Nintendo's latest Switch 2 system update, version 23.5.0, seems to have shut down ns2jb, the console's first software-only jailbreak. Dataminer OatmealDome says the OS exploit the jailbreak relied on is now patched, and that dumping and modding games won't be possible from here on. The one exception, he says, could be some cartridge games, and maybe game updates, released in the near future. Exploits inside individual titles, such as the SmileBASIC 4 programming app and Civilization VII, still work. However, it is no longer possible to break out of those apps into the rest of the system, so homebrew is stuck with whatever they can already do.

Nintendo's patch notes don't mention any of this. The listed changes cover accessibility options during first-time setup, groundwork for eShop gifting within family groups, and a new text-to-speech language, plus general fixes. It is also the first Switch 2 firmware since 23.0.1, the version ns2jb targeted when security researcher Sammy "pepsipu" Hajhamid released it on October 22. His exploit began with an integer overflow bug in SmileBASIC 4, a Switch 1 programming app that runs on the Switch 2 through backward compatibility. It was tethered to a PC and didn't survive reboots. Nintendo pulled SmileBASIC 4 from the eShop shortly after the release.

For fellow infrastructure maintainers, today marks just the beginning of what could be a series of AI-driven security challenges. Two critical security flaws have been discovered in all variations and implementations of the PHP programming language used for the web. With millions of websites relying on PHP, this security flaw affects all installations handling web requests, including PHP-FPM, Apache with mod_php, php-cgi, FrankenPHP, and LiteSpeed. The highest risk is currently associated with mod_php, as the exploit can trigger an unauthenticated request before any application code runs. PHP versions 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35 include fixes for these vulnerabilities, and users are strongly encouraged to update their PHP versions across their entire infrastructure.

The discovery of this vulnerability was aided by OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol LLM, which is part of the "Patch the Planet" initiative. This initiative helps software maintainers worldwide discover, patch, and test software for vulnerabilities. It supports many software maintainers by running extensive formal verification and checks with agents to ensure software behaves as intended and that there are no side channels to bypass modern software security. As a result, we can expect more of these discoveries in the future.

A developer who goes by Panchovix has released three tools that let NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50, RTX 40, and RTX 30-series owners run a modified VBIOS without writing anything to the card's flash chip. The first is a VBIOS editor for Windows and Linux that can change power limits, voltage ceilings, current (OCP) limits, fan channels, and the core and memory offset ranges. Edited images keep NVIDIA's original signature, which no longer matches, so they can't be flashed with nvflash. Patched tools did break NVIDIA's BIOS signature lock for crossflashing back in 2023, but this approach skips flashing altogether. On Windows, the loader stores the edited image in the GPU's driver registry key, where the driver picks it up as an override every time the device starts, and it only needs a quick GPU restart. The Linux loader instead patches NVIDIA's open kernel modules so the GSP firmware starts with the custom image, with Fedora 43 being the only distro tested on real hardware so far.

The screenshots show how this works in practice. On what appears to be an RTX 5090 Founders Edition ROM, the board power ceiling went from 600 W to 700 W and the NVVDD and MSVDD voltage ceilings from 1,110 mV to 1,150 mV. An RTX 4090 ROM had its power ceiling raised from 666 W to 750 W and its core offset range doubled to +2,000 MHz, and nvidia-smi later confirmed that card's power limit going from 550 W to 671 W. Apparently, an RTX 5090 reached 800 W, an RTX 5080 went from 360 W to 500 W, and an RTX 5060 Ti from 185 W to 300 W in the developer's own testing. Laptop RTX 40 GPUs can't be edited yet, and memory timings can't be changed since the card reads them directly from the flash chip.

AMD has finally commented on the vBIOS updates that Sapphire and Gigabyte are pushing out for Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards, though the statement doesn't clear up much. The company reached ComputerBase through Sapphire, which the German outlet had asked last week about what the new firmware actually fixes. Sapphire started offering the updates earlier this month for its RX 7600 through RX 7900 XTX models, citing only a security issue identified in partnership with AMD. Gigabyte followed and was a bit more specific, pointing to vulnerabilities in the AMD VBIOS under the AMD-SN-6023 identifier, an entry that still doesn't show up on AMD's product security page. Here's what AMD said:

As part of our standard procedure, AMD is releasing a firmware update to address potential security vulnerabilities. These fixes are provided ahead of public disclosure to give customers time to update their firmware. As a best practice, we recommend users update the firmware of their graphics cards as soon as it is made available by their respective GPU manufacturer. There are no reports of these vulnerabilities being exploited in practice.

The Linux kernel 7.4 is still a way out, with a late October/early November release anticipated, but it's already showing promising and usability updates for Linux PCs all around, with proper HDMI support with VRR and FreeSync support being just one example. A new patch called PerfOpt (Performance Optimization) is now slated to be merged into kernel 7.4, promising even more performance upgrades for AMD iGPUs.

Per the recent Linux kernel mailing list, PerfOpt "allows privileged integrated I/O devices (GPUs) to bypass the IOMMU when directly accessing system memory. The IOMMU only enforces the IR/IW permission bits without GPA->SPA translations." Effectively, the patch reduces the amount of system overhead for the iGPU, which should result in a performance boost for basically any application that's sensitive to latency or throughput.

Control Resonant launched on September 24 to a rather positive reception, and less than a week after launch, Remedy, the studio behind the game, is promising an October update that makes sizeable changes to gameplay, including adding what it calls "New Game++" mode, which is likely the most interesting part of the blog detailing the upcoming update.

At the time of writing, Control Resonant has a New Game+ mode, which allows players to play through the story once more before needing to start a new savegame. With New Game++, Remedy will allow players to "start NG+ run after NG+ run, without needing to erase all your progress," and thoroughly explore the world and lore. New Game++ is slated to land in Control Resonant sometime in October, although no specific launch date has been announced yet.

The Blood of Dawnwalker launched at the start of September with a strong start, selling over a million copies within the first week of launch. Following that success, it was confirmed that a sequel was already in the works, however, apparently one sticking point for many players was that the game didn't launch with enough difficulty options—especially not ones that make the gameplay more approachable. According to Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, game director for The Blood of Dawnwalker, in a recent interview with Eurogamer, an October update is en route to add a new difficulty mode.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth handheld performance review of The Blood of Dawnwalker is now live]

We will introduce an additional difficulty level, but an easier one, because many people are asking for a more easy difficulty. The Story mode which we have right now will be a different difficulty—we will call it Demanding or something like this—and we will add a new Story mode which will be even easier for people who don't want to experience the combat, they just want to learn the story and go through the game without this gameplay challenge.

Microsoft has fixed the bug that made Windows Security wrongly claim Microsoft Defender Antivirus was turned off. According to Windows Latest, the fix comes in Defender platform update 4.18.26080.4, which Microsoft released on September 17. No manual action is needed, and the update should arrive on its own unless you have blocked mandatory security updates through Group Policy or the Registry Editor. The false alert usually showed up when Windows booted up, then returned at random, even with notifications turned off. Apparently, clicking it only opened the Windows Security home tab, where everything showed as active.

Microsoft acknowledged the problem on August 28 and said it affected any supported version of Windows or Windows Server running the latest Defender updates. It never named the update responsible, and since Defender updates ship daily, there is no single KB to roll back to. Windows Insider users have apparently been seeing similar warnings since at least June. TechPowerUp covered the alert when it first surfaced, and several of our own staff ran into it too. Notably, almost three weeks passed between Microsoft's confirmation and the fix, which seems slow for a bug this visible.

The Asahi Linux project development team has long been working on bringing Linux to Apple Silicon MacBooks and desktops, going so far as to show off games on the Arm-powered laptops. The latest patches to Asahi add proper support for USB4 and Thunderbolt on MacBooks with the M1, M2, and M3 SoCs, and that support is now making its way to the mainline Linux kernel, as per an upstream patch by prominent Asahi developer, Sven Peter.

This series adds initial USB4/Thunderbolt support for Apple Silicon M1, M2 and M3 SoCs. Each USB4 capable Type-C port comes with an ACIO ("Apple Converged I/O") block which contains a Cortex-M3 coprocessor and the hardware implementing the USB4 router.

The modding community has been hard at work ever since the untimely release of DLSS-NR, a precursor to DLSS 5. Now, modders have gotten NVIDIA's leaked DLSS 5 tool working on RTX 4000 series cards, even though the tool was only built for RTX 5000 Blackwell hardware. The DLL leaked earlier this week via an early-access build of NBA 2K27, and people on the RenoDX Discord quickly got it running in other games using ReShade and RenoDX.

As we noted in our DLSS-NR breakdown, the AI model runs on FP8, which Ada Lovelace GPUs support just fine, but the compiled binaries inside the file only targeted Blackwell's sm_120 architecture, with nothing built for Ampere or Ada. A modder going by "Uncle Burrito" has apparently fixed that by hunting down the incompatible binaries and swapping in ones built for Ada. Tom's Hardware confirmed the patch works on an RTX 4080, and said other developers in the same Discord are working on their own versions of the fix.

AMD has acknowledged today that a new vulnerability in the trusted platform module has been found, but fortunately, it was patched before the public announcement. According to AMD, a potential out-of-bounds (OOB) read was present in the TPM 2.0 reference implementation, which could send malicious commands to TPM 2.0 and completely bypass its functionality. If an attacker were able to access and even disable the TPM, all digital signing and encryption would be compromised, earning this vulnerability a very high severity score. Reported under CVE-2026-6726 with a CVSS score of 8.5, and the second being CVE-2026-6727 with a CVSS score of 8.3, these attacks affected every AMD Ryzen CPU from the 3000 to 9000 series of desktop processors.

Intel security researchers spotted the issue and reported it to the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) and its Vulnerability Response Team (VRT). AMD has been working with motherboard vendors to ship updates and secure the platforms. Motherboard OEMs have been distributing these patches since May of this year, with some shipping in June and July. However, the only remaining CPUs for the August update are the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series, Ryzen AI 400 desktop and notebook series, as well as the Ryzen AI Max 300 series of processors, which will receive their Pluton secure processor updates this month.

In recent years, community-supported work on components like drivers and kernel improvements have made Linux distributions like SteamOS especially viable as gaming operating systems. Now, a new set of driver patches has been shared to the Linux kernel mailing list, and the developer behind the patches, David Vernet, claims to have improved 1% lows on AMD CPUs by as much as 31%. The new patches, which introduce the epp_boost feature to the AMD P-State driver, aim to improve CPU performance by improving CPU scaling and CPU boost behavior through identifying busy cores and enabling EPP boost on a per-core basis as needed. As per the explanation in the Linux kernel mailer:

When the epp_boost module parameter is enabled, an update-util hook samples each core's C0 residency (delta MPERF over delta TSC) at most once every 10 ms. If a sample shows the core at least 50% busy, the EPP field of its MSR_AMD_CPPC_REQ is set to performance (0) and held there until 300 ms pass without another busy sample, at which point the hook restores the request that policy management last stored in cppc_req_cached.

As promised previously, Palworld 1.0 has officially launched on Steam, bringing with it an absolutely gargantuan list of updates, features, and fixes. The update officially launches the game out of Early Access and adds 72 new pals to the game, bringing the total to 287—over 50 more than in the latest Pokémon Legends Z-A game. Palworld 1.0 also adds a new area, a floating island called The World Tree, and it expands the original world with new points of interest, Ancient Ruins with minigames, new islands with new volcano, desert, and ruin biomes, and new NPC settlements in four regions, each with their own NPCs and quests. There are several other gameplay changes, new mechanics, and systems overhauls that appear to largely be focused on increasing the fun of late-game and high-level gameplay, base building, combat, and life sim activities.

It's also worth noting that anyone running mods on Palworld has been instructed to remove the mods ahead of the 1.0 update in order to avoid game-breaking bugs. However, Pocket Pair explains that this advice is merely a precaution, due to the massive gameplay changes that have come as a result of the Palworld 1.0 update. Pocketpair has expressed its support for modding and its appreciation for the work done by its modding community, but it notes that mods that have been installed on Palworld "since around 2024" may result in crashes at launch or during gameplay, corrupted save data, or quests becoming impossible to complete. The studio advises only reinstalling mods once the mod creator has specifically confirmed that the mods will work on Palworld 1.0. The full release notes, available on Steam, span several pages, but some of the other update highlights follow.

Since Bungie launched Marathon, there have been two main camps in the online discussions about the new extraction shooter—those praising the game's PvP focus and those begging for more PvE action. With Marathon's latest update, however, Bungie has introduced a new mechanic to appease those in the latter camp. The C.A.R.R.I. Protocol is a new mechanic that encourages co-operative play, rewarding solo players and cooperative crews for completing objectives and extracting together. The system will reward cooperative players with CyberAcme Commendations, which is a new currency for players to spend in the C.A.R.R.I. Armory, and the rewards will focus on making the game less punishing for new and intermediate players.

CyberAcme Commendations are earned when players complete contract objectives in a crew or when solo players complete contract objectives or extract solo, and bonus Commendations will be rewarded for extracting with other players. The C.A.R.R.I. Armory contains a rotation of weapons, Salvage Crates with Salvage or Reputation, and other upgrades, and there will be daily deals in the armory. The C.A.R.R.I. Protocol will be active starting with Patch 1.0.6 and run until the end of Season 1. In addition to the new rewards, Marathon players will now also have access to Mercy Kit, which is a med kit designed specifically to healed down players not in your squad. The idea is that, if players decide to form an allegiance with another player they've already downed, they can revive the player and turn them into an ally. This depends on proximity chat, which is now easier to use with a new "toggle to open" function that also launches in the same update.

Like many single-player games, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has been playable on the Steam Deck since it launched on PC, earning itself a Gold rating on ProtonDB, however, there have been user complaints on ProtonDB about poor text legibility, UI scaling issues, and performance and stability. According to the game's latest patch 1.3 notes published on the game's Steam Store page, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is now verified for Steam Deck. Players have tools like XeSS, FSR 3, and the proprietary Pico upscaler, as well as frame generation, in order to improve motion smoothness in the game.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth performance review of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is now live]

The other update notes include performance improvements, stability and bug fixes—specifically hitching and frame drops when using the sniper rifle—and minor graphics related bugs. The update notes also mention implementing "various input and user interface related improvements and bug fixes," some of which may be responsible for the game's Steam Deck Verified status, along with a number of changes that have been mentioned in prior game updates. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach's "Portable Mode" is designed for systems like gaming handhelds, but tests still reveal that the game dips below 30 FPS in some situations.

Alongside the official Nintendo Switch 2 launch of Warframe, Digital Extremes recently shipped its "The Shadowgrapher" update with a new quest, Warframe, and game mode for all platforms. Almost immediately after the update went live, gamers were online griping about the difficulty of the new mission, Follie's Hunt, with most complaints centering around the unkillable foe, and some even going so far as to say that the mission was impossible for most to complete. Now, having seen the feedback, Digital Extremes has shipped a hotfix with changes to Follie's Hunt that aim to make it more approachable and less punishing. Digital Extremes explains that it interpreted much of the feedback as a design mismatch—Follie's Hunt is a "deviation from regular Warframe gameplay...so understandably there may be some players who don't align with its design," reads the post announcing the upcoming changes, which will be implemented and iterated on in the coming weeks.

With the first Follie's Hunt update, Digital Extremes has made the Follies hunting players less brutal by removing their invulnerability. Players seeking reprieve can now shoot Follie, and she will retreat momentarily if enough damage is dealt. Further, Follie's Aura doesn't do as much damage to players, and Inky Walls will no longer damage players or inflict knock-down, increasing survivability. Resources are also now easier to find and gather: Atramentum balloons are easier to see; there are fewer balloons to find, and the Atramentum reward per mission has been increased from 5 to 15. The patch notes also contain a slew of unrelated changes, and Digital Extremes has already said it will be monitoring player feedback to see what more needs to be done to make the gameplay fun.

Microsoft has released the KB5085516 out-of-band (OOB) update to address sign-in issues caused by the Windows 11 March update on certain applications. These issues included sign-in failures in the free version of Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Microsoft Edge, Excel, Word, and Microsoft 365 Copilot. In Windows 11 versions 24H2 and 25H2 with the March update KB5079473, OS Build 26100.8037, users experienced problems when trying to sign in to their Microsoft accounts. Now, the company is distributing the OOB update for OS Builds 26200.8039 and 26100.8039. Microsoft claims there are no known issues with this OOB update, suggesting that most concerns have been resolved and users can safely apply the update again.

The problem originally occurred when a device entered a specific network connectivity state that the Windows 11 March update did not handle well, causing some Microsoft applications to mistakenly identify the device as offline. Initially, Microsoft advised users to simply restart their devices to fix the issue, but the connectivity state where Microsoft accounts wouldn't sign in would often return. There was a significant chance that the device might revert to this specific networking state, resulting in repeated sign-in errors. However, now this has been resolved with the KB5085516 OOB update, which fixes networking states, so your device can continue running smoothly.

Pearl Abyss's Crimson Desert is just over a week away from its March 20 launch, and in a recent Steam News post, the studio behind the game has provided additional information about the release, while the Steam Store page now reflects that the game will launch with Denuvo DRM. The news update confirms that players jumping into the world of Pywel will be able to preload the game 24-48 hours ahead of the official launch, starting on March 17 or 18, depending on which part of the world they're in—the game goes live on March 19 at 10 PM UTC, so the exact launch date differs by region. Pearl Abyss also confirmed that Crimson Desert will not support cross-platform save, and there appears to be no plan to add it in at a later date. While Crimson Desert will be playable completely offline, Pearl Abyss warns that the game will need an internet connection on day one in order to install a day-one patch.

It's unclear how the addition of Denuvo DRM will affect gameplay, especially since Pearl Abyss set a pretty low barrier to entry with the minimum hardware requirements that it published earlier this week. Denuvo, and other DRM services, have, in the past, been known to cause performance degradation, even on higher-end hardware, but if the game was tested for the minimum requirements with the DRM in place, players can likely expect little to no performance hit. While Denuvo doesn't necessarily lock Linux users out of Crimson Desert, its use is generally frowned upon by the Linux gaming community. Pearl Abyss has not mentioned Steam Deck or Linux compatibility in any of its communications surrounding Crimson Desert.

Craftlings is OUT, and I wish you Happy Wusseln! I really hope that you enjoy it, and if you do, leave an early review and tell your friends about Craftlings. This will help a lot in establishing a safe and positive environment for further development. Thank you!

I had a short first night following launch. After releasing the game, I stayed up late to fix a bug and push a patch for Steam Deck users. But I'm really happy and proud that so many of you are playing Craftlings, and enjoying it. I truly appreciate all your warm comments and messages! If you could do me a favor and write a review on Steam, it would really help. This way, people interested in buying the game can better understand what to expect from it—what Craftlings is, and what it is not.
That would be awesome!

GSC Game World is excited to announce the release of the Stories Untold Content Update for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, delivering an expansive array of new narrative-driven content, locations, characters, and gameplay enhancements - all free for every owner of the game.

New Questline
This content update introduces an entirely new storyline built around a strange signal disrupting communications near Malachite - one that leaves stalkers with headaches, nosebleeds, and disturbing hallucinations.The emergency transmission now echoes across the Zone. Unraveling the mystery will take players on a journey that unfolds over hours of tense, gripping quests and into the depths of the Zone, where danger closes in and each choice pulls you deeper down the rabbit hole. With reality warping and threats lurking around each corner, discovering the truth behind the signal - and surviving - depends on instincts alone.

To all players of Monster Hunter Wilds, title update 4 will be released on December 16, 2025. This update will deliver additional content, including Gogmazios, the first Elder Dragon in Wilds, and the expansion of endgame content with the addition of the Gogma Artian Weapons. In this update we also focus on improving the game's stability and performance, implementing various improvements including CPU/GPU optimization for all platforms.

To further improve stability and performance, additional improvements will be implemented in a patch exclusive to the Steam version in late January 2026, as well as in the Ver. 1.041 update in February. We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who has reported issues and provided feedback. Your feedback has aided the development team's ongoing work to improve the overall experience through these updates. We'd like to further explain the stability and performance improvements roadmap that was shown in the December 2025 Monster Hunter Showcase.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, made by the independent French video game developer Sandfall Interactive, is the big winner at The Game Awards 2025 in Los Angeles, taking home the coveted "Game of the Year" award, as well as the "Best Game Direction" and "Best Narrative" awards. In case you missed it, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was nominated in a total of twelve categories. Launched in April, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 got some of the best reviews and has sold over 5 million units worldwide.

To celebrate the win, Sandfall Interactive released the Thank You update trailer, as well as the new free game update, bringing new content with a new playable environment, new music tracks, new boss battles in the Endless Tower, new Luminas and Weapons, official Photo Mode, new localizations, new quality of life and performance improvements across all platforms, including certification for Steam Deck and ROG Xbox Ally handhelds, as well as the official AMD FSR 4 Redstone support.

Capcom's slightly delayed end-of-year showcase aired earlier today, with one short segment focusing on an updated version of Monster Hunter Wilds. The long-running ARPG franchise's latest entry was launched across multiple platforms just over nine months ago. Prior to widespread release, a few reviewers reported major performance issues on modern consoles and PCs. Even highly-specced systems were stressed by Capcom's RE Engine-based flagship fantasy title. Amusingly, a PC benchmark tool was made available several weeks ahead of the game's launch. Since late February, several PC-centric patches have been issued. A lot of Monster Hunter series enthusiasts were not satisfied with these improvements, and simply stopped playing the modern blockbuster. Capcom's mid-December presentation encourages the lost segment of its fan base to "pick up the game again."

A Free Title Update 4 (TU4) is due to arrive on Dec 16. The official Monster Hunter social media account reckons that this patch will: "bring an array of performance improvements across all platforms. TU4 focuses on CPU and GPU optimization, reducing processing load with more than 100 under-the-hood improvements, among others." This general purpose set of improvements will be followed by two platform specific updates—the MH software engineering team has been tasked with molding the PC version into a better state. Capcom's steep challenge will be dealt with in the near future, as outlined by their latest message: "we'll follow this up in January with a PC-specific update with even more improvements, and are looking into further optimization for implementation in the February content update. We're committed to making Monster Hunter Wilds a great experience for all players. Thank you for your patience and continued support."

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora's free third-person update is now live on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via the Ubisoft Store, Steam, and the Epic Games Store, bringing two community-requested features to the game: the option to play in third person, and New Game+. You can now experience the adventure on the Western Frontier of Pandora in third person, giving you a new perspective on the world around you, and allowing you to see your character and equipped cosmetics as you play. The development team at Massive Entertainment reworked animations, controls, camera systems, and more to make the new perspective feel as seamless as possible.

Play Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in Third Person
After downloading the free update, the game will automatically be in first-person, but you can swap to third-person with the hold of a button. At any point during your playthrough, you can seamlessly switch between first and third-person perspectives. The third-person perspective in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is just the latest of several quality of life updates the game has received since launch. Others include the revamped Hunter's Guide, which allows you to mark favorite items and the addition of an "undiscovered items" filter to help you find unknown resources as you play; rebalanced combat; and a smoother 40 FPS mode.

As you may have heard both Tango Gameworks and Hi-Fi Rush have a new home under KRAFTON! And with this momentous occasion, we have some things that need to be done. Enough to do ANOTHER PATCH! There are some important bits in here so don't nod off midway through. Enjoy the notes, leave a comment, make a meme, smash that subscribe button...whatever you want to do to let us know you're still here!..And ignore the last one being the "Final" patch. Maybe this one is? Maybe it isn't? No one knows...

On PC
While a form of copy protection is still present in the game, Denuvo is now removed. As always, please support our games through legal means so we can continue to make cool things for you! Because of this major change in architecture, this patch MUST be downloaded to play the game after midnight at the start of January 16, 2026 (KST)! An unpatched version of the game will be unplayable at that point, so please be aware of this deadline.