PC Gaming

The system, Bethesda Game Studios Creations, “combines Skyrim’s existing Mods, Creation Club items and all-new Creations under a single Creations menu available for players to browse today in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition,” according to Bethesda’s blog post. If you become a “verified creator,” you can earn a cut for Creations sold in the game.

I’m guessing this system (or something like it) will come to Starfield when the studio officially ads mods to the game “early next year.”

The upcoming game puts a modern spin on the classic run ‘n’ gun, with its latest trailer highlighting the roster of playable characters and some revamped maps. Contra: Operation Galuga comes from Konami and WayForward, and will be available for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PS5, PS4, and PC in “early” 2024.

According to Rockstar’s press release for the just-released Grand Theft Auto VI trailer, the game will launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X / S in 2025 — PC isn’t a listed platform.

Unfortunately, the absence of PC isn’t too surprising, given that the PC version of GTA V was released more than a year and a half after the game first came out on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Seems like we might be waiting awhile for GTA VI on PC, too.

BG3 has been the most popular Steam Deck title since August, and now it’s topping the charts once again. Sitting in second and third place are Cyberpunk 2077 and Diablo IV, both of which have also become regulars on the top 20 list.

From Valve’s support document:

Unfortunately, macOS 10.14 was the last version to support running 32-bit games on macOS. Apple chose to drop support for 32-bit applications in macOS 10.15 (released 2019), and since many developers have not updated their games to support 64-bit executables, some games will effectively stop functioning on macOS. The Steam store will stop considering games that offer only 32-bit macOS binaries to be Mac compatible at the end of 2023. 98%+ of Steam customers on Mac are already running macOS 10.15 or newer. This means 32-bit only games and applications no longer run on your current operating system.

Steam’s support for macOS 10.13 and 10.14 will end on February 15th, 2024.

It started as an April Fool’s tease, but the very real handheld gaming PC is now six months old. Along with gyro controls, a new Armoury Crate update is adding a new Feedback Hub, the ability to turn CPU Boost off, new AMD Advanced Graphics Options, and direct sharing of images and video to Discord and TikTok.

Windows Central highlights this Asus video tracking everything added since launch (we revisited our review over the summer), or you can read the changelog here.

As far as Cyber Monday deals go, you can’t beat free (although some argue that the best deal available is a full-price offer), and you can get this 2015 entry from the Assassin’s Creed series directly from Ubisoft for $0 until the promotion ends on December 6th.

Without spending any more money, you can also flip through some concept art from the game in this gallery below (the full art book will cost you) or read Andrew Webster’s review calling the game “everything that’s great and terrible about the series.”

In an update to a federal antitrust lawsuit originally brought on by Humble Bundle owner Wolfire Games in 2021, Newell’s request to conduct a remote deposition in fear of contracting covid has been denied. It’s especially notable as the Valve boss rarely makes appearances, even including our talk about Steam Machines or more recent comments about New Zealand and the Steam Deck.

This litigation lines up as part of a larger battle over digital stores like Steam, Apple, Google, and others and the billions of dollars they pull in by taking a cut of software sales.

After Half-Life’s 25th anniversary documentary resurfaced an old bug where an alien tentacle’s animation didn’t quite line up with the scientist it was supposedly carrying, Valve has finally issued a patch to fix it. If you want to know more, Valve programmer Ben Burbank wrote a thread on Mastodon about the difficulties fixing it. IGN has all the details.

Did you miss every other time it was free-to-play? If you answered “yes” to those questions, then welcome to the club. We are the same, you and me.

Diablo IV is free-to-play on Steam until November 28th at 1PM ET or up to level 20, whichever comes first. IGN says that takes around eight hours, but they clearly don’t know me. (I would take longer.)

In a blog post announcing new controller-filtering features for Steam, Valve shared data about how popular Sony’s gamepads have gotten. In the past year, 27 percent of controller-based gaming sessions used a PlayStation controller, a 4x increase compared to four years ago. I’ve been using my DualSense with a long-ass USB cable for the lowest input lag and haptic trigger support, but apparently some newer games support the triggers wirelessly.

The game’s developer, Colossal Order, announced it’s pushing back the launch of DLC to focus on improving the game’s performance on PC. Shortly after the game’s launch last month, users complained about numerous performance issues with the city-building simulator (which may have something to do with its hyper-detailed characters walking around town).

In addition to pushing back DLC, the release date for Cities: Skylines II on console has been delayed as well while developers work to optimize the game.

Bethesda has released the 1.8.86 update for Starfield, and for PC gamers with recent Nvidia graphics cards, it should be an important one since it adds support for their cards’ AI-powered upscaling.

It also has a ton of other fixes and tweaks (now you can easily eat all the food you find), but the folks at Digital Foundry tried the beta version of the patch and have more information on exactly the kind of performance bump players can expect.

The 25th anniversary update of Half-Life hit Steam yesterday with some significant upgrades (and a limited-time free download!).

Unofficial player count tracker SteamDB showed more than 31,000 concurrent players at one point this morning. That peak is about twice as high as the highest one in the graph below. Guess I’m not the only one eager to take up Gordon Freeman’s crowbar again.

The Summoner Names players use in League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics are being dropped in favor of Riot IDs on November 20th. Riot has a post detailing what’s going on and some changes for Riot IDs as a whole — including that you’ll be able to change your ID name every 90 days for free, which should address some criticisms from the original plan.

Do you love the sound of the peel once you’ve built a PC? Well, Lian Li is providing a triple glass peel with its latest O11 Vision case, with tempered glass on the front, top, and left side. This beautiful fish tank case is all built on Lian Li’s dual chamber design, much like the rest of the popular O11 series. You can preorder the $140 case right now and it arrives at retailers later this month.

Elden Ring, Hades, Vampire Survivors, Dead Cells and Persona 5 can now wake up your Deck. (If you’ve ever spent $30 on Steam, you’ve likely already got enough points for a vid.)

Hey Moon Studios, can we get an Ori and the Will of the Wisps HDR one for Steam Deck OLED?

The deal is available until 1PM ET on November 20th, as spotted by Wario64. I’m choosing to ignore the last part of Wario64’s Threads post.

Will you buy Valve's limited-edition transparent Steam Deck for the US and Canada which has special eligibility rules? A "normal" OLED model that I swear to you is much better than the original where it counts? None at all?

No wrong choices here, but you've got under two hours to decide.

Asus created a special edition Rog Maximus Z790 Hero EVA-02 motherboard, but the company misspelt “Evangenlion” on it — adding an extra “n” on the I/O heatsink. Now the company has apologized for the mistake, offering an extended warranty for affected customers and a “corrected decorative part that end-users can use to replace the misprinted part.” This all reminds me of when the 8 on Nvidia’s RTX 3080 was printed upside down.

“We’re hopeful that people are excited about this release, and if we see high demand it will give us confidence to do more colorways in the future,” Valve said on X (formerly Twitter).

I imagine the device will sell out faster than you can say “Half-Life 3” when it goes on sale on Thursday, so hopefully Valve does take that as a sign that the people want Steam Decks in more colors.