Days after announcing a price cut for the existing Xbox Game Pass tiers, which'll no longer get new Call of Duty games at launch, it appears Microsoft have an all-new tier lurking up their sleeves. Dubbed Game Pass Starter Edition, leaks suggest it'll be something akin to the the established baseline Essential Game Pass tier, but bundled in with a paid subscription to Discord Nitro.
I delight in looking at shapes, I suspect we all do. They are the building blocks of life, often turned into literal building blocks handed to us as wee babes to help us make sense of the world. Games like Shapez 2, then, feel like a natural through line from this point, a mechanical orchestra that lets you put all sorts of shapes together to build factories that produce more shapes endlessly. And now that line has seen its end, as Shapez 2 has left early access today, arriving at its 1.0 release a little less than two years on from its original launch.
I've used Logitech's MX Master office mice for the best part of six years by this point, beginning with the MX Master 3, then the 3S and now the MX Master 4. Weirdly, the best one to pick up from a value and features standpoint is the MX Master 3S, which I noted in my original 2022 review to have the same excellent ergonomics as its predecessor, versatile wireless connectivity, a zippy 8000 DPI sensor and much more. For £69 from Amazon (nice), it's a return to one of the best prices I've seen on this rodent in a few weeks and in a general sense.
If you've spent days trapped in a loo after Samson cheekly locked you in one during a mission, then I bring good news. Liquid Swords' latest patch for their buggy crime sim's freed you from your bondage, while also adding some new tuned cars for you to race around while you celebrate no longer being stuck in the shitter.
Another Crimson Desert patch is upon us, with developers Pearl Abyss delivering more of the additions they outlined earlier this month. Though, they didn't get as deep into specifics on the likes of new difficulty settings and extra pets back then as they have in their latest notes, which also run down a raft of fixes for the red pudding.
Naval warfare won't be coming to Crusader Kings 3 with the big merchant republics expansion Paradox are set to roll out towards the end of this year. The studio say that they want to make sure they do sea battles justice, and so didn't want to shoehorn them into a DLC which already comes with "a fair amount of risk", while also blowing up their planned development timeline.
Valve, Epic Games, Microsoft, and the Roblox Corporation have all been issued transparency notices by the Australian government's eSafety commissioner, with the body seeking to learn what steps are being taken to keep kids safe on Steam, Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox. The Australian government say this step's been taken as without action, all four platforms risk "becoming onramps to abuse, extremist violence, radicalisation or lifelong harm".
