First Epic Games took on Steam. Then it took on Apple. Now Epic is reigniting an old rivalry with Microsoft in an attempt to usurp the Microsoft Store.

The Epic Games Store isn't just for games any more. Starting today, the Epic Games Store now has multimedia apps. Spotify is now available on EGS for some odd reason. The appearance might be strange, but the rationale isn't: Epic is making a clear move at pulling gamers away from the Microsoft Store by offering similar apps.

The idea is clear: Epic wants to be the one-stop shop for gaming and apps. Fortnite's massive 350 million userbase commands a lot of spending and exposure, and Spotify wants direct access to these gamers.

Ubisoft once again lets you buy your way to the top in its new Assassin's Creed game.

You spend one of two things when playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Time or money. You already spend money buying the game, but that's not good enough: Ubisoft wants to monetize its players even more. That's why Valhalla is a grindy and repetative game. It's great a first but can become tiresome, and it's not easy to level up.

That's why Ubisoft is selling convenience microtransactions to reduce time spent. You spend money so you spend less time, Or spend more time to not spend any extra money. Either way, you spend something.

Computex returns in 2021, with the event organizers announcing that even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, nothing will stop Computex from being a physical event in 2021.

Not only will there be a physical Computex in Taipei, Taiwan -- but it will be joined by an AI-based virtual tour, which definitely sounds interesting. Nothing can beat the feeling of being in-person in all that insanity, computer hardware, geeking out the entire time in that humidity, but in the beautiful country of Taiwan.

There's over 6 months between now and then, so I think we'll have to wait and see how things go in that time before things start getting locked in. TweakTown has been at every Computex for around 20 years now, and I personally have been to every single one between 2012-2019 and would've been there this year had the COVID-19 pandemic not wreaked havoc.

Pornhub enacted the "most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history" when it purged millions of videos from its website that were uploaded by unverified uploaders.

The company saw Visa and MasterCard remove support for payments on their website, so Pornhub turned to cryptocurrency almost instantly. Pornhub is now crypto-exclusive in the US, UK, Australia, Singapore, and other markets -- where credit cards will no longer work as they're not accepted.

Pornhub is the 10th biggest website on the internet, with 42 billion visitors in 2019 alone. The site estimates that over 11,000 hours of video is watched per minute, with traffic to Pornhub going on a stiff incline over millions more people being glued to their homes because of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.

Phanteks is entering the AIO game. The company announced its new Glacier One all-in-one liquid coolers, which are available in multiple sizes and multiple colors. It's not every day you see a white AIO cooler, but Phanteks is now offering one.

Phanteks' new Glacier One liquid coolers are available in 240mm, 280mm, and 360mm configurations. The company is not offering 120mm and 140mm variants of its AIO coolers. The new coolers include Phtanteks MP fans, which operate at 2000 to 2200 rpm and should provide near-silent airflow. Phanteks said it designed the MP fans specifically for use with radiators, and they are available separately from the Glacier One coolers.

The Phanteks Glacier One is built upon Asetek's Gen 7 AIO platform, which features a pure copper cold plate and a 3600 RPM PWM-controlled pump with ceramic bearings. Phanteks added a magnetic pump cap that includes a tempered glass "infinity mirror" top with addressable RGB lighting effects to make it look fancy.

Oded Daniel, one of the founders of Deca, the new VR company behind the upcoming DecaGear headset, revealed that his company is currently producing the first 300 units of the DecaMove locomotion system, and each one of them is destined for a reviewer.

Deca is a new company in the VR hardware space, and it is trying hard to gain the trust of the VR community rapidly. The company has given several glimpses into the production process for the DecaGear headset and the DecaMove locomotion system, with multiple developer vlogs released on Twitter, Linked In and YouTube. The company recently showed a machine that prints circuits on PCBs as it prepares the DecaMove hardware for reviewers.

Daniel said the company is calling the first 300 units the "blogger edition" because each one of them is destined to go directly to VR influencers on YouTube. We've reached out to MegaDodo, and we're hoping to get one, too, so we can tell you all about it.

Oculus released the launch trailer for the Quest exclusive Jurassic World Aftermath, and it looks like this is a title that fans of the Jurassic Park series won't want to miss. This cell-shaded VR adventure looks like a thrilling experience.

Jurassic World Aftermath puts you right in the center of the abandoned park. You're on a mission to retrieve embryos from the research facility, and just like in the original Jurassic Park movie, you're going to need to outsmart a pack of velociraptors.

Jurassic World Aftermath is a fully immersive room-scale VR game built exclusively for the Oculus Quest platform. This is one of the titles listed on the back of the Quest 2 box, so we expect good things.

The price of Bitcoin has hit a new all-time high. The $20,000 barrier has been smashed, and the top cryptocurrency is now worth over $22,000 per coin.

Just a month ago, it was big news that Bitcoin was back up to $19,000, approaching its all-time high of just shy of $20,000 in December 2017. Today, $19,000 is old news. We're in new territory with the cryptocurrency now trading well north of that $20k mark.

On December 16, 2020, Bitcoin's price finally crept past $20,000, which seems to have ignited a new fire of speculative investors. Within hours of breaking the psychological barrier of $20,000, the price shot up beyond $21,000. While I was writing this article, the ticker on Bittrex.com peaked at $22,922. Although, before I could hit publish the price started to plummet again, with it now below $22,000 again. Bitcoin is nothing if not volatile!

The free Oculus Quest ports of the classic Quake, Quake 2 and Half-Life games, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein have been modified to run at the Quest 2's 90Hz refresh rate. They are available now on Side Quest.

Simon Brown, AKA @DrBeef, is the independent developer behind the popular virtual reality ports of ID's classic Quake and Quake 2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Half-Life. His implementations incorporate 6-DoF control and stereoscopic rendering with the original game files to give you full VR support for these classic games.

DrBeef's VR ports are some of the more popular releases on the SideQuest distribution platform, having amassed over 175,000 downloads collectively, with a minimum star rating of 4.7 out of 5 for each of them. Now, gamers with Quest 2 headsets can run the game at higher framerates than before, thanks to the new 90Hz update.

CD Projekt RED now finds itself embroiled in a political controversy over a de-listed game, and fans aren't happy.

Earlier today, developer Red Candles announced their controversial horror game Devotion would be sold on GOG.com. Shortly after the reveal, CDPR reneged on the deal, and the GOG.com social media account publicly announced Devotion has been denied after CDPR received "many messages from gamers," and would no longer be sold on the digital storefront.

This move caused massive outcry among fans who saw CDPR's decision as kowtowing to Chinese gamers. Devotion originally sparked significant controversy by including negative mention of Chinese president Xi Jinping. Red Candles' horror-thriller was promptly banned and removed from Steam in China.

Cyberpunk 2077's console controversy has cost CD Projekt RED over half a million dollars in share value.

CD Projekt RED has lost over $641,000,000 in share value since Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous console launch. The game's poor performance on PS4 and Xbox One has triggered significant controversy, harming consumer trust. In a call with investors, the developer has admitted to focusing more on PC and next-gen versions, and admits it purposefully hid evidence of the game running on current-gen consoles. CDPR also promises to fix the game on PS4 and Xbox One.

This fiasco has significantly impacted CDPR's shares. At the time of writing, CD Projekt RED has 100,654,624 shares that're worth $21.31 each. A quick bit of math shows CDPR currently has a market value of $2.14 billion, down 23% since CP2077's release. CD Projekt RED had a $2.7 billion market value on December 9, a day before Cyberpunk 2077's release.

Terminator Resistance is getting upgraded with a next-gen PlayStation 5 version, complete with boosted optimizations, effects, and performance.

Today Reef Entertainment confirmed their new Terminator stealth shooter is coming to the PS5 with a bunch of enhancements. The re-release is called Terminator Resistance Enhanced, and will run at 4K 60FPS on the PS5, complete with new balance patches and the Infiltrator T-800 antagonist mode only previously available on PC. Owners of the PS4 version get a free upgrade to the PS5 port.

Reef says the re-release will leverage the PS5's full might, including faster loading times with the new PCIe 4.0 SSD, as well as new immersive haptic feedback with the DualSense controller. We don't know if the game will lock the triggers like Deathloop, but we should see something like Black Ops Cold War's increased trigger rumble at the very least.

Indie sensation Among Us is coming to the Nintendo Switch...but it's kind of a sus game to launch on the handheld-hybrid.

Yesterday Nintendo confirmed Among Us is coming to the Switch. It's a huge deal for developer Innersloth, and the game should sell tremendously well on the Switch--for only $5 you can jump into a high-stakes game of betrayal, lies, framing, and suspicion. There's just one real issue with Among Us on Switch: Communication.

Having fun in Among Us hinges on communication. You need to be able to talk and type to people to confirm your suspicions or to make up a fantastic story on why you're not the killer. The game doesn't technically have voice chat in any version, and you need an external program like Discord to communicate with friends. Even if Among Us did support voice chat on the Switch, you'd have to download the Switch Online app in order to actually chat.

Star Fox brought enhanced 3D polygons to the SNES with its FX chip. Now a skilled engineer brings real-time ray tracing to the classic console, complete with reflections and impressive effects.

Ray tracing is all the rage right now on RTX cards and next-gen consoles, but did you know the Super Nintendo could handle it too? Software engineer Ben Carter created SuperRT, a custom expansion chip that uses a "DE10-Nano FPGA development board with a Cyclone V FPGA" to add hardware-accelerated raytracing to the Super Nintendo.

Carter recently showed off his creation with an impressive demo with effects like real-time ray-traced shadows and reflections, inverted reflections, and a whole manner of unique animations that mirror other scenes and objects. The result is high-tech sorcery on the age-old system. The SuperRT was built as something that could actually run on the SNES, and the chip only handles ray tracing due to the "image data conversion."

Epic Games has announced that with the new v15.10 patch coming to Fortnite that they're enabling 120FPS support for both Battle Royale and Creative modes in Fortnite for both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles.

You'll need to jump into the video settings in Fortnite and enable "120FPS mode" which will see both the flagship PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles dropping from their 4K resolution to 1440p -- but you'll get that silky smooth 120FPS goodness.

Epic adds that "shadow settings, postprocessing, and streaming distances are slightly reduced, but volumetric clouds, physical rim lighting, and high-quality shaders remain enabled". If you're gaming on the lower-end Xbox Series S console then you will experience 120FPS mode in 1080p (down from 1440p on the flagship Xbox Series X). Epic adds that "shadow resolution and other settings are reduced and volumetric clouds are disabled".

If you've played Cyberpunk 2077 enough then you will have come across some sex shops by now, but some players are seeing a "distracting" amount of dildos everywhere. Yeah, you read that right -- Cyberpunk 2077 has a dildo infestation problem.

While I've got some screenshots below of my adventures into just a single sex shop in Cyberpunk 2077, other players of CD PROJEKT RED's huge new RPG are noticing some major dildo problems. Dildos are turning up in random places in their games, including street corners, restaurants and everything in between.

The reason? In an email to Kotaku, Cyberpunk 2077 senior quest designer Philipp Weber explained: "We wanted Night City to be pretty open sexually where something by today's standards might be taboo or kinky is very normal and commonplace by 2077 standards". I guess that includes as many dildos as possible, eh?

NVIDIA has pushed out its new GeForce Game Ready 460.89 WHQL drivers -- which weigh in at over 600MB, by the way -- with support for the new Quake II RTX update that supports the new Vulkan Ray Tracing extensions.

The Khronos Group is behind the Vulkan API, releasing its new Vulkan SDK that includes support for Vulkan Ray Tracing. The new Quake II RTX v1.4.0 update enables support for the just-released Vulkan Ray Tracing extensions in the game, which means any GPU that supports Vulkan Ray Tracing can play Quake II RTX with its path-traced graphics.

Andrew Burnes from NVIDIA explains: "Quake II RTX was initially released in June 2019, reimagining the classic game's graphics with amazing ray-traced lighting, shadows, and reflections. With the 2019 release coming well ahead of cross-vendor Vulkan APIs for ray tracing, Quake II RTX implemented ray tracing using NVIDIA's 'VKRay' extensions".

Corsair has just announced its new Hydro X water blocks that were made for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090, and GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards -- not just the Founders Edition cards either, but a range of custom AIB models.

The new Corsair Hydro X Series XG7 RGB GPU Water Blocks has over 50 high-density cooling fulls, a full-length aluminum backplate, and 16 individually addressable RGB LEDs. This brings some of the best cooling, style, and customization to a water-cooled GeForce RTX 3090 or GeForce RTX 3080 yet.

Corsair's cooler doesn't just keep the Ampere GPU cool, but the GDDR6 memory and VRMs will also stay much cooler with the Hydro X Series XG7 RGB GPU Water Block. The Hydro X Series XG7 RGB GPU Water Blocks comes pre-applied with thermal material and thermal pads, making installation into your system easier.

NVIDIA has just announced its new RTX A6000 workstation graphics card, offering the full Ampere GA102 GPU with all of the CUDA cores enabled.

The new RTX A6000 workstation graphics card packs a huge 10752 CUDA cores, compared to the GeForce RTX 3090 with 10496 CUDA cores and the Quadro RTX 8000 with 4608 CUDA cores. But the single-precision compute performance on the new RTX A6000 is 3.1 TLFOPs higher than the RTX 3090, with the RTX A6000 pushing 38.7 TFLOPs.

NVIDIA has used 48GB of GDDR6 memory on the new RTX A6000 workstation graphics card, which at 16Gbps, provides 768GB/sec of memory bandwidth. This is higher than the 672GB/sec on the Quadro RTX 8000 workstation graphics card, but less than the gaming-focused GeForce RTX 3090 with its 24GB of GDDR6X at 19.5Gbps and 936GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

TEAMGROUP is the first to have consumer-grade DDR5 memory ready, and is proudly working with motherboard makers as it enters the validation phase of its upcoming next-gen DDR5 memory.

TEAMGROUP has its first batch of DDR5 memory ready, with the first stick being a single 16GB DIMM of DDR5-4800 memory at 1.1V. The company is working with ASUS, ASRock, GIGABYTE, and MSI -- where TEAMGROUP provides some memory and then the companies collaborate between their respective R&D divisions for validation testing.

The best part about DDR5 is that you will get kick ass next-gen speeds out of the box, without having to overclock it like DDR4. You will be able to buy a new kit of DDR5 memory, if you motherboard is compatible that is, slot it in and enjoy an instant upgrade in speed.