The second part of the news:

Baldur's Gate 3's bear sex scene was such an 'upward turn in momentum for the game' that its animator called his mum to show it off: 'She was like, that's weeeird!'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/baldurs-gate/baldurs-gate-3s-bear-sex-scene-was-such-an-upward-turn-in-momentum-for-the-game-that-its-animator-called-his-mum-to-show-it-off-she-was-like-thats-weeeird/
Baldur's Gate 3 is resoundingly, terrifyingly, bone-quakingly popular. Why? Well, there's its deep and rewarding RPG mechanics, its cast of fascinating characters, and the historically high score it got in PC Gamer's Baldur's Gate 3 review. But mostly it's the bear sex.
Even before it released, BG3's red-hot bear scene—the bear is actually a transmogrified Halsin, in case you forgot—had already gone viral. Which makes sense. It is, after all, quite a unique scene as videogame romances go, and Larian was so proud of it that they made sure to show it off. To everyone. Including their mums.
>> “OMG, Mom, look what I’ve been doing at work” “What the Hell is wrong with you?!”

Dragon's Dogma 2 was the sign-off for Capcom legend Hideaki Itsuno, who's leaving to do his own thing after three decades at the top
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/dragons-dogma-2-was-the-sign-off-for-capcom-legend-hideaki-itsuno-whos-leaving-to-do-his-own-thing-after-three-decades-at-the-top/
Capcom veteran Hideaki Itsuno has announced his departure from the Japanese videogame giant, after over 30 years as a senior member of its development staff. Itsuno is best-known for his work on the Devil May Cry series, created by Hideki Kamiya but arguably reaching its peak with the Itsuno-directed Devil May Cry 3, and Dragon's Dogma, Itsuno's own dream game with the sequel turning out as his last major project for Capcom.

Risk of Rain 2's creators, along with 'many other' devs from Hopoo, have been snapped up by Valve—which means the end of the studio's unannounced game
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/risk-of-rain-2-s-creators-along-with-many-other-devs-from-hopoo-have-been-snapped-up-by-valve-which-means-the-end-of-the-studio-s-unannounced-game/
Risk of Rain 2—and the series in general—has enjoyed plenty of success over the years. With the first game made by uni students Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse, and being somewhat of an indie smash hit, the second arrived in 2019 and also sold gangbusters, hitting 500,000 players in early access.
Then in 2022, the Risk of Rain IP shifted hands from Drummond and Morse's development studio, Hopoo Games, over to Gearbox—and, if the reception to its latest expansion's anything to go by, it's not, uh, been going great.
When it comes to Hopoo, though, it looks like the studio's journey is coming to a close. As announced on the Hopoo's Twitter, both the studio's founders, as well as "many other talented members", are going to be "working on game development directly" at Valve, now.

'There's a plane bro': A Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 calling card seemed to reference 9/11 before getting removed
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/call-of-duty/theres-a-plane-bro-a-call-of-duty-black-ops-6-calling-card-seemed-to-reference-911-before-getting-removed/
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 currently has a closed beta underway, during which players are getting to know all of the ins and outs of what this this year's game has to offer, including talking to your meatshields and now finding some interesting calling cards. 

Court locks in Bungie's $4.4 million win against Destiny 2 cheat maker, refuses request for a new trial
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/court-locks-in-bungies-dollar44-million-win-against-destiny-2-cheat-maker-refuses-request-for-a-new-trial/
More than a year after Destiny 2 studio Bungie won a $4.4 million award against cheat maker AimJunkies, two US courts have effectively locked in the victory: One ruling affirmed the amount of the award, which AimJunkies had appealed, while another denied the company's request for a new trial.

Spectre Divide launches with outrageous $90 gun skins out the gate, which only makes its broken matchmaking more annoying
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/spectre-divide-launches-with-outrageous-90-gun-skins-which-only-makes-its-broken-matchmaking-more-annoying/
I have 41 minutes in the launch version of Spectre Divide, the new tactical FPS from Mountaintop Studios that has enjoyed loads of buzz from Valorant and Counter-Strike enjoyers through its closed and open betas. Normally, 41 minutes is more than enough time to fit in a match of Spectre, but I've been stuck staring at its menus thanks to unfortunate matchmaking bugs. I can't find a match despite around 30,000 people playing it, and once I start a queue, I can't cancel it unless I close the game.
Developer Mountaintop Studios has acknowledged the holdup and is working on a fix. The most recent update from the official Discord: "If you are in a queue longer than 11 minutes, restart your client and try again."
While waiting in my unstoppable queue, I tabbed over the Spectre Divide store and was met with a familiar eyesore: a $90 skin bundle resting above a $45 skin bundle. The Cry Kinesis bundle ($90) could be considered Spectre's flagship microtransaction for launch day—slapping sci-fi greebling and blue "cryo" FX on four of the shooter's most popular guns and transforming the knife into a glowing blue handaxe. "Cool," is what I would be able to say about these gun-fits if they weren't so insultingly overpriced.

Concord developer expresses gratitude for support following the sudden shutdown: 'For all of you reaching out with love, you are the reason we make games'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/concord-developer-expresses-gratitude-for-support-following-the-sudden-shutdown-for-all-of-you-reaching-out-with-love-you-are-the-reason-we-make-games/
The sudden shutdown of the newly-launched hero shooter Concord sparked an entirely unsurprising wave of unfortunate grave dancing amongst people who decried the game for being too "woke" or diverse, rather than being a game "for gamers," whatever that's supposed to mean. But amidst all that predictable sound and fury, there are also messages of support for the developers at Firewalk Studios, and expressions of hope from fans that Concord will be back.
>> Talking about players, they’re killing themselves in the game to gain XP.

Borderlands players cracked a secret cipher to find 'the most valuable SHiFT code we've ever made'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/borderlands-players-cracked-a-secret-cipher-to-find-the-most-valuable-shift-code-weve-ever-made/
When Gearbox rocked up to PAX West to show off some concept art for Borderlands 4, they didn't give away too much information about the upcoming looter-shooter. They did give something else away, however, as our siblings at GamesRadar reported—dice cards that contained a secret message. Each one had a series of up and down arrows surrounding a picture of a D20, and when Randy Pitchford revealed they contained a secret code, the internet's sleuths went to work.

'Worse than horse armour'—Age of Mythology: Retold is charging $6 for 22-year-old jpegs, giving the DLC 'very negative' Steam reviews before the game's even out
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rts/worse-than-horse-armour-age-of-mythology-retold-is-charging-6-for-22-year-old-jpegs-giving-the-dlc-very-negative-steam-reviews-before-the-game-s-even-out/
Age of Mythology: Retold, in case you're unfamiliar, is a sort-of remake of the classic 2002 strategy game that—as per our Age of Mythology: Retold review, which gave it a solid 75, "walks the tightrope of updating the bits that feel clunky by today’s standards without killing the sense of nostalgia."
But there's a fly stuck to those rose-tinted glasses. As players have observed, the game has exactly one DLC to its name (bar a soundtrack) the Legacy Deity Portrait Pack. It's currently on sale for $6 (£5) and, as the name suggests, lets players use the portraits from the 2002 original release.

No Man's Sky finally delivers the perfect reason to explore a few trillion planets: to go fishing
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/no-mans-sky-finally-delivers-the-perfect-reason-to-explore-a-few-trillion-planets-to-go-fishing/
(...)
So I'm excited to see infinite space sandbox No Man's Sky has apparently run out of other things to add to itself and finally patched in the one thing it always truly needed: fishing. The Aquarius Update arrives today, and all you intrepid Travelers now have a legitimate reason to restlessly explore the trillions of planets in No Man's Sky. The new space race is on: who can find the most serene and beautiful fishing spot in the galaxy?

Until Dawn remake dev hit by bone-deep layoffs just a month before the game comes out
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/horror/until-dawn-remake-dev-hit-by-bone-deep-layoffs-just-a-month-before-the-game-comes-out/
With exactly one month to go until the remake of the rather excellent PS4 horror game Until Dawn finally hits PC, its devs have been hit by layoffs. In a statement posted to LinkedIn, UK studio Ballistic Moon announced that it had made "the tough decision to significantly scale down our team to secure the future of our studio." 

Taking that runor as a base and looking at TPU's database:

That would put the 5080 at around 30% faster than the 4080. Not a mind blowing improvement, but a good one for sure.

We'll see how it's priced and how much memory it will have.

It'll probably stay at 16GB, or 20GB if that can't provide enough bandwidth - which with GDDR7 it should do.

I'm actually more worried about the gap between the 5080 and the 5070, going from 400W all the way down to 220W is nuts. Extrapolating from the 4070 Super (which has the same 220W TDP) and the performance gains for the 5080 over the 4090 and their TDP difference, I'm not even sure it can reach the 4070Ti in terms of raw performance. Imagine the gap having nothing between the 4090 and the 4070Ti...

The 5060 meanwhile has a higher TDP than the 4060Ti and should make a big leap in performance over it's predecessor, probably between 4070 and 4070 Super. Which doesn't leave a whole lot of room for a 5060Ti anymore. I do hope NVidia gives the card at least 12GB of VRAM this time around, though.

The 5050 meanwhile is with 100W lower than the 3050 8GB (115W-130W depending on the model), but considerably higher than the 3050 6GB (70W) and closest to the 4060 (110W) in TDP, so I expect a performance somewhat above the one of the 4060 when extrapolating from the 5080.

any thoughts on why Ragnorok on ps5 is 84 gb but the PC version is 190 gb? Just that much of an improvement to textures? Or just lazy port?

I would say combination of the two.

Even Activision said that they were looking into making the CoD games smaller in size since the storage amount on PC is even bigger.

I'm going to need a bigger drive in a few years.  4 tb might not be as large as I thought.  

Intel announces cancellation of 20A process node for Arrow Lake, goes with external nodes instead, likely TSMC [Updated]

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-announces-cancellation-of-20a-process-node-for-arrow-lake-goes-with-external-nodes-instead-likely-tsmc

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 & RTX 5080 Rumored For Completion This Month, 550W & 350W TGP

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-550w-5080-350w-september-design-fianlize-rumor/

AMD Radeon RX 7800M tested in 3DMark Time Spy: 28% faster than RTX 4070 Laptop GPU

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-rx-7800m-tested-in-3dmark-time-spy-28-faster-than-rtx-4070-laptop-gpu

Acer unveils Project DualPlay concept laptop with pop-out controller and speakers

https://videocardz.com/newz/acer-unveils-project-dualplay-concept-laptop-with-pop-out-controller-and-speakers

ACER unveils Nitro Blaze 7 gaming handheld with AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS

https://videocardz.com/newz/acer-unveils-nitro-blaze-7-gaming-handheld-with-amd-ryzen-7-8840hs

Part of me wonders if my 1000 watts is going to be enough for a 5090. TDP is an extra 100 watts.

I wanted to play Mass Effect Legendary Edition but thats pretty much a little over half of what I have for my SSD (256 GB)

My next build I'll make sure to have at least 1 TB and at most 2 TB if possible.

I'll want at least a 2 TB HDD option (with a max of 4 TB) as a secondary drive so I can put files in it and recordings of my playthroughs.

Right now 256 GB SSD with a 2 TB HDD.

The Thursday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

The Epic Store gives away two games:

• Football Manager 2024: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/football-manager-2024
• Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/sniper-ghost-warrior-contracts-c772b9

Next week, the free games will be Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland and SUPER CRAZY RHYTHM CASTLE.

Steam has three new deals:

• Backrooms: Escape Together, still in Early Access, will be 20% off until the 11th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2141730/Backrooms_Escape_Together/
• Katana ZERO features a 40% discount until the same September 11: https://store.steampowered.com/app/460950/Katana_ZERO/
• And Northend Tower Defense gets a 30% discount until September 18: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1669170/Northend_Tower_Defense/

Humble Bundle presents the Summer Narrative Celebration Bundle, with up to 9 items to get (there are two coupons) during 20 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/games/summer-narrative-celebration-bundle.

Fanatical has two new deals:

• The new Star Deal is The Legend of Tianding, 70% off: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/the-legend-of-tianding
• The BYO Platinum Collection - September 2024 is here with 18 games to choose for your 3+, 5+ or 7+ bundles: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/platinum-collection-build-your-own-bundle

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

-Empty-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

First HD Texture Pack for Bloodborne on PC
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/first-hd-texture-pack-for-bloodborne-on-pc/
Modder ‘fromsoftserve’ has released the first HD Texture Pack for Bloodborne that you can use on PC via the PlayStation 4 emulator, shadPS4. This is a WIP project, meaning that it does not cover all areas. So, let’s take a closer look at it.
As fromsoftserve noted, this pack covers five areas. These are Hunter’s Dream, Central Yharnam, Cathedral Ward, Upper Cathedral Ward and Old Yharnam. To overhaul the textures, the modder used AI tools. So basically, he upscaled the original textures by two times.
You can download this HD Texture Pack from this link. To install it, you’ll have to copy the map folder from this mod right into your Bloodborne game folder. And that’s it. When you load the game via shadPS4, you’ll instantly get the new textures.
>> The article has some screenshots and three videos.

Here’s Cyberpunk 2077 at 8K/Ultra+/Path Tracing with 300+ mods
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/heres-cyberpunk-2077-at-8k-ultra-path-tracing-with-300-mods/
YouTube’s ‘Digital Dreams’ has shared a video, showcasing Cyberpunk 2077 at 8K with over 300 mods and Ultra+ Path Tracing. This video will give you an idea of what a heavily modded version of CDPR’s title looks like in 2024.
To capture this gameplay footage, the YouTuber used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X with 32GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Sadly, though, he did not include any Performance Overlay. Thus, we don’t have any specific performance numbers.
From the footage, it appears that the game is way below 60fps. Moreover, it’s almost a given that Digital Dreams used DLSS 3 with Frame Generation. So, for all purists out there, this isn’t native 8K. Regardless of that, though, the game does look great.
It’s also worth noting that Digital Dreams shared the list of mods he has used. So, if you want to make the game look almost as good as this video, you can download the modlist from this link.
>> There’s no way he can natively run Cyberpunk 207 at 8K with path tracing, but it does great. The video is 8 minutes long.

GAMING NEWS

Deliver At All Costs is a new cool isometric destruction-based action delivery driver game
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/deliver-at-all-costs-is-a-new-cool-isometric-destruction-based-action-delivery-driver-game/
Now here is something really cool. Konami has just announced Deliver At All Costs; a new isometric destruction-based action delivery driver game. This looks like a lot of fun, so make sure to at least watch its debut gameplay trailer.
>> Looks fun.

Here are 40 minutes of gameplay footage from Titan Quest 2
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/here-are-40-minutes-of-gameplay-footage-from-titan-quest-2/
THQ Nordic has just shared a video, showcasing 40 minutes of brand new gameplay footage from Titan Quest 2. Titan Quest 2 is an isometric action RPG that a lot of PC gamers are looking forward to. So, if you are one of them, make sure to watch the video.