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

[JEMC]

Let's go with the Friday news!

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Fanatical has a new Star Deal and a new bundle:

• The new Star Deal is The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, 58% off during 24 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/the-great-ace-attorney-chronicles
• The new Prestige Collection BYOB features 19 titles to choose to make your 2, 3 or 4 games bundle: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/prestige-collection-build-your-own-bundle
• Also, you may be interested in the Golden Bundle, and the chance to win $2,000 worth of PC games and ebooks, or be one of the 100 runners up and get a a $5 coupon. Learn more here: https://www.fanatical.com/en/blog/explaining-golden-bundles-winners-and-more

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

Unreal Engine 5.2 Burned Dead Forest Tech Demo Released
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/unreal-engine-5-2-burned-dead-forest-tech-demo-released/
MAWI United has released a brand new amazing Unreal Engine 5.2 tech demo that PC users can download right now. This tech demo features a 2sqkm procedural burned forest that users can freely roam.
According to the team, this tech demo takes full advantage of Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen and Nanite techs. The entire 2sqkm forest is made up of billions of Nanite triangles of custom photogrammetry scanned trees, plants, rocks, debris etc.
>> There are two videos of the demo.

You're going to start getting 'Epic Rewards' on the Epic Games Store
https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-rewards-announcement/
Starting today, the Epic Games Store has a rewards program called, predictably, "Epic Rewards." No sign-up is required to participate: Two weeks after you make an eligible purchase on the Epic Games Store, you'll receive 5% back in the form of "Rewards" which can be spent on future EGS purchases.
5% of a $60 game is $3, which is nothing to sneeze at, unless you're currently experiencing seasonal allergies like I am. I sneezed at it twice.
As with all of these things, terms and conditions apply. One of those conditions is that Rewards eventually expire, but they've got a long shelf life: two years after you receive them. (25 months to be exact.)

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

This woman married 63 people in Stardew Valley, including, uh, Zoro from One Piece, and she refuses to stop there
https://www.pcgamer.com/this-woman-married-63-people-in-stardew-valley-including-uh-zoro-from-one-piece-and-she-refuses-to-stop-there/
I don't know what the partner cap on polyamory is, but this determined Stardew Valley player has definitely surpassed it by marrying 63 people simultaneously. If you have clocked the fact that there are not 63 people in the entirety of Pelican Town, Calico Desert, or Ginger Island from update 1.5, then you will not be surprised to hear that this was achieved with a hell of a lot of mods.
Streamer Yinny has posted quite a lot of modded Stardew Valley videos (many of which involve sexual dialogue mods so do beware the links) and last year undertook the challenge of simultaneously marrying 23 people in Stardew Valley. She achieved that feat with Free Love, a mod which allows you to have multiple spouses. I expected "multiple" to be, you know, like three maybe.
But even 23 was not enough for Yinny, who has now gone on to marry a total of 63 people in Stardew Valley. She's shown off her entire village (and then some) of spouses, who march into bed together each night with a full earthquake of plip plop footsteps and holy hell is it a sight to behold.

Fans mourn as Activision stomps COD mod project two years in the making: 'Any chance we had of feeling that arcadey style of Call of Duty again is gone'
https://www.pcgamer.com/fans-mourn-as-activision-stomps-cod-mod-project-two-years-in-the-making-any-chance-we-had-of-feeling-that-arcadey-style-of-call-of-duty-again-is-gone/
A fan-made COD client two years in the making has been suddenly and summarily squelched by Activision lawyers. SM² was a modding project that aimed to create a "Call of Duty client … with all new features, weapons, perks, streaks, maps, QOL changes and more," until one of its team members received a cease & desist letter from Activision last Wednesday. SM² began life in 2021 as a way to make its creators' "dream Call of Duty game," a mish-mash of systems, maps and modes from a range of CODs. It seemed to be trucking along pretty well, too: Its https://sm2.gg/devblog-4/">most recent devblog update (now only available via the Wayback Machine after the Activision takedown) was from April 21, and informed fans that the project would be making the switch from the original Modern Warfare 2 engine to the Modern Warfare 2019 engine, "for technical reasons".

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gets a first-person mod
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-gets-a-first-person-mod/
Modder ‘trevix’ has released a must-have first-person mod for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This mod will allow you to explore the world of Hyrule via a first-person perspective.
Going into more details, this mod removes the UI elements on Purah’s pad Camera app. However, the game will automatically switch to a third-person perspective during combat, jumping and swimming.
>> There's a less than 2 minutes video of the mod.

GAMING NEWS

Sony details its future PC strategy for its first-party games
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/sony-details-its-future-pc-strategy-for-its-first-party-games/
In the past couple of years, Sony released numerous of its first-party games on PC. And while most of these releases were commercial successes, Sony seems willing to retain the big gap between the PS5 and PC releases of its first-party games.