Last year, Overkill Games upset a pretty vocal corner of their Payday 2 [official site] community by introducing microtransactions to the co-op heist ‘em up – something they’d previously promised to avoid. In an announcement made yesterday, Starbreeze – Overkill’s parent company – revealed they’ve now acquired full rights to the Payday franchise and as such will scrap paid-for in-game items via the next update. Oh, and Payday 3’s been confirmed.

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Here’s yer weekly top ten Steam best-sellers. That being what most tore up the charts last week. Is DOOM still king? What happens to Total Warhammer now it’s actually released? And what in the name of all that’s holy is YouTubers Life? … [visit site to read more]

Story updated with Kickstarter details>

After I’d finished choosing the exact right Kris Jenner gif for a friend’s Facebook birthday well-wishing I was catching up with the Bank Holiday gaming news. The Fable universe card game’s impending Kickstarter caught my eye.

Okay, so according to the infodump over on IGN, erstwhile studio, Lionhead were working on a free-to-play digital card game called Fable Fortune set in the Fable universe prior to the studio’s closure.

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I’ve been holidaying far from computers for a good while now, and LawBreakers [official site] is the perfect entry point back into the world of PC games. Two recent videos highlight the verticality of the arenas in which teams will battle in this first-person competitive battler. My interest levels have been high since our first hands-on preview, which managed to transform my thoughts about the game from “why would I play this?” to “when can I play this?”. The answer, I suspect, is in a couple of weeks time at E3.

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Panic ensued in Castle Shotgun when a press release arrived quite unlike like the others. “I work for Alice & Smith, developers of The Black Watchmen Alternate Reality Game.” Alice! Our Alice? And Smith! But which Smith? An ARG? Suddenly, distrust filled the room. The tension was palpable. You could taste it in the tea.

Alice & Smith went on to present NITE Team 4 [official site], a hacking game set in the same universe as their ARG. It has a free public demo, but who could be trusted to report the truth? Who would be ready to betray their friends, in case the truth demanded it? Alice and both Smiths denied any involvement. Of course they would. That’s what guilty people do. After a heated discussion, they agreed to let an outsider investigate. That’s where I come in. Except someone stopped me in my tracks, just when I was starting to have some fun. We may never know the truth.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

PopCap got a lot of puzzle games right first time. Bejeweled [official site] took them three full goes, but by Bejeweled 3 by gosh they got it right.

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The Warcraft movie hasn’t exactly been drowning in plaudits after its premiere… to which I wasn’t invited, so I’m typing this in a Frankie and Benny’s immediately after my local cinema’s first non-midnight screening because hahahaha, no>. That’s how devoted I am to timeliness: a bit! But, as a long-time player of World of Warcraft who actually plays for stuff like the story and the PvE content, I still held out hope. If it simply wasn’t for> others, as the mood seemed, might it be for> me?

Answers as soon as I order this burger. Bacon, lettuce, no cheese…

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It’s bad enough when free games run amok and wreak havoc. But what would happen if they started… evolving?

It’s a regular day. You’re walking down the street when you spot a phone, lying on the ground. It looks dejected and defenseless. A Normal Lost Phone [official site] branded “Accidental Queens.” It’s ringing. You take a closer look, and remember: you have seen this phone somewhere. The image flashes before your eyes: Brendan warned you to stay away, that it was dangerous. That it had killed before. Curiosity overwhelms you: you tell yourself you shouldn’t, but you pick it up. It’s Ulule, a crowdfunding website. They’re asking for money to turn a free prototype into a complete game. They name inspirations: Gone Home, Her Story, Life Is Strange. Will you reply?

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Political Animals [official site] is a turn-based strategy game. It’s also a colourful election simulation where candidates are replaced by cartoon animals. It should be released in time for November’s US elections. No, really. As the blurb goes:

“Building a wall around a country to handle migration is completely insane, except when the candidate suggesting it is a mongoose with severe hair problems, then it’s practically cute.”

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