I’m a big fan of 4A’s Metro games, and I’m very much looking forward to the third chapter, Metro Exodus. Exodus begins in the Metro but very quickly moves outside, beyond the city and into the snowy Russian wild. The economy will be more akin to Fallout than in previous games, however, as ammo acting as currency is out and scavenging for things that can be turned into various useful items is in. It’s a bold step, and I really hope 4A can pull it off. Metro Exodus is expected to be out later this

Sweden has become the latest country to suggest that it could implement some sort of restriction on loot boxes in videogames. Ardalan Shekarabi, the country’s Minister for Public Education, told P3 News that loot boxes could be classified as a form of gambling by 2019, which would subject them to more stringent regulations under Swedish law. Under current Swedish law, loot boxes are not recognized as gambling and so there’s no way to legally regulate them. “I don’t want to rule out the possibili

AMD has teamed up with Valve to bring its TrueAudio Next technology to Steam games and VR applications. As such, Valve announced that its Steam Audio 2.0 beta release now supports TrueAudio Next, which allows developers to use a reserved portion of a support GPU to generate spatial audio. It was around this time last year when Valve launched its Steam Audio SDK as a free beta for developers. “Simulating and rendering indirect sound is the most computationally intensive part of what Steam Audio d

Destiny 2’s Crimson Days event, confirmed for a comeback in January, will feature a new map called Burnout, the studio revealed today, and a new 2v2 Clash mode that will very strongly encourage players to stick together. Crimson Days will offer the usual array of themed rewards, including ornaments, emotes, ghost shells, sparrows, and shaders. Crimson Engrams are earned by playing the Crimson Days Crucible playlist and will also be awarded along with Bright Engrams at level-up, and there’s no ca

A bunch of good indie games are cheap on GOG right now. Nearest I can tell, there’s no discernible pattern or schedule to these deals, but the discounts are steep and the games are great, so no complaints can be made. Here are some of the standouts:Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info.

2017 was a “mixed bag” for Sunless Sea developer Failbetter Games, and it’s resulted in some unfortunate changes at the studio and on its next project, Sunless Skies, which has sold far fewer copies than Sunless Sea and isn’t going to make its scheduled May release. Sunless Skies was a huge success on Kickstarter, breaking its £100,000 goal in just four hours and finishing with nearly four times that amount. “We’re in no danger of failing to deliver Sunless Skies, and never have been. The decisi

If you’re in need of a gaming keyboard with mechanical key switches, G.Skill’s Ripjaws KM780 RGB is on sale at Newegg for $100, down from its $170 list price. The version that’s marked down uses Cherry MX Red switches. Cherry MX Red switches are best suited for gamers who want a quiet and lightweight key action with minimal resistance. The styling on the Ripjaws KM780 RGB isn’t for everyone, though it isn’t quite as ‘loud’ looking as G.Skill’s photos make it seem, unless you copy the same RGB li

Addictive city builder Cities: Skylines is currently free to try on Steam, meaning you too could build a town where blimps blot out the sun. The free offer ends at 1 p.m. Pacific on Sunday, February 11. The base game is just under $8 at 75 percent off, and the deluxe edition package is $10 at 75 percent off. The $56 Cities: Skylines collection comes with all major and minor DLCs, including Natural Disasters, Green Cities and Mass Transit, as well as several content creator packs made with help f

We reported back in January about “Deepfakes,” a redditor and eventual subreddit dedicated to the creation of pornography featuring celebrity faces—such as those of characters from The Witcher—laid over those of the actual performers. That aspect of it has now led to the removal of the Deepfakes subreddit, which was banned earlier this afternoon for violating Reddit’s “policy against involuntary pornography.” “Additionally, do not post images or video of another person for the specific purpose o

The demand on GPUs created by cryptocurrency mining has resulted in exorbitantly high priced graphics cards that now routinely sell way above MSRP. If you’re willing to cough up the cash, though, you can find just about any card out there. You can even buy in bulk, as third-party vendors on Amazon look to hawk multiple graphics cards at once. Take for example this listing for a six-pack of XFX Radeon RX 570 graphics cards. Granted, these are factory overclocked cards with custom cooling solution

And it’s all because the FCC overturned net neutrality rules that were put in place under the previous administration. Combined with the actual report (PDF), it all sounds like a glowing endorsement of the FCC’s net neutrality repeal. The FCC points to that as further evidence that its net neutrality repeal is having the desired effect. These are some of several instances of the FCC using old data to support its recent net neutrality repeal. It’s far too early to tell what effect the FCC’s net n

But after the excitement of its first month, Civilization 6 has failed to surpass Civilization 5 in terms of regular players, according to Steamcharts. Image via SteamchartsQuestion 2: When Civ 5 came out, how long did it take to become your “go-to” Civ game? This was the most divisive question, with roughly a quarter of respondents each deeming it somewhat better, about equal, or somewhat worse. The most popular answer was “Missing features I liked in past Civ games,” with over 55 percent of re

(Image: © Red Hat via Jon Masters)Have you tried wrapping your head around Spectre and Meltdown only to come away feeling confused? My #FOSDEM keynote on #Meltdown and #Spectre slides are now available. We will attempt to cover 90 slides in 45 minutes with questions…wish me luck! https://t.co/cpTlNwSNMuFebruary 4, 2018Even if you’re not interested in Spectre and Meltdown specifically, you still might want to check it out. It definitely helps to have some level of technical savvy when wading th

Blizzard announced last week that Overwatch would mark the Year of the Dog with a new Lunar New Year event beginning on February 8. Today OW boss Jeff Kaplan fired off a new developer update video laying out what’s in store, beginning with a brand new map set in Thailand. More importantly, it’s the first Overwatch map designed specifically for Capture the Flag, which will feature prominently during the Year of the Dog. A four-week CTF competitive season will run during the course of the event, w

Sci-fi action RPG The Surge wasn’t without its issues , but I fell for its limb-targeting exoskeleton combat nevertheless. With this in mind, I’m pleased to hear the developer plans to launch The Surge 2 next year. Combat is also said to be “more brutal and tactical than ever”, and the aforementioned limb-targeting system has been expanded. Similar to Vostok’s freshly-revealed Fear The Wolves, more information is expected to come from Focus’ What’s Next event in Paris this week. No hard release

Modder Chant has devised an exceedingly clever Planet Coaster park on a giant Monopoly game board, and it’s not just for looks. It’s an actual functioning Monopoly game scenario with custom rules you can play while you build your park. Giant monopoly game pieces (top hat, battleship, ironing board, etc.) The park, the map, and the game within the game are all really cleverly imagined and executed. You can find this amazing Monopoly park in Planet Coaster’s Steam Workshop.

Making History, the first expansion for stellar space sim Kerbal Space Program, is due out March 13, 2018. Originally announced in March 2017, Making History makes two big additions to the base game. The first, and arguably most exciting, is a mission builder enabling players to create, edit and share custom scenarios. Right, that’s the making sorted, and we’re guessing it won’t be long before someone creates a mission to launch an electric car into orbit. The expansion’s other major feature is

Image credit: ESL via TwitterThe 2018 Winter Olympics kicks off in Pyeongchang, South Korea this weekend with all the chilly sports the summer Olympians are too scared to compete in. As a precursor to the main event, the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) competition also brought StarCraft 2 to the games—three months after competitive gaming was recognised by the International Olympics Committee as a sport. It’s also thought Intel is preparing esports events in-line with the Olympics’ 2020 and 2022 com

Rise and Fall is a great addition to Civilization 6 that doesn’t quite go far enough to be essential. In Rise and Fall, the system has been been spun out into two different types of era: player eras and game eras. During a game era, every civ is in an unacknowledged race to increase their era score with historic moments. Rise and Fall and Maybe Rise Again doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but a Dark Age isn’t the end. That’s what lies at the core of Rise and Fall.

Billed as a “post-apocalyptic first person shooter battle royale”, Fear The Wolves is expected to arrive in Steam’s Early Access programme later this year. Riding the wave of the genre’s PUBG-driven popularity, Fear The Wolves drops players into an “oppressive” and “radiation-ravaged” Chernobyl. From there it’s a familiar set up: 100 players face-off to become the last-person-standing, in groups or as “lone wolves”. Not much to go on beyond that, however more is set to be revealed at Focus’ What