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,…
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…
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…
Enlarge / “Your feedback is appreciated.” (credit: Epic Games) Last week, Epic finally added a user review system to its PC Game Store, nearly 3.5 years after the service’s initial launch. The first set of public ratings produced by that system is now live for hundreds of titles on the Epic Games Store (skip to…
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…
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…
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:…
Enlarge / In the new expansion pack The Delicious Last Course, Miss Chalice makes three. (credit: Studio MDHR) Some people will look at an expansion pack like Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course and make up their minds after a single glance. This $8 add-on’s beautiful brutality follows the same path as the original 2017 game Cuphead,…
Enlarge / All four of the mascots seen in this SGDQ promo image appear in various speedruns hosted over the past week. (credit: Summer Games Done Quick) The Games Done Quick series of charity events has long been a favorite among the gaming fans and critics at Ars Technica since it combines classic, beloved video…
Use cash to buy orbs. Despite backlash from some players, Diablo Immortal‘s free-to-play, microtransaction-laden game design seems to be working out just fine for Blizzard’s bottom line. Using data from mobile analysis firm Appmagic, MobileGamer.biz estimates that the iOS and Android versions of the game brought in $49 million in earnings from just over 10 million mobile…