Monthly Archives: July 2022

Divers recovered giant head of Hercules from Antikythera shipwreck in Greece

Enlarge / A diver with the Return to Antikythera project carefully excavates an artifact. (credit: Nikos Giannoulakis/Return to Antikythera) The so-called Antikythera mechanism, recovered from the wreckage of an ancient cargo ship off the coast of Antikythera Island in Greece, might be the world’s oldest analog computer. The mystery surrounding its purpose and origin continues…

Microsoft will start banning players from all private Minecraft servers

Enlarge / Players that Microsoft bans from Minecraft will soon also be prevented from joining private servers like this one. (credit: Tynker) Since its initial release over a decade ago (and even following Microsoft’s 2014 acquisition of developer Mojang), Minecraft has let players create private servers where they’re in full control of what behaviors (and…

PlayStation studios, major publishers break silence on abortion rights [Updated]

Enlarge / Just some of the game franchises represented by studios coming out in support of reproductive rights today. Last month, Insomniac Games (Spider-Man) CEO Ted Price reportedly told his employees that parent company Sony “will not approve ANY statements from any studio on the topic of reproductive rights.” That is apparently no longer true,…

Steam Deck shipments “more than double” this week—so let’s estimate how many

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) For anyone trying to buy a modern piece of gaming hardware, good news is beginning to peek through the dreary clouds of chip shortages and manufacturing hold-ups. This week’s optimism comes from a player outside the expected console- and GPU-making fray. Valve, the longtime software maker responsible for…

Return to Monkey Island trailer features an “adrift and unfulfilled” Guybrush

When Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman spoke to Ars in April, shortly after the surprise announcement of Return to Monkey Island, they weren’t ready to discuss details on where the franchise’s story would be going after LeChuck’s Revenge. Today, though, a new trailer and marketing materials for the game give us our first hints of…

Review: Razer Kishi V2 refines the “gamepad that clamps to phone” concept

Enlarge / It’s not a Razer device unless it’s posed next to a bunch of custom RGB lighting, right? In great news, the Razer Kishi V2 includes zero glaring lights, which we prefer here at Ars Technica. (credit: Razer) In the years since the phrase “don’t you people have phones” became a Blizzard-mocking meme, I’ve…

Blizzard will purchase 100-person Spellbreak studio to help make WoW content

Enlarge / Spellbreak battles are full of splashy elemental explosions and floaty acrobatic dodges. Blizzard Entertainment has acquired Boston-based Proletariat, the studio behind the magic-heavy battle royale game Spellbreak. Spellbreak will shut down by early 2023 as the workers at the 100-person studio transition to work on World of Warcraft and its upcoming “Dragonflight” expansion. VentureBeat…

Thanks to fans, the weirdest official Doom game is now playable on Windows

Enlarge / A seemingly lost turn-based version of Doom RPG is now fully playable on modern Windows PCs, thanks to efforts from the Doom reverse-engineering community. (credit: id Software) The creators of the Doom series have presented plenty of official and unofficial historical retrospectives, but these often leave out the weirdest official Doom game ever made:…