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

[JEMC]

The second part of the Thursday gaming news:

WoW: Forever has a new kind of ban to deal with real money trading
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/wow-forever-has-a-new-kind-of-ban-to-deal-with-real-money-trading/
This is a super interesting way to handle the deleterious effects RMT has on an MMO economy—and one of several things that Blizzard's been experimenting with in WoW: Forever to try to tamp down on inflation. Which is especially important given it's a game designed to be persistent and lasting with no expansion-launch resets to help.
>> I said it a few days ago and I’ll say it again: I don’t like the new style of PCGamer articles.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced was a big hit, and now it's time for big layoffs at the studio that made it
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/assassins-creed-black-flag-resynced-was-a-big-hit-and-now-its-time-for-big-layoffs-at-the-studio-that-made-it/
Three months after the very successful launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, a game that sold two million copies in a single day (three million copies in a week!) and surpassed "annual expectations" in just two weeks, Ubisoft has laid off 70 people from developer Ubisoft Singapore. In a statement provided to PC Gamer, the publisher also said it plans to close the Ubisoft Redlynx studio outright.

Ace Combat Zero gets its own standalone app on Steam, freeing it from the 136GB install of Ace Combat 8
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/ace-combat-zero-gets-its-own-standalone-app-on-steam-freeing-it-from-the-136gb-install-of-ace-combat-8/
Ace Combat 8 rocks. PC Gamer's reviewer scored it a 92%, and I've been savoring the campaign, because I know it could be years until we get another bombastic flight sim melodrama of its kind. Although I do have another Ace Combat lined up to play after: Ace Combat Zero, which was included as a free pre-order bonus with AC8, and subsequently responsible for the majority of the new game's negative launch day reviews.
(...)
But now there's a happy ending: in an update on the Steam page on Tuesday, Bandai Namco announced that Ace Combat Zero "will be made available as a standalone application on Steam." That doesn't mean it will be made available for purchase: Zero was a pre-order bonus, so only those who bought Ace Combat 8 ahead of launch will have it in their Steam libraries. No change there. You'll just be able to download and launch it independently if you already own it. It's currently going through "final quality assurance and compatibility testing" ahead of the split.

'My idea of a Netflix for games doesn't work': Garry's Mod successor is getting 'sweeping changes'
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/my-idea-of-a-netflix-for-games-doesnt-work-garrys-mod-successor-is-getting-sweeping-changes/
More radical changes beyond just giving the characters necks are coming to Garry's Mod successor s&box. Facepunch Studios' game creation platform's launch in April was met with a swarm of negative reviews, complaints of AI slop filling its user-generated game collection, and swiftly plummeting user numbers.
Now creator Garry Newman is reversing course on some of his decisions, such as pivoting to a 'greenlight type system' for user-generated games and announcing that the platform is going free to play much earlier than expected.

3 months after launch, Riot announces League of Legends Classic will be killed in January: 'most have gone back to other parts of League'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/moba/3-months-after-launch-riot-announces-league-of-legends-classic-will-be-killed-in-january-most-have-gone-back-to-other-parts-of-league/
League of Legends Classic was Riot's attempt to capitalise on nostalgia for vintage-era LoL. It stripped away most of the champions and kits introduced since 2013, reverted to an older version of the Summoner's Rift map, and promised to roll out "new" old Champions at a faster clip than in the olden days.
But the nostalgia Riot must have hoped would sustain the mode hasn't proven sufficient enough to keep it running: the mode will go offline in January 2027, only six months after its launch.

Disco Elysium splinter studio's Red Rooster is going to be a 'an incendiary, physics-driven RPG' where you play an inmate, an opiate-fuelled mathematician, and a bus driver with nunchucks
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/disco-elysium-splinter-studios-red-rooster-is-going-to-be-a-an-incendiary-physics-driven-rpg-where-you-play-an-inmate-an-opiate-fuelled-mathematician-and-a-bus-driver-with-nunchucks/
After Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM came apart at the seams, many of its developers—who put together what's basically one of the best RPGs of all time—splintered off into different studios, a move that's both a great shame but also deeply unsurprising for the passionate whims of ZA/UM's collective of passionate auteurs.
You can see a full write-up of who those studios are and what they're making courtesy of our resident schism expert Ted Litchfield, but today we'll be focusing on Summer Eternal. This particular studio has Argo Tuulik, one of Disco Elysium's writers, on board—as well as Lenval Brown, who did most of the game's narration.
It also feels like one of the splinters that's kept the revolutionary spirit of itself most intact—and you can feel that energy held like an excitable promethean fire in the palms of the site for Red Rooster, its finally-announced debut videogame.

A co-op survival game where trolls aren't just there to be killed? 'We don't talk about them as enemies, but rather as neighbors'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/a-co-op-survival-game-where-trolls-arent-just-there-to-be-killed-we-dont-talk-about-them-as-enemies-but-rather-as-neighbors/
A deep forest of towering trees can be an intimidating place, especially if you're only three inches tall. In co-op PvE survival game Trollheim: Gnomes, you're a wee little Sprýg Gnome looking for a new place to call home after Oden has driven you from Midgård.
That home is a dense, dark forest, and you're not the only one seeking refuge there. In addition to foraging, exploring, building your home, and dealing with survival systems like cold and hunger, your gnome will have to contend with other residents of the forest, which the Trollheim devs call väsen.

Finally: Our favorite roguelike for sickos will let me play as a sapient tree
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/finally-our-favorite-roguelike-for-sickos-will-let-me-play-as-a-sapient-tree/
What do you add to the game that has everything? We named Caves of Qud the best roguelike of 2024 due in part to its sheer density of simulated, deep-future, science-fantasy stuff: You can begin a playthrough as a fairly normal guy, and by the end of your run could be playing a clone of yourself who later became a psionic four-armed turtle man wielding a gun that uses blood for ammo and fires vacuum pulses that eat life.
With a tapestry of potential interactions already so profoundly, magnificently weird, what could Caves of Qud possibly be adding in Diaspora, an expansion that will be entering early access in December? Well, playable trees is a good start.