Wednesday news, part two:

Warzone 2 is getting absolutely slated by Steam reviewers: 'Crash of Duty'
https://www.pcgamer.com/warzone-2-is-getting-absolutely-slated-by-steam-reviewers-crash-of-duty/
Today I visited the Steam page for Call of Duty: Warzone 2, and two big orange words jumped out at me: 'Mostly negative'. Any player can leave a review on Steam and the platform summarises the overall mood, and it's not unusual to see high-profile games that launch with issues bombarded with negative reviews at launch before returning to some equilibrium when everything calms down. And Warzone 2 has issues for sure but I've had great fun with it. What's everyone moaning about?

Charlie Chaplin videogames are coming, with an unfortunate twist
https://www.pcgamer.com/charlie-chaplin-videogames-are-coming-with-an-unfortunate-twist/
A Canadian development outfit has acquired the exclusive rights to make videogames based on the works and likeness of Charlie Chaplin. The filmmaker and actor wrote, directed and starred in dozens of films and his character The Tramp remains one of the most globally recognised icons of comedy. (...)
The news comes via a CBS report on the Quebec-based company B Df'Rent Games which, with Chaplin expert Yves Durand, successfully pitched the idea to the Chaplin family. The conditions that the family wished for were "No violence. No sexism. No racism. Genuine storytelling." Which does sound like they thought they were being pitched this thing in the mid-1990s, but we'll let it slide.
Updated 12/06/2022: Co-founder of Indie Asylum Christopher Chancey contacted PC Gamer after publication. "Can confirm that the game will NEVER have NFTs and that it would've been a deal-breaker for us at [Indie Asylum] to work on a game that would have NFTs" said Chancey. "It would go against everything we stand for and what the Chaplin IP stands for.

Vampire Survivors' first full DLC is coming next week
https://www.pcgamer.com/vampire-survivors-first-full-dlc-is-coming-next-week/
Vampire Survivors developer poncle has unveiled the game's first full-on DLC, a trip to an alternate dimension inspired by feudal Japan entitled Legacy of the Moonspell. Set to come out later this month, the expansion will add a brand new stage, new characters, new monsters, and more than a dozen new weapons to go ham on them with.

CD Projekt warns of layoffs as The Witcher: Monster Slayer is being closed in 2023
https://www.pcgamer.com/cd-projekt-warns-of-layoffs-as-the-witcher-monster-slayer-is-being-closed-in-2023/
CD Projekt has announced that The Witcher: Monster Slayer, the Pokémon Go-like game of monster hunting that debuted last year, is being shut down. Anyone still playing has got some time yet to walk the Path before the end comes, though, as the closure won't actually happen until June 30, 2023.

Sonic Frontiers fans and Genshin Impact fans go to war over Game Awards vote (Updated)
https://www.pcgamer.com/game-awards-2022-players-voice-sonic-frontiers/
Yesterday, it looked like Sonic Frontiers would easily win the 100% fan-voted Players' Voice award at this year's Game Awards. Its lead vanished overnight, however, and what seemed like a nice story about an enthusiastic fanbase has taken a turn. As I write, lifelong internet enemies are being made.
The current Player's Voice award voting results are no longer available on the Game Awards site, but at last check, Genshin Impact had leapt into a tie with Sonic Frontiers. Unless the voting data starts displaying again (the site might just be overwhelmed), we won't know whether Sonic fans or Genshin fans will triumph until The Game Awards air on Thursday. Geoff Keighley, you clever bastard: You knew this would happen, didn't you?!

GTA Online players stole $4 trillion in one week, so they're all getting a free car
https://www.pcgamer.com/gta-online-players-stole-dollar4-trillion-in-one-week-so-theyre-all-getting-a-free-car/
Rockstar Games held a "Heists Challenge" event in Grand Theft Auto Online in 2020 that included rewards for the entire community if players could collectively steal at least $100 million—in GTA dollars, of course—in a single week. The community responded by stealing 10 times as much—$1 trillion—before the event was over. So for 2022, Rockstar upped the ante to $2 trillion—and once again, players proved more than up to the task.
Rockstar revealed today that players made off with an "absolutely staggering" $4 trillion, doubling Rockstar's target, which was itself double what players managed to take home in the 2020 event. Because of that most impressive accomplishment (which will no doubt come back to haunt players in the next Heist Challenge, but that's a problem for later), the Declasse Tahoma Coupe, an extremely sexy retro-styled machine, will be free for everyone for a limited time in an update coming later in December.

Blizzard disables Standard Hearthstone packs because they were dishing out new Signature cards like candy
https://www.pcgamer.com/blizzard-disables-standard-hearthstone-packs-because-they-were-dishing-out-new-signature-cards-like-candy/
Blizzard has temporarily disabled the opening of Hearthstone Standard and class packs while it investigates a "potential issue" with them. The nature of the issue hasn't been specified, but from the looks of social media it seems very much like the new, and supposedly ultra-rare Signature cards that went live today could be at the root of the problem.

Tons of game developers praise Dwarf Fortress in celebration of its Steam launch
https://www.pcgamer.com/tons-of-game-developers-are-praising-dwarf-fortress-today-in-celebration-of-its-steam-launch/
Dwarf Fortress is the top selling game on Steam.
I don't know how long that will be true, but it's a wonderful moment: one of the most influential and unique games on PC, in development for some 20 years, is finally, I hope, getting the mainstream recognition it deserves. It's definitely getting recognition from other game developers, who've flocked to the launch announcement to celebrate Dwarf Fortress's success, and its impact on their own games.

Microsoft makes 10-year COD commitment to Steam and Nintendo in a deal that's really about Sony
https://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-makes-10-year-cod-commitment-to-steam-and-nintendo-in-a-deal-thats-really-about-sony/
They finally did it, folks. After a prolonged will-they-won't-they, filled with all sorts of subtle hints and loaded implications, Microsoft has gone and tied the knot. In the event its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard goes through, the company has agreed to a 10-year deal to keep Call of Duty releasing on Steam and… Nintendo?
Update: In a statement provided to Kotaku, Valve's Gabe Newell said that, while "Microsoft offered and even sent [Valve] a draft agreement" to keep COD on Steam long-term, Valve decided it wasn't necessary.
>> I wonder how Sony will spin this, but the winner here is clearly Nintendo. Anyway, curl-6 has made a thread about this.

Sonic co-creator arrested a second time for even more insider trading shenanigans
https://www.pcgamer.com/sonic-co-creator-arrested-a-second-time-for-even-more-insider-trading-shenanigans/
Sonic co-creator and Balan Wonderworld director Yuji Naka has been arrested a second time for alleged insider trading, mere weeks after his initial apprehension.
>> Now it's for Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier.

Apparently, it's not only ray traced but it's path traced, something that we had only seen on much old titles like Quake. But yeah, looks like they0ve gone overblown just for the sake of it.

Also, after seeing some of the screenshots, the game looks nothing like the original game. They've completely changed the atmosphere of the game... to the worse, in my opinion.

They'll never get me alive!

*hysterical laughter*

The Callisto Protocol Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis Review

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/the-callisto-protocol-benchmark-test-performance-analysis/5.html

Very surprising considering it's an AMD sponsored title and that's Raster performance.

Latest Intel Arc GPU Drivers Boost DX9 Game Performance By Up To 2.3 Times, Promises Even More Optimizations Ahead

https://wccftech.com/intel-arc-gpu-drivers-boost-dx9-game-performance-up-to-2x-promises-more-ahead/

Global DRAM Prices Will Decline Up To 18% This Month & Hit Bottom By Q1 2023

https://wccftech.com/global-dram-prices-will-decline-up-to-18-this-month-hit-bottom-by-q1-2023/

Colorful confirms GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics card, same specs as 4080 12GB

https://videocardz.com/newz/colorful-confirms-geforce-rtx-4070-ti-graphics-card-same-specs-as-4080-12gb

No surprise it has the same specs as 4080 12GB

We will see what happens but I get the feeling RDNA 3 needed more time in the oven

"Dwarf Fortress is the top selling game on Steam."

Well that was unexpected, but I'm glad it is. I've tried getting into it years ago, but it was simply too much work, but it certainly sounds like a great game, and getting into it has probably never been easier than it is now.

Hopefully.

I don't remember if it was a rumor or an actual pice of info that you posted about a bug in the Navi 31 chip that would prevent the cards from boosting as high as they were supposed to. But, in any case, I agree that it looks like AMD kind of rushed these cards to be able to meet its 2022 deadline.

A shame.

On another note, Gamersnexus has made a video analysing the new architecture, for those interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iEDpXyFLFU

Yeah, even though I wasn't really interested in this game due to the "DLC death anims" and day 1 performance, seeing my 1080ti at 1440p getting dogshit results just further cements me to not buy from those devs, if that's how their games are going to perform.

I mean, it was expected for anyone with a hint of skepticism when AMD when they gave out wild TFLOPS numbers.

Even if the FP pipelines themselves are separated and dedicated units, you weren't going to see four Wave instructions being executed at the same time in each SP, unless this thing was pulling 500 - 600 W.

Mind, it is a similar thing for Nvidia, which after Turing has a pipeline that can do Int or FP32 but not both at the same time, so a third of the cores in Ampere or Ada is always idling at any given time, no matter how good your scheduler/pipeline reprogramming is.

(At least AMD is still just calling it another FP32 unit inside the CU, which is correct. Nvidia on the other hand claimed they "doubled" their cores outright when they didn't do such a thing).

Yea that dev made a pretty terrible port. Even with their stutter fix patch, the game still has plenty (granted a lot less than before) from what I have seen on Twitter. They ain't getting my money till discounted.

Is this their first ever AAA-style game?, I've not really heard much from this studio before, but if this is their first attempt, it's a rpetty terrible one. I imagine they won't sell too well going by the quick burn of their rep and the overall game perf being bad. 

I know Steam reviews are climbing back up to positive, but tbh I lost trust in ppl reviewing shit on Steam some yrs ago (primarily thanks to shills and meme reviewer types with anime pfp's, no offence to anyone here), so them giving positive reviews despite benchmarks stating the opposite just tells me that ppl are okay with getting kicked in the balls and paying for it. 

1080ti tho, like god damn that is just friggin sad to see in the benchmarks lol. I say this and I'm getting bogged down perf with WoW atm, but that's mostly down to Blizz not doing their job and Nvidia drivers once again dicking us around (checked to confirm this on Reddit/WoW forums and Sept nvidia drivers give us better perf, so that's on nvidia on their end for that, getting pretty sloppy with their drivers).

More or less. It's filled with some of the developers from the Dead Space team that EA nuked. Realistically, the only version that came out good was the PS5. Series X version also had big issues and even Series S was underwhelming. PC had the most issues which are getting fixed but there's a lot of things to fix.

And yea, I suspect pre-Turing GPUs to continue to struggle. Those GPUs were legendary but they don't support the full DX12 Ultimate feature set so they won't age too well as we continue to leave cross-gen. Hell judging by Star Wars PC requirements, RDNA 2 will also age poorly as its the first UE5 title and the recommended is a 2070 or 6700XT. For better or for worse, Nvidia has a pretty big grasp on where the industry is headed even if they don't control the console hardware. It's why we see RDNA 3 trying to be more like Ampere/Lovelace rather than following in RDNA 2's footsteps.

I think if you wait until 5000 series, assuming we don't get a mining boom, the prices will hopefully come back to normal. A lot of the things are coming back down in price around the world and if people continue to not buy GPUs at their high prices as is the case with the 4080, then Nvidia will have no choice but to lower their prices in the future. That and Nvidia is going back to Samsung means we should see another Ampere situation. Lets just hope it's without the mining boom.