There is probably no company more emblematic of the workplace chaos that’s gripped the videogame industry than Embracer. After rapidly expanding into a gaming behemoth, the studio went off a cliff in 2023 after the collapse of a planned $2 billion investment deal with Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group. But Matthew Karch, CEO of the newly spun-off Saber Interactive, believes Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors “gets a bad rap” for all the layoffs and studio closures that followed, saying in an interview with GamesIndustry that in reality, “nobody has been guided by more of a sense of fairness and reasonableness.”

Embracer acquired Saber Interactive in 2020, making Karch—formerly the CEO of Saber—a member of its board. In 2023, Karch took over as Embracer’s chief operating officer, and then in 2024 founded a company called Beacon Interactive that acquired most of Saber Interactive from Embracer in March.

“The process that we’ve had to go through to terminate studios has…

Apart from a wasted hour or so dabbling in Dark Souls, Elden Ring was my first soulslike, and so I think it’s understandable that when I found myself standing in the muck in the middle of Caelid, my immediate reaction was, “This is bullshit.” I was surprised to find out later that it was also tradition: Director Hidetaka Miyazaki has been throwing these things in since the very first Dark Souls because, apparently, he just can’t help himself.

Big surprise, then, that the Elden Ring expansion Shadow of the Erdtree has its very own poison swamp—something Miyazaki confirmed earlier this year, in case there was any doubt. But it may not be quite as big and bullshit as Elden Ring’s Swamp of Aeonia and Lake of Rot: In an interview with CNet, Miyazaki acknowledged that he “went a little too far” with Elden Ring, and he’s “trying to take some lessons from that.”

“You can say the version [of the poison swamp] that exists in the DLC, which I’ve already conf…

As part of a recent project to preserve pre/early internet gaming tapes and CDs, the videogame YouTube channel Noclip digitized an E3 2001 behind closed doors presentation of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. And it doesn’t look like the KotOR I remember rushing home from middle school to play back in the early aughts.

My trained RPG nerd’s ear instantly recognized project lead (and later Mass Effect helmsman) Casey Hudson as the one giving the talk, and he starts off slow, cycling through some pieces of KotOR concept art that have made the rounds online and in official companion books before. There is something fun to how he shows off art of what will eventually be Jolee Bindo or the Ebon Hawk in the final game without naming names.

We start getting to the real meat of weird, surreal, early KotOR with a model viewer demo of a rough-looking early Bastila as she cycles through various animations⁠—it seems pretty quaint in hindsight, but KotOR’s …

For someone that spends their life covering the cutting edge of tech, I can be surprisingly old-fashioned. I’ve lost the love for multiplayer gaming, I care not a jot for esports, and I like my games running on the powerful piece of hardware sitting on my desk, thanks very much. None of that cloud gaming malarkey for me.

However, watching Black Myth: Wukong streaming via a GeForce Now-equipped MacBook at Gamescom 2024, I had something of a realisation. A re-assessment of my principles, if you will. This is a game that caused our Tyler’s mighty RTX 4090 to struggle, and while you can absolutely tweak the settings to get a smooth experience (our Nick has put together an excellent guide to help you do just that), it can require a fair bit of adjustment to get the best out of it.

Playing it with the settings turned up, at a seamless 80 fps + with zero-perceptible latency—on a MacBook, of all things—suddenly made me realise how much sense cloud streaming …

Three months after bringing the action RPG Wayfinder back to Steam, developer Airship Syndicate has laid off 16 more employees but says it remains “committed to delivering the Wayfinder roadmap.”

“In light of the difficult challenges facing our industry, we’ve had to make the tough decision to let go of some incredibly talented Airship team members, including 12 full-time employees and four contractors,” CEO Joe Madureira and president Ryan Stefanelli said in a joint message posted on LinkedIn (via Game Developer).

“Earlier this year during a studio restructuring we both took pay cuts that are still in place today. In addition, we are both contributing personal funds to help Airship continue operating with our remaining staff.”

Wayfinder looked promising but struggled with server woes when it launched in August 2023, and ran into further trouble when original publisher Digital Extremes axed its publishing division a few months later. That led to a first round of …

Watch On

Brace yourself: A new wave of hero shooters is rolling in. Dozens of videos of a rumored Valve shooter called Deadlock have leaked over the past couple weeks, and now Sony has revealed Concord, a character-driven PvP shooter releasing this August.

Concord comes from Firewalk Studios, a developer Sony brought into the PlayStation fold last year. In the past, that would’ve meant no PC version for us, but these days Sony is releasing its multiplayer games on PS5 and PC simultaneously—see Helldivers 2—and that’ll be true for Concord.

Fans of Destiny 2’s PvP modes might find something familiar feeling about the gameplay trailer above, which was shown at Sony’s State of Play showcase today. The Firewalk crew is stacked with ex-Bungie developers: Concord game director Ryan Ellis, design director Josh Hammrick, lead gameplay designer Claude Jerome, and lead character designer Jon Weisnewski all worked on Destiny 2.

At first, though, it wasn’t clear tha…

Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft and now one of the world’s leading philanthropists, has announced the upcoming publication of a memoir focusing on his early years. Naturally titled Source Code, Gates tells the story of his childhood up to “my decision to leave college and start Microsoft with Paul Allen.”

“I’ve been in the public eye since my early twenties,” writes Gates, “but much of my life before then isn’t well known. Over the years, I’ve often been asked about my upbringing, my time at Harvard, and co-founding the company. Those questions made me realize that people might be interested in my journey and the factors that influenced it.”

Penguin’s blurb for the book, which can now be pre-ordered, says “Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It&…

Give your puzzle-loving brain something to chew on—like a helpful clue for today’s Wordle. It’ll give you enough to work with, without spoiling all your fun. Or if you’d prefer, click straight through to a quick win with the answer to the June 30 (1107) Wordle instead. Your game, your choice, your win.

Thanks for everything, vast quantities of grey letters in my first two guesses. If they hadn’t so thoroughly shut down so many possibilities early on, I’d have never gone for today’s answer. Or the one-letter-different alternatives I tried out before it, but we won’t talk about those.

Wordle today: A hint

Wordle today: A hint for Sunday, June 30

A pal, a friend, a good mate. Alternatively, a _____ system is used to provide personal support for others, in anything from work to health environments. 

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Is there a double letter in Wordle today? 

Yes, there is a double letter in today’s puzzle. 

Need a little help with today’s Wordle? Then you’ve come to the right place. You’re only a quick scroll away from a helpful clue for the May 3 (683) game, today’s answer in helpful bold text, as well as a wide range of tips, guides, and general advice designed to make your daily Wordle a consistent success.

I dared myself to try an opener I’d normally shy away from today, and I somehow got two greens and two yellow letters out of that little daring adventure. With that much help staring back at me right from the start, today’s Wordle answer came quickly and easily.

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, May 3

As this is PC Gamer, let’s say today’s answer refers to the group that’s not the Alliance in World of Warcraft. Alternatively, this word can describe any large crowd or mob-like group of people. You’ll need to find two vowels to solve this one. 

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Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

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An indie tower defense/shooter hybrid that hit Steam Early Access late last month is getting pretty positive reviews from early players. In Sentry your job is to defend a ship of frozen human survivors fleeing alien attack by setting up a gauntlet of traps, tricks, and environmental hazards between enemy boarders and the energy core of your ship.

Sentry’s also an first-person shooter hybrid, letting you use a variety of guns to blow out enemy weak points, or convenient windows, to defeat the oncoming horde. It’s just singleplayer for now, but Sentry plans to add two player co-op in the future.

You might remember Sentry from its trailer a couple years back.

Individual levels aside, Sentry is set up on a node-based map like a lot of popular roguelikes. As your ship moves from place to place, dodging enemies and hazards, you’re able to snatch usable stasis pods and equipment for your defensive works. I especially like that Sentry intends to let you use sucessive lines…

Skull and Bones costs $70, or your local equivalent, and that’s a hefty price tag for something that bears the trappings of a live-service game, including an in-game store, battle pass, seasonal events, and premium currency. But Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot defended the cost in an investors call today, saying the high price is warranted because it’s a “quadruple-A game.”

Guillemot’s statement came in response to a question from an analyst, who suggested that the price point “could presumably limit the size of the player base.”

“You will see that Skull and Bones is a full-fledged game,” Guillemot replied. “It’s a very big game and we feel that people will really see how vast and complete that game is. So it’s a really full triple-A, quadruple-A game that will deliver in the long run.”

Guillemot’s response—”It’s a good game!”—is to be expected. What’s interesting is the fact that the Skull and Bones price tag has come into question in the first place. I’ve …

Need some help with Wordle today? Don’t worry if you’re on your last row with not enough green letters for comfort, the answer to today’s puzzle is right here. You’ll also find a great selection of general tips on this page, as well as a clue for the December 30 (924) Wordle if you’d just like a bit of help.

I was in danger of overcomplicating today’s Wordle, wasting time and precious guesses searching for something that wasn’t there and that I didn’t need in any case. Somehow I managed to catch myself before I got too far into the letter-weeds this time, although it’s annoying to know I could’ve reached today’s answer a little earlier if I hadn’t been so eager to give my keyboard a workout.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, December 30

A simple clue for what should hopefully be a simple answer: how many somethings would you expect to find in a trio? 

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Is there a double letter in Wordle today?&n…

A clue for today’s Wordle is waiting just below, alongside a wide range of tips, guides, and our archive, all designed to help make the April 12 (662) and every other Wordle just that little bit easier, and if you just need to secure that win, you’ll find the answer only a quick click or scroll away.

I didn’t so much solve Wordle today as much as make a desperate guess using the only letters I had left to try, and even then, I wasn’t sure it would work. Luckily for me, it turned out fine in the end, but I’m hoping for a Wordle answer that’s a little less “exciting” in the near future.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, April 12

Today’s word is the name of a white crystalline salt with a wide variety of uses, including washing powder, soap, and enamel glazes. This substance is also known as sodium borate, and one of today’s three consonants is a letter you’d normally avoid.  

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Is there a double letter in today’…

Steam’s dominance of digital PC game sales is fearsome. In a 2021 survey, more than a quarter of game dev studios reported that they make over 50% of their yearly revenue from Steam sales. Despite its successes, however, Valve’s former economist says the company could’ve been even more terrifyingly powerful.

Before a stint as Greece’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis worked with Valve as its economist in residence, studying the player economies emerging from the exchange of in-game commodities like TF2 hats. In an interview with Aftermath, Varoufakis said that, by never shifting its sights from games, Valve failed to follow its true calling: macroeconomic forecasting.

Varoufakis’s primary work at Valve, he says, was monitoring the stability of player markets. By studying how those economies functioned, he informed Valve’s monetization strategy to avoid the potential mayhem of an unregulated player aftermarket, which he told Aftermath could’ve led “to subs…

It’s not cool when a retailer leak blows a big game announcement. Just ask Bethesda, which saw its surprise Rage 2 announcement spoiled by an errant Walmart Canada listing. (I bet Pete Hines is still steamed about that.) But you know what might be even more frustrating? When your own gear store does it.

That seems to be what’s happened with the next Hearthstone expansion: As noticed and captured by Hearthpwn, a t-shirt for something called Hearthstone: Showdown in the Badlands appeared on the official Blizzard store recently. 

The Badlands, as the Warcraft wiki explains, is an arid, desolate region in Khaz Modan, where “only the hardiest of creatures can survive.” It’s traditionally viewed as Horde territory but the Alliance has a presence as well, but it really doesn’t sound like there’s a whole lot going on for either side because it’s such an unpleasant place.

The leaked listing, which has since been taken down, doesn’t say anything about the presumed new H…