Despite the storage shortages, a brave team of Minecraft players has successfully mapped the entirety of 2b2t, arguably Minecraft’s oldest and most notorious server, and have now shared it as a 15TB download of highly compressed data that can be unpacked to the full 80TB archive. The team had to create its own custom compression format to pull off the feat.

The 2b2tplace preservation project started in 2024 and finally concluded in April of 2026 after an intensive 22 months of hard work. The team employed 28 bot accounts that tirelessly flew across the vast 2b2t world to map every single block with precision. The sheer scale of 2b2t is staggering because it encompasses well over one million blocks and includes the three primary Minecraft dimensions: the Overworld, the Nether, and the End.

The 2b2t server has a data footprint that exceeds 80 TB. Even if the team began their efforts before the recent storage shortage, it would still require an immense amount of storage capacity. Storing the entire 2b2t server would demand at least eight 8TB M.2 SSDs or, as an alternative, five 16TB SATA SSDs. Even with traditional storage, you still need three massive 36TB hard drives. We estimate the team has likely spent several thousand dollars on storage equipment, not to mention priority queue purchases and server rental costs, which totaled over $3,000 alone, according to the GitHub page.

If you are not a big Minecraft fan, 2b2t, short for 2builders2tools, is a Minecraft server characterized by its anarchic nature that launched in 2010. Unlike typical Minecraft servers, 2b2t operates with absolutely no rules, no staff moderation, and no map resets, so players have complete freedom to do whatever they want. Over the years, countless updates have dramatically reshaped the landscape, which has fueled several enthusiasts, including crayne, Fuch, mahan, Steve3, and others, to preserve the original state of 2b2t before it loses all of its essence for good.

Storing or sharing 80TB of data is insane, especially given the limited availability and overpriced storage solutions today - something on the scale of 2b2t can rapidly cause file sizes to spike to impractical levels. The archival team originally promised back in April to make the archive available in a compressed format, but that obviously created issues. As such, the team engineered a custom file compression format specifically for this project, named .zvcr (Zstd-compressed Version Controlled Regions). Common Minecraft servers use the .mca (Minecraft Anvil) file format, which is fine for single-player worlds or even small servers.

Unlike the .mca file format, which normally uses Zlib or Gzip compression, .zvcr uses the Zstd (Zstandard) algorithm that yields higher compression ratios. Zstd is superior in every way to Zlib or Gzip, whether it be compression and decompression speed or final file size. As a result, the team was able to compress the entire project to 15TB, saving up to 81.25% of space. So, now instead of needing eight 8TB M.2 or five 16TB SATA SSDs, you only need two or one to store the compressed archive, respectively. Unpacking the archive, on the other hand, is a different story.

The 2b2t server remains online so that Minecraft players can join in for their daily dose of chaos. Nevertheless, many longtime gamers argue the server has strayed from its anarchic roots. The eventual shift is the main motivation behind the 2b2tplace preservation initiative.

Microsoft announced that it’s increasing Minecraft’s minimum and recommended system requirements for the first time in 17 years. According to the company’s blog post, Minecraft: Java Edition will get a spec bump to ensure that the game runs smoothly today and in the future. While it’s understandable that the game’s developers would want to increase the performance of the hardware that the title runs on to implement more advanced features, the new requirements are significantly higher than the previous minimum specification. This could negatively affect players on older hardware that barely hits the minimum requirements, who would have no choice but to upgrade their PCs at a time when RAM prices are at a record high.

The new minimum specifications are quite reasonable, with the recommended specs falling squarely within the performance of the most common hardware in June’s Steam Hardware Survey (which also indicates that AMD now has more than 45% market share compared to Intel). If your system used to be at or higher than Minecraft: Java Edition’s previously recommended specifications, but no longer hits the current minimum requirements, you can switch over to the Bedrock Edition to continue gaming, although you might have to forgo some of your favorite mods.

If you’re running the bare minimum hardware to play Minecraft, Microsoft said that you could still possibly launch the game, although it warned that you might run into some issues. “These updated recommended system requirements won’t stop you from playing Minecraft: Java Edition today. If your computer falls below the new minimum requirements, Java Edition should still launch,” the company said in the Minecraft blog. “However, its performance and visual quality are no longer guaranteed on below-spec hardware, and it may struggle or fail to launch Java Edition in the future – especially as we transition away from OpenGL and towards Vulkan. We will keep players informed of these changes, especially changes that will sunset hardware that previously supported Minecraft: Java Edition.”

This means that you’ll have to spend some money to upgrade your system to just to continue playing your favorite game. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to get a new PC or join a giveaway to be able to play, though. If you know what you’re looking for, you can plausibly buy a used gaming laptop or desktop PC for around $350 to $500 — that should give you about a decade or more to enjoy the game if Microsoft keeps its spec upgrade cadence of 17 years for future versions of Minecraft.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise has a rich history when it comes to modding and tinkering, but we're pretty confident the community has never seen anything like this. Created by Dryxio, this new mod combines GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas, and GTA III into one multiversal entity interconnected through real-time, fully functional portals that let you travel between the three different games as if it were just a regular window.

The video above showcases just how insane this mod really is. It starts with CJ on Grove Street in San Andreas shooting at NPCs in different parts of the game (The Strip). Then, he moves toward the pink portal, shoots at NPCs once again, and just casually goes through it to end up in GTA Vice City as Tommy Vercetti. He wreaks havoc, walks back to the portal, and crosses through to Vice City as CJ, only to go to GTA III and repeat the same thing there.

The craziest part is how these portals genuinely act as windows to another world where you can stand in one game and shoot inside the other one. It's unclear whether there's a limit to the level of interaction, like if you can't drive cars through them, but it's impressive, nonetheless. The video also shows how you can place these portals anywhere in the world in any of the three games yourself.

All of this begs the question: how? The modder explains that all three games are running simultaneously inside one process, sharing one Direct3D device. Each portal is a live GPU texture; there's no video capture to fake the realism, and the transition to each game happens in real-time via an engine swap. When you walk through a portal, it simply switches to that game's engine while the others keep running in the background.

Each game and its world retain full native functionality such as its own AI, traffic, physics, saves, missions, and even settings. There's no loading screen when you use the portals either; you enter the world on the other side instantly, just the way you saw it before going through. This is largely possible because the source code of each game has been reverse-engineered and recompiled using an open-source engine.

Dryxio modified re3 and reVC — community projects that decompile the original source code of GTA III and Vice City into clean, readable C++ code — and used plugin-sdk to interface with San Andreas. Since these games used the proprietary RenderWare engine that can't render multiple spatial scenes together, an open-source reimplementation of it called librw was used to compile all three games into a single unified process.

The mod isn't publicly available at the moment, but you can bet everyone in the community now has their eyes on it. It's by far the most technically complex GTA mod ever, one that doesn't even require any understanding of software to grasp its ambition. There's also the elephant in the room known as Rockstar Games that could see this as copyright infringement and order it to be taken down, but for now, it lives as proof of human ingenuity (and vibe-coding).

Xbox has announced a new Xbox Backward Compatibility for PC program, which will let gamers play a selection of classic Xbox titles on PCs and handhelds, a move the company says marks the beginning of a bigger push into Xbox game preservation. The announcement begins with four titles that can now be played on PCs and handhelds, including the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X.

"This marks the beginning of a broader effort to preserve XBOX games from the past and bring them to PC over time," the company said in a blog post authored by Xbox "VP next generation" Jason Ronald. Alongside backward compatibility, the company says games will also include new features. The four titles in the announcement are:

• BLiNX: The Time Sweeper 
• Conker: Live and Reloaded 
• Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge 
• Fuzion Frenzy

You can now buy all of these games on PC, and they're also included in all Xbox Game Pass plans. Anyone who already owns these titles digitally on console can also now play them on PC or handheld, with support for Xbox Play Anywhere and Xbox Cloud Gaming. Crucially, this appears to be a digital-only preservation effort, so it won't help anyone who only owns physical copies of these games. Xbox has reportedly been testing a way to digitize physical games as far back as Xbox One, but that hasn't yet materialized yet.

Alongside the preserved original gameplay, Xbox claims these games will let users customize graphics settings, with up to 4x resolution scaling, VSync support, Fullscreen and Windowed modes, anisotropic filtering, and enhanced anti-aliasing, with more features to come in the future. Notably, Xbox will add achievements to select original Xbox games on console and PC.

Users who want to play these titles will need to meet the following system requirements:

Microsoft's emphasis on preserving older games is particularly noteworthy given recent backlash against Sony over its decision to end physical games with its next console generation, and the shuttering of some of its online stores. While Xbox's digital emphasis on game preservation still can't match the solidarity of physical media preservation, the timing of this announcement seems like more than just a coincidence.

A Grand Theft Auto (GTA) modder has developed a mod that lets you run Grand Theft Auto III (GTA 3) and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (GTA VC) as mini games right inside Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA SA). The modder, DryxioGTA, demonstrated the feat in a video posted on YouTube on Thursday, running the game on a Windows virtual machine on macOS.

In the video, GTA SA’s main character, CJ, can be seen stepping up to a TV, apparently inserted into the game by the mod. Once in front of the TV, the option to start either GTA VC or GTA 3 appears. The selected mini-game immediately starts running on the TV.

Gamers can switch between controlling the main GTA SA game or the mini game, using the F10 key. When controlling the mini-game — say, GTA 3, as in the video — players can play it as normal while the rest of the outer SA game continues to run, with characters roaming about. Similarly, switching control back to the outer SA game leaves the mini-game running on the TV.

Just a few hours after uploading a brief gameplay video, the modder released another video demonstrating an even more mind-blowing mod, this time running GTA Vice City inside GTA 3, inside GTA San Andreas!

As shown in the clip, the game starts with GTA SA, where players can walk up to a large screen to activate and start running GTA 3. Within GTA 3 — now running on the large screen inside San Andreas — gamers can drive to another specific screen and launch GTA VC. So you can be playing GTA SA, switch to a fully functional GTA 3 within SA, and then switch again to play Vice City right inside the GTA 3 sandbox, all while the other games are simultaneously running.

The remarkable mods are just one of thousands that developers have created since the game was first released on PC over 20 years ago in 2005. There are also several Mods for other GTA titles. Older GTA games have seen renewed interest as anticipation builds for GTA 6, which is scheduled to be released on consoles on November 19 after several postponements.

A PC gamer has created and demonstrated a handy Steam Game Cartridge system. Over on PCMR, Jibril-sama introduced the system, which blends the old-school console convenience of cartridges with Steam’s awesome and agreeably flexible games library. Ingeniously, it upcycles a bundle of old SATA SSDs into Steam-ready game cartridges using a disk mount detect and execute script on the software side and a SATA dock on the hardware side. Icing on this already tasty cake is provided by Jibril-sama’s colorfully encased and custom-labeled Steam Game Cartridges. Nice.

Steam Game Cartridges from r/pcmasterrace

“Got a couple of used 2.5" SSDs for cheap so I decided to make a Game Cartridge system,” the Redditor casually informs the PCMR masses in the post embedded above. “Games are actually on those SSDs with a script to auto-navigate Steam to the game's page. Auto-starting the game right away is also possible.”

Further comments by the OP explain that all the drives bought for this project were 128GB in capacity, and €7 a piece ($8). That’s not bad in the current RAM and NAND crunch, and keeps these files off your built-in primary storage. As many readers will know, PC game libraries can easily grow to hog a lot of storage.

We reached out to Jibril-sama for some more background info about how the Steam Game Cartridge system is designed to work with as little user friction as possible. They informed us that the system in the video runs Linux and Valve’s Steam URL Protocol is leveraged to navigate to the game's page or launch the game.

“All it needs is a systemd template to check for a script on the SSD and launch it. And a udev rule to trigger the system,” Jibril-sama told Tom’s Hardware. “So basically: Plug in SSD -> udev rule sees the event -> triggers the systemd daemon -> systemd daemon looks into the SSD and finds the script -> execute the script.”

Commenters on PCMR have overwhelmingly welcomed the Steam Game Cartridge future teased by this system. Some want to see the system extended to include GOG game libraries. Others query how the system handles the inevitable hefty multi-gigabyte updates that are pushed (even to older games) from time to time. Jibril-sama told Tom’s Hardware that they didn’t plan to deal with updates often, as they didn’t use cartridges for ‘live service’ titles, and they are mostly used for the “games that I want to replay once in a while.” If and when updates have been flagged, “I just let Steam handle the updates and wait a bit before I can play,” they added.

I’ve had repeated firsthand experience with Steam Games libraries being fussy when moving across different PCs, so stretching the library system this way could reveal cracks and wrinkles as more games are tested. We shall see.

Hopefully, fuller implementation guides, scripts, and resources to help others purchase or 3D print their own Steam Game Cartridge shells will be shared in due course.

Nvidia's RTX Spark platform arrives later this year, and the company is hard at work building the partner ecosystem around the GB10 Superchip to ensure that Windows and applications are ready for its agentic AI PC vision. As part of that groundwork, the two companies announced today that Sega will support the RTX Spark platform with its upcoming Virtua Fighter Crossroads, coming in 2027.

The two companies also committed to RTX Spark support for "future Sega titles,” meaning that we might see official support for other evergreen franchises like the Yakuza series, the Persona games, and the upcoming Alien: Isolation 2 and Total War: Warhammer.

Although the companies didn’t go into detail about exactly what full support for the RTX Spark means for Sega games, one would expect that the developer’s titles will be natively compiled for Windows on Arm instead of relying on the Prism x86 emulator for compatibility.

It also seems safe to expect that future Sega titles will incorporate DLSS technologies like upscaling and Multi Frame Generation in order to deliver the best possible experience on RTX Spark systems. Despite having GPU compute capabilities similar to those of a desktop RTX 5070 on paper, the unified memory architecture and relatively limited memory bandwidth of the GB10 Superchip behind the RTX Spark platform present challenges for gaming performance that are likely to make the incorporation of DLSS tech important for the best experience.

The relationship between Nvidia and Sega spans over 30 years, tracing its roots to the ultimately abandoned development of the GPU for the Dreamcast console. Despite its eventual decision to use an NEC-produced PowerVR GPU for that system, Sega offered Nvidia a $5 million lifeline that gave the company the runway that it needed to develop and deliver the Riva 128, its first DirectX-compatible GPU.

That investment proved to be historic, as Nvidia now has a market cap of over $5 trillion and is in the process of shifting the very foundations of computing through its Grace Blackwell and upcoming Vera Rubin AI platforms for the data center.

Whether the RTX Spark platform reshapes the PC when it arrives in the fall of this year remains to be seen. But if you’re a fan of Sega’s IP, this partnership means that you can at least look forward to a first-class experience with its games on RTX Spark systems.

According to new research published by Alinea Analytics, Valve has grossed an estimated 11.1 billion dollars throughout the first half of 2026. If correct, the estimates would make it Valve's most profitable half-year on record, as digital storefronts become the norm throughout the games industry. Earlier this month, Sony announced that it would stop making new physical PlayStation discs by 2028, instead turning its efforts digital.

According to a Substack post from research firm Alinea Analytics, games sold on the platform accumulated $11.1 billion in revenue in the first six months of this year, which is a 14.5% jump compared to the first six months of 2025. Even more impressively, though, Steam's H1 2026 has posted 8% higher numbers than H2 2025, which includes the lucrative holiday season where most of the biggest sales happen. The store generated "only" $10.3 billion in revenue during the latter half of 2025.

Steam has been on a consistent incline for 10 years, boasting record revenue numbers almost every successive year. Even if it hits a slump, the data shows Valve has never had two bad years in a row; a recession is always followed by a boom. Alinea says five main factors contribute to the storefront's growth: a surge in Chinese players, higher prices, viral co-op hits, and smarter back-catalogue categories from big publishers.

The last one is rather ironic, as it involves third-party publishers quietly returning to Steam after their own launchers faltered. Some companies like Activision still inject their proprietary launchers between Steam and the game itself for titles like Call of Duty, but the situation has generally improved.

What display resolution do you use on your primary monitor?

Almost 10 years ago, in the first half of 2017, the platform made a little less than $2.5 billion, which means the H1 2026 revenue is 4.7 times higher, almost quintupling in a decade. Moreover, it's remarkable to believe that Steam also made more in the first six months of this year than it did in the entirety of 2020, when most of us were confined to our homes, free from responsibilities, and with a lot of time on our hands.

Alinea lists Forza Horizon 6, Resident Evil Requiem, and Crimson Desert as the top three games for Steam's explosive H1 2026 numbers — all of them made almost $200 million. Games from prior years also played a bigger role this time since 2026 releases only accounted for 21% of the $11.1 billion, while 27% of H1 2025's revenue came from 2025 launches; 29% of H1 2024's revenue was accumulated from 2024 releases.

Amidst all the data, a clear trend is forming. People are looking back in their libraries and appreciating older games more than ever before, while new releases still make an impact if they're universally acclaimed. With the highly anticipated GTA VI coming soon (with no current PC release date), it'll be interesting to see how these numbers change. Now, if only Valve could make more Steam Machines to play all those older games everyone seems to be playing.

Game anti-tamper app Denuvo has been completely bypassed in pre-release versions of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, allowing pirates to distribute copies of the game days before its official release. A cracked version of the remake has been circulating since June 7 — more than a month before its July 9, 2026, release date. While the game is a remake of the original Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, which launched way back in 2013, it’s still expected to offer new content and enhanced graphics brought by newer, more capable hardware.

This isn’t the first major title to be hit by a leak before its official release day this year. Forza Horizon 6 leaked four days before early access and more than a week before its general launch date of May 19. LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and Subnautica 2 also suffered similar leaks, with playable versions of the games circulating online even before early access was opened to players. While Forza Horizon 6 and Subnautica 2 aren’t protected by Denuvo, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced use the controversial anti-tamper DRM tool.

Denuvo has been in hot water among gamers, especially as it was blamed for performance issues plaguing games that used it. Aside from that, many consider its mandatory 14-day online checks as intrusive, especially for story-driven single-player games where cheating won’t affect the gaming experience of other players. While a few users might’ve understood the studios’ need to protect their titles and reduce piracy, the fact that Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games that had it felt like its addition to games is pointless.

This is especially true now that we’re seeing pirated pre-release versions of games that are supposedly protected by Denuvo. While it’s unclear how Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced leaked, the fact that the app that reduces performance and reminds gamers that they don’t own the games they buy has seemingly failed at its one job is making users think that it’s unnecessary.

Game studios need to protect their intellectual property, which is why it’s understandable that they’d want to deploy tools like Denuvo. However, they shouldn't do so at the expense of gaming performance and the user experience, which are some of the primary reasons why gamers are pushing back against Denuvo. If these anti-piracy measures don’t punish legitimate players with reduced FPS and always-online requirements, among other negative side effects, then most gamers will have zero problems with using apps that protect the makers of their favorite titles.

DLSS Swapper is an open-source app that does exactly what it sounds like — it swaps out the appropriate DLSS files for any game, helping downgrade or upgrade its native DLSS version. While the tool itself is safe, along with the verified files it hosts, users can also upload their own DLLs to the app's GitHub repo. Unfortunately, it seems like some of these files can contain malware, disguised as helpful solutions.

To understand how this can even happen, we need to look at the way DLSS Swapper is set up. The app uses a manifest file to dig out DLLs from verified DLSS, FSR, and XeSS libraries. The verification process is thorough, and you won't see any file pop up in-app until its security hashes match official sources. However, it can also detect unknown files from new game releases installed on a user's computer.

These files are automatically uploaded to the repository as "issues," and the app also includes an option to upload your own DLL to help out fellow gamers. As you can probably guess by now, this is where the problem lies. These files are not vetted and remain in a grey area. DLL files are basically executable code, so if any of them were modified to include malware, you wouldn't even be able to detect it before it's too late.

The file would've already executed malicious code and installed a crypto-miner, for instance, in the background that hogs your PC's resources until you finally notice something's off. As such, the creator issues a clear warning to not download random files that show up on the GitHub repo, especially if they include comments that claim some sort of miracle cure. Stick to only the sources you trust if you must go outside of the officially supported libraries.

Previously, the developer already warned against the fake DLSS Swapper website posing as the real thing. Let this serve as your reminder that the app's GitHub page is the only place you should download DLSS Swapper from. Moreover, keep in mind that hardware support is just as important as software support, so if you have an older GPU that doesn't support the latest upscaling tech, a DLL swap cannot magically fix that.

Sony makes some of the best headphones on the market, and some of their recent models even include a myriad of sensors for spatial audio. These are standard gyroscopes and accelerometers capable of precise tracking, so why keep them limited to just audio features? That's exactly what developer Nicholas Slattery has done with his new project called "Sony Head Tracker" — it's an app that turns your Sony headphones and earbuds into a real-time head tracker for PC games.

I made Sony headphones work as a free head tracker for 200+ PC games from r/pcmasterrace

The app essentially acts as a bridge between the hardware and the software, which is OpenTrack. Sony baked the Android Head Tracker protocol into its headphones' firmware, which is what enabled spatial audio to expand the soundstage on supported devices. This data is ignored by Windows, but Slattery figured out a way to tap into the protocol and read everything it's capturing.

That includes rotation vectors, gyroscope fields, and Euler Angles (live calculation of yaw, pitch, and roll). The raw data packets are then packaged into a UDP stream that the OpenTrack software can read and understand. OpenTrack supports over 200 PC games and usually works with phones, webcams, and specialized eye or IR trackers, but Slattery's app opens it to an entirely new and ingenious set of devices.

Currently, Sony's WH/WF-1000XM6, WH/WF-1000XM5, and Sony ULT WEAR (WH-ULT900N) are officially compatible. Older models like the WH-1000XM4 or XM3 won't work because they lack the hardware (sensors) required for the head tracking. Apple's AirPods, which popularized Spatial Audio, use the company's proprietary protocol that doesn't open itself up on any device, as you'd expect, so they're also ruled out.

Once everything is set up, you just wear your Sony headphones and the in-camera will respond to your head movements, turning around with you. If you look to the side or glance up, the camera will peep there as well, as if you were wearing a VR headset. But keep in mind that this is not a VR replacement as the screen in front of you is still stationary. Regardless, this unlocks another level of immersion for race and flight sims.

The creator has tested the app to work flawlessly with Microsoft Flight Simulator, Elite Dangerous, and Assetto Corsa already. For those of us not rocking elaborate multi-monitor configs, something like this can serve as a middle ground between a true 6DoF setup and a simple helmet cam in-game, all for free. Sony Head Tracker is also open-source, so we only expect it to improve over time and expand its compatibility.

Over the years, our internet-surfing machines have evolved to the point that it's now possible to run entire full-length PC games right inside a browser. The latest milestone in this impressive trajectory is a new, unofficial port of Half-Life 2 developed by Slqnt and 98006. It's the complete main campaign of the game, including the two episodic DLCs, accompanied by a host of features that you find on the official release.

The game is, in fact, running natively on your computer; there's no cloud streaming involved. Under the hood, the port is powered by WebGL 2, a JavaScript API that bypasses the browser's typical layout engine and talks directly to your GPU to execute graphics-intensive tasks. Then, WebAssembly helps translate C++ code from the Source Engine into JavaScript that the browser can natively understand.

For storage, the port relies on a virtual file system that calls compressed assets via high-speed web requests. You just need to let the cache build up upon first boot for a few minutes, then you're off to the races. The same method creates .sav files directly in the browser's cache or IndexedDB, which allows you to pick up where you left off, just as if you had actually installed the game on your computer natively.

This port also features the Source console integration, enabling you to pull up a fully functioning developer terminal that can accept classic commands. You can type in cheats to give yourself a gameplay boost or tweak the engine variables as per your liking. While you don't get Steam achievements here (understandably), the game's built-in achievements are still present and accessible through the menus.

We tried the game on three different devices: a Windows PC with a Ryzen 7 7700X and RX 6700 XT, a OnePlus 12 smartphone, and a modded Nintendo Switch running Android. As you'd expect, the computer ran it the best and without any hiccups. Since this is a very old, non-demanding game, we were able to max out all the settings and play in full screen while achieving over 100 FPS. Frankly, it looked beautiful.

The mobile experience didn't work for us, but other users have reported it performing well, so your mileage may vary. Some bugs, however, remain persistent on the ideal desktop experience as well, with many users pointing out a rather hilarious "zombie" glitch where characters' heads render improperly, leaving their eye sockets vacant like a zombie. Certain complex animations also fail to trigger during intense cutscenes.

Overall, this is one impressive project, but it remains unofficial, and that means it's subject to a DMCA takedown from Valve. The port is basically at the company's mercy at this point, but Valve is generally community-friendly when it comes to stuff like this. It took Slqnt and 98006 just three months to develop, and the fact that it has survived roughly two weeks on the internet means it might have precedent to stay.

It's also not the only port of its stature, you can play thousands of old games for free on DOS Zone, including GTA Vice City, and Quake III is also available as a standalone browser project. Copyrighted IP is the only hurdle for retro revivals like these since the talent from the developers, and the grunt from the hardware, is otherwise abundant. If Valve doesn't make Half-Life 3, the fans might as well milk the original games as much as possible

Buying and collecting games on your Steam account can be quite fun, and some people have taken this to the extreme, with the most expensive Steam library worth nearly $750,000 at current prices. Unfortunately, most of us do not have that kind of money to burn on digital games, which is why programmer and web developer Mike Wang built the Steam Summer Sale simulator. This website looks just like the Steam website, and you even have to “log in” with whatever Steam account name you want to make up. Once inside the page, you’ll find $100 in your wallet, and you can just add any game to the cart and check it out.

If you run out of cash, the wallet will automatically refill to $500, meaning you essentially have an unlimited amount of money to splurge on games. You can also click the + Add Funds button as many times as you want to see your wallet grow to millions of dollars. The website makes cute sounds every time you click the Add to Cart button, making it more inviting to keep adding games. And once you’re satisfied (or tired) from all the clicking, head on to the cart and click Continue to payment to see all the games get magically added to your library one by one with matching sound effects that make it feel like you won the jackpot.

Aside from getting the dopamine hit of adding games to your library, there’s also a list of 30 achievements you can hit. You may think these are easy, especially since you’re just essentially adding games to the cart and checking them out, but a couple of them require some dedication. One is the Exact Change achievement, which requires you to zero out your wallet. Since it automatically refills if a game’s “cost” is more than your balance, you have to crunch some numbers to make sure that your cart has the same amount as your wallet. The other one requires you to buy every game on the simulator website, which means a lot of clicking.

While the website might look convincing and have a ton of listed titles, it unfortunately does not have every game available on the Steam store. For example, it’s missing the $999 Steam Game that lasts for just 10 minutes.

The Steam Summer Sale simulator may feel like a nonsensical project, similar to the fake food delivery apps that are growing in popularity in South Korea. However, its creator said that they built it to get the dopamine hit of “buying” games on Steam without actually spending money. It’s also quite entertaining, especially with its sound effects and achievements, and I found myself spending several minutes on the website just trying to hit that Exact Change achievement, which is actually quite hard!

Perhaps the real Steam Machine was the friends we made along the way... is what enthusiast Matthew Brunelle might've said after realizing he already had one at home. Instead of buying Valve's new console for a frictionless experience, Matthew decided to turn his existing PC into the perfect couch-gaming setup, made possible by a really long HDMI cable, a Steam Controller 2, and, of course, Bazzite.

For the expectedly tech-savvy audience reading this, you might already be making fun of this dude for discovering cables, but hold on a second. Matthew's computer sits in his own room, where it serves as a desktop for work, while his TV sits in the living room. The easiest way to bridge that gap is actually wirelessly, streaming the games over Moonlight or Sunshine, or even Steam's native remote play functionality.

There will be a noticeable latency penalty with this setup that may or may not bother you depending on what you're playing. Moreover, you're just mirroring your PC's screen this way; it's not actually a console-like experience where the device wakes up and goes to sleep seamlessly. Not to mention, Matthew is running NixOS, so he has to manually hook up the cable and change the sound and display outputs each time.

In comes Bazzite — Matthew installed the Linux-based OS on a third SSD and plopped it into his computer. Inside, in Steam's "Big Picture" mode, Bazzite automatically handles outputs upon rebooting, switching to the correct display, which is his TV, and remembers to use the HDMI out for sound. This still wasn't enough, however, until two more things came along.

First is the 50-foot-long fiber-optic HDMI 2.1 cable that can carry the signal over long distances without degradation or latency. It costs $75 and sits there, running along the molding of the house. On the other end, it plugs into a TCL Roku TV that's limited to 60 Hz, but Matthew plans to upgrade to an LG C5 OLED really soon, which should help saturate that cable's bandwidth, especially now that HDMI 2.1 officially supports AMD GPUs on Linux.

The last piece of the puzzle is the new Steam Controller, which ticks all the boxes for our resident MacGyver. It features symmetrical sticks, large touchpads, back buttons, and excellent compatibility with Steam and Linux. Matthew even mentioned that the DualSense was already good enough for him in this regard, but the Steam Controller 2 is even more comfortable and more reliable, since it doesn't drop the connection at all.

With everything in place, here's how the setup works. Matthew still has to boot his PC and select Bazzite in the boot menu. From that point, Bazzite automatically outputs to his TV in the living room and uses the living room speakers for sound. When Matthew is done with a session, he puts the system to sleep, and it wakes back up right where he left it. Sleep states on Linux-based gaming distros feel just like a console.

When it's time for work, he restarts his PC and boots back into NixOS, but Matthew finds himself leaving his computer in Bazzite more and more since it's so seamless. He even suggests switching to Bazzite's built-in desktop mode for work if he can't find a convenient solution to the dual-boot dilemma. Speaking of which, the blog post mentions that he is trying to set up hibernate-to-disk on Bazzite.

If he gets that working, Matthew could save his exact game state, reboot into NixOS to do desktop work, and then reboot back into Bazzite later right where he left off. There's still a manual element, but the transition becomes much more seamless as everything within Bazzite no longer needs to be shut down. Matthew still recommends the Steam Machine for an out-of-the-box experience similar to his, but for him, "a 50ft HDMI cable will do."

The Entertainment Software Association has told a California Senate committee that private and community servers are illegal and amount to piracy, which would be news to anyone who has downloaded Minecraft's server files from the official website. The ESA gave its opinion while opposing AB 1921, the state’s “Stop Killing Games”-backed preservation bill, with ESA vice president of state government affairs Jennifer Gibbons making the claim about software that publishers provide themselves, since Mojang offers a Minecraft server for free download on its own site. The bill then failed the committee by four votes to three with four abstentions, though it was granted reconsideration.

AB 1921, the Protect Our Games Act, would require publishers of server-dependent games to give players 60 days’ notice before shutting one down, then provide a playable version, a patch, or a refund. Assemblymember Chris Ward, who authored the bill, raised community servers during the hearing as one way to keep games running after support ends. The California Assembly passed it 43 to 16 in May before it moved to the Senate. Gibbons said the ESA considers such servers “piracy,” and argued that community servers are not affiliated with the publisher and don’t uphold the same trust and safety standards.

Mojang publishes a dedicated Minecraft server as a Java file and documents how to run it, while Valve distributes SteamCMD and dedicated-server tools for hundreds of titles, letting players run their own match servers on their own systems. Running a server for a game you’ve bought obviously sits inside what those publishers permit, and for Minecraft, it’s Mojang’s own recommended setup for free multiplayer.

Minecraft isn't the exception here. Palworld, Valheim, ARK: Survival Ascended, and Counter-Strike 2 all ship official dedicated-server software that runs on a spare PC or a rented VPS. The line the ESA steps over is a technical one, since running a publisher's own server binary is a licensed activity, not the unauthorized copy its piracy comparison implies.

Gibbons cited the U.S. Trade Representative’s Notorious Markets reports as precedent for the piracy claim, which have named private servers as infringement hubs. Those entries, such as Warmane and Firestorm in the 2018 report, were World of Warcraft servers that let players skirt past Blizzard's subscription, which is an entirely different scenario from running a free-to-play multiplayer server on a game that’s already been paid for.

Those WoW servers exist only because Blizzard never released its own, leaving operators to rebuild the backend from scratch through reverse engineering, which is what drew those copyright claims. AB 1921 compels nothing of the sort; its remedies let a publisher comply by releasing official server tools — exactly what Mojang already does with Minecraft — and a company distributing its own server software obviously can't be infringing its own IP.

Responding to comments made by Ward that private servers help to keep games alive, Gibbons said, “They’re illegal. They are not in any way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, for Minecraft, has gotten a lot of criticism because of those community servers not employing the same safety standards that Microsoft does on their Minecraft servers.”

Gibbons also referenced two pending lawsuits against private servers, but didn’t name them, nor did the ESA identify the cases in its written statement, which said private servers infringe publishers’ IP rights and that they reserve the right to act against them.

AB 1921 builds on California's earlier AB 2426, which requires sellers to disclose that digital purchases are licenses rather than owned copies. Back in April, a brief 30-day DRM check-in left some PlayStation buyers facing lost access to games that they had paid for due to this.

Riot Games has announced that it plans to let players stop its Vanguard anti-cheat from loading at Windows start-up, the company has announced, ending the boot-time behavior the kernel driver has had since 2020. The new mode, Vanguard On-Demand, loads the driver only when a Riot game launches and unloads it on exit, made possible by a Windows 11 25H2 feature that records driver activity even while Vanguard is dormant. It works only on PCs that also have UEFI Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, Virtualization-Based Security (VBS), Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity (HVCI), and IOMMU switched on. Riot anti-cheat lead Phillip Koskinas said roughly 35% of players already clear that bar, while about 3% are running incompatible hardware.

Riot calls the qualifying checklist Vanguard Pre-Check, and many prebuilt PCs and laptops sold in the past couple of years ship with the features on by default, and Koskinas estimates the share of fully secured machines at 34.33% and rising one to two percentage points a month. Everyone else will need to enable the settings manually, and most are UEFI options that Vanguard can’t change, meaning a trip into BIOS for those who want to do so.

The feature leans on Microsoft's Runtime Driver Attestation Report, built with the company's Xbox OS Security team and new to Windows 11 25H2. It records every driver loaded since boot as a running, append-only hash kept in the TPM, which is the same measured-boot method the Windows Boot Manager already uses for boot-start drivers. Vanguard can then confirm at launch that no vulnerable driver slipped in while it sat idle, closing the gap that forced the always-on design before. Older Windows releases lack that reporting hook, however, so 25H2 is a baseline requirement.

Riot Games has spent years pushing the same security stack as a barrier to play, having begun enforcing TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot on Windows 11 in 2020. The company drew backlash when it brought it to League of Legends in 2024, and in December, flagged a pre-boot motherboard flaw across Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock boards. Last month, a Vanguard update bricked DMA cheat hardware in a move that was likely tied to stricter IOMMU enforcement.

VBS and HVCI are likely to become sticking points for users who are most likely to want the option to toggle Vanguard’s anti-cheat. Both run parts of the kernel inside a hardware-isolated enclave, and benchmarks have long since shown a small but noticeable degradation to frame rate, which is why many gamers leave them off. Turning VBS on also activates Microsoft's vulnerable driver blocklist, which can disable older peripheral drivers.

Alternatively, payers can leave Vanguard as-is, with Riot saying it’s not “making anyone change anything” and is willing to wait until the ecosystem matures.

The preorder pages for GTA will drop at midnight local time in the US tonight, and you can buy both the Standard and Ultimate editions at the links below. Digital preorders of either variant get a month of GTA+ subscription as a preorder bonus.

Hype is cyclic. Once upon a time, there was Daikatana, the game that would have John Romero making us his female canine, but flunked hard. Then there was Half-Life 2, a game that still begs for a third installment today. Spore showed us how excellent ideas still need equal execution. In modern times, No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 both had massive hype and massive flops, turned around with many years' labor. And yet to this day, there's nothing quite like the buzz surrounding Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto VI, or as it'll be forever known, GTA 6.

The Standard edition goes for $79.99 and has the base game, the Vintage Vice City Pack with retro-themed cosmetics, and the '55 Vapid Stanier vehicle. The Ultimate Edition goes for a cool $99.99 and contains extra side missions and activities, additional vehicles, guns, and a truckload of outfits and other cosmetics for Jason and Lucia both.

These preorders at retailers mean you purchase a physical box that has a slip of paper inside with a download code, but not physical media. As such, this is for collector's item purposes. Without further ado, click away to your favorite e-tailer.

• Amazon
  • Standard Edition
  • Ultimate Edition
• Walmart
  • Standard Edition
  • Ultimate Edition
• Best Buy:
  • Standard Edition
  • Ultimate Edition

We won't bother rehashing details about the impending sequel to Rockstar's massively successful and still giant money printer Grand Theft Auto V. Suffice to say that the November 19 release is so hotly anticipated that employees are calling sick already, and there are reports of entire workplaces planning to shut down for the day. Many publishers and studios are reshuffling their release calendars so as not to get drowned in what is guaranteed to be the talk of the Internet for at least a few weeks, too.

Meanwhile, PC gamers will have to wait a year to see the game running natively on their systems and will have to drown their sorrows in one of the literal thousands of games that never make it to consoles. Regardless, Take Two Interactive's revenue is probably going to rival that of some AI companies — but in real dollars.

On this day in 1996, id Software unleashed Quake on the unsuspecting public. The game’s influence is difficult to overstate, with its pioneering 3D engine inspiring the first wave of 3D accelerator PC expansion card purchases, the establishment of online multiplayer competitive culture, and much more. Perhaps its impact on 3D gaming can only be matched by the same development team’s previous outing with Doom.

At launch, Quake drew criticism for its intense violence and gore, which also echoed Doom’s path to infamy among media and political pundits, and caused problems for ratings boards and regulators. However, id Software ignored such noise, insisting they simply made games they enjoy playing. Quake would be the last major id Software production with the ‘classic lineup’ due to burnout and various personal conflicts, notes Wikipedia.

Looking more closely at the technology behind Quake, it was clear the dev team eschewed ‘faking it with 2.5D tricks’ like in previous seminal PC FPS titles such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, System Shock, and others. Instead, Quake hit the scene with true 3D polygonal worlds and character models. The true 3D transformation meant that for the first time in FPS, games could enjoy real 3D collision and physics, as well as things like fully 360-degree vision and movement, and more.

With id Software’s new game engine arriving in the Pentium era, but still crushing the best CPUs of the time, it made a market for PC 3D accelerators. These add-in cards first became essential to PC gamers in the late 90s with full 3D engine titles arriving, led by Quake. So in the same era, we saw important hardware releases like the 3dfx Voodoo, ATI Rage, and Nvidia Riva cards. QuakeGL became the killer app to drive sales of these products.

As mentioned in the intro, 3D gaming engines and hardware aren’t the only long-lasting legacies we can attribute to Quake. The game also popularized online multiplayer gaming. Another huge influence Quake had was in inspiring (and allowing) the growth of a talented modding community. As well as numerous custom maps and campaigns, the moddability of Quake enabled total conversions like Team Fortress and Quake Rally, to drop a few names.

Quake would inspire imitators, tributes, and influence many more 3D gaming titles in the years and decades to come. There have also been several Quake sequels, remakes, and the game even sparked machinima film-making, where a game’s 3D world becomes a movie set. Many modern developers, including the founders of Valve, first cut their teeth on Quake modding.

Nowadays, folks have the luxury of the complete source code for winquake, glquake, quakeworld, and glquakeworld available on GitHub. It was released “for entertainment and educational purposes,” but under GPL, it can be used for possible commercial projects, too. Those into this kind of digital archaeology may also be interested in the GitHub repositories for Quake 2 and Quake III Arena.

In summary, Quake didn’t just splash down with one big innovation; it was the weight of multiple key advances that made it so important to the history and the future of PC gaming.

A curious new game titled Congratulations On Your Purchase recently appeared on PC digital marketplaces priced at $999. Its main claim to fame is that it is proudly “the most expensive game on Steam.” Buyers who purchase, download, and run this title will enjoy “a first-person luxury experience set inside a palace.” Perhaps most importantly, though, they will collect a ‘golden ticket’ Steam Achievement showing “you are now one of us” with the $999 proudly displayed at its center. It might be a cynical exercise in tapping into those compelled into conspicuous consumption, or it might be satire.

While Congratulations On Your Purchase asks for premium money, viewing the promotional video and screenshots doesn’t really give us palatial, luxury, exclusive vibes. It is more like being transported into a game credits screen where one is being congratulated for completing a Nintendo 64 game. The minimum system requirements of a GTX 1060 or RX 580 definitely seem like overkill for this 3D walking simulator ‘adventure.’

However, the gameplay, which can last about 10 minutes if you stretch it out, isn’t the point. “The most expensive game on Steam. A palace, a red carpet, paparazzi, and a wall where you leave your name — visible to every owner who comes after you. Ten minutes,” reads the Steam sales pitch – which may be AI-generated according to the small print. “The price is not a mistake. It is the point.”

Further insight into how the devs hope to get their hooks into the target audience to reel in $999 a pop is provided by the Steam page. “You paid for this. Not accidentally. Not on impulse. You saw the price. You read the description. And then you bought it anyway. Welcome.”

Towards the end of the Steam page sales pitch, the devs add a paragraph on the philosophical value of this kind of purchase. Of course, the answer isn’t discouraging towards the level of expense. Rather, the choice of how, when, and where to spend your cash is claimed to be “philosophically speaking, unanswerable.”

While Congratulations On Your Purchase may also be satirical, it can be added to your Steam Cart, purchased, and thus might raise a nice bit of pocket money for the devs at Minimum Viable Prestige and the publishers Worth It Studio. Visiting the game's associated website at www.steamelite.zone seems to confirm there have been two buyers, so far, leaving two personalized messages on the Congratulations On Your Purchase wall. We'd also grumble that this Steam game isn't even original in its satire/cynicism, as it shares much in common with the $999 Apple iOS app from the noughties dubbed I Am Rich.

Our conclusion is that you should definitely spend your money elsewhere this Amazon Prime Day week.

Earlier this year, Epic Games admitted its launcher sucked and committed to building a newer one that's much more competitive with Steam. Yesterday, at Unreal Fest, the company unveiled a roadmap for the next 12 months, promising significant upgrades in the form of Epic Games Launcher V2. The platform is being rebuilt internally so it's faster and includes a lot more features that will bring it up to parity with Valve's offering.

The biggest change is a redesigned storefront that's truly personalized to the individual user. Games will be recommended based on taste and playstyle, while the game pages will try to do more than just show the price, title, and cover. Epic Games Store already looks more modern than Steam, so the visual efforts are appreciated, but it's the underlying speediness and a sense of curation that will really matter.

The v2 launcher will supposedly open up 5x faster on average upon cold boots, while restoring it from the system tray will be 6.5x faster on average. That's a huge improvement, but keep in mind that Epic got these numbers from a ridiculous test bench comprised of a 32-core AMD Threadripper, an RTX A6000, and 128GB of RAM. Not exactly consumer-grade hardware, especially during these times.

There's a lot more coming apart from the upgraded storefront. For instance, Epic will finally add sprawling player profiles with avatars and your game activity. That will enable everything from DMs to better voice chat and game-independent parties. You'll be able to write manual reviews for games instead of relying on star ratings. Developers will be able to add their own patch notes, directly integrated inside the store, aided by a new notification system that'll inform players of the coinciding update.

The roadmap itself is split into three distinct categories: Up First, Up Next, and On Deck. Chunked installation of Fortnite is among the first new features we'll see, along with cross-region gifting and a private beta for Epic Games Launcher V2. Then, some of the aforementioned improvements are mentioned in the Up Next list, which will also bring the public beta of the new launcher for everyone to try.

Finally, things like universal controller support, akin to Steam's extensive toolset, will debut toward the end of the next 12 months. New APIs meant to help developers better understand the player base will be part of this update. The redesigned storefront is also part of this timeframe, so don't expect it in the following months. Perhaps the most interesting feature mentioned here is third-party communities, which, if implemented right, could be as useful as Steam Forums.

All of these little changes, along with the more prominent ones, will combine to form the Epic Games Launcher V2. If this timeline is to be believed, by this time next year, we'll have a much more competitive and robust EGS than ever before. Steam is a great platform in its own right, but competition is always important to drive innovation. Regardless of what you feel about Epic, the company's efforts to rebuild its launcher are ultimately better for the consumer.