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

[JEMC]

Here come the gaming news:

SALES/PLAYER COUNTS & DEALS

Steam has new deals and sales:

• Painkiller (the new one) is going to be 50% off until February 10: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2300120/Painkiller/
• GODBREAKERS has the same 50% discout until the same 10th of February, but it also has a demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2687400/GODBREAKERS/
• The Battle of Polytopia will be 70% off until the 10th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/874390/The_Battle_of_Polytopia/
• And these are the two sales:
  • Publisher Toplitz Productions puts its games on sale with up to 75% discounts until February 3: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33018175/sale/January2026
  • Electronic Arts celebrates a Lunat New Year Sale putings its gams up to 90% off until February, the 10th: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/36135791/sale/lunar-new-year-2026

Fanatical has the new BYO Very Positive Bundle (New Year 2026), with 17 titles available for your 2+, 5+ or 7+ game bundles during the next 34 days: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-very-positive-bundle

SOFTWARE, DRIVERS & STORE NEWS

NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready 591.86 driver
https://videocardz.com/driver/nvidia-geforce-game-ready-591-86

HIGHLIGHTS
Game Ready for ARC Raiders: Headwind Update
This new Game Ready Driver provides the best gaming experience for the latest new games supporting DLSS 4 technology including ARC Raiders: Headwind Update and Arknights: Endfield. In addition, there is Game Ready support for Highguard which features DLSS Super Resolution.

FIXED ISSUES
Fixed Gaming Bugs

• Total War: Three Kingdoms: Artifacts may be observed during gameplay when Screen Space Reflections is enabled [5745647]

Fixed General Bugs

• Color banding observed with SDR content when Windows Automatic Color Management enabled [5754551]
• Asus G14 may freeze on startup when Asus Ultimate Mode is enabled [5754849]

$900 million lawsuit accusing Steam of overcharging gamers in the UK and 'abusing a dominant market position' will proceed after Valve loses appeal against it
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/usd900-million-lawsuit-accusing-steam-of-overcharging-gamers-in-the-uk-and-abusing-a-dominant-market-position-will-proceed-after-valve-loses-appeal-against-it/
Valve is facing a new legal headache as a tribunal in the UK has ruled that a lawsuit filed against it in 2024, accusing the company of using Steam's dominance of the PC gaming marketplace to overcharge gamers and muscle out competition, can move ahead.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of children's digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt as a collective action—functionally similar to a class action—representing an estimated 14 million consumers in the UK. Very briefly, it alleges that Valve prevents game makers from offering their products at lower prices on other platforms, requires that all add-on content for games purchased on Steam also be purchased through Steam, and that Valve's "excessive commission" has resulted in inflated prices.

Valve needed to 'verify' footage of the 'alien orgy' in Earth Must Die before it was allowed to launch on Steam
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/adventure/valve-needed-to-verify-footage-of-the-alien-orgy-in-earth-must-die-before-it-was-allowed-to-launch-on-steam/
I sometimes wonder how Valve, which released over 20,000 new games on Steam in 2025 alone, can possibly be checking every single one of those games for potentially questionable content before they go up for sale. That's almost 400 new games per week to keep an eye on—a task that would require a whole lot of eyes.
Someone at Valve does seem to be watching, though. Case in point: comedy adventure Earth Must Die from Size Five Games, which launches today. As noted on its Steam page, the game contains "an alien orgy depicted as a gyrating lump on the floor," and that description seems to have raised at least one questioning eyebrow at Valve HQ.
According to publisher No More Robots, Valve needed to know more about this orgy. In fact, Valve needed to see this orgy. For reasons.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

New Vegas modder fixes one of those glaring issues you'll never un-see once you notice it: Your pooch pal doesn't have a sneaking animation
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fallout/new-vegas-modder-fixes-one-of-those-glaring-issues-youll-never-un-see-once-you-notice-it-your-pooch-pal-doesnt-have-a-sneaking-animation/
Odds are solid that Fallout: New Vegas is your favourite Fallout. Hell, odds are good that it's your favourite game, period. It shouldn't be, though. I'm sorry to tell you that up until yesterday, Fallout: New Vegas has been unforgivably bad. The dirt-worst.
This is, of course, because up until yesterday New Vegas had absolutely no bespoke sneaking animation for its canine companion Rex. Unlike the game's human companions, whenever the player dropped into a crouchwalk while accompanied by Rex, the daft mutt would simply… remain standing, plodding along behind you like you were on a jolly in the park and not on a stealth mission of immense importance.
No longer. Thanks to a modder named Wombat, Rex's crippling leg-bone issues are a thing of the past. Once you've got Dog Sneak Animations installed, dropping into a crouch (so long as you're out of combat) will have your pooch friend join you, shuffling along the floor flat on his legs like he's sidling up to you to say sorry for eating the sofa cushions.
>> The article has one screenshot and an almost 2 minutes video.

Baldur's Gate 3 modder adds legally distinct Poké Balls so you can 'capture non-player characters inside a ball and free them later (or don't)'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/baldurs-gate/baldurs-gate-3-modder-adds-legally-distinct-poke-balls-so-you-can-capture-non-player-characters-inside-a-ball-and-free-them-later-or-dont/
In a game packed with interesting items that can be used for all kinds of productive and/or sinister purposes, one of Baldur's Gate 3's more flavorful bits of enchanted ephemera is the Iron Flask, an item you can find early in the game that, as its tooltip says, "can hold friends and foes." The only way to learn what it contains, however, is to throw it—at which point you'll discover the spectator that was imprisoned within is very much a foe to you and everything else in the vicinity. And then presumably you'd be hit with one of its many beam attacks.
Unfortunately, the Iron Flask's potential for Poké Ball shenanigans is limited by the fact that it's single use, dashing our collective hopes of collecting our least-favorite NPCs and forcing them to fight the game's most horrible creatures—until this week. Modder ForKiramay has released the Binding Arcane Lattice Lock, or "BALL," a throwable item allowing you to "capture non-player characters inside a ball and free them later (or don't)."
If you're wondering what kind of person would want to trap a Baldur's Gate 3 NPC in an orb just to carry them around indefinitely, just spend an hour or two on the BG3 subreddit. You'll learn plenty.
>> The article haws an over 1 minute video.

Baldur's Gate 3 mod restores more than 100 conversations and 1,000 lines of voiced dialogue from the early access version previously lost in the ethereal plane
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/baldurs-gate/baldurs-gate-3-mod-restores-more-than-100-conversations-and-1-000-lines-of-voiced-dialogue-from-the-early-access-version-previously-lost-in-the-ethereal-plane/
I played the first act of Baldur's Gate 3 a few times in early access, which is why I'm always slightly surprised on subsequent playthroughs that there aren't a bunch of mind-controlled anglers protecting the dying mind flayer you encounter near the start of the game. They were cut in the final release, along with a bunch of dialogue and scenes, much of which has now been restored by modder HyperspaceTowel.
"This mod brings over 100 conversations and more than 1000 lines of voiced dialogue back from the dead", says the description of Early Access Scenes Restored. It restores a lot of companion reactivity in particular, enabling extra responses to, er, what you see behind the barn door. It's mostly dialogue for Astarion, Shadowheart, Gale, and Lae'zel, since Karlach and Wyll had different voice actors in early access, though a smaller amount of their dialogue has been restored by splicing existing lines of audio.
HyperspaceTowel plans to continue work on this mod, restoring more scenes including the one with the thralls on the nautiloid from the tutorial—another thing I always forget was removed until I start a new game. I can see why you'd want the prologue to be shorter, given how much people complain about tutorials, but I do miss hearing the poor brainwashed suckers ramble about rats in the flour and bulls on the loose while dragons and imps battle around them.
Apparently one issue with this mod is that it can interfere with how Gale's beard looks, though that's fixed with a mod you should already have: Gale's beard fix, which prevents his chin from clipping right through his flavor-saver.
>> There’s an almost 2 minute video in the article.

The game that coined the term 'visual novel' just got its first-ever fan translation for its 30th anniversary
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/visual-novel/the-game-that-coined-the-term-visual-novel-just-got-its-first-ever-fan-translation-for-its-30th-anniversary/
On Monday, a team of fan translators celebrated the birth of the visual novel with an English patch for 1996's Japanese PC-98 game Shizuku. In the mid-90s, recently established development studio Leaf—which at that point had only made a strip mahjong game and an adult JRPG—launched a "Visual Novel Series" of three adult games, beginning with Shizuku. Leaf's style of adventure game would soon become a phenomenon.
It feels a bit shakier to say that Leaf invented the visual novel, even if the studio coined the term. As talked about in detail in the video from YouTuber Bowl of Lentils above, Shizuku was heavily inspired by developer Chunsoft's "sound novels" for the Super Nintendo like Otogirisō, which were basically, well, simple visual novels. Chunsoft's adventure games placed text over static backgrounds and let you make choices at key narrative moments, much like other adventure games dating back to the 1980s. Audio was there to help heighten the storytelling despite the limited graphics.
Leaf's big "innovation" was to focus more on depicting its characters on-screen, which makes sense considering it was an erotic game. Shizuku was also predated by groundbreaking (and wildly popular) dating sim Tokimeki Memorial, which emphasized its graphics to similar effect. But "visual novel" was such a catchy name, it stuck with us for 30 years to become the de facto phrase to describe pretty much any adventure game that prioritizes text over interactivity.

GAMING NEWS

CODE VEIN 2 Shows PS3-Level Visuals in Some Areas Even on Max Settings
https://www.dsogaming.com/screenshot-news/code-vein-2-shows-ps3-level-visuals-in-some-areas-even-on-max-settings/
Bandai Namco has released CODE VEIN 2 to those who have pre-ordered its Deluxe version. As such, I’ve tried the game on my main PC gaming system and… well… things are not that great. Why? Let’s find out.

Monster Hunter Wilds Got Its First Major 2026 Performance Patch
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/monster-hunter-wilds-got-its-first-major-2026-performance-patch/
Capcom has just released the first major 2026 performance patch for the PC version of Monster Hunter Wilds. Moreover, the devs have acknowledged the DLC bug that can increase the CPU requirements in the camps.