A Yonhap News report (Google translated) says police in South Korea have searched the office of Dark and Darker developer Ironmace and seized materials related to the project. The raid in the city of Seongnam was reportedly connected to allegations that the game is being built using code and assets stolen from Nexon.

Nexon was reportedly working on a similar project, revealed in 2021 as P3, before pulling the plug on development later that year. Ironmace was founded shortly afterward, and includes former Nexon employees who apparently didn’t part with the company on the best of terms: The Ironmace website describes the studio as “a merry band of veteran game developers disillusioned by the exploitative and greedy practices we once helped create.”

A complaint over the matter was reportedly filed by Nexon with Gyeonggi Southern Police Agency in August 2021. The Yonhap report says the Gyeonggi Southern Police forwarded the matter to the Seongnam Branch of the Suwon District…

Developer Keen Games might have been a bit worried about releasing its new survival game, Enshrouded, just as the world was obsessing over Poké-like Palworld, currently the most-played game on Steam, and the second most popular game in the platform’s history. But it looks like there’s room for two big survival game launches, because Enshrouded has already managed to seduce more than a million players.

It certainly helps that Enshrouded and Palworld are very different takes on the genre. Palworld’s novelty stems from its multitude of critters, who can be captured, befriended and put to work in your grotty mines. Enshrouded, meanwhile, is a fantasy action-RPG with less punishing survival mechanics than we’re used to. That said, there are some similarities: Enshrouded also lets you rescue NPCs who you can attach to your camp in thanks for the rescue. 

“We’re excited to let you know that this is just the beginning for Enshrouded,” Keen Games added in a follow-up …

Having your pals along for a co-op run of Baldur’s Gate 3 can be a blast. It’s hard to tackle an entire 100-hour RPG together the whole time though, and sometimes you’re forced to continue the journey alone. At least, sort of alone, since there’s currently no way to boot your friend’s character concoction from your party once they’ve joined. Thankfully, that should all be changing soon.

Developer Larian Studios posted a community update on Steam, responding to fan theories around alleged “cut content” and offering an insight into what the future holds for Baldur’s Gate 3. There’s your bog-standard bug fixes to look forward to, but also improvements based on community feedback. An example of the latter is the future implementation of the “Withers’ Wardrobe of Waywards Friends.” Bonus points for the fantastic poster included at the bottom of the post, where Withers is sporting an incredible dashing party hat and has a full set of pearly whites. Simultaneously genius and terrifyi…

The newest trailer for Mortal Kombat 1 reveals its latest challenger: Geras. If you’re unfamiliar, he’s the keeper of the hourglass of time who debuted in Mortal Kombat 11, and given that Mortal Kombat 1 is all about timeline shenanigans it makes sense he’d appear to tidy things up. (By punching them.)

Geras seems to have brought back his Temporal Advantage ability, which lets him freeze an opponent in time and then hit them in the butt (or wherever). He’s got a whole raft of time-themed attacks, but some sand-related ones as well, including a fatality that involves holding his opponent’s face against the edge of a whirling sandstorm to angle-grind them down to the bone.

NetherRealm recently revealed that JK Simmons will reprise his role as Omni-Man in Mortal Kombat 1, joining guest stars Homelander from The Boys and Peacemaker from The Suicide Squad as well as returning Mortal Kombat karacters Ermac, Quan Chi, Shang Tsung, and Takeda in the Kombat Pack DLC.

Mortal…

I’m not exaggerating when I say that almost everything you know about Diablo 4 is about to change. I played with most of what’s coming alongside season 4 last month on a playtest server and, like many others, am now counting down the days until the real thing goes live on May 14.

Diablo 4 is going to feel like a new game—and a better game than the one last launched last year. The worst parts of it have been entirely reworked in season 4, like its overly complicated loot and limited build crafting. Blizzard’s name for the season, “Loot Reborn”, is genuinely an understatement; this is Diablo 4 reborn.

The first thing you’ll notice when season 4 begins is the lack of a seasonal mechanic on par with the vampiric powers in season 2 or the robot spider companion in season 3. Season 4 won’t give your character a bunch of new toys to play with that disappear when it ends. It doesn’t need that kind of twist. Instead, Blizzard has kept the seasonal theme light so the spotlig…

Diablo 4’s necromancer class fails the only test any game with a necromancer class needs to pass—which is whether or not you can command a deadly army of skeletons. Minions in Diablo 4 are weaker than the free spider pet everyone gets as part of season 3. They’re so bad that you can pick up every minion-based skill and do more damage by not even summoning them.

That could change in Diablo 4’s mid-season patch next Tuesday. The necromancer skeletons are all having their damage and health increased, and complementary skills, like Corpse Explosion, are getting buffed too. Blizzard said on a stream yesterday that these changes will be the first step toward bigger reworks to minions coming in season 4.

Season 3 underlined the problems with necromancers compared to the other four classes and the new patch notes seem to be aimed at addressing them head-on. Apart from lacking good minions, necromancers had zero ways to increase their movement speed—which has become m…

In what is surely the apex of both Baldur’s Gate 3 modding and my news writing career, a creator named Estgamers has developed the foulest fanmade BG3 spell yet: the foul hex of Testicular Torsion (warning: that link may not be work-safe depending on how cool your work is with both the concept of testicular torsion and medical diagrams of it in action).

Created by a modder named Estgamers, the Testicular Torsion Spell Mod is, well, a testicular torsion spell mod. It adds a new level 1 transmutation spell to the game that gets your enemies all twisted up in a way that’s both comical and intensely painful, dealing 1d4 of force damage. So long as they have testicles, anyway.

If you’re (mercifully) unaware of just what testicular torsion is, it’s basically the medical name for literally getting your nuts in a twist. Or one of them, anyway. It occurs when “the cord (called the ‘spermatic cord’) which carries blood to the testicle becomes twisted,” says Cambridge…

Valve has banned roughly 40 CS:GO accounts for trading, with the result that more than $2 million worth of in-game items have been lost. Any account that receives a community ban can no longer trade items, and so their stockpiles of CS:GO skins, stickers, gloves, knives, and the like are now in limbo. Other traders are apparently taking this as a warning, and selling everything they’ve got. 

Back in June, gambling site CSGOEmpire released a spreadsheet listing CS:GO traders they accused of being part of a scheme to launder cryptocurrency through CSGORoll, a rival gambling site. According to Dexerto, all but one of the accounts in that document were among those caught in this latest ban wave, and there has been speculation that Valve targeted them deliberately.

We’ve reached out to Valve to ask if these accounts were chosen because of their connection to CSGORoll, but have not received a reply. Without that confirmation there’s no way to know for sure if that’s why t…

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Soulslikes are generally solo affairs: It’s you against hordes of low-level flunkies and high-powered horrors in an endless grind of brutal combat until you finally avenge your family’s honor by reclaiming the Myrmidon of Loss, or whatever. (I’ve only played Elden Ring, so my grasp on the details is a little shaky.) Deathbound aims to do things a little differently, billing itself as a “one-of-a-kind party-based soulslike.” But that doesn’t mean you’ll be roaming the forbidden city of Akratya with friends: You’ll still be on your own out there.

Deathbound looks like a fairly straightforward soulslike at first glance, but what makes it different, according to developer Trialforge Studio, is its “unique four-hero system.” It’s not a party in the usual D&D sense, though. Instead, you’ll absorb the essence of fallen warriors as you travel through the game, essentially making them a part of you, and once you’ve bonded with them you’ll be able to transform between four …

Over 25 years after the first Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver launched, Crystal Dynamics has announced a remaster package collecting the first and second games in the series. The HD ports are the work of Aspyr, the studio responsible for the well-received remasters of the first three Tomb Raider games. The package was unveiled at Sony’s State of Play yesterday, but they’ve now been confirmed for PC.

Until recently the original versions of these games were available on Steam; they’ve since been removed, presumably to be replaced by their modernised versions. The trailer below shows what to expect: both games still look very much like late ’90s 3D action games, though they’ll enjoy sharper textures, smoother framerates, and upgraded models and visual effects.

Additions will include a photo mode, an “upgraded camera” and new control options. These games released for the original PlayStation at a time when analog sticks weren’t super popular, so the new controls and camera wil…

Cities: Skylines 2 didn’t have a great start last year. When it launched in October, the sequel to the best city builder around garnered a mountain of criticism thanks to its wonky simulation and significant performance issues. There were a plethora of great ideas buried inside it, but it definitely didn’t put its best foot forward. Improvements have been made since then, but this week’s launch of the first bit of post-launch DLC, Beach Properties, has just riled players up again. 

Beach Properties is a weird DLC to lead with. It’s an asset pack, so it doesn’t introduce any new features, instead throwing a waterfront zone, a bunch of new growable buildings, six signature buildings and, erm, four trees into the mix. Despite the name, it doesn’t actually include beaches, and the assets have been criticised for mostly being a bunch of regular houses.

Granted, at $10/£8.49, this was not going to be a beefy expansion. And it’s probably better for Colossal Order to …

One of the smaller pleasant surprises at this year’s Game Awards was the announcement of a free, Dredge-themed crossover DLC for Dave the Diver. The two fishing games will collide when the update launches on December 15.

Things actually seem pretty friendly between the duelling fishing games of 2023⁠—in a Mintrocked dev update, Dave the Diver director Jaeho Hwang and designer Nolan King cited a huge fan demand as the reason for the update, and explained that each team loved the other’s game.

The brief trailer shows a spooky red mist descending on the Blue Hole, as well as brief shots of Dave’s fishing boat exploring the lagoon in full 3D. Hwang and King describe this as a new minigame coming with the update, a fun nod to Dredge’s signature gameplay. The now-haunted Blue Hole has been infested with “aberrant” fish from Dredge, and these nasty boys serve as extra-challenging enemies with their unique sushi in demand among a special new clientele.

The DLC …

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The upcoming Dungeons and Kingdoms—which releases in early access on Steam soon—falls into the genre mashup category for me. Like Mount and Blade and Crypt of the Necrodancer, it takes two great tastes and sees if they taste great together. This time around we’ve got a medieval kingdom sim mashed up with soulslike dungeon delving, and it looks promising.

The first outing from Canadian solo dev Lincoln McCulloch, aka Uncle Grouch Gaming, Dungeons and Kingdoms will have you take a ragtag group of refugees from an “unlivable homeland” and build them a nice place, with tree chopping, crop planting, and all that good stuff. You can construct buildings on the fly from over 500 pieces and save your designs as blueprints you can share on Steam Workshop.

Dungeons and Kingdoms goes beyond city building and lets you transform the terrain around you. You can smooth out areas to facilitate farming, create a moat around your castle, even lift up a hill to stick an…

Canadian filmmaker James Cameron was catapulted to fame after directing and writing 1984’s The Terminator, a science fiction horror movie in which a cyborg is sent back in time by an AI defense network, Skynet, in order to eliminate the only threat it faces. In this case that means assassinating the mother of John Connor, the man who will one day lead the human resistance.

The Terminator is one of the all-time great blockbusters, and much of that is down to how it evokes the terror of being pursued by a machine with a machine’s purpose. “It can’t be bargained with,” Kyle Reese explains to Sarah Connor after the first encounter. “It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear.” The Terminator is a manifestation of Skynet itself, an AI designed to ensure humankind’s security, which long ago concluded that humankind itself was the problem.

Cameron would expand on the backstory of Skynet in Terminator 2: Judgement Day and, thanks to the peerless quali…

EA Sports is embarking on a huge re-branding exercise, with 2023 the first year it will release a football game without the FIFA imprimatur. The new-look EA Sports FC branding has been omnipresent at football matches and in coverage for a while now, but with EA ready to show off the game fans are finally getting a glimpse of what to expect. And it seems to be very bad faces. 

The cover for the EA Sports FC 24 ultimate edition has been revealed, featuring 30 football greats from the present and past, and wow does this thing go hard on the uncanny valley effect. Both male and female players are represented, various leagues and national teams, and the idea is clearly to show that, hey, this may have a new look but we’ve got all the stars of the game here.

At first glance it might look alright, particularly as the focal point is Erling Haaland in the middle and EA seems to have done a decent job of his face. But look at the others a little closer and you’ll soon see jus…

Last Moon is a retro 1990s RPG reminiscent of the early Legend of Zelda games with maybe a little bit of Wonder Boy in Monster Land thrown in, developed by the independent French team at Sköll Studio. Its wacky setting is a world that exists on top of a giant called If, which has become covered in corrupted creatures after the moon was somehow destroyed by human greed. This situation calls for a plucky Lunar Knight to restore order, and guess what? That’s you, my guy.

After waking up inside a gem held by an overgrown vine—look, I told you it was wacky—you set out on a quest that’s definitely going to involve some block-pushing puzzles and returning to previously locked-off areas to gain access to them once you’ve gained the ability to, say, remove a wall of thorns preventing your progress. There’s also a day-and-night cycle, with certain areas only being accessible in the dark, though of course things also get more dangerous at night.

You improve as a Lu…

Pot Boys, Pot Friends, Clay Bros, Cauldron Cuzs, Living Jars… it doesn’t matter what you call them: they seem nice. They were among the first memes to spawn from Elden Ring and it’s little wonder, because they’re a species of sentient and occasionally violent pot. It’s like Hayao Miyazaki and Lewis Carroll collaborated, and then, I dunno, Eli Roth barged in. Or, to put laboured references aside, it’s like Hayataka Miyazaki having a normal one.

A brief appearance in the first Elden Ring gameplay video vastly undersold how very many Pot Friends there ended up being in the base game, which is no bad thing because one can never be under-equipped with ceramic vessels, sentient or not. Even the Pot Friends who attack us in Elden Ring are charming: their moveset is lumbering and predictable so that if a Pot Friend hurts you it’s definitely your own stupid fault. Pot Friends are hilarious, gorgeous, whimsical, bumbling treasures, are they not? 

No: Pot Friends are ni…

If you happen to be a fan of multiplayer action in Crysis 3, Dead Space 2, Dante’s Inferno, or Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, you’re going to want to start squeezing in what you can, while you can, because Electronic Arts will be pulling the plug on all of them later this year.

The looming closures, first spotted by Pure Xbox, come as part of EA’s semi-regular housecleaning process for older games. “As games are replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the games that have been live for some time dwindles to a level—typically fewer than 1% of all peak online players across all EA titles—where it’s no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping the online services for these games up and running,” EA’s Online Service Shutdown page explains.

“We are also committed to constantly updating and improving the features and modes to keep in our games to ensure they remain exciting to play for as long as possible. T…

It’s been the better part of a year since the Elden Ring: Shadow of the Edrtree expansion was announced, and we’ve heard nothing of note about it since. The most recent financial report out of FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa brings both good news and bad on that front, which can be summed up in a single brief sentence: It’s coming along nicely.

“The release timing of DLC for Elden Ring has not yet been announced, but development is proceeding smoothly,” the report says. And that is the extent of it. For the true optimists hoping that a release target would be shared later in the report, as a sort of Columbo-style “just one more thing” surprise, I’m sorry to say that it’s not happening: In the Q&A section, Kadokawa repeats, “We are currently working hard on the development of DLC for Elden Ring but we have not announced a release date at this time.”

That presumably shoots down our assumption that Shadow of the Erdtree could be out in late 2023—it’s now Nove…

Pieces Interactive, the developer of the Alone in the Dark reboot that launched earlier this year, has been shut down by parent company Embracer Group.

Word of the closure came via Pieces Interactive’s Twitter feed, which posted an image containing the studio’s logo and the message “Pieces Interactive: 2007-2024. Thanks for playing with us.”

The studio’s website now carries the same image, as well as a longer message detailing the studio’s history since its founding in 2007. “In 2017, Pieces Interactive were acquired by Embracer Group after working with the expansion for Titan Quest, Titan Quest: Ragnarök and third expansion for Titan Quest, Titan Quest: Atlantis,” the message says. “Our last release was the reimagining of Alone in the Dark.”

Pieces Interactive’s Alone in the Dark reboot was good stuff. We called it “an intelligent reimagining of the 1992 classic” in our 76% review that, despite bugs and some occasional over-reliance on combat, delivered “th…

Epic Games and its CEO, Tim Sweeney, have been at war with Apple for years now. The present situation is this: Epic only wants to put Fortnite on iPhones and iPads if it can use its own store and payment processor instead of the official Apple App Store, which takes a 30% cut of revenue. Apple, meanwhile, would prefer it if Epic did not do that.

Epic didn’t get the ruling it wanted when it sued Apple over this issue in the US, but the story is different in Europe. The European Union’s 2022 Digital Markets Act now requires Apple to allow third-party marketplaces on iOS devices, which means that Epic can finally sell Fortnite V-bucks in Europe without paying Apple a cut for the privilege of accessing one of the world’s largest mobile device markets (except in the form of a brand new fee Apple has devised in response to the law, which Epic also takes issue with).

The time has finally come for the two companies to put the law into practice: Epic has announced that the Epic…

The recent success of TV shows inspired by games—Fallout, Cyberpunk, Halo, Castlevania—has prompted plenty of conversation about what other games might make for good television translations. Former Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider is one of the many people with thoughts on the matter, but even more interesting than which games he thinks would make for good television are the ones he believes would not.

“I imagine everyone would expect me to say Dragon Age, but that’d be a terrible idea,” Gaider said on Twitter. “I want to see a David Lynch-style (on acid) Disco Elysium. Or maybe Banishers.”

Gaider knows a thing or two about storytelling. He served as the lead writer on the Dragon Age games from Origin through Inquisition, has multiple Dragon Age-based novels to his name, and has design credits on Baldur’s Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, and Anthem. More recently he served as creative director on Stray Gods, a “genuinely thrilling, occasionally heartbrea…

Cooperative shooter Deep Rock Galactic will soon let players take its old seasons of stuff out of the closet and take them for a spin. That means the first four rounds of themed extra stuff to do in Deep Rock will be available as their own game modes alongside a separate Vanilla module that can spit out events and game modes from every season—and all of that’s coming as part of DRG season 5 this June.

As part of that, every single season’s tree of unlockables, their Performance Pass and Cosmetic Tree, will be put back in circulation as part of their own seasonal play mode. If you played that season before, you’ll get set back to where you were on that tree.

It’s an approach we’re seeing more and more limited-time-experience live service games adopt as time goes on: There’s a lot of game to play, so why restrict it to a limited amount of time when people might not be able to play it? With the notable exception of genre-leader Destiny 2, of course, which routinely re…

Sick of the sight of your keyboard? Well, you won’t be with the new Drop CSTM80 thanks to its novel quick-swap top case.

The CSTM80 is a tenkeyless board with a magnetic top case allowing for super-swift swaps. Simply pull the top case off and drop a different one on for a pretty comprehensive change in visual vibe. The standard fully-assembled CSTM80 comes with a black polycarbonate case for $149.

You can also choose from white, black, Laser Purple, Skiidata Orange, and Jasmine Green polycarbonate cases for $25 a pop. If you fancy something slightly more substantial, anodized silver and black aluminum top cases go for $59 each.

If the swappable top case is the main attraction, the rest of the package looks decent, too. Highlights include the gasket-mounted design, per-key RGB LEDs, custom ABS south-facing keycaps with shine-through side legends optimized for south-facing switches, PCBA mounted stabilizers, customizable weight and 5-pin switch support.

O…

EVO Japan 2023 took place from 31 March to 4 April, and was the first in-person Evo held in the country since 2020. Hosted at Tokyo Big Sight, the world’s premiere fighting game competition was coming home and hopes were high… but it all turned out to be a bit of a mess.

There were still plenty of great fights to be seen, eventually, but the problems were numerous. There were a lack of staff, the venue was cramped, disorganisation over brackets in certain games saw enormous downtime between matches, and many players complained about the game setups being laggy.

Some fans thought that players, rather unfairly, were being salty about losses, but Evo general manager Richard Thiher subsequently confirmed the technical issues. “It is important to confirm that Punk and others were right, the Evo Japan 2023 stage setup negatively impacted players,” said Thiher. “It is also necessary to confirm it was the stage and stream design itself, not the INZONE monitors. We …

Square Enix’s newest games aren’t doing so hot. Without any major releases in the three-month period from April to June, its net sales dropped by 18.4% from the same period last year. Overall, however, the company still made a 250.1% operating profit, largely due to its mobile and MMO games, which means Final Fantasy 14 is one of the main things keeping its “digital entertainment” financials positive.

In its latest earnings report, Square Enix says net sales and profits of its MMO games are one of the only things going up compared to the previous fiscal year. MMOs made up 68.4% of its operating profits, while its mobile games made up 31.1%. Interestingly, these numbers don’t even include FF14’s latest expansion, Dawntrail, which launched just last month. It seems like the usual lull before an expansion didn’t affect the 12-year-old MMO all that much and I wouldn’t be surprised if the next quarter sees the profits go up even higher.

In fact, Square Enix’s MMOs have been d…

We finally got our first word on Final Fantasy 16’s promised PC port since its initial announcement in September. Speaking with Famitsu (spotted via Genki_JPN on Twitter), FF16 developers Hiroshi Takai, Takeo Kujiraoka, and Naoki Yoshida (affectionately called Yoshi-P by fans) briefly touched on the PC version in a long interview about the game.

“Details will be announced in due course,” Yoshida replied to a question about recommended PC specs for the game. “However, I would like you to prepare an SSD… In FF16, a game where loading speed is critical, an HDD would be difficult to use.

“Of course, we will do our best to optimize as much as possible, but we cannot overcome the hardware barrier alone, so please consider that an SSD is a must.”

That makes plenty of sense: fast storage and the war on load times has been one of this console generation’s genuine technological leaps, and fast, cheap, high capacity SSDs are everywhere now. I built my last PC with a 25…

Dave the Diver is one of PC Gamer’s favourite games of 2023, no small feat in a year as crammed with great releases as this one has been. In his review from July, Chris called it “easily the best game of 2023” saying “When I finished the final boss at 35 hours in, I felt like I’d been on a real adventure, and the ending gently, but genuinely, tugged on my heartstrings.” Granted, this was before Baldur’s Gate 3 blew everyone away, but still a score of 91 is nothing to sniff at.

Naturally, we were hugely excited by what colourful, charming adventure developer Mintrocket might conjure up next. The good news is that its next game is coming much sooner than you’d expect, with a planned release in 2024. The…interesting news is that it’s a PvPvE Zombie Survival game called Nakwon: Last Paradise.

Nakwon is basically Escape from Tarkov, but with zombies. It sees players venturing out from a safe zone into zombie-strewn Seoul, scavenging resources to help them survive…

In July 2022 Ruja Ignatova, the self-styled ‘Cryptoqueen’ behind a pyramid scheme called OneCoin, was placed on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list. The Bulgarian-born Ignatova, accused of defrauding investors of billions, disappeared in 2017: the FBI reckons she travels with “armed guards” and “may have had plastic surgery”.

Believe it or not, the plastic surgery may be the least sensational aspect of this story. OneCoin appeared in 2014 and was essentially a multi-level marketing scam with crypto at the core. The exchange was closed in 2017 and, following Ignatova’s disappearance, she was subsequently charged with eight crimes in 2019, including wire fraud and securities fraud. The FBI added her to the most wanted list in 2022 with a $100,000 reward, later increasing it to $250,000. Now, it has increased that reward substantially: the question is why.

The reward for information leading to the arrest of Ruja Ignatova now stands at $5 million (£4 million). T…

There was an earlier time on the internet where it felt like there was a constant stream of little tchotchkes and gadgets to stumble upon and develop intense fixations over. I’m not sure what changed—learning firsthand how tight disposable income is probably had a part—but online trinkets don’t hit like they used to. Now, the only trinkets I see are what surfaces from the homogeneous soup of nerdy Etsy products and this one ad that inflicted me with the knowledge that there’s a niche market of dudes who want to buy beard straighteners. But today was different. Today, I found the Pixel Window. 

The Pixel Window is an in-development project from monoli, a Japanese material designer and art student-turned-engineering Ph.D. who blends those backgrounds to, as a Google translation of monoli’s webshop puts it, create “a small laboratory you can wear.” Monoli’s made a series of wearable and handheld prisms, including color-diffracting cubes and the Pixel Mi…