Path Of Exile‘s quarterly leagues are always a good excuse to return to the free-to-play action RPG. A fresh start for all players, new skills to learn and a major new twist added to the game each time. The previous Incursion league was a fast and focused side-dungeon adventure, and the Delve league – launching August 31st – looks similar in structure. They’ve found a deep, abandoned and very haunted mine in Wraeclast, so players get to lead a light-generating machine down into its bottomless depths in search of fame, glory and (as usual) tons of loot.

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We’ve just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It’s a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you’ll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.

2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets. (more…)

It’s all-change day for free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile. Out with the old animal-bothering Bestiary league, and in with Incursion, an even more morally questionable side-adventure for players to work their way through as they level and loot their way across the incredibly cursed continent of Wraeclast. This time we’re travelling back through time to murder the heck out of the ancient Aztec-like Vaal civilisation before they have a chance to go extinct on their own terms. Did I mention that a rather Conquistador-looking lady is involved?

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Changes are afoot at Path Of Exile developers Grinding Gear Games, as Chinese publishers Tencent have bought a controlling stake in the Kiwi studio. Grinding Gear say that Tencent will help them grow and improve their action-RPG, with multiple expansions currently in the pipeline, and insist that the free-to-play game won’t become ‘pay-to-win’.

“We will remain an independent company and there won’t be any big changes to how we operate,” they say. Hmm! Path Of Exile is a corker, going from strength to strength across updates, so it’ll be interesting to see how this develops. (more…)

As much fun as collecting critters was in Path of Exile‘s Bestiary league, it perhaps got a bit away from the heart of the free-to-play action RPG: running around dungeons, kicking stuff over and hoarding the loot. The next league – Incursion – starting on June 1st brings us back to basics with a twist: travel to the past to violently carve out your own perfect side-dungeon, then pick its bones clean in the future.

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Though we won’t see Monster Hunter: World on PC until chuffing autumn, other games are stepping up to offer opportunities to track and fight big creatures. Fine free-to-play action-RPG Path Of Exile today adds a Bestiary Challenge League, which will challenge players to track, fight, and capture 300-odd monsters. Players can keep ’em in a menagerie to visit, which is nice, or go full Monster Hunter and murder the monsties to use their guts in crafting powerful items. Oh dear oh dear. (more…)

In The Fall of Oriath, you went to war with the gods themselves. In the Abyss, you fought ancient undead, led by a nameless lich-king and in the War For The Atlas, you set your sights on two almighty beings that create and destroy entire worlds on a whim. Now, Path of Exile‘s next league challenges you to… open a zoo? Well, that’s a bit different.

While not quite as ambitious as the expansions preceding it, the Bestiary league (due March 2nd) for Path of Exile looks to add a lot more flavour and tangential content to the popular free-to-play action RPG, designed to be accessible to all players from total beginners right up to endgame grind-fiends.

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We’ve already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin’ and a-shakin’ in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol’ Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well – as do a host of other games from 2017’s great and good.

Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you’re so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I’d have gone for in each category. (more…)

Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games.> But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol’ breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.

Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.

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We asked a handful of our contributors to put together a list of their three favourite games from 2017. Their picks are running across the week while the rest of RPS slumbers.>

2017 has been a stunning year. Partially in the ears-ringing, shellshocked way, partly in the Wow, I m making a living writing about games style, and consistently in the Nobody has time for even half these amazing games sense. Of the scant handful of games I did manage to see through to the end, here are my picks from 2017, although if I had time and column inches to spare, I could sing the praises of another dozen more. (more…)