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Mittwoch, 11. März 2026

"Valve does not cooperate with gambling sites" - Counter-Strike publishers issue rare public defence of lootbox mechanics, following New York lawsuit

In an unusual show of candour, Valve have spoken out publicly against a lawsuit filed in New York, USA that accuses them of "letting children and adults alike illegally gamble" via loot boxes in Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2.

With the caveat that I am no Atticus Finch-esque legal expert or even a Louis Tully-grade bumbler, I find Valve's rebuttal to be a mixture of whataboutery and tactical mitigation, with a couple of fair points. It basically sidesteps what I think is the lawsuit's most important argument – that lootbox mechanics are fundamentally manipulative. You can read the thing in full here, or you can read my slapdash summary-with-notes, below.

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Intel’s new, "fastest ever" desktop CPUs put their focus back on game performance

Intel have announced a handful of new gaming CPUs, the Core Ultra 200S Plus series, to release next month. After 2024’s original Core Ultra 200S family went for efficiency gains at the cost of frame-punching game power, these 200S Plus chips are once again tuned more for straight performance, which sounds good to me. I like lower electricity bills and heat generation as much as the next hardware editor, and was fairly optimistic about that initial batch of Core Ultras at first, but they ended up so slow and dull it essentially put me off writing about CPUs for a year and a half.

Say hello, then, to the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 250K Plus, which’ll be out on March 26th 2026 at $299 and $199 respectively. There’ll also be slightly cheaper KF variants, without integrated graphics, for each. Intel VP Robert Hallock says these will be the "fastest desktop gaming processors Intel has ever built," which they’ll need to be – while the blue team have been fiddling with efficiency, AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech has ran away with the gaming advantage, especially on the outstandingly quick Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

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New tactics RPG Never's End blends Final Fantasy with the turbulent spell combos of Divinity: Original Sin

Never's End is the new strategy RPG from a former Destiny developer in which you lead a party of possessed villagers against a ravening (yet cuddly) tide of undead. At a glance, it's an elegantly muted Final Fantasy Tactics, with doll-sized characters on a spinnable grid-based map. In the hands, it's surprisingly reminiscent of Larian's Divinity: Original Sin games, with a nerdy application of thermodynamics that lets you transform each map into a vortex of mist, flame and increasingly naked skeletons.

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Dienstag, 10. März 2026

Why did Dispatch's devs push through to make it despite initial disinterest from investors? "Arrogance and stupidity"

It's no secret that those shadowy guys with all the money to fund games generally don't have much interest in narrative heavy, singleplayer games. And yet even still, games like Dispatch continue to do very well for themselves. Even still, for developer AdHoc Studio, the funding process doesn't sound like it was an easy one, but in their self-admitted "arrogance and stupidity," they went on to make it anyway.

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Regions of Ruin: Runegate is a pleasantly pixelly RPG about rebuilding a lost dwarven kingdom, and it’s out next month

I tend to take my videogame dwarves spacefaring, but there’s something inviting about the more classical, beards-and-barrel-chested adventuring being offered by Regions of Ruin: Runegate.

An expanded and prettified sequel to 2020’s Regions of Ruin, which I also knew nothing about until this morning, Runegate casts you as a lone dwarf charged with travelling the treacherous (but attractively pixel-arty) wilds to bring about the rejuvenation of your peoples' ruined subterranean home. Here’s the new release date trailer; not to spoil the ending, but it’s out on April 14th 2026.

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Capcom reveal Resident Evil Requiem story DLC and minigame while dangling sweaty carrot of Hot Uncle Kennedy romance sim

Resident Evil Requiem is getting a story expansion and a new minigame, together with the already-promised photo mode, Capcom have announced. What the expansion and minigame involve remains unclear, but there is just the dimmest possibility that we'll finally be able to play the official Leon Kennedy Meet 'n' F*ck game of our wildest dreams.

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New lawsuit wants Valve to repay "billions" earned from "illegal gambling" lootboxes in Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2

Tis the season for taking Steam to court, apparently. A new class action lawsuit has been filed in Washington, USA accusing Valve of running an unlawful gambling operation through lootbox mechanics in Counter-Strike 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2.

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