Just Survive, the survival H1Z1 video game, shuts down in October.
In a post on Steam, developer Daybreak said Just Survive goes dark at 7pm UK time on 24th October. All Steam purchases and in-game transactions have been disabled.
"The excitement of the game's promise was palpable and its loyal community is still full of ideas for its future," Daybreak said.
Fortnite will soon get input-based matchmaking, developer Epic has announced.
It means the battle royale game will pair you against players who are using the same peripherals, for example, controller versus controller, keyboard and mouse versus keyboard and mouse.
It'll help avoid situations where console controller players go up against those who use a keyboard and mouse. (PlayStation 4 players who use a keyboard and mouse are considered to have an advantage over controller users - Microsoft currently does not provide official keyboard and mouse support for the Xbox One.)
What's the statute of limitations on spoilers? I can't be sure, so be warned: I'm about to spoil certain aspects of the final season of Lost. If you haven't seen it yet, look away now.
I will be brisk, at least. In the final season of Lost, which I've been watching for the first time just now, a group of characters, who have spent much of the previous five seasons marooned on a strange island, start turning up in Los Angeles. Familiar faces - we've spent five years with these faces by this point - but now the details are all different. One of them suddenly has a teenaged son. Another's toxic relationship with his father is now toxic in a different way. Some of them have different jobs - Sawyer and Miles: Supercops! is a spin-off I would have set the recorder for - and some of them are entirely different people. But they're also, in some strange way, the same people they've always been. They stare out of the screen through the same eyes, they say their lines with the same weight and rhythm and intonation.
Lost gets a bit Cloud Atlas, in other words. In David Mitchell's playful novel a handful of distinct souls are shuffled around through matryoshka'd stories that explore different periods of human history and different literary genres. The details change, and in the wonderful/awful/wonderful film version, the wigs and rubber noses are shared about, but the souls can always be traced and the same theme of predation remains.
Controversial space sim Star Citizen is currently free to try on PC, if you fancy taking to the heavens and seeing what development progress has been made in recent times.
Star Citizen's Gamescom Free Fly weekend runs from today, August 24th, to Monday August 27th, and offers access to the game's latest Alpha 3.2 build, as well as dogfighting stage Arena Commander and first-person shooter module Star Marine.
Four ships are also available for testing purposes during the Free Fly weekend: the Avenger Titan, Protector, Cutless Black, and the Dragonfly Black.
UPDATE: Somewhat later than expected, Fortnite's anticipated live event has now occurred, ridding the map of one mysterious object and leaving us with another, even weirder edifice to ponder.
Following the day's increasingly frantic rift activity, relative peace has now been restored - but not before one final, dramatic blast of purple lightning ushered forth from the crack in the sky. Once the ensuing 15-second light show was over, the rift that's been a constant companion throughout Season 5 was no more; it did, however, leave a curious parting gift:
The mysterious cube-shaped monolith stands at precisely the point the final lightning blast struck, and it's far from dormant. Get too close to its humming, pulsating heft and you'll catch a glimpse of unfamiliar symbols flashing across its surface, and of distant constellations glowing from deep within. You certainly can't accuse Epic of skimping on production values.
Gamescom provided my second chance to see CD Projekt's startlingly impressive Cyberpunk 2077 demo, and even a second time through I found myself again taken aback by the depth, detail and design of its neon-lit Night City.
A second viewing brought up some questions, however. A very different dialogue choice towards the end of the quest disappointingly brought about the same end result, and the fact we were seeing this vertical slice of the game again prompted its own queries.
And, since its initial announcement at E3, excitement around the game has been tempered somewhat as fans of the genre have begun wondering how accurately CD Projekt will reflect the diverse classes and character options of both the original Cyberpunk 2020 pen and paper game, or how it will deal with topics such as transhumanism that are at the heart of the cyberpunk genre in general. A recent, now-deleted tweet from the developer which referenced a transphobic meme did absolutely nothing to help matters.
In the best example I've seen of a carrot on a stick since those chocolate bars I got for giving blood, Fortnite fans have noticed a snazzy premium dance you can get for free - if you enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on your Epic account.
Boogie Down is a legendary dance awarded when you sign up your Epic log-in for 2FA via email or an authenticator app.
For the uninitiated, 2FA means you'll get an email or alert if a new device signs in to your account, and then a prompt to enter a security code to ensure it is actually you doing so.
An enormous boss fight against Medusa is not something you would have expected from an Assassin's Creed game a few years ago. God of War? Of course. Castlevania, sure. But to face off against the mythological monster in a series so concerned with history as Assassin's Creed? You'd think the developers had spent a little too much time in the Animus for their own good.
And yet it fits this new breed of Assassin's Creed - one unashamedly wearing its RPG systems as obviously as Ezio draped that cloak over his shoulder before you followed yet another NPC over a rooftop. Assassin's Creed has always dabbled in myths and conspiracy stories, but never quite this overtly. Since last year's Origins, however, the series has embraced ancient times and allowed itself a little more wiggle room to work in its fantastical elements. It fits - featuring the importance of the time period's Gods and other legendary figures and explaining their feats using connections to the series' own legendary First Civilisation.
Assassin's Creed has often used the First Civ as a creator of macguffins (the various Apples of Eden, for instance, First Civ objet d'arts which control human will) - but has also often kept the really wacky stuff at arm's length - hidden away for hardcore players to find, and rarely if ever mentioned during the game's marketing campaign. But this is a different Assassin's Creed era - and especially so with Odyssey as it takes place before the actual Brotherhood was founded. Fans have asked Ubisoft what Odyssey has to do with the Assassins if it does not include any. Ubisoft's answer is that Odyssey features the mythological elements the series has established over the past decade - which may well be why our Gamescom demo is all about the First Civ now.
Sony's announced the next DLC pack for Call of Duty: WW2, titled Shadow War - and it adds some stuff players did not expect.
Operation Arcane is the name of the new War mode mission, and it gives players the chance to use a Tesla Gun as well as inject themselves with super soldier serum.
It's set deep within a secret enemy research facility in the Austrian mountains. The Allies have to infiltrate the lab, steal the enemy secrets and schematics and destroy the classified tech in a hanger packed with UFOs.
All Destiny 2 players can try Gambit for a day, Bungie has said.
Gambit, Destiny 2's new (and very fun!) hybrid player versus player versus environment mode, goes live alongside expansion Forsaken on 4th September, but a 24-hour trial will be made available to all players from 6pm UK time on 1st September.
Gambit won't dish out unique rewards until after 4th September, and you won't be able to rank up your Infamy (Gambit-specific ranking) until after then, either, but you will see some year one reward drops, Bungie said in its latest weekly update.