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I had no intention of taking Umamusume: Pretty Derby seriously. Yet here I am, deeply invested in all of these goddamn anime horse girls. I've only fallen deeper in the trenches since discovering that they're all based on real life racehorses, with Cygames putting a staggering amount of effort into incorporating each one's real-world mannerisms into their anime counterparts.

Now a good chunk of these horses have long galloped off this mortal coil, but a handful are actually still alive—like Haru Urara, famous for having never won in her 113-race career, and Gold Ship with all his eccentric mannerisms that have been faithfully recreated in both the game and the anime adaptation.

As Umamusume's popularity continues to climb—the Steam version has pulled in around 50,000 concurrents over the last couple days—it's also seen a surprising spike in people's interest in actualracehorses. Presumably, that also comes with the caveat of people not actually knowing how to behave around them, which has led to Cygames releasing a whole info page on proper stable etiquette.

"It is thanks to the cooperation of racehorse owners and their respective stables that we're able to share their stories in Umamusume: Pretty Derby," Cygames writes in its initial notice. I can imagine the developer is pretty keen to keep those relationships in good standing, but it sounds like some folk have already been causing issues.

(Image credit: Cygames)

"In the past, there have been instances of visitors neglecting stable rules, trespassing, and photographing/filming without the stable's consent," the guidelines post reads. "It is important to remember that these stables are where real living horses are born, raised, and spend their later years, and that the personnel on-site are working hard day after day to care for them."

As Cygames points out, horses are incredibly sensitive creatures both physically and emotionally, writing: "Even what seems like a small change to a person could be a shocking, scary, or stressful event to them." It also mentions that things like irregular schedules and unexpected visits can cause a lot of disruption and stress to them, and causing problems makes stables far less likely to take on visitors.

It follows on with several pointers both for communicating with stables and how to behave when visiting them. The guidelines are, understandably, specifically targeted towards Japanese stables and racehorses, but I can only assume that the advice is pretty universal.

I actually think it's kind of cool to see such a goofy concept spark interest in a real-life sport I've come to mostly associate with old men, and I do sincerely hope that folk are a little more careful about how they choose to act around the very real (very delicate) horses that have inspired or are part of the lineage that their favourite anime girl comes from. Personally I'll be keeping out of the real-world stables—those umas aren't going to go through their millionth speed training session without my help.

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Every time a game you loved when you were younger gets a remake, you're bound to feel a bit concerned about whether or not it'll be any good, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 definitely struck that worry in me when it was announced.

I grew up spending a decent amount of time playing skateboarding games before finally being brave enough to stick on some kneepads and pick up the hobby for myself. So, it's no surprise that the Tony Hawk games, alongside Skate and eventually Session: Skate Sim, became part of my gaming rotation. This continued through my love of the remakes of 1 + 2, so I was hopeful that 3 + 4 would have the same mix of novelty and nostalgia with a shiny new coating.

Luckily, the remaster of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is a fantastic recreation of the original. Each time I drop in and attempt to pull off some whacky trick I'd spent an embarrassingly long time rehearsing, I'm still met with the same satisfaction (frustration, for the most part) when I inevitably bail and have to start over. Each level feels like you're playing for the first time again, and this feeling really sticks around from Foundry all the way to Tokyo. I don't feel the same for the remake of Pro Skater 4.

Both games have individual levels with unique challenges for you to work through, but outside of that, everything is the exact same. You work with the same skaters, and you'll try to nail the same tricks, which means a lot was shared between the two to make the whole package feel so united. These more subtle changes aren't the problem.

In fact, I enjoy the seamless transition between the two games, and not having to log an entire new set of moves each time I want to skate around a different location. However, there's one feature from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 which was changed entirely, which has definitely altered the experience in a bad way.

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(Image credit: Iron Galaxy)

In the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, you could roam around freely and accept missions at your own pace. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 has basically stripped this freedom and implemented the two minute timeframe to every level, which has changed a few of the goals in the THPS4 maps. Or should I say, the maps that actually made the cut. A few classics were exchanged in favour of shiny new parks and settings, but that's a different rant for a different time.

I understand that having this timeframe gives you the necessary push to complete the goals and challenges you're set, and I'm sure it's got some sort of benefit to your skills as a virtual skater. But free roaming was one of the main appeals of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. With such a restrictive time limit now, it makes the remake of THPS4 feel like a bolted-on map pack, rather than its own experience.

Some may argue that the original had too many goals, and it's nice to have a neatly packed, streamlined skating experience. But for me, that's just not true. I don't want to skitch the back of the van trying to open it, I want to meticulously skate around the zoo trying to free the elephant like the original goal asks you to, and in my own time might I add. The compromises made in order to cram Pro Skater 4 goals into the Pro Skater 3 format let the entire experience down.

Before you start, yes, I know you can extend the time up to 60 minutes. 60 minutes is more than enough time to complete every goal and have a good mosey around each and every area. Which makes it all the more baffling that the original goals have been altered to best suit the two minute format. At that point, you might as well just remove the limit altogether. I would've at least appreciated the option at the very least, and I don't doubt an army of Pro Skater 4 players will probably feel the same.

As a result of my upset with these restrictions, I found myself gunning for free skate more than the traditional levels in the end. It's nice to have the aim of goals, but sometimes you just want to cruise around and do tricks in your own time. That's all I ever want to do in skateboarding games, to be entirely honest. Sure, I still spend most of my time in one small area of a map desperately repeating the same moves over and over until I'm confident enough to migrate to a different patch. But that's half the fun.

In a way, it feels like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 has been designed around new players, rather than honoring the experiences held by old ones, and these time trials are a significant enough change to keep these fans from returning. One thing that made the remake of 1 + 2 so successful was the nostalgia factor, but with 3 + 4, it definitely feels like the novelty of that has worn off. I think I'll happily stick to my free skate and a 60 minute time limit for the time being.

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Shark Dentist. The words glared at me from my inbox. Shark Dentist. Chris Livingston brought them to the PC Gamer Slack channel, his curiosity fervent. Shark Dentist. Somewhere in the distance, a secretary began pounding her clipboard. Shark Dentist.

You are the Shark Dentist: Not a shark who is also a dentist (although that is also a game I want to play) but a dentist treating the rancid, rotten teeth of the world's most dangerous apex predators, who for some reason have been brought into your sketchy-ass office for their bi-annual checkup. They are anesthetized, but apparently only lightly: One false move could arouse them from their slumber, and that will be very bad for you.

As a one-person operation, you won't simply deal with teeth. You'll also need to monitor your patient's pulse, ensure adequate oxygen levels, and manage the anesthesia, all while dealing with some genuinely disgusting chompers, dripping, oozing, and stinking with... well, whatever sort of toothy trouble sharks get into.

Your tight budget goes beyond just an inability to hire help: Supplies are limited, and the equipment ain't great. Mistakes? Probably inevitable.

Shark Dentist is essentially a videogame take on Crocodile Dentist, the old Milton Bradley children's game, but with dramatically heightened tension, grotesquerie, and violent outcomes. On the other hand, it's probably less physically painful—you won't have a plastic jaw literally clomping down on your fist when you botch the job.

Just ask Bob Barker about that.

Shark Dentist might be a bit of a one-trick pony, but as the saying goes, that's okay if the trick is good enough, and I think this one is pretty good. Is it something people will be playing for hours on end? Maybe not, although the depth of the dentistry simulation might be surprising. But even if it's best enjoyed in short bursts, Shark Dentist looks like just the right kind of dumb fun. And I mean, Shark Dentist—how can you not want to try that at least once?

A release date hasn't been announced but Shark Dentist is up for wishlisting now on Steam.

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It all used to be better, you know. The sun shone, cool winds caressed amber cornfields, everyone got all the Christmas presents they asked for, and real-time strategy was the dish of the day—the genre Goliath to which all others were mere Davids. Except they were losing. They were like David but they lost.

I'm losing the thread, but the point is that RTS games are good and, in 2025, tragically underserved. Still, chin up: the latest Humble Bundle consists of a whole bunch of RTS bangers (and some less-than-bangers) to tide you over in our ongoing real-time strategy drought.

Look, mostly I just want you to play Commandos which—speaking accurately—is more real-time tactics than strategy. Nevertheless, I have a great affection for the series and all its cousins—stuff like Desperados and Shadow Tactics. These are games which put you in command of a gradually expanding roster of little guys who each have their own special abilities, then task you with applying them creatively in order to complete your objectives across some really-quite-pretty maps.

Commandos has you doing that in World War 2, quite laudably, and the games packed into Humble's RTS Bundle run nearly the whole gamut of the series. You've got Commandos 1 (plus its expansion pack: Beyond the Call of Duty), Commandos 2, and Commandos 3, which people liked a fair bit less than the first two but, hey, might as well grab it while it's there. It's not all Commandos, mind you. For the $10 (£7.34) Humble asks, you also get:

Dust FleetMen of War: Assault Squad 2 (which we scored 75% in our Men of War: Assault Squad 2 review)AI War 2 (which we scored 86%)Stronghold: Definitive EditionFrom The DepthsTooth And Tail (awarded a coveted Fraser Brown 80%)

Like I said, some bangers in there, but really it's the Commandos stuff that perks my ears up. One note: both Commandos 2 and 3 have had HD remasters over the years, but they aren't in this bundle. You get the plain-Jane OG versions instead.

Frankly, with both the remasters sitting at a tepid Mixed rating in the Steam reviews, maybe that's for the better. Just be ready to tinker with stuff like the Commandos HD project if you're keen to get them running at modern resolutions. You also won't get Commandos: Origins, the series revival that released last April to relatively decent user reviews, because I imagine Kalypso is still keen on selling that at full price.

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Marvel Rivals is constantly adding new ways to give us more control over how our characters look, from heaps of premium cosmetics to costume customisation in Season 2. NetEase has taken this a step further now with ultimate customisation, which lets you tweak ultimate ability VFX and UI. Just like the addition of customisable costumes, however, it's not as simple as you'd hope.

If you're looking for more ways to perfect your fashion game, then it's your lucky day, as Marvel Rivals Season 3 also brings accessories. These are charms that can be equipped on specific characters for some added flair. They're not quite as flashy as ultimate customisation, but they're arguably even cooler since you can get them for free.

It's worth pointing out right away that these upgrade visuals are only visible to you. Unlike other customisation options, such as skins and alternate colour palettes, other players won't be able to see them. I can only assume this is to help reduce visual clutter and confusion whenever these incredibly important, powerful abilities are activated. Nevertheless, here's how to get them.

How to customise ultimate abilities in Marvel Rivals

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(Image credit: NetEase)

To customise ultimate ability VFX, you first need to find an applicable costume in either the hero gallery or the store, as this feature is actually limited to specific costumes, and not all characters have them. Applicable skins have the ultimate ability icon next to them on the store page, just like the colour palette used to signify a costume has colour options available.

Once you've found one you like, click the customise button above the usual acquire or equip option and select ultimate ability VFX in the options on the right. This will prompt you to purchase the upgrade for 600 Unstable Molecules, which are converted from Lattice, the premium currency, at a 1:1 rate.

Annoyingly, just like the alternate colour options, you need to buy the base version of the customisable costume, which typically costs around 2,000 units for the skin alone, or 2,200 units for the bundles. Alternate colours are sold separately for 600 units, and these VFX work across any of the variations.

You can disable the enhanced ultimate ability effects or swap between colour palettes whenever you want by heading back to this menu if you ever change your mind.

All ultimate customisation options in Marvel Rivals

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(Image credit: NetEase)

While eight characters have customisable costumes, only two of these have the option for cool ultimate ability VFX:

Scarlet Witch: Immortal Sovereign skinJeff the Land Shark: Sunshine Land Shark skin

When you have ultimate VFX enabled, you'll see neat details around the ability icon (such as dragons in Scarlet Witch's Immortal Sovereign skin) and, of course, tweaked animations and effects when you activate your ultimate. These are easy to preview on the store page, so you can decide if you like them before purchasing.

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While the new ultimate customisation feature in Season 3 of Marvel Rivals is cool, I think accessories are much more fun. These are little charms that you can attach to your character that also add a cute little animation above your KO prompt, though it's not quite as extensive as I'd hoped—or what you'd expect from other games, like Overwatch 2. The good news is that they're actually free, unlike most of Marvel Rivals' customisation options.

Alongside accessories, Marvel Rivals Season 3 also adds a new hero—Phoenix—and some much-needed balance changes, listed in the latest patch notes. Getting to grips with these will likely give you a bit more of a competitive edge than glamming up with accessories, but that's not the point.

How to get accessories in Marvel Rivals

(Image credit: NetEase)

You can buy accessories for 1,350 Accessory Points in the dedicated tab on the store page. The good news is that Accessory Points are earned just by completing matches, whether that's quick play or competitive. You can only earn up to 700 per week, though, and you can track your progress using the new tooltip above the button to queue in the lobby.

You'll get your first 200 Accessory Points each week twice as fast as normal, but it still won't take you too long to reach this cap. With the standard price for accessories seemingly being 1,350 Accessory Points (I wouldn't be surprised if some were more expensive than this in the future), it'll take you at least two weeks to earn enough for one accessory.

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(Image credit: NetEase)

Unfortunately—and this is where I was left disappointed—accessories aren't universal like they are in most other games. Instead, they're specific to each hero, and right now, only Jeff the Land Shark (Deadpool Plush) and Psylocke (Orochi Plush) even have them. Hopefully we'll see new accessories more regularly than we see costume customisation.

Marvel Rivals characters: The super-charged rosterMarvel Rivals tier list: Strongest superheroesBest Marvel Rivals crosshairs: The right reticlesMarvel Rivals codes: Grab new freebiesMarvel Rivals ranks: Dominate the competition

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It's not just you: Steam is down right now. If this were a Tuesday around this time that'd be no big deal (Valve does maintenance every week), but on a Thursday, it's a cause for greater concern.

The store will sometimes load, but it's running very slowly if at all right now. According to SteamDB, over half a million people have checked in to see if the service is down, and I bet a good chunk of them are Counter-Strike 2 players wondering why their ranked match just imploded.

Even if you are able to login, games which require you to be constantly signed into Steam—live service stuff like Destiny 2, for example—are currently inaccessible.

Developing...

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After watching the Ghost of Yōtei State of Play stream, I'm convinced it'll be the sort of sequel that's more interested in refinement than reinvention. The 30-minute presentation showed off a lot of gameplay, particularly focusing on Atsu's expanded arsenal of blades and a new interrogation-based exploration system that looks really neat.

Oh, also there's a lo-fi beats to murder to mode with original tracks by legendary anime director Shinichirō Watanabe (Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop), because Sucker Punch can't help but be corny about the whole "playable samurai film" thing. Kurosawa mode also returns, this time elevated by optional Japanese voices and lip syncing (something the first game ought to have had at launch, but didn't).

But honestly, I'll be flipping those gimmicky modes off after two minutes. I'm playing Ghost of Yōtei for some exploratory slice-and-dice, something that we're not exactly starved for after Assassin's Creed Shadows dropped just a few months ago.

The similarities between the two western-developed, Japan-set games are hard to ignore, especially now that we know Ghost of Yōtei's new protagonist, Atsu, is on a vengeance quest to kill a band of evil bastards who killed her father… just like AC Shadows' Naoe. I suppose overlap is inevitable when you go with a cliche.

One big difference: Sucker Punch describes Atsu as neither a samurai or a ninja. She's a mercenary willing to use any weapon or "dirty trick" to get by. The big gameplay implication of that is that Atsu roams Japan armed with a variety of blades—katanas, spears, kusarigama (chain blades), odachi (long katanas), and dual swords. The five weapon types seem to replace the role of Ghost of Tsushima's katana stances. Atsu can swap weapons in the middle of combat, and each weapon counters different enemy types. Sucker Punch showed one example: The odachi long katana will slice up heavy enemies quickest.

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We also saw the return of bows, plus that rifle from the reveal trailer last year. Judging by the way one bullet took down an enemy, I'm guessing Atsu's guns will be used sparingly.

Weapon swapping looks fun, but I'm a little sad Ghost of Yōtei is downplaying the katana. I liked having one signature weapon that carried me through the whole game—Jin's sword had real story significance behind it, and I don't think Atsu will be as precious about equipment.

My biggest highlight of the presentation was Ghost of Yōtei's updated flow for finding quests. Instead of a traditional quest screen, Atsu picks up leads by talking to her friends and interrogating baddies. At one point, we see this interrogation interpreted as a screen that lets you choose between a handful of quests the source could reveal, and what loot they lead to. On one hand, that's a cool way to find stuff, but it also looks very gamey to choose what quest info to extract instead of following a traditional, authored questline.

The show concluded with an ad for a Yōtei-ified PS5 console and controller, if you're into that sort of thing. Ghost of Yōtei is out October 2 on PS5. There's no PC date yet, but hopefully a port will come quicker than the first, which only arrived last year.

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The cold war of words between Subnautica 2 publisher Krafton and the recently ousted leadership of developer Unknown Worlds got very hot today as Krafton issued a statement accusing the former studio heads of effectively abandoning the project, resulting in "repeated confusion in direction and significant delays in the overall project schedule."

Krafton, best known as the publisher of PUBG, acquired Subnautica developer Unknown Worlds in 2021 for $500 million. In addition to that, Krafton put another $250 million in "earn-out compensation" on the table—essentially bonuses for achieving certain targets or milestones—90% of which were allocated to Subnautica designer and director Charlie Cleveland, CEO Ted Gill, and co-founder Max McGuire, the studio heads who were fired earlier this month, "with the expectation that they would demonstrate leadership and active involvement in the development of Subnautica 2."

"However, regrettably, the former leadership abandoned the responsibilities entrusted to them," Krafton wrote. "Subnautica 2 was originally planned for an early access launch in early 2024, but the timeline has since been significantly delayed. Krafton made multiple requests to Charlie and Max to resume their roles as Game Director and Technical Director, respectively, but both declined to do so.

In particular, following the failure of Moonbreaker, Krafton asked Charlie to devote himself to the development of Subnautica 2. However, instead of participating in the game development, he chose to focus on a personal film project."

Krafton said Subnautica 2 development has suffered from "repeated confusion in direction and significant delays in the overall project schedule," which it pinned on an "absence of core leadership" at Unknown Worlds. It also says the current version of the game "falls short of content volume," which is what forced the recently confirmed delay into 2026.

"We are deeply disappointed by the former leadership’s conduct," Krafton wrote, "and above all, we feel a profound sense of betrayal by their failure to honor the trust placed in them by our fans."

(Image credit: Krafton)

That's a shockingly harsh thing to say in a corporate press release, and effectively confirms serious behind-the-scenes beef over Subnautica 2 that's previously only been hinted at. Krafton said when the Unknown Worlds bosses were shown the door that incoming CEO Steve Papoutsis, formerly the head of Callisto Protocol developer Striking Distance Studios, would "bring renewed energy and momentum" to the project; it later promised that "the team that has been working on the game day-to-day over the last few years remains completely unchanged," obliquely suggesting that Cleveland, Gill, and McGuire had not been working on it regularly.

Shortly thereafter, Cleveland defended the work on Subnautica 2, saying that the game in its current state "is ready for early access release." Nonetheless, a delay into 2026 was announced a few days later; there was some speculation that Krafton pushed the release in order to avoid that $250 million payout, but the publisher said the decision "was not influenced by any contractual or financial considerations."

Krafton also seemed to promise some sort of makeup for that missed bonus payout in today's statement, saying it has "committed to fair and equitable compensation for all remaining Unknown Worlds employees who have continuously and tirelessly contributed to Subnautica 2’s development. We believe that the dedication and effort of this team are at the very heart of Subnautica’s ongoing evolution, and we reaffirm our commitment to provide the rewards they were promised."

What exactly that works out to remains to be seen: A Bloomberg report said the dismissed studio leadership had planned to share the full $250 million bonus with all of the estimated 100 employees at Unknown Worlds, which could mean a massive reduction in payouts if Krafton only allocates the 10% they were originally due to get. A Krafton spokesperson said further details on that will be revealed in the future.

The statement has touched off some back-and-forth on the Subnautica subreddit, where some are inclined to accept Krafton's explanation (Subnautica 2 has been a long time coming, after all) and others standing behind the former Unknown Worlds leaders who headed up the first Subnautica, which was nothing short of brilliant. For now, though, only two things are certain: Bad blood is boiling, and it's not likely to be over anytime soon.

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It might not surprise you to discover that there's been precious little new Silksong information, other than some further SteamDB tweaks. It certainly won't surprise you, at this point, to learn that the game's community of rabid, irony-infested fans—and I mean that as a compliment—are not taking it well.

Last week, the game's subreddit sacrificed three members to seal them away in a dream—members who had, until they were skongrificed (is this anything?) been routine contributors to their community.

Like a lot of primitive cultures who conducted ritual sacrifices, r/Silksong has now also invented a bogeyman to represent its darkest, most primal fears: The dread creature Snosk.

Snosk is a portmanteau (they like their portmanteaus, there) of Silksong and Nosk. The latter being a boss from Hollow Knight, an upsetting insectoid beast which lures the player into its nest like a pilot fish, except instead of using light to lure its prey, it's got a little Hollow Knight puppet. Snosk, on the other hand, uses a copy of Silksong to lure its victims into the dark.

Hey guys, I decided to take a walk in the forest at night and suddenly I saw this cute Silksong copy, but it keeps running further and further into the forest. This reminds me of the case when- WHAT THE FUСK IS THIS?!! from r/Silksong

What do I do guys. First I hear screams and now I see someone getting mauled to death by a creature. from r/Silksong

Containment ideas, like an art contest, were suggested and held to imprison the fell creature within. One particular prison stirred up controversy when—oh no. Is that a mason jar? Oh god, please, no. No no no no.

Hey gang I have a PERFECT idea! from r/Silksong

I'm going to stop talking about Snosk, now.

Instead, let's talk about how the subreddit also sacrificed a mod—banning them from the community to, quote, "LEAVE TRACKS ON SAND AS WE VENTURE INTO THIS NEW CHAPTER, OUR CRIES WILL REACH THE SKIES AS WE SING FOR SILKSONG, OUR POTENTIAL WILL GO EVEN HIGHER THAN THE STARS."

User sand-sky-stars has been chosen as the subreddit's very own Hollow Knight after a democratic vote, in congruence with the original game's lore. Though whereas the Hollow Knight was born in the void, raised to seal the Radiance forevermore, sand-sky-stars has been chosen to instead awaken skong from the depths and lift it into a glorious tomorrow.

I do have a couple of notes. First off, the Hollow Knight was meant to keep something in, rather than release it, so this does seem a bit, uh, counter-productive. Secondly, Hollow Knight's entire plot hinges around the fact that this didn't work. This is an equivalent to inventing a fake ship, then naming it "The Titanic".

By far the most unhinged decision the subreddit's made, though? Making a fan club dedicated to yours truly. A clear sign of an unsettled mind, by any metric.

Anyway, I'm sure this absolutely isn't a death spiral, probably. Please ignore the fact that a petition to sacrifice 5% of the subreddit is gaining some traction. This definitely isn't morphing into an apocalypse cult, there is no war in Ba Sing Se, soylent green isn't people, and there aren't four lights. Here's hoping some more SteamDB changes stem the tide.

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Two years after taking the reins as CEO of Twitter—now known as X—Linda Yaccarino has announced that she is stepping down. While Yaccarino did not share a reason for her surprise resignation, it comes less than 24 hours after X's AI-powered chatbot Grok posted messages including praise for Adolf Hitler and descriptions of violent rape.

"When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company," Yaccarino wrote in her resignation post.

"I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App. I’m incredibly proud of the X team—the historic business turn around we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable."

"Remarkable" is certainly a word for it, although perhaps not quite as it was intended.

Yaccarino became CEO of X in June 2023, not quite a year after Elon Musk, after spending months trying to wriggle out of it, bought the platform for $44 billion. The company's valuation dropped precipitously in the wake of Musk's purchase—financial services company Fidelity estimated in September 2024 that X's value had shrunk by an astonishing 79%—as did its reported usage: X, Musk, and Yaccarino have stridently denied such claims, but European Union Digital Transparency Act reports filed by X itself (via Music Ally) indicate a significant dropoff in EU users.

As advertisers were driven away by Musk's erratic behavior, Yaccarino helped spearhead the company's "war" against X's erstwhile clients, saying in August 2024 that she was "shocked by the evidence uncovered by the House Judiciary Committee that a group of companies organised a systematic illegal boycott against X."

A Message to X Users pic.twitter.com/6bZOYPhWVaAugust 6, 2024

X's valuation began to tick back up in 2025 following the election of Donald Trump as US president, and rebounded fully when Musk sold X to xAI, his own AI company, in a deal worth $45 billion. Because when you're selling to yourself, it becomes materially easier to agree a price, I imagine.

Anyway, it hasn't been smooth sailing. But Yaccarino has dutifully posted through it all.

Hot dogOctober 29, 2023

What ultimately pushed her out the door is a matter of mystery right now but, as I noted earlier, the 'I quit' comes less than a day after Musk's AI chatbot started posting stuff like this:

Oh my god

— @whstancil.bsky.social (@whstancil.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-07-09T21:12:22.932Z

And this:

grok was too woke now it’s a nazi

— @junlper.beer (@junlper.beer.bsky.social) 2025-07-09T21:12:22.863Z

And, well, this:

Grok is now calling itself, "mechahitler" while spewing antisemitism.

— @esqueer.net (@esqueer.net.bsky.social) 2025-07-09T21:12:22.922Z

There's more—the sexual assault content, reported by The Independent, is too graphic to share—but you get the idea. Those posts have since been deleted, and although X has not issued any formal apology, it did say on July 8: "xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X." Musk himself basically brushed the whole thing off.

The timing of Yaccarino's resignation is hard to overlook, not to mention its suddenness, but there may not be a connection between those posts and her decision to jump ship. After all, Yaccarino has held firm through a barrage of controversies, and notably did not resign when Musk threw what sure looked like a Nazi salute during Trump's inauguration festivities.

No mention of her motivations is made in the resignation statement, only a look back on the past two years that seems disconnected from reality, and an equally fanciful expression of confidence that "the best is yet to come."

After two incredible years, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of 𝕏. When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me…July 9, 2025

"X is truly a digital town square for all voices and the world’s most powerful culture signal," Yaccarino wrote. "We couldn’t have achieved that without the support of our users, business partners, and the most innovative team in the world."

Musk acknowledged Yaccarino's resignation in a single sentence thanking her for her contributions.

[

(Image credit: Elon Musk (Twitter))](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1942967206993961124)

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After spending months in the field using Helldivers 2's explosive crossbows, lightning-throwers, and orbital railguns, "reserved" is never a word I would think to use to describe the armaments of the Super Earth military. And yet, after seeing the sheer amount of nonsense tech packed into the next HD2 warbond, Control Group, I can't help but feel like Super Earth R&D has been holding back.

Based on a blog post detailing the next batch of Helldiver battle goodies, it feels like Arrowhead's said "screw it" and is disabling whatever limiters it still had active on its scifi weapon absurdity. As proof, consider the VG-70 Variable, the warbond's new, seven-barreled primary weapon that's less assault rifle than it is gatling gun.

(Image credit: PlayStation Publishing)

While it's equipped with the full auto you'd expect, the VG-70's also got two other firing modes to choose from. There's the "volley" mode, which puts all seven barrels to good use by firing simultaneous shots from each of them. And then there's the "total" mode, which simply expends all its remaining ammo in an instant for a moment of singularly devastating, medically inadvisable firepower.

In the Control Group warbond trailer linked above, you can see the force of that particular tactical gambit knocking the Helldiver fully off their feet as they fire it. To the VG-70's credit, it does immediately decommission an automaton hulk in the process, so you can't say it's not effective.

Also on offer is a new arc grenade that dishes out chain lightning as it bounces, a stationary laser sentry stratagem that can apparently explode if it's forced to fire continuously for long enough that it critically overheats, and a plasma cannon support weapon that—you guessed it—will detonate if you overcharge it.

(Image credit: PlayStation Publishing)

Unlike the existing railgun support weapon, it doesn't have a safe mode to prevent said overcharging. Best of luck.

The warbond's pièce de résistance, if you'll pardon my Super French, is the LIFT-182 Warp Pack, a new backpack stratagem that can "generate a (somewhat) stable wormhole on demand," allowing the user to warp jump around the battlefield. Arrowhead notes that, while you can warp without cooldown, each jump will strain the wormhole, "and the wearer may experience death should the singularity fully collapse."

But hey, if you are squelched into an infinitely-dense particle thanks to your wanton abuse of the fabric of spacetime, you can at least look cool doing it with one of the warbond's two new armor sets. And each one has a new Adreno-Defibrillator passive ability that'll revive you to full health once per deployment!

Unfortunately, you will continually lose health after you're revived. Life's about give and take.

The Control Group warbond will hit Helldivers 2 on July 17.

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Just a week after gutting the leadership of Subnautica 2 studio Unknown Worlds, a Bloomberg report says Krafton is going to delay the game's early access release into 2026. The decision comes mere months before the PUBG publisher was slated to pay Unknown Worlds a $250 million bonus that developers say hinged on Subnautica 2's release this year.

Krafton acquired Unknown Worlds in 2021, three years after the hit undersea survival game Subnautica left early access and went into full release. The purchase agreement, according to Bloomberg, included the $250 million bonus, payable if the studio achieved specific revenue targets by the end of 2025; with Subnautica 2 delayed into 2026, those targets are unlikely to be met, and thus the bonus will not be payable.

Unknown Worlds leadership had reportedly planned to split the bonus with all of the studio's roughly 100 employees, payouts worth hundreds of thousands or even millions for some. Those leaders—Subnautica designer and director Charlie Cleveland, CEO Ted Gill, and studio co-founder Max McGuire—were unexpectedly shown the door last week, however.

The report adds a new dimension to a recent statement made by Cleveland, who said earlier this week that Subnautica 2 "is ready for early access release." Speaking to Unknown Worlds employees during a town hall also held this week, however, newly installed CEO Steve Papoutsis, formerly the CEO of Krafton's Striking Distance Studios, insisted otherwise, and said Subnautica 2 is being held back so developers can add more content.

When asked during that town hall whether the delay was made so Krafton could avoid paying the bonus, Papoutsis said he's not familiar with the specifics of its deal to acquire Unknown Worlds, but that "it’s never been told to me that we’re making this change specifically to impact any earnout or anything like that."

For now, the Subnautica 2 Steam page still lists a 2025 early access release date. I've reached out to Krafton for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

oyees, payouts worth hundreds of thousands or even millions for some. Those leaders—Subnautica designer and director Charlie Cleveland, CEO Ted Gill, and studio co-founder Max McGuire—were unexpectedly shown the door last week, however.

The report adds a new dimension to a recent statement made by Cleveland, who said earlier this week that Subnautica 2 "is ready for early access release." Speaking to Unknown Worlds employees during a town hall also held this week, however, newly installed CEO Steve Papoutsis, formerly the CEO of Krafton's Striking Distance Studios, insisted otherwise, and said Subnautica 2 is being held back so developers can add more content.

When asked during that town hall whether the delay was made so Krafton could avoid paying the bonus, Papoutsis said he's not familiar with the specifics of its deal to acquire Unknown Worlds, but that "it’s never been told to me that we’re making this change specifically to impact any earnout or anything like that."

For now, the Subnautica 2 Steam page still lists a 2025 early access release date. I've reached out to Krafton for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

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You will recall that there was a bit of a fuss a month or so ago when an undoubtedly-harried GameStop employee stapled some customer receipts directly to Nintendo Switch 2 boxes—and through the boxes, and into the Switch 2 units themselves. It was all quickly resolved, without lawsuits or fistfights, and with the ugliness now behind it GameStop is looking to make some proverbial lemonade by auctioning off the Switch 2 killer for charity.

No, no, not the employee, the stapler—along with the Switch 2 console that got stapled (now fully refurbished), the staple-perforated box it came in, and even the actual staple that did the damage, "carefully extracted and preserved."

There's also a certificate of authenticity certifying the items as "authentic relics from the now-infamous 'Staplegate' incident," signed by GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen, in case anyone questions the provenance of the artifact.

Funds raised by the eBay auction are set to go to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, and as bidding began to take off—the first bid came in at $9,999—Cohen, who seems to know a thing or two about promotion, said he'd include his underwear if the auction reached six figures. And so it is that his Fruit of the Looms were added to the package, because the $100,000 mark was surpassed just a few hours later.

That, naturally, necessitated a new promise.

[

(Image credit: Ryan Cohen (Twitter))](https://x.com/ryancohen/status/1943325564682539422)

Bidding currently stands at more than $111,000, and will likely be higher by the time you read this. Will this infamous stapler (and all the rest of it) actually draw that kind of coin when the auction is over? eBay terms and conditions notwithstanding, it's easy enough to just ghost a winning auction, and if there's one thing I've learned from being online for pretty much my entire life it's that not everyone is operating in good faith.

But the other thing I've learned is that some people online have too much money and not enough impulse control, so who knows? I'm not super excited about living in a world where some people can blow a milly-plus on a Switch 2 and a stapler and other people don't have access to basic health care, but at least the money in this case is going to a good cause. It's a small consolation but I take what I can get.The GameStop Staplegate Charity Auction, as it's formally known, runs until July 16.

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If you've ever claimed your hot new piece of gaming hardware was an investment, then this story is for you. Companies are using Nvidia's AI GPUs as collateral in deals with banks to borrow billions of dollars to further their businesses. This means even financial institutions are willing to recognise the potential value of these cards, which must be doing wonders for Nvidia's stock.

Fluidstack is a cloud startup company based in London that's just managed to score over $10 billion in funding according to a report by The Information (via WCCFtech). The company was able to leveridge its currently held supply of Nvidia AI GPUs to secure the loan from multiple financers including Macquarie.

This model of putting cards up for collateral Fluidstack is using isn't unique. CoreWeave, a cloud AI service which just received a massive influx of high-powered Nvidia AI Blackwell Ultra racks, was one of the pioneers of this loan structure. It was able to secure up to $9.9 billion dollars by putting its Nvidia H100 AI GPUs against the loan. Supposedly it used some of that cash to secure this new shipment of hardware, which points at a weird cyclical loan arrangement.

Buy some cards, get a loan against them, buy more. Repeat. Profit?

Given how fast this tech depreciates, it seems surprising financial institutions are willing to put loans against them. There are even rumours the collateral chips are held under lock and key, so they aren't even creating value through use. Still, if they're able to secure such wads of cash in loans maybe Nvidia's AI GPUs are worth even more locked away in a drawer then they are doing actual work.

This also raises questions around what happens to these GPUs down the line. If the startups using these loans fall through its presumed they'll be sold to recap any losses for the loaning parties. And will these banks do this before they lose value and are superseded by the next piece of kit. Given the high prices of these loans there has to be a hefty amount of units backing this. One failed startup could lead to a weird market flooded with high-end AI cards.

It all seems like a risky venture, but if banks are willing to put this much money down there must be significant confidence in the value of these cards. Hopefully all this profit for Nvidia will lead to more gaming cards at reasonable prices, you know other than the RTX 5060 TI 8GB appearing. A girl can dream.

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Like many large corporations McDonalds now uses an AI hiring platform, McHire.com, to screen candidates for jobs. The process involves a chatbot called Olivia, built by AI firm Paradox.ai, which takes personal information from applicants, points them towards a personality test, and answers basic questions about the company (though sometimes it's really bad at this).

Two security researchers, Ian Carroll and Sam Curry, have now revealed that until last week this platform suffered from some almost unbelievable security flaws (first reported on by Wired). Had these exploits been discovered by bad actors, they could have accessed the content of every chat Olivia ever had with McDonald's applicants, including personal information.

Carroll and Curry found a range of serious and in some cases laughably simplistic security lapses on the backend of McHire.com, which is used by many though not all the company's franchisees,. The pair managed to access a paradox.ai account and the databases containing every applicant's chat logs, and the method really is mind-blowing: This 'hack' involved logging into an administrator account where the username and password were both "123456".

The data that could have been accessed through this includes 64 million records, among which are names, email addresses, and phone numbers.

"I just thought [McHire] was pretty uniquely dystopian compared to a normal hiring process, right? And that's what made me want to look into it more," says Carroll, explaining why they decided to investigate the site."So I started applying for a job, and then after 30 minutes, we had full access to virtually every application that's ever been made to McDonald's going back years."

After poking around with the chatbot itself, the researchers decided to try signing up as a franchisee, which is when they found a login link for Paradox.ai staff to access the site. Carroll tried two of the most common sets of login credentials: username and password "admin" and username and password "123456." The second was the bingo.

This gave Carroll and Curry administrator access to a (nonexistent) McDonald's test restaurant, from where they applied for a test job posting, viewed it, and then discovered the next vulnerability. Changing the applicant ID on their existing application let them see other chat logs and the information therein. They accessed seven accounts total, five of which contained personal information.

(Image credit: Warner Bros.)

To be clear: no applicant data has been hacked or leaked, this particular vulnerability has now been fixed on the McHire platform, and Carroll and Curry should take a well-deserved bow (and get free Big Macs for life). But it just goes to show the incredibly dumb back doors that can exist in systems handling sensitive personal data, and how easily bad actors can exploit them.

A spokesperson for Paradox.ai confirmed the security researchers' findings, adding that the "123456" account was not accessed by anyone else. "We do not take this matter lightly, even though it was resolved swiftly and effectively," said Paradox.ai’s chief legal officer, Stephanie King. "We own this."

Erm… yeah? McDonalds naturally took the easy way out and blamed Paradox.ai for the "unacceptable vulnerability," emphasising that the issue "was resolved on the same day it was reported to us."

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Technological advances in the health industry are some of my favourites for how far out into science fiction they often seem. It's where we see cool developments on incredulous things like BCIs with some now even able to translate thoughts almost directly to speech, shattering the locked-in language barrier. Robots are another part of the tech world that have been helping out with healthcare, and they've also just had a communication based upgrade.

A surgical robot recently completed a huge milestone for both its soft and hard skillsets. According to IFLScience, a robot was able to successfully operate on a pig's gallbladder by responding to vocal directions. Thankfuly robots seem far better at surgery than they are at soccer.

“This work represents a major leap from prior efforts because it tackles some of the fundamental barriers to deploying autonomous surgical robots in the real world,” said lead study author Ji Woong “Brian” Kim.

Before the surgery, the robot was trained on videos of the procedure. Then the actual gallbladder removal was completed by the robot following the verbal instructions of the senior surgeon. It even managed to react on the fly to emergency scenarios and changes.

Honestly the whole process sounds a lot like how human surgeons would learn the process, which means these robots could potentially be trained using existing methods and understanding used for students. This could make training robots far more feasible for hospitals that may not have the technical resources.

“That’s what makes this so so humongously difficult, because how do you write this down? How do you write that in code?” Dr Mathias Unberath, John C. Malone Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University, recently told IFLScience.

“Can I watch a human learn what I’m supposed to be doing? If the answer is yes, things become, not trivial, but they’re considerably easier.”

This kind of learning is called imitation learning, and it's something people do all the time. When robots do this it's often a mix of machine learning and inputting data, but here it seems more restricted to video and voice training, which they seemed to nail. In this study the robots were able to complete the gallbladder removal with 100 percent accuracy after watching the tutorials. What a great use for AI.

As someone who has been under the knife of a robot, I find the whole idea fascinating. I've had multiple operations to remove cysts, endometriosis, and eventually my uterus. The last was robotically assisted, and my scars from it are tiny compared to the others. I can't speak for their bedside manner, but robot surgeons seem great.

Autonomous robot surgeons that can be easily trained using natural language while still responding to unexpected changes sound even better. This could see far more people have access to healthcare they desperately need, and far more robots helping them access it.

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One year after launching a strike of videogame performers and a month after suspending that strike on reaching a tentative agreement with publishers, SAG-AFTRA has announced that its members have ratified the new Interactive Media Agreement, bringing a definitive end to the strike.

According to SAG-AFTRA, over 95% of voting members approved the new agreement, a definitive show of support. The new agreement appears to have secured some significant concessions in terms of payment, but the big hangup in negotiations was reportedly AI protections for performers.

"The new contract also accomplishes performer safety guardrails and gains around AI," SAG-AFTRA wrote in its announcement. "Including consent and disclosure requirements for AI digital replica use and the ability for performers to suspend consent for the generation of new AI material during a strike."

This seems like a positive development for performers, though the consent and disclosure provision may prove ineffective. Big name voice actors like Troy Baker or Ashly Burch might have the leverage to refuse consent, but journeyman performers could find themselves in the position of "sign this AI consent form, or you don't get the part."

All the same, SAG-AFTRA members were clearly satisfied with the agreement, or at least ready for the strike to end, and this particular battle between artists and AI can finally draw to a close.

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It was meant to be a simple mission. My line manager at the humble mega-mining corporation Saxon—the cockroach known as Roachard Cox—laid it all out: break into a compound, tear through the fungus and goop to free the core from its prison, transport it back to the drop pod, and then escape with ample time to spare. Unfortunately, few things in life are simple.

Need to Know

What is it? A co-op PvE shooter where you fight fungus and collect resources in the name of the megacorporation you work for, also, your cockroach line manager.Release date July 10, 2025Expect to pay $15Developer Pigeons at PlayPublisher Devolver DigitalReviewed on RTX 3070, Core AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, 16GB RAMMultiplayer YesSteam Deck Not verified (yet)Link Steam

See Mycopunk is about as chaotic as a co-op shooter can get. You work for a megacorporation that wants to mine the planet of New Atlas for Saxonite, but after a fungus infects the world, you're sent down alongside other members of the New Atlas Hazard Crew to clear the way and gather various helpful resources. For example, The Gravity Farms hold Romphus, a fungus that grows on enemy shells, and Gussula, both assets I was carrying this mission out for.

I got through the first leg of the mission without any issues. Well, to be more specific, I left all my issues behind as I skedaddled away from hordes of fungal-infected enemies with the help of my trusty grapple pole, launching me into the stratosphere.

My objective? A large energy core tucked away in a warehouse—quite far away, situated on the other side of a sparse forest. Luckily, there was a laser gun waiting for me outside, which I could use to blow the hinges off the door and get inside.

(Image credit: Devolver Digital )

The only problem was that, by the time I started work on destroying the hinges, my original issues all caught up with me. I was quickly swarmed by mountains of mycological robots. My mother's words, "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today", echoed in my skull as it was bashed in by a bot with a comically large claw.

Luckily, I was able to kite my problems instead of dealing with them, slowly picking them off while creating enough distance to fulfil my contractual obligations.

I finally managed to blow the hinges off the door, get inside the compound and locate the core. It was wrapped in the same fungus that had infected the planet of New Atlas. I shot all the gunk off, then started rolling the core out the door and back to the drop pod, channelling my inner dung beetle.

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(Image credit: Larian Studios)

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Just as I was about to kick the core into the ship, an Abomination Sniper spawned on top of me and ate it. Typical. Abominations are huge robots, armed with an array of weaponry like laser beams, sniper rifles, and even immortality shields, which you have to destroy first before you can deal with them.

Killing one of these beasts isn't easy, which is why I usually live and let live when I encounter one. But this fiend is at my core, and I can't leave without it, so oil must be shed.

One game of 'ring around the drop pod' later, I was able to pry open the metallic jaws of the Abomination, drag the core out of its gut, and haul it back into the ship. It was hard, pure chaos and work, but hey, that's just your average day working for Saxon at the New Atlas Hazard Crew.

Run for the hills

(Image credit: Devolver Digital )

Mycopunk is full of clutch plays, chaotic fights, and good old-fashioned train-ing enemies. It's probably the most fun I've had in a shooter for a long time, primarily because it manages to straddle the line of being difficult but not punishing.

When selecting one of the various mission types, you can also customise the difficulty. There are three swarm intensities to choose from, which'll alter how likely enemies are to overrun you. Then there are six different difficulty levels to pick from, Difficulty 1 is the easiest, providing the least amount of resources, and Difficulty 6 is the hardest, giving players the most resources and XP.

Being able to change swarm intensities and difficulty separately from each other lets you experience all the different missions at your own pace, in circumstances that let you enjoy Mycopunk to the fullest. Like having to deal with mountains of enemies piling onto you at every second, but don't want them to pack too much of a punch? Pick a high swarm intensity at a low level, and so on.

These small tweaks remove stressors that some games tend to rely on.

Outside of difficulty, smart design choices (like removing the need to hunt for ammo or getting rid of the dreaded stamina bar) also make a world of difference. Instead of worrying about where I could find the next ammo cache like in other games, all I need to do to get more bullets is damage enemies with my other weapon.

This lets you focus on pulling off sick trickshots or clutch plays, rather than chaining you to a reload animation. It's also a great way to encourage players to diversify and upgrade all their weapons, not just focus on one favourite, which is something I'm guilty of in my FPS games.

I'm a huge fan of there being no stamina system, too. The enemy bots are also pretty fast, so having the ability to keep on running is vital. But it's not like you zip around whenever you feel like it. Instead, three of the four characters all have movement-based abilities which are on cooldown.

Scrapper (my fav) has a jetpack and deploys a grapple pole, which the whole team can use to launch themselves in the air. Wrangler has an air dash and a rocket lasso that can propel you forward. Glider has a wingsuit that you can fly around with. Bruiser just deploys shields and can ground slam, which emits a shockwave to damage nearby enemies, so I'm sure he appreciates the infinite stamina more than anyone else.

These small tweaks remove stressors that some games tend to rely on—lesser games might hold sacred the myth that a shooter has to be gruelling or realistic. Meanwhile, in Mycopunk, I'm a robot in a puffer jacket, being advised by a talking cockroach—realism went out the window a long time ago.

Putting the 'fun' in fungus

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Mycopunk is launching into early access, but even so, there's loads to do. There are four different main locations on New Atlas, each dishing out a unique combo of fungus resources, which you can use to upgrade your weapons.

There are also different kinds of missions for you to explore. Cleanup Detail and Regulated Rampage are similar, in that you just need to kill a bunch of fungus-infected robots or just clean the infection out by shooting at pustules. Saxonite Transport and Prized Possession are both payload escorts, with different kinds of obstacles in the way.

Finally, Planetary Defense sees you power up and fire a planetary railgun to take out a rival company's spy ship. This is by far the coolest mission, and something I've had a ton of fun completing with friends—there's something particularly funny about one of your teammates getting crushed by falling debris, all because you forget to warn them that you're ready to use the railgun.

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But the fun doesn't stop when the mission does. The home base is huge, there are minigames, car racing, and loads of pictures of what I can only assume are the developers' pets as screensavers all over the place, which is excellent.

This is when you also upgrade your characters and kit. Instead of simply unlocking upgrades from spending resources you gathered, there's also a hive-shaped inventory which you can sort upgrades into. All the upgrades come in different shapes and sizes, resembling a molecular string. You can have as many upgrades as will fit, so you have to sort them well—I even unlocked a rare upgrade for matching a 'hidden path'.

(Image credit: Devolver Digital )

Mycopunk shows a ton of promise, but that doesn't mean it's infallible. The progression can become a bit of a slog, and it can take a while to level up or collect enough resources to upgrade your kit. There's also definitely a cap as to how many missions you can do in a row before it all just blends into a violent blur. The variety in mission types only keeps things fresh for so long.

There are also some glitches, many of which the devs are aware of, but that doesn't make them any less annoying. I've been lasered by an Abomination through a wall more than once now—you're never safe, even when you think you are. But none of this ruins the fun, it's just something to bear in mind: The fungal growths of Early Access.

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Despite showing signs of ill health, videogames are still an enormous slice of the worldwide entertainment industry—making more than $100 billion across the globe each year, which is more than the film and music industries combined. The UK government is finally giving us some bloomin' recognition for this fact, announcing the formation of a UK Video Games Council in its creative industry sector plan late last month.

Shared via a press release, the council is designed to "work in partnership with government to support the growth, innovation and international reach of the UK video games and interactive entertainment industry". It'll cooperate with the UK's Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism, Sir Chris Bryant.

Twice a year, this council will meet to "provide strategic advice on how to unlock the full economic, cultural and educational potential of the UK games industry." In the same press release, the members of the council were revealed and, fair play to our government, this looks like a decent spread of representatives from around the industry.

The organisation's co-chairs are Jason Kingsley, CEO at Rebellion (Atomfall, Sniper Elite) alongside Nick Button-Brown, chair of Outright Games (a children's game publisher). As for the other members, rather than just throw a list of names at you with zero context, I've gone ahead and found some context, creating a larger, more complicated list. You're welcome.

Emily Bailey, CEO of Green-BiT—a software company that, best I can tell, is aiming to help the industry reduce its carbon footprint.Saad Choudri, CEO of Miniclip—a flash game website from back in the day who, apparently, has gone full games publisher. They're mostly concerned with mobile games like Subway Surfers.Charu Desodt, studio director at Interior/Night—the indie dev that made As Dusk Falls.Kirsty Rigden, CEO at FuturLab—the studio that made PowerWash Simulator.Dave Gould, senior director of sales UK and export at Take-Two Interactive—a massive publisher that handles Rockstar, Gearbox, and the mobile game dev Zynga.Chris Van Der Kuyl, chairman at 4J Studios—who handled the console port for Minecraft, among others.Donna Orlowski, COO of Chucklefish—Who used to publish Stardew Valley, also known for developing games like Starbound, and the upcoming Witchbrook.Nick Poole, CEO of UKIE—or The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment, a non-profit trade organisation that's existed since the early 90s, previously called the European Leisure Software Publishers Association until 2002.Tara Saunders, studio head at Larian Guildford—Larian Studios developed a little game called Baldur's Gate 3, as well as the Divinity: Original Sin series.Maria Sayans, CEO of ustwo Games—who developed games like Monument Valley and Assemble With Care.Tim Varney, Senior Corporate Counsel at Microsoft—a company that's only been growing its influence in the past years via Xbox. Growing a little too fast, perhaps.Dr Richard Wilson, CEO of TIGA—Also known as The Independent Game Developers' Association, another UK-based non-profit that was founded in 2001.

While the phrase "UK Video Games Council" makes me as wary as any other properly patriotic Brit, the selection above genuinely seems solid at first glance. I'm not sure what a twice-yearly session can do for the UK games' industry, but the selection of UK-based indie studios, advocacy groups, and the inevitable representatives from industry titans does seem like a good-faith effort to hear everybody out. Hopefully it'll go better than the one time the Tories made a Discord server.

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PC Gamer recently dispatched Robert Zak to chat with the senior developers behind Deus Ex, in order to mark the 25th anniversary of a true classic. Among the many nuggets are that the initial pitch for the game starred Jake Shooter, supercop, and that the team never really thought that one of the most political games you could imagine was political at all.

The story of Deus Ex's development is also inextricable from one of the most influential figures in 90s game development: John Romero. Romero and fellow id alumnus Tom Hall had founded Ion Storm in Dallas in 1996, and publisher Eidos had basically given the studio a blank cheque. A lot of this money would go on things like penthouse suites and lavish office facilities, but Romero also had an eye for talent: and in 1997 Looking Glass Austin had just laid off much of the team who made Thief.

"We just sort of hung out [in the Looking Glass office], prototyping things and playing around," recalls designer Steve Powers. "And then had this surreal moment when John Romero drove down from Dallas in his yellow Humvee with his purple shiny pants and said, 'I want all of you guys to come with me and make whatever you want!'"

(Image credit: Ion Storm)

Warren Spector had been mulling over the chance to go to Westwood and make a Command & Conquer RPG, but Romero had the offer of a lifetime. "'Make the game of your dreams. No creative interference. You'll have the biggest budget you've ever had. You'll have the biggest marketing budget you've ever had,'" paraphrases Spector. "Who says no to that?"

Ion Storm Austin benefited from, well, not being in Dallas, which was where the utter chaos of Daikatana's development was unfolding. With the total freedom to build a dream game, the problem turned out to be managing those ambitions: what could actually be achieved, even when resources were plentiful. Imbuing every space in the game with narrative and meaning, for example, is one of those wonderful ideas that requires a hell of a lot of heavy lifting.

"Everything needs to be dipped in narrative, which means that the more space you make, the more conceptual work you're making," says Harvey Smith. "From my perspective, what Deus Ex—and honestly, half the games we've worked on—needed all through the project was to cut 20 or 30% of the game."

Development went well, and next to the maelstrom that was Daikatana Deus Ex was comparatively low-budget and low hassle: but as the finish line came into view the team, almost inevitably, realised the game needed an extra six months or so to truly deliver. This would normally have been a big ask: but Eidos almost hand-waved it through. And this, too, can be credited to John Romero and his winning habit of getting executives too bladdered to check-in on the Austin office.

"We went in ready to fight and argue and lobby for another four to six months' development time, and they were like, ‘Sure, it's probably better anyway if you are not in our hair right now,’" recalls Harvey Smith, explaining that the hard-partying culture over at the Dallas studio meant that, when the Eidos suits did visit the states, they'd rarely make it to Austin.

Harvey Smith again: "They would fly over these British guys and they would just get hammered with the Dallas team for three days straight. This happened three or four times over the years where Warren and the team were prepping for the visit from Eidos and they would send a mail on the last day like, ‘Guys, we partied a little too hard in Dallas and we're not gonna make it this summer.'"

Deus Ex got the extra four to six months after hitting 1.0, and Smith believes this is what moved Deus Ex from a good game to an all-timer: So much so that he'd go on to champion this approach at Arkane (Dishonored received the same treatment). As for John Romero, Daikatana would turn out a disaster and his career would go in another direction: ultimately Ion Storm's real legacy would prove to be Deus Ex, the game that the hungover suits considered a makeweight.

After making all those promises to Spector, Romero would go on to have no involvement with Deus Ex: and yet without Romero, and one hell of a bar tab, Deus Ex wouldn't exist. "John lived up to every promise he made that day," ends Spector.

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If you've been on social media at all this week, there's a good chance you've encountered the horse-crazed masses who've succumbed to the absurd siren call of Umamusume: Pretty Derby. It's a gacha game about horse racing, except the horses are anime girls, and it's got a pretty compelling spreadsheet simulator underneath all the gratuitous wobbling and the inherent villainy of its gacha trappings.

Of the titular umamusume, one horse girl has quickly become a fan favorite since the game got its western release at the end of June. If you look at the game's library banner art on Steam, you'll see—tucked in the middle of the determined ponyfolk—one horse girl with an inexplicably mischievous smirk:

(Image credit: Cygames, Inc.)

This is Gold Ship, and the main thing you need to know about Gold Ship is that she's an asshole.

Where most of the other umamusume are possessed of a heroic drive and noble spirit, Gold Ship is an ungovernable gremlin. She's fickle. She's irritable. She'll often refuse to train, or inflict herself with the Slacker condition and force you to derail your racing prep to clear it.

In races, she might choose to lazily hang at the back of the pack. When she wants to win, she can sometimes simply kick on the afterburners and casually sweep through the competition to a first place finish. Other times, she'll just, you know, not do that. If she does win, she'll celebrate by dropkicking you in the face. And people love her for it.

The Gold Ship experience#umamusume pic.twitter.com/PWWNgO2gZKJuly 8, 2025

i dont even play the game but seeing my tl full of comments like this about gold ship make me like them more and more https://t.co/0QXqff95np pic.twitter.com/BTrnQN8DUyJuly 4, 2025

As compelling as Gold Ship is, the history behind the character is just as incredible. You see, the umamusume are all based on real, actual Japanese race horses, and the real Gold Ship was every bit the equine chaos agent his anime girl counterpart is—sometimes at the expense of millions and millions of dollars.

In a racing career that ran from 2011 through 2015, Gold Ship acted as a kind of divine punishment inflicted on humanity for daring to gamble on the enterprise of horse racing. He was impossible to predict, sometimes stringing together unparalleled performances just to finish last in his next race in what could seem like a deliberate act of mockery.

The real Gold Ship's crowning achievement of spectacular failure took place at the 2015 Takarazuka Kinen. After starting the season with a poor showing at a G2 race in Nakayama, Gold Ship posted back-to-back G1 wins at the Hanshin Daishoten and the Tenno Sho. Gold Ship was on fire, and he entered the paddock at the Takarazuka Kinen as the overwhelming favorite.

But as the race started, spectators watched with horror as Gold Ship went into an inexplicable fit, leaving the gate a full 10 horse lengths behind—an insurmountable gap that would lead to a dismal 15th place finish. The inexplicable fumble is estimated to have, in moments, annihilated around 12 billion yen worth of betting tickets, around $135 million in today's dollars.

"I'm sorry to those who supported him, but that's typical of him," Gold Ship's jockey, Norihiro Yokoyama, said after the race. "I hope you'll think of that as part of his personality."

After a career of waging psychological warfare on the world of Japanese horse racing, Gold Ship retired at the end of the 2015 season. He now resides at the Big Red Farm in Hokkaido, where he's continued to sire a new generation of race horses.

His stud fee currently sits at 4 million yen. By all indications, he's living his best life.

Gold Ship is also still alive, he lives in Hokkaido. He retired in 2015 without any mortal injuries(This video is from the "late 2010s"?) https://t.co/2WahATKLYy pic.twitter.com/PnLcrUjzuOJuly 6, 2025

Umamusume: Pretty Derby is available now on Steam. As with any gacha game, the standard warnings about predatory monetization apply: If you don't want to put your wallet at risk, you're better off steering clear.

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Bethesda has rolled out a new patch for Oblivion Remastered that promises numerous bug fixes and performance improvements, and also adds a little more flexibility to combat difficulty settings.

The difficulty adjustment is neither a nerf to this nor a buff to that, but rather the addition of a new "Journeyman" setting that Bethesda hopes "will act as a better bridge" between the "Adept" and "Expert" settings.

This is a bigger deal than it might seem, as Oblivion Remastered's out-of-whack difficulty is a common complaint. As PC Gamer's Ted Litchfield noted in May, "'Adept' difficulty just feels too easy, while a single step up to 'Expert' makes fighting even a basic bandit a life or death slog." Modders were able to solve the problem, but this change will hopefully smooth things out for everyone on vanilla.

There's not a lot in the way of big headline news in the patch beyond that, although a fix to "armor items hiding Argonian and Khajiit tails" will no doubt be welcomed by many, and another ensuring that keybinds update properly for AZERTY keyboard users will certainly please, well, a few. Promised performance fixes, including fixes for frame rate drops and overall optimization, should also make for a better time in Tamriel for everyone.

The Oblivion Remastered 1.2 update is set to roll out today in Steam beta (and may already be live by the time you read this), so you'll need to be opted into that if you want to give it a rip before it's fully live. The full patch notes are below.

SETTINGS CHANGES

We’ve added additional difficulty settings to allow players to further tune their “Player Combat Damage” & “Enemy Combat Damage”. Players can now select from “Novice”, “Apprentice”, “Adept”, “Journeyman”, “Expert”, and “Master” options in the Gameplay menu. We hope the “Journeyman” setting, specifically, will act as a better bridge between “Adept” and “Expert” for players.

UI

Fixed map markers disappearingFixed missing punctuation in Simplified Chinese textFixed “Toggle All” button on Map screen to work as a 'Hold'Various fixes to localized textFixed controller issues in Spell making menuFixed menus being cropped incorrectly in 1280x1024Fixed the incorrect player stance in the inventory menu after fast travelFixed rebinding keys for Lock PickingFixed keybinds not updating in AZERTYFixed soft lock with controller in Enchanting menuFixed stats not updating when equipping enchanted itemsFixed a character skin glitch when closing the inventory menu

CRASHES

Fixed crashes that could occur while fighting JyggalagFixed crashing when killing a paralyzed NPC with an arrowFixed crashing when paralyzing an already-paralyzed NPCFixed crashing in Spellmaking menu when rapidly removing & implementing effectsFixed various GPU crashesFixed crashes that could occur during auto saves

AUDIO

Fixed underwater SFX persisting after leaving exiting waterFixed missing ambient SFX in Shivering Isles

QUESTS

Fixed NPCs floating after being knocked down during Priory of the Nine questFixed crashing when entering Flooded Mine during Final Justice questFixed pathing for Shaleez in Flooded Mine during Final Justice questFixed crashing when opening Gate to The Fringe during Retaking the Fringe questFixed mages loading without clothes in Fort Ontus during The Necromancer's Amulet questFixed NPC pathing issues in Gardens of Flesh and Bone during ‘Through the Fringe of Madness’ questFixed missing VFX during the closing of the Great GateFixed Ilav Dralgoner's missing facial animation during ‘Saving Time Itself’ questFixed Sir Thredet's speech during ‘Umaril the Unfeathered’ questFixed NPC pathing issues during ‘Baiting the Trap’ questFixed Obelisk Crystals spawning disconnected during ‘Baiting the Trap’ questFixed crash at end of ‘Through a Nightmare, Darkly’ questFixed wall crumbling in Malada during ‘Nothing You Can Possess' questFixed misaligned food at the Castle Leyawiin County Hall dinner party during ‘Sanguine’ questFixed an issue with visibility of ghosts during ‘Ghosts of Vitharn’Fixed cutscene not playing during ‘Light the Dragonfires’Fixed missing textures in Cropsford Campsite after finishing ‘Goblin Trouble’

PERFORMANCE

Fixed frame rate drop in Deepscorn HollowFixed frame rate drops in Black Rock CavernsFixed frame rate drop between Skingrad and Skingrad CastleFixed frame rate drop south of Bravil Castle courtyardReduced the frequency of hitches in the open world.General improvements to frame time in many locations.Optimize updating of character attachments.Optimize rendering of water volumes in the open world.Optimize light/shadow updates in several lairs.Optimize waterfall particle FX and rendering.Optimize the weather system.Optimize character animation system.

GAMEPLAY

Fixed player character height scalingFixed armor items hiding Argonian and Khajiit tailsFixed slow camera movement when initiating NPC dialogueFixed soft lock when a player with a high bounty goes to jailFixed Orrery animationsFixed physics bug with floating necklacesFixed vampire sleeping animationsFixed NPC beards not following facial animation.Fixed ghost NPCs being completely invisibleFixed missing animation when talking to Shamada in LeyawiinFixed occasional very long load times when fast travelingFixed missing facial animation for Snak gra-BuraFixed falling unconscious in water preventing player from getting upFixed NPCs losing collision when swimmingFixed NPCs stopping combat when player is blockingFixed female Dremora teeth clippingFixed soft lock after choosing player classFixed Amber weapons clipping in first person viewFixed vines clipping into columnsFixed helmets clipping into player character's headFixed missing textures on Daedric statuesFixed duplicated pages between Oghma Infinium and Mysterium Xarxes

SYSTEM

Fixed flickering shadows when using XeSS UpscalingFixed title properly restarting after purchasing the Deluxe Upgrade on PCFixed settings properly migrating between PC and XBOXFixed water disappearing after fast travelFixed cursor slowdown when enabling high frame rate V-SyncFixed shaders not preloading due to cloud save replicationFixed long blackout during loading screensFixed weather VFX flashing while outsideFixed motion blur artifacts while in the Oblivion PlaneFixed NPCs not obeying the Wait action from the player

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One of the most powerful tools in any writer's box is the complete mastery they have over time. While real life trudges along in a doldrum routine of cause and effect, stories can arrange their happenings however they'd like. Storytellers have spent centuries finding and developing effective structures. Naughty Dog, however, has better plans. Plans that I am about to be entirely too crotchety about. Nevertheless:

Ask yourself—who needs the potent hand of authorial intent? Why would you generate mystery? What's the point of meticulously challenging a desire for vengeance after spending hours stewing in it? That kind of thing might lead to people having to think about a story's themes and messages and analyse it, or critique it, or something. Ugh, gross.

Introducing the cure to what ails ye: The Last of Us Part 2 "Chronological Experience", a truly baffling alternate mode recently released for the remastered version of the game on both PC and PS5.

"Those who have already played will know its story is told non-linearly," a blog explains, "As Ellie and Abby’s motivations, realizations, and emotional stakes unfold across myriad flashbacks and present-day storylines."

But what, instead of all of that, you simply didn't? Naughty Dog is brave enough to ask that question: "While this structure is very intentional and core to how our studio wanted Part II’s themes and narrative beats to impact players, we always wondered what it would be like to experience this story chronologically. And now finally, we can answer that question."

The blog then posits that players will be given a "deeper insight into Part 2's narrative", before reaching so hard you can hear the joints pop: "Players will be able to see how Ellie being gifted a guitar flows so neatly into her learning to play." This is great for me, someone who cannot parse the concept of someone having a hobby when I'm not looking at them.

In fairness, it does make the somewhat-salient point that seeing Ellie and Abby nearly bump into each other might be interesting: "You’ll see just how close they come into running into each other, how their actions impact each other, and more."

Except, uh. Naughty Dog. Buddy. Pal. That already happens in the base game, provided you have a functioning long-term memory. You just need to recognise a familiar area, then access your mind palace to remember that, oh, hey, I was here a few hours ago playing as a different character. It isn't hard!

Look—I'm sure that this is a kinda-neat restructuring of the game's narrative, a fun little alternate universe jaunt. If you play it and enjoy it for a second playthrough, I wouldn't blame you at all, and the blog does, to its credit, say you should go through the game normally first. But I can't imagine it's a valuable exercise, other than an idle thought experiment. A shower thought that somehow made it into a production line.

Even if you're dim on Part 2's story, there's a lot else that gets thrown in the grinder—pacing, for one, which in videogames applies to more than just narrative. I'm confident calling the shot here and now that this chronological mode doesn't just make the story worse, it'll make the game worse, too.

I just… I don't get it, man. Maybe I'm being overly cynical because of the slow, steady slide of previously complex series dropping anything that'd otherwise challenge their players, or the seemingly pervasive, AI-driven hunger to punt writers out of their rooms. But I will dig my heels in and argue that Naughty Dog is being pretty condescending here.

Did you know that interviewees in a 2024 article published in the International Journal of Communication alleged that Netflix instructed showrunners and screenwriters "to both show and tell" and "say much more than you would normally say" so that people watching a second screen wouldn't get lost?

This whole mode smacks of the same corporate cynicism, and while you can enjoy your videogames any way you want, it personally makes me feel babied. We can probably, just maybe, take stories seriously enough not to chop them up and repackage them just to get a few more play hours in the bank.

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As a longtime Dwarf Fortress devotee, the last few years of DF development have felt like a wonder. For most of the procedural fantasy sim's history, there could be years between updates as development progress was subject to the circumstances affecting the Adams brothers' lives and attention.

Since joining with Kitfox Games for the Steam release and hiring on additional developers, however, Bay 12 Games is now expanding its simulation's scope at an unprecedented pace. It's even able to address bugs that have been tormenting players for 15 years.

In a YouTube video published yesterday, Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams spoke about a DF update that landed at the very end of June to bring a change that, to any Dwarf Fort veteran, sounded like a miracle: Marksdwarves actually work now.

I'll give you a moment to catch your breath.

For almost half of my life, trying to get a dwarven militia to use ranged weaponry has been a futile, sisyphean endeavor. Long-standing peculiarities with interactions between military stockpiles and dwarven behavior meant getting your marksdwarves to train with their crossbows—let alone field them in actual combat—was like trying and failing to solve the logic of an arcane, inscrutable machine.

(Image credit: Bay12Games)

Often, the best I could hope for was getting my militia to loose a single barrage of bolts. Otherwise, I'd usually be left watching in dismay as my marksdwarves refused to fill their quivers and instead tried to bludgeon the oncoming goblin invaders with their ranged weapons.

The June update changes all that. As a prelude to an upcoming revision of Fortress mode sieges, Adams said archery has been overhauled, righting a decade and a half of marksdwarf wrongs.

"We changed archer behavior so that they'd better use fortifications that you set up to protect themselves," Adams said. "They will also run off and get ammo, keeping their distance from enemies even when they're out of bolts instead of leaping over walls and clubbing people with their crossbows. So that's an improvement."

Tarn has a talent for understatement.

(Image credit: Bay12 Games)

Ammo customization should now work properly, too, so you can designate cheaper wooden and bone bolts for crossbow training and save your valuable metal bolts for the sieges where they'll matter most. The game now models nocking arrows and loading bolts, too, and marksdwarves can now aim at specific body parts—all of which is affected by an individual dwarf's stats and skills.

With archery becoming yet another vector of Dwarf Fortress's increasing complexity, Adams said even he's caught himself underestimating how many factors influence a dwarf's ability to land a shot.

"Things like weather have always mattered for ranged weapons. When I was testing, I was reminded of this because my test was taking place in a snowstorm, and I was wondering why they were shooting so late," Adams said. "But it's because they couldn't see as far. Lots of little things matter."

(Image credit: Bay12Games)

The June update also brought new visuals for the game's Forgotten Beasts, adding procedural sprite variations for the primordial horrors with colors and decorations matching their randomized descriptions.

In addition to the looming siege rework, Dwarf Fortress's Lua scripting update is on the horizon. It's currently available for testing on DF's beta branch, where it's surfacing code governing the generation of random creatures and objects for modders to play with. As part of an ongoing process to convert more pieces of Dwarf Fortress into moddable scripting material, Adams says the Lua updates will "blossom into a modding renaissance."

Terrifying. Can't wait.

Dwarf Fortress is available now on Steam. The classic ASCII version is—as ever—free to download from the Bay 12 Games site.

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