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

[JEMC]

The second part of the news:

'It's a horrendous and shameful scam': Modern Warfare 3 plummets to one of Steam's worst-rated games as fans bombard it with Mostly Negative reviews
https://www.pcgamer.com/its-a-horrendous-and-shameful-scam-modern-warfare-3-plummets-to-one-of-steams-rated-games-as-fans-bombard-it-with-mostly-negative-reviews/
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's launch weekend has been… unfortunate. Between a "rushed campaign" and bizarre launcher woes, fans have channelled their frustration into critical Steam reviews. It's seen the game plummet to a Mostly Negative rating, getting it onto SteamDB's chart for the 100 worst games on the platform.
>> The Groot-like skin doesn't help either.

WoW Classic is doing Cataclysm because the fans, against all odds, are actually here for it: 'We got the survey data back, and it wasn’t bad'
https://www.pcgamer.com/wow-classic-is-doing-cataclysm-because-the-fans-against-all-odds-are-actually-here-for-it-we-got-the-survey-data-back-and-it-wasnt-bad/
World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion was… divisive. In the case of the Barrens, it was literally divisive—cleaving the once-beloved levelling zone in two. A landslide of other changes to old world content meant that, while The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King were pretty well-received, Cataclysm is the red-headed stepchild of Warcraft's earlier history—and that's to say nothing of its endgame content and patch cycle.
But, according to an interview by PCGamesN with executive producer Holly Longdale, the prospect of going back to Cataclysm isn't as unpopular as you might think. "Much like many players, [we] were like ‘Oh, God, are they gonna do Cataclysm?’ And we were like ‘why don’t we just ask?' … Then we got the survey data back, and it wasn't bad."
>> The director also did another interview, sharing some info about what's going on.

Amazon Games lays off 180 workers, says all people really want from Prime is free games
https://www.pcgamer.com/amazon-games-lays-off-180-workers-says-all-people-really-want-from-prime-is-free-games/
Amazon Games is laying off 180 employees, primarily focusing on its Prime-related offerings. The entire team from Crown Channel, an Amazon-backed channel on Amazon-owned Twitch, has been let go, and the news adds to a miserable pile of layoffs across the gaming and tech industries in 2023: Amazon itself made 100 job cuts in April.

Roblox faces class-action suit from parents about sexual content and grooming: 'Parents who would never let their kids use TikTok don’t think twice about letting them on Roblox'
https://www.pcgamer.com/roblox-faces-class-action-suit-from-parents-about-sexual-content-and-grooming-it-is-illegal-to-expose-minors-to-these-kinds-of-things-and-its-not-slowing-down/
Roblox's awesome growth in recent years has been long in the making, but such scale has brought a new level of scrutiny to what may now be the biggest single gaming experience in the world. There are all sorts of criticism faced by the platform, but the most serious by far relates to its overwhelmingly young audience (a February 2022 SEC filing says over 60 percent of Roblox users are under the age of 16, 55% 12 or under), and whether it does enough to protect them from bad actors and the type of content children should not be seeing. Many parents don't think it does enough. And not for the first time, some are taking action.

6 years after becoming publicly playable, Escape from Tarkov is adding vaulting and fans are a lot more excited about it than I would've expected
https://www.pcgamer.com/6-years-after-becoming-publicly-playable-escape-from-tarkov-is-adding-vaulting-and-fans-are-a-lot-more-excited-about-it-than-i-wouldve-expected/
The multiplayer FPS Escape from Tarkov went into alpha testing in 2016, and moved into beta—which is still ongoing—a year later. And now, six years after that, developer Battlestate Games is working on a new feature that has the community a-tingle with excitement: vaulting.

Coral Island, the farming life sim packed with shockingly attractive NPCs, is out on Steam
https://www.pcgamer.com/coral-island-the-farming-life-sim-packed-with-shockingly-attractive-npcs-is-out-on-steam/
Stop me if you've heard this before. You've just arrived in a small village on a secluded island that's fallen into disrepair, and the only thing that can save the town is some complete newbie doing a heck of a lot of farming. Yes, Coral Island has a lot in common with the best cozy games on PC, but those games have a formula for a reason: it works. I played about a dozen hours of Coral Island while it was in early access and except for the time I rage quit because a sprinkler I crafted was mildly disappointing, it's a perfectly enjoyable cozy farming and life sim.

505 Games' parent company lays off 30% of its workforce, says gamers really only want sequels so that's what it's going to make
https://www.pcgamer.com/505-games-parent-company-lays-off-30-of-its-workforce-says-gamers-really-only-want-sequels-so-thats-what-its-going-to-make/
The videogame industry continues to be plagued by layoffs as 505 Games parent company Digital Bros has announced plans to eliminate roughly 30% of its total workforce. The company said the cuts are necessary because, simply put, gamers prefer sequels and remakes to brand-new games, and so that's what it's going to focus on.
>> There's no mention of how many people will be affected, but almost a third of its workforce must be a lot of people.

Warhammer Quest is being delisted from Steam in December, but will remain available on GOG
https://www.pcgamer.com/warhammer-quest-is-being-delisted-from-steam-in-december-but-will-remain-available-on-gog/
Warhammer Quest was a well-liked Games Workshop board game from 1995, a halfway point between dungeon crawls like HeroQuest and tabletop roleplaying games. Its videogame adaptation was released on PC in 2015, and while its simplicity kept it from topping the list of the best Warhammer games, it made an ideal laptop time-filler. Which is why it's a shame that in October it was announced that Warhammer Quest is being delisted on Steam.
Ian Baverstock, director of publisher Chilled Mouse, told PC Gamer that December 12 will be the day of Warhammer Quest's removal from Steam, although "It isn't being delisted from GOG at this time." Presumably GOG is subject to different licensing terms, which makes sense given its original remit as the home of Good Old Games. Man O' War: Corsair, a kind of "Sid Meier's Pirates goes Warhammer", also suffered a delisting on Steam but remains available on GOG.

If they won't let Eidos do it, build your own Deus Ex in Shadows of Doubt's incoming modding update
https://www.pcgamer.com/if-they-wont-let-eidos-do-it-build-your-own-deus-ex-in-shadows-of-doubts-incoming-modding-update/
Immersive sims are a strange genre. Ultra influential, utterly beloved, but relatively thin on the ground. They're a delicate instrument: a difficult thing to get right and even when you nail it, certainly nowhere near as lucrative as your live-service whatevers and open-world thingummies. So every time we get a new one—and it's actually good—it feels like a bit of an event, as was the case when procgen detective sim Shadows of Doubt hit early access in April.
But here's the good news: It sounds like you'll be able to use the game's own tools to gin up your own immersive sims in the relatively near future. Developer ColePowered Games is targeting a December release for Shadows of Doubt's modding update, and has put out a bit more detail about what, precisely, the new tools will look like.

Payday 3 hasn't had updates because of a 'critical error in our backend', Starbreeze says the launch has been 'frustrating'
https://www.pcgamer.com/payday-3-hasnt-had-updates-because-of-a-critical-error-in-our-backend-starbreeze-says-the-launch-has-been-frustrating/
It's fair to say that Payday 3 hasn't had the smoothest of launches, but then it was never the easiest of sells. Payday 2 came out in 2013 and amassed a dedicated following, then Payday 3 came along and, on the surface at least, didn't seem to change an enormous amount about how the game worked but committed the cardinal sin of going live service and then… nothing. Since launch there have been plenty of complaints about its offering but only one minor patch, leaving players wondering what exactly was going on.
Well, Starbreeze producer Andreas Häll-Penninger calls this "the elephant in the room" and says "to make a long, complicated and technical story short we found a critical error in our backend update pipeline. As a result of this, there was a significant risk that any update we made could affect the player saves and progression.