After that beta that everyone couldn’t get enough of and last week’s launch, Riot are shipping out Valorant‘s first update. The patch notes are relatively brief: Sage has been taken down a couple pegs and some new ultimate ability orb types have been added. One thing that’s not changing is the familiar “ShooterGame” directory from Valorant’s Unreal Engine origins. Just a cheeky fact unearthed by some eagle-eyed folks.

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E3 is off this year but a load of publishers, associations, and blogs are trying to fill the void left by the binning of the video games industry’s largest marketing event. After a series of postponments given the American political climate, these online events are now getting rolling. Tonight, IGN kick off their multi-day ‘Summer Of Gaming’ with a livestream bringing game announcements, news, trailers, and more. Which you can watch embedded below from 9:30pm tonight (1:30 Pacific) and chat about and that.

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The spacetime barriers between systems will fall this week in No Man’s Sky when cross-platform multiplayer arrives in a free update. Hello Games today announced Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation spacemen will be able to play together from Thursday the 11th. The sandbox space potter ’em up will arrive on Xbox Game Pass tomorrow too, both for PC and Xbone, so you might get to mingle with a whole lot more spacepals.

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Remember when Nvidia unveiled their special (and slightly heinous looking) Cyberpunk 2077-themed RTX 2080 Ti graphics card back in February? Well, now you can try and win one from GOG if you fancy decking out your PC with this fiercely yellow version of their flagship GPU. All you need to do is describe Cyberpunk 2077 in exactly eight words without using the game’s title. Easy, right?

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Over the weekend, Itch.io launched a giant Bundle For Racial Justice And Equality. It was an overwhelming and enticing selection when it launched with about 750-odd games. Now the bundle has grown to over 1400 items, some of which are tabletop RPGs and game-adjacent bits like asset packs. They’re all yours for a contribution of $5 or more.

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It’s only been a couple of weeks since Ubisoft’s US store had their big Legendary Sale, but now they’ve morphed their mythical season of discounts into an even bigger Summer Sale with savings of up to 80% off – a full 5% improvement on last time. While most of the prices will feel familiar to anyone who dug around last time, there is an interesting new quirk here: if you add Rainbow Six: Siege Gold or Ultimate editions to your cart, you’ll get a further 20% off everything else in your shopping basket.

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Ubisoft are fond of those Rainbow Six Siege free weekends, aren’t they? Another one has rolled around this month, letting players give the team-based tactical shooter a go for free from tomorrow until June 15th, and enticing you in with tantalising discounts should you find yourself wanting to own it. As usual, it’s the full game you’ll be getting access to for free, so you can try out all the maps and all the modes, and your progress will carry over should you decide to go in for purchase.

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Amid the megablast of news about Destiny’s future yesterday, Bungie started the latest season, the Season Of Arrivals. After nine rocky months of decreasingly good seasons in Destiny 2, Season 11 feels like Bungie are starting to turn a corner. I don’t know how I’ll feel about Arrivals in two months, but right now I’m pretty excited about a lot of its newness. Not just because I get to spend a lot more time with my shady spaceuncle, Drifter.

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Popularity poses an interesting dilemma for any piece of media, but especially for those that thrive on their secrets. Attention is the held-breath hope of most aspiring indie developers, but a large enough community will excitedly share guides, forum posts and screenshots that illuminate every last hidden corner of a game. That might well be antithetical to the intended player experience, or an artist’s ultimate goal for their work.

Who are the enthusiasts who wade into the secrets of a game on behalf of other players? What are their motivations and expectations? And how do developers feel about the short-work illumination of their years of work? To see how the dynamic between an active community and a game’s developers can play out, I decided to speak to the principal creator of this year’s brilliant “sad tamagotchi” game The Longing, as well as the two creators of its most visited guides.

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As we prepare to batten down the hatches for all the notE3 events kicking off this week, I thought I’d give our giant list of new PC games one last update before we get a barrage of new release dates thrown in our face. Besides, there have been loads of new games announced in the last ten days alone, many of which are happening later this month, so there’s plenty of fresh info here even before we get into the meat of all the upcoming game streams.

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