Counter-Strike: Global Offensive became a slightly less accurate name, as 20,000 accounts have been banned from FaceIt’s platform since late August by the recently-unleashed admin AI Minerva.

After months spent in machine learning trials, the system built with Google tech led to a 20% reduction in the number of toxic messages between August and September according to FaceIt’s blog.

I’ve changed my mind. Algorithms are good now.

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The Schwarzschild radius of the Steam Charts continues to shrink as the effects of the Universal Collapse take greater impact on our daily lives.

Read on if you want to know how to protect your family from complete atomic devastation.

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Sure, it s a game about a post-apocalyptic delivery man wandering a celebrity-packed end-times with a baby strapped to his belly, but the biggest mystery about Hideo Kojima s Death Stranding has always been if it s coming out on PC. From there all other questions flow, like a stream of truth gurgling into a lake of knowledge. Here s some truth for you: Death Stranding is out in 2020 on PC, aiming for a summer release. It s also out next month on PS4, so let s thank the console players for beta-testing it for us.

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Halloween events with spooky ghosts and zombies mark the commercial start of autumn in video games, but what about the simple pleasure of a walk in the woods on a crisp autumn day? That’s the real season to me. I am delighted to visit such a place with the latest in JLV’s Places, a series of wee free walking simulators which capture places, times, and moods with sketchy strokes. I’ve left this running on my second screen while working and feel quite ready for some cocoa.

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I appreciate a name like Panzer Dragoon: Remake. It s not shy about what it is, which is a remake of the 1995 Sega Saturn shooter about drago(o)ns. It was announced for the Nintendo Phabuslate earlier this year, but the developers have found the button on their machines that also makes it for the PC, so now we re getting it as well.

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ESPN, “the leading multinational, multimedia sports entertainment entity”*, have apparently got their hands on Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 notes. They’ve got a source and a training document that say the game will be revealed at BlizzCon later this week, and will include “PvE features” involving “in-game items” and “hero talents”. This gels with a report from 5 months back, plus it’s a pretty logical move.

Still, s’cool though.

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On September 10th, RAM maker G.Skill proudly proclaimed that not only had they just set a new world record for the fastest RAM frequency, but that they were also the first ones to go over the 6.0GHz mark (6016.8MHz, if you want the exact number, or 6016.8MT/s, if you want to be 100% correct in your terminology). Their victory has been pretty short-lived, though, as Crucial have now gone and set another brand-new record of 6054.4MT/s.

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Although we won t be able to play Crusader Kings 3 until next year, last weekend I got to try the next best thing – a massive game of Crusader Kings 2 without a single PC involved. As part of the celebrations at PDXcon, Paradox turned the interior of the Nalepastrasse radio station (formerly the broadcast hub for communist East Germany) into a vast map of Europe, and gave 250 or so players the chance to swindle, excommunicate, marry and assassinate their way to the top of the feudal world.

I was curious to see what on earth would happen if you replaced CK2 s vast array of simulated bastards with real people, and how the sheer, breathtaking amorality of medieval power-grabbing would play out when you had to look people in the eye while doing it. As such, I enlisted the help of freelancer Rosh Kelly, and entered the melee for five hours of profound chaos. Here s how it went down.

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Put down your fidget spinners, all you people who use fidget spinners. If you want something to do while you’re doing something else, there’s very little better than Floating Point – a simple free-to-play game on Steam about grappling and swinging around constellations of floating blocks. It’s by Tom Francis, the creator of other excellent games such as Gunpoint, Heat Signature, and Morphblade – but despite that impressive track record I’ve put more hours into Floating Point than any other game of his.

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The latest interactive file system pal from Nathalie Lawhead is a delightfully anxious almost-spider called SHARED_ANXIETIES_WITH_A_FRIEND_ON_YOUR_BIRTHDAY.exe. They wander about your screen, expressing all kinds of day to day fears. And I love them.

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