Fifteen years. Five UK Prime Ministers. Both my entire High School and University runs combined. Through it all, Black Mesa has been there, churning away, promising that one day it’d be done. After eight years, it was. Sort of. Released a Xen-less mod, it would take another eight years for the developers behind the notorious Half-Life remake, Crowbar Collective, to finally be done with it. Posting on Steam earlier today, the team announced that a full, final version of Black Mesa is imminent – with a 1.0 preview due for public testing any day now.

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You snooze you lose, Twitch. Activision Blizzard this week announced a multi-year deal with Google to stream future esports events solely through a plucky little website called YouTube. By nicking exclusive rights to broadcast big-hitters like the Overwatch and Call Of Duty Leagues, Hearthstone and such, Google hope to kick-start their struggling attempts to kickstart streaming on YouTube and topple Twitch’s reign over the medium.

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I’m not really sure I “get” Mooncharmer. Released last month by Paws Menu’s Michael Berto and artist Joost Eggermont, Mooncharmer is a self-described “visual moment” – collectively an interactive diorama, a Bandcamp EP and (if you pay up) a collection of media “arranged musically”, Mooncharmer isn’t even really something you play. Leave the game running and it’ll chug along of its own accord, strolling and resetting at a steady pace.

What I am sure about, however, is that Mooncharmer is a delight. A lovely little lunar dance to enjoy for five fleeting minutes.

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Card-shuffling strategy Duelyst is powering down next month. Such is the way of free online games, sadly. Bidding farewell to Duelyst in an announcement on Friday, developers Counterplay Games are “saddened to announce” that all servers will officially close on February 27th at 11pm (3pm PST). If you’ve ever wanted to give it a shot – and from the reception it got in the RPS treehouse, you really should – that’s four weeks to give Duelyst one last bash.

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Sundays are for starting violin lessons. Seriously. You should all be very glad you don’t live near me. Here’s the best writing about videogames from the past week.

For Vice, Cameron Kunzelman took a look at a book where an academic tries to figure out what indie games are. In this confusing and ever-changing world, it is easy to forget that indie games are the ones about geese.

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This week, Rocket League announced plans to stop supporting Mac and Linux versions, we learned Stardew Valley has sold so very many copies, Lunar New Year sales kicked off, and it looks like support for unionising the games industry is growing. Read on for more of the week’s PC gaming goings-on in our News Digest, and do also check out the Weekly Updates Update for some of the week’s big patches.

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You could’ve just called it Season 12. Instead, I have to report that – after being pushed back another two weeks – Fortnite Battle Royale: Chapter 2: Season 2 will finally launch on February 20th. As they say, though, good things come to those who wait. Those extra two weeks of Season 1 will come with new Overtime Challenges, an unannounced two-week long limited event, and allow Epic a little more time to bring the game over to their brand new physics engine, Chaos. Should be a banger.

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This week, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds added a new map, Hades added a new god and a rod, and Disco Elysium added an extra-hard difficulty mode. Read on for more of the week’s PC gaming patches in The Weekly Updates Update.

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Japanese animator and illustrator Taro Oono (official site) may also be one of the most prolific game developers you’ve never heard of. But despite launching dozens of tiny interactive vignettes convened with domestic life, family antics and gorillas, you won’t find his catalogue on Steam, Epic or even indie-centric Itch.io. For a little under a year, Oono has been posting his collection of short, hand-drawn microgames directly through his Twitter.

After all – they’re only gifs.

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Ark: Genesis, the monstrous next expansion for Ark: Survival Evolved, has been delayed. Again. Well, half of it, at least. While the first bit of Ark’s massive two-part expansion was set to embark last December, its release was later pushed back to January. This week, Studio Wildcard regret to inform us that we’ll need to hold on a little longer before building a bungalow on a sea turtle, with Genesis now scheduled to arrive on February 25th.

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