If they want to avoid a PR desaster, they should exclude their first-party games from that limitation, especially Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3.

Thermalright has a new line of coolers, coming soon

Insane how they are able to sell these coolers at these prices. Really want to see how the high end one performs and how it stacks up against Noctua's to be released NH-D15 G2.

Can it really be a big problem? I mean, 200MB of storage per game feels like quite a lot of saves. Does anyone need that many saves or have savefiles gotten so effing big?

My Auto-Saves + Endgame-Saves of Cyberpunk (I tried all the endings) are already 137 MB. Plus 20 MB for the Point-of-No-Return Auto-Saves.

With just 10 additional manual saves (not much in such a huge game), you already reach the limit.

Well, if you already have manual saves, you can trim down some of those 20 autosaves ...

What the fuck nVidia. Valued more than Apple?
A.I hype man. It prints money.

^ when people are gold-rushing, no better business than to sell shovels, am I right. 75% gross margins are insane.

Nvidia's P/E ratio is now very high though - closer now to Intel's during the dot com bubble than the rest of the tech industry (which has already very inflated market caps vs. the average).

It has the potential to transform the entire society and Nvidia is positioned well to take advantage of the situation, so I can kind of see why there is a lot of hype. Note that that's not necessarily my take on what AI is or isn't going to do, just why people might be hyped about it.

I'm pretty happy with Nvidia's growth since I own stocks in it.

A new Humble Bundle has been released, it has a pretty good selection of games.

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/future-games-show-discovery

• American Arcadia
• Deliver Us Mars
• En Garde
• The Entropy Centre
• Gloomwood
• Lost in Play
• Ship of Fools

There are a lot of showcases on Steam right now.

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/summer_showcase_2024

Here are a few games I found interesting, in case your backlogs and wishlists aren't large enough.

• Aethermancer
• Blue Prince
• Cat Quest III
• Cataclismo
• Creatures of Ava
• Demonschool
• Dragon Shelter
• Echo Generation: Midnight Edition
• Escape from Ever After
• Eternal Strands
• Fallen Aces
• Grifford Academy
• Immortal Hunters
• KARMA: The Dark World
• Lost Hellden
• Metaphor: ReFantazio
• Munch
• My Lovely Empress
• REKA
• Renaissance Kingdom Wars
• SacriFire
• Sandwalkers
• Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire
• SteamWorld Heist II
• Still Wakes the Deep
• Toads of the Bayou
• WILD Tactics

Let’s go with the Friday news!

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Oof: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League lost Warner Bros. $200 million—which is $25 million more than the original 2016 movie cost to make
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/oof-suicide-squad-kill-the-justice-league-lost-warner-bros-200-million-which-is-25-million-more-than-the-original-2016-movie-cost-to-make/
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, despite having some bright spots, is nevertheless a complete disaster for Warner Bros. Entertainment. The live-service disappointment has led to the company, uh, growing more focused on live service and free-to-play games for some reason. Though more notably its existing properties and games, such as Hogwarts Legacy—which the majority of Suicide Squad's team has reportedly been shunted onto.
The staggering loss was, according to a Bloomberg report, put into perspective during an earnings call in May, where Warner Bros. "revealed it was taking a $200 million loss on Suicide Squad".
For context, the original 2016 Suicide Squad movie—the bad one—cost $175 million dollars to make—that is, before you factor in various advertising costs. Despite being a critical failure by most metrics, the film still managed to take off at the box office to the tune of over $725 million worldwide. I've sympathy for Rocksteady, but that comparison's gotta sting.

The Humble Store has two new sales:

• The Frontier Publisher Sale launches with up to 90% discounts during 6 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/frontier-publisher-sale/
• The Looters & Labyrinths Sale also has games up to 90% off during 6 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/looters-labyrinths-sale/

Fanatical has two new deals:

• The new Star Deal is Ship Graveyard Simulator 2, 50% off during 48 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/ship-graveyard-simulator-2
• And the Capcom Arcade Bundle has 5 games with an 88% discount during 13 days: https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/capcom-arcade-bundle

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

GOG will let you bequeath your game library to someone else as long as you can prove you're actually dead
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/gog-will-let-you-bequeath-your-game-library-to-someone-else-as-long-as-you-can-prove-youre-actually-dead/
You can't bequeath your Steam account to your loved ones when the sad day of your passing comes around, at least not without breaking the TOS, but it turns out you can leave your GOG games to someone—as long as everyone involved is willing to do some legwork up front.
(...)
Giving someone your username and password is easy enough, but legally bequeathing a digital library turns out to be a lot trickier. Valve is a hard "no" on the matter—which I suppose is actually quite simple, if not the desired response—but GOG says it will try to accommodate such requests, as long as those left behind can prove that everything is on the up-and-up.
"As you may know, GOG does not collect information sufficient to truly identify a particular person (such as name and surname) or their family or marital status," GOG said in a statement provided to PC Gamer. "For this reason, we are not able to establish that someone is related to a particular user or that a particular user has passed away.
"In general, your GOG account and GOG content is not transferable. However, if you can obtain a copy of a court order that specifically entitles someone to your GOG personal account, the digital content attached to it taking into account the EULAs of specific games within it, and that specifically refers to your GOG username or at least email address used to create such an account, we'd do our best to make it happen. We're willing to handle such a situation and preserve your GOG library—but currently we can only do it with the help of the justice system."
>> At least it’s something.

LSFG 2.1 introduces X3 frame generation which will effectively triple your framerates
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/lsfg-2-1-introduces-x3-frame-generation-which-will-effectively-triple-your-framerates/
THS has released a new version of LSFG (Lossless Scaling Frame Generation) which adds support for an X3 frame generation mode. According to the modder, this will effectively triple your framerates, and it will not bring any additional input lag over the previous X2 frame generation mode.
As THS noted, you’ll get the exact same latency lag with X3 as you did with X2. Apparently, latency is affected by the base framerate and when the GPU is fully utilized. Or at least that’s what the modder claimed. For the best experience in both image smoothness and latency, it is recommended to lock the game framerate at 1/3 of the monitor’s refresh rate in X3 mode.
Moreover, X3 has increased GPU load by approximately 1.7 times compared to X2 mode. At the same time, LSFG 2.1 Performance and LSFG 1.1 have been optimized to be 20% faster in X2 mode compared to the previous version.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

This Fallout 4 Mod improves the faces of over 1450 NPCs, covering the base game and all DLCs
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/this-fallout-4-mod-improves-the-faces-of-over-1450-npcs-covering-the-base-game-and-all-dlcs/
Modder ‘ZPASCALIONZ’ has released a must-have mod for Fallout 4. This mod, called FO4FI HD Series (HD 2K Faces), overhauls the faces of all NPCs for the main game and all of its DLCs.
Going into more details, Fallout 4 features 1,452 NPCs in total. And, by using FACEGEN, the modder has improved each and every one of them. As ZPASCALIONZ noted, he did not simply upscale the vanilla textures. Instead, he went the extra mile and improved numerous small details (as well as the textures themselves).
>> The article has some screenshots.

The interconnected world of unofficial Dark Souls sequel Nightfall was just about finalized a whole year ago, but advances in modding tools led its creators to rebuild the whole thing
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/the-interconnected-world-of-unofficial-dark-souls-sequel-nightfall-was-just-about-finalized-a-whole-year-ago-but-advances-in-modding-tools-led-its-creators-to-rebuild-the-whole-thing/
Breaking a year of near-silence on the project, Dark Souls: Nightfall lead Grimrukh has put out a 14-minute video update on the ambitious Dark Souls 1 fan sequel. The good news? They've really dialed in their modding tools to produce a version of their remixed DS1 world map that's simultaneously more ambitious and also technically cleaner, with less proverbial gum and tape holding it together behind the scenes. The bad news is that this required redoing a lot of work, and the project does not yet have a release date.
Nightfall is a mod we've had our eyes on for awhile: it's set just after the end of Dark Souls 1, with that familiar world having degraded and rearranged itself even more as the fires fade. It has a vibe of a Dark Souls ROM hack, with familiar areas stitched together in fresh ways while new bosses and NPCs await.

GAMING NEWS

Nightdive has announced a remaster for the horror-themed classic FPS, Killing Time
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/nightdive-has-announced-a-remaster-for-the-horror-themed-classic-fps-killing-time/
Nightdive Studios has just announced its next remaster which will be for the horror-themed classic FPS, Killing Time. Killing Time was originally a 3DO exclusive title, however, it found its way to the PC in 1996.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown PC Demo Available for Download
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/test-drive-unlimited-solar-crown-pc-demo-available-for-download/
Now here is a pleasant surprise. NACON has just released a PC demo for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. This demo is available right now on Steam, and it will let you get your hands on this upcoming open-world racing game.

Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Patch 3 Released & Fully Detailed
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/tomb-raider-i-iii-remastered-patch-3-released-fully-detailed/
Aspyr has released the third major title update for Tomb Raider I-III Remastered, and it shared its full patch notes. This patch brings fixes and tweaks to all three TR games. So, let’s take a closer look at it.