Early Access games are here to stay, but is that cause for concern or celebration? We gathered to discuss whether early access benefits developers or players in its current state, and how we’d make it better. Along the way, we discussed the best alpha examples, paying for unfinished games, our love of regularly updated mods, Minecraft and the untapped potential of digital stores.>

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Last time we checked in with teens-in-a-war ARPG spin-off Final Fantasy Type-0 [official site], we’d just received word that it would be coming to PC “soon”. Thanks to the press release that just landed on my desk, I can tell you that “soon” is August 18th. Obviously you should never preorder anything ever but if you were> to preorder this ‘un, you’d be able to cross the streams of in-game menageries by adding a chocobo courier to Dota 2. You can also have “a Moogle (Class Zero) as your ward”. I quoted that directly because most of the words didn’t mean anything to me.

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Level 28! No, the other kind of level. The type that you run around in, shooting people or jumping on their heads and that sort of thing. Adam, Alec, Alice and Graham gather to discuss their favourite levels and/or maps from across the vast length of PC gaming, including selections from Deus Ex, Call of Duty and Quake III. Someone even makes a case for Xen from Half-Life, and means it.

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Below you will find the 25 best horror games ever released on PC. To ensure the list was as accurate as possible, the compiler was locked in a dark cellar with a copy of every game in existence and a computer capable of running them all. Two weeks later, the following article was found written on the walls in blood (the postscript was recorded on an audiolog). The writer was nowhere to be seen.

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With over $17.5 million on the line Valve’s fifth annual Dota 2 [official site] competition, The International, is the biggest eSports event yet in terms of prize pool. It’s also the last International before the company makes some big structural changes to the Dota 2 competitive scene. I suspect next year’s event will feel substantially different so I’m hoping this year’s games are an end-of-an-era mic drop as monstrous and impressive as the prize pool itself.

Here’s a cheat sheet with all the basic info about the tournament:

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Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart.>

Today Twitter had a meltdown over the existence of a magazine about YouTubers called Oh My Vlog. You can pretty much guess at the reactions. The reason that I bring it up is that it prompted me to take my first internet quiz in about ten years.

Suddenly I was seized by curiosity. Were there Dota 2 quizzes? There must be! This is the internet, there’s a quiz for everything.

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Valve has announced the prize distribution for its annual Dota 2 [official site] championship, The International. Given money is still coming in thanks to the related crowdfunding drive these figures are likely to go up a little more before the event takes place in August. But it means that none of the qualifying teams will be leaving with less than $51,000 in prize money and the winners of the whole thing will snag more than $6 million.

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You might have forgotten Team Fortress 2 exists, but the same can t be said of the 50-odd-thousand people that are playing it as I write this. Last week Valve rolled out the games 33rd(!) major update, Gun Mettle bringing a new comic, new maps, balance changes and a 3 month long event. I spycrabbed my way back in to check it out.

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In Pop Flash, a series of insights into Counter-Strike: Global Offensive [official site], Emily Richardson looks past the amazing clutches and crushing defeats to understand the culture and meta of Valve s everlasting competitive FPS.>

This week, I ll be discussing abuse and toxic behaviour in the CS:GO community. Before we get to it, let me reiterate that I am madly in love with Counter-Strike. It s simply one of the best team games out there. This piece, however, is meant to highlight one important issue that I think we can overcome.

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Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart.>

Above is a picture of two bears. I have been watching a bearcam while I try and write about matchmaking rating (MMR) in Dota 2 [official site]. Eventually I started imagining the bear you can just about see in the background shouting at the one on top of the little waterfall “WHAT’S UR MMR, SCRUB?” as they both fail to catch any fish.

I guess that’s as good a jumping off point as any: I don’t associate MMR with anything good. I associate it with miserable gaming experiences and being used to undermine people in discussions.

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