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Steam

Mortal Kombat 2 No Longer Coming Out In Time For Easy Halloween Costumes

Report: Charlie Kirk Shooter Suspect’s Steam Gaming History Under Review By Secret Service

by admin September 18, 2025

It didn’t take long after law enforcement officials publicly identified a suspect in the Charlie Kirk assassination for people online to begin combing the internet looking for his digital footprint. One of the profiles they found appeared to be his Steam account which, according to Bloomberg, is now being investigated by the Secret Service.

That’s because 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who was charged earlier this week with murdering Kirk at a speaking event last week, reportedly used Donald Trump’s name as an alias on the Valve-owned gaming storefront at one point. Sources told Bloomberg the reference to the president is what led to the Secret Service’s involvement despite the Homeland Security agency having no role in protecting Kirk at the time of the assassination.

The Steam account many believe to belong to Robinson shows thousands of hours spent playing games like Sea of Thieves, Deep Rock Galactic, and Counter-Strike. The handful of public Steam reviews he seemingly authored were indistinct from the thousands of others posted for those games. People have also been combing through his apparent Steam inventory, which includes hats, trading cards, and other unlockables.

Steam is among those gaming-affiliated internet platforms which have been called to Congress next month to testify about online radicalization. The CEOs from Twitch, Discord, and Reddit have also been asked to participate. Despite a reference to Helldivers 2 appearing on one of the casings left behind near the crime scene, there’s been little publicly disclosed evidence so far that gaming, memes, or any other part of the modern internet played much of a role in driving Robinson to allegedly assassinate the right wing podcaster.

“The politically motivated assassination of Charlie Kirk claimed the life of a husband, father, and American patriot. In the wake of this tragedy, and amid other acts of politically motivated violence, Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) announced on Wednesday.

But leaked Discord chats and interviews with friends have so far offered little that would suggest Robinson’s history with gaming and the internet were uniquely worrying, or different from those of most other people his age.

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September 18, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Escape From Tarkov’s Steam release comes with a snag for people who already own it

by admin September 18, 2025

It’s that time of the year folks. The weather’s getting colder, the days are getting shorter, and Escape From Tarkov is getting Tweeted and Skeeted about again because of a controversial decision. This time, it’s because the game is coming to Steam, which in and of itself is a perfectly fine, perhaps even smart thing to do. The thing that’s being called into question however, is the answer to a question on the Steam release’s FAQ page about whether or not you’ll have to buy it again.

“To play Escape from Tarkov through Steam, you must purchase any edition of the game on Steam,” the FAQ page explains. “You can then link your existing Battlestate Games account with an active copy of the game to your Steam profile. If the editions differ, it will automatically use the higher edition of the two when launching the game through Steam.”

It then provides an example, noting that if you buy the standard edition on Steam, but your Battlestate Games account has the Unheard Edition, that’s the one you’ll be able to play on Steam. That’s… something? I just can’t see any particular reason you’d want to buy the game again aside from Steam Deck functionality, except the FAQ also notes that “Battlestate Games [have] no plans to support a version of the game for Steam Deck,” so you can throw that reason out of the window. There will be Steam achievements if that’s something you care about?

All of your character progress will carry over to the Steam version of the game as well, once you’ve linked your Battlestate Games account, and you’ll still be playing on the same servers as people who bought the game on its official website.

I have no idea how easy it would be to guarantee every single person who owns the game a copy on Steam as well, but it still feels like an odd choice in general. In any case, after being in early access for close to a decade, the full version of the game launches in a couple months’ time on November 15th.

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September 18, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

The New Mars Attacks Game On Steam Is Very Good

by admin September 17, 2025

Well, I didn’t have this on my 2025 bingo card, which is a thing I assume we all have. There’s a Mars Attacks! video game out this week on PC, and more surprisingly, it’s a really fun, if somewhat rough around the edges, theme park management game that plays a lot like a sci-fi spin on Zoo Tycoon and Two Point Hospital.

Cleverly titled Mars Attracts, this newly released theme park management sim lets you abduct humans from throughout history and build a theme park around displaying them like animals while also experimenting on them in horrible ways for science. And also to provide entertainment to your depraved Martian guests. And after spending a few hours with Mars Attracts, I’m both excited to play more and also disturbed by how quickly I turned on humanity in the pursuit of building the coolest theme park on Mars.

Mars Attracts isn’t based on the ’90s Mars Attacks movie directly, but instead is based on the original trading cards that inspired Tim Burton’s cult classic film, so don’t expect Pierce Brosnan and Sarah Jessica Parker to pop up at any point. Instead, Mars Attracts uses the OG card art and lore as its foundation to build out a wild theme park management simulator. And all of the new in-game art created for Mars Attracts is fantastic, perfectly emulating the old look of the cards. I really want some of these loading screen and pause menu images printed out as big posters.

So what do you do in Mars Attracts? Well, you build theme parks. But it’s not as simple as plopping down some paths, food stalls, trash cans, and rides, and calling it a day. The Martians in Mars Attracts are coming to your park to see different human beings from various points in history, like the Wild West and Ancient Rome. Through the use of time travel and UFOs, you send off aliens to go collect humans and items from a given time period, which you then place in exhibits. And while you have some humans collected, you might as well run experiments on them. Not only does this please many of your guests, but it also helps you earn the various research currencies needed to unlock upgrades and new things to build. It’s a lot more fun than researching new tech in other park builders. In those games, I don’t even get to torture and kill one single human, let alone dozens.

Of course, the humans you collect aren’t going to be happy about this situation, so you’ll need to make sure you keep their enclosure clean and filled with food troughs and water dispensers, and not poke and prod them too much. If a human gets too angry and wants to break out, they just might, and you’ll need to call in security to stop them.

And if you have an excess of human beings, you can also just dissect them and use their parts to build new kiosks and entertainment options for your guests. Want to provide your Martians with balloons made out of human lungs? You can do just that, once you’ve killed enough humans. If this all sounds morbid and disgusting, don’t worry. Mars Attracts features a cartoonish and silly aesthetic that makes it easy to have a good time while torturing your human captives.

Mars Attracts is currently in early access on Steam, and while I didn’t experience any annoying bugs or crashes while building out my incredible parks across the game’s first few starting zones, I did notice some missing text and a lack of sound effects. There’s just a general sense that the game isn’t finished yet, which is exactly what I would expect from an early access indie game. I also felt like some parts of the in-game economy felt grindy, and it can be annoying managing supplies when it feels like your workers aren’t doing what you expect. So if you prefer your games to be more feature-complete, perfectly balanced, and…well…finished, then you might want to wait.

For everyone else, if you love building out wacky hospitals in Two Point or building elaborate parks in RollerCoaster Tycoon, I’d definitely recommend Mars Attracts. It’s the weirdest theme park builder I’ve played in a long time, but also a fantastic spin on the genre that sci-fi fans and Mars Attacks lovers will enjoy for hours and hours.

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September 17, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Skate 4 Is Getting Savaged In Early Steam Reviews But These Clips Are Incredible

by admin September 17, 2025

Skate 4, officially titled “skate.” (seriously, EA?), arrived on Steam in Early Access yesterday. The reaction has been swift and harsh. Full Circle’s reboot of the beloved extreme sports sim franchise is getting hammered with negative reviews bashing it as “mostly empty, soulless, and constantly remind[ing] you to spend money” and “everything i didn’t want.” But then I see incredible clips of players doing ridiculous nonsense and I immediately become transfixed.

Skate 3 came out well before our current age of social media brain rot, but clips of Jesus shredding to Pearl Jam have still made it the stuff of internet legend. I have no idea if Skate 4—excuse me, I mean “skate.”—will be able to rekindle the same grungy magic of a lost skater age, but I can say, based on some of the new clips going viral, that it does not seem like an entirely lost cause.

Man you don’t even know pic.twitter.com/4XIlCEdKx4

— Konto (@KontoLetzPlay) September 16, 2025

Have I told you that you can also clap in mid-air to stop yourself from instantly falling? It’s a shame that EA fumbled the bag so badly at launch. The always-online requirement alone kept tons of players from being able to easily hop into the game on day one thanks to server outages and long queue times. A microtransaction shop also doesn’t seem like a good fit for plumbing the nostalgia of mid-2000s gaming when companies didn’t try to nickel and dime fun. Many of these issues can be solved. Content can be added. That’s the whole point of Early Access, after all. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a Skate 4 defender—ahem, I mean “skate.” apologist—or even brave the launch-week woes for yourself to feast on what other players are cooking up.

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September 17, 2025 0 comments

Hands-on with an ROG Xbox Ally handheld gaming PC

Product Reviews

Good news for Windows handhelds: Microsoft is now letting you launch installed Steam, Battle.net, and other storefront games from the Xbox app

by admin September 17, 2025

Xbox on PC is now officially rolling out a feature that might have it become a single stop for all your games. As Xbox’s VP of Experiences Jason Beaumont explains, in addition to “updated app functionality”, one new feature currently rolling out on Windows is an “aggregated gaming library”. Beaumont has also announced that “cross-device play history” will be coming, but that will be later this month.

The main library aggregation update rolled out to Insiders a few months ago, but it looks like it’s now being released to non-Insiders in regular updates.

Those considering using aggregator apps like Playnite, in other words, might not need to do so anymore because they’ll be able to use the Xbox app to view their entire game library, not just games bought on the Xbox app itself. This will “show your installed games from multiple PC storefronts, including your Xbox library, Xbox Game Pass, Battle.net and other leading PC storefronts.”

Getting to those storefronts should be easier, too, as you can use the new ‘My Apps’ tab in your library to house Battle.net and so on.

It’s worth noting, though, that third-party apps like Playnite and other aggregators might not be rendered completely redundant by this new Xbox feature. That’s because the new feature is only for installed games, whereas Playnite (for example) also acts as a home for owned but uninstalled games.

This also seems like more of a move for Windows handhelds—especially the Asus ROG Xbox Ally—than PCs, which explains why all the promo pics are all of the Xbox Ally. Although it’s nice to have all games from different platforms in one place on a desktop or laptop, it makes most sense for a handheld device where you’re expected to stay within the confines of the Xbox app, in the ‘full screen experience’.

(Image credit: Microsoft Xbox @ Xbox Wire)

It also fits in with Microsoft’s seeming push towards an all-encompassing platform.

I’ve come up with a new term for the Microsoft Xbox platform: ‘Gloop’. The Gloop is a globby mass of various features and services all schlopped together into an increasingly large ball of putty. At least, that’s how my peculiarly abstract brain likes to think about it.

Microsoft is even claiming that game streaming inside a car ‘is an Xbox’. With it seeming like the ROG Xbox Ally handheld ‘console’ is, well, just a Windows handheld with some optimisations, and with Xbox expanding and pushing its cloud gaming services across various devices, Xbox is starting to become synonymous as just ‘whatever runs on the Xbox app.’

Thus: Gloop. I’m not complaining, it’s just a metaphor. You’re welcome. It only makes sense to throw our mutli-platform game libraries into that mix, I suppose.

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September 17, 2025 0 comments

Hollow Knight Silksong will be supported with extra content for years to come

Game Updates

Hollow Knight: Silksong is reportedly already about a third of the way to the original’s total sales, with Steam leading the charge

by admin September 17, 2025

Hollow Knight: Silksong has sold 3.2m copies on Steam alone since its release, according to analyst estimations.

Ahead of its release, Silksong was the most wishlisted game on the platform with 4.8m wishlists. It seems the majority of these have converted into full sales. That’s all led to large numbers of concurrent players – Silksong reached a concurrent player peak of over 587k two days after release, making it the 17th most played game on Steam.

These sales are according to analysis from GameDiscover in its latest newsletter, which adds Silksong has sold around 500k copies each on PlayStation and Switch (both consoles), as well as reaching 1.5m downloads on Xbox Game Pass.

Hollow Knight: Silksong Review – Beautiful, Thrilling And CruelWatch on YouTube

Of course, part of that success is down to the popularity of the original Hollow Knight. According to GameDiscover’s data, there’s a 78.78 percent overlap in audience between the two games, with 22 percent of all Hollow Knight players on Steam buying the sequel.

The original game sold 15m copies, with sales skyrocketing due to extended hype around Silksong.

Another part of that success is the game’s price – it came in cheaper than many expected, causing debate across the industry around the appropriate cost of indie games.

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September 17, 2025 0 comments

An enemy soldier is in the player's sights.

Game Updates

Escape From Tarkov On Steam Will Require A Separate Purchase

by admin September 16, 2025

Escape from Tarkov, arguably one of the most hardcore extraction shooters out there, is finally making its way to Steam. The game has previously lived in perpetual beta status, but now the highly anticipated 1.0 release is expected this November. You can’t buy it on Steam just yet, though the listing is up and you can wishlist it. But, as some are learning, if you have already been a long-time Tarkov player and are hoping to consolidate your game library under Valve’s launcher or make use of Steam’s social features, you won’t just be able to download the game on Steam and connect your Battlestate Games account. You’ll have to pay for the game a second time.

Like with many things involving Tarkov, this is all a little confusing, if not intimidating. So let’s break it down.

The Steam page for EFT went public today, with a release date of “coming soon.” Meanwhile, a FAQ on EFT’s official website lists some potentially disappointing news for some: “To play Escape from Tarkov through Steam, you will need to link a Battlestate Games account to your Steam account.” This is hardly unique to EFT’s arrival on Steam, as other games, such as Final Fantasy XIV and, more recently, Star Wars Outlaws, that have previously launched elsewhere and later come out on Steam typically have not supported a “cross-buy” situation. Still, this news has left a sour taste for many, with fans chiming in on social media to suggest the game is likely to get review bombed upon release and that it just feels silly, greedy even.

The same FAQ page states that if you previously purchased any of the more expensive versions of the game, a newly purchased Steam copy “will automatically use the higher edition of the two when launching the game” once you’ve linked your accounts. So, technically speaking, if playing on Steam is a must, and you’ve purchased a more expensive version of EFT in the past, you should only buy the base edition on Steam when it goes live.

The Steam FAQ page also contains some other potentially upsetting information: There are currently no plans for EFT to support the Steam Deck and Family Sharing is a no-go. Plus, the system requirements, as seen on the Steam page, are pretty steep. Recommended specs include 64GB (!!) of RAM and a 4070.

Escape from Tarkov’s main extraction mode will finally emerge from beta status on November 15, 2025, after nearly a decade in development. But it’s not the only mode that EFT has on offer.

As an extraction shooter, Tarkov features PvP elements that see both bots and players on a live multiplayer map, though the main game loop is all about getting in, looting, surviving, and extracting. Two years ago, however, BSG released EFT: Arena as a standalone solution for those who wanted to experience the tactical shooter in a competitive environment. Though Arena uses the same EFT account to share rank and stats, and is available for purchase individually on the Epic Games Store right now, this mode does not have a Steam listing.

So while needing to buy the game a second time if you desperately need to play might be a bummer, it’s worth noting that you can just add non-Steam games to the Steam launcher. That said, given that you’ll still need a BSG account and your previous purchases of the more expensive editions will carry over, some are wondering why BSG can’t just allow the base version to carry over with a download of the launcher through Steam.

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September 16, 2025 0 comments

The protagonist of Hollow Knight Silksong, Hornet, looks up at a crowd of bugs suspended from the ceiling in web

Product Reviews

Those years of Silksong memes were no joke: Even Borderlands 4 can’t escape its shadow after their first weekends on Steam

by admin September 16, 2025

The weekend after launch is often when games hit their all-time peak Steam concurrents (at least until a big sale or special update), and Borderlands 4 managed to hit 304,398 on Sunday, according to SteamDB’s record keeping.

It’s an impressive achievement for Gearbox’s $70 co-op shooter, but if it puts Borderlands 4 somewhere in the stratosphere, then Hollow Knight: Silksong must be mingling with the aurora borealis, having hit 587,150 concurrent Steam players on the Saturday after it launched.

Those numbers put Borderlands 4 at #46 on the list of all-time highest Steam concurrent peaks, just below Elden Ring Nightreign, and Silksong all the way up at #17, sandwiched between Apex Legends and Path of Exile 2.

I don’t like to fixate too much on Steam concurrents as a measure of popularity, as they don’t tell the whole story, but they are one of few direct windows into what gamers are doing that we have, and this particular figure underlines just how colossal of a success Silksong has been.

The rest of the story in this case includes the detail that Silksong is much cheaper than Borderlands 4—$20 vs $70—which helps explain why it was able to attract a greater number of Steam players (and why Borderlands 4 is the one at the top of Steam’s best sellers chart, which is based on revenue). Silksong is also a game that should run on just about anything, including a Steam Deck, whereas Borderlands 4 has fairly demanding minimum specs and launched with frame rate and stuttering problems.

On the flip side, though, Silksong is available on Game Pass, while Borderlands 4 isn’t. Last we heard, Game Pass has more than 35 million subscribers. That’s 35 million people who can play Silksong without buying it on Steam, and the subscription service has in the past been blamed for limiting the retail success of games on it. Yet industry analyst GameDiscoverCo estimates that the 2D action platformer has sold 3.2 million copies on the platform so far.

Part of me thought that all those years of memey pining for Silksong—flooding the comments in every gaming showcase with demands for a trailer—were just a passionate but moderately-sized fanbase having some fun. It turns out there really was a Silksong army.

Looking down on a behemoth like Borderlands from any vantage point is quite an achievement for an indie series. The first Hollow Knight saw 15 million copies sold, according to a recent Bloomberg report, which is obviously nothing to sneeze at, but 94 million copies of Borderlands games had been sold prior to Borderlands 4, according to Take-Two Interactive.

And the Hollow Knight fans were right to anticipate Silksong: We awarded the tough-as-nails indie metroidvania a 90% in our review.

We don’t yet have a review of Borderlands 4, but it’s on the way, and critics who received advanced copies have mostly liked it. In the meantime, we do have lots of Borderlands 4 guides to offer. (Don’t tell the cool kids with their bug game, but Borderlands 4 is more my thing, so that’s where my personal contribution to these numbers lies.)

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September 16, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Borderlands 4 dev releases stability patch amid negative Steam reviews

by admin September 15, 2025

Borderlands 4’s PC community has been vocal about poor performance since launch, and a new patch released on September 13, 2025, aims to address some of those complaints.

The game’s launch on Steam saw thousands of negative user reviews complaining about low frame rates, stutters, and crashes, even on high‑end hardware. These issues dragged the game’s overall Steam user rating down to “Mixed”.

September 13 patch seeks stability boost

A Gearbox blog post accompanying the update stated that the September 13 patch focused on improving stability across a wide range of PC configurations.

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To help with smoother performance, Gearbox and 2K have also released optimization guides for NVIDIA and AMD users. Owners of the former were advised to ensure their drivers are up to date, and to follow recommended settings for their GPU and resolution. AMD users were given similar guidance.

While the patch does not yet appear to have solved all reported issues – negative reviews critcizing performance have continued to appear on Steam following the patch – many have already expressed cautious optimism that stability has improved.

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“Thanks again for joining us on this journey, Vault Hunters—we’re just getting started. We’re continuing to read your feedback, planning additional updates and will have more details to come,” Gearbox said in a statement.

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September 15, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

After selling 1.4m copies on Steam, Stardew Valley-inspired Dinkum hits Nintendo Switch this November

by admin September 13, 2025

You may not be aware of it, but the Australian-themed Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley-inspired title, Dinkum, was one of the breakout Steam games of 2022. The game sold over 350,000 within a month, and the title has gone from strength to strength since, racking up a total of over 1.4m sales since its 14th July early access launch in 2022.

What’s the story behind the game’s success? There was a late marketing push for the title just before it hit Steam – aided along by IGN’s Summer of Games show in the same year – and some YouTubers that focus on cozy life-sim games helped nudge the audience higher, too.

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Solo developer, James Bendon, is now keen to push his growing audience even further by releasing the game on Nintendo Switch (and playable on Switch 2). Whilst the initial development efforts on PC were all handled by Bendon, publisher Krafton has supported with the Switch ports, with members of the team at studio 5minlab coming in to help with porting the title to the handheld machine.

“As a massive Nintendo fan, having my own game on a Nintendo console has been a lifelong dream for me,” Bendon says in a press release. “I feel that Dinkum is a good fit for Nintendo Switch players, and it’s been the most requested console from players who have been waiting a long time to play Dinkum. I am certain that launching on the Switch will bring a lot of new players to Dinkum.”

Per a release from Bendon and Krafton, the Nintendo Switch version has been optimised for handheld play (with adjustments made to control schemes, and UI/UX), and all major content will be available across both platforms. There is a small exclusive in-game Battlegrounds costume players will be able to nab on Switch, but it’s just a cosmetic.

We’re used to seeing a lot of life sims and farming games during Nintendo Direct showcases, but with this one, it at least seems like there’s an in-built audience that’s been waiting for a while to see Dinkum escape the exclusive realms of the PC. And as we’re seeing ConcernedApe slow down development on Stardew Valley (well, in theory, at least), Bendon hints that Dinkum could live a lot longer.

“I think Dinkum is the kind of game that I could update forever, so I think as long as there are players who love Dinkum, I think they will inspire me to continue working on updates,” he says. “I am hopeful that offering Dinkum on the Nintendo Switch (and hopefully many other platforms in the future) will only bring more passionate players to Dinkum, and their passion for the game will continue to fuel my inspiration.”

Dinkum comes to Nintendo Switch, and will be playable on Switch 2, on 6th November.

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September 13, 2025 0 comments