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

[JEMC]

Here comes the second part of the news:

Rockstar hornswoggles lapsed GTAO players with $3 million welcome-back offer that actually requires you to spend money to get most of it
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/grand-theft-auto/rockstar-hornswoggles-lapsed-gtao-players-with-usd3-million-welcome-back-offer-that-actually-requires-you-to-spend-money-to-get-most-of-it/
I regard GTA Online the same way I regard the Seven Years' War: I only know it at a distance, it sounds like a living nightmare, and whenever I learn something new about it I'm sure glad I'm not there.
Maybe I'm not the only one, because Rockstar is giving away $3,000,000 to any lapsed player who returns to its loving bosom. If you're currently playing then you're already hooked, and Rockstar has nothing for you but scorn.
>> What a sacumbag move.

Cities: Skylines 2 celebrates 10 years of Cities with more nuanced homelessness and six new DLCs
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/city-builder/cities-skylines-2-celebrates-10-years-of-cities-with-more-nuanced-homelessness-and-six-new-dlcs/
It’s hard to believe, but the premiere metropolis maker this side of SimCity 4 has just hit a 10-year milestone—and in classic city builder fashion, Cities: Skylines 2 is honoring the occasion with traffic bug fixes, new buildings and radio stations, and major changes to homelessness.

PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/pc-gamers-spend-92-percent-of-their-time-on-older-games-oh-and-there-are-apparently-908-million-of-us-now/
Ben Porter, director of consulting at videogame market intelligence company Newzoo, is giving a GDC talk this week that picks out some highlights from the firm's annual look at the state of the games industry. PC Gamer was fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at his slides, and one of the takeaways is that PC gaming is bigger than ever: And we love to play old games.

The Silent Hill F system requirements look pretty modest at first but that's only for all my 720p gamers out there
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/the-silent-hill-f-system-requirements-look-pretty-modest-at-first-but-thats-only-for-all-my-720p-gamers-out-there/
If you are able to competently run Silent Hill 2 Remake on your rig, the Silent Hill F system requirements suggest you can run it too, but there's a caveat.
(...)
For Silent Hill F, the minimum system requirements allow you to play the game on 'Performance quality settings', getting 30 fps at 720p. Given few gamers actually play at 720p, this method of getting the minimum requirement is a tad flawed. You will want a more powerful rig than the minimum to play at 1080p.

'People like to hate EA, I don't know why': Split Fiction's Josef Fares says he has a good relationship with his publisher, but 'nobody believes' him
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/people-like-to-hate-ea-i-dont-know-why-split-fictions-josef-fares-says-he-has-a-good-relationship-with-his-publisher-but-nobody-believes-him/
EA doesn't have the best reputation. Whether it's being awarded with the title "worst company in America" multiple times, its role in the downfall of previously beloved developers like BioWare, its love of microtransactions, or continually heralding the demise of singleplayer games, it hasn't earned much goodwill.
Hazelight Studios founder Josef Fares, whose team just released Split Fiction, one of the best co-op games ever made, doesn't share that sentiment.
>> Well, they fought hard to earn that reputation.

Larian's Swen Vincke subtweets anyone still fixated on singleplayer games' commercial viability: 'They just have to be good'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/larians-swen-vincke-subtweets-anyone-still-fixated-on-singleplayer-games-commercial-viability-they-just-have-to-be-good/
When Swen Vincke took the stage at 2024's Game Awards to call out the entire games industry for being more committed to "market share" and "arbitrary sales targets" than making good games for their own sake, he noted that the secret formula which led to Larian’s meteoric rise had nothing to do with audience expectations or brand value. Instead the team made good, trailblazing games and things just kind of worked out after that.
He's doubled down in a recent post on X which addresses skeptics of his point directly, as well as anyone saying that games need to start falling in line with multiplayer live service trends, saying it's "that time of the year again when big single player games are declared dead. Use your imagination. They're not. They just have to be good."

After 12 days and 100s of wipes, World of Warcraft's latest world first raid ends in anticlimax: 'That's the boss?!?'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/after-12-days-and-100s-of-wipes-world-of-warcrafts-latest-world-first-raid-ends-in-anticlimax-thats-the-boss/
The latest World of Warcraft world first race, in which teams compete to finish a new Mythic raid faster than the others, has been settled: But the final boss was so anticlimactic that the winners almost surprised themselves (thanks, GR+).
>> Why? You’ll have to read the article to find out.

World of Warcraft Classic’s Season of Discovery may be teasing a legendary weapon that players have speculated is in the game for two decades
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/world-of-warcraft-classics-season-of-discovery-may-be-teasing-a-legendary-weapon-that-players-have-speculated-is-in-the-game-for-two-decades/
It’s long been a running joke in the World of Warcraft Classic community that the Ashbringer, known by lore nerds as the legendary sword wielded by Tirion Fordring, can be obtained by fishing in just the right spot. Or killing just the right amount of arbitrary mobs. Or doing a secret quest to cleanse the Corrupted Ashbringer. People have lots of ideas, really.
Back in the day, the only version of the weapon you could actually get was the Corrupted Ashbringer in Naxxramas, but that didn’t stop anyone from wishing for the real thing. In the live version of WoW, paladins eventually got their hands on it in the form of an artifact weapon when Tirion Fordring got melted by a demon and dropped it at the beginning of the Legion expansion, but it was drained of its power and disposed of with all the other artifacts when Legion’s last patch rolled in. It seems like Classic players will finally get their hands on the old-school legendary item that was hinted at and datamined by sites like Wowhead but never implemented.

Hasbro will be ready to share news about the future of Baldur's Gate 'in pretty short order'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/hasbro-will-be-ready-to-share-news-about-the-future-of-baldurs-gate-in-pretty-short-order/
Somehow, a year and a half after the smash hit singleplayer RPG Baldur's Gate 3 went into full release on Steam, it's still drawing in tens of thousands of concurrent players every day—on Steam alone. In just about every other instance, that would mandate expansions, sequels, and relentless franchising until we're all finally sick of it; but in the case of BG3, developer Larian Studios decided not to take the money and run, leaving Baldur's Gate owner Hasbro with an extremely hot, valuable property and nobody doing anything with it.
It shouldn't come as any great surprise that won't likely be the case for long. Speaking to IGN at the 2025 Game Developers Conference, Hasbro's senior vice president of digital games Dan Ayoub said the company has "a lot of people very interested in Baldur's Gate," and that it's "kind of working out our plans for the future."
"Actually, in pretty short order, we're going to have some stuff to talk about around that," Ayoub said.

After years of playing as stupid, boring humans in Fallout, you can finally channel your inner Walton Goggins and become a ghoul in Fallout 76
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/after-years-of-playing-as-stupid-boring-humans-in-fallout-you-can-finally-channel-your-inner-walton-goggins-and-become-a-ghoul-in-fallout-76/
For too long, Walton Goggins has been out in the Hollywood hills living my dream: wandering the wasteland as a rotting, irradiated zombie with a beer in one hand and a shotgun in the other. That finally ends today thanks to Fallout 76’s new Ghoul Within update, which adds a whole host of ghoul-related features and rewards.
The headlining feature is, as you might guess, ghoulification: a new questline will allow players to become a feral ghoul for the first time in the series’ history, though you’ll want to subdue any urges to devour your fellow vault dweller with a cocktail of consumable drugs. The bright side is you’ll be immune to disease and mutations, and in fact, radiation will give you increased max health and interact with your new ghoul perks (which the patch notes call gherks).
>> And some are already thinking of ways to benefit from those who will turn into ghouls.