Latest News - Page 275

Valve has updated Steam's "Rules and Guidelines" for Steamworks Documentation, which are the rules of the road if a developer wants to upload their game to Steam. The new update adds a new 15th clause that prevents a specific type of game from being listed on the biggest PC gaming storefront.

Before the update Valve listed fourteen clauses that developers have to adhere by to get their game listed on Steam, and now there's a new 15th clause, which states that developers are not allowed to have their game contain any "Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult-only content."

Following this change, many games and DLCs have been removed from Steam as they are now in violation of Steam's new guidelines. Screenshots have been provided below of a selection of titles removed, and notably, the majority of the titles that have now been deleted from Steam are in violation of the adult content policy.

Windows 11 is now giving people the ability to let Copilot peer into their desktop and help them with whatever task might be in progress, if only in testing for now.

In a blog post, Microsoft announced that the Copilot app is getting this new ability via an update from the Microsoft Store for Windows Insiders.

The new feature is called 'Desktop Share' for Copilot Vision, and it allows you to share your desktop with the AI, or a single browser or app window if you prefer.

GTA 6 could make $7.6 billion in revenue just two months after launch, venture capitalist firm Konvoy predicts.

GTA 6 is expected to be so big that it will collectively raise the games industry. Gamers will buy new PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles to play GTA 6, Rockstar is expected to sell tens of millions of copies, and the game will boost digital spending across consoles.

But how much will GTA 6 actually make? One gaming VC, Konvoy, has laid out some pretty generous predictions. The firm estimates that GTA 6 will make a combined $7.66 billion in revenue in 60 days after launch, which includes game sales, GTA Online spending, and GTA+ subscription sign-ups. The numbers are staggering to say the least; one expert in the field, Joost van Dreunen, expects GTA 6 to make a more conservative $2.7 billion at launch.

On a recent episode of the BBC's morning show in the UK, a segment explored the growing popularity of the retro gaming market in Britain. Primarily focusing on older console hardware and games from the 1980s and 1990s, retro gaming boasts a vibrant global community centered on nostalgia, community, and video games from a bygone era.

The segment included Nick Poole OBE, the CEO of Ukie, the trade body for the UK's video games and interactive entertainment industry. He was there to discuss retro gaming; however, the online discussion and feedback on the segment were focused squarely on a decision made by the BBC's breakfast team.

As part of a visual display of retro gaming hardware and games for the segment, the BBC thought it would be a good idea to put an NES cartridge for Super Mario Bros. in a Super Nintendo. Can the 16-bit SNES play 8-bit NES games? No, which is why it caused some viewers to call it a crime.

A new GIGABYTE motherboard vulnerability has been discovered that affects the BIOS or UEFI firmware. The vulnerabilities are severe, as they allow attackers with local or administrative privileges to execute code in System Management Mode (SMM), which is separate from the operating system.

This allows the code to bypass traditional security on affected devices, as discovered by Binarly, which assigned a high-severity score of 8.2. The good news is that GIGABYTE has posted a security bulletin covering the vulnerabilities, which also lists the affected platforms. However, the vulnerabilities affect hundreds of motherboards covering the Intel 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 series platforms.

As these vulnerabilities affect motherboards for the popular 10th and 11th Gen Intel Core processors, which many are still using, Eclypsium has published a list of the affected motherboards in PDF format, which can be found here.

NVIDIA's RTX Remix Mod Contest, which is offering $50,000 in cash prizes to the best RTX Remix mods for classic games, is wrapping up this week. Need for Speed: Underground RTX Remix is one of the mods that we've been following for a while, and as part of the contest, Version 0.5 of the project has been released.

The update introduces over 500 new textures, further enhancing the visuals of this classic racing game from 2003. And as we're talking about a game that is now over two decades old, the update also replaces some of the models found in the game with new, highly detailed versions that add more detail to the world of nighttime racing.

The star of the show is the new path-traced lighting, which adds full ray-tracing to the game, dramatically improving the look and feel of races. It's transformative stuff, and a game-changer for what is widely considered to be one of the best entries in EA's iconic racing franchise.

NVIDIA's latest DLSS 4 weekly round-up is a little light on brand-new titles, but it does feature three popular titles in the PC gaming community. First up is hero shooter Marvel Rivals, which has just kicked off Season 3 with a new map and X-Men's Jean Grey as the latest playable superhero.

Season 3 of Marvel Rivals arrives with DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation support, alongside NVIDIA Reflex, which boosts performance by up to 5X at 4K. With DLSS Super Resolution, Multi Frame Generation, and Reflex, everything from the GeForce RTX 5070 and higher can achieve a smooth 230+ FPS in 4K with max settings, with the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 hitting an impressive 451 FPS in NVIDIA's benchmarks.

Drop the resolution to 1440p, and the GeForce RTX 5060 achieves 199 FPS with DLSS 4, with the RTX 5070 now reaching 300 FPS. Interestingly, NVIDIA's charts don't include the recently released entry-level GeForce RTX 5050 - though we expect it to perform just fine at 1080p with DLSS 4.

The Seagate Exos M and IronWolf Pro drives, built on the company's Mozaic3+ platform with HAMR technology, are now widely available in 28TB and 30TB capacities. With the AI boom, Seagate is positioning its new high-capacity HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) drives as the solution for the increasing demand for scalable storage in data centers and on-premises systems.

HAMR technology, which opens the door to larger-capacity magnetic drives (the traditional platter variety), incorporates new cooling features for its powerful laser to maintain low operating temperatures without compromising a drive's reliability. Having access to 30TB on a single drive is fantastic for AI, as the more complex an AI system becomes, the more memory and storage it requires.

Seagate has confirmed that it has shipped over one million Mozaic drives, with the milestone attributed to the AI boom and the fact that its Seagate Exos M and IronWolf Pro drives represent the highest density drives offered in the market today.

Nintendo has explained in an "Ask the Developers" interview with the team behind the upcoming Donkey Kong Bananza how the idea for destructible environments came about, and why the game is releasing exclusively on the Nintendo Switch 2 and not the original Switch.

The team behind Bananza is the same team that created Super Mario Odyssey, which introduced destructible environments shortly after its release. The idea was combined with the team being tasked with creating a 3D Donkey Kong game that captured the essence of the character, but also ushered in a new level of innovation for players. The new innovation decided upon by the developers was environmental destruction, which is the core theme of Bananza.

In the interview, the title's game directors explain they decided to combine the work they have done with 3D Mario games with voxel-based destruction, which, for those who don't know, a voxel is a 3D pixel. Here's the difference. Pixel art consists of lots of tiny squares, and when arranged on a flat surface with variations in color, they create a two-dimensional image, or a pixel. Take that same idea and extend it to three dimensions, and you get what is called a voxel, or a 3D pixel.

Microsoft has added a new feature for Xbox Insiders and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers in the PC Gaming Preview program: the ability to stream "select console games" that they own as part of Xbox Cloud Gaming. The update also enables the "stream your own game" feature in the Xbox PC app.

This feature, previously available on consoles, smartphones, and browsers, allows you to stream eligible games that you already own without the need to install them natively. This feature also includes access to console-only games that were previously unavailable to play via the Xbox PC app.

Over 250 games are supported in the "stream your own game" catalog, with Microsoft noting that more console-only games will be added over time. You can find the full list of compatible titles here.

It was only earlier today The Game Awards' Geoff Keighley and the official Call of Duty X account confirmed Black Ops 7 was getting a worldwide reveal at Gamescom 2025 scheduled to take place next month, and now we are already hearing leaked details about the upcoming next release in the Call of Duty franchise.

The inside information comes from renowned Call of Duty insider GhostofHope, who wrote on X that the COD Next event for Black Ops 7 is scheduled to happen at the end of September in Las Vegas, and that the beta for the game will be released shortly after.

For those who don't know, COD Next is the biggest Call of Duty event as it involves content creators, such as popular livestreamers, being flown out to a location to play the new Call of Duty game ahead of its release to the public.

Nintendo has kept its lips sealed on what development team is behind the soon-to-be-released Donkey Kong Bananza, until now, with the company publishing an interview with the team.

As many fans suspected, the team that worked on Super Mario Odyssey "were central to Donkey Kong Bananza's development." While this was suspected by many after seeing footage of Bananza, this is the first time Nintendo has confirmed the news publicly. The interview includes comments from Kenta Motokura, a producer for Bananza; Kazuya Takahashi, a game director; Wataru Tanaka, another game director; Daisuke Watanabe, an art director; and Naoto Kubo, the sound director.

Motokura explained that Koizumi-san, the Senior Executive Officer and Senior General Manager of the Entertainment Planning & Development Division at Nintendo, approached the team behind Super Mario Odyssey and said the company wants to make a 3D Donkey Kong game.

CD Projekt Red has announced Cyberpunk 2077 will soon be getting a new update that will be detailed in the form of a new REDstream scheduled to take place on July 16.

In a new post on the official Cyberpunk 2077 X account, developer CD Projekt Red has said their latest game will be receiving a new significant update titled "Patch 2.3." The new update will be revealed tomorrow during a livestream scheduled to take place on Wednesday, July 16 at 5:00 PM CEST. Unfortunately, no more details were provided about the update, just that the REDstream will feature Paweł Sasko, the associate game director on the upcoming sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, and Adrien Jouannet, the lead designer at Virtuos.

As for other Cyberpunk 2077 news, CD Projekt Red recently announced the title was making its way over to Apple Silicon, meaning M-series Mac users will now be able to jump into Night City through the App Store. The Mac version of the title will include the Phantom Liberty DLC and require 16GB of unified RAM to run. Notably, the last time CD Projekt Red reported sales of Cyberpunk 2077 it pegged the title at moving as many as 30 million units. But that was before it released on two new platforms, now Mac and the Nintendo Switch 2.

Microsoft recently announced that, in an effort to make the company more agile, it would be laying off as many as 9,000 jobs across its various companies working under its umbrella, and one of those companies was Activision Blizzard King.

King, the developer of some of the most popular mobile games, such as Candy Crush Saga, was hit with a 200-person layoff, and now we are beginning to hear who, or rather what, has replaced those workers. Sources speaking to MobileGamer.biz said that King suffered a loss of about 10% of its workforce and according to King staff that spoke to the publication anonymously, "Most of [the] level design [team] has been wiped, which is crazy since they've spent months building tools to craft levels quicker. Now, those AI tools are basically replacing the teams."

The level design team wasn't the only department to be hit with layoffs, as King's narrative copyrighting team was also hit extremely hard. The source said, "The copywriting team is completely removing people since we now have AI tools that those individuals have been creating." The source added that following the mass layoffs, morale at the company is "now in the gutter" as the source alleged that many of the staff that were let go have expressed "dissatisfaction with the company or processes" in the past.

Obsidian releases Patch 1.5 for Avowed, adding in a bunch of new content while squashing bugs.

Avowed's latest update refreshes Obsidian's landmark RPG, expanding the game with new items, skills/abilities, and convenience options. Patch 1.5 also christens Avowed as a Steam Deck Verified game while adding language options for Korean and Japanese.

Patch 1.5 weighs in at 8.5GB on Xbox, and the biggest reason to check it out is the new abilities and combat mechanics. Obsidian added four new abilities and four new passives for both the Ranger and Fighter, changing up the combat dynamic a bit. Some enemies can now use the same skills as players; Obsidian warns that various baddies can cast some pretty nasty abilities like Returning Storm, Ring of Tire, Taunt, Clear Out, Blizzard, and Tanglefoot.

Early tests of NVIDIA's Neural Texture Compression (NTC) and Microsoft's latest DirectX Raytracing 1.2 have revealed a big drop in VRAM consumption, possibly paving the way for games requiring less VRAM in general.

Neural Texture Compression takes advantage of NVIDIA's neural networks to compress and decompress game textures, which translates to files being reduced in size without them taking a big hit in terms of quality or visual fidelity. NTC has been tested by @opinali, who took to X to share his findings on using the new feature with Microsoft's DirectX Raytracing (DXR) 1.2. The DXR update includes what are called Cooperative Vectors, which enables GPU shaders to work in unison on small matrix or vector operations.

When Cooperative Vectors are paired with NTC it creates an extremely efficient compression/decompression mechanism that operates within DirectX 12. The result is a significant reduction in VRAM consumption. opinali explained in a series of posts that by enabling Cooperative Vectors and NTC the texture renders at 2,350 FPS, while disabling it, the performance drops to 1,030 FPS. More importantly, opinali found "NTC saves almost 90%," and explained that "textures can be 50% - 70% of VRAM used by games, so this is HUGE".

The Analogue 3D console has been delayed slightly and will now release in August, the company today announced.

The new Analogue 3D console aims to bring 4K gaming to Nintendo 64 games for the first time ever. The system is aptly named because it uses FPGA tech to cleverly mimic a real Nintendo 64 console experience, with modern bells and whistles like Bluetooth and WiFi. The Analogue 3D is also compatible with every N64 game cartridge ever made.

The system will not release in July 2025 as originally planned, and is now launching in late August. The company says that it's been affected by Trump's ever-changing tariff policies but users won't have to pay extra to get their Analogue 3D consoles. Buyers and interested gamers remain skeptical of the system simply because Analogue Inc. has yet to show a working console in action--likely due to potential copyright concerns from the hawkish, ever-litigious Nintendo.

AI will transform gaming into a prompt-driven experience where users can freely customize experiences on-the-fly, former Square Enix exec Jacob Navok predicts.

AI is here, but the technology doesn't have a lot of applications for gaming. At least, not yet. Microsoft is investing big into AI tech, and plans to use generative AI to make and play video games--Microsoft signed a multi-year deal to use InWorld gen AI to make quests and dialog for games, as well as its own in-house gen AI called Muse. Other publishers like Electronic Arts are investing into generative AI, whereas platform-holders like Sony are using AI and machine learning on new graphics-upscaling technologies like PlayStation Spectral Resolution Scaling.

EA's investment could better represent the future of gaming, though. Last year, EA demoed gen AI tech to investors that used chat prompts to change gameplay in real-time. Users could chat with EA's AI bot, lay out what they wanted to see in the game mode or map, and AI would adjust everything within seconds. This, according to a former Square Enix director, is the kind of gaming that we'll see sometime soon.

Good news for Resident Evil fans: The director of the upcoming RE movie adaptation is a huge fan of the franchise.

When a video game adaptation fails, one of the main criticisms is usually that the creators didn't understand the source material (see the Halo TV show backlash, for instance). Luckily, it sounds like that won't be the case for the new Resident Evil movie that's slated to release in 2026.

Horror film director Zach Cregger will be at the helm of the new Resident Evil film adaptation. Cregger is known for his suspenseful and mysterious horror movies, Weapons and Barbarian, and he's also a huge fan of Capcom's decades-long zombie survival games. That being said, Cregger won't be following every scrap of Resident Evil's winding lore.

Golden-age PlayStation game developers Acquire are back in the limelight with plans for new, all-original IP.

Acquire, the Japanese dev behind the classic Tenchu series, has announced that it's working on three new projects. Acquire has signed a multi-year partnership with Red Dunes Games in the first Japan-UAE collaboration deal of its kind. Red Dunes is mostly known for publishing and co-developing sidescrollers with retro graphics, including metroidvania Silent Planet, and is also making a new Samurai Pizza Cats game.

"The two companies will co-develop a slate of original IPs that blend world-class Japanese craftsmanship with bold, global creative vision," reads the press release.