The Steam Frame, a new VR headset Valve just announced alongside a new Steam Machine and Steam Controller, is both a simpler and more complex virtual reality kit than 2019’s Valve Index. While it lacks the Index’s fancy finger-tracking controllers, the hybrid headset can run Steam games straight from its own onboard storage, aided by controllers that adopt a more conventional gamepad (or Steam Deck)-style layout. The Frame’s goal, therefore, is to let its wearers play as many VR and> non-VR games as possible – with its ARM-based Snapdragon chip posing both challenges and opportunities to spread that compatibility into Android VR games as well.

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Tomb Raider developers Crystal Dynamics have announced another round of layoffs, their third round of jobs cuts this year. The studio say "just under 30 team members across various departments and projects" are losing their livelihoods, and claim this is necessary "to optimize the continued development of our flagship Tomb Raider game, as well as shaping the rest of the studio to make new games for the future".

This year alone had already seen Crystal Dynamics lay off staff in two waves, with 17 employees being let go in March and an unspecified number of others handed their marching orders in August.

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Back in December, the reveal of Sloclap’s Rematch sent me into spirals of introspection about the classist origins of my apathy for football. Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is sending me into spirals of introspection about the fact that maybe football was a Dragon Quest RPG all along. Hypersonic penalty kicks that wreathe the ball in purple fire? Nobody told me football was this rad. So many years wasted, playing effing grass hockey.

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Over 200 staff at GTA 6 developers Rockstar North have signed a letter to management calling for the "immediate reinstatement" of 31 workers fired recently by the company. Rockstar claimed they fired these staffers for "gross misconduct", subsequently accusing them of sharing confidential info publicly. UK union the IWGB, of which the fired staff were members, have accused Rockstar of union busting and filed legal claims against the company.

The union have also held protests outside Rockstar North and Take-Two's UK offices.

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People who savour the sweet reek of Saturn V exhaust, rejoice. People who love cats, tremble. Felipe Falanghe, original developer of gurning spaceflight simulator Kerbal Space Program, has teamed up with Dean Hall, original creator of zombie MMO DayZ, to make a spiritual Kerbal successor - Kitten Space Agency.

As the name may suggest, it trades the little green men of KSP for a bunch of feline astronauts - a meme-ish setup that apparently has nothing to do with real-life space experiments on animals, and which goes hand-in-paw with a new in-house software engine. Also, Hall and Falanghe have hired a former SpaceX staffer to work on the physics.

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If you sit and look at one of Assetto Corsa Rally’s gorgeously-rendered Alfa Romeos, Lancias, or Fiats in the car preview screens, there’s a palpable elegance and beauty to their forms.

Sadly, anyone watching me attempt to wrestle them through the Welsh woods or along tight stretches of French tarmac over the course of six hours so far would have rarely seen any elegant or beautiful driving. There are times, especially in long sweeping turns, when things start to feel as satisfying as they should. Most of the time though, Assetto Corsa Rally with a wheel feels a lot like you’re skating on ice, rather than the gravel and tarmac it currently offers.

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