Here come the Friday news!

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Fanatical has three new 24h Flash Deals:

• Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has a 24% deal: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/eiyuden-chronicle-hundred-heroes
• Sands of Salzaar gets a 67% discount: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/sands-of-salzaar
• And The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition is 83% off: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-special-edition

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

-Still nothing-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Skyrim just got a new DLC-sized expansion mod with over 200 locations, 180+ quests and 8,500 lines of voiced dialogue
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/skyrim-just-got-a-new-dlc-sized-expansion-mod-with-over-200-locations-180-quests-and-8500-lines-of-voiced-dialogue/
Modder ‘agerweb’ has released a new DLC-sized expansion mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, called Shumer and the Priest Kings. Shumer and the Priest Kings packs over 200 locations, more than 180 quests, and 8,500 lines of voiced dialogue. So, let’s take a closer look at it.
This expansion tells the story of Shumer, a story the player will learn by completing quests, reading books, journals, letters, and talking to people.
Shumer is the size of about 3 Skyrim holds with over 150 map-marked locations (and 40 unmarked ones) and 80+ underground locations. In total, there are over 200 new locations. Also, there are two small islands called Barbella and Althira. Shumer is home to over 1000 NPCs. Currently, the mod has 8,500 lines of voiced dialogue to support the quests and narrative of Shumer.
Players will also find 52 new books (so far) covering the Shumerian-themed history and its religion plus some fiction/non-fiction stories. There are also 42 journals and numerous letters. Treasure hunters will also be able to get their hands on 4 new treasure maps.
As said, the mod offers 180 quests. Of them, 21 are for the Main Quest. Then we have 34 side quests, 21 guild quests, and 70 various quests that players can find in Shumer. Not only that but the islands and Skyrim also have 38 new quests to complete.
>> The article has an almost 15 minutes video.

GAMING NEWS

Frontier is officially working on a new Jurassic World game
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/frontier-has-officially-announced-jurassic-world-evolution-3/
Frontier has announced the signing of a license with Universal Products & Experiences for a third Jurassic World game. According to the press release, this new Jurassic World game will be released between June 1st, 2025, and May 31st, 2026.

Cities Skylines 2 Patch 1.1.2f1 adds official support for NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/cities-skylines-2-patch-1-1-2f1-adds-support-for-nvidia-dlss-super-resolution/
Colossal Order has released a new update for its city builder, Cities: Skylines 2. According to the release notes, Patch 1.1.2f1 adds support for NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution. This will greatly improve performance and image quality on the NVIDIA RTX GPUs.

Warner Bros calls Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League a “disappointment”
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/warner-bros-calls-suicide-squad-kill-the-justice-league-a-disappointment/
Well, we all saw that coming. On its latest earnings call, Warner Bros’ CEO David Zaslav called Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League a disappointing release.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a GaaS (Game as a Service) title that nobody wanted. It’s been almost a decade since the previous Batman: Arkham title and a lot of gamers were expecting a bombastic single-player game from Rocksteady. Instead, we got yet another GaaS game. And, from the looks of it, the game did not sell well.

God of War: Ragnarok seems to be the next PlayStation game for PC
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/god-of-war-ragnarok-seems-to-be-the-next-playstation-game-for-pc/
Ghost of Tsushima is coming to PC next week. And, according to industry insider ‘billbil-kun’, the next PlayStation game that will be released on PC is God of War: Ragnarok.

Friday news, part two:

Experiencing Tekken 8 crashes? Nvidia admits to ongoing driver bug with 10-series cards
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/experiencing-tekken-8-crashes-nvidia-admits-to-ongoing-driver-bug-with-10-series-cards/
Tekken 8 is, I am told, a very good fighting game. Not that I'd know too much about this sort of thing, as my reflexes are now old and haggard enough that I could be beaten by a well-trained dog that licks the buttons on command in anything that requires fast-paced controls. Sigh. 
Anyway, what I do know about is Nvidia GeForce driver updates, and the notes for the most recent release confirm that Nvidia is aware of an ongoing crashing issue in the game. Listed in the release notes for the latest 552.44 Nvidia driver is the admission, under "open issues", that "Tekken 8 may randomly crash during gameplay on GeForce GTX 10-series graphics cards". 
>> Welp, I’m glad I’m not playing it.That would drive me nuts.

It's not over—reports warn of more cuts on the horizon at Microsoft, citing a company structure spread too thin
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/its-not-overreports-warn-of-more-cuts-on-the-horizon-at-microsoft-citing-a-company-structure-spread-too-thin/
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." That's an idiom I've got rattling in my head while the games industry stares down the barrel of further cuts at Microsoft's gaming division, which is presently citing eerily familiar reasons for its alarmingly-rapid contraction. 
(...)
Regrettably, it still isn't over. As reported by Bloomberg, "Xbox began offering voluntary severance agreements to producers, quality assurance testers and other staff at ZeniMax" this week—while "others across the Xbox organisation have been told that more cuts are on the way."

Warzone hackers give overkill a new meaning by stuffing rockets into assault rifles, leaving victims clueless as to how it's even possible
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/call-of-duty/warzone-hackers-give-overkill-a-new-meaning-by-stuffing-rockets-into-assault-rifles-leaving-victims-clueless-as-to-how-its-even-possible/
The devil may work hard, but Warzone hackers have proven time and time again that they work harder, especially since they've found a new way to bring utter chaos to the game by loading what looks like rocket ammo into their weapons.
A now-deleted video taken by a bystander showed a couple of hackers wreaking havoc in a Warzone lobby by loading sniper rifles and other guns with rocket ammo and tearing apart the competition and the map along with them. 

Large-scale game development is 'crushing under its own weight' according to Devolver co-founder
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/large-scale-game-development-is-crushing-under-its-own-weight-according-to-devolver-co-founder/
Devolver Digital is known for working with independent developers on games like Human Fall Flat, Children of the Sun, Cult of the Lamb, and, honestly, most of the quirky indie games that you can think of. While it has made a name for itself by championing the little guy, its co-founder, Nigel Lowrie, admits that competing against live service games and existing in the current gaming ecosphere isn't the easiest thing to do. 
During the last Game Developers Conference (GDC) in mid-March, Lowrie discussed these issues in an interview with Games Industry.biz and what it means for the publisher. "There's us, on maybe the smaller-to-medium-size end. But on the larger end, it feels like [game development] is crushing under its own weight a little bit," Lowrie says. "The consumers are so tied up in some of these really fantastic live service games, but there's only so much time they can spend. So there are more and more huge games being launched, asking for an enormous amount of time, but there's just not that much time available for people to play.

24 years later, Warren Spector offers more details about Deus Ex's cut 'Denver airport conspiracy' mission that was 'so crazy no one would believe it'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/24-years-later-warren-spector-offers-more-details-about-deus-exs-cut-denver-airport-conspiracy-mission-that-was-so-crazy-no-one-would-believe-it/
The Denver International Airport has been the subject of all sorts of odd conspiracy theories since its opening in 1995, which made it an ideal setting for director Warren Spector's conspiracy-filled 2000 immersive sim Deus Ex. Spector actually mapped out an entire level that would be set at the airport, but ended up cutting it "because it was so crazy no one would believe it," he said during a recent PC Gamer roundtable podcast.
>> Talking about the past, the voice acting back then was also different.

Mark Hamill to return as The Joker in Multiversus
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fighting/mark-hamill-to-return-as-the-joker-in-multiversus/
Mark Hamill will return as the voice of The Joker for Multiversus, Warner Brothers and Player First Games have confirmed, following several years away from the role. A brief teaser, posted to X/Twitter, gives some of The Joker's moves, while a short trailer was posted to YouTube with a longer one to come later.

Animal Well is shaping up to be the most acclaimed metroidvania since Hollow Knight
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/animal-well-critic-reviews-launch/
One of the best-reviewed games of the year so far launched on Steam today. In his 90% Animal Well review for PC Gamer, Shaun said that the 2D metroidvania "may go down in history as one of the genre's best," and other critics agree.

Check out this gorgeous, sepia-toned apocalyptic adventure set in northern Finland
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/adventure/check-out-this-gorgeous-sepia-toned-apocalyptic-adventure-set-in-northern-finland/
The humble point-and-click adventure game has gone through many iterations, with ups and downs year to year, but the genre has given up its relevance entirely. I know this because at least once a year I see one that's just drop-dead interesting for some reason or other. Rauniot, out now from Finnish indie developer Act Normal Games, is drop-dead interesting because it's drop-dead gorgeous. 

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, one of my favorite recent CRPGs, is getting a monster farewell DLC in the style of Mass Effect 3's Citadel add-on
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous-one-of-my-favorite-recent-crpgs-is-getting-a-monster-farewell-dlc-in-the-style-of-mass-effect-3s-citadel-add-on/
Even with its hands full on Warhammer 40K CRPG Rogue Trader, Owlcat Games has found time to add a ton of substantial DLC to its 2021 RPG epic, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Now WotR is set to get its swan song on June 13 with A Dance of Masks, a massive new epilogue chapter to the main game.

DayZ's upcoming arctic expansion will let you freeze, burn, starve, and get eaten by zombies all at once
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/dayzs-upcoming-arctic-expansion-will-let-you-freeze-burn-starve-and-get-eaten-by-zombies-all-at-once/
Marquee zombie survival shooter DayZ has a new expansion coming this fall, its first in nearly five years. DayZ Frostline will introduce the frigid new Sakhal archipelago, a sprawling 83km² map—that's about 32 square miles of frigid islands and volcanic peaks. A debut trailer and screenshots show off industrial facilities, mines, pipelines, and oil derricks in tundra environments. Those same shots, however, are interspersed with steaming sulfurous pools, volcano cones, and rugged rocky shorelines.

Well yes, there’s a third part of the news:

Helldivers 2's themes are bleeding into its community management, and creating a new standard in live storytelling
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/helldivers-2s-themes-are-bleeding-into-its-community-management-and-creating-a-new-standard-in-live-storytelling/
Helldivers 2 is setting a new standard for live storytelling, and not a little of that is how the game's fiction has bled-over into the online interactions between Arrowhead Game Studios and the playerbase. This found spectacular expression last week after the game's first real misstep, a Sony-mandated account linking requirement, saw Helldivers collectively organise and (what else) review bomb their own beloved game on Steam in an effort to get the situation reversed.
(...)
I find this stuff almost as fascinating as the ongoing Galactic War itself. Arrowhead has succeeded in engaging a playerbase at huge scale, and making them feel like they have a degree of control in how this game is unfolding. Helldivers 2 players are seriously invested in this universe already and, when they're not playing the game itself, are using a myriad of out-of-game tools to track it, offer feedback, and collectively organise themselves. The fact this maps so well onto Helldivers 2's satirical themes of managed democracy and collectivism is just the icing on the cake.
>> Talking about what happened last week, the game remains delisted in 177 countries.

Nothing about Helldivers 2's newest assault rifle makes any sense
https://www.pcgamer.com/helldivers-2-tenderizer-impessions/
It's one of my favorite times of the month: new Helldivers 2 warbond day. After a community vote that went overwhelmingly in favor of no delay, Arrowhead released the Polar Patriots premium warbond today, adding four new guns and other goodies to its rapidly-expanding co-op shooter.
You can unlock the items on the warbond's first page in any order, but I suspect most people will go straight for the shiny new assault rifle: the AR-61 Tenderizer. (...)
Looks good, sounds great—maybe you can sense the "but" coming. The promise of the Tenderizer hits a major snag when you take a look at its stats. On paper, the Tenderizer is extremely similar to the standard Liberator—they have the same damage per shot and nearly identical recoil—except the Tenderizer has a smaller magazine and slower fire rate. Hmm…
>> That’s not the only thing that doesn’t make sense, the 1-player missions have 4-player patrol spawn times.

Blizzard's internal Diablo 4 playtests are a 'cursed problem' where 'to really test our game, you need to spend your life playing our game,' designer says
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/blizzards-internal-diablo-4-playtests-are-a-cursed-problem-where-to-really-test-our-game-you-need-to-spend-your-life-playing-our-game-designer-says/
Diablo 4's lead class designer called trying to test an action RPG made to be played for hundreds of hours "a cursed problem" that would take "more hours than what you would normally expect someone to work at a job," in an interview today with Diablo 4 streamer Raxxanterax.

Bungie reveals all the possible perks on Destiny 2's spicy new Prismatic class items
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/bungie-reveals-all-the-possible-perks-on-destiny-2s-spicy-new-prismatic-class-items/
With less than four weeks to go before The Final Shape—the climactic expansion in Destiny's decade-long saga—the flow of information coming from Bungie is fast turning into a fire hose. In the latest This Week In Destiny post, the studio breaks down all the perks that can be combined on Prismatic class items, the new type of exotic armor that you might recall I was very excited about when revealed last month.

'Everyone and their mum' is playing Hades 2, which is exactly why The Rogue Prince of Persia is delayed
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/everyone-and-their-mum-is-playing-hades-2-which-is-exactly-why-the-rogue-prince-of-persia-is-delayed/
Hades 2 burst forth from the bloody river Styx into a 'surprise' early access last week, immediately throwing its weight around with over 100,000 concurrent players and—as you might've noticed—causing several indie developers to go on red alert.
One such developer is Evil Empire, the offspring of Dead Cells creator Motion Twin, which is currently in the process of crafting The Rogue Prince of Persia. Similar to Dead Cells, it's a 2D, platformer roguelike that was also planning on releasing into Early Access May 14. It's not anymore.
As per the studio's Twitter account, The Rogue Prince of Persia will still wallrun into early access this month, with a proper date to be announced on Monday next week.

Former Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider pours scorn on EA's AI dreams: 'What they took as excitement was really a veiled wail of despair'
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/former-dragon-age-lead-writer-david-gaider-pours-scorn-on-eas-ai-dreams-what-they-took-as-excitement-was-really-a-veiled-wail-of-despair/
EA sure is keen to start using AI in all its games. So keen that CEO Andrew Wilson can't stop chatting about it: In March he was envisioning a bleak future where 3 billion people were using it, and just recently he was regaling investors with the news that EA devs apparently have a "hunger" to begin using the tech themselves.
But maybe take Wilson's words with a grain of salt, because over on Twitter, former Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider had some fierce criticisms of the EA boss and his breathless hosannahs to AI. Responding to Wilson's comments, Gaider wrote that "the 'hunger' referred to here is the allure of a spreadsheet where the labour costs suddenly show as a teeny tiny bar compared to the other bars and a bunch of executives around a table nod and repeat 'ROI' and 'good, yes, good' over and over again.

And now, the GOG and Steam deals for the weekend:

+GOG

• There’s only one new Deal of the Day: GINSHA, 30% off until Monday: https://www.gog.com/en/game/ginsha
• And RollerCoaster Tycoon celebrates its 25th Anniversary putting its games on sale with up to 75% discounts during 7 days: https://www.gog.com/en/promo/20240510_rct_anniversary

+Steam

• Super Bunny Man will be 35% off until the 15th of May: https://store.steampowered.com/app/673750/Super_Bunny_Man/
• Dwarf Fortress gets a 20% discount until the 16th of May: https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/
• The Dark Souls franchise is on sale, with all the games and DLCs being 50% off: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/DarkSoulsFranchise
• EMERGENCY 20 will be 66% off until May 16: https://store.steampowered.com/app/735280/EMERGENCY_20/
• The Company of Heroes franchise is on sale, with up to 75% discounts until the 16th.. CoH 3 will also be free to try until Monday: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/cohsale
• The LudoNarraCon is back with demos and up to 90% discounts. While the Con lasts until Monday, the 13th, most deals will end the 16th: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/LudoNarraCon
• The Dying Light franchise is on sale with up to 85% discounts until the 19th of May: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Techland/sale/dyinglightstandard
• King Arthur: Knight's Tale will be 60% off until May, 23rd: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1157390/King_Arthur_Knights_Tale/
• And the Paradox Interactive Publisher Sale brings up to 80% deals until the 23rd, tho some deals will end sooner. Also, Crusader Kings III will be free to try during the weekend: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1158310/Crusader_Kings_III/

That’s it. Until next time, I wish you a happy and gaming weekend.

Ya it works quite well and isn't very costly. Depends on how long they last I guess. It's been 3 years so far and they're still going strong.

There's always room for case improvement. Hopefully this model sells well enough to warrant a higher airflow model eventually.

The iPad Pro 2024's new Tandem OLED screen explained: why it's important, and why it took so long to come

https://www.techradar.com/tablets/ipad-pro/the-ipad-pro-2024s-new-tandem-oled-screen-explained-why-its-important-and-why-it-took-so-long-to-come

The tech is kinda nuts. They put two layers of OLED pixels layered on top of each other and the result is 1000 nits fullscreen brightness and 1600 nits peak. Not 2% or 10%, fullscreen on an OLED.

NVIDIA To Unveil GeForce RTX 5090 & RTX 5080 At The Same Time, Availability A Few Weeks Apart

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-rtx-5080-unveil-same-time-availability-few-weeks-apart/

Unsurprising

AMD’s Enthusiast Ryzen “Strix Halo” APUs Spotted: 120W TDP, FP11 Platform & 64 GB Memory

https://wccftech.com/amd-enthusiast-ryzen-strix-halo-apus-spotted-120w-tdp-fp11-platform-64-gb-memory/

AMD Fullfills Open-Source Promise, Releases Full MES Documentation For RDNA 3 GPUs

https://wccftech.com/amd-fullfills-open-source-promise-releases-full-mes-documentation-rdna-3-gpus/

Intel Panther Lake-H High-End Laptop CPU Spotted With 12 Next-Gen Xe3-LPG “Celestial” GPU Cores

https://wccftech.com/intel-panther-lake-h-high-end-laptop-cpu-spotted-12-xe3-lpg-celestial-gpu-cores/

Apple introduces M4 chip

https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2024/05/apple-introduces-m4-chip/

Tech Jesus finds it a sound concept and his testing proves that it works and is a valid concept we could see being used in not just SFF's, but mid and full tower builds. I just hope it actually catches on, because tbh, having less fans, paying less money towards cooling would be ideal for me, while also having improved cooling tech on top of that as a bonus. 

I already bought my partner a fan based heater, which costs less than a bog-standard elec radiator, and the fan is really small, but does a great job, and also comes with the added bonus of acting as a cooling fan as well, which is great.

Also I just realised, because that fan slots nicely into the SFF case, imagine a mid range tower, it'd allow for a more cleaner/refined look for the cases, because it only takes up a strip slot, and not a block slot, like all regular fans tend to take up (this could also help with dust build-up, which regular fans tend to cause over time). 

Impressive indeed, but also not really suitable for monitors (tho it may work for TVs). That's way too bright for something that you'll use for long periods, and I wouldn't be surprised if it could hurt your eyes.

But hey, I have a monitor rated for 350cd/mm2 and have the brightness set to 12%, so maybe I'm biased ...

This has been an issue for years... The smaller we make the chips, the higher the chances of leakage... The more leakage, the more heat, the more limited we are with clockrates.
...So chip designers started using dark silicon around parts of the chip as a way to insulate against that which we saw with Pascal... It does make the chip larger.
nVidia also deployed a few extra tweaks like decoupling parts of the chip to drive up clockrates as well.

Obviously companies like TSMC and Samsung took note of that and started making specific tools for various process nodes to capitalize and optimize for it as well, hence why there are a dozen different types of "7nm".

..Now when we actually get to 3nm, not the advertising 3nm... But geometrically real 3nm... The real issue will end up being Quantum Tunneling. - But we are not there yet and won't be for years.
I.E. TSMC's "3nm" process is using a gate pitch of 48nm with N3E being 24nm.

That's true, although I was thinking specifically of increases in parasitic capacitance and leakage with sub-10 nm contacts. Apparently, these can be significant enough to decrease frequencies at a constant power density depending on the node.

The 5 nm threshold for mobility collapse from quantum tunneling comes from the width of the silicon transistor fin, which is around 8 nm for TSMC's N3, not gate or metal pitches. In fact, the limit is more like 7 nm for FINFETs, so TSMC is skirting the line with N3... and everyone else has moved to GAAFETs.

Nodes used to be named after half of the minimum metal pitch (so that'd be 24/2 = 12 nm for TSMC's N3) but logic gates have been scaling better than DRAM and now are the smallest feature. So the naming scheme isn't that outrageous, TBF.

AMD RDNA 5 To Be A Completely New GPU Architecture From The Ground Up, RDNA 4 Mostly Fixes RDNA 3 Issues & Improves Ray Tracing

https://wccftech.com/amd-rdna-5-completely-new-gpu-architecture-from-ground-up-rdna-4-fixes-rdna-3-improves-ray-tracing/

Sounds about right considering the xbox leak. The question is if it will have the feature set that will match whatever Nvidia will have in store.

ASUS Comes Under Huge RMA Fire, Charges $3,758 Just To Repair Just Plastic On A $2800 RTX 4090

https://wccftech.com/asus-under-huge-rma-fire-charges-3758-to-repair-just-plastic-on-2800-rtx-4090/

Asus RMA has been a complete shitshow