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

[JEMC]

Let's go with the news. Again, all in one post:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

GOG celebrates the release of Real Heroes: Firefighter HD with a 34% discount until January 28: https://www.gog.com/game/real_heroes_firefighter

Steam has two new daily deals:

• Democracy 4, still in Early Access, is 25% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1410710/Democracy_4/
• And Deliver Us The Moon is 34% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/428660/Deliver_Us_The_Moon/

And Fanatical has a new Star Deal: Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York, 66% off for the next 24 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/vampire-the-masquerade-coteries-of-new-york

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

NVIDIA GeForce Hotfix 461.33 driver fixes SteamVR issues, resolves crashes
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/nvidia-geforce-hotfix-461-33-driver-fixes-steamvr-issues-resolves-crashes/
NVIDIA has released a brand new hotfix driver for its graphics cards. According to the release notes, the NVIDIA GeForce Hotfix 461.33 driver fixes some stuttering issues that occurred in all SteamVR games.
Furthermore, this driver fixes some crashes in Detroit: Become Human and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Additionally, it resolves an issue that could cause Adobe Premiere Pro to freeze when using Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration.
>> Available from here.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Dragon Age: Origins receives an AI-enhanced HD Texture Pack, improving over 2200 textures
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/dragon-age-origins-ai-enhanced-hd-texture-pack/
Modder ‘NewActionPotential’ released a HD Texture Pack for Dragon Age: Origins that overhauls over 2200 textures. In order to achieve this, the modder used AI techniques, meaning that these new textures retain the style of the original textures.
Going into more details, NewActionPotential used ESRGAN in order to upscale over 2200 textures by 2x or 4x. In addition, multiple pre-trained models were used to reduce DDS compression artifacts, remove anti-aliasing, and add detail.
>> It weighs 4.6GB and you can find it at Nexus Mods.

GAMING NEWS

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint is free to play until January 25th
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/tom-clancys-ghost-recon-breakpoint-is-free-to-play-until-january-25th/
Ubisoft has announced that Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint will be free to play for a limited time. From today and until January 25th, PC gamers will be able to download and play this latest Ghost Recon game.

PUBG Update 10.2 released on PC, adds PGI.S livestream and new reputation system
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/pubg-update-10-2-released-on-pc-adds-pgi-s-livestream-and-new-reputation-system/
PUBG Corporation has released Update 10.2 for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. As the press release reads, Patch 10.2 builds on the momentum of Season 10 by supporting its next esports event PGI.S in a big way, introducing a new reputation system, a new vehicle, and updates to Ranked Mode.

Check out some magic harpoon fighting in Olija, an upcoming game from Devolver
https://www.pcgamer.com/olija-gameplay-footage/
As Evan pointed out the other day, we're in a quiet period for game releases. Hitman 3 is great, but a lot of developers are starting 2021 by hunkering down and plugging away at games scheduled for later in the year or beyond. One small exception is Olija, which will be out on Steam at the end of this month, and which features a pretty cool magic harpoon—perhaps in time to benefit from the internet's sudden fascination with sea shanties.

Gabe Newell says Valve has 'games in development that we're going to be announcing'
https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-says-valve-has-games-in-development-that-were-going-to-be-announcing/
(...)
Newell also touched on the topic of Half-Life 3 (or, more accurately, the topic of why he refuses to discuss the topic of Half-Life 3) and "Citadel," an apparent codename for something that may or may not be in the works at Valve. Despite his refusal to actually talk about either, he did confirm that Valve has new projects in the works, and maybe more importantly a renewed enthusiasm for game development driven by the success of Half-Life: Alyx.

Magical 3D platformer Balan Wonderworld is getting a beefy demo on Steam next week
https://www.pcgamer.com/magical-3d-platformer-balan-wonderworld-is-getting-a-beefy-demo-on-steam-next-week/
Balan Wonderworld, the whimsical action-platformer from the creators of games including Sonic the Hedgehog, Nights into Dreams, and Phantasy Star Online, is set to arrive on Steam in March. You'll be able to see what it's all about next week, though, with the arrival of a beefy demo offering roughly two hours of solo or local co-op gameplay in parts of three of the game's 12 realms.

These are the 31 gaming companies Tencent invested in last year
https://www.pcgamer.com/these-are-the-31-gaming-companies-tencent-invested-in-last-year/
Tencent Games, the world's largest gaming company (and China's second biggest tech firm), has its fingers in a lot of pies. In the gaming industry, it has investments in companies like Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and Epic. But in 2020, Tencent closed 300 percent more deals than it had the previous year—adding a whopping 31 gaming companies to its list of investments and acquisitions.
>> They're going to dominate everything.

So, who's making Call of Duty: Warzone now?
https://www.pcgamer.com/cod-warzone-developer/
Call of Duty: Warzone is rapidly becoming a bigger part of Activision's business. As a free-to-play battle royale game with over 80 million players when last we checked, it's easily the biggest Call of Duty thing going on right now, and that's including the newer Black Ops - Cold War. In its first year it seemed clear that Infinity Ward was leading development, but the Modern Warfare studio has gone completely silent about the game in the past month.

Valorant's worst map just got a major rework
https://www.pcgamer.com/valorants-worst-map-just-got-a-major-rework/
Ah, Split: both the name of Valorant's worst map and a description of what I'd like to do whenever I have to play it. The high-rise hellscape is the subject of Valorant's new 2.1 patch. Riot is aiming to make the map easier to attack across the board. After seeing the map rework for myself, I may not have to hate Split anymore.

Minecraft gets glowing squids in its new Caves & Cliffs snapshot
https://www.pcgamer.com/minecraft-gets-glowing-squids-in-its-new-caves-and-cliffs-snapshot/
The forthcoming Minecraft Caves & Cliffs update is still a while away, but dedicated players have already sampled its wares in the form of content snapshots. The latest of these, memorably titled 21W03A, adds glowing squids and glowing lichen to the Java Edition of the game.

Golf With Your Friends bought by Team17 for £12 million
https://www.pcgamer.com/golf-with-your-friends-bought-by-team17-for-pound12-million/
Team17 has acquired the rights and assets for Golf With Your Friends for £12million ($16.4million USD.) The acquisition should mean some extra DLC on the horizon, as well as a possible sequel: Team17 announced alongside the news that it hopes to "create additional opportunities to extend the life cycle of the existing game" (thanks, GamesIndustry.)

Critters for Sale is a psychedelic point-and-click fever dream, out in 2021
https://www.pcgamer.com/critters-for-sale-is-a-psychedelic-point-and-click-fever-dream-out-in-2021/
I'm not sure exactly what I just played after finishing the demo for Critters for Sale. It's the first short story in a bigger collection of five point-and-click episodes all encased in gritty 1-bit visuals. If every other episode in the full game, which releases on June 3, is as bonkers and surreal as the first one, we're in for a wild ride.

Hitman 3's save transfer site is buckling under the pressure
https://www.pcgamer.com/hitman-3s-save-transfer-site-is-buckling-under-the-pressure/
A website designed to help seasoned assassins carry over their Hitman 2 progression into Hitman 3 is struggling to keep up with demand, says developer IO Interactive.
A major feature of the final entry in this Hitman trilogy is that it carries over player progression from the previous two games. Despite some confusion around launch about how the game being an Epic exclusive may affect this, it's now confirmed that Hitman 1 & 2 owners on Steam will get to carry their own Agent 47s over to Epic copies of Hitman 3. But this involves a site built to manage this one-time transfer and, with demand high, it is experiencing some major issues.

Activision Blizzard is currently valued at $72 billion
https://www.pcgamer.com/activision-blizzard-is-currently-valued-at-dollar72-billion/
Activision Blizzard's total worth is now estimated to be around a whopping $72 billion (£52.5bn) with stock prices sitting at $95 a share—the highest it has been since 1984 (when there were many, many less shares in the company). As noted by The Wall Street Journal the company's share price has been on a steady rise since December 2020.

Dyson Sphere Program's planetary production lines enter early access
https://www.pcgamer.com/dyson-sphere-programs-planetary-production-lines-enter-early-access/
Interstellar factory-builder Dyson Sphere Program has begun cracking open planets with today's launch on Steam Early Access.
Following the game's announcement last year, Fraser described DSP as a kind of interstellar Factorio—and sure, with the way you lay out planet-spanning conveyor belts and production pipelines, there's more than a passing resemblance to Wube Software's time-destroying sim. But for me, the image of a dinky robot running around gathering resources on spherical worlds instantly calls to mind Uber Entertainment's underappreciated RTS Planetary Annihilation.