If you've started a new character or world in Valheim 1.0 from the beginning (or are playing it for the first time ever), you may be wondering about the Battle Idols and Protection Idols you've found. While opening chests in Valhiem's various biomes, you will occasionally come across an item called a Battle Idol or Protection Idol made of wood, bronze, iron, or other materials.These Idols don't seem to serve...

Deep sea exploration and restaurant management game Dave the Diver is still going deep: Developer Mintrocket says the game has now moved past 10 million copies sold across all platforms, while the In the Jungle expansion that came out in June has moved past one million sales of its own.Dave the Diver was an "out-of-nowhere hit" when it arrived in 2023, earning a whopping 91% review score at PC Gamer—a...

Early access on Steam is a simple concept. You buy a game before it's finished, provide bug reports and feedback to developers, and help shape a project's direction and ambitions. Everybody wins: You get to play the game early, and developers earn money that helps them continue and finish their work. It's been a boon for numerous notable games over the years, including Baldur's Gate 3 and Palworld.In an interview...

Thief designer Randy Smith Evergreen, whose credits also include System Shock 2 and Dark Messiah: Might and Magic, thinks we need to chill out a bit when it comes to the graphics arms race. Specifically, he reckons the race should have stopped 16 years ago with Remedy's original Alan Wake, which was quite a looker back in the day. "The fidelity curve has become outrageous," he tells us. "It's become...

The Independent Workers of Great Britain union held a rally today in Glasgow, Scotland to mark the beginning of the final workplace tribunal hearing that will resolve the case of 31 former Rockstar employees who were fired by the company in October 2025.The dispute turns on the cause of the terminations, or lack thereof: Rockstar says the employees were fired for leaking information about "upcoming and unannounced" games in a...

Dual-mode is still not perfect in gaming monitors, but we are consistently getting the option for nearly no extra cost, and that is making it a mighty viable choice, especially if you are running a rig that can only sometimes run the native resolution. The option to flit from 1080p at double the refresh rate for competitive or highly intensive games, and then back to 4K for lush sights or...

I'm looking forward to an expansion for a game from 2015 more than I am for pretty much any new game coming up. The Songs of the Past add-on for The Witcher 3, which will be out next year, promises to let us explore a whole new region and get to know Dandelion better than ever. I'm more interested in a brand new chunk of world than intimate moments with...

A new hotfix for The Blood of Dawnwalker rolled out today, and you'll be happy to know that this one improves the game's overall stability, fixes several progression blockers, fixes an issue with controllers that was causing frame rate drops, gets rid of the famous red pipe—more on that later—and keeps dead folks from talking so much.That last point, about the stiffs who won't shut up, doesn't figure as one...

Call of Duty has joined Microsoft's bid to reinvigorate interest in Xbox consoles, today announcing a Modern Warfare 4 gun skin that you can only see if you're playing on an Xbox.You read that right: The Inner Circuit blueprint is an M4 skin granted to those who pre-order Modern Warfare 4 on any platform, but the gun looks totally different on the Xbox version.LEFT: The Inner Circuit skin as it'll...

If you're shopping around to get ready for the new school year and looking for a gaming laptop to cover a broad range of performance needs, you'll find plenty of hardware claiming it's for "gaming," but just what kind of gaming experience you'll get is still a huge question. Plenty of brands are happy to have you find out later that the type of gaming is limited to retro games...