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

[JEMC]

It's Tuesday and these are the news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Steam's Top 10

(Click here for the Top 100)

Football Manager 2024 is the best-selling entry in series history with 7 million gum-chewing devotees, studio pays tribute to 'incredible community of players'
https://www.pcgamer.com/football-manager-2024-sells-7-million-and-pays-tribute-to-the-incredible-community-of-players-that-we-first-started-talking-to-directly-in-the-internets-infancy-in-the-early-90s/
Football Manager is one of those games that now feels like an institution. I play the newest entry and, even though it's a much-improved and more sophisticated experience, I am still in some sense a teenage boy at a beige PC with my treasured copy of Championship Manager 97/98. I've been playing some version of this game on-and-off for a quarter of a century.
Sports Interactive was founded in 1994 and has specialised in this one game ever since (with a few short-lived forays into hockey and baseball management). It has built a huge and loyal fanbase devoted to the Football Manager series, and has established the game as such an accurate simulation of the real world that it is now used in aspects of the sport (hell, there are even pro managers who credit the game with their careers).
So the news that Football Manager 2024 has become the best-selling entry in series history feels both unsurprising and richly deserved. Sports Interactive has announced that last week saw the game record "its seven millionth player" which beats the previous record of 6.88 million players set by Football Manager 2023. SI notes that the latter figure was achieved over that game's lifespan, but "FM24 broke that record in less than 100 days."
>> I remember that Ka-pi loved the series. What about you, does any of you also play it? Anyway, congrats to the studio and Sega.

Steam has new deals for us, including new weeklong deals:

• West Hunt will be free to try during 2 days and 50% off until the 19th of February: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1570330/West_Hunt/
• Koei Tecmo's Spring Festival Sale features up to 75% discounts until February, 19th: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/KOEITECMO/sale/lny24
• The RPG Maker 2024 Festival puts its games up to 90% off until the 19th: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/RPGMaker2024
• Vagrus - The Riven Realms gets a 40% discount until the 26th of February: https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660/Vagrus__The_Riven_Realms/
• And this is a sample of the weeklong deals:
  • The Last Faith is 20% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1274600/The_Last_Faith/
  • Cloud Gardens features a 33% discount: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1372320/Cloud_Gardens/
  • Stellar Tactics, still in Early Access, gets a 50% deal: https://store.steampowered.com/app/465490/Stellar_Tactics/
  • Circle Empires is going to be 75% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/834740/Circle_Empires/
  • And the last one, Rogue Legacy, features an 80% discount: https://store.steampowered.com/app/241600/Rogue_Legacy/

Fanatical has a new Star Deal and a new sale:

• The new Star Deal is Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, 83% off during 24 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night
• The RPG Maker Festival is also present here, with up to 90% discounts during 5 days: https://www.fanatical.com/en/franchises/rpg-maker

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready 551.52 driver
https://videocardz.com/driver/nvidia-geforce-game-ready-551-52

Highlights
Game Ready for Skull and Bones
This new Game Ready Driver provides the best gaming experience for the latest new games supporting DLSS technology including Skull and Bones which features DLSS Super Resolution.

What’s New in Release 550

• Support for CUDA 12.4.
• Adds support for RTX Video HDR.
• Adds support for the “Auto” setting for RTX Video Super Resolution.
• Adds support for NVIDIA Ultra Low Latency Mode with DirectX 12 titles.
• Adds the latest performance improvements, bug fixes, and driver enhancements

Fixed Issues

Fixed Gaming Bugs

• Some users may experience intermittent micro-stuttering in games when vertical sync is enabled [4445940]
• Red Dead Redemption 2: Stutter observed on some Advanced Optimus notebooks [4425987]
• Immortals of Aveum: Addresses stability issues over extended gameplay [4415277]

Fixed General Bugs

• Potential stutter may be observed when scrolling in web browsers on certain system configurations [4362307]

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

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GAMING NEWS

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director wants series vets and newbies alike to be surprised by its twist and turns, seeing the remake as more than 'just a callback'
https://www.pcgamer.com/final-fantasy-7-rebirths-director-wants-series-vets-and-newbies-alike-to-be-surprised-by-its-twist-and-turns-seeing-the-remake-as-more-than-just-a-callback/
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth isn't coming to PC any time soon—but there are signs of hope, which means I'm allowed to be hyped for it, and definitely won't get burned by a year-long wait. Especially not after finishing the FF7 Remake last week. (I'm hoping if I write this down, it'll become real).
Until then I'll be dodging spoilers—and it looks like there'll be plenty of fresh ones to avoid. That's according to an interview with the game's director Tetsuya Nomura over on Automaton last week.

Dead Cells' designer livid at former studio for ending support for the game in 'worst a**hole move imaginable'
https://www.pcgamer.com/dead-cells-designer-livid-at-former-studio-for-ending-support-for-the-game-in-worst-ahole-move-imaginable/
Late last week came the news that, seven years after its early access release, original developers Motion Twin and DLC developers Evil Empire will be ending work on Dead Cells. Evil Empire was set up as a satellite studio to support the game and had been working on it for over five years, creating four DLCs and 18 updates including the recent (and excellent) Castlevania crossover, but now says it's moving on to "secret projects".
The news didn't seem like an enormous surprise: Dead Cells has been wildly successful, and has had great post-launch support, but it's now an absolutely huge game and seven years of updates seems pretty healthy. But the game's designer and a co-founder of Motion Twin, Sébastien Benard, has a very different take: this guy is absolutely furious about it, and seems to think Evil Empire is being thrown under the bus.

Rocksteady applauds players for 'breaking' Suicide Squad with infinite damage scaling bug, but decides to fix it and start a new leaderboard
https://www.pcgamer.com/rocksteady-applauds-players-for-breaking-suicide-squad-with-infinite-damage-scaling-bug-but-decides-to-fix-it-and-start-a-new-leaderboard/
Rocksteady's Suicide Squad has finally arrived, and been met with something of a mixed reception. (...)
The game's launch has, from a technical perspective at least, gone pretty smoothly: until now. Rocksteady's issued an update on the game's Discord about a bug that's allowed players to acquire Mastery Levels "beyond our wildest expectations." When the developer began looking into why, it soon realised the problem was with the Burn status effect, which applies damage over time.

The Thaumaturge, an RPG from the studio that's also working on The Witcher remake, is delayed because February is just too crowded
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-thaumaturge-an-rpg-from-the-studio-thats-also-working-on-the-witcher-remake-is-delayed-because-february-is-just-too-crowded/
The Thaumaturge, an isometric RPG about occultists summoning spirit beings in 1905 Warsaw, has been delayed into March—not because it needs more development time, but because February is just too damn crowded already.

Baldur's Gate 3 hits half-a-million Steam reviews, and reading them has been 'pure joy,' says Swen Vincke
https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-steam-reviews-500k/
Larian founder Swen Vincke is reading our Baldur's Gate 3 Steam reviews, but if he hasn't read all of them, it's nothing personal: Even at a pace of five seconds per review, it would take the armor-clad CEO a month without breaks to get through every one of them. There are now over 500,000 reviews for Baldur's Gate 3 on Steam.

Amid big rumors, Phil Spencer will discuss 'the future of Xbox' in a podcast this week
https://www.pcgamer.com/amid-big-rumors-phil-spencer-will-discuss-the-future-of-xbox-in-a-podcast-this-week/
Rumor has it that Microsoft plans to release at least some of its Xbox console exclusives on PlayStation 5. This Thursday, we'll find out if it's true.
Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer acknowledged the rumors last week and announced that he'd reveal Microsoft's "vision for the future of Xbox" this week. We've now learned that the announcement is going to happen on the Official Xbox Podcast this Thursday, February 15.

DSOGaming didn't have any news article today, but they have an interview with a Nvidia representative:

NVIDIA Big Interview – Ray Tracing, DLSS, RTX Remix & More
https://www.dsogaming.com/interviews/nvidia-big-interview-ray-tracing-dlss-rtx-remix-more/
A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of interviewing Luke Spring, NVIDIA’s EMEA GeForce Communications Lead. In this Q&A interview, we talk about Ray Tracing, RTX Remix, DLSS and more. So, without further ado, here’s our big NVIDIA interview.