The biggest PC gaming stories of the week
Gambling controversy, Chinese playtime monitoring, and a very fine Sekiro mod.
Welcome to another weekly news round up. We've seen alien invasions, a few fun controversies, and footage that may have ruined Toy Story for us forever. Let's get to it.
• GTA's new Casino update is unavailable in more than 50 countries
Games continue to run afoul of differing regional approaches to gambling rules. Regulators are still making their minds up about loot box mechanics, but the combination of real money purchases and familiar casino games in this update seems to have gone against Rockstar in this case.
• China's anti-addiction regulations put American game developers in an awkward moral situation
Steven continues to investigate the state of game publishing in China.
• Every Cyberpunk 2077 player gets exactly the same in-game content
In a world of platform-exclusive items and levels, this is welcome.
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• Team Fortress 2's hat economy has crashed. Whoops!
Rare items are flooding the market. Expect a fix of some sort soon.
First EVE Online, now this.
• Woody has been studying the blade with help from this Sekiro mod.
• A Total War community manager ends his final stream by calling a YouTuber a 'dickhead'
A mic-drop moment from a now-former Creative Assembly employee, which has since apologised for his comments.
• The enormous JRPG Disgea is free this weekend
Bet you can't complete it before Monday.
• A new Yakuza game will be announced next month
UK editor in chief Phil Savage will be a very happy man.
More news
- Mordhau's future includes new maps, a chat filter, ranked play, and maybe mod tools
- Star Citizen is no longer a lawless frontier thanks to the new update
- Netflix's Witcher series might give Tub Geralt his TV debut
- The ‘Big O’ is the ultimate gaming PC and it’s not for sale
- This Sekiro mod lets you fight bosses, and only bosses, in any order you want
- The next Overwatch hero is a literal mad scientist named Sigma
- Dragon Age 4 setting all but confirmed by upcoming short story collection
- See new footage of the forthcoming Blair Witch game
- MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is delayed, will be an Epic Games Store exclusive
- This War of Mine invites you resolve existential questions in new DLC
Tweet of the week
#TheWitcher3 pic.twitter.com/5QUKQwb90EJuly 25, 2019
SunhiLegend does the best gifs and tweets. Related: Hit Box Porn is the best part of gaming Reddit.
Around the office
Andy has been reveling in the nostalgia of old magazines and the games ads that used to appear in them. Does anyone know what on Earth this is?
I have absolutely no memory of this game. Did anyone play it? pic.twitter.com/g9xGi55yp5July 26, 2019
Meanwhile, Steven has been dropping scorching Final Fantasy 14 hot takes. His enthusiasm for the game makes me desperately want to play it, but on the other hand, I only have so many hours of precious life left.
If you can put up with the MMO bullshit and a weak first chapter, FF14 is low key the best Final Fantasy since 9.July 3, 2019
And Evan has been successfully syncing up with randoms in the still-excellent Apex Legends.
No idea how we survived this. Zero comms with these guys the whole time, just pure across-the-internet cosmic alignment of our gamer zodiac signs pic.twitter.com/bTLDWbGOzsJuly 18, 2019
Finally, we wave farewell to Samuel Roberts, our UK editor in chief who is catching a train to a new job. I got an email from Sam from his work address about a work thing a day after he had supposedly left the job. This is a very Samuel thing to happen. Happy trails good pal.
Tomorrow is my last day on PC Gamer after 5.5 years. In that time, the website has more than doubled in audience size, we launched an E3 show, a UK consumer show, and made a lot of magazines. Delighted I could play my part. Gave it my very best.July 23, 2019
That's all, folks. Have a great weekend and may your latency be low, and loot drops all be legendary.
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Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.