Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

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Monday news, part two:

The Darkening of Tristram returns to Diablo 3
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-darkening-of-tristram-returns-to-diablo-3/
The Darkening of Tristram has returned to Diablo 3. For the last few years, Blizzard has celebrated the original Diablo’s anniversary by hurtling Diablo 3 players back into the past, into an homage of its progenitor. Take a trip back in time and you’ll net yourself a few rewards, including a wee Butcher minion that follows you around, menacing people.

Steel Division developer says employees were fired for 'inappropriate' behavior
https://www.pcgamer.com/steel-division-developer-eugen-systems-fires-six-staff-amid-row-about-fair-pay/
Update: Eugen Systems has issued a statement saying that the dismissal of the employees was not related to the 2018 labor dispute at the studio, but because they "used a professional tool for an inappropriate purpose."

The next Atlas update lets players eat shit and die
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-next-atlas-update-lets-players-eat-shit-and-die/
On January 7, Atlas developer Grapeshot Games is hoping to push out a patch that will, among many positive changes, make eating poop a death sentence. It doesn't specify whose poop you have to eat, but I'm assuming any old turd will, come Monday, turn would-be fecal feasters into corpses.

Red Dead Redemption 2 claims 7 Game Developers Choice Award nominations
https://www.pcgamer.com/red-dead-redemption-2-claims-7-game-developers-choice-award-nominations/
The Game Developers Choice Awards are held in conjunction with the IGF, but cover all games and platforms, from indies and mobiles to big-budget mega-hits. Red Dead Redemption 2 tops this year's list with seven nominations, followed by God of War and Marvel's Spider-Man, which drew six nominations each. The PC is championed by Return of the Obra Dinn, which collected four nominations including Best Narrative, Best Visual Art, the Innovation Award, and Game of the Year.

Slay the Spire adds Steam Workshop mod support
https://www.pcgamer.com/slay-the-spire-adds-steam-workshop-mod-support/
Slay the Spire finishes its run in Early Access on January 23, but that impending deadline hasn't stopped the developers from pushing out a major new feature in the first patch of the year. Patch 54, released on Thursday, includes Steam Workshop support for modders who want to make their own cards or other changes. All you have to do to enable mod support is choose "Play with mods" from a new launcher when you start the game. Presumably this will disable Steam Achievements, but we haven't verified for ourselves yet (and achievements aren't mentioned in the patch notes).

14 Days of Fortnite is coming back next week
https://www.pcgamer.com/14-days-of-fortnite-is-coming-back-next-week/
Epic decided a couple of days ago that, because it had incorrectly listed the end date for the 14 Days of Fortnite event on social media channels, it would give the Equalizer Glider reward to everyone who had completed at least one of the challenges during the event. Now it's decided that decision was not actually the decision it wanted to make, and so it's bringing back the event next week so players can have another shot at earning any rewards they may have missed out on.

Doom composer Mick Gordon recruits heavy metal choir for next soundtrack
https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-composer-mick-gordon-recruits-heavy-metal-choir-for-next-soundtrack/
Mick Gordon, the composer behind the soundtracks for Wolfenstein: The New Order, Killer Instinct and 2016's Doom, is pulling together a choir of heavy metal screamers for his next game.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2019 is now live
https://www.pcgamer.com/awesome-games-done-quick-2019-is-now-live/
The 2019 edition of the week-long Awesome Games Done Quick, the world's largest speedrunning event, is now live. The first day includes runs of Hollow Knight, Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter and a Portal race. You can watch all of them on the Games Done Quick Twitch channel (or in the player above)—after a short pre-show, it'll launch straight into speedruns.

FutureGrind looks like a neon, futuristic Trials game in its stunt-filled trailer
https://www.pcgamer.com/futuregrind-looks-like-a-neon-futuristic-trials-game-in-its-stunt-filled-trailer/
FutureGrind looks a bit like a far-future version of Trials, the series of tough 2.5D motocross racers. The focus, judging by the new gameplay video above, is a mixture of survival and stunts: you grind your brightly-coloured bikes along neon rails, backflipping your way between rails to build up a combo. If you touch the wrong-coloured rail, you explode.

Get a sneak peek at Anthem's latest Javelin in the new trailer
https://www.pcgamer.com/get-a-sneak-peek-at-anthems-latest-javelin-in-the-new-trailer/
The latest trailer for Anthem has appeared ahead of CES 2019, showing off lots of striking environments full of Javelins and monsters battering the snot out of each other.
Not surprisingly for an Nvidia trailer, the focus is on eye candy, and crikey does Anthem look pretty. The not-quite-open-worlds of BioWare games past, such as Inquisition and Andromeda, even when they were pretty large, never felt quite as liberating as, say, Skyrim or The Witcher 3's Northern Realms. They always felt constructed rather than believable places. Anthem's world, so far, looks not only gorgeous, but more tangible, too.

It looks like The Elder Scrolls Online is going to Elsweyr
https://www.pcgamer.com/it-looks-like-the-elder-scrolls-online-is-going-to-elsweyr/
The Elder Scrolls Online is heading to Elsweyr, home of the fluffy khajiit. The official Twitter account teased the MMO's next expansion, which will be properly revealed in a livestream on January 15. "Cat's out of the bag," the tweet reads. It seems to confirm datamined expansion details that appeared a few hours before.

Valve doled out nearly six months' worth of bans after CS:GO went free to play
https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-doled-out-nearly-six-months-worth-of-bans-after-csgo-went-free-to-play/
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive had one of its best ever months after going free to play, and a record number of VAC bans were doled out on Steam as a consequence. Over 600,000 accounts received VAC bans in December, with the first wave of bans happening days after CS:GO shed its price.