Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate has released a second statement after it u-turned on a decision to lock an "exclusive" PvE mode to its €300 Unheard Edition following player feedback, saying it is "very sorry that fans and the game community in general are experiencing these feelings".
In the statement posted to Reddit, COO Nikita Buyanov said that they "somehow did not foresee the fact of such a reaction" and has now "decided to just open [the controversial PvE mode] for EoD owners for free".
On Friday (26th April), Matt reported that Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate had drawn fan ire after unveiling a €250 (€300 after tax) special edition that, alongside some controversial special advantages, contains an exclusive co-op PvE mode that won't be made available to those that bought a previous edition.
I didn't realise this while I was recording the video, but this week's VR Corner subject, ConVRgence was made by the same developer as another game that I previously featured in my Corner, Paradox of Hope.
'Monkey-With-a-Bomb', as the solo studio is called, released Paradox of Hope in Early Access exactly two years ago this week and, while it was only a slice of the full experience, its Metro-inspired gameplay was obvious to see. So obvious in fact that Metro rights-owner PLAION (aka Embracer) slapped the developer with a take down order, presumably due to the upcoming release of the VR exclusive spin-off, Metro Awakening.
ConVRgence then is a clean slate for Monkey-With-a-Bomb and it is a game that, despite being set in a similar post-apocalyptic world to Metro, is now unique enough to not warrant a slap on the wrist from some angry men in suits. In this week's VR Corner, you can watch me try out the first hour of the game, which focuses on proceedural, single-player extraction shooter gameplay, mixed with a heavy dose of realistic gunplay too.
Manor Lords developer Greg Styczeń wants your help deciding what he should do about the game's global market supply mechanic.
Addressing the game's considerable fanbase on the official Discord, Styczeń asked for feedback on whether the mechanic – introduced after critics and content creators noted the trade system was "too OP" – should stay or go.
"When press and content creators got the build two weeks ago, they often said that the trade is OP and that it's too cheesy/exploity to just sell one type of good and make your town rich that way," Styczeń said.
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Paramount's Knuckle show – which only debuted on Paramount's streaming service, Paramount Plus, earlier this week – will also be available to buy physically.
Whilst the physical editions have not been formally confirmed by Sega, pre-orders for a steelbook blu-ray and DVD have popped up on sites like Amazon and Walmart.
As yet, there's no release date, but we do get a price: $32.
Few games have left such an immediate impression on me as The Collage Atlas. Here are anchors dropping from a white sky, razor-thin keys opening butterfly locks, and books swarming in the wakes of ships as if they were murmurations of starlings. Brought to life with a hand-drawn pen-and-ink aesthetic, the game's calm spaces and wealth of illustrative detail work together to encourage self-reflection. Having immersed myself in the game over the last few weeks, I wanted to know more. That's why I find myself talking to its solo developer, John Evelyn. He's the man who built this game and literally drew it into life.
It took Evelyn four and a half years to create The Collage Atlas. He tells me it began as a picture book designed to help people through difficult times - a picture book that would have worked alongside a companion app. "I initially assumed that the best way to talk about the things I want to discuss would be through a picture book," he explains. But the medium was always secondary to the message he wished to convey.
"I wanted to explore the idea that when life becomes particularly challenging - perhaps we go through traumatic events or things completely out of our hands. We start to feel that our sense of agency is somewhat undermined." Evelyn pauses here. "That we don't have meaningful authorship over our own lives. That's something that I and many other people have experienced."
Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone has pushed out another update for Stardew Valley.
Update 1.6.6 addresses a number of bugs and some balance, gameplay, and translation issues, including restoring the ability to give your spouse crap flowers – the cornerstone of every healthy relationship, of course – and resolving an evaporating raccoon.
The patch also now means bee houses work with flowers in garden pots, the "Minecart depot" alternative layout now only appears in the upper or lava mine areas, and you can now turn the gold clock off and on.
Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate has u-turned on a decision to lock an "exclusive" PvE mode to its €300 Unheard Edition following player feedback, but insists it is not reneging on its promise to give End of Darkness edition owners "all subsequent DLCs" because "PvE gamemode is not DLC".
Late yesterday (26th April), Matt reported that Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate had drawn fan ire after unveiling a €250 (€300 after tax) special edition that, alongside special advantages some are calling pay-to-win, contains an exclusive co-op PvE mode that won't be made available to those that bought a previous edition.
As we reported at the time, it's this inclusion of an exclusive new co-op PvE mode that's caused the most consternation as Tarkov's previous Edge of Darkness Edition - now discontinued - promised purchasers would get "free access to all subsequent DLCs".
Bloober Team has two unannounced projects in the works: "Project C", a brand-new IP being developed in partnership with Take-Two Interactive, and "Project R", a 2025 release based on a Skybound Entertainment IP, the entertainment company owned by The Walking Dead creator, Robert Kirkman.
Right now, Bloober is keeping the details close to its chest, but its recent annual report – as translated by @pl_evil – reveals just a little of the studio's plans as it wraps up the development of Silent Hill 2 Remake.
"Project C, which we are working on together with Private Division (Take-Two Interactive), is currently well advanced, and we are very pleased with the current progress," Bloober said in its annual report.
Path tracing? In Dragon's Dogma 2? The game shipped with ray-traced global illumination but a path tracer sits within Capcom's code - exposed thanks to a new mod for the PC version of the game. Graphics Suite Alpha, made by developer EXXXCellent, is available on Nexus Mods and includes path-traced lighting, shadows and reflections, all running in real-time. So, how does it look, how well does it run - and why exactly is it there in the first place?
To install the mod, you'll also need the most recent REFramework tool from Github, extract that into the Dragon's Dogma 2 install directory, then add in the mod's Lua script to the autorun folder. Go in-game, and you should have access to a bunch of additional options at the bottom of the REFramework overlay related to RT and path tracing.
With PT enabled, you'll see significantly more material and lighting detail versus the standard ray-traced global illumination (RTGI) with the option to use a per-pixel or four-samples-per-pixel level of granularity - each with a corresponding performance cost, of course. The standard RTGI has significantly less information to work with - one sample for every four pixels, so it has a lot more compromises compared to the 'ground truth' of path tracing.
WWE 2K24 has unbanned modder WhatsTheStatus following complaints from its community.
WhatsTheStatus - who was banned last week for "violation of terms" - revealed on Twitter/X that, after speaking with 2K and the WWE team, they had "come to an agreement, and a fair one at that".
Originally, 2K and/or developer Visual Concepts was unhappy with WhatsTheStatus' mods, saying that as they "negatively impact the game experience for other players", the modder was banned in order to ensure there is a "positive WWE 2K24 experience for all players".
Bloober Team says it is "very confident" and "excited" about Silent Hill 2 Remake.
In the studio's annual report to shareholders, as translated by @pl_evil, the team expressed its excitement about the highly anticipated remake, stating that it was "very confident about the final result", and acknowledged the success of Silent Hill 2 Remake will be "the most important test" the studio has faced.
"We do not hide it internally or externally - this is the most important test of our actions," the team reportedly said.
Aspyr has confirmed it has restored posters that were "inadvertently" removed from Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered in its last patch.
Despite them being flagged by the official Tomb Raider website as a detail to go find, a set of Lara Croft pin-up style posters were mysteriously pulled from the game's Remastered graphical mode recently with no warning.
Aspyr now says this removal was "inadverent" and happened when the team was making "several texture and graphical updates to the HD version".
This week, everyone's been talking about early access releases again. Why? The headline moment was No Rest for the Wicked developer Moon Studios defending a bumpy early access release by saying, "It's already pretty clear that going with EA is one of the best decisions we could've made." And then unexpectedly it added: Dark Souls 1 could have been better had it had an early access release too - an odd addendum and I'm not sure I agree with it, but OK. The other thing this week was mega-Wishlisted game Manor Lords arriving in early access in, again, an unfinished state. Neither of these things is remarkable. We know how early access releases go by now - we've had them for the past 10 years (god is it really that long?). We know games aren't finished when they arrive, though there's still a part of us that sees a game being sold for full-price-like money and expects a full-price-like experience from it. So around Manor Lords and No Rest for the Wicked, a familiar discussion has resurfaced, of when are - and when aren't - early access releases a good thing?
There are some well-worn arguments here you will have heard before, and undeniably the open development model - which came in at around the same time as the 'take back control from the publishers' crowdfunding movement in 2012-ish - has notable benefits. It's hard to argue against the added income a game makes by launching into early access, with which a developer can finish making a game, without cutting corners. And it's hard to argue against having a huge and readily available QA team to playtest a game and new features, and offer feedback on them. You no longer need to guess what your audience likes: you simply can let them play it and see what they think. A lot of games that go through early access come out better on the other end, and some have been enormous successes, like Baldur's Gate 3 and Hades and Slay the Spire. It's no wonder each of the companies behind those particular games are set on using early access again.
Indeed, when I think about what I played of Manor Lords, early access seems like a great place for it. To my mind, it has some pacing issues and tuning kinks, and bugs - all of which I expected. It's also still without some of the important pieces it needs to be a full experience, and all of that, early access can help with. I actually hope that with the money it earns, a few more developers will join the Manor Lords team. It's been a solo project for several years but some extra people now will help push it down that final stretch. Who knows? Maybe the game will make so much money - there are 3m people with it on their Steam Wishlist after all - Manor Lords will be able to achieve things previously thought out of reach. That's what happened with Baldur's Gate 3, remember - the scope of the game increased because of its early access success.
It mightn't be a huge surprise to hear - given we're talking about one of Steam's most wishlisted games in recent times - but solo developer Slavic Magic's Manor Lords is off to a flying start; the medieval city builder/strategy hybrid is currently Steam's best-selling title and its fourth most played game just hours after launch, with over 156K concurrent players at the time of writing.
Manor Lords has, of course, been drawing admiring glances since the launch of its demo back in 2022. That early look resulted in half a million people adding the game to their Steam wishlists and that number has only grown; another half a million people have wishlisted it this week alone, meaning it had surpassed 3m by the time today's early access release rolled around.
Since launching this afternoon, Manor Lords has steadily worked its way up Steam's most-played charts, passing evergreen big hitters such as Grand Theft Auto 4, Rust, Apex Legends, and Rainbow Six Siege - not to mention a couple of ballsy newcomers (Helldivers 2) and returning favourites (Fallout 4 and Stardew Valley) - along the way. Right now, with 156K concurrent players to its name, there're just three perennially immovable titles - PUBG, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike 2 - between it and the number one spot.
Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate has drawn fan ire after unveiling a €250 (€300 after tax) special edition that, alongside special advantages some are calling pay-to-win, contains an exclusive co-op PvE mode that won't be made available to those that bought a previous edition promising access to "all subsequent DLCs".
The tactical online FPS' new Unheard Edition is positively crammed with stuff, beginning with relatively innocuous inclusions such as a digital copy of the game and closed beta access. But it also includes unique weapons and a number of paid advantages - increased stash size, expanded PMC pockets, additional slots for the in-game flea market, and more - that have caused the new edition to be labelled "pay-to-win" by members of the community.
It's the inclusion of an exclusive new co-op PvE mode that's caused the most consternation, however, with the chief sticking point being that Tarkov's previous Edge of Darkness Edition - now discontinued - promised purchasers would get "free access to all subsequent DLCs".
Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami has opened up about his decision to leave Tango Gameworks, as he wishes to break free from the survival horror genre.
Mikami left Tango Gameworks - the ZeniMax owned studio he founded in 2010 - in February last year. Then, earlier this year, he founded a new company called Kamuy.
Now, in an interview on Japanese talk show Byking (thanks Automaton Media), Mikami has discussed his decision in more detail.
Animal Crossing's musical pooch KK Slider takes centre stage in a second wave of Lego sets themed around Nintendo's relaxed life sim series.
KK, Isabelle and Audie minifigures are included in a new town hall set which also features an RV and a small café stand. (Brewster minifigure when?!)
A second set features the landing jetty and lookout tower of Dodo Airlines. This will include Wilbur and Tangy minifigurines.
Meta is continuing to plough billions of dollars into its AR/VR division Reality Labs, despite losses of more than $1bn every month for most of the last two years.
The Facebook and Meta Quest owner's latest launch is a refreshed range of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which shrink the company's hardware into a pair of designer specs.
New features here include video calling and an AI that can respond to questions based on what you're looking at. But Reality Labs as a whole is still nowhere close to turning a profit, and in its latest financial results has said it expects losses to increase as it deepens its investment.
Medieval city-builder Manor Lords is out today on PC in early access, which means we finally know how much it costs.
In the UK, the game costs £34.99 across Steam, GOG, Epic and Microsoft, and is available on PC Game Pass. That's $39.99 in the US and €39.99 in Europe, as well as other regional prices as listed on SteamDB.
Further, the game and its supporter DLC is available at a 25 percent discount - that's £26.24 in the UK - for the next two weeks, along with 20 percent discounts on the artbook and soundtrack.
Switch 2 will feature Joy-Con controllers that connect to the main console using magnets, a new report suggests.
Citing sources from accessory manufacturers, Spanish site Vandal states that the Switch 2 Joy-Con will stick to the console itself magnetically, rather than use the fiddly rail system of the current Switch and Switch OLED.
Vandal previously reported correctly on various features of the Switch OLED before its unveiling, again based on information from accessory manufacturers, who are typically given early access to under-wraps hardware by console makers.