Valve recently announced that it was adding an opt-in toggle to enable data collection in Steam for the Steam Deck, with the idea behind the new feature being that developers could analyze the reported framerate data using Steam's built-in tools to better optimize their games for the handheld's hardware. In a new Steam Client update, however, Valve has confirmed that it will start sharing that same average Steam Deck framerate data with players before they buy the game, so that they can get a relatively accurate idea of what to expect from the gameplay experience before spending money on the game.

The framerate data will be displayed as an average at the bottom of the Steam Deck compatibility screen as an FPS figure specific to the player's current hardware. The figure will also cite the date the average was last updated. Clicking or tapping the dropdown arrow next to the framerate note will expand a histogram showing the game's average framerate distribution across gaming sessions as a percentage. This should, with relative certainty, convey how often players ran into gameplay hitching.

Pressing Shift five times in a row might soon stop summoning the Sticky Keys prompt on Windows 11. Microsoft is updating the dialogs that ask whether you want to turn on Sticky Keys or Filter Keys, adding a way to tell Windows not to ask again directly from the prompt. The change shows up in the release notes for Beta build 26320.9876 and Experimental build 26340.9882, both released to Windows Insiders on November 6. Right now, getting rid of the prompt for good means going into Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard and turning off the keyboard shortcut for each feature. The same Beta build also moves the channel to Windows 11 26H2 and brings Microsoft's rebuilt Windows Search.

This is a small tweak, though it fixes a long-running annoyance for gamers. Plenty of games use Shift to sprint or crouch, which makes it easy to trigger the Sticky Keys shortcut by accident, and the prompt can pull players out of full-screen games. Filter Keys has a similar shortcut that kicks in when the right Shift key is held down for eight seconds. Microsoft's notes don't mention games at all, saying only that it should mean fewer interruptions for people who don't use these features. It looks like another quality-of-life fix from Microsoft's internal push to clean up Windows 11. There's no word on when the updated prompts will reach regular Windows 11 PCs, and Microsoft notes that features in Insider builds may not always ship, so it's reasonable to expect a wait of at least a few weeks.

HWiNFO's newest beta, v8.55-6115, adds recognition for an AMD Radeon RX 7500, a graphics card AMD has not yet announced. The changelog entry is a single line with only the name, so the specs, the GPU underneath, and any launch plans are all unknown for now. The most likely candidate is probably the 6 nm "Navi 33" RDNA 3 chip, which already powers the 28 CU RX 7400 and the fully enabled 32 CU RX 7600. Of course, a card squeezed between those two would leave AMD very little room to work with, so the name is a bit puzzling. AMD hasn't said anything about the card so far, but we have heard the name before.

When the RX 7400 and RX 7300 first appeared in rumors back in 2024, there were rumblings of an RX 7500 XT desktop graphics card, though nothing concrete ever followed. Moving onto other additions to HWiNFO, the same build also adds enhanced support for Intel's Nova Lake-E and Razor Lake-H, HX, and S processors. Razor Lake is the platform expected to follow Nova Lake, and Intel has yet to officially announce it. CPUID added Razor Lake support to CPU-Z 3.02 earlier this week, while HWiNFO picked up preliminary Razor Lake-AX support back in August. With the first Nova Lake-S desktop chips not expected until Q1 2027, retail Razor Lake chips are probably still a long way out.

Digital Extremes, the game studio behind Warframe, has been working on its latest game, Soulframe—an open-world, co-op fantasy action RPG with a strong focus on melee combat—for a number of years, with ongoing invite-only alpha testing having been live since 2023. Although it looked like the game was preparing to launch in some capacity over a year ago, Digital Extremes has waited until November 9 to launch the full-scale open alpha test of Soulframe. This means that the game will no longer require an invitation to play.

Digital Extremes announced the Opem Preludes along with the reveal of the upcoming Verse of the Veilands update, which introduces rideable wolf companions, which players can raise from pups, alongside new weapons and pacts, bosses, and the Veilands, described as a new "environmental world progression system." Soulframe features crafting, weapon progression, story-driven quests, and highly customizable combat and skills.

Not too long ago, the developers behind OpenMouse, the open-source, community-driven alternative mouse configuration suite, revealed that they were working on supporting keyboard customization alongside the myriad gaming mouse models the suite now supports. As per a recent announcement on the project's Discord server, the latest OpenMouse beta release has added support for a number of gaming keyboards from Logitech, Razer, SteelSeries, and Wooting. Initial support also appears to be in development for Wuque Studio and the Kochi Hummingbird 68.

So far, actual feature support also appears to be limited, and the implementation is very much still in beta, with the app connecting correctly to a Wooting 80HE in a brief test but failing to load the proper keymap and failing to adjust the settings correctly. However, the planned feature set appears to be competitive with most proprietary keyboard customization tools, with HE features like adjustable actuation, rapid trigger, toggle key, mod tap, SOCD, and DKS, all present in addition to robust RGB customization and support for layers and profiles. What is notably absent is the ability to remap keys, however.

Microsoft's redesigned File Explorer context menu is now rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Beta channel with build 26220.9757. The new menu first showed up in the Experimental channel back in August, when the File Explorer team admitted that the Windows 11 right-click menu had grown cluttered and sluggish over time, partly because every app that adds its own entries makes the menu do extra work each time it opens. The redesign trims the top level down to commonly used actions and adds a new Settings page, reachable through a "Customize menu" link at the bottom of the menu, where users can pick what shows up.

Going by Microsoft's August post, the customization goes fairly deep. Built-in commands such as Send to and Create shortcut can be toggled on or off, Print can be added, and app extensions can sit in the main menu or a submenu, or be hidden entirely. Cut, Copy, Paste, Rename, Delete, and Share can also be shown as text instead of a row of icons, and Properties can be moved to the bottom. A first-time teaching tip may also pop up to point people toward those options. Microsoft says it will keep refining the design based on Insider feedback, so some of this could still change.

Even while Valve transitioned its Steam client to 64-bit, its Linux client has remained stuck in 32-bit land, but it appears as though that is finally slated to change, with a new 64-bit Steam client for Linux finally launching in the beta branch. This follows on the recent announcement of the beta RT3 client earlier in 2026 marking the start of the transition and promising a more consistent experience across different Linux distributions.

The launch of the 64-bit beta comes alongside Steam's new Achievement Sets update that allows developers to group base game, DLC, and other achievements based on categories. There is also a new achievements page to more easily track game achievements. Ahead of the latest beta launch, Valve also responded to Epic Games's new vibe-coded Epic Games Launcher beta with a mainline Steam client update that resulted in significantly faster cold-start times.

Intel today released the latest Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.9034 Beta comes with optimization for "Gears of War: E-Day," and "Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve." The driver release notes don't specify any new issues being fixed with this release, but Intel identified a handful new issues to fix in future driver updates. This is a beta driver, and so it's only recommended to use this if you plan on playing "Gears of War: E-Day," or "Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve" over the weekend. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.9034 Beta

Due to popular demand, Embark is expanding its support for PvE, co-op-only mode, which it started with friendly lobbies that which placed non-aggressive players together in the same servers after they had proved their dedication to the PvE grind. As per a recent update by Embark Studios, Arc Raiders will get a dedicated co-op/PvE mode for testing in October. This is according to a new blog post by Embark Studios, who says that the new PvE beta test will last a week, running from October 13-20.

Unlike the previous system, where players were matched based on their aggression, the new PvE mode will allow players to manually toggle either PvE-only or classic PvPvE gameplay, and PvE mode will completely disable friendly fire, meaning no accidentally downing a teammate with bad aim. PvE will be handled separately from PvPvE when it comes to matchmaking rankings, and it will feature the same Solos, Duos, and Trios gameplay, with all team structures playing alongside one-another in the same sessions. Following that test, Embark will evaluate whether a pure PvE mode has a place in Arc Raiders, and it specifically says that "this test is not a promise that there will be a PvE mode in the future."

The latest HWiNFO 8.53 beta (build 6075) lists "Improved Nova Lake QS support and fixed SA VID reporting" in its changelog, as spotted by VideoCardz. QS stands for qualification sample, a stage that comes well after the early engineering samples that Intel sends to partners, and it usually sits much closer to retail silicon. HWiNFO has mentioned Nova Lake before, including enhanced support for the mobile Nova Lake-H and HX chips, but this is the first changelog line we've seen that names QS silicon directly. That strongly suggests Nova Lake hardware is very close to its retail form.

The System Agent VID fix is a small detail, but it looks like HWiNFO's developer is working with real telemetry rather than just adding a new identification string. That would suggest at least some developers or validation partners already have Nova Lake QS hardware, although this is an inference from one changelog line. Intel hasn't confirmed Nova Lake launch dates yet; however, previous reports point to an early 2027 release. Leaked roadmaps suggest 28-core desktop parts will arrive first, with the 52-core flagship arriving later in 2027.

Valve has been tweaking and adjusting Steam's Big Picture and handheld client UI since the launch of the Steam Deck, and now, with the Steam Machine making its way to the hands of gamers, it seems as though the gaming giant is reevaluating its UI once again. This time, a new Steam beta has launched, featuring Big Art Mode, a new mode that more or less mimics the functionality of a third-party community-driven tool called DeckyLoader.

The new Big Art Mode can be optionally enabled, and it basically expands game thumbnails to a large vertical shelf at the bottom of the display, with the highlighted game's artwork scaled to fill in the background, instead of showing the customary grid with games in their shelves. This new Big Art Mode is also accompanied by several other new customization features, including new custom screensavers, and a new optional personal calendar on the Home screen.

KDE Plasma is by far one of the most popular and recommended desktop environments in the Linux world, and it seems as though the development team has no plans to slow down. In the latest KDE Plasma 6.8 release, which is building to a September beta 1, there are numerous improvements to both performance and user interface that should be included in the eventual October stable launch of Plasma 6.8. The upcoming changes were detailed in the weekly This Week in KDE blog post.

The first change that most people will notice when they first update is that the lock screen now features selectable authentication types and better button alignment. Automatic brightness now also intelligently learns brightness preferences when users manually adjust their brightness. Performance improvements come by way of significantly reduced RAM usage by the Discover background notifier process, improved Plasma login speed, better speed and efficiency of the KWin screenshot functionality, improved screen recording smoothness when recording high-refresh displays.

Subnautica 2 launched to massive success in mid-May, quickly racking up hundreds of thousands of concurrent players on Steam. Now, three months after launch, Unknown Worlds has announced a new experimental build for the Early Access game, much like it had with the original Subnautica and Below Zero later. The studio says that the experimental branch is part of its dedication to a transparent development process for Subnautica 2.

The experimental build is optionally available on both Steam and Xbox and will allow players to try out upcoming in-game content before it lands in the mainline build of the game. The goal of the experimental build is to crowdsource issues and bugs before new features, changes, and mechanics hit the mainline version of the game, and players will be able to freely switch between builds without affecting their main savegame. At the time of writing, the main focus is on major updates, meaning experimental build players will receive major updates "shortly before" the main branch, but the game studio may also test smaller patches in the experimental branch.

Bungie is seemingly betting on its new Vault Breaker PvE game mode to help bolster Marathon's player counts, even though it only appears to have resulted in a small blip in concurrent player counts when the new game mode launched on July 21. Most recently, Bungie has announced that Marathon's Vault Breaker will be extended.

As of the announcement, Vault Breaker will run until August 18, instead of the previous end date of August 4. The extension was likely implemented in order to gauge interest and player retention in the roguelite PvE mode and gather player feedback after a July 28 update that introduced substantial changes to Vault Breaker, including a new solo queue and enemy AI tweaks that should make solo play in Vault Breaker less punishing.

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls officially started an open beta test on the morning of July 24, but shortly after the beta went live, users started reporting that they could not access the game due to a PlayStation Account error. The beta, went live across PC, PS5, and Xbox platforms, has reportedly been inaccessible to many players for much of the day, with Downdetector showing between 1,500 and 7,000 error reports every 15 minutes by users since the early hours of the open beta. Errors don't seem to be limited to any specific system, which makes sense, since the PlayStation Account login is required for all platforms. Arc System Works and PlayStation have acknowledged the issue, commenting in a post on X that there will be server maintenance until 16:00 PST (01:00 UTC).

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls on XThe MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls Open Beta will be temporarily taken offline for maintenance. The maintenance end time is 4PM PST. Updates will be shared through the game's official channels.

We apologize for the inconveniences this may cause. Thank you for your patience.

NVIDIA has released the GeForce 610.82 Hotfix Beta display driver to address a pair of issues affecting recent Game Ready driver releases. The update resolves stability problems in Halo: Campaign Evolved on GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs when using the 610.xx driver branch. It also fixes intermittent long pauses that could occur during extended Path of Exile 2 gameplay sessions running in DirectX 12 mode. As with all NVIDIA hotfix releases, this is a beta, optional driver. It undergoes a shortened QA cycle and will be pulled once its fixes are rolled into the next official WHQL-certified release. Users seeking maximum stability may prefer to wait for that broader driver update.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 610.82 Beta Driver

Intel today released the latest version of Arc GPU Graphics drivers. Version 101.8864 Beta doesn't include any new game optimizations, but fixes a few important issues specific to its various product lines. To begin with, the drivers fix an issue with "Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced," "Assassin's Creed Shadows," and "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Seige," which causes the game to crash when upgrading GPU drivers if the game's shaders have been compiled with a previous driver version. This fix applies to Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" processor iGPUs, Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete GPUs, Arc A-series "Alchemist" discrete GPUs, Core Ultra Series 1 "Meteor Lake" processors with Arc-branded iGPUs, and Core Ultra Series 2 "Lunar Lake" processors with Arc-branded iGPUs. The drivers also fix display corruption during cutscenes with "LEGO Batman: Legacy of Dark Knight."

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.8864 Beta

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, the new 4v4 tag-team fighting game from Arc System Works and PlayStation Publishing, has an open beta scheduled for July 24-26, ahead of its August 6 release date. This will be the first time players can experience the game outside previous closed beta tests, and it will also see the introduction of Blade to the game for the first time. In total, players will have access to 15 different heroes and villains to play in heated close-quarters combat.

Although it was previously known that there was a beta test coming, Sony just revealed more details about what will be playable in the beta. The Fighting Souls open beta will be available on PS5 and PC via Steam. As confirmed previously, however, there is. Although there is no requirement for a PlayStation Plus account, players will need to have or register an "Account for PlayStation"—seemingly a rebranded PSN account, as we previously reported. This online account requirement was previously confirmed when SteamDB showed that the game would be inaccessible in 132 countries due to PlayStation account restrictions.

Intel today released the latest version of its Arc GPU Graphics drivers. Version 101.8861 Beta comes with optimization for "Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced," "DOOM: The Dark Ages Revelations," "Echos of Aincrad," and "Halo: Campaign Evolved." The optimizations are provided for Intel Arc A-series "Alchemist," and B-series "Battlemage" discrete GPUs, and Intel Core Ultra processors with Intel Arc branded integrated graphics solutions. The drivers don't include any game- or application-specific bug fixes. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.8861 Beta

In April 2026, Natalie Vock, a software engineer famous for contributions to Valve's Linux gaming stack, published a series of patches to improve VRAM usage on Linux, largely directed at devices with dGPUs with limited VRAM, and now that patch has seemingly also been adopted by Valve itself in the latest SteamOS Beta update 3.8.20. The update notes denote this as "Greatly improved VRAM management, improving performance and stability in cases where VRAM is limited," which should help improve performance for Valve's Steam Machine at higher resolutions. Of course, this update should also improve performance for DIY Steam Machines and other dGPU gaming machines running Valve's SteamOS. It should be noted that there may be little to no performance improvements for iGPUs, since they share system memory and VRAM already, and overflowing to system memory was what was causing performance issues.

In Vock's testing and subsequent testing of an implementation of the dmemcg-booster and the patches on CachyOS, performance on low-VRAM GPUs was nearly doubled in some cases, making games that were previously unplayable just barely smooth enough to play on the aging hardware. The SteamOS 3.8.20 Beta update also updates the Mesa graphics driver to a new major release, specifically Mesa version 26.1.2, which adds support for a number of ray tracing features and improves support for new Intel GPU hardware and stability for both frame rates and shader compilation under OpenGL and Vulkan. It also includes fixes for bugs with the Legion Go S SD card reader, issues with streaming in desktop mode, and graphics driver issues preventing Sniper Elite 5 from rendering correctly.

Valve's SteamOS 3.8.6 Beta update has officially been announced, and although it brings the usual list of bug fixes and stability updates, the new update also adds support for a host of new hardware and some software features. For one, it looks as though AMD's work to get HDMI 2.1 functional on Linux is progressing, with SteamOS 3.8.6 bringing support for VRR over HDMI on devices with native HDMI output. The HDMI VRR support is noted as preliminary, so it may still be an imperfect experience, but it seems as though the work is coming along. VRR frame pacing has also been improved, and TCL TVs will now more reliably connect to the handheld via the Steam Deck Dock.

SteamOS 3.8.6 also adds controller support for several new gaming handhelds—specifically, the MSI Claw A1M, 7 AI+ A2VM, 8 AI+ A2VM, A8 BZ2EM, and the OneXPlayer Apex and X1 series—and it improves support for controllers using AccelGyro3D devices, with specific mention of the original Lenovo Legion Go and MSI Claw A1M. The graphics driver has also been updated with improved stability, and the update added graphics features necessary for some games, including Crimson Desert. The update also improves audio over HDMI, and there are several audio bug fixes and stability improvements. Last, but not least, SteamOS will also yet again allow Bluetooth Wake for the Steam Deck LCD, and it enables wake from sleep for connected Steam Controllers.

Intel today released the latest version of Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.8824 Beta comes with Game On optimization for "007: First Light." The drivers also fix issues where "Call of Duty: Black Ops 7," "Call of Duty: Warzone," and "Call of Duty: Black Ops 6" exhibit corruption or crash during gameplay, with Arc B-series discrete GPUs, A-series discrete GPUs, and integrated graphics solutions of Core Ultra Series 3, Series 2, and Series 1 processors.

The drivers also address bugs that cause display corruption during gameplay with "Pragmata," "Resident Evil: Requiem," "Monster Hunter Wilds," "HITMAN: World of Assassination," and "Street Fighter 6" across its entire range of discrete and integrated graphics solutions. A bug related to an intermittent crash with "The Finals" has been addressed for Core Ultra Series 3. Grab the driver from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.8824 Beta

The Khronos Group, the organization behind the Vulkan graphics API that forms the backbone of gaming on Linux, has officially listed the Valve Steam Machine on its database of conformant products. The Steam Machine showed up on the Vulkan database on May 23 sporting Vulkan 1.4 support and AMD Navi 33 GPU hardware. The spec sheet listed in the database indicates that the Steam Machine in question is still on the Linux kernel version 6.16, which is the latest version recently released in the SteamOS Beta 3.85 in mid-May.

While there is no launch date or other novel information listed in the Vulkan database, the addition of the Steam Machine to the database is an indication that Valve may be preparing for an imminent Steam Machine launch. This is also reinforced by the fact that the Steam Machine was submitted to the database with a current version of SteamOS running—even if it is a beta version—suggesting that SteamOS support for the Steam Machine has progressed beyond the previously indicated "initial support" phase. At this point, it seems like one of the last, if not the last, remaining roadblocks hindering the launch of the Steam Machine is the current RAM crisis and its associated hardware shortages.

The KDE Plasma Linux desktop environment is already a feature-rich desktop for both productivity and gaming, but the KDE development team has been hard at work adding ever more features to the DE and polishing the experience. One of the newest additions to KDE, apparently coming in Plasma 6.7 and now available for testing in the Plasma 6.7 Beta, is the introduction of Plasma Bigscreen, which is a new desktop UI built specifically for home theater PC setups, and it looks to be a more open alternative to Steam's Big Picture mode or the SteamOS desktop. Those looking to test out KDE Plasma 6.7 ahead of release can download the beta from KDE.org.

KDE Plasma Bigscreen is fully open source and is designed around a controller friendly desktop interface that uses a similar row-based layout and quick access to settings as SteamOS, but, unlike Valve's SteamOS, you don't need to rely on adding apps to Steam to launch them from the Bigscreen UI. It uses the same Kwin, Qt, KDE Frameworks, and Kirigami underpinnings as desktop Plasma, meaning Plasma Bigscreen users can install just about any apps that are offered by their distribution's package manager or via Flathub. It also works with KDE's customization and theming from within the settings app, which will make Bigscreen highly customizable where SteamOS's fullscreen UI more or less makes you use a plugin to make any significant aesthetic changes. KDE Plasma 6.7 is slated for a full-scale launch in June 2026, and Plasma Bigscreen is expected to be included with Plasma 6.7 as long as nothing goes catastrophically wrong during the beta.

With the launch of the Steam Controller now firmly behind us and shipping slowly getting some momentum, gamers have started speculating about the two remaining products in Valve's 2026 hardware line-up: the Steam Machine and Steam Frame. Now, an update to Valve's Proton 11 Beta 3 indicates that Valve has updated FEX, the Arm64-x86 emulator to run traditional x86 games on the Frame's Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile SoC. The update brings Proton up to FEX-2605, which includes performance improvements for 32- and 64-bit games, improved stability with controllers, and support for newer Qualcomm chipsets.

In addition to the Proton updates, the Steam Frame also now appears on Qualcomm's XR/VR/AR Finder page, where it lists the device's SoC and said that it features "advanced CPU and GPU performance, AI acceleration, and fast connectivity," so there's nothing really of substance there in terms of specifications. It is notable, though, that the Steam Frame is making more and more appearances in the news cycle, thanks to these sorts of updates and the most recent updates to the Steam Store's hardware page. These, along with recent signs that Valve is stocking up US warehouses with both Steam Machine and Frame hardware may be signs that Valve will stick to its original "first half of 2026" launch promises with an imminent launch for the Steam Frame.