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

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"Tuesday" news, the second part:

Withers wasn't joking—ruining the vibe in Baldur's Gate 3's new epilogue is punishable by death
https://www.pcgamer.com/withers-wasnt-jokingruining-the-vibe-in-baldurs-gate-3s-new-epilogue-is-punishable-by-death/
A little while before the fifth Patch of Baldur's Gate 3 came along, I wrote up this news post about a teaser image Larian Studios had shared on Twitter, featuring Withers in a silly little hat warning "fun is mandatory".
I joked about being scared at the time. Little did I know, I was very right to be. If you rain on Withers' carefully constructed parade, his cosmic wrath is mighty. This was actually brought to my attention by camilams on the Baldur's Gate 3 subreddit, but I figured I'd boot up my save to test it myself. (Sorry, Volo. You were the only person I could bring myself to harm.)

Elden Ring's producer says development of its Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is 'going well', compares it to Bloodborne with 'new battles and new characters'
https://www.pcgamer.com/elden-rings-producer-says-development-of-its-shadow-of-the-erdtree-expansion-is-going-well-compares-it-to-bloodborne-with-new-battles-and-new-characters/
FromSoftware recently received a gong for Elden Ring at the Japanese PlayStation Partners awards, as part of which producer Yasuhiro Kitao picked up the trophy and said a select few words to the press. The conference was reported on by the publication Game Watch and, as Kitao was speaking in Japanese, this is a lightly edited machine translation of his remarks.
(...)
Then the question about Elden Ring's DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, which doesn't even have a release date yet. Kitao doesn't really say anything of substance, but the exciting point is that he uses the 'B' word. "I'll talk about the DLC another time," says Kitao. "It's still a little ways off, but progress is going well. Like Bloodborne's expansion, it has new battles and new characters: So please look forward to new things."

Payday studio Starbreeze is working on a co-op multiplayer D&D game, and the more I think about it the more it makes sense
https://www.pcgamer.com/payday-studio-starbreeze-is-working-on-a-co-op-multiplayer-dandd-game-and-the-more-i-think-about-it-the-more-it-makes-sense/
If you've ever thought to yourself that the Payday games are great but they'd be even better if they replaced the guns and bank vaults with swords, spells, and treasure chests, Starbreeze Studios has some oddly-specific good news. Its next big project is a "co-operative multiplayer" game set in the fantasy RPG world of Dungeons and Dragons.
To be fair, I don't know if Project Baxter, as the new game is known internally, will really be something akin to Payday: D&D. Starbreeze described Baxter as "the next AAA title in our niche of cooperative multiplayer games" in its August financial report, when it was still negotiating for the license, but also seemed eager to differentiate it, saying "it is a completely new project, in a completely new genre, compared to Payday."

Ark: Survival Ascended lead designer Jeremy Stieglitz admits 'the servers are ass, they run like ass, and their stability is ass'
https://www.pcgamer.com/ark-survival-ascended-lead-designer-jeremy-stieglitz-admits-the-servers-are-ass-they-run-like-ass-and-their-stability-is-ass/
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"Firstly, I wanna say the servers are ass, they run like ass, and their stability is ass," Studio Wildcard co-founder and Ark co-creator Jeremy Stieglitz said on a recent Extra Life charity Twitch livestream. (The full stream is here.)
"We need to improve it," Stieglitz added. "It's gonna be improved imminently."

EA announces layoffs at F1 developer Codemasters 'to meet evolving business needs and priorities'
https://www.pcgamer.com/ea-announces-layoffs-at-f1-developer-codemasters-to-meet-evolving-business-needs-and-priorities/
2023 isn't over yet, and neither are the game industry layoffs that have been such an ugly hallmark of the year. Electronic Arts has confirmed with IGN that it has laid off an unspecified number of employees from Codemasters, the developer of the Grid, F1, and EA Sports WRC racing games.

Rockstar devs react to Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer leak: 'This f***ing sucks'
https://www.pcgamer.com/rockstar-devs-react-to-grand-theft-auto-6-trailer-leak-this-fing-sucks/
It's not fun for developers when trailers leak early for their games, but I imagine even less so when your studio has something new to share as rarely as Rockstar does. The studio planned to premiere the first GTA 6 trailer tomorrow morning. People were so excited about it that thousands were sitting around in the livestream chat 24 hours ahead of time to get hyped about the game. Then, earlier today, the full trailer leaked onto X with an ugly crypto watermark glazed over the center of the screen.
This forced Rockstar's hand: The leaker's account was suspended, but rather than let that pixellated, partially obscured version of the trailer circulate for the next 12 hours, Rockstar went ahead and posted the official trailer on YouTube early. It's a good trailer, but some Rockstar employees are annoyed that their big reveal was moved forward by a leak, and I can't blame them.
>> Looking at the bright side, the trailer had over 60 million views in 12 hours... now likely a lot more.