With all of the Age of Empires Remasters that are in Microsoft's pipeline, some fans have wondered whether or not the company has forgotten about one of their other popular spin-off titles, Age of Mythology.

We already have the remaster for the first Age of Empires and now we are currently waiting for the remaster of the second game, Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. At the moment, Microsoft are conducting an Insiders Program that will allow lucky fans to get an early taste of Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. The program is invite only and can be signed up for here, and the release is scheduled for sometime this fall.

With all this news swirling around Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, some fans wondered whether or not Age of Mythology would be getting some love. In a recent interview with Eurogamer at E3 2019, ADam Isgreen, the Creative Director for the Age of Empires franchise at Xbox Game Studios mentioned that Microsoft hasn't forgotten about the title. Here is what he had to say: "It's great to see how much love there is for Age of Mythology, 'cause I love it too - it's more of a... less accurate history. It's super loose, people just have fun, and I love that too."

Yesterday it was confirmed that the missing YouTuber Desmond 'Etika' Amofah has been found dead in Manhatten's East River. Fans of the YouTuber/streamer have now started a petition to reinstate his once deleted YouTube Channel.

If this is fresh news to you that Etika has passed, here is quick summary of the events. Etika had a history of mental health issues and expressed his struggle with internet fame and the negativity that comes with it many times in the past. Last October, Etika's channel was terminated due to him uploading pornography to it, effectively he was sabotaging himself.

Amofah's last communication with people was on June 19, and on June 20 the New York Police department declared it a missing persons case. On Sunday night Amofah's belongings was found on Manhattan Bridge and his body was found a day later near the South Street Seaport. Fans are now rallying a petition together to get his channel reinstated so they can enjoy Etika's past content. The petition already has 380,000 signatures as of the time I'm writing this.

Microsoft already taps semi-custom silicon from AMD for its current-gen Xbox consoles, and its next-gen Project Scarlett consoles that will soon expand the Xbox family in 2020... but what about AMD silicon inside of Surface products? That seems like it could happen, soon.

According to the latest rumors, Microsoft is working on a new AMD-powered Surface laptop that would drop the proprietary Surface Connect with the much more open USB-C port. Inside of the new Surface laptop is reportedly an AMD Picasso SoC on the 12nm node which will see Microsoft reduce its dependency on Intel for CPUs inside of its Surface products. The AMD Picasso SoC would feature Zen+ CPU cores (not Zen 2, and not 7nm) with Vega GPU cores.

On top of that, Microsoft is also reportedly working with Qualcomm on custom ARM-based silicon for codename Excalibur, a new Surface Pro that the silicon sounds like the Snapdragon 8cx, and some. Expect full 5G connectivity, and so much more on Excalibur. We'll keep you up to date on the new AMD silicon inside of the new Surface laptop as it happens.

AMD is just over a week away from launching its new Radeon RX 5000 series graphics cards based on the new Navi GPU architecture, and while we'll see the Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 -- there won't be any high-end flagships to compete against the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti.

According to new leaks stumbled upon by Komachi on Twitter, it looks like SAPPHIRE is working on a bunch of new Navi-based Radeon RX 5000 series cards including some purported flagship models we haven't heard about yet. We're looking at the Radeon RX 5900, RX 5900 XT, RX 5950 and RX 5950 XT as the new high-end Navi-based graphics cards to be excited for -- but are they based on Navi 10 or 20? That we don't know.

We could expect a dual-GPU variant in the Radeon RX 5950 XT which would be really cool, but I can't imagine the power numbers on that thing.

VESA has just announced the fresh new DisplayPort 2.0 standard that drives supported resolutions right up to 16K, which comes in at an eye-weltering 15360x8460, and DP 2.0 can do it at 60Hz.

DisplayPort 2.0 can also do dual 8K monitors both at 120Hz which is astounding, considering DP 1.4-based 8K monitors use dual DP cables to hit 8K60. This is the first update to the DisplayPort spec since 2016 with DP 1.4a, which compared to that DP 2.0 has 3x more bandwidth which is the driving force behind the huge uptick in resolution support. VESA Board Chair Alan Kobayashi explains: "DP 2.0 represents one of our most significant milestones in the history of DisplayPort, and is the culmination of several years' effort and major enhancements to this ubiquitous standard".

DP 2.0 supports multiple high-res, high refresh rate displays with the increased bandwidth allowing for 2 x 8K 120Hz monitors, or 2 x 4K 144Hz monitors which is just incredible. Not only that but we'll have support for 10K monitors as well. This is all thanks to that increased bandwidth that the new DP 2.0 standard is capable of, speaking of which here are the raw bandwidth and effective bandwidth numbers:

Twitch gives creators a new way to reward subscribers with exclusive content.

Today Twitch announced Subscriber Streams, a new feature that essentially locks specific streams behind a paygate. Only users who enlist in a creator's subscription plan can view the streams as they go live and on VOD. Subscriptions start off at $4.99 a month, then rise to $9.99 in the second tier and $24.99 for the third tier. Amazon Prime users can subscribe to their favorite content creators for free, but only the first time is free.

The idea here is to reward fans while actively incentivizing paid recurring subscriptions to access broadcasts. It's billed as a way to give back to fans and supporters with specific streams not available to everyday users, creating a kind of club that gives more direct exposure to a creator. All Subscriber Streams are marked as such on the main Twitch page, and anyone can see a 5-minute preview of the footage before they buy in.

After a falling-out with Activision, Sledgehammer Games co-founder Glen Schofield has found a new home full of chicken dinners.

Today PUBG Corp announced it's opening a new game studio called Striking Distance, with Dead Space producer and Call of Duty veteran Glen Schofield at the helm.

Striking Distance will evolve PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds beyond a multiplayer shooter and into the realm of narrative-driven story campaigns. "Schofield is building a world class development team from the ground up to create an original narrative experience within the PUBG universe," the announcement reads. Schofield's past work in games like Dead Space and Call of Duty WWII hints the PUBG story will be quite visceral and gritty.

A new expose from Kotaku reveals the harsh working conditions Treyarch employees face while making big Call of Duty games like Black Ops 4.

The games industry and its major players have a severe problem with crunch, or the practice of accelerating development on games way beyond normal time frames. In the months leading up to a game's release, developers work long, arduous hours at the cost of their personal lives and psychological well-being. The paychecks are good--or at least bigger than normal--but the workloads, lack of communication, and reboots typically grind morale into dust. Treyarch, one of the leading studios behind gaming's most lucrative shooter franchise, has been particularly affected by this practice. One dev even described the studio as a "nightmare" during crunch its periods.

Black Ops 4's massive success came at a real cost for Treyarch. Speaking to Kotaku, one dev said they endured "perpetual crunch" to get the game finished. Contractors, who make the bulk of the dev team for these projects, were treated as ancillary workers, almost interlopers, who fed the human-chomping machine of game crunch. Q&A testers were slammed with insane hours. Big development shifts exacerbated things considerably. Like most big AAA games, Black Ops 4 was quite different at the beginning. The team originally envisioned an interesting-sounding new 2v2 campaign mode that shifted into a normal, linear singleplayer endeavor.

If U.S. President Trump's proposed Chinese tariffs aren't amended to exclude games consoles, the entire precious console industry could come unraveled.

Today Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony issued a thorough letter to the U.S. government that exhaustively details just how badly tariffs will disrupt the console games industry. The missive warns the tariffs will cause console prices to rise well past their current MSRP, and dramatically interrupt the critical supply chains needed to facilitate the market.

In short, the tariffs could permanently alter the $47.9 billion console games industry by throwing a wrench in the finely-oiled gearworks. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will have to delay manufacturing as they find new facilities and make big multi-year deals for component creation, shipping, and hardware assembly. As costs rise, they'll in turn pass those costs to consumers, which will lead to lower sales. And lower sales means the companies will make less money, and pay less taxes on consoles sold in the United States. No one wins here.

Rick and Morty season 4 is being craved by fans, and the release of the fourth season is not even that far away for the mainstream. But for attendee's of the Adult Swim Festival, they will get a special early sneak peak.

According to an announcement from Deadline, the long-awaited fourth season of the hit TV show Rick and Morty will have a special showing at the Adult Swim Festival in Los Angeles. The Adult Swim Festival will be held across two days and run from Friday, Nov. 15 (Saturday) to Nov. 16. Deadline says that there will be a "never-before-seen screening" on the second day of the festival.

While Deadline doesn't mention whether or not this will be an early screening of the first episode of season 4, I have a sneaky suspicion this might be an early screening. Adult Swim has described this years festival event attractions as a "one-of-a-kind 360 degrees fan experience". Rick and Morty season 4 will debut sometime in November.