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

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The Thursday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

The Epic Store gives away Golden Light: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/golden-light-f543b3.
Next week, they'll give away EARTHLOCK and Surviving the Aftermath.

GOG has launched a new Bethesda Publisher Sale, with up to 85% discounts until Monday , the 13th: https://www.gog.com/en/promo/20231109_bethesda_publisher_sale.

Steam has three new deals/sales:

• It may be more focused to Chinese players because of the 11/11 date, but the Steam China Indie Games Week has up to 80% deals until November, 15th: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/double11
• The Dead Island Definitive Collection is going to be 86% off until... some unknown time. But given that the individual games will also be on sale until the 15th, it's safe to assume when this deal will end: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/320/Dead_Island_Definitive_Collection/
• The Armistice 2023 sale, the sale for the War Child Charity, features up to 90% discounts. Some deals will end the 15th while others will last until the 21st: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/armistice2023

The Humble Store has a new Gearbox Publisher Sale, with up to 90% discounts during 6 days. There are keys for Steam, EGS and direct downloads: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/gearbox-publisher-sale/.

Fanatical has three new 24 hours Flash Deals, that may be the last ones:

• Resident Evil Village Gold Edition has a 50% discount: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/resident-evil-village-gold-edition
• The Forgotten City will be 65% off: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/the-forgotten-city
• And Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe Edition gets a 94% deal: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/sniper-elite-4-deluxe-edition

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

Valve is working on a new Steam feature that will let you hide all those weird sex games from your friends
https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-is-working-on-a-new-steam-feature-that-will-let-you-hide-all-those-weird-sex-games-from-your-friends/
Valve appears to be working on a new feature for Steam that will let you mark individual games as "private," which will let you keep your profile public while preventing all your friends from knowing just how much time you spend playing Horny Housewives Booty Call Blackmail. (Or, you know, whatever.)
Currently, the privacy options on Steam are limited: You can set your profile, or individual parts of it (game details, friends list, and inventory), to public, friends only, or private. That provides some control over what the rest of the Steam universe can know about you, but it's an all-or-nothing solution that lacks flexibility.
The addition of a per-game privacy option, spotted and shared on Twitter by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik, promises to go a long way toward addressing that shortcoming. Steam users will be able to mark individual games as "private," which will keep other Steam users—even their friends—from seeing it.

Windows 11's color blindness filters no longer add latency or hurt performance in games
https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-11s-color-blindness-filters-no-longer-add-latency-or-hurt-performance-in-games/
Microsoft has added new colour filter settings to the latest Windows 11 Insider build, which should be of major benefit to PC gamers with colour blindness.
The main hook of the update are two new sliders: an intensity slider for the OS-wide colour filters and a colour boost slider. The intensity slider affects how much a filter impacts colours across your display, while colour boost will change how vivid those colours are. They're sort of two sides to the same coin, but the gist is you'll now be able to have much greater control over the colour filters already in the OS, which include those for deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia, as well as grayscale.
Importantly, however, this update also makes better use of your GPU hardware so that these filters can be applied without any performance impact.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

New First-Person Mods Released for Mass Effect Legendary Edition
https://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/new-first-person-mods-released-for-mass-effect-legendary-edition/
Modder ‘Aphar’ has released new cool mods for the first two Mass Effect games in the Legendary Edition. These mods will allow you to play these games in first-person mode.
What’s neat about these new FP mods is that when Shepard is in combat and not in cover, you’ll be able to see him. The way you use cover will also really matter in the game. After all, the mods completely changed all the combat cameras to fit this new viewpoint. This means you can peek around corners and shoot from different angles, and there’s also a cool new lean feature.
Exploring the environments is now easier and more enjoyable. The game also feels more responsive. When you stop moving, there won’t be that annoying extra step that occurs in the vanilla version. Plus, when you sprint, you can turn faster, and it won’t mess up your field of view. Instead, there’s a tiny camera wobble to make it feel like you’re running. Oh, and those elevator rides are now in first-person too.
>> There's an over 4 minutes video of the mod.

'Very Handsome and Beautiful Withers' Baldur's Gate 3 mod turns your camp's ugly skeleton into a bone-ified sex symbol
https://www.pcgamer.com/very-handsome-and-beautiful-withers-baldurs-gate-3-mod-turns-your-camps-ugly-skeleton-into-a-bone-ified-sex-symbol/
The various party members of Baldur's Gate 3 are, of course, staggeringly beautiful. Whether we're talking Ventrue Stewie Griffin, Reddit the wizard, or the jolly green fascist, all of them (plus all their pals) could easily take their turn on the catwalk if the mood struck them.
That goes for everyone in your camp save one. Poor old Withers, the 1-hit-point wonder who stands apart from the rest of your crew doling out revives, respecs, and resurrected minions to do your bidding when no one in the usual crew will do. While the old bag of bones has a beautiful mind, his physical appearance is somewhere between Tutankhamun and a hairless cat. I'm sure that does it for someone in the comments, but he's not likely to grace the cover of GQ anytime soon.
That is, until now. Thanks to the enterprising work of modder-slash-beautician neonbutchery, Withers can now keep up with the rest of the BG3 in the modelling leagues. Very Handsome and Beautiful Withers is a mod and self-described "cursed artifact" that, once dropped into the Baldur's Gate 3/Data folder, will turn the man himself into a veritable smoothskin: all chiseled jawlines, razor cheekbones and a set of, let's be honest, outrageously kissable lips. Just dreamy, like a sexy Easter Island head.
>> The article has one screenshot.

GAMING NEWS

New Starfield Beta Patch adds official NVIDIA DLSS 3 support, brings GPU performance optimizations, improves CPU usage
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/new-starfield-beta-patch-adds-official-nvidia-dlss-3-support-brings-gpu-performance-optimizations-improves-cpu-usage/
Bethesda has just released a new beta patch for its space RPG, Starfield. The November 8th Update adds official support for NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation. Additionally, it packs both GPU and CPU performance optimizations.

First EA Sports WRC PC Patch released, adds shader pre-compilation
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/first-ea-sports-wrc-pc-patch-released-adds-shader-pre-compilation/
Codemasters just released a new update for the PC version of its rally racing game, EA Sports WRC. This update does something cool: it gets rid of those annoying stutters in the game when shaders are compiled. So, if you play the game on your PC, you won’t have to deal with those awful shader problems anymore.

Alone in the Dark gets a new 7-minute gameplay trailer
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/alone-in-the-dark-gets-a-new-7-minute-gameplay-trailer/
THQ Nordic just dropped a new gameplay trailer for Alone in the Dark. In this video, you get a whole 7 minutes of fresh gameplay, where Emily and Private Investigator Edward are searching to find Jeremy.

Alan Wake 2 Update 10 released, is 2GB in size, brings over 100 fixes, tweaks and improvements
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/alan-wake-2-update-10-released-is-2gb-in-size-brings-over-100-fixes-tweaks-and-improvements/
Remedy has just launched Update 10 for its horror game, Alan Wake 2, which brings over 100 fixes, tweaks and improvements. This patch fixes game-breaking critical issues blocking progress in the Scratch. So, that’s good news for those who have encountered them.

Dying Light 2 Community Patch 3 Released and Detailed
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/dying-light-2-community-patch-3-released-and-detailed/
Techland just dropped the third community update for Dying Light 2: Stay Human. The team added some cool stuff that the community asked for in the Sneak Peek, like new features and improvements.

Take-Two plans to monetize the GTA5 FiveM & RDR2 RedM Mods
https://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/take-two-plans-to-monetize-the-gta-5-fivem-and-redm-mods/
In August 2023, Rockstar shared some big news. Rockstar said that they’ve teamed up with Cfx.re, the folks who made GTA 5 FiveM and RDR 2 RedM. And just yesterday, during Take-Two’s earnings conference call, Strauss Zelnick talked about their plans to monetize both FiveM and RedM.