also be a premium paid expansion coming in at around the same $39.99 price point as the aforementioned Worlds expansions. Aside from sharing that more details will arrive "this summer," meaning between June and August, no details have been shared about the contents of the new update, but the comparison also suggests we will see it launch with a new locale with a new hub, missions, and enemies.

The February 2026 update will add a new boss, the Arch-tempered Arkveld, a monster available to hunters above rank 100, in its own 10-star event quest alongside special 10-star quests featuring all four previous Arch-tempered monsters and rare rewards. Completing the Arch-tempered Arkveld quest will unlock a special optional hunt-a-thon quest pitting players against all four Arch-tempered monsters in a single quest. The update also makes the winning sword and pendant from the weapon design contest available to everyone as a special event quest reward. There will also be a collaboration with Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, and the anniversary events will make all previous time-specific event rewards available again through a weekly rotation of previous seasonal events. The anniversary events and collaboration will feature new and fun twists on existing quests to match the Festival of Accord vibes, with matching Stories rewards. The event festivities will last for a month, from February 18 to March 19, and there will be special one-time event rewards. The development team has also analyzed game data and prepared a special limited-time event featuring a buffed version of the least-hunted monster in the game, with the quest again delivering special cosmetics and rewards. Tsujimoto says that Capcom still has more in-store for Monster Hunter fans that it will reveal closer to the anniversary event start date.

Kysona is known for its affordable, high-performance gaming peripherals, having previously launched the Jupiter and Mercury wireless symmetrical gaming mice, which weigh in at 40-46 g, and the brand has now announced the Saturn series gaming mice, which bring the same sensor and MCU hardware found in the aforementioned symmetrical models into an ergonomic shell. The Saturn series comes in two flavors: the more expensive Pro model, which comes with a PixArt PAW 3395 sensor and a bigger 500 mAh battery, and the Saturn SE, which uses the PixArt PAW 3311 sensor, ditches the 8 kHz polling, features a different coating, and comes in around 2 g lighter for it—56 g for the SE, 58 g for the Pro.

The Saturn gaming mice use a shell design reminiscent of something like the Razer Basilisk V3 or the more recent Mchose G7 series—that is to say, the Saturn shell is a right-handed ergonomic gaming mouse with a thumb rest. Kysona suggests that the shape is optimized for palm and claw grips and that the "ice-feeling coating" is resistant to sweat and helps maintain grip during intense gaming sessions. The Saturn measures in at 126 × 75 × 41 mm, making it 4 mm shorter than the Aforementioned Razer Basilisk and 5 mm shorter and 4 mm narrower than the venerable Logitech G502. The Saturn also looks to have slightly more palm support and a pronounced curve to the right near the back of the mouse shell. No specific switches or encoder are mentioned, but an image on the site suggests that the Saturn mice will use Huano 100M Transparent Green Shell White Dot switches, which are a medium force mechanical switch with an MTBF of 100 million clicks. Aside from the main click buttons, the Saturn features two programmable side buttons, and both models feature wired, 2.4 GHz, and Bluetooth connectivity. The Saturn Pro comes in black, pink, and white, and is available for $35.99 after a 60% launch discount, while the Saturn SE is available in white or black and comes in at $24.99 after that same launch discount, but this model includes a charging dock that doubles as a receiver extender.

Control Resonant is slated to launch later this year, and with the gaming industry what it is in 2026, there were bound to be questions about the use of generative AI in the upcoming third-person shooter. In a Q&A session during a recent earnings call, Remedy CEO, Markus Mäki, confirmed that Control Resonant will not feature any content with generative AI: "I can say that, for example, Control Resonant does not use generative AI content at all." However, he goes on to explain that the exclusion of AI at Remedy may not last very long into the future. Mäki said that "making far-reaching promises about the future is pretty hard at this point," and that the company is following the development of generative AI tools to evaluate whether "there is anything that is really ethically in the right place, and is something that can add player value and that our teams want to use."

He also mentioned that there is "varied interest in different crafts at Remedy into investigating these AI tools," signalling that there is some internal interest in different departments. This somewhat echoes a recent survey of game industry workers, which found that as many as 81% of game industry workers use generative AI for brainstorming and 35% used it for prototyping. At the same time, only 7% of those game industry workers surveyed by the GDC Festival of Gaming thought that generative AI was having a positive impact on the game industry. A number of gaming giants have also recently thrown their weight behind AI tools in the name of efficiency or novelty, including Take-Two, whose CEO similarly said that GTA VI will feature no generative AI, but hinted that future games likely would include the controversial technology. Ubisoft, likewise, is exploring the possibility of AI teammates in games, while EA has announced a full-scale AI pivot. These announcements are in spite of the recent DRAM crisis resulting in unaffordable PC hardware, delayed product launches, and severe strain on the supply chain.

Gameplay details for Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is an upcoming 4v4 team fighting game in development at Arc System Works—a game studio known for massive fighting game franchises like BlazBlue and Guilty Gear—have officially been leaked via the game's official Steam page. While the page has since been edited to remove the information, screenshots saved by @Wario64 on X show many of the details that Arc and PlayStation Publishing accidentally released ahead of schedule. We already knew, ahead of the upcoming PlayStation State of Play where the game is slated to launch, that Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls would be a 4v4 fighting game, but the screenshots reveal that there will be 20 Marvel characters to choose from at launch, and fights will be staged at iconic Marvel scenes, with the Steam Store art suggesting Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters may be one such location.

Additional details reveal that multiplayer modes can be both online or local, and online lobbies can feature up to 64 players at a time. There will also be a single player episode mode in which players can "dive deep on each team...to learn more about team dynamics and lore." It was also revealed that a PlayStation account will be required for multiplayer gameplay. While this may be frustrating to some PC gamers, it also means that cross-platform multiplayer will likely be supported at launch. Gameplay details for Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls are slated to be revealed at the upcoming Sony State of Play scheduled for "early February". This leak comes shortly after bad news from 2XKO, a 2v2 tag-team fighting game set in the League of Legends universe. The game will also be targeting 60 FPS and will be able to run at up to 4K resolution.

Super People, a once-popular battle royale game that takes the typical first- and third-person shooter gameplay and throws superpowers into the mix, is no stranger to hard times, with the battle royale having already suffered a shut-down once before in 2023, after it was launched to mixed reviews and subsequently riddled with cheaters. Super People was relaunched into Early Access in September 2025 after a series of successful closed beta tests and a change in ethos surrounding the game. On February 9, however, mere months after the relaunch, Wonder Games has officially announced that it will be shutting Super People down for good after player counts steadily dwindled from a peak of 47,000+ (4,514 after the September relaunch) to 99 daily concurrent players.

According to the announcement on Steam, Super People will be taken offline on February 23, 2026. The game will still be playable until that date, but in-game purchases will be disabled as of February 13, and Wonder People is offering refunds to players who have purchased in-game premium currency within seven days before the announcement. There is no word on the studio's fate or that of its developers, but Wonder People is supposed to be working on World of the Dead an upcoming "immersive zombie FPS game that combines the first-person shooter and extraction PvPvE genres," that has yet to have a release date attached to it.

Steam's Early Access system started as a way for developers to introduce their games to the community and help fund development while simultaneously gathering community feedback, but it has become somewhat of a joke, given how long some games stay in early access. With Steam's latest update, the gaming platform is hoping to bring some transparency to the system with a clearly labelled date for when the developer plans to move from early access to the full 1.0 launch. Previously, it was fairly standard practice for developers to announce the planned release date in a news post that would inevitably be hidden after a few weeks if updates were frequent enough; adding this field is a standardized way to let gamers know when to expect the full release of a game they may be interested in.

This will also increase visibility and discoverability of these 1.0 launches, with the 1.0 launch dates automatically appearing in gamers' Steam personal calendars when they wishlist or follow a game that is in early access. Developers can add a vague time frame—like just the year—or a specific date to their 1.0 launch information, and, at least at the time of writing, the 1.0 release date is entirely optional. This still allows flexibility for smaller developers who aren't necessarily experienced enough to know when the 1.0 launch will happen while giving those who want to inform their player base the option to do so.

Ahead of its launch, 2XKO seemed to have decent support, replete with officially endorsed, fan-hosted competitive events, but as revealed in a new blog post from Riot Games, the developer of the League of Legends spin-off, 2XKO hasn't quite reached the heights the game studio was expecting. The game's executive producer, Tom Cannon, revealed Riot Games will be down-sizing the 2XKO team, explaining that, while there is a passionate core audience, 2XKO simply doesn't have the momentum "needed to support a team of this size long term." Riot assures 2XKO players that the game will not be discontinued, despite the rocky launch, and that the smaller, more focussed support team will "dig in and make key improvements to the game," including addressing some common community requests.

According to Game Developer, Riot Games confirmed that it would be laying off roughly 80 workers from the 2XKO team globally, which is roughly half of the game's development team. Riot says that the plans for the 2026 Competitive Series and its partnerships with community tournament organizers will remain unchanged, but that the changes made to the development team were ultimately necessary for sustainability of the game. Riot says it will help affected employees through the layoffs, providing them assistance to look for other opportunities within the studio where possible "and providing a minimum of six months of notice pay and severance where it's not possible.

Discord will be the latest social media platform asking for government identification or a facial scan in order to access content deemed not safe for minors. In a new blog post, Discord has announced "teen-by-default" settings, which will go into effect in "early March 2026." The new settings will set all existing and new Discord accounts to the "teen-appropriate experience" mode, which will filter out all content inappropriate for minors. Discord users who wish to access age-gated content will need to go through an age verification process, which will involve uploading a scan of a government-issued ID or by scanning their faces to verify age. This policy has already been in place in the UK and Australia since 2025, but this move will see the change roll out globally. This may not be necessary for all users, since the social media platform will also be implementing its age inference model, which will analyze user accounts—looking at the types of games users play, the amount of time users spend on Discord, and what time they are active—to determine whether they belong to adults. Discord claims the new system is being implemented in the name of "giving teens strong protections while allowing verified adults flexibility."

Discord says that the selfie video used for age verification never leaves the user's phone, and that all processing is done locally. ID documents, on the other hand, are processed by a third party service provider, and documents are "deleted quickly—in most cases, immediately after age confirmation." Discord divulged in a support page that it uses k-ID for age verification, and even in the short time that the age verification system has been a requirement, there have already been reports of privacy breaches—in one instance, up to 70,000 user profiles (emails, names, and other contact information), along with government IDs and credit card information were reportedly accessed by hackers in October 2025. This age verification system mirrors the system adopted by Roblox not too long ago, and the online response has been similarly pessimistic.