Earlier this week on Twitter we asked members of the modding community to send us their opinions on Valve's controversial decision to roll out a program for paid mods within the Steam Workshop. Below are two responses we received.

Andrew Paterson is a contributor to the Crusader Kings 2 "A Game of Thrones" mod.

Last Thursday in one fell swoop the decision of Bethesda and Valve divided the entire PC Gaming community by allowing modders to charge money for their content. When I saw this, one thought crossed my mind: the feces was truly about to hit the fan.

If I told you that Watch Dogs 2 is in development, you would likely respond, "Yes, and?" The original was pretty good, and Ubisoft was clearly committed to it as a major franchise from the outset. Even so, it hasn't actually announced that a sequel is in the works. And, to be clear, it still hasn't.

Nonetheless, it looks very much like it's happening, based on this Videogamer.com report, which noticed the LinkedIn profile of one Julien Risse, a senior gameplay designer at Ubisoft, whose credits include Watch Dogs, the Bad Blood DLC, and—this is the important bit—Watch Dogs 2. Risse has since updated his profile to remove the Watch Dogs 2 reference, but the screen capture tells the tale.

Ubisoft has made oblique references to Watch Dogs 2 in the past. In June 2014, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot suggested that the sequel might not feature Watch Dogs lead Aiden Pearce, and in September, Ubisoft Montreal Vice President Lionel Raynaud told CVG (via Polygon, since CVG no longer exists) that "fixing and refining what worked well [in Watch Dogs] is probably the way to go for Watch Dogs 2."

We've reached out to Ubisoft for comment, and will update if and when we receive a reply.

Deep Silver announced two things about Dead Island 2 last summer: First, that it would not take place on an island, and second, that it would be out in the spring of 2015. One of those statements is no longer true.

To be fair, it's not like Deep Silver and Yager Development, the team actually making the game, were being intentionally deceptive. But sometimes things don't work out quite as expected. "We have always set ourselves a big goal for Dead Island 2: to create the sequel that takes Dead Island to the next level. A game that takes what our fans tell us they love about Dead Island—multiple different characters to play with, co-op, and turning a paradise setting into a zombie slaughter melee—and a game that adds a ton more content and combat options on top of that," the Dead Island 2 team wrote on Twitter. "And we wanted to have all of that that done for release in Spring 2015."

But after "looking at the game long and hard," the studio decided that it isn't quite where it should be, and thus elected to push it back to 2016. It didn't offer any hints as to when in 2016 it might be out, saying only that its focus at the moment is "purely on development," and that more information will be released later.

"We know that our fans will be disappointed by this news," it wrote, "but by giving Dead Island 2 more time we are confident that everyone will get a better game to play as a result."

I've been playing Dota 2 for just under three years. In that time, I've seen a few dozen new heroes. I've seen multiple patches turn the meta upside down and force me to reconsider my (ever-fledgling) understanding of this vastly complicated game.

Even so, I've started to anticipate certain kinds of change. Hero rebalances and redesigns are expected, when you play a game like this. Even the addition of crazy new Aghanim's Scepter upgrades has become familiar—a theme of the last few patches, something that is exciting every time it happens but not, at this point, a surprise.

It doesn't take much for a Dota 2 patch to feel like a big deal—new heroes reliably achieve that. It does, however, take something really different for a patch to feel like the start of a new era. Every now and then, Icefrog does something to the game that makes people say 'is this even Dota'. That's how I felt when 6.82 dared to change the map. I didn't expect 6.84 to meet—or even exceed—change of that magnitude, and yet it has.

A lot of this is down to the new items. It's funny—new heroes form the most obvious milestones in the game's history, but items are far less common and a far bigger deal. A new character squeezes into the roster, upsetting some strategies and galvanizing others. New items—let alone nine of them, with substantial changes to existing ones—affect every character and every player. Learning a new hero, no matter how different, is a known quantity. Incorporating new concepts into every single hero you play is something else entirely.

The Dota community is currently dealing with the ramifications of the Lotus Orb, an item that allows you to reflect single-target spells back at their caster. This adds a new dimension to what could be described as Dota 2's substantial 'crazy shit' component: a million new ways for already-complex abilities to interact with one another. Here, via the Dota 2 subreddit, is Tiny's Toss being reflected. Here, also, is Doom dooming Doom. Here are five Snipers sending off 6.83 in the best way possible.

This is highly visible Crazy Shit; it makes for good gifs. Less visible are 6.84's fundamental changes to core Dota 2 concepts. In the era of midgame items that can be 'consumed' to gain a permanent buff reflecting some of their benefits, being 'six slotted' doesn't mean what it used to. This is also the era of farm being given to a character—Alchemist—so he can produce Aghanim's Scepters for other players, a substantial expansion of what it might mean to be a support in a Dota match.

On top of that, you've got the introduction of magical lifesteal and cooldown reduction, concepts that have never been part of Dota despite featuring in more or less every MOBA to follow after it. Figuring out the long-term ramifications of these changes will take months or more: we should expect surprising ideas to fall out of 6.84 for a long time to come.

I've seen some cynicism, in comments and on Reddit. 'We League now'. 'Is this even Dota'. That kind of thing—it happens every time, and its intensity this week simply mirrors the unusual number of new ideas in this patch.

I want to argue that this very much is Dota. In my mind, the process that is about to begin in earnest—a massive, community-wide adaptation to new ideas, new situations and new interactions—is the exact thing that defines the game. Other games might aim for a stable set of game mechanics that sustain entertaining competition in perpetuity, but not this one. Dota isn't stability. Dota isn't balance. Dota is chaos.

Back in January, I wrote an article about why I don't see Dota as a MOBA. In it, I argued that business models have a substantial effect on the type of experience that a game offers. I still believe this: your time with a game isn't just defined by what happens in a match. It's defined by the structure that surrounds that match, what you're asked to pay for and what you aspire to achieve with every game.

In that regard, Dota and League (and all of the games that imitated League) are very different. Consider how important account progression is in the latter: a high-level Summoner account represent months or years of effort, collection, and progression. It's equivalent to a high-level set of MMO characters, and includes a lot of the same ideas: a long-term commitment represented by cooler stuff and fatter, healthier XP bars.

Dota doesn't work like that. At all. You might collect cosmetics, I suppose, but your account level is one of the game's most meaningless numbers. Your time with the game is vaguely represented by your MMR, but that's hardly consistent from player to player. Dota has no MMO-style progression system, and as such it's a vastly different proposition. It's not a MOBA; it's Dota. This doesn't mean that either type of game is better than the other. It means that they offer very different things, and have different obligations to their players. Which one you prefer is a matter of taste.

That's what I argued back in January. The comments were a mixed bunch. A lot of people—hilariously—sent me the Wikipedia list of MOBAs, as if the terminology we use was determined by Wikipedia and not the other way around. Some people simply don't believe that business models influence game design: I'm more sympathetic to that view, even if I disagree with it.

Here's the thing, though: to me, Dota 2 is defined by its ability to undergo vast, sometimes fundamental changes. A Dota 2 match might only last an hour, but the (meta)game of Dota takes years and its most dramatic moments come when Icefrog does something totally game-changing. This isn't just a concern for pro teams. Everybody experiences it. It's what it means to be a Dota player.

Dota is never more Dota than when one complicated and probably broken game mechanic combines with another complicated and probably broken game mechanic to create a totally unexpected outcome. And it's Dota's business model—first free and community-curated, as a mod, then totally free as a professionally-developed game—that allows it to continue to be this way. It requires a development philosophy that values unexpected combinations of game mechanics, and a business model that keeps player investment and game design separate.

Chaos is the soul of Dota, but chaos is undesirable when your game is also a service. XP bars and microtransactions represent an investment of player time and money, and players expect that investment to be protected by a game's developers. MOBAs need to be balanced and fair and reliable as a courtesy to their long-term players.

Dota doesn't.

That's why there's nothing like it, and the 6.84 update symbolises that perfectly. The reward for your years-long involvement with this game isn't measured in progression bars or an expanding roster of characters: it's measured in the number of times you've looked at the patch notes and thought 'this changes everything.' Dota isn't just three lanes and ten players. Dota is crazy shit.

To read more Three Lane Highway, click here.

Alpha and Early Access reviews offer our preliminary verdicts on in-development games. We may follow up this unscored review with a final, scored review in the future. Read our full review policy for details.

Once upon a time, the Colin McRae Rally series was a celebration of the purity of rally driving. But over time, after adopting the Dirt monicker, it became increasingly flashier, fancier, and noisier. It developed an American accent and started chain-drinking cans of Monster. The rallying was still there, kind of, but was drowned out by rawk music, irksome announcers, and daft stunt driving.

But Dirt Rally, a PC exclusive that sneaked quietly onto Steam this week, redresses the balance. It s the purest rally game since the earliest entries in the McRae series, and one of the most realistic simulators Codemasters Racing Studio has ever made. Their other driving games are great, but you can t really call them sims. They re entertaining approximations of motorsport, giving you the feel of driving a car, not the reality.

Dirt Rally, however, is as real as it gets. The developers have created a brand new engine designed to replicate the real-world physics of rally driving as closely as possible. Lead designer Paul Coleman drives rally cars himself, so he knows first-hand what it feels like. You realise just how realistic the game is when you tear away from the starting line in your first race and immediately skid into a ditch. Try to play it like a traditional racer, or a traditional Dirt game, and you ll get nowhere.

Mirroring the knife-edge tension of real rally racing, you constantly feel on the verge of disaster when you play Dirt Rally. As you hurtle along its rugged, unpredictable courses, all it takes is the slightest mistake to send you spinning out. The cars are twitchy and heavy, giving you the feeling that you re wrestling to keep them on the track. It s all about balance: driving carefully and precisely, but also knowing when to push the limits, so you can shave precious seconds off your time.

The sound design is excellent, and really helps sell the weight and power of the cars. On gravel roads you hear stones ping against the metal. Your chassis creaks and groans as you trundle over bumpy terrain. They re subtle details, but they give the game a remarkable feeling of physicality. You really do feel like you re throwing a hefty, tangible machine around the tracks.

It s perhaps not surprising given their racing pedigree, but Dirt Rally is impressively polished for an Early Access game. You ll just have to decide whether the content on offer is worth 25—a price that will rise as the game approaches completion. Buying in now means you get access to all future updates, including a hill climb mode, new cars, new tracks, and PVP multiplayer.

There are 14 cars, all rendered with fine, hand-crafted detail, including rally classics like the Lancia Stratos, Subaru Impreza, Ford Sierra RS Cosworth, and Mini Cooper. From the 1960s through to the modern day, the cars on offer have their own distinct personalities. Bombing around a gravel track in a rickety little Mini Cooper feels very different from doing it in a modern rally-tuned car.

There are 36 courses spread across three distinct environments. Powys, Wales is grey, wet and muddy, with nerve-racking forest sections. Monte Carlo, Monaco features tight ice-and-snow-covered tarmac roads. And Argolis, Greece is dry, dusty, and comprised mainly of gravel roads. They all look fantastic, especially the rain-soaked Welsh countryside, and they re packed with trackside detail. I was so distracted the first time I saw a camera drone buzz over my car, I crashed.

Throw in a career mode with vehicle upgrades and team management and you ve got a pretty decent package. Above all, though, the real joy here is the driving, and the 36 courses offer a good variety of terrain and weather to test your skills. It's a satisfyingly back-to-basics rally game that makes up for its lack of flair with a deep, robust driving model. This is shaping up to be one of Codemasters best driving games. With regular updates promised, Dirt Rally might be worth investing in early.

Verdict

A welcome return to the series rally roots. A driving game for anyone who likes a stiff challenge, or who thinks the other Dirt games weren't realistic enough.

How would you like $500 to spend on any Steam game that takes your fancy? Two winners in today's Bundle Stars giveaway can enjoy a spending spree on us, while runners up will win the Bundle Stars Indie Legends Bundle. That includes the stylish co-op heist game, Monaco, the joyful platforming 'n punch game, Guacamelee, the addictive and pure fighter, Divekick, and more.

To enter, check out the widget below. You can improve your odds by adding extra entries in the sweepstake. You get two extra entries for following PC Gamer and Bundle Stars on Twitter and Facebook, and for joining the Bundle Stars and PC Gamer Steam groups. The randomly selected winners to be picked on Tuesday May 4 at 4pm GMT / 8am PST / 11am EST. Good luck!

Overkill's take on the Walking Dead has been formally confirmed for a 2016 release on PC by the studio's parent company Starbreeze.

The team behind Payday 2 is handling the comic book tie-in, and the co-operative first-person shooter will - quite obviously - take a fair few pointers from the creation (and success) of Payday 2. Just with more zombies, I'd guess.

Based on the comics, Overkill's version of the Walking Dead is also going to avoid the pitfalls of certain other tie-ins by running with its own set of characters and stories, with creator Robert Kirkman in tow to help out.

Steam bans can now be handed down from game developers themselves, it has emerged. Previously bans could only come from Valve itself, but now those making the games can ask those running Steam to kick someone out, with Valve enforcing those wishes.

As posted over on the Steam Community: "In order to ensure the best possible online multiplayer experience, Valve allows developers to implement their own systems that detect and permanently ban any disruptive players, such as those using cheats."

Devs inform Valve, Valve bans the account, the banned party is to direct their complaints straight to the developer rather than Valve, as "the game developer is solely responsible for the decision to apply a game ban. Valve only enforces the game ban as instructed by the game developer."

It would feel a bit like passing the buck were it not for the fact that Steam has thousands of games on it - that's way too many for one company to police by itself. Hopefully this won't lead to a ton of rash or incorrect bans, and hopefully it will mean games with dysfunctional, cheat-ridden multiplayer modes will be more likely to see a cleansing.

The PC version of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is not being handled in-house at Eidos Montreal - it has instead been handed to Nixxes, the studio behind many Square Enix/Eidos PC ports over the past 15 years.

The studio made the announcement on its site without much fanfare, and there's been little indication as to what features the PC version of Adam Jensen's latest sneak-or-shoot adventure will see implemented. We do know from earlier confirmation that Mankind Divided will support Direct X 12 and AMD's TressFX tech, so it shouldn't look too shabby.

Nixxes previously handled PC port duty on the likes of Hitman: Absolution, Tomb Raider, Thief and, yes, Deus Ex: Human Revolution - so it's a studio with a lot of experience. Safe hands? The PC version of Human Revolution was handled well, with a number of platform-specific features - though there was room for improvement - so I'll go with 'yes'.

For the past few Junes, right before one of the busiest gaming weeks of the year, we ve taken a moment to imagine the E3 press conference that PC Gamers deserve. It s become one of our tiny traditions (along with Chris questionable behavior in survival games). Mostly it s an excuse for us to publish something entirely detached from reality before we fly to Los Angeles and publish every scrap of gaming news and opinion that our bodies will allow. It s therapeutic to daydream about Gabe Newell materializing atop a unicorn through a fog of theater-grade dry ice to announce Half-Life 3.

We get valuable stories, videos, and interviews out of E3—you can imagine how handy it is to have almost every game-maker gathered under one roof for a few days. But it s no secret that the PC doesn t have a formal, organized presence during E3. Generally speaking it s the time of year when Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo jostle for position about who can create the most buzz. Despite being a mostly exciting few days of announcements, E3 has never given the biggest gaming platform in the world an equal place at the table.

That s our collective fault, not E3 s. One of our hobby s greatest strengths is the fact that there isn t a single owner. The PC has no marketing arm, no legal department, no CEO to dictate what should be announced or advertised. And thank Zeus for that. The fundamentally open nature of our hobby is what allows for GOG, Origin, Steam, and others to compete for our benefit, for the variety of technologies and experiences we have access to—everything from netbook gaming to 8K flight simulation to VR.

Everyone involved in PC gaming has shared ownership over its identity. One of the few downsides of that, though, is that there isn t really a single time and place for PC gaming to get together and hang out. We love BlizzCon, QuakeCon, DreamHack, Extra Life, The International, and the ever-increasing number of PAXes. But there s something special about the pageantry of E3 week, its over-the-top showmanship, its surprises, its proximity to Hollywood. And each June, even as we ve jokingly painted a picture of PC game developers locking arms in a musical number, we ve wanted something wholly by, for, and about PC gaming.

Well, hell, let s do it.

For the past few months we ve been organizing the first ever live event for PC gaming during E3, The PC Gaming Show. Tune into our Twitch channel on Tuesday, June 16 on 5 PM and you ll see a spectrum of PC gaming represented on stage: a showcase of conversations, announcements, hardware, trailers, and other stuff that makes PC gaming great. We ve been talking to everyone we know, big and small—if there s a game or developer you want to see—tell us! So far, Blizzard, AMD, Bohemia Interactive, Boss Key Productions, Paradox, Dean Hall, Tripwire, and more have signed up to be a part of this inaugural PC gaming potluck (Paradox has promised to bring nachos), and we ll be announcing more participants as we lead up to June 16. And hey, the endlessly friendly Day[9] is hosting. We love that guy.

We re sincerely, stupidly excited about this. The PC gaming renaissance we re all living in deserves a moment of recognition during the biggest gaming expo of the year—it s about time! Listen in on Twitter and on our Facebook page as we share more details leading up to June.