You can no longer subscribe to the Elder Scrolls Online for longer than 90 days, as Bethesda has - without mention - removed the six-month option from its site.

As noticed by... well, those who play the game, the only subscription selections available on the MMO are now either 30 or 90-day options.

On the French forums this was all explained away by a moderator as being a simple case of people preferring the shorter subs. But that's not a theory that's holding water with a vocal section of the community.

See, other games have removed longer subscription options just before making the leap to free-to-play. It makes sense, as otherwise you're going to have a lot of long-term subscribers annoyed by a big change.

With the Elder Scrolls Online not exactly setting the world of MMOs alight, it might seem a sensible course of action to remove the paywall and encourage any and all to get involved.

Would losing the subscription model help the good-but-not-great MMO? Who knows. But it's certainly not out of the question for a big release to entirely change its business model shortly after launching.

And it works out okay, sometimes.

Anyway, in lieu of actual information from Bethesda we can just look forward to January's release of update 6, with its Champion and Justice Systems.

[via Joystiq]

File it in 'rumours encased in a shell of vague Google translations', but there might be cause to think a Final Fantasy XV-related game is coming to PC, based on a Square Enix job posting.

Said vague Google translation of this career opportunity shows the studio is looking for an online game planner to work on 'new online games related to FFXV'.

As for skills required - and why this is posted on PC Gamer - the post asks for knowledge of and interest in PC gaming.

It could be elements lost in translation, but the fact it's a posting for games 'related' to Final Fantasy XV means we could be seeing some form of spin-off on our beloved PCs. At the same time, it could also be pointing at a service run via PCs, but that supports the console-only main FFXV.

Yes, I'm speculating. It's the end of 2014 and apparently we're out of news for the year.

Final Fantasy XV coming to PC wouldn't be too out-of-the-ordinary, anyway, especially not with Square Enix making a big push in recent months to bring its FF back catalogue to the mighty personal computer.

For the time being, though, this is all to be taken with a pinch of vaguely Google translated salt.

The aforementioned vague Google translation came from both the Square Enix job site, linked above, and GamesTalk.

Grimrock 2 tapped into my imagination the most this year. It s pleasantly quiet, great for little, hour-long excursions of exploring, fighting, and learning with my silent party of four; me a kid again, playing pencil-drawn mazes with traps and monsters. It s an action RPG in the old-style (think Ultima Underworld), but though the grid-based movement might seem to cancel out exploration, I m astounded by the amount of stuff I miss. I like playing it in brief sessions, enjoying its island s mystery and serenity for as long as I can before it cripples a party member, kills another, and I need a break from its resistance. Other times, though, I just get lost in getting lost, spending hours poking through dungeons, backtracking, and forgetting whatever it was I was doing when I started.

The puzzles range from simple (put item on switch) to Hey, remember that story about a guy traveling to the tundra and watching the sun set? Move a boulder like that. It can be frustrating, and I m not ashamed to admit I ve consulted a guide, but I ve done it as sparingly as possible. Part of the fun is in figuring out the little stuff, like what to do if a party member breaks their leg, and jotting down notes for the complex stuff, like the spellcasting cheatsheet I made myself.

Though silent, every character I make grows a personality along the way: my ratling farmer who only gains experience when he eats (is that how farming works?); my wizard who accidentally roasted the party with a fire spell; my alchemist whose gun is always jamming. And while combat may seem clunky and outdated, the quick clicking is almost soothing. As I tap on my melee characters every time they re ready to attack, swipe out rune patterns for my spellcaster, and deftly shuttle potions around between my characters, I get into a sort of groove; it feels like a rhythm game.

But soothing only really describes the moments when I m succeeding. It s also really stressful, and really difficult. Grimrock 2 requires a lot of patience and learning, but I ve never felt like my mistakes were unfixable. Sure, I should ve chosen a slightly different party makeup, and slightly-different skills, but so far I ve always been able to progress while telling the story I want to tell. I mean, the farmer class is really dumb, but he s starting to pull his weight just fine, the gluttonous weirdo.

And then there are all the things that make Grimrock 2 a great PC game. It loads up fast, something I really appreciate when I want to hop in quickly before bed, and includes a dungeon editor for community-made adventures. Modders are all over it—mm, longevity.

Grimrock's campaign can feel a little bare compared to the modern world-spanning narratives of games like Dragon Age: Inquisition, but I like the simple quiet (not including the terrifying moment a chest is revealed to be a toothy mimic). It's just me and my party, slowly figuring it out as we go, with no one yapping at us to save the world. It's an old style of game, but updated with so much care that it doesn't feel old—just really, really good.

It's Christmas. Would you like a free game? Of course you would! Thanks to our friends at Playfire, you can get a free Steam key right now. Follow the link for full details.

Microsoft has announced that sales of the original Kinect for Windows will come to an end in 2015. The device was a "milestone achievement," but the release of the Kinect for Windows v2 sensor in October means it's time to move on.

"The move to v2 marks the next stage in our journey toward more natural human computing. The new sensor provides a host of new and improved features, including enhanced body tracking, greater depth fidelity, full 1080p high-definition video, new active infrared capabilities, and an expanded field of view," Microsoft said in a statement. "Likewise, SDK 2.0 offers scores of updates and enhancements, not the least of which is the ability to create and publish Kinect-enabled apps in the Windows Store."

Microsoft said it will do its best to fill orders from business customers who still need large numbers of the v1 hardware, but once the existing stock is gone, there will be no more.

"We know that your proven track record doing great things with the original technology will only get better with v2—the improvements in quality from the original Kinect for Windows sensor to the v2 device are truly immense," the statement says. "And so, we re cheered by the prospect of seeing all the amazing solutions you ll create with this the new and improved Kinect for Windows."

Kinect for Windows v2 is available from Microsoft for $200.

[Update: Electronic Arts says its investigation into the matter has come up empty. "We found no indication at this point of a breach of our Origin account database," an EA rep said. "Privacy and security of user account information are of the utmost importance to us. We encourage our players to use Origin user ID and passwords that are unique to their account, and to report any activity they feel may be unauthorized to EA customer support at help.ea.com." 

Customers who use the same password across multiple sites may still be at risk as a result of breaches elsewhere, however; in November, the hacker group DerpTrolling claimed to have access to roughly seven million username/password combinations from various services, including 1.7 million Origin accounts.]

Original story:

Reports of a possible hack of Origin are surfacing on Reddit, where users are reporting unauthorized purchases and other activity on their accounts. The cause and extent of the breach isn't yet clear, but if you have credit card information stored in your account (and really, even if you don't), this would probably be a good time to double-check your purchase history—and change your password.

Some Reddit users say they've been charged for games they didn't buy, while others have received emails reporting failed attempts at purchasing games through their Origin account; one poster said he realized something was up when he started earned achievements for a game he'd never played, while another discovered his account had actually been banned because someone had used it to purchase FIFA and then farm coins.

The good news is that EA customer support appears to be handling the situation well, although obviously some people are having more (or less) luck in that regard than others. Origin also now supports two-factor authorization similar to that of Steam, which when active will send a security code via email or text message whenever the account is logged into from an unrecognized device. Even if you haven't run into any difficulties, I'd strongly recommend turning it on: You'll find it in the "Account and Privacy—Security" section of the Origin drop-down menu.

Electronic Arts said in an email that it is currently investigating the claims. We'll update when we learn more.

Elyot Grant, Founder of Lunarch Studios, has multiple keyboards, but not all of them are the kind you'd expect. His rig has to multitask between gaming, streaming, working, recording, and still leave room on his desk for more puzzles than I can count. Elyot left a PHD program to found Lunarch and their first game, Prismata, was just recently funded on Kickstarter. He was kind enough to take some time and tell us about his setup. 

What's in your PC?

• Clevo W350ST barebone with i7-4800MQ processor
• 16 GB ram 
• 240 GB SSD + 1TB HDD
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M
• logitech g100S mouse
• corsair K70 keyboard with cherry brown switches
• Windows 7 + cygwin
• Laptop screen + 2 x 24" monitors
• Sennheiser HD280 Pro headphones
• Logitech C920 camera and Samson G Track Microphone plus a Bell Fiber 50MBps up/down internet connection for streaming

What's the most interesting/unique part of your setup?

This is my home office. It serves 5 purposes: work, gaming, video/audio recording, streaming, and music production. A lot of the hardware gets moved around between my home and the actual Lunarch studios office, which is about 200 meters down the street, where I have a (pretty much identical) setup.

What's always within arm's reach on your desk?

A lot of puzzles, and not only the physical ones you see in the pictures. I've got some materials from last year's World Puzzle Championship sitting right next to me right now, and I'm often caught working on math olympiad or programming contest problems.

What are you playing right now?

I've barely had a chance to play anything other than Prismata (our company's game) over the last couple of months, which I play pretty much every day. During the holidays, I did manage to find some time to play a bit of Smash Bros and some other Wii U games (Captain Toad, Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze, Super Luigi U).

What's your favorite game and why?

Probably StarCraft: Brood War, which I played pretty competitively back in the day. StarCraft was just incredibly difficult to play optimally and that's what made it so appealing to me. I feel like a lot of other games, especially nowadays, don't do nearly enough to make the game as challenging as possible for the player. StarCraft was hard, but for the *right* reasons. It offered a huge number of strategic options and ways to gain value against your opponents, and rewarded you when you played well. Few other games do that for me.

It's not quite as catchy as promising to make you his bitch, but Oculus VR CTO John Carmack says big things are in store for people who try the Oculus Rift VR headset for the first time. In an interview with Fortune, the former id Software mastermind said that using Oculus technology is akin to a religious experience.

"Oculus really started popularizing a new approach using cellphone screen technology, a wide field of view, and super-low-latency sensor tracking. It s not crappy stuff that doesn t work and makes everybody sick," Carmack said, comparing previous virtual reality efforts to the Oculus Rift. "When you experience Oculus technology, it s like getting religion on contact. People that try it walk out a believer."

Somewhat less hyperbolically, he also reiterated comments made by EVE: Valkyrie Producer Owen O'Brien earlier this year that, despite early expectations, the best Oculus Rift experiences aren't actually first-person shooters. "Comfortable VR experiences had to be these seated cockpit games and you re diverging from that at your own risk," he said. "The great games are the space sims and driving sims and these experiences where you re basically sitting at a table with nothing happening in front of you."

"Simulator sickness" notwithstanding, Oculus VR clearly isn't giving up on first-person experiences. Earlier this month, it acquired Nimble VR, a startup company developing low-latency hand-tracking technology using 3D cameras.

"Winter Showdown," the upcoming new game mode for World of Tanks, sounds like fairly conventional stuff: You put the tanks in the snow and boom, it's a showdown in winter. But this is actually quite a bit different than you might expect, because it's not an ice-encrusted, Eastern Front-style armored brawl. It's an 8-bit mode.

The trailer does look wintery, but even more than that, it looks like somebody recreated the game in Minecraft. There's more to the new mode than just the blocky graphics, though, as Winter Showdown adds "mega platoons" supporting five players instead of three, and new gameplay modes including two-on-two mega platoon battles, and 10-vs-10 random battles.

The add-on will also bring a trio of new tanks to the party: The close-quarters Mammoth heavy tank, the long range Polar Bear tank destroyer, and the quick Arctic Fox light tank. There will be a new battle arena, an Operation Winter medal, and as is appropriate for this more old-school style of multiplayer tank battle, players will be able to heal their teammates by shooting them with special gold ammunition.

Winter Showdown goes live on January 26, except in Korea, where the action will begin on January 15.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes' release on PC has brought with it the big PC benefit: modding. The added benefit of time means there's a fair bit you can mess about with already.

Over on Steam, you can find out how to tweak and tinker with your copy of Kojima Productions' mini-masterpiece.

You can find guides for model swaps, FOV fixes, time and weather edits and more - the frame rate cap can be lifted too, should you want something more than plain old 30-60fps.

Obviously this means work is now underway on ripping the game apart as much as possible, in order to rebuild it as something newer, faster, better, sexier.

Or just to do this:

(That's main character Big Boss replaced with the face of series creator Hideo Kojima, in case you're confused)