Buying an new SSD could be about to become as difficult as buying a new, next-gen graphics card in the coming months thanks to the rise of a new cryptocurrency known as Chia. According to a new report from HKEPC (thanks Hexus), storage prices in Hong Kong have soared in recent days as miners snap up high capacity drives in anticipation of Chia being the next big thing, causing several models to go out of stock. Now, manufacturers in China have confirmed they're starting to produce dedicated cryptocurrency mining SSDs to help handle the growing demand.

Read more

Yesterday afternoon, Rockstar's games suddenly weren't available to buy on Steam. Were Rockstar pulling out in a big store scloosie hullaballo? Had Ian Gun, the inventor of guns, finally sent in his lawyers to demand royalties? Naw, looks like it was one big daft mistake. It did have one bright side, though. When Grand Theft Auto and the rest returned, so did Midnight Club 2, the racing game they actually had intentionally pulled from sale in 2018, giving people a fleeting opportunity to buy it again.

Read more

AMD's free mobile-based streaming platform, AMD Link, is now available on PC as part of the latest update to their Radeon Adrenalin software (version 21.4.1). The app previously allowed AMD Radeon-based PCs to stream games to Android and iOS devices over their home Wi-Fi networks, but now AMD graphics card owners will be able to stream their games to other Windows 10 machines as well. That's not all, either. A new feature called 'Link Game' will also let users invite other AMD Radeon mates to connect to their PC remotely so they can play local or split-screen multiplayer games together from afar.

Read more

While Warzone players are expecting an explosive end to the current season on Wednesday, the devs have confirmed that the next won't actually start until Thursday the 22nd. Last night they laid out some of what to expect from Season Three of Warzone and Cold War, with new weapons including a spring-loaded ballistic knife and a baseball bat. They're still not saying what will happen in Warzone on Wednesday, but let's focus on the important detail: KNIFE GUN. Plus, they've nerfed the Sykov.

Read more

Gamesplanet's Spring Sale is in full swing right now, and there are some great savings to be had on over 2500 games until next Monday, April 26th. Chief among them is Remedy's excellent telekinetic shooter Control, whose Ultimate Edition is over 50% off at the moment as part of today's 24 hour flash deal.

Read more

Developers Iron Gate Studios have made a big update to their Viking survival sim Valheim, overhauling the game's terrain system. It should be a big help to players who struggle with Valheim's performance, and make the landscape look a little more natural for all your groundworkers.

"The new terrain modification system is made to reduce the number of network instances and make loading faster and smoother," the devs say.

Read more

Ten years ago, Valve released Portal 2. I’d like to think that the ultimate goal of Portal 2 was to get me to write an article about its tenth anniversary, so my ego wouldn’t let it go by. 10 is a nice age to celebrate, and it’s also the perfect number of random facts to pluck from the history of one of Valve’s most celebrated games. Also, I get to call them “decafacts”.

Read more

Respawn Entertainment have revealed that the next character jumping into the Apex Legends arena is Valkyrie. She's the daughter of Viper, a villainous Titan pilot you might recognise from Titanfall 2. In a new Stories From The Outlands video, we get a glimpse of Valkyrie as a kid, taking a joy ride in papa's big Northstar mech. Unfortunatley, it seems Apex still isn't getting proper mechs, but Valkyrie will be bringing a few parts of Northstar into the battle royale with her when the new season starts on May 4th.

Read more

When Sennheiser's gaming division transformed into EPOS last year, one of their first orders of business was the release of their GTW 270 Hybrid wireless earbuds, an expensive, but highly compact take on a traditional gaming headset. Despite their tiny size, these earbuds had a built-in microphone and everything, but their short battery life of five hours made them less than ideal for prolonged gaming stints. The good news is that EPOS are now in the process of refreshing Sennheiser's more traditional line-up of gaming headsets, starting with the EPOS H3. This is the evolution of Sennheiser's GSP 300 and 350 headsets, the latter of which I thought was a decent, if rather chunky £115 headset back when I reviewed it in 2017.

Read more

I'm writing this just a day or so after Hunt: Showdown celebrated its three-year anniversary with an event which caused it to break its all-time concurrent players record. Of course, that would be more noteworthy if the game hadn't been breaking its concurrent players record with increasing frequency over the past several months. It seems that word has started to spread at last that Hunt, with its wonderfully unusual approach to battle royale and competitive multiplayer, is well-worth the average player's free time.

Read more