When it comes to physics-driven sandbox games with community mods and creations, PC classic Garry's Mod is up there as an all-timer. It's been a Steam staple for decades, with the game's history tied to the release of Valve's own iconic Half-Life 2 from 2004.

And now, in a very strange and out-of-nowhere move, Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman and Facepunch Studios have confirmed that they have received DCMA copyright takedown requests from none other than Nintendo. At first, many believed this was a hoax orchestrated by a copyright troll, but Garry Newman has taken to X to confirm that the takedown requests are "legit" and have been "verified by Nintendo."

What does this mean? Any mod or creation for Garry's Mod, including Nintendo content, characters, or IP, must be removed. And when you're talking about decades and thousands of uploads, it's "an ongoing process" with "20 years of uploads to go through."

The process of naturally making a diamond takes billions of years, as minerals under extreme pressure deep beneath the Earth's surface get mashed together to form the most popular gemstone made entirely out of carbon.

Waiting for new diamonds to form simply isn't feasible, which is why researchers have turned to synthetic diamond manufacturing to keep up with the global demand for diamonds. It still typically takes a few weeks to synthetically produce a diamond, but a team of researchers with an innovative approach to the problem has shaved a few weeks down to just a few minutes. Researchers from the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea have devised a new method that can also be scaled up for mass production.

The researchers have proposed a mix of liquid metals: gallium, iron, nickel, and silicon, which are enclosed in a custom-made vacuum system that's within a graphite casing. This casing is then rapidly heated and cooled while being exposed to methane and hydrogen, creating the pressure needed to make a diamond. How does it work? These conditions force the carbon atoms within the methane to move into the liquid metal, creating little diamond "seeds" within the liquid.

Valve has changed Steam's refund policy, which featured a loophole that was undoubtedly abused by at least thousands of gamers.

Steam's refund policy is quite straightforward; at its most rudimentary, a user can purchase a game and play it for up to two hours. Before the two-hour mark, the buyer was able to refund the game at zero cost, and as you can probably imagine, this loophole was easily abusable by the millions of Steam users. However, Valve has now changed its policy by partially patching up the loophole, specifically in regard to titles that are in pre-purchase and offer "Advanced Access."

For those that don't know, Advanced Access can be granted to a player that pre-purchases a title. Sometimes developers and publishers will give early access to a game to those who pre-order. The duration of this access can sometimes be as long as a week or just 24 hours. Steam's refund policy didn't count any hours played of an Advanced Access title, and only began counting after it was officially released.

TSMC has announced its development of next-generation Compact Universal Photonic Engine (COUPE) technology, which will support the "explosive growth" in data transmission associated with the "AI boom."

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) unveiled its newest semiconductor process, advanced packaging, and 3D IC technologies for the next-generation of AI innovations with silicon leadership at TSMC's 2024 North America Technology Symposium.

At the event, TSMC unveiled its new A16 technology, which packs industry-leading nanosheet transistors with an innovative backside power rail solution for production in 2026, with "greatly improved logic density and performance." TSMC also introduced its new System-on-Wafer (TSMC-SoW) technology, which is an innovative solution that delivers "revolutionary performance to the wafer level" in addressing the future AI requirements for hyperscaler datacenterrs.

We somehow missed this, but ASUS recently launched its own external 4K game capture box, the new TUF Gaming Capture Box-4K Pro. This box supports full HDMI 2.1 4K 144 Hz HDR passthrough, variable refresh rates, and up to 4K 60 FPS capture. It's a stylish little unit with RGB flourishes and that signature rugged all-aluminum ASUS TUF Gaming look.

The TUF Gaming Capture Box-4K Pro supports a wide range of input signals, making it an excellent option for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X capture. On the PC side, it supports 1080p and 1440p 120 FPS capture and 1080p 240 Hz and 1440p 144 Hz passthrough. On top of this, there's VRR or Variable Refresh Rate support, so you can game with G-SYNC or FreeSync enabled.

All of this is handled via a single USB 10 Gbps port that connects to a compatible PC for recording and capture. The TUF Gaming Capture Box-4K Pro is also a certified OBS-compatible device. In addition, ASUS has announced that it has won a prestigious IF Design award.

Sony's gaming patents are now starting to coalesce into exciting new features for PlayStation consoles, and today's new addition could help pave the way for major next-gen upgrades on the PlayStation 6.

Community Game Help is now live on PS5, turning PlayStation users into tipsters along the way. The new feature is an evolution of the PS5's Game Help feature that gives users video and/or picture tutorials on how to complete certain activities in a game (e.g. boss fights). Think of it as a digital version of those old NES secrets books from the 1990s.

What does the Community Game Help feature actually do? How does it work? Sony explains: "Once you turn on the settings, your PS5 will automatically capture a video when you complete a certain activity in a game. Then, it will be reviewed by a moderator, and if approved, your video will be published as a Game Help hint for PlayStation players to watch, learn from, and rate."

Blizzard games have started appearing on GeForce NOW, thanks to NVIDIA's cloud gaming service supporting Battle.net. As part of its weekly GFN Thursday update, NVIDIA confirmed the addition of 16 new games to the GeForceNOW library. And there's more Blizzard love joining the service in the form of classic games from the Diablo and StarCraft franchises.

This includes StarCraft Remastered, StarCraft II, Diablo II: Resurrected, and Diablo III, all playable over the cloud with GeForce RTX hardware. And yes, you can stream games like the excellent Diablo II: Resurrected remaster/remake at up to 4K 240 frames per second if you've got a GeForce NOW Ultimate subscription - and access to a GeForce RTX 4080.

These Blizzard additions join Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, Call of Duty, and Hearthstone, which are all supported and available on GeForce NOW. Other new titles joining the library this week include Dead Island 2 (Steam), the retro-inspired shooter Phantom Fury (Steam), and the highly anticipated Manor Lords (Steam and Xbox/PC Game Pass).

AMD's next-gen Ryzen 9050 series "Strix Halo" APU specs have been circulating the rumor mill for a while now, but some new details have surfaced that are getting us excited.

The new Strix Halo APU will be quite the beast, offering 16 cores and 32 threads of next-gen Zen 5 processing power, with 1MB of L2 cache per core, and 32MB per CCD of unified L3 cache (MALL cache). We should see not one but two CCDs on the Strix Halo APU, which will see 8MB of L2 cache per CCD (8 cores per CCD, two CCDs = 16 cores = 16MB of L2 cache in total).

AMD's next-gen Strix Halo APU will feature an upgraded XDNA2-based NPU for AI workloads, offering a much higher 60 TOPS of AI workload performance. Remember: this is 60 TOPS just for the NPU, and not counting what will be capable from the CPU and GPU on Strix Halo. Speaking of the GPU, AMD will include an RDNA 3.5-based GPU with 20 Work Group Processors (WGP).

Sabrent has a new special offer for PlayStation 5 owners, with a free PS5 heatsink with the purchase of a super-fast Rocket 4 1TB or Rocket 4 2TB SSD. You can buy your Sabrent Rocket 4 1TB or 2TB SSD -- and get your free PS5 heatsink -- on Sabrent's website here.

If you want a super-fast Gen4 SSD or a larger Gen4 SSD for your PlayStation 5 console -- given that it comes with a standard 1TB SSD -- Sabrent is celebrating with a new special offer. With the purchase of a Sabrent Rocket 4 1TB or 2TB SSD, the company will provide a free M.2 NVMe heatsink for the PS5, which is worth $20.

You can grab the Sabrent Rocket 4 1TB SSD for $99.99 or the larger Rocket 4 2TB SSD for $199, both of them will come with the free PS5 heatsink.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang will deliver a live keynote a few days before Computex 2024 kicks off, with the keynote taking place on June 2 at 7 PM Taiwan time at the NTU Sports Center (National Taiwan University Sports Center).

Huang will discuss how the era of AI is driving a new industrial revolution across the planet. NVIDIA will remind people that the keynote is free to attend and will also be live-streamed. NVIDIA's just-announced keynote is NOT part of the official Computex 2024 keynotes, and it will be mentioned only on NVIDIA's website.

NVIDIA hosted the opening keynote for Computex 2023 last year, but it seems that GPU competitor AMD is hosting the opening keynote of Computex 2024 with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su taking the stage. Not only that, but Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger will also be presenting a keynote for his company. AMD's keynote will take place on June 3 (9:30 to 11 AM) while Intel will host their keynote with Gelsinger on June 4.