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

[JEMC]

The Tuesday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Steam’s Top 10
 
(Click here for the Top 100)

Starfield is surprisingly absent from Steam's 2024 bestsellers list despite taking a top spot in 2023
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/starfield-is-surprisingly-absent-from-steams-2024-bestsellers-list-despite-taking-a-top-spot-in-2023/
Valve has published its annual Best of Steam list for 2024, ranking the year's top games in various categories. The top-sellers list for 2024 bears a lot of similarity to that one 2023, with one notable exception: Starfield is nowhere to be seen.
Valve doesn't release sales data for individual games, so we can't say how much any particular title on the list pulled in: Instead, they're randomly sorted in "buckets"—platinum, gold, silver, and bronze—indicating their relative success. Given the number of games released every month on Steam, even a bronze-tier ranking represents a significant success.
Five of the 12 games in the platinum category—PUBG Battlegrounds, Destiny 2, Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2, and Apex Legends—are free to play, and all five were ranked in the same category in 2023, a testament to the lucrative value of a free-to-play hit. At the other end of the spectrum, Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 are both hanging in there: Elden Ring no doubt benefited from the release of the outstanding Shadow of the Erdtree expansion in June, but Baldur's Gate 3 maintaining its spot more than a year after release—with numerous meaty updates to its credit but no full-on DLC—is something of a surprise. Black Myth: Wukong and Helldivers 2 also made the cut, as did Space Marine 2, Black Ops 6, and Palworld.

This co-op survival horror masterpiece is just $2 in the Steam Winter Sale, which could explain why it just hit an all-time high player count of nearly 100k a decade after it launched
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/this-co-op-survival-horror-masterpiece-is-just-usd2-in-the-steam-winter-sale-which-could-explain-why-it-just-hit-an-all-time-high-player-count-of-nearly-100k-a-decade-after-it-launched/
In 2014, survival horror game The Forest launched into early access on Steam. As part of Steam Greenlight (remember that?), the small team of developers Endnight Games delivered triple-A visuals, intricate building and crafting systems, and gut-wrenching horror as players struggled to survive on a remote island amidst terrifying cannibalistic tribes.
So why, 10 years later, did The Forest just crack its all time concurrent player record today with a whopping 97,964 players?
Well, it might have something to do with the cracking Steam Winter Sale that's happening now. The Forest is 90% off, which means you can grab it for a mere two bucks.

Today’s free game at the Epic Store is Dredge: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/dredge-3e3a5f.

Fanatical’s Star Deal has been extended for another 24 hours.

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

None-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

-Empty as well-

GAMING NEWS

Johnny Silverhand is coming to Fortnite and yup, he's got a suitcase nuke
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/battle-royale/johnny-silverhand-is-coming-to-fortnite-and-yup-hes-got-a-suitcase-nuke/
Fortnite is ostensibly a battle royale game in which players fight within the confines of a slowly constricting circle until only one remains. But it's more notable as a theater for pop culture crossovers: Witness, in 2024 alone, the inclusion of Lady Gaga, the Cybertruck, Kamala Harris, Skibidi Toilet, and in case you'd forgotten what time of year it is, Mariah Carey. There's no rhyme or reason to it that I can ascertain beyond "the kids like this, right?" (and money, of course) and so while I can't say it's not unexpected, I'm also not all that surprised that dead rockerboy-slash-terrorist Johnny Silverhand will soon join the fray.

Final Fantasy 14's battle designer admits they went a little overboard on streamlining fights, especially for melee: 'Our policy of reducing gameplay-related frustrations was sometimes taken too far'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/final-fantasy/final-fantasy-14s-battle-designer-admits-they-went-a-little-overboard-on-streamlining-fights-especially-for-melee-our-policy-of-reducing-gameplay-related-frustrations-was-sometimes-taken-too-far/
Anyone who endured Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker as a melee main will know the pain of that expansion's raids and bosses—gigantic hitboxes, no positionals to hit, and virtually zero downtime to strategise around.
(...)
Discussing Endwalker specifically, Nakagawa confesses the team "vetoed some interesting ideas for mechanics so melee players wouldn't be frustrated by periods of downtime where they can't attack the boss; we removed them regardless of how interesting the mechanic could be." Like I said before, it did really feel like melee DPS jobs bore the brunt of Endwalker's underwhelming difficulty the most, though healers aren't far behind. "In hindsight, we should've weighed the interesting nature of an idea versus the frustration of being unable to attack, but our policies had formed an environment where such ideas were easily eliminated," Nakagawa said.

Riot's co-founder says money isn't everything: 'People think we make things like Arcane to sell skins when in reality, we sell skins to make things like Arcane'
https://www.pcgamer.com/movies-tv/riots-co-founder-says-money-isnt-everything-people-think-we-make-things-like-arcane-to-sell-skins-when-in-reality-we-sell-skins-to-make-things-like-arcane/
The League of Legends-inspired series Arcane may be the most expensive animated series ever produced, and unfortunately, despite the stellar reception, it didn't manage to make much of the money spent back. But apparently, Riot doesn't care too much about that part.
(...)
Despite Riot firing 11% of its staff earlier this year, Riot's co-founder Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill says that as far as they are concerned, Arcane was a huge success:
"People who look at the world through a short-term, transactional, cynical lens really struggle to understand Riot. This has been true with various people trying to claim that high-quality free games won't work, that esports will never work, that our music was insane, and are now saying that Arcane wasn't awesome and worth it. "These people think we make things like Arcane to sell skins when, in reality, we sell skins to make things like Arcane. Riot is a mission-driven company where Rioters are constantly striving to make it better to be a player. That is why we have successfully done that over and over again across multiple games and now multiple businesses/mediums—games, sports, music & animation. Do we get everything right? Nope. But we are not focused on the short-term extraction of profits—we are focused on delivering exceptional value to our audience over the long term, again and again and again. To be clear, Arcane crushed for players, and so it crushed for us."
>> If he says so...

As you would have expected, there'll be no news tomorrow. And neither on Thursday, which is also a festive here. If I survive all the food and sweets I'll try to make the news again on Friday, but I can't guarantee it.

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, as you prefer. Have fun!