Overwatch 2’s new Antarctic Peninsula map will drop with the launch of season 3 on February 7, and in it, you can find penguins, snow, and a sort-of-functional ice fishing spot.

The Control map has three distinct points to capture: one that takes place in science labs, another that surrounds a mining drill, and a third on an icebreaker ship. Each of them are surrounded in natural paths made of ice and snow, which was a considerable challenge to make, according to its designers.

“We’re used to working on you know, sort of modular, street, city-based stuff that has a lot of like real world reference, that’s great to look at. All of a sudden, we say we’re gonna do Antarctica and you Google ‘Antarctic,’ and you go, oh, you know, that’s a problem,” level designer Trey Sp…

Blizzard’s games have been published in China by NetEase for 14 years, a partnership that has been enormously successful for both companies. The Chinese publisher’s rapacious growth over the last decade was turbo-charged by the money it made from the games’ success and, while NetEase’s success can hardly be attributed solely to that, it is now one of the largest internet and videogame companies in the world.

But things have gone sour in a manner that, given the size of the respective companies, can only be called hilariously petty.

It was announced late last year that the Blizzard-NetEase deal would not be renewed. This sparked a minor war of words between the companies and, last week, Blizzard blamed NetEase for the problems after it refused to agree to a six month e…

At first glance, our story earlier this week about the imminent RTX 4090 export ban seems like something only China has to worry about. But not so fast. It could have an impact closer to home.

Tom’s Hardware reports that RTX 4090 prices are going haywire in China, with supplies drying up and the few that are available now doubling in price. Back home, there are already signs that the rush to bag RTX 4090s in China before the ban kicks in next month could be pushing prices up.

The cheapest RTX on Newegg as we write these words is this Zotac item for $1,699, well above the $1,599 MSRP set by Nvidia. Incidentally, the RTX 4090 is currently out of stock on Nvidia’s store.

The next cheapest 4090 on Newegg is a $1,729 MSI card. It’s similar situation on Amazon, with the chea…

Last weekend the North American finals of the Apex Legends Global Series was abruptly called off after two players suffered mid-match hacks that enabled cheating software. The word is that this was down to a remote code execution (RCE) exploit, a particularly nasty form of intrusion that’s such bad news that Easy Anti Cheat (used in Apex) was stung to issue its own rebuttal asserting “there is no RCE vulnerability” in its software.

Easy Anti-Cheat got out of the gate before EA and Respawn, but the Apex developer has finally commented on the incident. Not that it’s saying much.

“On Sunday, a few professional Apex Legends player accounts were hacked during an ALGS event, ” says a Respawn statement. “Game and player security are our highest priorities, whic…

Update #1: Asus has confirmed the ROG Ally, its own handheld gaming PC, is real. This follows a painfully long-winded April Fools’ Day ‘joke’ announcing the product.

To get you up to speed, the ROG Ally is a handheld gaming PC that Asus announced on April Fools’ Day and confirmed to be a joke. Then they kept going on about it after the fact and now two days later they’re revealing the actual April Fools’ Day joke was that it was real all along. 

Basically, there’s no joke, never was.

Update #2: We have some concrete info on what’s powering the ROG Ally (not A Lie). 

Dave2D has the details, and confirms that inside the ROG Ally is a custom AMD SoC built on TSMC’s 4nm process node. It houses a Zen 4 CPU and an RDNA 3 …

Use our tips, tricks, and brand new Saturday clue to give your daily Wordle the best possible start. Feel free to take a look at our hint for the August 31 (1169) game if you’d like to make sure your guesses are headed in the right direction, or go straight for the win with today’s answer. However you like to play, we can help.

After yesterday’s struggle, I was pleased (and more than a little relieved) to see today’s Wordle reveal itself quickly and without any real fuss. Just me, some green letters, some more green letters, and then the warm fuzzy glow that comes from solving a weekend Wordle. Perfect.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, August 31

Pouring liquids and liquids themselves are the theme today. This is the long tea…

CD Projekt has confirmed that the addition of detailed vaginas to female monsters was in fact a mistake, and will be removed.

There was already plenty of nudity in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but the next-gen update that arrived in December upped the ante somewhat. As we saw last week, both the Crones of Crookback Bog (in their human forms) and the vampiric bruxae that appear in the Blood and Wine expansion were given significantly changed pubic areas in the update, taking them from a “Barbie doll situation” to the full monty, complete with visible labia and nicely coiffed public hair.

You can see the changes thanks to screens posted on Reddit, which for obvious reasons I would not recommend clicking on if you’re at work and they’re not cool with full frontal nudity.

(Or…

Looking for a hint for today’s Wordle? Then you’ve got one. Waiting a little further down the page is a fresh clue for Wednesday’s game. Not looking for a hint, and would actually quite like someone to help you win this thing instead? No problem. The answer to the May 29 (1075) Wordle is here too.

It looked like I’d guessed my way into a tight spot today, but in truth I was exactly where I needed to be. Between the greys and greens I’d already uncovered, there was only one unlikely combination left by the end—today’s Wordle answer.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, May 29

Today’s answer is used exclusively to refer to things related to the pope. Someone might receive a _____ blessing, or if the pope visited somewhere t…

A Valve designer has revealed that at least one developer associated with the company is working on spinning up HDR for Linux gaming.

Joshua Ashton, who works on key bits of tech like DXVK and VKD3D-Proton, has apparently gotten HDR properly going. The development was noted by Steam Deck developer Pierre-Loup Griffais via Twitter, where he showed off both Halo Infinite and Deep Rock Galactic.

I find it specifically very spicy to play Microsoft’s flagship series on a Linux machine. There’s something deliciously heretical about that.

For avid Steam Deck watchers eager to read the tea leaves on new hardware developments at valve, this milestone seems significant. This announcement could lend some hope to the idea that the next Steam Deck will ship with a powerfully bright…