That's some big money

Just noticed after reading EGS "100% rev" share deal, that they say this on releasing anywhere else at the same time as selling to them:

Can I still release a product on my first-party store or website?
Yes. Products in the Epic First Run program can also be released simultaneously on publishers’ and developers’ own stores or launchers with direct sales, sale of an Epic digital redemption code, or integration with our keyless redemption program. Please note, keyless distribution will require technical work to implement for developer or publisher’s launcher and/or store.

Developers and publishers can also use the Epic Games Store’s keyless redemption program to sell on other stores including Green Man Gaming, Humble Store and several others. After the six-month exclusivity period ends, developers are welcome to release their products on other third-party stores, while continuing to benefit from Epic’s 88%12% revenue share.

You're still basically selling an EGS key, which is still locking you down to Epic, only until the 6 months are up. So really they don't want you selling anywhere that doesn't have to give out an EGS key to give them a customer...

y'know what'd be better?, letting everyone sell anywhere at any time, and just being able to choose based on rev split, y'know, like open competition works?. Let devs make that 100% rev share on EGS, while at the same time, allow them to reach more customers on Steam at the same time. Yeah I know that would be a lose-lose for Epic, but who gives a shit, remember Epic is all about them devs earning their bread, right? (totally not about looking out for their own backs purely to become a permanent market leader or anything). 

ComputerBase has compared the RX 7900 GRE and the RX 6950 XT, both modded o have almost similar settings to show the architecture gains of RDNA3:

https://www.computerbase.de/2023-08/amd-rdna-2-rdna-3-gaming-vergleich/

The raytracing gains are higher than the rasterizing gains:

The Thursday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

The Epic Store gives away Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/homeworld-deserts-of-kharak.
Next week, they'll give away Cave Story+.

Steam has two new deals:

• Spirit of the North will be 80% off until August, 30th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213700/Spirit_of_the_North/
• The Endzone franchise, with the game and DLCs, go on sale with up to 80% discounts until the 6th of September: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/endzone-franchise-sale

Humble Bundle has launched the new Masterful Modern 3D Platformers, with up to 10 items to get during the next 20 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/games/masters-modern-3d-platformers

Fanatical's Summer Sale is over and now it's back to its regular deals, that include a new Star Deal and a bundle:

• The new Star Deal is Marvel's Midnight Suns Legendary Edition will be 66% off during 48 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/marvels-midnight-suns-legendary-edition
• The new Diamond Collection BYOB Reloaded Edition features 12 titles to choose from for your 3, 4 or 5 games bundle: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/diamond-collection-reloaded-edition-build-your-own-bundle

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

Epic goes on the hunt for even more exclusives with a new program offering bigger payouts to smaller studios
https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-goes-on-the-hunt-for-even-more-exclusives-with-a-new-program-offering-bigger-payouts-to-smaller-studios/
If you thought the era of the Epic Games Store exclusive was winding down, think again. Epic announced today a new program called Epic First Run that throws open the exclusivity doors to just about anyone with a new game.
The Epic Games Store has grown into a successful, major digital storefront since its launch in 2018 in large part due to exclusive game releases: Epic has used the massive financial success of Fortnite to pay publishers in advance to launch games on its storefront, and more to the point, not launch them on Steam, at least temporarily.
It's managed to attract some big names over the years, like Borderlands 3, Control, Hitman 3, and Kingdom Hearts, but it's been a ridiculously expensive endeavor, too: We learned in May 2021 that it had already spent more than $1 billion on exclusives. Despite not making money on them, Epic said in March 2023 that it was going to continue pursuing exclusives for its storefront, but would focus more on major releases, which had proven much more effective at attracting new users to EGS than smaller games.
The new Epic First Run program is a way to augment that strategy by bringing smaller studios back into the picture. Instead of negotiating up-front deals with developers and publishers for individual games, First Run grants them 100% of all net revenues earned during the first six months of a game's release on the Epic store in exchange for those six months being mostly exclusive. It's open to any developer or publisher with a game coming out on or after October 16 (when the program goes live) that hasn't previously been released through another third-party storefront or subscription service.
>> Epic gets exclusives without spending money.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

D&D's favourite spellblade subclass has been modded into Baldur's Gate 3, along with its much-desired 'blade' cantrips
https://www.pcgamer.com/dandds-favourite-spellblade-subclass-has-been-modded-into-baldurs-gate-3-along-with-its-much-desired-blade-cantrips/
I'm still shocked that the Warlock's Hexblade patron from Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition (D&D 5e) isn't in Baldur's Gate 3. For those unfamiliar, the Hexblade is a Warlock subclass from the rulebook Xanathar's Guide to Everything, focused on mixing martial might with pact magic. It's a perfect spellblade—sometimes called a 'gish' in the tabletop community.
Wyll—the Blade of Frontiers—is clearly meant to be a Hexblade, mixing swordplay with magic in equal measure, but the game's existing Pact of the Blade isn't enough to bridge that gap. Trying to make a melee warlock in Baldur's Gate 3 is just a constant fight against the fact that Eldritch Blast is better in every way, dealing the same amount of damage at range. The Hexblade is also really popular for multiclassing for just about any spellblade, due to a few key features: (...)
Fortunately, modder Feriat111 of Nexus Mods has righted this wrong with the mod "Hexblade Subclass and New Invocations". The adds a seemingly faithful recreation of the subclass alongside several key Invocations (Warlock exclusive abilities) such as Grasp of Hadar, which lets your Eldritch Blast pull targets towards you, as well as Eldritch Smite, a version of the Paladin's Divine Smite that deals force damage.
>> The article has no screenshots nor videos.

GAMING NEWS

First 17 minutes of gameplay from the story mode of Mortal Kombat 1
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/first-17-minutes-of-gameplay-from-the-story-mode-of-mortal-kombat-1/
IGN has shared a video, showcasing the first 17 minutes of gameplay from the story mode of Mortal Kombat 1. This video contains spoilers so make sure to avoid it if you want to experience on your own the story campaign of Mortal Kombat 1.

Immortals of Aveum cannot run at Native 4K/60fps on NVIDIA RTX 4090, even on Low Settings
https://www.dsogaming.com/articles/immortals-of-aveum-cannot-run-at-native-4k-60fps-on-nvidia-rtx-4090-even-on-low-settings/
Immortals of Aveum is a new single-player magic FPS game that is powered by Unreal Engine 5. The game uses both Lumen and Nanite, and it for gaming at native 4K, it requires GPUs that have not been released yet. Even the mighty NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is unable to offer 60fps at Native 4K… on LOW SETTINGS.
>> The game deserves to sell like crap, to match the effort the studio made in optimization.

The Last of Us Part I Patch 1.1.2 improves visuals and user experience
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/the-last-of-us-part-i-patch-1-1-2-improves-visuals-and-user-experience/
Iron Galaxy and Naughty Dog have released Patch 1.1.2 for the PC version of The Last of Us Part I. According to the changelog, this latest update packs improvements to the game’s visuals and user experience.

Here are 14 minutes of gameplay from the Alan Wake 2 Gamescom 2023 Demo
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/here-are-14-minutes-of-gameplay-from-the-alan-wake-2-gamescom-2023-demo/
At Gamescom 2023, Remedy had a playable demo of Alan Wake 2 that attendees could play. So, below you can find a video, showcasing 14 minutes of gameplay footage from it.

The first Broken Sword game is getting a 4K remaster
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-first-broken-sword-game-is-getting-a-4k-remaster/
Revolution Software has announced a 4K remaster of the first Broken Sword game, called Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged. In addition, the company is working on the next part of this adventure series, called Broken Sword – Parzival’s Stone.
>> Colour me interested.

First screenshots for the spiritual successor to GTR, GTRevival
https://www.dsogaming.com/screenshot-news/first-screenshots-for-the-spiritual-successor-to-gtr-gtrevival/
Ian Bell, the CEO of Straight4 (and former founder of Slightly Mad Studios) has released the first unedited in-game screenshots for GTRevival. GTRevival will be a spiritual successor to the legendary sim racing series, GTR, and these screenshots will give you a glimpse at what Straight4 aims to create.

New gameplay teaser trailer for the dinosaur survival horror game, Deathground
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/new-gameplay-teaser-trailer-for-the-dinosaur-survival-horror-game-deathground/
Jaw Drop Games has released a new gameplay teaser trailer for its upcoming dinosaur survival horror game, Deathground. This teaser trailer is one minute long, and it packs a number of gameplay sequences from this new dino game.

Thursday news, part two:

Lords of the Fallen's latest story trailer gives me hope for its shamelessly heavy metal album cover setting
https://www.pcgamer.com/lords-of-the-fallens-latest-story-trailer-gives-me-hope-for-its-shamelessly-heavy-metal-album-cover-setting/
I got my hands on Lords of the Fallen earlier this month—and what I experienced was pretty promising. Weird multiverse shenanigans with a lantern that let you explore the environment, shaking up a classic souls formula by letting you peek into another world whenever you wanted.
(...)
That vibe of unleashed high-fantasy nonsense carries on with the story trailer Hexworks dropped during Gamescom 2023, which features plenty of weird creatures I didn't get to see in the preview. It's a story trailer, sure, but I'm far more excited by the aesthetic sensibilities on display here, which you can see below.

Teenager found liable for GTA 6 hack did it in a Travelodge where police put him after he was arrested for another hack
https://www.pcgamer.com/teenager-found-liable-for-gta-6-hack-did-it-in-a-travelodge-where-police-put-him-after-he-was-arrested-for-another-hack/
A court in the UK has found that an 18-year-old from Oxford, Arion Kurtaj, was a part of the Lapsus$ hacking group responsible for hacking a range of tech firms including Nvidia and Rockstar Games. These intrusions resulted in a major leak of footage from the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, a game that Rockstar has yet to officially unveil, and the court heard that Kurtaj leaked the clips from a Travelodge hotel while he was already on bail after being arrested for another hack.

Beware the corpse nuke that can end your Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough with a bang
https://www.pcgamer.com/beware-the-corpse-nuke-that-can-end-your-baldurs-gate-3-playthrough-with-a-bang/
There are many ways to do massive damage in Baldur's Gate 3, we've learned. Players have devised an owlbear orbital strike and an impressively coordinated explosive barrel chain, but the greatest damage of all is hiding in your party just waiting for you to neglect it. Some early spoilers for Gale's storyline to follow, if you'd not guessed yet.

Move over every other 2024 game, the next great mud trucking sim just shot to the top of my wishlist
https://www.pcgamer.com/move-over-every-other-2024-game-the-next-great-mud-trucking-sim-just-shot-to-the-top-of-my-wishlist/
Some people took up gardening in the first months of the pandemic. Others learned to cook, built Lego sets, or got buff. My pandemic fixation was SnowRunner, the sequel to off-road trucking sim MudRunners that's essentially Death Stranding with killer mud deformation tech. It's a challenging, gorgeous, and surprisingly tranquil driving game that we wholeheartedly recommend, but my eyes are now firmly fixed on the next entry announced yesterday at Geoff Keighley's Opening Night Live stream—Expeditions: A MudRunner Game.

BioWare lays off roughly 50 employees: 'We must shift towards a more agile and more focused studio'
https://www.pcgamer.com/bioware-lays-off-roughly-50-employees-we-must-shift-towards-a-more-agile-and-more-focused-studio/
In a blog post that studio manager Gary McKay said was "deeply painful and humbling to write," BioWare announced that it is laying off roughly 50 employees in order to "preserve the health of the studio and better enable us to do what we do best: create exceptional story-driven single-player experiences filled with vast worlds and rich characters."

Bethesda exec's 'one piece of advice' for Starfield players: don't skip 'amazing stuff' because it doesn't seem like a real quest
https://www.pcgamer.com/starfield-activities-advice-gamescom/
There's no "wrong" way to play big, open-ended RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 or Starfield, but there kind of is, right? At least, there are a lot of opinions on how to have the most fun in these games, and some of them even come from their creators. Larian boss Swen Vincke offered some advice for our first Baldur's Gate 3 playthroughs, and now Bethesda head of publishing Pete Hines has dropped a Starfield tip ahead of the September 1 launch for premium edition owners.

My favorite plane of all time is now in Microsoft Flight Simulator and oh I think I've got something in my eye
https://www.pcgamer.com/my-favorite-plane-of-all-time-is-now-in-microsoft-flight-simulator-and-oh-i-think-ive-got-something-in-my-eye/
The Dornier Do X was the biggest, heaviest, and most powerful flying boat in the world when it launched in 1929. It was also magnificent, weird, brashly ambitious, deeply flawed, and inevitably doomed—and, for those and unrelated reasons, my favorite plane of all time. We'll never be able to fly in one in real life (they're all long gone) but now we can get a sense of what it was like in Microsoft Flight Simulator, which just added the great flying boat as a new Local Legend.

The Lord of the Rings game we're actually excited to play is coming in October
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-lord-of-the-rings-game-were-actually-excited-to-play-is-coming-in-october/
Upcoming survival crafting game The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria has just announced a release date and it's breaking ground pretty soon, it turns out. We'll be delving down into the dwarven homelands starting on October 24.

Here's when Armored Core 6 unlocks in your time zone
https://www.pcgamer.com/armored-core-6-release-time-date-pc-console/
Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon brings back FromSoftware's mech series after a 10 year wait, and it's every bit the revival Armored Core deserved. After such a long wait, it'd be a shame to waste time not playing Armored Core 6 when that time could be spent tinkering with mechs and jumping into frenetic missions as soon as the game goes live. AC6 doesn't have a single global release time across platforms, though, so when exactly you'll be able to play it depends on whether you're on PC or console.
Here's Armored Core 6's release time, broken down by time zone and platform.

Stalker 2 looks great but, thanks to the situation in Ukraine, is delayed into early next year
https://www.pcgamer.com/stalker-2-looks-great-but-thanks-to-the-situation-in-ukraine-is-delayed-into-early-next-year/
Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine is ongoing, sadly with no end to the conflict in sight, and its impacts continue to be felt globally and most acutely in Ukraine itself. Developer GSC Game World was based in Kyiv and, since the war began, has been facing the direst of circumstances: development of Stalker 2 was temporarily paused while it helped some employees flee the conflict zone, while other staff are volunteering or have signed up for the Ukrainian armed forces.
(...)
Now there's good news and bad news. The good news is that our own Phil Savage went hands-on with Stalker 2 at Gamescom, and within three minutes had been chewed up by a dog, blasted by an anomaly, and irradiated. In other words, this sure sounds like the zone, and looks the part too. The bad news is that as part of the Gamescom appearance GSC has released a new fact sheet for the game, which pushes the release date back from late this year into Q1 2024: so anytime from January 1st to March 31st, 2024.
>> And there's an official Gamescom gameplay trailer.

Skateboarding roguelike Helskate shows off damage-buffing barrel rolls, and I'm stoked to shake off the rust
https://www.pcgamer.com/skateboarding-roguelike-helskate-shows-off-damage-buffing-barrel-rolls-and-im-stoked-to-shake-off-the-rust/
I used to love the Tony Hawk games—Underground's antagonist Eric Sparrow might still be the most punchable villain in gaming, and shredding the half pipes of Pro Skater 3's Warehouse level to Goldfinger's Superman was a formative experience.
But all good things must come to an end. I eventually betrayed my Pro Skater roots to EA's Skate games. It's been years since I've balanced on a grind rail of any description, and I'm sure that muscle memory has completely atrophied. It's going to get a workout soon though, because Phantom Coast's skateboarding action roguelike Helskate looks like it could bring me out of retirement.

I didn't wake up late, you woke up early. Time for some hardware news:

It is kind of a shitty time when the only company that refuses to discount their products to a meaningful degree is the only one that is making massive amounts of profit while everyone else who has been discounting their products and are trying to compete has been seeing losses after losses. But then again, Nvidia's current massive success has nothing to do with gaming as their Ai vision has had 10+ years of R&D while no one else really invested quite as heavily in the field.

NVIDIA Gaming Revenue Sees 22% Growth As Global Demand Normalizes, Laptop GeForce GPUs Outpace Desktops

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-gaming-revenue-sees-22-growth-as-global-demand-normalizes-laptop-geforce-gpus-outpace-desktops/

Intel 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh Desktop CPUs Leaked By MSI, 3% Faster Than 13th Gen

https://wccftech.com/intel-14th-gen-raptor-lake-refresh-desktop-cpus-leaked-msi-3-percent-faster-13th-gen/

Sad and unexpected

Intel Expresses Confidence in “Intel 4” Process, Says Its Competitive With TSMC’s 3nm Node

https://wccftech.com/intel-expresses-confidence-in-intel-4-process-competitive-with-tsmc-3nm-node/

AFOX gears up for the GeForce RTX 50 Series: EEC submissions range from RTX 5090 Ti to RTX 5050

https://videocardz.com/newz/afox-gears-up-for-the-geforce-rtx-50-series-eec-submissions-range-from-rtx-5090-ti-to-rtx-5050

Placeholder really

Hot damn he confirmed it's glossy too! End game monitor boys.

The only improvements come from the higher clocks and extra cores for the 14700K.

It will be interesting to see the cost, in watts, of that measly improvement.

The funny thing is 100% of a small userbase is worse than 70% of a large userbase. This is actually a pretty shit deal considering the flack people give you if you say you are EGS exclusive. The only developers that should make their games EGS exclusive should take a money deal and not this nonsense. Personally I'd rather have no one take any deals but if they want to, they better get one where EGS gives them money up front.

Intel has the advantage of backside power delivery (5-15% efficiency improvement), which TSMC will only introduce in their second-generation N2 process. However, their sole library attributes' such as cell height and pitch are more comparable to TSMC's N7 and N5.

It's not comparable in any way to TSMC's N3, except for the lower-density cells using a relaxed pitch that will be a part of the logic used in the high-performance N3 libraries.

I suppose, given the naming scheme, that Intel hoped to have this out and taking orders a year ago at the latest but it didn't work out. A shame, for it would have been very competitive with N5 and N4 especially at HPC.

This is so well made lmao