Software & Gaming

Dota 2 has reworked its Ranked rewards scheme, bringing in Seasonal Rank Medals to replace its renown matchmaking rating (MMR) system. This new system is now live, as Valve kicked off the game’s six-month Ranked Season yesterday. The news was revealed over on Dota 2’s official blog, attempting to reward …

Despite the changes that have been made, there are still plenty of fans out there that feel Star Wars Battlefront II is a grind. Some sneaky players, however, have crafted contraptions to circumvent the system and earn credits while they are away from their keyboard. Of course, the game as …

It looks like Bungie may have a few questions to answer, as an investigation into Destiny 2's XP system has revealed some interesting tricks at play. This week, it has come to light that Destiny 2 may use a ‘dynamic XP' system, which means players may often be rewarded a …

Its Black Friday today, which means plenty of people are going to be shopping around for deals on all sorts of things. This year, we have plenty of tech companies jumping on board. Overclockers UK has a new round of deals up today, ASUS has a bunch of sales going …

Hot on the heels of its most recent Firefox Quantum update, Mozilla has teamed up with the folks over at ‘Have I Been Pwned' to implement a new ‘Breach Alerts' feature into the browser. The idea is to throw up a warning if a user is visiting a site that …

Rare has been working away on Sea of Thieves for quite some time now. The game is perhaps one of the most highly anticipated on Microsoft's list of exclusives and soon, you'll get to try it out for yourself. This week, Rare announced that it would be having one last …

While the PC platform is known for being a powerhouse in comparison to its rivals, it is often the biggest pain to move around the house. Developer Andrew Sampson has taken it upon himself to create Rainway, a new application that hopes to stream your PC to various other devices. …

Update (6/12/17): The official unveiling of the new desert map has now revealed it will be titled ‘Miramar' instead of Valle Coronado as the below datamine originally suggested. Along with the title, Bluehole also gave further details regarding what to expect from Miramar in the form of six new screenshots, …

Further expanding from its base dinosaur taming gameplay, Ark’s next expansion pits players against a whole host of fresh monstrosities to fight and control on a new, malfunctioning Ark called ‘Aberration’. Players clever and strong enough to survive Aberration will “uncover the ultimate secrets of the Arks and discover what …

Earlier this week, we learned that Disney would be abruptly shutting down Marvel Heroes, the Diablo-style superhero action game. This news came at a surprising time, as the game just relaunched and landed on Xbox One and PS4. When the initial closure announcement took place, it was thought that the …

Last night, Valve kicked off its Steam Autumn Sale and so far, there are some excellent deals to be had on many PC games. There are even a few surprisingly high discounts for recently released titles, like Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, and Middle Earth: Shadow of War. For starters, …

When Square Enix parted ways with IO Interactive, it was surprising that it let the developer keep the rights to its Hitman franchise. CEO Yosuke Matsuda has now spoken up, revealing that the difficult decision was made for the continued success of both Square Enix and the Hitman series alike. …

When it was revealed that loot boxes would be bombarding the beaches of Normandy in Call of Duty: WWII, developer Sledgehammer Games was quickly to quell pay-to-win fears. Since then, dataminers have delved a little deeper, uncovering unreleased loot crates that are bound to cause controversy if implemented. Stating that …

Originally being shot down, Tencent never gave up its perusal of launching official Chinese servers for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. It seems that the ongoing battle between the publisher and Chinese watchdogs has come to an end, with Tencent securing the rights to officially launch PUBG in the country after all. The …

Update (22/11/17): Earlier this week, it came to light that EA may have fired Plants VS Zombies creator, George Fan, after he objected to putting microtransactions and pay to win mechanics in the sequel. The claim was made by an indie developer, rather than anyone directly involved, but now, a …

It looks like Uber is about to be subjected to even more scrutiny, as it has emerged that the online taxi app suffered a huge data breach more than a year ago. During this, hackers made off with the details of 57 million drivers and customers. In an effort to …

It seems that politicians in the US are also getting involved in the video game loot box debate. Earlier today, we learned that the Belgium Gaming Commission do consider loot boxes to be a form of gambling and now, politicians in Hawaii are calling out EA's “predatory practices” with Star …

Update (22/11/17): After announcing that it would be launching an investigation last week, the Belgium Gaming Commission has announced that it now deems video game loot boxes as a form of gambling. Initially, the Belgium Gaming Commission was investigating the crates obtained in games like Overwatch and Star Wars Battlefront …

While the current controversy surrounds loot boxes, the original debacle with microtransactions arose around free-to-play mobile games that employed an addictive design, ensnaring people into paying out the rear end. It turns out that developer Playsaurus feels pretty bad about the whole thing, dropping the free-to-play model for its upcoming …

Although many changes have already made their way to Star Wars Battlefront II, the game has just received its “first official patch,” including fixes for known problems. Unfortunately, it also seemed to have created a lot more than intended, going as far as to break progression entirely. With Patch 0.2 …

Valve has been tinkering with the Steam Store page regularly throughout the course of 2017. Previously, Valve has made changes to how Steam Reviews work but after some reflecting, the team has decided to make some additional improvements to make user reviews more helpful. Up until now, Steam's most helpful …

It looks like the latest update for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds isn't sitting well with players, as numerous complaints have come in. It seems that after the latest update, frame rates have taken a dive, particularly when trying to loot, or when opening and closing the map. Complaints first started appearing on …

Unless you’ve been isolated on Dagobah, you’ll have no doubt heard about the controversy surrounding Star Wars Battlefront II and its microtransaction system. According to one Wall Street firm, however, this outrage is unwarranted given that it’s still “one of the cheapest forms of entertainment.” Outcry from fans over Star …

Among the overwhelming focus on games as a service alongside an epidemic of microtransactions, fans of CD Projekt Red couldn’t help but get worked up at the prospect of upcoming title, Cyberpunk 2077 following the same path. Worries can now be put to rest, as the developer has since taken …

We are just about to come to the end of Rainbow Six Siege's second year of content, which means it is time to start looking ahead to ‘Year Three'. Today, Ubisoft announced that it would be continuing content updates in January 2018, with four quarterly season drops planned once again. …

There has been plenty of drama surrounding Star Wars Battlefront II. Prior to launch, players took issue with the game's progression system and microtransactions, prompting EA to make some last minute changes. However, it seems that the damage had already been done, with Battlefront II's physical launch sales down by …

Following in the footsteps of Zofia and fellow South Korean operator Dokkaebi, Ubisoft teases its third and final operator of Year 2, Vigil. While not as in-depth as Zofia, we get a look into his backstory, weapons and gadget before his full reveal on Sunday 19th November. After service among …

Following on from the Blizzcon reveal a few weeks back, today's Overwatch update adds a new hero to the game- Moira. This latest character joins the team under the support class, with new abilities that make her a mobile healer that can also deal a decent amount of damage to …

The threat of a Vivendi takeover has been hanging over Ubisoft for many months now. The former Activision owner has been increasing its stake in Ubisoft consistently, which has caused plenty of stress for CEO, Yves Guillemot. However, it looks like Vivendi is holding off in the short-term, with no …

It’s safe to say that EA and DICE have had a rough time with Star Wars Battlefront II after it was revealed that the title was ridden with pay-to-win loot crates. While its AMA did little to quell these concerns, DICE has gone one step further, temporarily removing all microtransactions …