In celebration of Twitch Prime Day, July 16, the streaming platform’s premium subscription service is giving away 21 free games. This follows Twitch Prime’s ‘Free Games With Prime’ initiative that was launched in March and gifts members complimentary games on a monthly basis. After providing a brief blurb on all of those, Busey says Twitch has “enlisted some of your favorite streamers to showcase them and tell you more about Twitch Prime”. Here are the English speaking and international host sch

When Epic Games rolled out its Playgrounds limited-time mode for Fortnite last week, it didn’t last long: matchmaking errors were rife, prompting Epic to remove it for some urgent patching. But it looks like the mode will roll out internationally later today, according to an update on Reddit. “We’ve completed our testing process for the improvements to our matchmaking services and are deploying servers that will bring back the Playground LTM,” the message from Epic Games reads. But get those cre

One team stood out above all the rest by standing out literally below everyone else: The Shanghai Dragons. I know what it’s like to love a loser, so becoming a Dragons fan was like second nature to me. The team we love to loveThe Shanghai Dragons started with one of the smallest rosters in the League. That’s the best thing about being a Shanghai Dragons fan, something I wouldn’t trade for a winning record or a better team. I’m a Shanghai Dragons fan, and I’m not going anywhere.

Late last month, the operators of the game streaming service Rainway noticed something unusual: Hundreds of thousands of error reports began appearing on its tracker for no apparent reason. Further investigation eventually narrowed the compromised users down to a single commonality: They all played Fortnite. With that realization in hand, Rainway engineers began to really dig in, beginning with a search for Fortnite hacks on YouTube. “We downloaded hundreds of programs, all claiming to do someth

A quarter-century is a long time to wait for the release of a mod, but that’s how long it took for System Shock: ReWired to appear on the scene. It’s “the very first full fan made singleplayer campaign for the original System Shock,” according to its ModDb page, featuring three all-new levels, four new cyberspace areas, new puzzles and audio logs (no voice acting, though), and a brand-new ship to explore: The hospital ship UNN Bismarck. Nightdive Studios, which is currently working on both a rem

From Star Wars: Battlefront and Destiny to Doom and Wolfenstein, everyone loves a good laser rifle (at least, in videogames). But according to Gizmodo , China loves laser guns the most: it’s only gone and made one. The country’s ZKZM-500 laser assault rifle can result in “instant carbonization” of targets a kilometer away, reports claim, burning human skin and igniting flammable materials. The South China Morning Post adds that researchers say the laser can “burn through clothes in a split-secon

Fortnite Season 4 followed a theatrical superhero theme, with unlockable pseudo-Marvel skins and loading screens released each week that showed the actors at work. With the Fortnite Blockbuster contest, Epic Games wants players to film their own interpretation of the movie happening behind the scenes, and the winner gets their take canonized. Make a flick that impresses the Fortnite team, and they’ll play the movie at the in-game drive-in theater at Risky Reels, display the title of your film on

I’ve put 400 hours into Rainbow Six Siege. This weekend, a teammate said something I’ve never heard before:”Hey, will one of you guys please play Tachanka?” If you’ve been following our coverage of Rainbow Six’s ‘Lord and Savior,’ you’ll know that Tachanka is not considered the best operator in Rainbow Six Siege. “Get on and off Tachanka’s turret like five or six times, and you’ll get a speed boost,” the teammate promised. This exploit allows any defender (but particularly the three-armor defend

The International Olympic Committee has announced plans to host an “Esports Forum” in partnership with the Global Association of International Sports Federations on July 21 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Esports players, publishers, teams, media, sponsors, and event organizers will be invited to take part, as will members of “the Olympic Movement” including representatives of national Olympic committees, sports federations, athletes, and the IOC itself. “The IOC and GAISF are closely following the ra

HTC and its retail partners are now selling the full Vive Pro kit with controllers and base stations included. The two base stations that come in the Vive Pro kit are the upgraded SteamVR 2.0 models offering a total play area of 10m x 10m (32 feet x 32 feet). If that’s not large enough, the Vive Pro supports up to four base stations to effectively double the play area. HTC’s asking price for the Vive Pro kit is $1,399, which is almost triple the price of the original Vive ($499). Several retaile

(Image: © Intel)Intel is reportedly prepping a new round of 9000 series processors culminating in the Core i9-9900K, an 8-core/16-thread chip that figures to be the chipmaker’s most powerful mainstream CPU to date. The distinction there is on “mainstream,” as Intel’s product stack already extends well past eight cores. According to WCCFTech, Intel is readying at least three new mainstream parts. Either way, it’s interesting that Intel is finally bringing an 8-core processor to the mainstream mar

In a recent Sea of Thieves update, Rare added a little scavenger hunt to the game—and it isn’t an easy one. What are Skeleton Thrones? Skeleton Thrones are literal thrones scattered across Sea of Thieves’ islands. Where are the Skeleton Thrones? Here’s where to look:Shipwreck Bay — Large — The small island on the northern side.

When asked by the interviewer if there will be fast-travel in Fallout 76, Howard responds with a simple “Yes.” Also in the interview, Howard states that players under level 5 can’t be killed by other players in PvP. (He also says this feature might change before Fallout 76 is released.) On the other hand, it raises additional questions: what if two low-level players square off, and neither of them can die? Fallout 76 is due to be released November 14, 2018.

People have been doing unbelievable things in Dark Souls for years. Thanks to modder notaprofi , creator of the newly released Rolly Souls mod, PC players can now attempt just that. As notaprofi explains on Nexus Mods , Rolly Souls disables walking, jogging and sprinting in the original Dark Souls. Then again, 1v1 Dark Souls fights are pretty much constant rolling anyway, so you might not even notice the difference. Incidentally, Rolly Souls reminded me of one of my all-time favorite Dark Souls

For those of you who aren’t satisfied with throwing money at the still-ongoing Steam Summer Sale, the Humble Store has some very good deals on the table in the DRM Freedom Sale that kicked off today. There’s no great, unifying theme here as far as I can see, except that all of the games in the sale are provided through Steam keys and are DRM-free—thus the title of the sale. Most of us will probably just chuck in the Steam keys and be done with it, but I can think of at least one anti-DRM purist

THQ Nordic announced today that corrupt cop simulator This Is the Police 2 will be released for PC on August 2. This Is the Police is a management-adventure about a corruptible cop in a dirty world that showed promise but didn’t quite live up to it. For This Is the Police 2, developer Weappy kept the lead character but moved the action to a very different sort of locale and added an XCOM-style layer of turn-based tactical combat. But game director Ilya Yanovich told us in April that the tactical

If you’re in the market for a new gaming laptop, you’ll find several deals over at HP today. That’s mainly because of a coupon code (JULY4PC18) that knocks 20 percent off laptops costing $599 or more. One of the more intriguing uses for the coupon code is on a 17-inch Omen X laptop with a GeForce GTX 1080 inside. We recommend adding the optional G-Sync upgrade, as it’s only $30 extra (usually upgrading to a G-Sync panel adds around $150). Go here to grab this deal, and don’t forget to add the G-

Our hope, and also belief, is that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be an extraordinary creative product and that it will do incredibly well. Zelnick is obviously still confident about the cowboy misadventure, no doubt realising that he could probably sell a few million dirty, sweat-smeared stetsons if there was some Red Dead Redemption 2 branding on them. The original Red Dead Redemption was no slouch in the sales department, either, shifting around 15 million copies, and that was without the benefit

We’ve rounded up some of the more interesting SSD deals, starting with a 1TB Intel 760p NVMe SSD. That’s a really good price, considering this is a high performance NVMe drive. It uses 3D NAND TLC memory chips and is rated to deliver up to 3,210MB/s of sequential read performance and 1,315MB/s of sequential writes. If you’re looking for a cheaper pathway into NVMe territory and can make do with a smaller capacity drive, the 256GB model of that same SSD series is on sale for $74.99. That is about

Jump Force has been similarly piquing my interest since it was shown off at E3, though in this case I actually recognise a few characters. The Shōnen Jump mash-up includes characters from DBZ, One Piece, Death Note and, announced today, Bleach. Rukia Kuchiki – Rukia is a soul reaper from a noble family who specialises in Kido (the magic of the soul reapers). You’ll be fighting in neon-soaked streets and, just like the real Hong Kong, expect to see Blackbeard’s crashed ship looming over you. Jump