The Wednesday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

GOG has two new deals:

• The new Deal of the Day is Tavern Master, 20% off until Friday: https://www.gog.com/en/game/tavern_master
• The new Midweek Sale features deck building games with up to 85% discounts during the next 4 days: https://www.gog.com/promo/20220810_midweek_sale

Steam also has two new deals:

• Internet Cafe Simulator 2 is going to be 40% off until August 16: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1563180/Internet_Cafe_Simulator_2/
• And Exo One gets a 30% discount until the 23rd of August: https://store.steampowered.com/app/773370/Exo_One/

And Fanatical has two new flash deals:

• The first flash deal is The Jackbox Party Pack 8, 52% off during 24 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/the-jackbox-party-pack-8
• The second flash deal is Resident Evil Village, 58% off until tomorrow's refresh: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/resident-evil-village

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

A mobile ad tech company wants to buy Unity for $17.5B
https://www.pcgamer.com/a-mobile-ad-tech-company-wants-to-buy-unity-for-dollar175b/
California-based mobile ad tech company AppLovin has offered $17.5 billion to acquire Unity in an all-stock deal, Reuters reports. The deal would leave Unity with 55% of the shares of the company resulting from the merger, which comes to 49% of the voting rights.
You've heard of Unity, given that its engine seems to run everything that Unreal Engine doesn't these days, but you might not know AppLovin. The company made its name with its marketing and analytics platforms that provide developers the tools to promote and monetise their mobile apps. Advertising technology, in other words. They do have some tendrils in games, though: they bought mobile game maker Machine Zone a couple of years ago, and even bought that other Wordle last May.
The offer comes hot on the heels of Unity's July announcement that it would be merging with ironSource, a company mostly notorious for developing a malware installer called InstallCore back in the early 2010s. Game devs who use Unity were less than thrilled by that prospect, to say the least.
>> So first Unity merges with a malware making company and now it can be bought by an adware making one. Unity's future looks more and more grim.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Half-Life 2: VR’s Public Beta launches this September
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/half-life-2-vrs-public-beta-phase-launches-this-september/
The SourceVR Mod Team has announced that the public beta phase for Half-Life 2: VR will begin this September. In order to celebrate this announcement, the team has released a new trailer that you can find below.
Half-Life 2: VR is a mod that will allow you to play this classic Half-Life game in VR. The mod will allow you to do things that were almost impossible in the non-VR version. For instance, you can spin the blocks in the playground just by hitting them or play tetherball with a corpse in Ravenholm. You will also be able to physically dodge for cover, and manually reload your guns.
For those wondering, Half-Life 2: VR is targeting SteamVR, so any headset supported by SteamVR should be good to go. So far, the mod has been successfully tested on Index, Quest, Vive and Pimax headsets.

GAMING NEWS

Here are the PC graphics settings for Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
https://www.dsogaming.com/screenshot-news/here-are-the-pc-graphics-settings-for-marvels-spider-man-remastered/
The PC review embargo for Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered will be lifted tomorrow and its PC graphics settings have been leaked online. As we can see, the PC version will feature numerous graphics settings. Not only that, but the game will also support PC-specific features.
>> And here are the launch times of the game.

The news, part two:

Elite Dangerous has ended a 2-year story with a big disaster and an update
https://www.pcgamer.com/elite-dangerous-has-ended-a-2-year-story-with-a-big-disaster-and-an-update/
A new update for Elite Dangerous has just landed, bringing an end to the long-running Azimuth Saga storyline, paving the way for the next chapter in the story, and fixing a ton of issues.

Overwatch will stop selling loot boxes this month
https://www.pcgamer.com/overwatch-will-stop-selling-loot-boxes-this-month/
We have Valve to thank for the introduction of paid loot boxes in PC gaming, but the loot box trend didn't really kick off until Overwatch made box-opening fun, cool, and sometimes free in 2016. Six years later, Overwatch is one of the only popular games left pushing loot boxes, but not for much longer. To prepare for the day that Overwatch 2 ditches loot boxes forever, Blizzard will cease selling them in Overwatch 1 later this month.

Subnautica studio will reveal its new sci-fi strategy game at Gamescom
https://www.pcgamer.com/subnautica-studio-will-reveal-its-new-sci-fi-strategy-game-at-gamescom/
In February, Krafton announced that Subnautica studio Unknown Worlds, which it had acquired in October 2021, was working on a new project that was not Subnautica 3. Instead, it's a "turn-based strategy game set in a sci-fi world"—quite a departure from the first-person survival games that put Unknown Worlds on the map.
Later this month at Gamescom, we'll finally get a look at what it's all about: Unknown Worlds co-founder Charlie Cleveland will formally unveil the new game during the Opening Night Live showcase. (...)

Destiny 2 fans jump on leak as evidence that a new 'poison' subclass coming
https://www.pcgamer.com/destiny-2-fans-jump-on-leak-as-evidence-that-a-new-poison-subclass-coming/
Be prepared to take this with a sizable pinch of whatever passes for salt in the Destiny 2 universe, but it appears an artist at Bungie may have inadvertently given a glimpse of the game's next subclass. The leak came in the form of a clip allegedly posted to an Artstation account, as first reported by DestinyTwoLeaks on Twitter. I can't confirm the provenance because the linked post has been pulled, but—this being the internet—the clip is still easy enough to find. I've embedded it at the top.

Battalion 1944 studio splits with Square Enix, announces free Legacy edition coming to Steam
https://www.pcgamer.com/battalion-1944-studio-splits-with-square-enix-announces-free-legacy-edition-coming-to-steam/
Battalion 1944 launched into early access in 2018 as a throwback to the early days of the Call of Duty games. There were some troubles, predictable for an early access game, but it seemed like a very strong start for a niche multiplayer FPS. Square Enix, which had published Battalion 1944 under its indie-focused Square Enix Collective, apparently thought so too: It acquired a 20% stake in developer Bulkhead in November 2018.
Unfortunately, neither the game nor the relationship between Bulkhead and Square Enix worked out quite as hoped. Battalion 1944's average concurrent player count has been stuck in single-digits since mid-2020, a console release that was promised in a 2016 Kickstarter never happened, and today Bulkhead announced that it has "formally ended" its relationship with Square Enix.

The PC version of Madden 23 doesn't include its biggest new feature
https://www.pcgamer.com/madden-nfl-23-pc-version-fieldsense-last-gen/
The version of Madden NFL 23 you can pre-purchase on Steam is not the same Madden 23 you can get for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. It's equivalent to the version being released for the last-gen PS4 and Xbox One consoles, which are nearly 10 years old. That means the PC version won't include Madden 23's headline feature, a "physics-informed" animation system called "FieldSense."

Surreal Apex Legends bug is doing a switcheroo on character abilities
https://www.pcgamer.com/surreal-apex-legends-bug-is-doing-a-switcheroo-on-character-abilities/
Apex Legends has just kicked off season 14—introducing new character Vantage, marking the death of the self-revive perk and increasing the level cap with an extra three tiers of 500 levels. It's also had some unintended side effects, like a very humorous bug that does the old switcheroo on character abilities.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU rumored to boost over 2.8 GHz offering the same compute power as RTX 3090 Ti

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4070-gpu-rumored-to-boost-over-2-8-ghz-offering-the-same-compute-power-as-rtx-3090-ti

Reminder that TF isn't an indication of real world performance.

TSMC N4, High Clock Rate, Loads of L2 cache, More Vram... Oh lord he comin'

AMD Ryzen 7000 DDR5 memory ‘sweet spot’ is 6000 MT/s, Infinity Fabric frequency up to 3 GHz

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-7000-ddr5-memory-sweet-spot-is-6000-mt-s-infinity-fabric-frequency-up-to-3-ghz

The groundwork being laid with Zen 4 is certainly impressive. Hopefully we will see more than 15% uplift.

Latest AMD & Intel CPUs Including Zen 4 & Raptor Lake With VAES Instructions Susceptible To Data Damage on Windows, Patch Rolling Out But Will Reduce Performance

https://wccftech.com/latest-amd-intel-cpus-including-zen-4-raptor-lake-with-vaes-instructions-susceptible-to-data-damage/

• AMD CPUs Affected: Ryzen 5000, Ryzen 5000X3D, EPYC Milan, EPYC Milan-X, EPYC Genoa
• Intel CPUs Affected: Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, Alder Lake (Partial), Raptor Lake (Partial), Ice Lake-SP, Sapphire Rapids-SP

I wonder if this is what nuked my 16TB hard drive...

AMD Rumored To Cut Ryzen 7 5800X3D Prices Next Month Owing To Zen 4’s “Amazing” Gaming Performance

https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-7-5800x3d-cpu-price-cut-next-month-zen-4-amazing-gaming-performance-rumor/

Intel Core i9-13900K Raptor Lake CPU Up To 24% Faster Than 12900K, 43% Faster Than 5950X & 68% Faster Than 5800X3D In AOTS Benchmark

https://wccftech.com/intel-core-i9-13900k-raptor-lake-cpu-faster-than-12900k-5950x-5800x3d-in-aots-benchmark/

AOTS isn't considered a real world benchmark of actual gaming performance so I'd take it with a grain of salt.

That vulnerability in Windows seems more like a problem caused by MSoft than a flaw on Intel and AMD's chips.

By the way, given that some here have VR headsets, or plan to, this is something for the future:

Researchers find way to shrink a VR headset down to normal glasses size
https://www.pcgamer.com/researchers-find-way-to-shrink-a-vr-headset-down-to-normal-glasses-size/
Researchers from Stanford University and Nvidia have teamed up to help develop VR glasses that look a lot more like regular spectacles. Okay, they are rather silly looking due to the ribbons extended from either eye, but they're much, much flatter and compact than your usual goggle-like virtual reality headsets today.

Yeah if I had to guess the info on these are rough guidelines given to aib's given from Nvidia and to make sure they can provide enough juice and headroom for power limits for their respective lines of GPU's.

With how AMD are keeping high efficiency with RDNA 3 with their press and maybe internal leaks.. maybe Nvidia got wind of performance of the whole stack, and decided to dial down. And try other configurations with to get similar results without completely throwing away the efficiency/performance gains. It'll be interesting either way. I'd hope if Nvidia can get the 4090 and 4080 TDP's down to sane levels.. for all of our sakes. And if the 3080 does indeed come out with only 320W that makes it much more appealing GPU to me. 

Yea idk how Nvidia is able to get info from AMD before they even launch but Ampere stack against RDNA 2 was pretty solid so I suspect that they have something to go on this time around too. Now that we know Nvidia is also uping the clock speeds similar to AMD, I think we get to see a better picture of where the wattage requirements are coming from. 4090 with 16k cuda cores running at 2.8Ghz will be nuts. And that's before the Kingpin versions.

We will see though. If a 4080 can be 40-50% faster than 3080 while keeping the 320 watts and $700 price point, it should be a very killer GPU. Especially with Nvidia's lead in feature sets. And this time, Nvidia has much better Vram throughout the product stack instead of with Ampere were a 3060 had more Vram than 70 and 80 class loll.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is some industrial espionage going on in the background. Especially when so many parties and money involved. Something is bound to get leaked between competing companies. With how Nvidia is doing the last several months they really need to pull out all stops with Ada LL. With rumors and murmurs that RDNA 3 going to a big jump, they can't really let AMD get the lead.

And yeah big oof on giving the 3070 8GB of VRAM. 8GB was barely enough for games for current generation two years ago, upon the GPU's release - which largely consisted ports of cross gen consoles games. Now its going to age rather quickly, with Raytracing becoming the norm in a lot of upcoming game engines. Them giving the 3060 more VRAM was kinda them admitting them dun goofed. Ada looks to be a massive improvement this time round from the get-go, if the leaks are true and information is correct.

But yeah It'd be crazy if Nvidia can pull that off with card with 16GB GDDRX, huge cache and clocks.. it should be a beast. And this is even before looking at supposed improvements in RT performance and new feature sets. Can't wait for the reveal and proper specs and release.

Imagine, just imagine if...they were to make another 1080ti lightening in a bottle with the 4080...

ngl, I would die. 

Oh there's bound to be some form of corp espionage. Remember that dude who ran the Steam sales data site?, turned out he was Epic's second in command and the whole gig was done and wrapped up shortly as EGS entered the market. Even after all that happened they moved onto friends list data from Steam, so it wouldn't surprise me at all to see shit going on between Nvidia/AMD like it did with Epic vs Steam. 

Seriously, EA?

I mean, even ultrabooks now start to have more powerful iGPUs/APUs than last gen consoles had. I really don't see the point of bringing the old version to PC by now