Monday news, the second part:

Miyazaki says calm down, FromSoft will keep making 'singleplayer-focused games' in future even though its current obsession is multiplayer stuff
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/miyazaki-says-calm-down-fromsoft-will-keep-making-singleplayer-focused-games-in-future-even-though-its-current-obsession-is-multiplayer-stuff/
FromSoftware has two irons—that we know of—in the fire right now: Elden Ring Nightreign (releasing on most current platforms) and The Duskbloods (for something called the 'Nintendo Switch 2').
But wait. These are both multiplayer-focused things. More multiplayer-focused than usual, I mean. Nightreign is a full-on co-op game set in The Lands Between while The Duskbloods is a "PvPvE-focused multiplayer action title" set in fake-Yharnam. What could this mean? Is FromSoft leaving us singleplayer likers behind? Do I have to go out and make friends?
Shockingly, no. And thank god for that. In an interview with plucky independent games media outlet Nintendo, FromSoft president and Duskbloods director Hidetaka Miyazaki assured scared, lonely fans of more traditional, Dark Souls-ian fare that the studio has no intention of dedicating itself entirely to multiplayer-focused titles in the years to come.

Dice 'n' Goblins is a charming little dungeon-crawling RPG with some deceptively clever systems under the hood
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/dice-n-goblins-is-a-charming-little-dungeon-crawling-rpg-with-some-deceptively-clever-systems-under-the-hood/
Sometimes, I don't want world-spanning quests and epic theatrics out of my RPGs—some days I just want to be a little guy hitting monsters and seeing my numbers go up. Dice 'n' Goblins, which releases on Steam today, is a perfect fix for that kind of hankerin'.

13 years after it was first teased, the official Mewgenics trailer is here with live-action sexual dysfunction, brutal violence, a divine grudge, and more than 100 truly awful cats
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/13-years-after-it-was-first-teased-the-official-mewgenics-trailer-is-here-with-live-action-sexual-dysfunction-brutal-violence-a-divine-grudge-and-more-than-100-truly-awful-cats/
2012 was quite a year. Barack Obama was re-elected, PC Gamer selected Mass Effect 3 as Game of the Year, and Binding of Isaac studio teased its next game, an "adorably horrible" kitty-cat mutation simulator called Mew-Genics.
Now it's 2025: Donald Trump is somehow sort of in charge, BioWare seems pretty much cooked, and Mewgenics—now minus the "-"—still isn't out. But after 13 years of waiting we do now finally have an official trailer, and I don't know what I expected but it sure wasn't this.

The Monster Hunter Wilds update added a big, beautiful bird who gives you free stuff, and players are already worshipping it as a benevolent god
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/the-monster-hunter-wilds-update-added-a-big-beautiful-bird-who-gives-you-free-stuff-and-players-are-already-worshipping-it-as-a-benevolent-god/
They might eagerly go toe-to-toe with a tyrannosaur just to turn its hide into a hat, but even hunters love free stuff. It's no surprise, then, that it's taken only hours for Monster Hunter Wilds players to turn a newly-added bird benefactor into an object of worship.

Tekken 8's newest season is being dogpiled with negative reviews as director says there's a 'disconnect between what the community wants' and what the developer is doing
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fighting/tekken-8s-newest-season-is-being-dogpiled-with-negative-reviews-as-director-says-theres-a-disconnect-between-what-the-community-wants-and-what-the-developer-is-doing/
Tekken 8 is losing the matchup against its own community right now, with its second season being met with near-universal criticism, tanking its recent Steam review rating all the way to Overwhelmingly Negative.
Currently, only 14% of reviews made in the last 30 days are positive, while its overall rating is still Mixed as Steam has flagged the whole thing as a review bomb incident. I don't know if that's necessarily true, though—sure not every thumbs down is inherently insightful, but it's clear the choices made for season two are not liked.

Months before Schedule 1 was a Steam top seller, its solo dev was worried he was 'kneecapping' himself by not putting 'drug' in the title
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/months-before-schedule-1-was-a-steam-top-seller-its-solo-dev-was-worried-he-was-kneecapping-himself-by-not-putting-drug-in-the-title/
Thanks to the benefit of hindsight, we know that Schedule 1 is a pretty cool name for the drug-dealing sim that's topped the Steam charts these last two weeks. It's evocative, memorable, and references its subject matter without affixing a played-out "Simulator" on the end. But five months ago, back when Schedule 1 was nothing more than a modestly popular demo, its developer was seriously worried that the name would sabotage its success.

After being laid off from his triple-A 'dream job', this developer made a game about a disgruntled ex-employee seeking revenge on the corporate world
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/after-being-laid-off-from-his-triple-a-dream-job-this-developer-made-a-game-about-a-disgruntled-ex-employee-seeking-revenge-on-the-corporate-world/
What does it take to turn someone into a supervillain? According to a few Marvel movies, not much: Tony Stark skipping a meeting or taking over your construction contracts will instantly push you into a career of ruthless supervillainy.
In pixel art action game Vindefiant, it didn't take much to turn someone evil, either:
"In Vindefiant, you play as Alyx, a disgruntled ex-employee on a relentless path of vengeance and destruction," the game's Steam page says. After getting fired from his corporate job, "Alyx unleashes his powers and sparks a path of rage and destruction to get revenge on his former employer."

Abiotic Factor's next update will bring a whole new upgrade system and fix attacks on your base: 'We've heard a lot of feedback about base assaults and how they just kinda stink'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/abiotic-factors-next-update-will-bring-a-whole-new-upgrade-system-and-fix-attacks-on-your-base-weve-heard-a-lot-of-feedback-about-base-assaults-and-how-they-just-kinda-stink/
It's only been a couple of months since Abiotic Factor's Dark Energy update cascaded out of its Black Mesa-ish science lab. But developer Deep Field Games is already heavily into production on the game's next block of content. This week, it provided the first look at the new update, titled 'Cold Fusion', and it's shaping up to be another substantial addition to the Half-Life inspired survival game.

Terra Invicta, the space 4X from the creators of XCOM's Long War mod, just got a massive update that adds exofighters, improved diplomacy, and 'advanced weapons' for its alien menace
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/terra-invicta-the-space-4x-from-the-creators-of-xcoms-long-war-mod-just-got-a-massive-update-that-adds-exofighters-improved-diplomacy-and-advanced-weapons-for-its-alien-menace/
Terra Invicta, the space 4X from the creators XCOM's Long War mod, was already denser than a black hole when it launched into Steam early access back in 2022. But that hasn't stopped developer Pavonis Interactive from stuffing yet more matter into its strategic singularity where the alien defence of XCOM fuses with the geopolitics of Crusader Kings, with a brand new update landing this week, bringing a host of new features to the hugely ambitious strategy game.

The remaster of D&D classic Neverwinter Nights 2 still hasn't been announced, but it's already Steam Deck verified
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/the-remaster-of-d-and-d-classic-neverwinter-nights-2-still-hasnt-been-announced-but-its-already-steam-deck-verified/
First reported by Gaming on Linux, backend updates to the yet-to-be officially announced Neverwinter Nights 2 Enhanced Edition recorded by SteamDB show that the remaster of Obsidian's 2006 classic is already Steam Deck verified.

Overwatch and World of Warcraft art director Bill Petras has died
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/overwatch-and-world-of-warcraft-art-director-bill-petras-has-died/
Bill Petras, a veteran of Blizzard Entertainment with a career spanning over 30 years in the games industry, has died. The news was shared to LinkedIn by Petras' friend and colleague, former Blizzard cinematics director, Harley D. Huggins II. Petras is survived by his family, who are planning a celebration of life for Petras in the coming days.

Party with wizards and get stuck in a Medusa timeloop in Indiepocalypse's latest anthology of unusual games
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/party-with-wizards-and-get-stuck-in-a-medusa-timeloop-in-indiepocalypses-latest-anthology-of-unusual-games/
For five years the indie designer known as Pizza Pranks has been publishing Indiepocalypse, a monthly "bundle-zine" of 10 experimental indie games by different developers. They're always a bit off-kilter, and they come with a helpful pdf zine where the creators of each one do a postmortem on their inspirations. It's also full of handy links to other places you'll find niche games, like the interactive fiction zine ChoiceBeat.
The latest issue of Indiepocalypse is #63, and as always it's a zip file full of surprises. Among them is Wizard Party, a point-and-click adventure where you navigate a house party where ideas manifest as interactable objects once they're mentioned in conversation, which you can then use to solve puzzles.

Pacific Drive's 'largest ever' update adds endless expeditions to the vehicular survival game, but it's a big change to how saving works that has me pondering a reinstall
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/pacific-drives-largest-ever-update-adds-endless-expeditions-to-the-vehicular-survival-game-but-its-a-big-change-to-how-saving-works-that-has-me-pondering-a-reinstall/
Pacific Drive received its "largest ever free content update" this week, one which introduces a brand new way of playing Ironwood Studios' vehicular survival game. But you'd better step away from the newswheel, bucko, because I'm hijacking this article for my own devious ends. While the headline addition of the update is some fancy-sounding expeditions, it's a secondary feature developer Ironwood Studios has folded in, which actually made me consider reinstalling the game.

In 'a bit of an experiment' Rust's latest update makes softcore mode even softer, and some changes may be brought over 'to the vanilla game in future'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/in-a-bit-of-an-experiment-rusts-latest-update-makes-softcore-mode-even-softer-and-some-changes-may-be-brought-over-to-the-vanilla-game-in-future/
Rust is, famously, an unforgiving affair, a survival game where someone murdering you and stealing everything you own is also known as 'Tuesday'. But Facepunch's open-world cruelty simulator does have at least one merciful bone in its emaciated, battle-scarred body. In 2021, Facepunch added a softcore mode, which mitigates some of the vanilla game's brutality with features like safe spawning zones and the ability to recover some of your loot upon death.
This mode is also the focus for Rust's latest update, and it appears the grizzled survival game is further mellowing in its old age. As of this update, softcore mode is going even softer, and at least one of the changes may have implications for Rust as a whole.

Superb city-builder Against the Storm will round off its roster with a DLC of bats, who 'take pride in enduring what breaks others and cannot stand being favored'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/city-builder/superb-city-builder-against-the-storm-will-round-off-its-roster-with-a-dlc-of-bats-who-take-pride-in-enduring-what-breaks-others-and-cannot-stand-being-favored/
Against the Storm is one of the best city-builders of recent years, taking the SimCity cycle of building cities destined to be destroyed by natural disasters and infusing it with a roguelike structure, such that the death of your city is merely a part of the game, rather than the end of it. Yet alongside this, one of the key secrets to its success is the diverse array of anthropomorphic animals—the citizens of your civilization in this grim fantasy realm—you have to manage.
(...)
Now, developer Eremite Games has offered a glimpse of the game's next DLC, which will further complicate balancing your citizens' needs with the addition of a new species—Bats. According to the developer's Steam blog "bats are stern and fiercely devoted people. They take pride in enduring what breaks others and cannot stand being favored. Bats excel at metallurgy but find no particular comfort in any type of work." That last bit sounds just like me, except for the metallurgy part.

And here’s the expected third part of today’s news:

The rights to one of the greatest PC games of all time languished in the vault of a Midwestern insurance firm until a frustrated player bugged them about a re-release, 'But they asked me if I wanted to do System Shock 3'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/the-rights-to-one-of-the-greatest-pc-games-of-all-time-languished-in-the-vault-of-a-midwestern-insurance-firm-until-a-frustrated-player-bugged-them-about-a-re-release-but-they-asked-me-if-i-wanted-to-do-system-shock-3/
Speaking to Nightdive founder Stephen Kick and VP of business development Larry Kuperman at this year's Game Developers Conference, I was curious about how it felt to be returning to System Shock 2 for the studio's upcoming remaster. After all, I had a loose understanding that Shock 2 is the game that kicked off Nightdive in the first place.
Kick recounted the unlikely story of how he found himself making deals to revive a dead franchise, and also supplied a detail I'd never known before: For the longest time, the rights to System Shock were in the hands of an insurance company that had no idea what to do with them.

That game jam based on Oblivion's terrible persuasion wheel actually produced some good, weird ideas
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/that-game-jam-based-on-oblivions-terrible-persuasion-wheel-actually-produced-some-good-weird-ideas/
A couple of months ago PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens bemoaned the state of this world with regards to how there is not in fact an elaborate remaster or remake of Oblivion available to him. He was consoled, however, by the fact that some indies were making an entire slew of jam games based on Oblivion's uh, polarizing, persuasion wheel. (It's bad, actually. You can watch a little video of it.)
Well, the game jam's runtime is over and it… actually produced some really good, weird ideas for games. These were all made in a week of total chaos by indie developers—which is to say they're proof of concept, not finished games. But they're free, cute, and fun.

You really should play Sultan's Game, a beautiful, cruel card shuffler which launched on Steam recently
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/card-games/you-really-should-sultans-game-a-beautiful-cruel-card-shuffler-which-launched-on-steam-recently/
Challenged to a supernatural game by the sultan, you have to fulfill the conditions of a mystical game that demands you commit dreadful sins: Carnality, Bloodshed, Conquest, and Extravagance.
You'll have to desperately scheme, manage your limited resources, and explore the depths and heights of society to win a stay of execution—and to survive the consequences of the horrible things you did to win.
Sultan's Game is a really cool narrative card game, a kind of bleak, terrible world where your poor character must sink to lowest lows in a desperate bid to survive a kind of gruesome One Thousand and One Nights fantasy world of mystics and madmen.

Arkane was 'devastated' by its cancelled Half-Life 2 Ravenholm game, but the masterclass it got from late visionary artist Viktor Antonov 'was pivotal to what would become Arkane later'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/arkane-was-devastated-by-its-cancelled-half-life-2-ravenholm-game-but-the-masterclass-it-got-from-late-visionary-artist-viktor-antonov-was-pivotal-to-what-would-become-arkane-later/
One of the most unfortunate missed shots in gaming is that of Arkane's cancelled Ravenholm game—in case you're unfamiliar, circa 2007-2008, Arkane was working on a standalone spin-off that would see players returning to Half-Life 2's zombie-infested Ravenholm.
The project got shuttered because Arkane wasn't able to deliver on time—though not for lack of trying. This was back when Valve was still attempting (and stumbling on) its episodic vision of Half-Life, and seemingly couldn't figure it out, either.

Former Awesomenauts developers finish the game they were working on when the studio went bankrupt in 2023, and it'll be free for the first 24 hours after release
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/former-awesomenauts-developers-finish-the-game-they-were-working-on-when-the-studio-went-bankrupt-in-2023-and-itll-be-free-for-the-first-24-hours-after-release/
Awesomenauts developer Ronimo Games filed for bankruptcy in 2023, bringing a premature end to an unnamed project it had in development. But a year later, four former members of the studio including the CEO got back together to form a new studio called Rangatang and resumed work on the project, which is now set to launch on May 15—and if you grab it within the first 24 hours of release, it's yours to keep forever.

Preppered: an existential platformer is a game that'll make you pay not just for your choices, but your sucky platforming skills, too
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/preppered-an-existential-platformer-is-a-game-thatll-make-you-pay-not-just-for-your-choices-but-your-sucky-platforming-skills-too/
Preppered: an existential platformer, which releases today (April 7, if you're reading this from the future), is shaping up to be a fascinating little exercise in interactivity. As you might've surmised from the title of the thing, it's 100% a platformer—the 'existential' bit comes from the looming doom that'll haunt your every step. Especially the wrong steps, which you'll be making frequently.

Like in the old times.

A shame you can't unlock extra hardware parts, but AMD and Nvidia learned to prevent that a long ago.

Nvidia is really in a lot of trouble. I hope they manage to find all the issues soon, ideally before or coinciding with the launch of the 5060s cards.

Typical Dell. Their monitors are good, but their own systems leave a lot to be desired, in part because of the propietary sh*t they add to them.

But, but... AMD drivers always bad???

Hey, the Nvidia drivers may have struggled to fix black screen issues on the new cards, but at least they also caused blue screen issues on the old cards

It's interesting because my experience has been completely flawless not has a single crash, black screen or any performance loss running VRR, HDR with various game some with DLSS and others at native but I'm on a single screen and on HDMI so maybe I avoid everything and the problem is display port related maybe but it's a shame GN never did tests with HDMI or at least never said about the results if they did but there is one good thing with the crashes been reproducible and not just random hangs and that is like gold dust to developers so it should be something that can figure out.

Usually, if nothing is said, it means that it's not relevant. Therefore, if they don't mention HDMI, then it shouldn't cause troubles. But it's not like you can connect two monitors via HDMI with these cards, right?

In any case, I'm happy you're not affected by this mess.

When it comes to the problems with drivers, in my experience neither AMD nor Nvidia have even been flawless. Nvidia may had earned a reputation of good drivers, but that was mostly because AMD had more troubles, making Nvidia look good, rather than because their drivers were flawless. The amount of hotfixes Nvidia has released over the years prove that.

It's just that this time it feels like all stars have aligned and nothing has gone as planned for Nvidia (lack of stock, missing ROPs, burned connectors and bad drivers that are jus tthe icing on the cake) whereas everything when great for AMD, starting with the gamble of delaying the launch by a couple months that, instead of hurting them, allowed them to build a lot more stock and gave them extra time to work on the drivers and avoid the usual launch issues it has always had.

There is some models that have 2x HDMI connectors mostly the Asus cards but a few others do also so they could of tested it and ruled it out if they couldn't reproduce crashes on dual HDMI but if it didn't cause problems I think they would of mentioned it's a DP thing only so I presume they never did the tests.

First Ryzen AI MAX+ “Strix Halo” Mini-PC goes on preorder at $2000+, launches next month

https://videocardz.com/newz/first-ryzen-ai-max-strix-halo-mini-pc-goes-on-preorder-at-2000-launches-next-month

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti with GDDR7 128-bit memory, shipping manifests confirm

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5060-and-5060-ti-with-gddr7-128-bit-memory-shipping-manifests-confirm

Razer, LG and Lenovo confirm laptops with GeForce RTX 5060 and RTX 5050 8GB graphics cards

https://videocardz.com/newz/razer-lg-and-lenovo-confirm-laptops-with-geforce-rtx-5060-and-rtx-5050-8gb-graphics-cards

MSI To Launch Its New QD-OLED 4K 240Hz Gaming Monitor For Pre-Orders In China Next Week At $752

https://wccftech.com/msi-to-launch-its-qd-oled-4k-240hz-gaming-monitor-for-pre-orders-in-china-next-week-at-752/

Japanese Semiconductor Giant Rapidus Accelerates Efforts On 2nm Process Amid Interest From Google & Apple; Mass-Production Expected By 2027

https://wccftech.com/rapidus-accelerates-efforts-on-2nm-process-amid-interest-from-google-apple/

https://www.techpowerup.com/335198/framework-halts-sales-of-select-laptops-in-the-us-amid-tariff-changes

Who's next?