Well, this is something new. Human Head Studios, who have developed and just released Rune 2 yesterday on the Epic Games Store as an exclusive release, today announced their studio was shutting down. At the same time, Bethesda announced it was founding a new game studio, Roundhouse Studios, which would be fully populated by the Human Head Studios' staff, left unemployed from the closure of that developing label. While it's obviously great that in effect nobody was left unemployed... Does this "make sense much"?

It does. However, there are some interesting tidbits to this story. One of the more pressing questions is: how will Rune 2 be supported in the future? That question wasn't addressed by now Roundhouse Studios Creative Director Chris Rhinehart - we just assume the game has been released in an "as is" state and it doesn't matter whether there are some breaking bugs in that release. Any reported bug will be filed under "no developer found; won't fix". There are also some more interesting nuances to this deal, though. You might remember Human Head Studios previously worked on Prey 2, with Bethesda acting as publisher, but was removed from the project after the studio declined Bethesda's offer to buy Human Head Studios. This action cost the studio the IP, and led them towards development of Rune 2. However, all of that bad blood has seemingly been left behind them, according to press releases from both parties. You can read those after the break.

Free games are always hard to pass, so if you are craving some meaty releases to tide you over until something new and fresh that catches your fancy comes along, this Epic Games Store might (and might not) be for you. From October 17th through October 24th, the digital storefront so many love to hate is offering two generally well thought-off games i the form of Observer and Alan Wake's American Nightmare.

Whether you crave a meaty, cyberpunk-inspired detective story in Observer, or a not so meaty, all-hell-broken-lose experience set in the excellent Alan Wake universe, you can drop by your Epic Games Store Launcher (we know you have it installed, come on) and just add them to your cart for free. They're yours to keep forever. And if you don't have the Epic Games Store launcher, perhaps you should. Observer might very well make it worth all the hassle of downloading and clicking through a menu three or four times. And as a very relevant footnote, the Epic Games Store has just started its Halloween Sale, which goes from today, October 18th, through November 1st. You can find some older games discounted up to 70%, with the discount decreasing somewhat linearly according to release date.

Rockstar Games revealed that its hotly anticipated PC version of "Red Dead Redemption 2" will launch across three digital platforms. Pre-orders for the game will open on Rockstar Games Launcher on October 9th. At launch on November 5th, the game will be available on the Epic Games Store. This "exclusivity" will remain for a month, when in December, the game becomes available on Steam. Both Steam and Epic Games Store form concentric DRM layers to the Rockstar Games Launcher, and the game will be available on this launcher throughout, including pre-orders. Buyers are expected to be drawn to Epic Games Store or Steam to take advantage of regional pricing.

Well, Quantic Dream has been on a roll launching its formerly PlayStation-exclusive titles in a remastered form on the PC platform. I hope you've been having fun with them - if you crave strong, cinematic storytelling and complicated, branching choices and dynamic narratives, David Cages' brainchilds will be right up your proverbial alley. And it seems the PC versions of the games are well optimized and have more than adequate compatibility and stability - and I might be making the ports a disservice by using those particular adjectives. Just keeping your expectations in check.

I'd say this is one of the more aspiring stories told by Quantic Dream - easily. The scenarios that play out in the course of the game are all too real (at least in my own personal view of society and our systems) not to take a look at. It's a human dream, this one game. Take a look at the trailer after the break. Detroit: Become Human will be available for the PC platform via the Epic Games Store, and is expected to drop before the end of this year.

Epic Games, as part of the company's $100 million Epic MegaGrants program, is awarding the Blender Foundation $1.2 million in cash to further the success of Blender, the free and open source 3D creation suite that supports the full range of tools empowering artists to create 3D graphics, animation, special effects or games.

The Epic MegaGrants initiative is designed to assist game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing outstanding work with Unreal Engine or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community.

EPIC CEO Tim Sweeney in a veritable Tweetstorm detailed EPIC's strategy on gaming exclusivity a bit more - and to listen to the CEO, EPIC is doing this as a way to break Steam's grasp on the PC games distribution market and their 30/70 distributor's cut. Asked on games exclusivity and their usage as a digital storefront strategy, Sweeney said that EPIC "believes exclusives are the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo at a large enough scale to permanently affect the whole game industry." He also says that this split is a "disastrous situation for developers and publishers alike."

Sweeney says that other independent storefronts that have been launched over the years (we imagine he's speaking of GOG and Humble Bundle, just to name a few), "none seem to have reached 5% of Steam's scale." He goes on to say that "this leads to the strategy of exclusives which, though unpopular with dedicated Steam gamers, do work, as established by the major publisher storefronts and by the key Epic Games store releases compared to their former Steam revenue projections and their actual console sales." His stance is that EPIC's 12/88 split is fairer for developers (stating that a 30% cut would almost totally cut into their profits), and that this additional money that enters studios' pockets will necessarily be split among "(1) reinvestment, (2) profit, and (3) price reduction", and that in this way, EPIC's solution is both proportionate to the problem, and a move that will benefit gamers in the long run.

EPIC today announced their first ever EPIC Mega Sale, which brings a pretty linear discount across the games catalogue the online store has available for purchase. The company announced it is slashing at least $10/£10/€10 from every game priced above $14.99/£13.99/€15.99. This includes preorders on their own page, which means you can pre-purchase one of those soon to be released Quantic Dream games on the cheap (Heavy Rain and Beyond: two Souls can be yours for €9.99 right now, for instance), and Close to the Sun for €19.99. So if you are looking for some Epic Games Store exclusives (such as Metro Exodus for €34.99), go on and run.

Update: A clarification was sent out earlier today where Epic said that they won't stop supporting Rocket League on Steam, as they never could actually do, since legions of players that had already purchased the game on that platform would pick up their pitchforks with a vengeance. However, wording on Epic's clarification leaves much to be desired, and seemingly confirms that the game will not be available on Steam:

"The PC version of Rocket League will come to the Epic Games store in late 2019. In the meantime, it will continue to be available for purchase on Steam; thereafter it will continue to be supported on Steam for all existing purchasers. (...) "Rocket League remains available for new purchasers on Steam, and long-term plans will be announced in the future."

Epic Games has announced the acquisition of Rocket League developer Psyonix, which created one of the most addictive non/Battle Royale game of recent times. The move by Epic will see the games- introduction to the Epic Games Store, with platform exclusivity confirmed for late 2019 / which means that anyone looking to purchase the game on a PC/centric digital storefront will have to go to Epic's, since Steam will be leaving the vendor equation.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has come out with an interesting commitment: that EPIC would stop hunting for exclusives in the PC platform is Steam were to match them in their 88% return to developers for each game sold. Being a developer themselves, Epic games have certainly looked into creating their own storefront as a way to escape the clutches of Steam's cut in the digital, PC distribution market (a move that had already been done by the likes of EA and Ubisoft, if you'll remember). A commitment to stop hunting for exclusives (and thus segregating the PC games offering across different platforms) is a clear indicator of Epic's mission with the Epic Games Store: to bring back power and returns to developers such as them (while taking a cut from the profits for themselves, obviously).

Check out after the break for the full content of Sweeney's remarks regarding their Games Store and the problem with Steam. I, for one, don't see much of a problem with virtual segregation of games across multiple PC-bound platforms - one of the strengths of PC gaming is actually the ability to install multiple applications that increase functionality, after all. But if the end game of all of this is simply to give more back to developers and Epic's move facilitates that by forcing Valve's hand in matching them for fear of drying profits - then so be it.

Ubisoft has pulled the upcoming entry to its smash-hit RTS franchise, "Anno 1800" from Steam. For the PC platform, the game will be available only through Ubisoft's own UPlay, and the Epic Games Store, which continues to vacuum AAA titles from Steam on the promise of higher revenue share for the game developers. Ubisoft is giving Steam fans a chance to put their money where their mouths are, though.

You will be able to pre-order "Anno 1800" on Steam until April 16. The pre-ordered game will remain in your Steam library, and you will receive updates for the game through Steam. Also, people who purchased the game on Steam will be able to play multiplayer with those who bought their copies through UPlay or Epic Games Store. This presents Steam fans with a unique opportunity to tell a big studio like Ubisoft what they want.

Bethesda had concerned a few people last year when they had announced most of their new games would be available on the PC platform only via their own store and launcher, at least initially. People were quick to speculate whether this was Bethesda wanting a bigger share of the pie than Steam would allow, which is hilarious in hindsight with everything Epic Game Store related since then, and also whether this was because they were worried that Fallout 76, the first of these games affected by said decision, would have generate refunds galore on Steam as a result of bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Today Bethesda took to social media to make good on their promise, saying that all their upcoming games will be simultaneously available on both Steam and the Bethesda Store, including Rage 2, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot.

Interestingly, it will still be a while before Fallout 76 will make its way on Steam, which does not help its cause as far as far as having a depreciating player base goes. The move in general also plays into the larger dynamics of PC game stores, with game exclusives suddenly becoming a valid point of consideration as the competition from Epic Games heats up. It is also interesting to see how few complaints there are online of how these games are not available on, say, the Epic Games Store, or Discord, or GoG, and points further to the loyalty-factor of the populace complaining about exclusives on PC game stores in 2019.

Randy Pitchford is an interesting character even as game company CEOs go, with a.. checkered history in the last few months that go from funny all the way to controversial at minimum. As the head of Gearbox, he holds a lot of power when it comes to the Borderlands franchise, which itself teased a third numbered entry to be revealed at PAX East later this month. His social media activity has been a prime example of what not to do as a CEO owing to some personal and professional issues alike, which meant that this latest tease not only got people looking at more about the Borderlands franchise, but also his twitter account.

Users dug up an old tweet from December 2018 wherein he claimed he was "excited to support the Epic Games Store", and this was enough to initiate concerns that Borderlands 3 might be an exclusive to the Epic Games Store on the PC platform. Subsequent replies did nothing to quell these concerns, although there was nothing to confirm anything either. This may all be making a mountain out of an imaginary molehill, but it makes sense for Epic Games to go after Borderlands 3 to get more customers on their side- especially knowing that such exclusivity deals could be in the millions of US dollars. We will know more when the game is officially announced, so keep an eye out for that.

We reported earlier this month how Steam users were resorting to review bombing of the previous game entries in the Metro franchise, mostly driven by Deep Silver/Koch Media's decision to take Metro Exodus over to the Epic Games Store for a timed exclusive. 4A developers commented on how this could impact further game development on the PC platform, and that ended up being more kindling to the fire despite some language communication gaps in play. Metro Exodus has since launched, and has been getting reviews from the media and players alike, with the former mostly agreeing it is a good game, but not necessarily as good as the previous entries were. The latter, however, is where things got interesting- especially on Steam.

For those who were able to add the game to their Steam library before it got moved, and there are a lot of those too given Metro Exodus rose to the top spot of best selling titles once that news broke, the game appears to be more than satisfactory at first glance. While many were expecting users to review bomb the title negatively again, the current status of the game on Steam is "Very Positive" as far as user reviews go. Discussions have been mostly on point as well, until you dig deeper. The most helpful reviews, as rated by other Steam users, are really just a dig at the Epic Games Store, with language used that is less mature than the game rating itself. Newer reviews continue to do the same, so perhaps this was an attempt by many to appease the game publisher by leaving positive reviews of the game, but still making it more about the Epic Games store than the game itself. Not the best way to go about things, but it is still better than review bombing the game.

The drama surrounding Metro Exodus continues unabated. Deep Silver which has ownership over the IP, was the one that decided to pull Metro Exodus from Steam in favor of a 1-year timed exclusivity deal on the Epic Games Store. If you've been following the drama thus far this is all public information. Furthermore, it was speculated that this move was made at the very last minute considering other retailers were originally advertising preorders as being Steam keys for quite some time right up until the news of the digital platform switch broke. Lending more credence to the fact this was a disruptive switch at the last minute is the physical packaging which was not altered for the game's launch and instead has a sticker covering the Steam logo. Truly for such an outstanding game, the mess of its launch should be remembered as a great example of how not to release a game.

"Metro Exodus" is the week's big AAA PC launch, and the latest entry to the post-apocalyptic horror-survival shooter franchise by 4A Games. The Ukrainian studio recently pulled the game from Steam and made it an exclusive with rival DRM platform Epic Games, in pursuit of a higher revenue-share. This invited inexplicable hatred from Steam users, who appear to have review-bombed the game on review ratings aggregator Metacritic.

Metacritic presents averages of reviews by media publications and user-reviews side-by-side. This is vital as it helps uninformed or undecided gamers know if a game is overrated by the media. In case of "Exodus," Much of the 0-rated user-reviews include lines that criticize the game's non-availability on Steam or its withdrawal from the platform. The Metacritic review-bombing is the latest episode in a long saga of animosity between Steam users and "Exodus" developer 4A Games. 4A Games did initially solicit pre-orders for the game on Steam, and abruptly stopped its sales late-January. Those who had pre-ordered would continue to receive the game and its updates. 4A muddied the waters further by responding to initial criticism from Steam users by threatening to desert the PC platform as a whole, inviting more bile from some really angry gamers. The game received "generally positive" reviews from professional game reviewers.

For those who got lucky enough to pre-order Metro Exodus on Steam before its defection to the Epic Games store are now able to pre-load the title in preparation for its launch. It will require 51 GB of storage space, so if your connection is a bit slower, you'll be waiting a while for it to download, which means the Steam pre-load period quite beneficial. For those that bought the title elsewhere and have to go through the Epic Game store, you will have to wait for the official launch since the platform does not currently support preloading of soon to be released games. This will likely make those with slower connections a bit irked since it means they will be waiting even longer to play the title come release day.

The fact Metro Exodus was pulled from Steam but can still be preloaded on the platform, while the Epic Game store will force users to wait will likely just add to the drama and controversy. However, if you step away for a moment and focus on the game itself one thing remains breathtakingly clear, the game is quite astonishing in regards to the graphics, even with RTX disabled. You can take a closer look for yourself in our performance analysis of Metro Exodus.

Epic Games wants a slice of next-generation NVIDIA GameWorks titles that are bound to leverage the RTX feature-set of its hardware. The latest version of Unreal Engine 4, released as a preview-build, comes with a host of real-time ray-tracing features. In its change-log for Unreal Engine 4.22 Preview, Epic describes its real-time ray-tracing feature to be a "low level layer on top of UE DirectX 12 that provides support for DXR and allows creating and using ray tracing shaders (ray generation shaders, hit shaders, etc) to add ray tracing effects."

The hardware being reference here are the RT cores found in NVIDIA's "Turing RTX" GPUs. At the high-level, Unreal Engine 4 will support close to two dozen features that leverage DXR, including a denoiser for shadows, reflections, and ambient occlusion; rectangular area lights, soft shadows, ray-traced reflections and AO, real-time global illumination, translucency, triangular meshes, and path-tracing. We could see Unreal Engine 4.22 get "stable" towards the end of 2019, to enable DXR-ready games of 2020.

When Steam hit critical mass in the mid 2000s, digital distribution of games was close to non-existent, Internet speeds were too low to transmit 8-10 GB games that would ship in DVDs, and game patching was a mess. Steam solved many of these problems by offering distribution, DRM, aftersales support (automatic updates), and even multiplayer services across its network. Steam didn't become popular on its own, though. Valve Software was mainly a game developer, and it marketed Steam by making its AAA smash-hits "Half Life 2" (and its episodes), "Counter Strike," and "Left 4 Dead," exclusive to the DRM platform. Even if you bought those games on DVDs, they would have to be installed and supported through a Steam account. Those games served as tech-demonstrators for Steam, and how efficient an all-encompassing DRM platform can work.

Steam maintained its dominance for a good 8-odd years until big game publishers such as EA and Ubisoft wised up to the concept of multi-brand distribution platforms Steam mastered. Steam operates on a revenue-sharing model. For every Dollar spent on a game, a percentage of the money is retained by Steam toward its services. EA and Ubisoft figured it wasn't rocket-science to copy Steam, and came up with their own platforms, EA Origin, and Ubisoft UPlay, both of which are multi-brand. They figured their capital-expenditure toward running these platforms was less than what they'd pay Steam at scale. EA restricted all its titles to Origin, while Ubisoft made some of its games available on Steam, even though UPlay would remain a concentric DRM layer to those games. Then something changed in 2018.

We reported yesterday how Metro Exodus unceremoniously left Steam for a year-long exclusivity deal on the Epic Game store, one of many steps that Epic and Tencent are taking to challenge the Goliath of PC gaming storefronts itself. Valve was quick in putting out a rare statement yesterday, which has been updated since to reflect the status of the game on Steam, and it can be seen below verbatim, with THQ Nordic's take on this matter past the break.

Notice: Sales of Metro Exodus have been discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store. The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam. We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know.

Metro Exodus is an upcoming post-apocalyptic first-person shooter that could be a trilogy finale. Just weeks ahead of its launch on the PC platform, 4A Games made a groundbreaking announcement: that the game will not be available to order on Steam, at least from tomorrow through Feb 14, 2020, and that its PC version will be an Epic Games Store timed exclusive. The game will launch at USD $49.99 in North America, and 59.95€ in the EU.

Pre-order sales of the game have stopped on Steam, however, those who bought the pre-order on Steam have the option of either receiving the game upon launch, or canceling their pre-order for a full refund. Those who choose to stick to Steam will get their game as usual, including update patches, and support on Steam Community. Epic Games Store is vacuuming game studios in droves due to a favorable revenue sharing deal compared to Steam, when lets developers keep 88 percent of the sales.

The Independent has conducted an investigative report into the underwold's usage of Fortnite as a venue for money laundering. This likely won't come as a surprise - Fortnite has pretty lax acquisition restrictions for its in-game content and V-bucks, and the world's most popular multiplayer game moves millions of players through its servers daily. with such a deep pool of likely buyers for anything Fortnite at under Fortnite-store pricing, the stage is set for an almost untraceable money laundering scheme.

The Epic Games Store with its aggressive developer earnings program is drilling away at Steam's already-installed hegemony as the PC gaming platform of choice. A mere 12% royalty for the storefront means much more money goes back to the developers, and the more copies are sold of a given game, the bigger the profit will become. This is why some games have already even left Steam's shores to find a home on the Epic Games Store, and now, a AAA title in The Division 2 will be skipping Steam entirely. With launches on Ubisoft's own store and an 88% cut on the Epic store, Ubisoft will be looking to maximize their profits.

That part of the story is done; Ubisoft has also outed the system requirements for the PC version of The Division 2, which, for a minimum of 30 FPS at 1080p, will require either an AMD FX-6350 or Intel Core I5-2500K CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and 2 GB of video RAM on an AMD Radeon R9 270 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 670.

The launch of the new Epic Games store for the PC has created many an aftershock in the gaming industry, including Steam updating their revenue share model, but the games press and media alike were quick to discuss implications more so for the equally new Discord store that understandably is more in line as far as breaking into the market goes, and impact from competition accordingly. In a series of moves that no doubt pleases game developers and publishers alike, Discord announced that they are going to offer a 90/10 revenue distribution with 90% in favor of developers- an increase over the industry leading "up to 88%" from Epic Games until then.

There is a small catch in that Discord is allowing developers to self-publish the games if they so desire, which in turn is how they will get that 90% revenue share, so it remains to be seen how user friendly that process is. Discord in their blog post made a big point about how it does not cost 30% to distribute games in 2018, a move that will no doubt be examined throughout not only the gaming industry but every single online app distribution platform where a 70/30 split is the current industry standard. As long as this move enables the store to break even and churn out a profit, we would like to see more of this happening to where game developers get more money and do not feel compelled to work ridiculously long hours.

Epic Games has been pulling a few major moves in the PC gaming market lately, none bigger than creating their own game store and following up with shifting over some of their games from Steam. The company promises a more lucrative profit distribution share to developers (to which Valve had preemptively countered slightly with their own Steam revenue update), and that did help get some game developers and publishers on board, including Supergiant with their new games Hades.

To appease the cautious PC audience thus far, Epic Games has decided to begin with some free games for account holders. As of the time of this post, the excellent aquatic survival game Subnautica is up for grabs. The game was somewhat of a sleeper hit this year, and well worth the free price of admission for anyone interested. The game is available through December 27, after which Epic Games will offer Super Meat Boy for free the following two weeks.

Epic Games is moving its entire collection of digitally-sold games away from Steam, and on to its own new store+DRM platform rivaling Steam, Origin, and UPlay. The new Epic Games Store plans not only to sell games published by Epic, but also other third-party publishers, to whom Epic is promising an 88% revenue share (keeping a 12% thin margin for handing DRM, unlimited downloads, and update patch distribution). For comparison, Steam rakes in a 30% margin. Epic is offering additional incentives to third-party game studios who use Unreal Engine. Epic Games titles are being pulled out from Steam store. The move does not affect people who already own Epic titles on Steam, as future re-installs and patch updates will continue.