Epic Games is finally addressing one of the biggest issues with its game engine: in-game stuttering. Thanks to the latest version of Unreal Engine, version 5.8, this problem is becoming a thing of the past. The engine now incorporates Microsoft's DirectX Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) for pre-compiled game shaders, moving shader compilation off the player's device. This change reduces the power and CPU time spent on compiling shaders. The company packages shader data into a State Object Database (SODB) and uses cloud-based compilation to convert that data into a Precompiled Shader Database (PSDB). This database can be shipped alongside the game, allowing it to find ready-to-use shaders on the first run. As a result, game developers will be able to provide pre-compiled shaders, speeding up game loading times and reducing any shader-induced stuttering during gameplay.

Once these pre-compiled shaders are downloaded onto the device, they will be simply invoked when playing the game, leaving Unreal Engine with easy access to shaders for seamless loading. As one of the most demanding game engines, Unreal Engine in its version 5.x is already computationally intensive and requires powerful graphics cards for optimal results. However, even with powerful GPUs, in-game stuttering can occur if a game's shaders aren't properly compiled and loaded. Using ASD will finally resolve this issue for good, provided game developers choose to support it.

Jagex has announced a fourth RuneScape MMO at RuneFest 2026. It currently goes by the working title RS4, though most people are already calling it RuneScape 4. The game is being built in Unreal Engine, and Jagex hasn't said which version. It's the first numbered follow-up since RuneScape 3 arrived in 2013. A CGI teaser shown at the event has a town in a green valley, floating islands, and a dragon rider being attacked by a three-headed dragon. Jagex says RS4 is in early development with its own dedicated team, and that it is still "a few years away." The studio also isn't ready to talk about platforms.

Interestingly, RS4 didn't start out as a full game. It began as an expansion for RuneScape: Dragonwilds, Jagex's Unreal Engine 5 survival game, and apparently grew into its own project after playtesters asked for a more traditional MMO take on that setting. The expansion was reportedly planned for 2027. The story is said to pick up years after Dragonwilds and starts in the same region, Ashenfall. RuneScape 3, Old School RuneScape, and Dragonwilds will all keep running alongside it. Of course, we don't know yet how monetization will work or whether any progress carries over from RuneScape 3, and I think it'll be a while before we see real gameplay.

The KytyPlus PS5 emulator has reportedly rendered the Unreal Engine 5-powered Silent Hill 2 remake on an integrated GPU. Reddit user Legal_Help_31 shared a test on an AMD Radeon 840M with 512 MB of dedicated VRAM plus shared system memory, paired with a Ryzen AI 5 340 and around 15 GB of shared RAM. Performance is still not where we would want it, of course. The game's content warning screen runs at around 4 FPS, and it looks like the game only starts and sits there for several minutes without crashing. The test includes no gameplay at this time. The developer's own GitHub page calls the work experimental and says it is not a playability claim. FSR upscaling can apparently be used as well.

KytyPlus is a high-level emulation (HLE) fork of the KytyPS5 project. It reportedly runs without Sony's console firmware and uses Vulkan for rendering. The original KytyPS5 reportedly still crashes when launching Silent Hill 2 Remake, even on stronger hardware, so KytyPlus is a few steps ahead there. It is also impressive that this technically ran on an iGPU, but a boot screen at 4 FPS tells us very little about whether this ever becomes playable. The emulation scene has moved quickly in recent weeks, though, with KytyPS5 showing tremendous progress in Demon's Souls Remake and Astro Bot, among other games. KytyPlus developers are apparently now working to improve the performance in Silent Hill 2 Remake.

NVIDIA has rolled out RTX Kit 2026.3 alongside version 2.0 of its RTX Mega Geometry SDK, giving game developers a fresh batch of neural rendering and path tracing tools. The headline feature is support for streaming continuous level-of-detail clusters for high-density meshes, shown off in a new textured glTF version of the Zorah demo. The rest of the RTX Kit update covers RTX Character Rendering 1.4, RTX Dynamic Illumination 3.1 with DLSS Ray Reconstruction integration, RTX Neural Shading 1.4, and RTX Texture Filtering 1.3, which adds Collaborative Texture Filtering.

RTX Neural Texture Compression 0.10 is still in beta, but it now supports the DirectX 12 Agility SDK preview with Linear Algebra, letting Tensor Cores accelerate neural texture decompression in DirectX shaders. It and RTX Texture Filtering 1.3 also gain Windows ARM64 support, which seems to be groundwork for the RTX Spark PCs NVIDIA says start shipping in October. NTC was already running on Windows on Arm back in August.

CD Projekt Red joint CEO Michał Nowakowski has explained why the studio moved The Witcher 4 from its in-house REDengine to Unreal Engine 5, and he says the messy Cyberpunk 2077 launch wasn't the trigger. Speaking on the Deconstructor of Fun podcast, he called the idea that REDengine caused Cyberpunk's problems a mistaken assumption. He revealed that the switch instead came after an early look at Epic's The Matrix Awakens tech demo. Here's what he said:

"It was not the Cyberpunk launch that convinced us to abandon the REDengine and switch completely to Unreal Engine 5 with the future projects. It was more the moment we got an early scoop of the Matrix demo that Epic made. We then asked ourselves: 'Is UE5 ready to ship a game like we make?' And that's where we came to the table with the guys from Epic. That's where we made the strategic collaboration."

Rebel Wolves' debut game is certainly off to a strong start. The Blood of Dawnwalker has sold more than 1 million copies worldwide, the studio confirmed on social media, just two days after its September 3 launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. The game hit 1 million sales fast enough that most of it likely came from day-one momentum, though Rebel Wolves hasn't broken down sales by platform. The Blood of Dawnwalker is an open-world dark fantasy RPG set in 14th-century Europe, built in Unreal Engine 5. Players control Coen, who's human by day and a vampire by night, as he tries to save his family within a strict 30-day in-game clock.

Rebel Wolves is led by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, former director on The Witcher 3, and this is the studio's first release since it was founded in 2022. As expected with a first release, the launch also comes with some rough edges. Performance on Steam Deck and other Windows handhelds has required real compromises to remain playable, and the game's most popular Nexus Mods download reportedly conflicts with its core survival mechanics. However, none of that seems to have slowed sales much so far. It's still early days for the game, but crossing a million copies in under 48 hours is quite rare for a completely new IP.

CD Projekt Red is aware that switching The Witcher 4 to Unreal Engine 5 carries the risk of the game blending in with every other UE5 title out there. CDPR built Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 on its own REDengine, which gave both games a distinct visual identity. UE5 has since become the industry default, and plenty of games on it end up with a similar glossy look, which players online often complain about. Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski addressed that concern directly, admitting the studio spent real time in R&D wondering if Epic's engine was even the right fit.

"That was a big question we were asking ourselves, because pushing the envelope with how the games look, the cinematic feel of it all, is very, very important. And that was a big question mark when we were in the R&D phase over whether Unreal Engine 5 is going to be a good fit or not. We really are going to be able to differentiate ourselves. People are going to feel this is a CDPR game still."

Each week, new games and apps integrating NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex, and advanced ray-traced effects are released or announced, delivering the definitive PC experience for GeForce RTX players.

Today, the Gears of War: E-Day Multiplayer Beta opens to all players, and No More Room In Hell 2 exits Early Access. Tomorrow, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam launches on Thursday. And a new 11-minute trailer signals that Phantom Blade Zero can now be pre-ordered ahead of its October 29th launch.

As we enter the second to last week of July, we have a week full of mid-range game releases. We kick off the week with some dinosaur action in this week's biggest release, where you get to take on the role as a Spinosaurus with a sword. We kick out the Monday blues with a space RTS/RPG, followed by a trip to feudal Japan and samurais and then a quick switch to Scotland for another fight for power. We round off the week with an anime-style RPG and finally a co-op game could see you getting egg on your face. We also have some other new releases this week that might be worth checking out.

Dinoblade / This week's major release / Demo / Thursday 23 July
Dinoblade is an intense action RPG set in a prehistoric world forever changed by a cataclysmic event. Step into the role of a young Spinosaurus, wielding a colossal Great Sword. Confront rival dinosaurs, some armed with weapons of their own, all in a desperate fight to prevent a looming extinction. Steam link

With the October 6 launch of Gears of War: E-Day fast approaching, more and more details about the game are starting to appear online, whether via official channels or leaks. The latest news is that, in addition to the previously announced Ray Traced lighting, reflections, and shadows, Gears of War: E-Day will feature NVIDIA's DLSS 4.5, as confirmed by an NVIDIA blog post. DLSS 4.5 promises better quality upscaling, temporal stability, and antialiasing.

The addition of DLSS 4.5 means that Gears of War: E-Day will also feature Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, up to 6x, and NVIDIA has also confirmed that the game will feature Reflex for latency reduction in PvP modes. The game will also feature Nanite and the latest Unreal Engine 5.8 versions of Lumen and MegaLights, which should help optimization as well as lighting accuracy. All of this means that Gears of War: E-Day should deliver on a technical and immersive level, thanks to more realistic lighting and shadows as well as more detailed objects and real-time destruction.

Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney, has a reputation for his hot takes on the gaming industry, and he has previously been vocal about both the perceived benefits of AI in gaming and his criticisms of its detractors. Now, the executive has expanded on his prior comments about Valve's mandatory generative AI disclosure, which he previously said "makes no sense for game stores," in a new interview with PC Gamer. These comments follow the recent announcement that Unreal Engine 5.8 and Unreal Engine 6 will add more generative AI features to the game engine. Addressing the question of AI art and how it may be more of a PR problem, Tim Sweeney said that "it's just a question of adaptation of tools, because there's nothing like a prompt-to-game solution on the horizon that anybody expects will work," going on to explain that artists at Epic Games are already using generative AI to "reduce the drudge work," referring to some of the more tedious parts of the 3D modelling and texturing process.

He goes on to advocate for using AI, stating that "it's impossible to reconcile the idea that developers shouldn't use productivity-improving tools with the state of the industry." He goes on to explain that how you go about creating an in-game asset isn't important, and that "you might spend a million dollars modeling a flower pot to get the most detailed flower pot creatable by humanity, but you could also scan a flower pot with a very high resolution camera," and that "the value is not in creating a perfect flower pot...the real value is in building the scene and building the game and building the narrative." Ultimately, his argument is that AI makes it cheaper to make games and in-game assets, but he argues that "it's unfortunate that so many developers are put into this position. If you want to launch a game and get it as widely publicized as possible, you've got to put it on Steam...then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game." He calls Valve's AI disclosure "irresponsible" and says that it makes it "much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success."

Following Epic Games's recent announcement of a slew of new generative AI features coming to Unreal Engine 5.8 and the upcoming Unreal Engine 6, as well as its video demonstrating how it uses AI in daily game development and asset creation, the developer of Vampire Survivors, Poncle, announced in a comment on Reddit that it was reviewing its Fortnite x Vampire Survivors collaboration. Details about the collaboration had not been revealed, but Epic Games mentioned Vampire Survivors as a headline collaboration in its Unreal Fest on June 17. At the time of writing, it's unclear what action Poncle will take regarding the Vampire Survivors x Fortnite collaboration, but it seems as though there is a growing divide in the gaming industry, specifically between developers and studios open to using generative AI and those who oppose it. While Poncle has not explicitly stated its reasons for concerns over generative AI, common concerns range from IP an art direction issues to environmental concerns and even more esoteric issues surrounding the validity of AI art.

Poncle Official on RedditFollowing today's news about gen AI usage by Epic to create all sort of game assets, including Fortnite characters, we're currently "reviewing" our collaboration with Fortnite. We'll let you know if anything moves forward.

Unreal Engine 5.8 has just been announced by Epic Games as the last major update to Unreal Engine 5 before the launch of Unreal Engine 6. While there are a number of changes present in UE 5.8, including streamlined texturing and landscape creation, and sandboxes for isolated experimentation, to name but a few, two new headline features are coming to the real-time rendering pipeline with UE 5.8. The first is Lumen Lite, a new version of Lumen dynamic global illumination specifically designed to offer as many of the features and as much of the artistic quality as full-scale Lumen with much lower GPU compute costs. According to the update notes, Lumen Lite can be as much as twice as fast as Lumen High Quality, and it is lightweight enough to run on the Nintendo Switch 2 at 60 FPS.

The other new tool available to developers is MegaLights, which is now production-ready and allows artists and developers to place dynamic and shadowed area lights into scenes to improve quality and reduce noise. Epic cites a performance target of 60 FPS on current consoles and has included dedicated debugging tools to make game optimization easier with MegaLights. Unreal Engine 5 has been the scapegoat of many complaints by PC gamers about poor game performance—even if there are examples of visually striking games built on UE5 that are well optimized—and Lumen global illumination is one of the features that tends to take at least some of that blame. Both of the new features are supported on PC, along with many of the other new rendering tools, like Fog Screen Space Scattering, which improves volumetric fog and dust rendering, and a new toon shader for stylized games.

Bandai Namco and Rebel Wolves have officially released full system requirements, new story trailer, and the release date for the upcoming The Blood of Dawnwalker. Built in Unreal Engine 5, The Blood of Dawnwalker is a single-player open-world action RPG game developed by studio which is co-founded by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The game is set in an alternative 14th century, where feudal lords have been overthrown by a clique of powerful vampires, and follows Coen, a young man turned into a Dawnwalker.

In addition to the story trailer, which reveals a bit more details about the game, Rebel Wolves have also released full PC system requirements for the game, and you will need at least an Intel Core i5-10400F or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU, 16 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050, an AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, or Intel Arc A580 graphics card with at least 6 GB of VRAM. This will run the game at 1080p resolution at 30 FPS with low quality preset. The recommended PC system requirements, which target 1080p at 60 FPS or 1440p at 60 FPS with high quality preset, include an Intel Core i5-13600 or an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and NVIDIA RTX 5060 or AMD RX 6800 XT for 1080p and NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti or AMD RX 7800 XT for 1440p resolution.

NVIDIA has released the GeForce 596.36 WHQL Game Ready driver for Conan Exiles Enhanced game, launching on May 5th with support for DLSS Multi Frame Generation, DLSS Super Resolution, and NVIDIA Reflex. The new driver also adds support for the recently announced GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB Laptop GPU, as well as fix some gaming and general bugs.

As detailed by NVIDIA, Conan Exiles Enhanced is built in Unreal Engine 5 and packs eight years of post-launch content, as well as brings improved visuals, enhanced performance, and modern rendering technology. In addition to the game launch support from day one, the new GeForce 596.36 WHQL Game Ready driver also adds support for the recently introduced GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB Laptop GPU that will feature 24 Gb GDDR7 memory. According to the release notes, the new driver also fixes issues in God of War: Ragnarok, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and The Crew Motorfest games, as well as blocky artifacts issue seen in when playing H.264 content with DXVA 3.0 and issue with Blender 5.0.1 EEVEE.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 596.36 WHQL Game Ready

UK publisher Kwalee and independent studio Out of the Blue are pleased to announce that the Lovecraftian narrative puzzle adventure Call of the Elder Gods will launch on May 12, 2026. The game is coming to PC (via Steam), Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and is available day one with Xbox Game Pass. A sequel to 2020's award-winning Call of the Sea, Call of the Elder Gods is a single-player, first-person puzzle adventure with a strong narrative focus.

Players step into the roles of Professor Harry Everhart and newcomer Evangeline Drayton, solving intricate puzzles driven by logic, observation, and environmental interaction.Together, they journey from New England to the Australian desert, the frozen Arctic and the ancient city of Pnakotus, searching for missing loved ones while confronting personal grief.

Microsoft has officially announced its next Xbox Summer Games showcase, which will take place on June 7, 2026, showing off the latest of what Microsoft has in-store for gamers in 2026. While it's not yet been revealed what will be shown off at the game showcase, Microsoft did confirm that there will be a Gears of War: E-Day showcase immediately after the Xbox Games Showcase, in which we're likely to see at least a new trailer and maybe a release date for the upcoming Xbox shooter, which was revealed at the 2024 Summer Xbox Game Showcase and hasn't made much noise since, despite its 2026 release date.

The Xbox Game Showcase is slated to start at 10 AM PT on June 7, which is 14:00 UTC. It's already been all but confirmed via the game's Steam store page that Gears of War: E-Day will launch for both PC and Xbox, although not much else is known about the game other than that it will be a prequel set 14 years before the original Gears of War, and that it will be built on Unreal Engine 5.

Epic Games has just announced a round of layoffs in an effort to save costs following a downturn in engagement on Fortnite. A recent post to the Epic Games news page explains that "The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded," and Epic says that the layoffs are part of company-wide cost-cutting measures that aim to reduce expenses by over $500 million in order to stabilize the company's finances. These other cost-savings measures will affect contracting, marketing, and hiring at the company, and any staff affected by the layoffs will receive severance packages of at least four months of base pay—with that amount increasing depending on tenure at the company.

The Epic layoffs will affect 1,000 workers, and Epic seems to blame both industry-wide challenged and its reliance on Fortnite as its major cash cow for its financial troubles, with Epic CEO, Tim Sweeney emphasizing that "the layoffs aren't related to AI," and explaining that Epic wants "as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can." He also goes on to say that Epic has struggled to deliver "Fortnite magic with every season," and noting that the game is in its early stages of returning to mobile platforms, but that the goal going forward will be to focus on "fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events," while focusing on Fortnite's user-generated content and on upgrading from Unreal Engine 5 to Unreal Engine 6. The full statement regarding Epic's layoffs follows.

Not every hero fights for glory or is destined to save kingdoms. Not every legend is born from noble sacrifice. Some are forged in shadows, driven by selfish ambition, bad decisions, and an impressive lack of moral standards. In Styx: Blades of Greed, our favorite goblin anti-hero returns with a sharper blade, a sharper tongue, and a brand-new obsession: Quartz… no matter whom he has to kill along the way. Whether you've followed Styx since his early days or you're about to meet him for the first time, here's why he's the kind of character you'll absolutely love to hate.

Embodying the perfect anti-hero
As a goblin, Styx isn't your typical fantasy protagonist and that's exactly the point. He isn't the chosen one here to save the world. He's not a hero. He's a sharp-tongued protagonist, here to survive, preferably with a full purse and someone else taking the blame. Armed with razor-sharp sarcasm and a constant stream of cynical observations, Styx comments on nearly everything he encounters, mocking pompous rulers, scoffing at heroic ideals, and questioning the intelligence of just about everyone around him.

I am thrilled to finally be able to deliver updates on Silent Hill: Townfall, following our announcement back in 2022. Screen Burn may be a small development team, but they have taken their time to craft a game that we can now present with confidence. In the recent State of Play, we (Konami) revealed a new trailer that gives you a glimpse into the world that awaits. Please enjoy. To explain more, I will hand it over to Jon McKellan, Writer and Director at Screen Burn Interactive on Silent Hill: Townfall.

A new chapter
With Silent Hill: Townfall, we at Screen Burn Interactive wanted to both evolve the unique narrative design that we had experimented with in our past games while pushing into ambitious territory, with a new town to explore, horrific enemies to fight and evade, and story-driven puzzles that help deliver a new but distinctly Silent Hill tale of mystery, tragedy and loss. With our first full trailer release, we have shown a slice of what to expect, answered some long lingering questions, and likely raised some new ones too…

"The REANIMAL experience is a clear reflection of who Tarsier is—a group of individuals with a shared sensibility that feel privileged to have been able to work together on a game like this," said Oliver Merlöv, Managing Director, Tarsier Studios. "We believe the more personal the art, the more attention poured into every detail, the more worthy a game is of player's time. We can't wait for them to play REANIMAL!" And since many of you have asked about friend's pass we will let you know as soon as possible!

The game has already received a strong and positive critical reception worldwide, earning generally favorable reviews across all platforms on Metacritic. Additionally, fans can check out the IGN REANIMAL store for some cool official REANIMAL merchandise! Check out the IGN REANIMAL store here.

KRAFTON today unveiled Project Windless, a new open-world action RPG set in the fantasy universe of The Bird That Drinks Tears novel series, with the debut of its first-ever trailer during today's Sony PlayStation's State of Play. This marks the first public reveal of the single-player title, currently in development at KRAFTON Montréal Studio, and introduces players to a vast world shaped by myth, war, and legendary heroes.

A New Premium Open-World Action RPG
Designed as a player-driven open-world experience, Project Windless centers on a continent-spanning conflict, combining epic storytelling with visceral, mastery-driven combat and massive real-time battles. Built with Unreal Engine 5, the game features a non-linear structure where player decisions shape alliances and the broader conflict unfolding across the world through exploration, combat, and interaction with key factions.

Just few more days until the horrors begin! REANIMAL, the highly anticipated co-op horror game from Tarsier Studios, creators of Little Nightmares and Little Nightmares II, launches this Friday, February 13. Pre-ordering the Deluxe Edition now secures 10% savings and grants access to the REANIMAL Season Pass, which includes all three DLCs in The Expanded World campaign—delivering all-new horrors for players to survive.

There are three upcoming chapters in The Expanded World, the first of which is scheduled to release in summer 2026. The Expanded World will weave a completely original story around new child protagonists, thrusting players into chilling new environments and monstrous horrors across the war-torn REANIMAL island.

Mesa 26.0.0, the latest update to the open-source Linux graphics driver stack, has officially been released, and the new release promises a number of improvements to stability and performance, especially for gamers on AMD Radeon GPUs via Vulkan ray tracing in the RADV driver. There has also been done to the open-source NVK driver for NVIDIA GPUs, Intel Iris and ANV drivers, and support for the Qualcomm Adreno Gen 8 graphics for Snapdragon X2 SoCs has been added. In a recent blog post ahead of the official driver release, Natalie Vock, a developer working on Mesa, explained the more technical aspects of the update and their implications.

The most notable mentions include changes to shader compilation and function calls that make RADV work more efficiently in ray tracing—a change especially notable on Unreal Engine games, according to the developer. The developer notes that in Ghostwire Tokyo, RT passes have been sped up by more than two times. While this won't translate directly to a 200% performance increase, and the effect won't be identical across all games, it means that the ray tracing experience on Linux is catching up to Windows. There are also improvements to Unreal Engine 5 performance, specifically relating to Lumen ray tracing, where a number of tweaks and workarounds effectively make the driver work more efficiently with the feature set.

Hello everyone! The twenty-something devs at Vermila Studios would like to thank you very much for your interest in Crisol: Theater of Idols. Today is an incredible day because, after more than five years under development, we can see everyone experiencing the game. Do not hesitate to leave a review, they are very encouraging and help us improve the game within our abilities. We hope Tormentosa surprises and terrifies you equally, and that your blood will protect you from all evil. Go for it, good luck!

Crisol: Theater of Idols is a first-person horror/action game set in Hispania, a twisted version of Spain. Play as Gabriel, a soldier who uses blood as both weapon and lifeline. Explore the cursed island of Tormentosa, uncover dark secrets, and battle horrifying enemies. Will you survive? Crisol is developed by Vermila Studios, and published by Blumhouse Games.