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

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The Friday gaming news, part two:

Helldivers 2's big beefy build is going away for good, because Arrowhead is 'confident that players are having a great experience' with the new skinny version
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2s-big-beefy-build-is-going-away-for-good-because-arrowhead-is-confident-that-players-are-having-a-great-experience-with-the-new-skinny-version/
Kate Moss once said "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," which tells me that Kate Moss must have an extremely bland, uninteresting diet—and I say that as a small-town white guy in Canada, which should really tell you something. Still, it's sometimes not a bad idea to slim things down a little—such as in the case of Helldivers 2, which is ditching its 'large' build permanently later this month.
For any of this to make sense, you'll need to cast back to December 2025, when Arrowhead reduced the Helldivers 2 install size by a whopping 85%, from 154GB to 23GB. That's a hell of a cut, but it wasn't so much a case of developer wizardry as simply a matter of the game being massively over-bloated to begin with: Arrowhead said earlier in 2025 that the PC version of Helldivers 2 was so much larger than the console editions because it duplicated some data files in order to make up for the relatively poor performance of conventional hard drive drives (HDDs), which are significantly slower than solid-state drives (SSDs).
At the time, the "slim" build of Helldivers 2 was released as a Steam beta, to reduce the likelihood of some unanticipated awfulness. But it seems that all went well, because very soon Helldivers 2 Large will be no more.

Ruiner 2 promises to evolve the original top-down shooter 'into a deep, systems-driven action RPG'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/ruiner-2-promises-to-evolve-the-original-top-down-shooter-into-a-deep-systems-driven-action-rpg/
Released in 2017, Ruiner is a stylish, brutal top-down shooter that earned an 84% in our review as "a superb, if short, whirlwind of cyber-violence and sightseeing." Nearly a decade later, developer Reikon Games says a sequel is finally on the way.

Let it Die is dying, but offering players a onetime purchase to keep it alive offline
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/let-it-die-is-dying-but-offering-players-a-onetime-purchase-to-keep-it-alive-offline/
Grasshopper Manufacture's Let It Die, a free-to-play combat-focused roguelike, is closing down its online servers this August, but it has an offer for you. A new offline version of Let it Die is being made available for purchase, which will strip out all of the live-service stuff and replace them with offline equivalents.

Blizzard is giving away access to paladins for free at the start of Diablo 4's next season
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/blizzard-is-giving-away-access-to-paladins-for-free-at-the-start-of-diablo-4s-next-season/
From the moment Blizzard released paladins in Diablo 4 early for pre-ordering its Lord of Hatred expansion, the game was full of them. Everyone, it seems, has been counting down the days to try a class they've missed since Diablo 2.
Starting on March 11, when Diablo 4's next season begins, paladins will be free to play for anyone logging into the game. You can join the holy warrior fans and play one yourself until level 25 without needing to pre-order the expansion (or owning the base game). Access to the class will end on March 18, but that still gives you a full week to see what they're all about.
>> Two more aticles: 1- You’ll be able to transform into the Butcher before Lord of Hatred arrives (link); and 2- The premium currency is hurting its new housing system (link).

From next week, Australia will require users to verify their age to play GTA Online and other R18+ online games
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/from-next-week-australians-will-need-to-verify-their-age-to-play-gta-online-and-other-r18-online-games/
Australians attempting to access online games with an R18+ classification will soon need to prove their age, and if publishers don't comply they could face fines of nearly AU$50 million. The change applies to online games only—in other words, singleplayer, offline games with an R18+ rating, like Doom Eternal, don't need to worry—but it will affect GTA Online.

Marvel Rivals is bringing back Chrono Rush, among other fixes, in its latest patch: 'With no cap on how many points you can earn'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/marvel-rivals-is-bringing-back-chrono-rush-among-other-fixes-in-its-latest-patch-with-no-cap-on-how-many-points-you-can-earn/
Marvel Rivals' latest patch brings back a popular event, Chrono Rush. It's a modifier that basically lets you earn an infinite amount of Chrono Tokens, which you can then use to unlock battle pass tiers and cosmetics.