As reported by The Korea Economic Daily, top-ranked Go grandmaster Shin Jin-seo became the first human to defeat the AI platform KataGo on July 21. It's a surprising, encouraging sign of human capabilities almost 30 years after supercomputer Deep Blue's historic defeat of Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.Go is believed to be the oldest board game that is still widely played, originating in China and beating out Chess by at least...
First reported by Dexerto, former Jagex employee Andrew "Mod Jed" Lakeman has been sentenced to three years in prison (suspended for two years) for using dev tools to remove items from player accounts, then selling them online. An investigation found that Lakeman had earned more than $400,000 through this activity.Former OSRS developer Mat K elaborated on some of the saga in a 2021 episode of OSRS Podcasts. Lakeman was a...
DLSS 5 is a controversial technology for all sorts of reasons—you might have heard about this little thing called AI slop—but perhaps the most infamous is its uncanny look. Real concerns have been raised about the potential for something so aesthetically transformative to preserve a game developer's artistic intent, with Nvidia trying to run interference on this very point. Director of both Kingdom Come: Deliverance games, Daniel Vávra, has re-entered...
Play This Right NowWelcome to Play This Right Now, the site version of our weekly newsletter in which we celebrate a new game, update, or DLC that we think is well worth checking out. You can subscribe to the newsletter at the link if you want to get our thoughts about a new videogame happening direct to your inbox every Thursday.If you're sick of parrying in videogames, then Onimusha: Way...
Terminally Online(Image credit: Future)This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer's very own MMO column. Every other week, I'll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we've all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice.Ah, the MMO inventory. The delightful abstraction that means we don't need to actually think all that hard about...
Weird WeekendWeird Weekend is our regular Saturday column where we celebrate PC gaming oddities: peculiar games, strange bits of trivia, forgotten history. Pop back every weekend to find out what Jeremy, Josh, Ted, and Rick have become obsessed with this time, whether it's the canon height of Thief's Garrett or that time someone in the Vatican pirated Football Manager.Vholume is not big on waypoints or barriers, and I love it...
The way our hobby talks about player counts is all sorts of messed up. Steam concurrents are a useful metric for gauging a game's general popularity, but they paint an incomplete picture. They're a single data point, yet have become the flimsy scaffolding on which the internet builds elaborate headcanon about a game's quality, viability, or deadness. Sometimes dogpiling is so successful, and the resulting perception so difficult to fight,...
The Labor Day weekend is upon us (in Canada and the US, anyway, and we'll be sure to spare a thought for our UK colleagues who will be working on Monday) and holy cow, it is about time. If you find yourself in need of something to do, here's a thought: Play Civilization 7, because it's free to play on Steam until September 10.Civ 7's had kind of a rough...
Officials with Miami-Dade County have held talks with Rockstar about using facilities and landmarks in the county to promote the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, according to a recent report by The Miamian, saying it could represent "a unique opportunity to generate revenue for the County while showcasing Miami-Dade to a massive audience." Just one problem: the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office is dead-set against it.The Miamian report (via RPS) says the...
In 2021, as studio CEO Pete Parsons cited the company's recent "tremendous growth and opportunity," Bungie announced its plans for a massive expansion to its Bellevue, Washington headquarters. The campus embiggening, which internal sources have reportedly described as costing "hundreds of millions" of dollars, more than doubled the size of Bungie's offices from 84,000 square feet to just under 211,000.Now, after five and a half years of spending sprees, publisher...