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

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Monday news, part two:

My favorite indie answer to the Elder Scrolls, Dread Delusion, just got a surprise final content update⁠—including a dungeon built inside the remains of a giant flying squid
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/my-favorite-indie-answer-to-the-elder-scrolls-dread-delusion-just-got-a-surprise-final-content-updateincluding-a-dungeon-built-inside-the-remains-of-a-giant-flying-squid/
Indie RPG Dread Delusion got its 1.0 release in May after two years of early access, but developer Lovely Hellplace had one more big addition left for the surreal adventure: a free "final content update" that focuses on Dread Delusion's endgame.

Date Everything is a dating sim with 100 fully voiced household objects to woo, such as a smoke alarm and a cabinet
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/visual-novel/date-everything-is-a-dating-sim-with-100-fully-voiced-household-objects-to-woo-such-as-a-smoke-alarm-and-a-cabinet/
Dating sims have let you date swords and pigeons and Colonel Sanders from KFC, but the dating sim-gularity had yet approached—only now we are arrived. Upcoming dating sim Date Everything will feature 100 fully-voiced household objects to romance, befriend, or even become enemies with. This is all thanks to a pair of magic glasses that let your character interact with the things in their home as if they were people.
>> The article features the trailer of the game, in case you want to know more.

After 3,878 days in early access, zombie survival game 7 Days to Die finally releases
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/after-3878-days-in-early-access-zombie-survival-game-7-days-to-die-finally-releases/
Veteran zombie survival game 7 Days to Die has released out of Early Access after more than 11.5 years of availability on Steam. It's from, you know, back when Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball was a charting hit and Barack Obama was the US president. The now "finished" game adds new high definition character models, a new system of player armor and clothing, new animal models, a new challenge system to replace tutorials and quests, new models for vehicles, a spate of improvements for randomly generated worlds, over 75 new points of interest to explore, new zombie model variants, tweaks to character progression, a lighting update, and many, many optimizations to game code.

Survival RTS Cataclismo added a sandbox mode, because sometimes we just want to make our silly little castles in peace
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/survival-rts-cataclismo-added-a-sandbox-mode-because-sometimes-we-just-want-to-make-our-silly-little-castles-in-peace/
In our Cataclismo preview earlier this month, we enthused about the survival RTS's toolset for meticulous base-building, which lets our inner Lego kids delight in the delicate, piece-by-piece placement of masonry, merlons, and murder holes. In fact, the building is so satisfying that the lack of a sandbox mode was one of our few sticking points. Good news: Cataclismo lacks no longer.

Actors' union 'not happy' about GTA 6 strike exemption, but confirms it's in the contract: 'Insane, but it's there'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/grand-theft-auto/actors-union-not-happy-about-gta-6-strike-exemption-but-confirms-its-in-a-contract-insane-but-its-there/
Videogame actors are on strike: The approximately 160,000-member SAG-AFTRA union says that major game makers have refused to include sufficient protections against generative AI in their contracts. The game makers disagree, and for now, the parties are at an impasse.
(...)
GTA 6 and many other games are exempt from the strike, because it doesn't affect games that started production over a year ago, according to statements from the union and the game makers, which were acquired by Kotaku.

Every ARPG needs a good endgame, and for No Rest for the Wicked, it's a roguelite that just got a huge update
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/every-arpg-needs-a-good-endgame-and-for-no-rest-for-the-wicked-its-a-roguelite-that-just-got-a-huge-update/
No Rest for the Wicked, the Early Access ARPG from the developers behind Ori and the Blind Forest, just got its first major content update since release, and it's a big one.

Valley Peaks trades Getting Over It's frustration for cozy frog vibes, but keeps you climbing
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/adventure/valley-peaks-trades-getting-over-its-frustration-for-cozy-frog-vibes-but-keeps-you-climbing/
Valley Peaks, which released on Steam this week, is a cozy first-person platformer where you play as a frog tasked with climbing mountains and installing radio transmitters on them. It's on sale for the first two weeks, 10% off until August 7. 

Activision secretly experimented on 50% of Call of Duty players by 'decreasing' skill-based matchmaking, and determined players like SBMM even if they don't know it
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/activision-secretly-experimented-on-50-of-call-of-duty-players-by-decreasing-skill-based-matchmaking-and-determined-players-like-sbmm-even-if-they-don-t-know-it/
If you ever find yourself in the middle of an argument about Call of Duty and want to toss a tank of gasoline on the fire, recite these four letters in order: S-B-M-M. Skill-based matchmaking is the invisible system by which Call of Duty, as well as most modern multiplayer games, match you with similarly-skilled players so that every matchup is as fair as possible.
(...)
Activision has historically stayed on the sidelines during these debates, but that changed earlier this year when the publisher finally lifted the veil on how matchmaking works in every modern Call of Duty game, and explaining its reasoning for choosing SBMM. Building on that, today the company published the second in a series of white papers diving deep (and I mean terminology tables and multi-format graphs deep) on matchmaking.

Grand strategy fans gobsmacked by this outrageously detailed Holy Roman Empire map from the unannounced Europa Universalis 5
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/grand-strategy-fans-gobsmacked-by-this-outrageously-detailed-holy-roman-empire-map-from-the-unannounced-europa-universalis-5/
Every week for the past few months the developers at Paradox Tinto have been posting developer diaries and in-progress map screenshots from the game that everyone knows is Europa Universalis 5, but which for now they're just calling Project Caesar.
This week was a big one, as yesterday's Tinto  Maps post was the grand heart of early modern Europe: The Holy Roman Empire. Historical strategy fans long knew that this would be an immense undertaking at the level of fidelity which EU5 intends... but I don't think anyone truly saw this coming.

Blizzard politely tells Hearthstone players their game isn't dead just because it's not getting a new cosmetic board this expansion
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/card-games/blizzard-politely-tells-hearthstone-players-their-game-isnt-dead-just-because-its-not-getting-a-new-cosmetic-board-this-expansion/
Earlier this month Hearthstone players were surprised, and some were more than a little upset, to discover that upcoming expansion Perils in Paradise would not have its own custom game board, the background on which a Hearthstone match is played. It quickly led to many doom-and-gloom predictions that this was the beginning of the end for Hearthstone, the start of a degradation of service t hat would lead to its cancellation—like Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm before it.
Blizzard's development team has now responded by pretty much saying "We're not dying, honest." Instead Blizzard wants Hearthstone players to know that it's pivoting a bit on how Hearthstone updates are made while shifting some resources to other parts of Hearthstone, like player personalization—not to other projects entirely.