
Looks like there’s a drip somewhere in Valve’s spigot. Source code for both Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has apparently been made public. The files appear to be from years ago, though that may not prevent present troublemakers from doing their thing. Some fan servers are worried enough that they’ve gone offline until they can assure that these leaks won’t compromise the security of players. So far it’s unclear where the leak originated, though of course that hasn’t stopped anyone from guessing or pointing fingers.
Update: Valve have now responded to RPS to say they are still investigating but currently “have not found any reason for players to be alarmed or avoid the current builds” of either game. >
The loveliest thing I’ve seen today: the farm and farmhouse of Stardew Valley drawn as a Polly Pocket toy by artist Brittnie Marcil. Polly Pocket, if you don’t know, was a line of teeny doll houses, dioramas, and playsets hidden inside mock makeup cases. Pleasing little treasures. While we could never afford such fancy toys when I was a nipper, I remain wholly delighted by Marcil’s picture today. Come admire!

If you’ve not heard of Itta, that’s alright. It’s got plenty of familiar touchstones to help you along your way. It’s a stew with chunks of big bass boss rushing, action-y bullet dodging, and grim indie game sadness. It’s out today, so you can skip off to try it if any of those hooks entice you.

Untitled Goose Game is a game about being a horrible goose, about making a mess and watching hapless Brits try to clear it up again. But under all that, it’s a game about things. Apples, hair brushes, keys, mallets, toy planes, tulips, teapots. After all, it takes things to mess things up.
“Items are the language of the game,” co-designer Nico Disseldorp tells me. “They’re both the tools and the reward. They play a really central role in so much of what we do, and how people play.”
The small snowy map of Vikendi returned to Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds with the start of Season 7 today, having been pulled from rotation in January for improvements. They’ve removed a few villages, added more cover in places, reduced the amount of snow across a lot of the island, and, most importantly, rebuilt the scrappy old Dino Park (which I did already adore) as the larger and flashier Dinoland. While you can’t ride its rusty ferris wheel or the broken rollercoaster winding around a volcano, the overhaul has added something you can ride: new trains now trundling around the map. Pleasing.

Don’t worry, Warzone, it’s totally natural for free-to-play battle royales of your size to have these growing pains. As with just about any competitive game, Call Of Duty: Warzone cheaters have been diligently looking for ways to game the game to victory. In order to preserve some semblance of fair competition for the rest of us, Infinity Ward say they’ll be throwing suspected cheaters into their own lobbies away from the rest of us.
New pets, a dastardly PvP faction and fresh ways to earn extra gold and reputation headline the shiny new things waiting for you right now as part of Sea Of Thieves‘ April update. This is a big one folks, I don’t think there’s been an update with this amount of stuff since Tall Tales were introduced for the game’s anniversary last year. There’s none of those to be found in Ships Of Fortune, though. This time around, Rare are giving some life to Sea Of Thieves factions, and letting you earn big by joining up with them.

Out of all the agents available in Valorant, Raze is perhaps the most rage-inducing to contend against. Her skillset is focused almost entirely on dealing direct damage, setting her well apart from the rest of the agents in Valorant. But while her abilities are fairly easy to get to grips with, there’s an awful lot more to them – and her – than meets the eye. Our Valorant Raze guide will walk you through some top-tier tips and tricks for getting the most out of this bombastic demo expert.
Last night saw the start of the Guardian Games in Destiny 2, a new three-way competition between Hunters, Titans, and Warlocks to, in Bungie’s words, “test your skills in a series of daily class challenges” and ultimately “prove that your class reigns supreme”. In reality, the competition is just another set of bounties in a game already too focused on bounties. Guardian Games is a bust, and not at all what this disappointing season needs. However! Yesterday’s patch did at least fix some frustrating issues, including putting seasonal mod slots on some old armour and adding more Pinnacle rewards.
I remember playing a Counter-Strike map in 2001 called fy_iceworld. It was a small simple grey killbox of a map that virtually anyone could’ve made within the first few hours of downloading the editor tools.
fy_iceworld quickly became one of the most popular and divisive CS maps at my school. I was, of course, one of the haters. I tried to convince my friends to vote against fy_iceworld on our local internet cafe’s CS server, but they argued that I was just salty about being bad at it (which was partly true) and they forced the mapchange anyway. Similar conversations played out across countless clan servers, cyber cafes, PC bangs, and LAN parties around the entire world.
To properly gauge fy_iceworld’s influence and legacy, I asked several working level designers for their takes. Should we love it or bury it?