NCIX is in some big effing trouble with a story breaking over the weekend that someone had access to their old servers that went for auction and were purchased, after the Canadian retailer went bankrupt in 2017.

The servers that were previously owned by NCIX somehow ended up on Craigslist, with Travis Doering from Privacy Fly access the servers and pretending to be someone called "Jeff" for privacy (fly) reasons. Doering was after the data on the NCIX server, making is clear he was after the contents of the HDD alone and not the juicy server hardware. Doering met with the seller multiple times, confirming that they were ex-NCIX servers and that they indeed had NXIC user and business data on it.

The used servers were sold because NCIX reportedly didn't pay their warehouse storage bills in late-2017 with over $115,000 owed, where the servers were given to the warehouse owner to sell to recoup costs. Yeah well, the NCIX servers weren't wiped and millions of customers private detailed were exposed, as well as business customers who used to buy many millions worth of goods.

Global entry! We have teamed up with ADATA to give away an awesome SPECTRIX D80 DDR4 3000MHz 32GB Memory Kit to one lucky winner!

Meet the world's first RGB DDR4 memory with a hybrid liquid-air cooling system, the SPECTRIX D80. It utilizes a combination of a liquid heat sink that's hermetically sealed with non-conductive fluid and an aluminum heat sink to deliver effective thermal cooling. What's more, the liquid heat sink is illuminated with RGB lighting to give your rig a distinctive flair.

How to Win

There were a few glaring issues in the Battlefield V open beta such as the ridiculous length of dying in the game, but the developers at DICE have been tweaking the game leading up to its now-delayed launch.

DICE recently posted about some of the tweaks they've been working on with Battlefield V, with one of them tied to making "a tighter death experience". DICE addresses this by bringing up that if you played the open beta you "might have found it took a while to get back into the action after having been downed by an enemy. This has been tweaked; bleeding out now goes much faster than before. Also, the time spent in the squad follow camera - AKA the "parrot camera" - will be reduced. The revive icon and audio for revive shouts will be polished to make it easier to see and hear squad mates calling for help".

The bleed out time on the Battlefield V open beta was so bad, but the developers at DICE have been improving that. DICE said: "When shot down, the length of your bleedout time will be taken into consideration when you get to the squad follow camera screen. If you've spent a lot of time bleeding out, the waiting time in the squad follow camera before spawning will be shorter. This will make for a tighter experience and benefit Medics, since players won't hesitate to shout out for help".

The foldable smartphone race will begin later this year, with both Samsung and Huawei fighting to be the first to market with the world's first foldable smartphone. Huawei is now back in the news with Huawei deputy chairman Ken Hu confirming that a new foldable smartphone with 5G connectivty will be in consumers' hands in 1H 2019.

During the World Economic Forum panel, Hu said: "In our first [5G] smartphone we're going to introduce a foldable screen".

5G will usher in a new world of connectivity that isn't just blistering speed, but it will be 4K and beyond video streaming, more smartphones used during dense events without speed loses (think concerts, sports matches, etc), cloud-based AI with low latency, streaming 4K and beyond games, 10x increased cloud usage thanks to super-low latency and super-high speeds, and so much more.

MSI had its turn just before with their new Z390 motherboards led by the flagship MEG Z390 GODLIKE motherboard, but now it's time for ASUS to shine in the light with their Z390 motherboards and the flagship Z390 ROG Maximus XI.

The new ASUS Z390 ROG Maximus XI CODE motherboard with an absolutely huge heat sink that spreads from the first to second x16 PCIe port and over the Z390 chipset, edging to the 4 x DDR4 DIMM slots. It looks glorious as well, with some awesome RGB-lit start/reset buttons next the DIMMs. It requires an 8+6-pin power at the top, and is ready for the flagship Core i9-9900K processor.

This motherboard is the new ASUS Z390 ROG Maximus XI, and you can see that there's some EK Water Blocks cooling above the CPU, with the same behemoth of a heat sink on the board. Looks great IMO, even in black and white as a preview image.

Intel is getting its new 9000-series CPUs ready for launch in the next month, with motherboard makers preparing their Z390 motherboards. MSI's new Z390 range has now leaked, led by the flagship MEG Z390 GODLIKE which looks so damn awesome.

MSI's new flagship MEG Z390 GODLIKE features an M.2 expansion card as well as something else - it seems to be a streaming-related card with an HDMI port on the back so maybe this is for gamers who want to game on their Core i9-9900K as well as stream to Twitch, etc. The MZI MEG Z390 GODLIKE motherboard sports four PCIe x16 ports, three M.2 slots (and another two with the M.2 expansion card), and a larger E-ATX form factor.

Next up we have the new MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard that has tons of RGBs coming out of it - hell, all of these new Z390 motherboards from MSI do.

Kojima Productions dropped a new Death Stranding trailer at this year's Tokyo Game Show...and we're as lost as ever.

Death Stranding is a giant cryptic puzzle with tons of interlocking layered mechanisms, and gamers everywhere are keen on trying to solve it. In typical Kojima style, the latest gameplay trailer gives us more questions than answers to fuel the wild speculation. The footage was quite brief and revealed Troy Baker's very playful and bantering character (aka the Man in the Golden Mask) who appears to be with a villainous rogue outfit somehow affiliated with ancient Egyptian lore (or maybe that's just the style, who knows). What's even more interesting is Baker's skull mask is infused with eldritch magic that can collect the weird phantom darkness and manifest it into shapes. In this case, the Man in the Golden Mask summons a terrifying shadow lion to take out Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus).

There's a lot to dissect here, and the Death Stranding Reddit has been busily connecting threads together. Do note that Baker's fetus-tank glows a baleful red, hinting at malevolence or perhaps some sort of corruption that allows for manipulation of the shadow-monsters. And of course he teleports away like a mischievous trickster.

Using valuable lessons learned from the Final Fantasy XIV MMO and the unique Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix will focus more on live games to make recurring revenue and tailor-make its games for fans.

Alongside its thriving MMO business, Luminous Productions will lead the charge into Square Enix's live service plans. The new studio was born from change and strife, and is made up of key FFXV developers including game director Hajime Tabata who iterated, crunched, and took on insurmountable hardships to develop not only the game itself, but the new engine that powered it. Now the team is bringing their hard-earned expertise and powerful Luminous Engine to help push boundaries and blur singleplayer and multiplayer gaming. We've seen threads of this focus with Final Fantasy XV's unique merging of a expansive singleplayer-driven story arc with its MO-style Comrades gametype, both of which have transformed the game into a mini-franchise within itself. In short, FFXV is a gift that keeps on giving, and Square Enix wants more.

Ultimately this means Luminous Productions aims to blend live services with engaging stories--an evolution of what it did with FFXV. The studio is working on AAA games alongside other projects, and we spotted a job listing in March that hinted microtransactions and live services would be included in these games.

The mini-console war is in full pelt, and Nintendo might swing back at Sony's new PlayStation Classic with a new (old school) system of its own.

Back in July 2017, Nintendo filed a trademark for an Nintendo 64 controller image. The trademark's style closely resembles those used on Nintendo's mega-hit NES and SNES Classic Edition micro-consoles, signalling a new low-cost retro system is on the way. On August 30 that trademark was approved and published on the European Union Intellectual Property Office.

Scouting the trademark yielded some interesting results that strongly support an N64 mini is in the works (and maybe something else). The EUIPO partially objected to the registration back in January because it didn't look enough like an actual Nintendo 64 controller. The trademarked image is missing the left and right bumpers, for example, and doesn't have the embossed "Nintendo" logo on it.

If you want to play an optimized version Anthem before release then you'll need to pay up some cash.

EA is somewhat confusing gamers with Anthem's early pre-release access. Now the publisher clarifies there are three ways to play Anthem before it's launch in late February, and all of them cost money. Essentially you'll get in if you've pre-ordered the game or are subscribed to Origin/EA Access (basic or Premiere). But how you spend your money and on which platform determines how and when you get in.

Anthem's three pre-release avenues are a VIP demo, early access, and the Play First Trial (which used to be open to all Origin users). Premiere members who bought into EA's new PC-only subscription tier can play all three and get overlapping access to the full game a week early. But pre-orders only get you access to one of the three early play opportunities.