The Wednesday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

GOG has several new sales:

• GOG celebrates its 13th anniversary by putting over 100 games up to 90% off during the next 7 days: https://www.gog.com/promo/gog_13th_birthday
• Besides those games, there are also collections recommended by some GOG team member: Richard, Vencja, Maciej, Tania, Bartek and Wiktoria.
• Also 6 classic games from Funbox arrive on the store with 50% discounts until October 6: https://www.gog.com/news/discover_6_classic_games_from_funbox_media

Steam has two new daily deals:

• Omno is 20% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/969760/Omno/
• And The Fermi Paradox, still in Early Access, is also 20% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1543150/The_Fermi_Paradox/

The Humble Store has two new sales:

• The Assassin's Creed Franchise Sale features up to 85% discounts during the next 5 days. The keys are for UPlay, obviously: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/assassins-creed-franchise-sale/
• The EA Super September Sale brings up to 75% discounts during the next 6 days. The keys are, unsurprisingly, for Origin: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/ea-super-september-sale/

Fanatical has a new sale:

• I still find it hard to believe, but there's a Publisher Sale... by Playstation Mobile, with all the Steam games up to 55% discounts during the next 6 days: https://www.fanatical.com/en/publishers/playstation-mobile-inc.
• And there's a new bundle added to BundleFest, so check it out: https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

Microsoft Store opens to third-party storefront apps, including Epic and Amazon
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/microsoft-store-opens-to-third-party-storefront-apps-including-epic-and-amazon/
The Microsoft Store, formerly known as the Windows Store, is infamously bad. We declared in 2017 that after years of operation, upgrades, and improvements, sorry, it still sucks. A rumor surfaced in April suggesting that Microsoft was planning a new store that doesn't suck—a bold strategy—but as of July we were still waiting, without too much optimism.
Today Microsoft announced a new policy that, to my eyes, does not suck: Making third-party storefront apps available on the Microsoft Store, beginning with Amazon and the Epic Games Store.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Experience Attack on Titan in VR thanks to this mod for Blade & Sorcery
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/experience-attack-on-titan-in-vr-thanks-to-this-mod-for-blade-sorcery/
Modder ‘Fraz’ has released a cool mod for Blade & Sorcery that lets you experience Attack on Titan in VR. This mod includes tons of mindless titans, as well as the Armored Titan, Female Titan and Eren’s Attack Titan.
As with the anime/manga, players can kill the titans by slashing their neck/nape area. Moreover, this mod features a wide range of waves to choose from.
You can download this mod from here. The modder also suggests using the Attack On Titan Map Pack, as well as the ODM Gear if you do not have it already.

First Diablo 2 Resurrected Mod brings QoL improvements, reduces grinding
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/first-diablo-2-resurrected-mod-brings-qol-improvements-reduces-grinding/
Diablo 2 Resurrected has just been released and its first gameplay mod has just appeared online. Created by Zander, this mod attempts to bring some Quality of Life improvements. Moreover, it aims to make the game less grinding, which is a great thing (at least IMO).
Now do note that this mod is only for single-player mode. Do not attempt to use this mod while playing online, as it may get you banned.
Going into more details, this gameplay mod allows you to teleport in town. It also increases the stack size of tome and key (100) and bolt/arrow (500). Furthermore, all equipment types are available in gambling, and the cow level does no longer require the wirt leg. Lastly, less exp is required for high levels (exp gain is not slowed down).
>> You'll find it at Nexus Mods.

Jill Valentine can now wear the Doom Slayer suit from Doom Eternal in Resident Evil 3 Remake
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/jill-valentine-can-now-wear-the-doom-slayer-suit-from-doom-eternal-in-resident-evil-3-remake/
Modder ‘4Kodda’ has released a cool mod for Resident Evil 3 Remake. As the title suggests, this mod allows Jill Valentine to wear the Doom Slayer suit from Doom Eternal in Resident Evil 3 Remake.
Now what’s really cool here is that the suit does not change Jill’s body shape. In other words, it doesn’t turn her into a female bodybuilder. Thus, this mod feels like a proper skin cross-over between Doom Eternal and Resident Evil 3 Remake. It’s so good that it could easily pass as something official.
>> Available from Nexus Mods.

GAMING NEWS

Battlefield 2042 Open Beta dates leaked via the Origin API [UPDATE: Official]
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/battlefield-2042-open-beta-dates-leaked-via-the-origin-api/
EA’s Origin digital store has just leaked the beta dates for the new Battlefield game, Battlefield 2042. According to Origin’s API, the Open Beta will launch on October 8th and will last until October 10th.
UPDATE:
EA and DICE have just confirmed the aforementioned dates!

Battlefield 2042 Open Beta Official PC System Requirements
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/battlefield-2042-open-beta-official-pc-system-requirements/
EA and DICE have revealed the official PC system requirements for Battlefield 2042’s upcoming Open Beta. This Open Beta will launch for everyone on October 8th, and pre-load will be available on October 5th.
According to the devs, PC gamers will at least need an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or an Intel Core i5 6600K with 8GB of RAM and an AMD Radeon RX560 or an NVIDIA GeForce GTX1050Ti.

Monster Hunter Stories 2 Update 4 Release Notes, comes out on September 30th
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/monster-hunter-stories-2-update-4-release-notes-comes-out-on-september-30th/
Capcom has announced that the fourth major update for Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin will release on September 30th, and shared its complete changelog.

New free next-gen Unreal Engine 5 tech demo available for download
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/new-free-next-gen-unreal-engine-5-tech-demo-available-for-download/
Indie team ‘historia’ has released a new free tech demo for Unreal Engine 5 on Steam, called The Market of Light. In this tech demo, you assume the role of a small firefly that collects orbs of light scattered around the market.
>> To make it even easier, it's available from Steam.

Part two of the news:

Guide the citizens of the future as a powerful AI running a cyberpunk city
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/guide-the-citizens-of-the-future-as-a-powerful-ai-running-a-cyberpunk-city/
Reigns is a super-simple medieval management sim in which you, the monarch, make binary decisions based on a wide variety of scenarios that will either cement your place in history or, more likely, lead to your untimely and ugly demise. (...)
NeuroNet: Mendax Proxy looks a very similar sort of experience, but one that takes place in a cyberpunk world. You play as an experimental AI owned by a megacorp (of course) who's been put in charge of running the city in all matters large and small, ranging from municipal approvals to aiding criminal investigations and (again, of course) harvesting data for advertisers.

Dead by Daylight's new survivor is a teenage witch, but not that one
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/dead-by-daylight-mikaela-reid/
After Dead by Daylight's Hellraiser update added good ol' Pinhead, players are finally getting a new survivor character to balance things out, and she's appropriately dressed for the spooky season.
The Hour of the Witch update adds Mikaela Reid, a young witch who wouldn't look out of place in something like Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. She'll be added sometime in October.

New World queues reach as high as 20,000 for popular servers
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/new-world-server-queue/
Nearly 700,000 people were simultaneously running New World earlier today, but less than half of them were actually playing Amazon's new MMO. The rest were sitting in queues waiting to get into one of the 2,000-player islands. Projected wait times for certain New World servers continue to be measured in tens of hours.
>> You can't name your character "Bezos" or "Amazon".

New World won't let you swim, but you can walk underwater
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/new-world-wont-let-you-swim-but-you-can-walk-underwater/
New World begins with you surviving a shipwreck, so it's a wee bit surprising that you don't know the first thing about swimming. Nobody in Aeternum does. It's surrounded by water and full of rivers and lakes, but you'll never get to go for a paddle.

Vaporize hordes of rebels with a sky laser in Diplomacy is Not an Option
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/diplomacy-is-not-an-option-preview/
Diplomacy is Not an Option definitely lives up to its name. Within 10 minutes of playing the demo's wave survival mode, I was raining arrows and thrusting spears into a small horde of rebel bandit scum. At no point did I need any reinforcements to protect my mighty wooden gate, but I had the magic points to instantly call down an army of hulking dark knights from the heavens, so I figured why not?

Netflix buys Oxenfree developer Night School Studio
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/netflix-buys-oxenfree-developer-night-school-studio/
In one of Netflix's first big moves as it expands into game devleopment, the streaming company https://about.netflix.com/en/news/expanding-our-games-team-with-the-acquisition-of-night-school-studio">announced on Tuesday that it's acquired indie developer Night School Studio. Night School's first game Oxenfree was highly praised when it came out in 2016, and we also quite liked Afterparty, an adventure game about drinking your way out of hell. The studio is currently developing a sequel to Oxenfree, which will continue under Netflix's ownership.
>> I wish them better luck than the studios bought by Amazon.

Diablo 2: Resurrected players who can't boot the game will have to wait a few more days for a fix
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/diablo-2-resurrected-players-who-cant-boot-the-game-will-have-to-wait-a-few-more-days-for-a-fix/
Diablo 2: Resurrected is quite good, as you'd expect—it's a redo of one of the greatest action-RPGs of all time, after all. But its launch hasn't been entirely smooth, as players have struggled with disappearing characters, being locked out of their games, or a simple refusal of the game to start at all.

Halo Infinite is inviting everyone, Insider or not, to this weekend's technical test
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/halo-infinite-is-inviting-everyone-insider-or-not-to-this-weekends-technical-test/
Last week, Halo Infinite kicked off the first of two back-to-back technical test weekends, inviting everyone registered as a Halo Insider to give the game a shot. But evidently, 343 needs even more players for this weekend's run, with the developer now opening the floodgates—with a catch.
Given the upcoming Halo Infinite test is introducing us to 12v12 Big Team Battles, 343 is removing the trial's Insider requirement. On Xbox, this means flatly enabling everyone access to the technical test. But on PC, the process isn't quite so simple.

Genshin Impact is being review bombed after months of player frustration
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/genshin-impact-is-being-review-bombed-after-months-of-player-frustration/
Genshin Impact is being review bombed following growing frustrations from the community over the game's treatment.
It's been a rough few months for the gacha game, with increasing criticisms coming from fans regarding updates and events. The release of 5-star character Yoimiya was poorly received, with complaints of broken abilities and a feeling that minimal thought had been put into her overall gameplay design. Similar problems then arose with the game's next 5-star character, Baal.

Apex Legends is adding 'bite-sized' story quests to public games
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/apex-legends-is-adding-bite-sized-story-quests-to-public-games/
Apex Legends has been disappointingly light on story this season. But that's all set to change later today with Old Ways, New Dawn, the first of a new character-driven series of story events Respawn is calling Apex Chronicles.

Co-op dino shooter Second Extinction is getting full crossplay and a horde mode
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/co-op-dino-shooter-second-extinction-is-getting-full-crossplay-and-a-horde-mode/
We said last year that Second Extinction's "janky co-op dino shooting shows potential," but that it could probably stand a little more time in Early Access. Almost a year down the road, it's come a long way, and today developer Systemic Reaction unveiled the details of its biggest update yet.

By the wat, for those interested in VR...

Valve's Index successor rumoured to be a standalone VR headset
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/valve-deckard-standalone-VR/
Valve may have another VR headset design in the works to follow up the excellent Index, but this time it could be completely standalone. Similar to the Oculus Quest VR headsets, the Blade Runner-inspired 'Deckard' codename looks to be for a standalone option—that means it'll use its own processor, battery, and inside-out tracking solutions rather than utilising the hardware inside your PC.

Do you think they could use Steam Deck's hardware to power this VR headset?

AMD Navi 33 RDNA 3 GPU For Next-Gen Radeon RX 7000 Graphics Cards Allegedly Features 4096 Cores

https://wccftech.com/amd-navi-33-rdna-3-gpu-next-gen-radeon-rx-7000-graphics-cards-allegedly-features-4096-cores/



So double the cache but half the memory bus... I get the feeling the lower end for RDNA 3 will be heavily gimped like RDNA 2


Silicon Lottery Announces It’s Shutting Down Business Next Month, End of An Era For Intel & AMD Pre-Binned CPU Sales!

https://wccftech.com/silicon-lottery-announces-its-shutting-down-business-next-month-end-of-an-era-for-intel-amd-pre-binned-cpu-sales/

Haven't really ever used their service because the prices were high and never really needed to run my CPU to the limit. Plus many CPUs run at their limit out of the box anyway...


NVIDIA Announces GTC Featuring New AI Tech & Products, CEO Jensen Huang To Address Keynote on 9th November

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-announces-gtc-featuring-new-ai-tech-products-ceo-jensen-huang-to-address-keynote-on-9th-november/

Maybe Super series?


Prime Gaming Adds STAR WARS: Squadrons, Ghostrunner, Alien: Isolation and More

https://wccftech.com/prime-gaming-adds-star-wars-squadrons-ghostrunner-alien-isolation-and-more/

Pretty good month

Austin Evans: "Inside the Nintendo Switch OLED " (Feat. Stephen Burke from Gamers Nexus)

Looks like after he got shat on by making incorrect assumptions about how the new revision of the PS5 would perform against the old one, he is going to let Steve do the actual tests this time around.

Steve is there for the last leg of the video but the jist of it is that Austin is going to ship the switch OLED over to gamersnexus and there are some minor differences.

I could see it.

Maybe steam deck 2. The first Steam Deck will be hard pressed to run any games on VR unless all you are doing is... well..... You already know...

You're really not. I got those 20-40% not from estimates, but from Benchmarks between the TX and the TX2, and that was the bracket of performance increase (in FPS) between the two with similar power consumption.

Yeah, the memory bus will probably limit the potential of that chip. But we'll see.

And one of the reasons Silicon Lottery is closing is because most CPUs already run close to their limit nowadays, making their "products" less appealing.

I mean, it would be a good start, and they'd save some R&D costs.

C'mon, it's not like HL Alyx or Skyrym VR are that demanding.

Blood Omen 1 is now available on GOG. I never thought I would see the day.