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Mere days after winning plaudits for banning gambling advertisements on its platform, Twitch decided it had stacked up enough goodwill among streamers: and decided to piss them all off. Recently, there's been an increased push by content creators for Twitch to change its revenue split in favour of streamers: from the current 50/50 to 70/30. This came with a petition signed by 22,000 streamers and viewers, and was inspired by the revelation that Twitch was in fact paying some of the most prominent streamers a 70/30 revenue share already, but had stopped offering such deals even for the biggest channels.
Twitch has now responded to these demands, with the corporate equivalent of a big red stamp saying DENIED.
Dan Clancy, president of Twitch, published an open letter about the platform's new approach. It goes into some detail about why Twitch has reached the decision it has, while also including some empty platitudes about "our global community" and how "we support all streamers’ careers and ambitions like they’re our own."
Essentially, Clancy says that the vast majority of Twitch streamers receive "a baseline revenue share of 50/50 on the net revenue from those earnings." That is to say, subscription revenue. But streamers who grew larger have in the past been offered "premium subscription terms" which were higher, without any "consistent framework to determine who would receive these deals and when." Clancy says that more than a year ago Twitch stopped offering such deals, although it continued to honour existing ones.
Then there's a brilliant bit of table-flipping. Clancy says that Twitch realised it was (a) not being "transparent about the existence of such deals" (b) wasn't consistent in the criteria used to award them (ie there was none) and the coup de grace is (c) "we don’t believe it’s right for those on standard contracts to have varied revenue shares based on the size of the streamer."
That is, the argument being made by streamers was that if big streamers are getting 70/30, that's unfair to the mass of smaller streamers on 50/50 who are also contributing to the wider Twitch ecosystem. Twitch is saying it accepts that argument: but rather than bringing all streamers up to parity, they're going to squish the big ones down.
"For these streamers still on these premium deals, we’re adjusting the deal so that they retain their 70/30 revenue share split for the first $100K earned through subscription revenue," writes Clancy. "Revenue above $100K will be split at the standard 50/50 share split. We’re announcing this change now, but it won’t go into effect until after June 1, 2023. After that point, streamers will only be affected once their existing contract is up for renewal."
Clancy touts a recent change to the ad revenue split (55% in favour of the streamer) as a mitigating factor, before going on to say, despite the guff about transparency, that "we will, in rare cases, continue to negotiate custom agreements on a case by case basis."
While streamers are still catching their breath at this, Clancy goes in for the kill: why not 70/30? "When we first established a 50/50 revenue share split, it was to signal that we’re in this together," writes the president of the world's largest streaming platform, which itself is owned by Amazon.
Amazed that this blog post announcing creator pay cuts, also included mention the site’s owner: Amazon, a literal trillion dollar company. Servers that can’t even support streams over 8k bitrate. Youtube offers 70/30 revenue split, and over quadruple the bitrate. pic.twitter.com/BH0kBm7z9RSeptember 21, 2022
See moreClancy goes on to say that Twitch has received feedback from 22,000 streamers about the 70/30 split and paying streamers faster. He says in response to the latter that the payout threshold has been halved to $50, and the company's long-term goal is "same day payouts and lower thresholds."
Twitch says features such as Prime Subs, Community Gifting, Hype Train, and the Ads Incentive Program "have driven an increase of 27% more streamer revenue per viewer hour every year over the last five years. This means the same viewer hour now earns [streamers] three times more money than it did five years ago, on average."
Therefore, goes the platform's logic, it has already "put more money into streamers’ pockets than 20% more subs revenue share would have."
Then the haymaker: the cost of running Twitch. Clancy writes that "live video costs for a 100 [concurrent viewers] streamer who streams 200 hours a month are more than $1000 per month. We don’t typically talk about this because, frankly, you shouldn’t have to think about it. We’d rather you focus on doing what you do best. But to fully answer the question of 'why not 70/30,' ignoring the high cost of delivering the Twitch service would have meant giving you an incomplete answer."
Twitch is here effectively saying that the platform's technology and featureset is what's enabling all the money to be made, and on top of that it is already subsidising smaller streamers. Clancy does not explicitly say, of course, that a streamer with 100 viewers who does 6-7 hours a day costs Twitch $1000 a month to host without necessarily bringing in $1000 a month. But that's the underlying argument.
The letter ends with some lip service about communities and streamers and all the money to be made on Twitch, before including as an addendum the email sent to those streamers who will be affected by the change. The email details the change as follows:
- We will continue to offer you 70% of subscription revenue share for all subscription Tiers up to a maximum subscription revenue of $100K USD annually.
- For subscription revenue in excess of $100K USD, your sub revenue share rate will default to the standard Partner rate of 50% for Tier 1 subscriptions, 60% for Tier 2, and 70% for Tier 3 for the remainder of the 12-month period.
- The $100K USD threshold will be calculated over a 12-month period starting from your annual agreement renewal date. The $100K USD threshold will reset on the first day of the subsequent 12-month period, and each 12-month period thereafter.
- Once we implement this change, progress towards the $100K USD threshold will be trackable on your creator dashboard.
- The subscription revenue threshold of $100K USD applies to all subscription earnings, including Prime subscriptions, and will not impact any other revenue shared with you (advertising, Bits, etc.)
So Twitch will no longer give the 70/30 split to any streamers after June 2023 but, for those on that deal, they get the sweetener of it continuing to apply to the first $100K in subs revenue. Spinning this as fairer to small streamers is pretty brazen, but at the same time there's a grain of truth to it: a flat structure for all but the most exceptional cases is arguably fairer than what exists now.
It's also important to remember that Clancy may be the president of Twitch, but he's also the messenger for a business that is still apparently not turning a profit. I say apparently because Amazon doesn't release separate financials for Twitch. There is a tonne of money sloshing around this ecosystem, for sure, but in the long run Twitch must be self-sustaining: and the prospect of going from a 50% to a 30% cut in subs revenue must have given some execs sleepless nights.
This is a super manipulative statement. The TL:DR is you're cutting your biggest partners revenue rates purely to push your ad program and make the average viewer experience suffer. It's worded as a noble thing when you're just trying to shove more ads down everyones throatsSeptember 21, 2022
See moreYesterday Twitch announced banning Gambling streams, which is great.Today they announced dropping partner revenue split by 20%, which means YouTube (the platform that keeps stealing top creators) now offers more & fairer pay for creators.We couldn't have one nice day Twitch. https://t.co/K9gi69vFq7September 21, 2022
See moreOne of the more interesting questions this raises is what, exactly, streamers are in the sense of employment. The huge ones sign contracts, sure, but for most streamers clicking their agreement on a TOS list is enough to get started, and then they're what in relation to the platform… a contractor? Certainly not an employee. There's a fuzziness about this relationship that, to be fair to both sides, exists because this way of making a living is still so new.
This move is obviously something of a gamble. Twitch's biggest rival is Youtube, where the creator split from subs is already 70/30 and a host of stars have been tempted by big money deals. The bet is that Twitch is so big and the platform can offer so much more in terms of a streamer-dedicated featureset that even the larger streamers will grumble about this, then move on to the next thing. For all the patter about being in this together, this is a clear and simple stance. Twitch is telling streamers that the platform doesn't need them as much as they need it.
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If you've an eye for modular technology, you may have been keeping up with Framework's brilliant dive into the DIY laptop scene. Our Dave seems to think this is the "future of gaming laptops" and although he may well be onto something, Framework has decided to bring us a svelte, and highly customisable Chromebook, ahead of the modular gaming monster we were dreaming of.
Framework laptops are highly modular. You have the option to completely upgrade the system as you go, just as you would your desktop PC. Only there's also the potential to have any combination of ports jammed in the sides, too. Want just USB Type-C sockets? Go for it.
With Framework even selling its CPU mainboard separately, there's a lot of potential for modders—some hero even turned a Framework laptop into a tablet with the parts available.
A few months back, Framework brought DIY 12th Gen Intel upgrades to its laptops, and now the company has partnered with Google to create the 12th Gen Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition. It doesn't look like you can swap out the CPU on this one—it's certainly not been referenced as yet—but as Framework founder Nirab Patel says in the company's announcement vid: "The laptop has enough performance so you can play Steam games natively."
Nebulous, I know, but I'm sure it'll play the Sims 4 at the very least via the Steam on ChromeOS Alpha.
The base Chromebook Edition may not come with a discrete mobile GPU, but an Intel Core i5 1240P alone may not be as bad for gaming as you might expect. With just four Performance cores, eight Efficient cores, for a total of 20 threads across the lot, it's certainly no high-performance CPU. The 80 Intel Xe GPU execution units aren't going to play Metro Exodus on ultra settings anytime soon, either, especially not at the laptop's native 2256 x 1504 pixel display. But there may still be some fun times to be had on the road with the efficient-running Chrome operating system.
(Image credit: Framework / Google)
There's also something to be said about a 12 MB L3 cache, and the ability to boost from 1.70GHz base CPU frequency and 30W sustained performance, to 4.40GHz and 60W in turbo mode. The Core i5 1240P has even managed to outperform the i7-1260P in multi-thread workloads according to Notebook Check's Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro tests.
Essentially, as is the same with Chromebooks across the board, the focus is on productivity. And now with Framework's help Google has extended that focus to DIY heads.
"The pre-built configuration comes with 8GB of DDR4 and 256GB NVMe storage and can be upgraded to up to 64GB of DDR4 and 1TB of NVMe storage," the press release notes. That's a little disappointing considering Intel's 12th Gen CPUs should be compatible with DDR5 memory, but I guess you can't have everything. At least not without spending the big bucks.
Perfect peripherals(Image credit: Colorwave)Best gaming mouse: the top rodents for gaming
Best gaming keyboard: your PC's best friend...
Best gaming headset: don't ignore in-game audioIf the idea of rifling around in your laptops innards, Google style, is something you're interested in exploring, the Framework Chromebook Edition comes to preorder in the US and Canada today, with the base config going for $999. That feels like a lot of cash, considering we wouldn't recommend a gaming laptop with less than an RTX 3060 for that price, but all this modularity has got to count for something, right?
Shipments start in late November/early December and you're looking at a fully refundable $100 deposit when you pre-order. You can also get on the waitlist for replacement parts and modules for the Chromebook Edition today at the Framework marketplace.
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Valorant's 5.06 patch notes are here and they're calling out bad behaviour. Though the main focus of the patch is the large changes to the map Pearl, which I'll go over in detail, what piqued my curiosity is the brand new Disruptive Gameplay-based Behaviour Indicator. Valorant is now going to point out the players in each game that have been flagged as behaving in a disruptive manner.
The patch notes simply state: "We've introduced a feature that will show at the end of game screen, which players have been detected for engaging in disruptive gameplay-based behaviour." This will be added to Unrated, Competitive, Spike Rush and Replication with others modes on the way. What disruptive behaviour means in this context is anyone's guess as Riot haven't clarified what that exactly means. Does it mean going afk mid-round? Does it mean language used in voice comms or using abilities to harm team mates to try and teamkill them? Perhaps. But Valorant will now point at you and laugh as you hide in shame as it knows you're being an 'wookie' in a video game.
The patch notes' highlight is that Valorant's newest map, the underwater city Pearl, is getting a rework. Since the game's initial release, the maps Riot Games has launched have had their ups and downs—but mostly downs if players were to speak their mind on the topic. Each map, as Riot once said, asks a question. For example, Bind asks what happens when you're given teleports to go from one side of the map to the other quickly and Fracture asks if you'd like to cry. Oh sorry, I mean it asks how things change if there are two attacking sides. But Pearl? Pearl asks you how many angles you want to check and then triples it.
Image 1 of 6(Image credit: Riot Games)Image 2 of 6(Image credit: Riot Games)Image 3 of 6B Shops changes (Image credit: Riot Games)Image 4 of 6B Shops changes (Image credit: Riot Games)Image 5 of 6B Shops changes (Image credit: Riot Games)Image 6 of 6B Shops changes (Image credit: Riot Games)It's no secret that Valorant is heavily influenced by the game formula of CS:GO. It's basically like its Gen-Z cousin, and although Valorant has a superpowered, sci-fi flair to it, Pearl was supposed to strip much of that flair back and give players a very simple, straight-forward experience by making a tight but complex map. Though it removes many gimmicks, it's now being reworked to make players spend less time checking angles and more time getting onto or defending sites.
Patch notes for 5.06 reveal many of the changes for both attackers and defenders. Anyone who has played Pearl, for example, will know that when pushing B Main, there is a little waist-height wall down the edge of the map which you have to check when attacking as once-per-game, someone on the enemy team may be able to hide there. It's not frequently used it but slows down the push quite significantly when in reality there are already many places to hide on B-site already. That waist-height wall is now being lowered so no one can hide completely, it's easier to check, and more risky to hold. All the changes to Pearl are in this spirit, accelerating the flow of play and making the numerous places to hide fewer and farther between.
Other changes include Mid Shop's pile of boxes disappearing in favour of a larger platform, which will typically aid flanks or rotations. Mid Shops to the central plaza is having a tricky corner removed for the same reason. Mid Top, by attacker spawn is being reduced in size so defenders have an easier time keeping mid control.
Image 1 of 6Art after (Image credit: Riot Games)Image 2 of 6Art after (Image credit: Riot Games)Image 3 of 6Art after (Image credit: Riot Games)Image 4 of 6B link after (Image credit: Riot Games)Image 5 of 6B Link after (Image credit: Riot Games)Image 6 of 6Cubby after (Image credit: Riot Games)The removal company seems to have finally visited Art, because the boxes have been removed making this area far clearer. This helps both teams check and clear the area, when before it was hard to be aggressive for either team.
And that clearing affects A Main and B Link too. Many boxes which were easy enough to conceal yourself behind have been removed, some vertical advantage points have been removed and my favourite little cubby on A Main has been removed, too. Shame, it was my favourite place for a Chamber teleport on attack. Perhaps what attackers will feel the consequence of the most is that the stairs down into A site from A Main have been narrowed so smoking it is easier on defence. Even without a smoke, defending that point will be easier with the smaller choke point.
Image 1 of 2A main to site before (Image credit: Riot Games)Image 2 of 2A main to site after (Image credit: Riot Games)There are some small bug fixes too which you can check out in the full patch notes on the Valorant blog post.
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The GTA 6 leaks have gotten a few souls in a tizzy about the game's graphical fidelity. Otherwise rational people look at leaked gameplay footage from a project that won't be finished for years, see the placeholder barks and Ken-doll textures, and conclude that, well, clearly this is representative of the final product. It won't get better than this.
Fortunately (or unfortunately if you were looking forward to an avant-garde, deconstructed GTA 6 experience) that's not the case. Early builds—even early builds of beautiful games—tend to look rough, and to prove the point, developers have been posting screenshots and videos of some of the biggest and prettiest games around in their earliest, ugliest stages of development. Take, for example, this video of an early build of Control shared by the game's lead designer.
Since graphics are the first thing finished in a video game, and CONTROL won multiple awards for excellence in graphics, here is footage from the beginning of development :)Full video here: https://t.co/l2g7oPhtk7
pic.twitter.com/cGnmJZXF5ESeptember 20, 2022See moreIt's a rare glimpse into an aspect of game design that you don't often see. If games marketing had its way, we'd all believe that videogames were delivered by storks, fully-formed and perfect. The fact that games, with very few exceptions, spend a vast chunk of their development time on the verge of catching fire might ruin the magic. Would Mass Effect's universe feel so majestic and impressive if you knew that, for a while there, Commander Shepard was running around in it without a head?
I mean, personally speaking, yes it would. I don't know about you, but the fact that basically every game that actually ships is something bordering a miracle makes them feel more impressive to me, not less. A video of The Last Of Us' Joel running around a map that looks like a PS1 level makes the final game look all the better, as far as I'm concerned.
The meme train keeps on rolling, and more and more devs are showcasing their rickety early builds as time goes on and momentum builds. If you fancy keeping track, you can check out this thread on Resetera that's trying to collate them all, and here are some highlights.
"Graphics are the first thing finished in a video game" Here's a Thunderjaw from an early build of Horizon: Zero Dawn pic.twitter.com/Xq6fw5fS0eSeptember 20, 2022
See more"Graphics are the first thing finished in a video game" Here's what early versions of Cult of the Lamb looked like pic.twitter.com/F5EyEH6M9rSeptember 20, 2022
See moreWhat art looks like for a video game in development. https://t.co/15bo6L6qMaSeptember 20, 2022
See moreI will leave you with this short video of a personal project of a Bungie senior designer; I guess some games actually do just look perfect right from the start.
Graphics are the first thing that is finished in a video game (footage from a personal project I was working on a few years ago before I started at Bungie) pic.twitter.com/Vw22EDn6yfSeptember 21, 2022
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For years now, the lines between PC gaming and mobile gaming have been blurring. Whether you're playing native mobile games with increasingly jaw-dropping graphics or streaming triple-A games from the cloud or your home PC, the technical prowess of games on the small screen is evolving, and you need a phone that will evolve with it.
With O2 Switch Up, you can make sure that you always have the best phone and best conditions for gaming right at your fingertips. This feature, available to O2 customers on a Plus Plan (or to custom plan customers for a small monthly fee), lets you upgrade your phone as many times as you like with no extra charges. Essentially, you get to hop over to a new contract, send your old phone back to O2 (which will then be resold as a refurbished model), and carry on with your brand-new phone like nothing happened!
Whether you're a gamer, a hobby photographer, or someone who needs the internet here, fast, now on your device, there are many variables to consider when picking a new phone.
Is image fidelity the priority for you? Then when doing your Switch Up, look for a phone with a crisp AMOLED display, which will make black colours on your screen as deep as the cosmic void–perfect for horror gaming under the covers.
(Image credit: Andy Ford)If you're signed up to cloud gaming services like GeForce Now, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (which contains cloud gaming), or Google Stadia, then you can take full advantage of them with a phone that supports 5G–the mobile internet protocol that's so fast it's led to a mass exodus of traditional home broadband users. With 5G and a cloud gaming subscription, you'll be able to stream heavy-hitting triple-A PC games straight to your phone even when you're on the go.
If you're streaming in your home from your own gaming PC (using an app like Steam Link or Moonlight), then keep an eye out for phones with high 120Hz, 144Hz, or even higher refresh rates so that those searingly high frame rates make it over from your rig to your phone. Or maybe you just want something as simple as a beefy battery to sustain you through those hours-long gaming sessions, in which case look for a device that has a 5000mAh battery or upwards.
Of course, there are plenty of other things to think about with a smartphone - from a powerful CPU for multitasking to storage capacity capable of holding all your photos, videos, and games - so head into an O2 store and the staff will be on hand to make sure that whatever phone you Switch Up to is the right one for you.
What you need to know about O2 Switch Up
(Image credit: Andy Ford)- O2 Switch Up is included with a Plus Plan, but you can add it as a Bolt On to any new Custom Plans for a small fee (£3.99) within 14 days of the start of your contract.
- The phone you're returning needs to be in good condition.
- Switch Up isn't available on SIM-only plans. Contract customers only!
If you want to know more, head over to the official O2 Switch Up page, or just go to any O2 store to see what they have available. If you're already on a Switch Up plan, you can swap your old phone out for a new one right there and then, and the good thing about doing it all in-store is that you get to physically get a feel for what you want. O2 understands that your phone is a vital life and gaming companion, so they'll help you choose wisely.
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After weeks of leaks and a pulled database listing, the official Ted Lasso account has confirmed that the fictional feelgood manager and his team, AFC Richmond, will be a part of FIFA 23. From a marketing perspective it's a no-brainer, even if from a real-world perspective it's a bit bonkers to think about a comedy coach and club rubbing shoulders with real-world teams.
Ted Lasso is an enormously popular (and very funny) Apple TV+ series that is currently in the process of filming its third and final season. It follows the journey of an American coach dropped into managing the struggling Premier League side AFC Richmond, who is at first hated by everyone before things take a turn for the better.
The crossover was first 'officially' leaked when AFC Richmond appeared in the FIFA rankings database for the game, a listing that was swiftly removed but not of course before the internet had screens of it. There was also an in-game shot of the AFC Richmond logo in menus.
Now the official Ted Lasso account has confirmed the crossover by tweeting a picture of actor Jason Sudeikis in a motion capture rig, alongside the text: "Look out, Mario! You're not the only pixelated man with a mustache who never knows where the tube is taking him…"
Look out, Mario! You're not the only pixelated man with a mustache who never knows where the tube is taking him… pic.twitter.com/sDIS9VPDmhSeptember 20, 2022
See moreThe EA Sports FIFA account replied to this a mere 20 minutes later with an emoji of eyes.
So yep: believe. This FIFA entry will be the first to feature motion-captured managers as well as players, so watching Sudeikis gurn about should be pretty faithful. The third season of the show was announced in 2020 but doesn't yet have a release date, amid murmurs of production troubles and perfectionist rewrites. The FIFA 23 deal is also of-a-piece with what's been going on there though, with the series having secured the license to use real premier League teams as well as AFC Richmond boasting a new kit designed by Nike.
We'll be getting Roy of the Rovers next. FIFA 23 is out 30 September, with early access for pre-orders, and will be the last EA game made under the FIFA license after a nearly three-decade partnership. EA is moving on with the series under the new branding of EA Sports FC (catchy), while FIFA huffs about how whatever it eventually makes will be "the best". That, at least, is the kind of positive attitude Lasso would admire.
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Way back in ancient times, i.e. the '70s and '80s, the floppy disk was a major player in the world of digital storage. And you might be surprised to learn just how prominent the format still is in this age of lightning fast NVMe SSDs. While there are no longer manufacturers churning out floppys, there's still one hero preaching the superiority of the format.
The founder of Floppydisk.com and self proclaimed "last man standing in the floppy disk business," Tom Persky, has been keeping the generally defunct format alive. Featured in the recently released book, Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious Afterlives of a Flexible Medium alongside artists and other obsolete media likers, Persky celebrates the format he's made a living off for over two decades (via The Register).
"20 years ago I was actually in the floppy disk duplication business," he remembers. "Not in a million years did I think I would ever sell blank floppy disks." That's because duplicating floppys in the 1990s, he says, was "as good as printing money." His journey into selling blank disks happened organically over time, and when the last floppy disk fell from the production line, Persky was there to catch it, investing in just "a couple of million disks," to keep his passion going.
"When people ask me 'why are you into floppy disks today?' the answer is simple: 'because I forgot to get out of the business,'" he jokes.
In his musings over the magical magnetic disk format he holds so dear, Persky reveals (much to my astonishment) that the floppy disk is still going strong today. Not only do countless computing devices in the world's healthcare system still utilise them, but users of embroidery machines are some of his top customers. He even reports that "Probably half of the airfleet in the world today is more than 20 years old and still uses floppy disks in some of the avionics."
The US Air Force only stopped using floppy disks for its nuclear weapons system in 2019, in fact. Which is, uh, a bit of a relief if I'm honest. But if even the air corps has been going hard on floppy disks for this long, there must be something to be said about the staying power of the format.
Peak Storage(Image credit: Future)Best SSD for gaming: the best solid state drives around
Best PCIe 4.0 SSD for gaming: the next gen has landed
The best NVMe SSD: this slivers of SSD goodness
Best external hard drives: expand your horizons
Best external SSDs: plug in upgrades for gaming laptops and consolesI mean, sure they max out at around 250Mb in their most industrial capacity, they're super easy to damage owing to their floppy nature, and the read/write speeds are utterly atrocious compared to the data storage devices of today, but at least they can be used as a retro medium for modern art.
Alright, the likelihood is we just have trouble parting with, or don't have the money to replace, old tech. I see very few benefits to going floppy today, especially as the majority of tech we see doesn't even have a way of reading the data. As a dejected man once said, "I've got a floppy, but nowhere to stick it," (at least, I'd like to imagine someone said that).
And although plenty of industries are still using the format, there's a concern that floppy disks will soon be phased out completely, with Persky admitting his company has maybe another four years left before it will be no more.
That's around 20 more years than I expected, so that's something.
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'You maniacs. You priced them up. Ah, damn you, god damn you all to hell!'
That's pretty much my reaction to the price of the first Nvidia RTX 40-series cards. A set of fresh Lovelace GPUs where the cheapest of the three new cards is a princely $900. Have a guess how much an overclocked ROG version of the 12GB RTX 4080 is going to cost... my bet is on a four-figure sum.
But you have to admit, we've got ourselves to blame here. Even if in reality we've been backed into a corner by myriad external forces, we've proved to Nvidia, and to every other component maker, that us PC gamers will pretty much pay anything to get our hands on the latest and greatest graphics cards for our rigs.
Sure, we've had little choice. The only other option was to call a halt to progress and not buy a new GPU when we couldn't quite get the frame rate we wanted out of our current system. And who's going to do that when there are tempting new graphics cards on offer? It's just money, after all.
The RTX 4090 was unveiled at the GeForce Beyond Special Broadcast, and this monster graphics card will be hitting the shelves on October 12 for the exorbitant price of $1,599.
Admittedly, that's only $100 more than the RTX 3090 launched for back in 2020, and $400 less than the Pandemic Special RTX 3090 Ti, but the fact the entire release lineup of RTX 40-series cards starts at $900 is kinda galling.
A third-tier card should not cost the best part of a grand.
But there's nothing faster right now, and no matter how much AMD wants to shout about the potential performance efficiency of the RDNA 3 cards launching on November 3 this year, the likelihood is that Nvidia's beefy RTX 4090 GPU will retain the performance crown until the end of 2022 at least.
It's not even the full-fat top Lovelace GPU, either. There's plenty of room for an 18,000+ CUDA core $2,000 RTX 4090 Ti or Titan down the line.
And frames mean sales (as no marketing person has ever said) and so whichever GPU is able to post the highest gaming frame rates is going to be the one the majority of PC gamers will covet.
Image 1 of 4(Image credit: Nvidia)Image 2 of 4(Image credit: Nvidia)Image 3 of 4(Image credit: Nvidia)Image 4 of 4(Image credit: Nvidia)And it looks like price is no object to many of our gaming ambitions.
The perfect storm of unprecedented performance increases, supply chain disruptions, the crypto-mining boom, and stay at home orders from the past couple of years meant that prices spiralled ever higher as demand continued to outstrip supply. Those were all things out of our control and meant that if we did want a new card, we had to pay through the nose to get one.
Even now, when there are plenty of cards on the shelves, the average selling price of a graphics card has still not dropped down to pre-pandemic levels. And likely never will.
Like everything else graphics cards are only worth what people are willing to pay.
Now those external factors are largely mitigated we're left purely with the burden of inflation and the certain knowledge in the minds of marketing departments across the globe that people will still pay.
You can bet during the entire of 2021 Nvidia was kicking itself for costing the RTX 3080 at just $699 when retailers and AIBs were selling for far more than that initial price. And it certainly isn't going to take the risk of missing out on dollar dollar bills this time around, even if the bottom has fallen out of the crypto market and the supply chain has been more or less shored up.
We can call it greed on the part of the capitalist businesses manufacturing the hardware that goes into our gaming PCs, but like everything else graphics cards are only worth what people are willing to pay. If everyone now baulked at the $1,600 price tag for the RTX 4090, and Nvidia struggled to shift the volume it needs to, then you can bet there would be price cuts.
(Image credit: Nvidia)But though there are no longer supply chain problems, crypto goliaths swallowing up hordes of GPUs, or nationwide lockdowns the green team will probably still sell out of its initial run of RTX 4090 cards; both from its own vaults and from the distribution centres of all its add-in board partners. Well, apart from EVGA.
I probably wouldn't feel so gutted about the pricing of the new Ada Lovelace cards if they weren't the first RTX 40-series card out the door. If Nvidia had launched with a more affordable RTX 4080 (that didn't seem like a ret-conned RTX 4070) ahead of it, then you could still make the case the RTX 4090 is just the faintly ludicrous money-no-object, ultra-enthusiast, Titan-class card. That it's not really meant for gamers, but for budding professionals who can't afford a Quadro.
It's tough to maintain that line, however, with the GeForce brand name upfront, and the fact that it's the first Lovelace GPU to hit the shelves and is branded "a quantum leap in gaming" by Nvidia. Then you have second- and third-tier cards coming out for $900 and up.
Jen-Hsun's talked about the burgeoning RTX 40-series as a set of cards that will "deliver the ultimate performance to enthusiasts," while the mainstream will still be served by the RTX 30-series surviving alongside it. It can therefore still cater for a broad cross-section of the GPU-buying public, even if this two-caste system means slumming it with last-gen silicon at the lower end.
(Image credit: Nvidia)Can AMD respond with some affordable RDNA 3 GPU that matches Lovelace, but undercuts it on price? Nope. The rumours are that the Navi 31 card will be expensive as well. If the new Radeon cards can compete with Lovelace why would they charge less? AMD has shareholders it has to please with increased average selling prices, too.
But hey, if we get a $350 RTX 4060 card out of all this sometime next year, with practically RTX 3080-class gaming performance, I'll be a lot happier. It's possible, even likely given the rumoured core counts putting it just shy of the GA102 GPU of the last-gen card, but we're not going to see it until long after the first super expensive RTX 40-series cards hit the market.
After all, from the looks of things the RTX 30-series cards are going to stick around for a while. But then who's to say the RTX 4060 isn't going to come with a much higher price tag than the RTX 3060 it's replacing? I certainly wouldn't bet against a $450 sticker price.
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Everything you need to make today's Wordle a breeze is on this page. I can offer you a hint for the September 21 (459) challenge, a few general tips to improve your daily game, and if you're stuck you'll find the answer close by.
Finding four yellows early on felt more of a curse than a blessing today, as I had to then shuffle everything around without any real feeling of where it went as there wasn't much of anything to guide me. I did make it just in time, but it was pretty close.
Wordle hint
Today's Wordle: A hint for Wednesday, September 21
Today's answer is used to describe a brief summary of previous events, a quick go-over of the most important points of a story, conversation, or professional presentation. Long-running TV series often have these at the beginning of major episodes, to make sure everyone's up to speed.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:
- A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants.
- A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
- The solution may contain repeat letters.
There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank.
Wordle answer
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)What is the Wordle 459 answer?
Not sure? No problem. The answer to the September 21 (459) Wordle is RECAP.
Previous answers
Wordle archive: Which words have been used
The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.
Here are some recent Wordle solutions:
- September 20: ALIKE
- September 19: TRICE
- September 18: STICK
- September 17: CHUTE
- September 16: PARER
- September 15: DOUBT
- September 14: THYME
- September 13: ALPHA
- September 12: BOOZE
- September 11: TIBIA
Learn more about Wordle
Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.
You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns
️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. 
means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 
means you've got the right letter in the right spot.You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer.
After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
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Five years ago, solo developer Brianna Lei released Butterfly Soup, a visual novel about an all-girl high school baseball team. Hysterically funny and upsettingly accurate to the experience of being awkward and young, we praised its well-written LGBT characters and dubbed it the best visual novel of 2017. Now, Lei has announced she's working on a sequel.
Butterfly Soup 2 will take place "a few months after the events of the original game" and will hop between the viewpoints of its returning main characters, Diya, Akarsha, Min-seo, and Noelle. According to the official fact sheet, it should roughly take a tidy three hours to play and will be available on a pay-what-you-want model just like the original Butterfly Soup.
Butterfly Soup 2 should release on October 29, though Lei says, "It's actually not finished yet, so once again it'll probably come right down to the wire". That will give you plenty of time to re-read the original, as well as Lei's other visual novel Pom Gets Wi-Fi, which is about a pomeranian's quest to get wi-fi, yes. You can also check out some of the other best visual novels on PC.
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Nvidia dropped some pretty hefty news on us recently with the official launch announcement for its upcoming RTX 40 series of cards. The next gen heavyweight RTX 4090 cards are launching in October, with two RTX 4080 variants also ready to go in November. These big cards come with some pretty huge promises to match, like massively improved FPS when it comes to competitive shooters.
Of course, given all this news comes from Nvidia itself, it's to be taken with a heavy dose of scepticism. While we're definitely impressed with things like the new modding tools to add ray tracing to basically all games, and excited for those ray tracing processing improvements, it's always good to keep expectations grounded. Especially around marketing speak.
One of the big claims Nvidia has made up for its new line of cards is an up to 4x performance increase thanks mainly to the improvements on Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling, or DLSS technology. The new DLSS 3 is boasting a whopping 4x frame rate increase for the new cards, which sounds like a huge improvement. And to be fair, it may well be, but Nvidia's own graph detailing the performance gains tells a different story.
The up to 4x performance claim at the top of the graph falls away a bit when you look at the games listed. To the left we have the category for today's games and none are getting anywhere near that performance boost. The best of the lot is Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, which is only getting slightly over the 2x relative performance marker with a 4090 card. It could just be about optimisation, but it seems clear you won't be seeing those huge gains on games you already own.
Screen queens(Image credit: Future)Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC
Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick screens
Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do
Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gamingOn the right side of the graph you can see some massive spikes for what's listed as next-generation performance. Cyberpunk 2077 with the new ray tracing overdrive is pushing over the 4x mark, as is Nvidia's Racer RTX. Though Portal with RTX is still much lower, barely making the 3x mark even with the RTX 4090 card. Still, it leaves us hopeful that while we won't get the full advantage for older games, the next generation may wind up looking incredible.
Of course, this all remains to be seen and you can bet we'll be testing these cards on all sorts of games to see how they truly perform as soon as they're in our hot little hands. It'll be interesting to see how games of different generations play with the new tech, and whether or not these gains are noticeable to begin with.
But it looks fair to say those who aren't jumping out of their skin for new games shouldn't be in any rush to upgrade. Most people could easily get by with an older and much cheaper card. If your machine is doing a perfectly capable job then it's not going to be worth dropping over a thousand dollars for these improvements. Given Nvidia is keeping the RTX 30 series around to sell alongside these cards, it seems the green team knows it as well.
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The PC gaming landscape is once again set for big changes with the launch of new hardware. As the next generation rolls in, many of us are adrift in dreams of upgrades. With some of the newest Nvidia cards officially launching this November, we're drooling over the potential boost that can come with new GPUs.
Depending on what you play and how, you might be interested in different advancements. For the shooter die-hards, Nvidia is making some pretty big promises when it comes to improvements in frame rate for some of the most popular games. For those chasing impossibly high FPS numbers, a new monitor may well be in need to keep up with these cards.
Nvidia is making some pretty big claims for its RTX 40 Series, stating that competitive players will actually benefit from something like a 27" 1440p 360Hz monitor like the Alienware 34 QD-OLED monitor, which is one of our favourites in the category. The company says the new cards will deliver framerates of 360+ with latency as low as 10ms in optimised games, giving players a slight edge.
A graph on Nvidia's RTX 40 announcement page shows off some of these improvements to popular esports titles. The examples given are for the upcoming RTX 4090, paired with an Intel i9 running Apex Legends, Fortnite, Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege, and Valorant at 1440P. Most were happily pulling over 400 FPS with under 10ms latency on the company's tests.
Screen queens(Image credit: Future)Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC
Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick screens
Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do
Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gamingThe demanding Apex Legends doesn't do quite as well as the other games. In the graph it's been capped at 300 FPS, which feels like it's falling short of Nvidia's 360 FPS claims. Still this is a pretty huge improvement over what I've ever achieved in Apex. That boost in performance likely wouldn't help a last-place champion like me, but for those into esports any advantage is key.
Fortnite performs the best out of the bunch, but that's what you'd expect from a game optimised to work just about anywhere. If it can run on a Switch or even a phone, it's not too surprising. The graph shows Fortnite zooming along at an uncapped 601 FPS at 8.4 ms of latency. The speed at which kids dressed as a bear piloting another bear will turn into houses when you shoot them is going to be staggering.
Rainbow Six Siege comes in a very healthy second with an uncapped framerate of 493 and only hitting 7.9 ms in the latency department. Valorant is next with 433 FPS at 8.2 ms, which might just help you rank up through the nerves. Overwatch, like Apex Legends, had its framerate capped but this time at 400 FPS and was hitting 8.6 ms latency. It'll be extra interesting to see how the upcoming Overwatch 2, which recently lost its lead hero designer, works with these cards.
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In 1997, four German students put their hobby project online: 2D fantasy MMO Tibia. In the years that followed, millions of players in hundreds of countries would log onto Tibia (most of them in Brazil and Poland, where it was most popular), and its creators would found development studio CipSoft. Tibia would become famous for its depth and secrets, with mysteries like a door that wasn't opened for 12 years contributing to its ongoing appeal. It's still being updated today. As the latest Tibia news post informs players, "Next Tuesday, September 27, your game experience will be enriched by sound."
Tibia's developers have been working on audio for the previously silent pixel-art MMO for the last year. Explaining why it took so long, they say, "It was crucial for us to provide you with choices, to give you various options to customise your own sound experience, to decide which sounds you want to hear and which you might want to mute. This allows you to set the pace at which you want to explore this new and fresh aspect of Tibia. It is up to you when and how much you want to hear of Tibia's sounds and music. You can change your settings as you please and choose whatever sound experience you prefer."
The arrival of sound will be preceded by the premiere of Tibia's anthem, "a musical composition which embodies the history, the spirit, the heartbeat of Tibia." You'll be able to hear the Tibia anthem via YouTube on September 26 at 8pm CEST.
"After 25 years," Tibia's community managers say, "this is quite a step but it is one worth taking. We encourage you to be curious, to venture out to traverse Tibia's soundscapes like the adventurer you are." You can sign up for a free account to play Tibia on its official
website, and if you're wondering what was behind that door that wasn't opened for 12 years, well, the answer was actually a bit disappointing. -
Keyboards are one of the easiest parts of your PC gaming setup to really dial into your own style. First you get to choose what kind of feel you're after, whether you want something specifically for gaming or you're a die-hard mechanicaldeviant. There are even analogue solutions like our favourite gaming keyboard the Wooting Two He, for those who really want to feel their keys. But the choices don't end there.
Artisan keycaps are a great way to go that extra distance in keyboard customisation. They range from the very simple, like these G-Skill caps that let more light shine through, to the truly terrifying, like these finger-hungry T-Rex caps. Sometimes hardware companies even come out with their own bits of keyboard bling like these RTX ON caps from Nvidia, or the tiny GPU keycap released by Asus.
But the biggest problem with all of these solutions is that they're weak. Sure, a Kerbal-themed keycap might look cute, but it's also safe, boring, and uninspired. Buying sweet keycaps off the internet may be fun, a great way to support small artists, and stylish, but where's the risk? Where's the adventure? Where's the permanent destruction of property you were trying to enhance?
That's why I'm glad someone with some keyboard balls has finally decided to show their face to the modding community. Redditor lady_renari has posted this frankly so-good-it's-upsetting glitter mod video to help inspire us all. Finally, a challenger who knows what they're doing and has a little sense of daring has appeared.
Perfect peripherals(Image credit: Colorwave)Best gaming mouse: the top rodents for gaming
Best gaming keyboard: your PC's best friend...
Best gaming headset: don't ignore in-game audioThe video takes us through the step by step process of this extremely skilled build. It's fair to say you probably shouldn't follow along with this one, not unless you're incredibly certain of your ability—but it's still nice to watch a master at work.
First we start with a detailed look at how the specialised glue is applied carefully around the edges of the keys. The glue is expertly applied so as to slide between the keys, leaving the caps as free from mess as possible for a smoother typing experience down the line. The technique used here is just so impressive to watch, it had me holding my breath through the entire application.
modding_your_keyboard_is_super_simple from r/MechanicalKeyboards
Once the layer of glue has been applied and has evened out, the keyboard begins to resemble membrane-based boards. It's already amplified the look of the original basic board, elevating it to a new category. Despite this, that's not the end of this impressive mod. The final shine has yet to be added.
With an absolute masterclass of brilliance, modder lady_renari then coats the glue with glitter. Different sections of the keyboard all have their own color themes that, when the glittering is complete, show off a clearly segmented board. It's so easy to tell which part of the keyboard is which thanks to the large blocks of glittery colour. A build this good-looking and functional is a rare site.
And of course they finish the build with a step so many modders forget: a good rinse under the tap. It's a great way to get rid of any loose bits of glue, glitter, or whatever you happen to choose to work with. Unfortunately the video abruptly ends here, so it's hard to get a look at the final product, but the process was a clear educational treat. I learned so much I can put to use in my own future keyboard-modding projects.
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In 2021, PUBG owner Krafton announced it had acquired the rights to The Bird That Drinks Tears, a popular series of Korean fantasy novels by Yeongdo Lee. Though little about the game has been revealed since, and the official website still calls it Unannounced Project, a cinematic "visual concept trailer" has now been unveiled.
The trailer does get a name: The Nhaga Eater, referring to Kagan Draca (following the website's anglicized spelling), a central character of the books who hunts and consumes reptilian beings known as nhagas. That's him, smoldering with generic rage as he severs a nhaga's head in the trailer. The books also feature bird-people called rekkon and creatures called tokebi, inspired by Korean myths of mischievous pranksters called dokkaebi (who Rainbow Six Siege's Korean hacker Grace "Dokkaebi" Nam is named after).
While it's an expensive-looking few minutes of Unreal Engine 5 CGI, the trailer doesn't tell us anything about how Unannounced Project will actually play. A job listing for an executive producer on the project did call for experience launching at least one narrative-driven singleplayer open world game, however.
Krafton owns multiple studios, and the one working on this project is Team Windless. Hollywood concept artist Iain McCaig (Star Wars, The Avengers) is its design director, and his art apparently inspired this trailer. "The team has spent over two years on building character and worldview on the artwork", its description says. Presumably the game's still a long way off then.
In the meantime, a couple of other Krafton-owned studios have games coming out soon. Striking Distance is working on sci-fi survival horror game The Callisto Protocol, due out on December 2, and Unknown Worlds is planning to release digital miniatures game Moonbreaker into early access on September 29.
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After the hashtag #TwitchStopGambling began trending thanks to its adoption by popular streamers including HasanAbi, Pokimane, and Mizkif, Twitch has responded with an announcement that it will "prohibit streaming of gambling sites that include slots, roulette, or dice games" beginning on October 18.
The problem of gambling on Twitch was brought to light recently after Sliker, who streams VR games, Counter-Strike, and Valorant, was accused of borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his viewers, mods, and other streamers without any intention of paying it back. Confronted on a Discord call (via Vice), Sliker admitted to using the money for online gambling. "I don't want no sympathy in this. It's true, it's disgusting," he said. In an apology video, Sliker explained that he became addicted to gambling after getting into skin gambling on CS:GO Lounge, and then moving on to gambling with money.
Discussion of gambling on Twitch inevitably brought up the site's Slots category, which currently has more viewers than Fortnite. It's the seventh-most popular category overall. Viewers watch as streamers put thousands of dollars into virtual slot machines and card games, often in crypto casinos, without being aware they may be playing with "house money" rather than risking their own.
As #TwitchStopGambling hashtag gained steam, streamers suggested going on strike for at least a week around Christmas as a way of encouraging Twitch to ban streams of gambling sites. Twitch responded quickly, and as its statement says,"We'll be making a policy update on 10/18 to prohibit streaming of gambling sites that include slots, roulette, or dice games that aren't licensed either in the U.S. or other jurisdictions that provide sufficient consumer protection. These sites will include Stake, Rollbit, Duelbits, and Roobet. However, we may identify others as we move forward."
However, Twitch's wording does leave the door open for licensed gambling sites. In the United States, online gambling is currently legal in Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The statement also says, "We will continue to allow websites that focus on sports betting, fantasy sports, and poker."
Twitch's hesitancy to go further and completely ban gambling on its site may have something to do with the fact that the Slots category has enjoyed "a 66% increase year-on-year", according to a statement StreamElements gave to GamesIndustry.biz, and racked up over 50 million hours watched last month. Twitch's statement ends by saying, "We'll share specifics on the updates to our Gambling policy soon, including the full policy language, to make sure everyone is clear on our new rules before they take effect on 10/18."
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It's not often I paste a short video of me playing a game into the PC Gamer work Slack and other writers immediately buy it on Steam. But all it took was a 90 second clip of me trying to toot out Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in trombone-based rhythm game Trombone Champ and several copies of the game were sold. Like, instantly.
You can see the clip in the gif above, so long as you promise to turn on the sound as high as it'll go. Yes, my performance was terrible and if Beethoven wasn't rolling over in his grave it was only because he'd already burst out of it, staggered around shrieking, and then vomited. But in Trombone Champ, playing the trombone badly is just as much fun as playing it well, which is just one reason why I love it.
In fact, since trying out Trombone Champ for the first time this morning it's become—and this isn't a joke—a serious Game of the Year contender for me. It's a blast. Or rather, it's a toot.
Trombone Champ works like other music rhythm games: notes move across the screen from right to left, and you move the mouse up and down to meet them and then click or press a keyboard key to play the note. Accuracy and timing determine how well you play, with little words popping up to tell you how you're doing. Words like Perfecto! Or Nice! If you're sucking, as I typically do, you'll get a Meh or sometimes a Nasty, which is maybe the funniest word to use to describe someone playing a trombone poorly. I doubt many music teachers use it, but maybe they should.
You're graded at the end of each song (there are 20 in all, with a plan to add more on the game's roadmap), and each time you play a song you earn Toots, which can be spent on Sacks, which contain Tromboner Cards. I first assumed these cards were just a joke. Some cards display famous trombone players and musicians and contain facts about how many hot dogs they could eat in one sitting, while other cards feature things like baboons, or a trumpet (described wonderfully as "the coward's trombone").
But these cards eventually have a function, one that I stumbled on accidentally by clicking something that perhaps should not be clicked. Did I summon a demon in Trombone Champ? I may have summoned a demon in Trombone Champ. Look, I'm not going to explain the whole thing because there's far more to Trombone Champ than just honking out notes to a beat. There's also… lore.
(Image credit: Holy Wow)In fact before you even get to toot on your first trombone you'll realize there's more going on here, as an introductory cutscene describes ancient trombone prophecies in a manner befitting The Lord of the Rings. A flame alights in the dark. A shadowy trombone slowly begins to spin. Baboons are mentioned. It won't be the last time baboons are mentioned, either.
I won't sum it all up, but as you play you'll discover:
- New trombones
- More new trombones
- Music mostly not meant for trombones
- Fascinating trombone lore
- Collectible cards and card crafting
- Hot dogs
- Baboons
- A song about baboons
- Baboon facts
- Baboon secrets!
- Non-baboon secrets
- A 'baboon quantity' option in the settings menu
- Possibly that demon I mentioned
(Image credit: Holy Wow)And then there's just the act of trying to competently play fast-paced songs on a damn trombone, which is genuinely tricky and, like I said, great fun no matter how badly or successfully you wind up playing. (Thankfully, I'd describe the scoring as almost criminally generous, so even an absolutely awful rendition won't be too harshly graded.) I've laughed a lot while playing Trombone Champ, more than I have with any game in long while. Some of the humor just comes naturally from missing a note with a trombone in a song like Also Sprach Zarathustra or Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
But there's also the game itself, which packs jokes onto the screen while you're playing, like during The Star-Spangled Banner. At first an American flag flaps proudly in the background as fireworks pop off in time with the notes, but then the scene morphs into a pile of money and then, finally, an enormous greasy hamburger. And during the baboon song—there's a baboon song—pictures of various baboons pop up while you toot to the lyrics, which mostly consist of the word "Baboon." It's a hilarious game. (And a great song.)
And funny as it is, Trombone Champ is no joke. The songs are almost all blisteringly fast (you can slow them down a bit in the settings) and the notes come at you with lightning speed, so many of them, and they go on for quite a while. How long is Hava Nagila? Much, much longer than you remembered, especially when you're playing it on a trombone.
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2K Games has warned its customers to ignore recent customer support messages, even if they appear to be legitimate.
It's not that someone is spoofing the 2K support email address. It's worse: Someone gained access to the actual platform 2K uses to provide customer support, apparently by stealing the credentials of a contractor, and "sent a communication to certain players containing a malicious link."
"Please do not open any emails or click on any links that you receive from the 2K Games support account," the company said in a message posted to the 2K Support Twitter account, which was not compromised. The 2K Support website (support.2k.com), however, is temporarily closed. Visiting it presently displays a login page.
The malicious link was reportedly disguised as a download link for the 2K Launcher, but would actually lead to the victim downloading malware designed to steal passwords saved in browsers, according to an analysis of the file requested by Reddit user TronFan, who received one of the fake support emails and realized it was suspicious.
2K's first suggestion for anyone who clicked the link is to reset passwords stored in their browser, which supports the conclusion that the malware is a password stealer. 2K also recommends enabling multi-factor authentication where available (just a good idea in general), running an antivirus scan, and checking email settings for unexpected new forwarding rules.
If you didn't click a link from a recent 2K Support email, don't do that, obviously. (I'd avoid downloading files linked in emails in general; it's better to navigate to the website that hosts the file yourself.)
2K says it will put out a notice when we can trust 2K Support emails again, although perhaps "trust" is too strong a word. Due to incidents like this along with regular old email spoofing, I'm skeptical of every email sent to me by the services I use.
Hey folks, please read an important message from our Customer Support team. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/yKI18eL7mYSeptember 20, 2022
See more"We deeply apologize for any inconvenience and disruption that this matter may cause," said 2K.
For now, the attack appears unrelated to the Rockstar Games hack that saw in-development GTA 6 footage circulate online last weekend. 2K Games and Rockstar share the same parent company, Take-Two, but the systems accessed by the attacks aren't related, and they're different kinds of attacks with different targets. The Rockstar hack targeted a developer and its information, whereas the target of the 2K Support attack wasn't 2K itself, but its customers.
PC Gamer has contacted 2K to ask for more information about the attack and how it happened. We'll update this story if we learn something new.
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The four-player co-op shooter Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is coming to PC in November, but before it gets here there will be a beta test, and you can sign up for a shot at access right now.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is essentially a WH40K version of Vermintide, the four-player Warhammer Fantasy co-op action games originally released by Fatshark in 2015 and 2018. They were excellent, and our June hands-on preview of Darktide strongly suggests even better things ahead: It's more gun-focused, as you'd expect from the 40K setting, but still awash in lore, weirdness, and "frankly enormous hordes of enemies."
"It's a game I would've happily played all day even in that [pre-release] state," Wes wrote. "I don't know yet how well the changes to loot and leveling will play out here, but the action is everything I wanted from a 40K version of Vermintide."
The Darktide closed beta test will run from October 14-16, and will be available exclusively on PC through either Steam or the Windows Store. (The full game is also coming to Xbox Series X-S consoles.) There will be more content and features in this beta than were offered in the previous technical test, and more players will be supported, but only a limited selection of weapons, enemies, maps, missions, and other systems will be available—less than the full game—and progress will not carry over.
To get into the Darktide beta, you'll need to pop 'round to the signup page and give them your email address. At some point after that, you'll receive an email with a link to a survey asking for more detailed information, ranging from basic system specs and internet connection speed to your location and your past experience with co-op shooters. Once that's done, you move into the waiting phase: If you're selected to take part, you'll receive a follow-up email with a Steam key that you can redeem for access to the game.
Fatshark didn't indicate how many people will be admitted to this test, but it did state in an FAQ that preordering the game is not necessary for access. At the same time, it hinted pretty strongly that it's got something in store for people who do: "We recognize the players that pre-order as some of our most committed players and while we don’t have anything to share today, it is safe to assume that we will have a few things to share in the future," the studio wrote.
One other point of note: While the beta is closed, you can stream it, if you're into that sort of thing. Fatshark also invited streamers to sign up to receive upcoming information regarding its creator program.
I recently played Necromunda: Hired Gun, another WH40K shooter, and it was fantastic: probably the most wildly over-the-top ultraviolent grimdark nonsense (in a good way) I've ever seen. (It's also in far better shape now than when we reviewed it.) The two games are completely unrelated but in a very general "all metal all the time" sense I really hope Darktide can pick up the setting where Necromunda left off and run with it.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is set to come out on November 30. The full game is available for pre-purchase now on Steam.
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The FOV slider is the single most important graphics option in gaming by at least one metric: it can literally stop a game from making you feel sick.
In 2006, I got more headaches from The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion than I did from cramming for school exams. I played days upon days of Oblivion, but not on a PC—I was stuck on an Xbox 360, which was new and shiny but still barely capable of running Bethesda's new RPG. Every play session more than an hour gave me a dull headache, which I blamed on simply too much Oblivion. It wasn't until years later that I found forum threads online with people complaining about the same thing—and they blamed Oblivion's particularly narrow field of view, or FOV, for giving them headaches or even making them nauseous.
But game developers will tell you: finding the right FOV is not as simple as it looks. "FOV is a bit of a tricky thing," says Sébastien Laurent, technical director at Hunt: Showdown and Crysis developer Crytek. "It sounds straightforward at first, it's 'just' the angle of vision that you want to give the player. It seems to be a simple balance between providing the user all the relevant information all the while providing an image that looks good."
PC players often prefer a wider field of view, which offers more peripheral vision. That spatial awareness can be clutch when someone tries to flank you in a first-person shooter. But the advantage of a narrower field of view is that everything on the screen is closer together and easier to see because they take up more space. The more pixels the head you're trying to shoot takes up on the screen, the easier it'll be to shoot.
FOV sliders let players find our own sweet spot, but they're rarely an option in console games today, let alone back in 2006.
"When it comes to consoles, the performance is a way more critical subject, and a larger FOV, even if it implies the same number of pixels to shade, leads to a direct increase in scene complexity," Laurent says. "The wider the FOV, the more objects can land in the view of the users and need to be rendered, the more shadows need to be calculated, the more complex the occlusion computations get, etc."
For a cutting-edge open world game like Oblivion, a narrow FOV meant a mostly stable framerate. But why did that more enclosed view of the world leave some of us feeling hungover after a couple hours of bashing river crabs? Basically, your body thinks you ate some bad meat.
Okay, that explanation requires some context, which Jordan DeLong, who has a PhD in psychology focused on perception and cognition, was happy to provide. One key detail: Some of us are far more sensitive to a mismatched field of view than others.
"If it's a flight simulator where the vision doesn't match the [movement], it's actually fighter pilots that get motion sick first, because they have such a fine-grained expectation of how they should be moving," he says. "If you put them in a simulator and it's not the same, their brain goes 'oh, something's off.' They have a finely honed expectation of what their physical reality should be like, given [what they're seeing]. It's a feedback loop, so that sets them off."
PhD in Psychology: Perception, Cognition, and Developmenthttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/3HaXaEPVhfoVfaqN9KGXw8.jpgJordan DeLong got a PhD in psychology focused on perception and cognition from Cornell University. After working as a professor at several universities, he's now "a Senior Data Scientist at Eysz, a med-tech startup that focuses on transforming epilepsy care. He utilizes psychological theory, machine learning, and good-old fashioned research design to separate the signal from the noise."
Even those of us who aren't fighter pilots have a lifetime's experience of moving through the world, which is why a first-person game with an FOV too divorced from our natural vision can be jarring. But why is motion sickness our body's response? Enter the bad meat, and bodily reflexes that date back to our earliest caveman days.
"We're not good at detecting if we've been poisoned, whether some food was bad, or whether what you drank had something in it," says DeLong. "You can imagine in the past you're rolling around and eating different things, trial and error. Well, one of the best ways that you can detect whether you've been poisoned before any of the other symptoms is that there is a desynchrony between your perception and your motor system. Normally they're in sync with each other…
"When there's a disconnect between those two, it's usually, in a naturalistic sense, because you've been poisoned with something, or maybe you drank something on purpose or accidentally, that altered your perception. The nausea is your body trying to get you to throw up whatever you have eaten that has screwed up your proprioception, perception motor system. That's all it is."
I'm a little surprised that people think one FOV is just better than the other. No.
Jordan DeLongIn games this is most often blamed on a narrow FOV, but a too-wide FOV can cause the same bodily reaction—you're probably just more likely to notice a super-wide 'fish eye' field of view looks odd, and dial it back before feeling queasy.
"You would love for the FOV of the camera in the game to mimic the FOV of you actually moving through the actual world," he says. "And that's going to be different based on the actual size of the screen and how close it is to you. When I'm playing, I like to have the screen real close. And that kind of changes my opinion of what the FOV setting should be. Because if it's further away, well, then you'd actually expect it to be a narrower field than if you're up close, you expect it to be wider."
The closer your FOV setting comes to mirroring the portion of your vision the screen in front of you takes up, the more intuitive sense it will make to your brain. This is why there's no such thing as the "best" FOV for any game: that number will vary dramatically based on how big your screen is and how close you are to it.
DeLong stresses that despite the motion sickness a less-than-ideal FOV can cause, we're exceptionally good at adapting. "There are a lot of keyboard warriors online that will say, 'the exact right field of view is this.' You know, you can get used to a lot of different stuff… That's something that your visual system is actually pretty good at doing, adapting and understanding. It takes a little while, but you can. I'm a little surprised that people think one is just better than the other. No. It's literally a personal, perceptual thing."
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Call of Duty fans are fighting over the soul of the series. In the first days of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer beta (currently open to PlayStation players only), conversation has been dominated by details—minimaps are less useful, boots are louder, and some perks now have to be earned mid-match. Modern Warfare 2 is Infinity Ward's latest attempt to slow down CoD (for the better, I think), but it's not going down well with the loudest corners of the community.
Numerous popular posts on the official MW2 subreddit and Twitter make it clear that some players aren't happy with the ways that Infinity Ward is breaking with CoD's run 'n gun tradition. If you ask me, those players are wrong.
I'm having a great time in the Modern Warfare 2 beta (though I'm most excited to try the PC version this weekend). Infinity Ward is once again demonstrating why its turn on the CoD development carousel is worth waiting for—this is already the best CoD has played recently in terms of sound, feel, movement, and feedback. Modern Warfare 2 has that extra sprinkle of tacticool magic that was sorely missed in CoD's last two years of Cold War fan fiction and bland WW2 rehashes. It's exactly what I've been craving out of CoD for a while now, so much so that the things that usually annoy me, like punishing aerial killstreaks that blow me up without warning, are more tolerable.
Infinity Ward is rethinking how 6v6 CoD is played while still sticking, sometimes stubbornly, to its roots. If you've Called a lot of Duties over the last 15 years, you should be aware of these key changes:
- You can have up to four perks equipped at once, but two of them (a Bonus perk and Ultimate perk) only activate once you've gained enough points each match
- Players are not highlighted on the minimap when they shoot or sprint
- Name tags do not appear above enemies when aiming at them
- Slide canceling is mostly gone—Infinity Ward is cracking down on this funky, unintentional movement tech (though players are already figuring out ways around this)
The most radical change is by far in the minimap. Previously, sprinting or shooting an unsilenced gun would reveal your position on the minimap for the entire enemy team. I've always hated this and I'm glad it's gone—getting punished with a map ping for getting a kill feels as backwards in 2022 as it did in 2007. Instead, enemy shots will now appear as a ping on the compass at the top of the screen, pointing to the direction of the action without broadcasting exact 2D coordinates.
Sound check
Getting punished with a map ping for getting a kill feels as backwards in 2022 as it did in 2007.
Honestly, I haven't used the compass much either, because Modern Warfare 2's sound has been all I need for situational awareness. There is a downright ludicrous level of fidelity in sound FX this time around. Following in the literal footsteps of games like Hunt: Showdown and Rainbow Six Siege, seemingly every action you can see has an associated noise that keeps me firmly glued to the action—bullets believably explode and reverberate through indoor spaces, scratchy camo pants "thwip" as your legs collide mid-run, empty casings rattle on the ground, and stomping boots echo down hallways to warn of incoming danger. Positional audio is accurate enough that, playing with my nice pair of headphones, I've been able to hear less careful enemies before they hear me.
The somewhat ironic result is that, despite sprinting no longer being punished on the minimap, my matches have been noticeably slower and more methodical than years past. It's hard to hear what's going on when you're the loudest one in the lobby.
Maybe my 2,000 hours of Rainbow Six Siege are doing the talking, but I'm a fan of slower CoD. If I'm going to get shot in the back, I'd much rather it be the result of them hunting me down with sound than following a red dot on a map. It's nice to run around without feeling the constant need to stare at the upper left corner of the screen. Modern Warfare 2's radar change is taking me back to the last time Infinity Ward tried something radical with 6v6: The first beta for Modern Warfare 2019 didn't have a minimap at all. The compass was originally meant to replace the map entirely. I celebrated the death of the minimap at the time, but pressure from fans pushed Infinity Ward to add it back in with a pre-launch patch.
A weaponized DDOS is a little on the nose for Call of Duty. (Image credit: Activision)Power creep
Another smart change is Modern Warfare 2's new method of picking perks. You can now make "perk packages," which are essentially a loadout of perks independent of your gun loadouts. As someone who usually wants to equip the same set of perks on every class and occasionally swap to try others, the ability to batch-equip has already saved me a years' worth of Create-a-Class tedium.
I'm not as convinced by the Bonus and Ultimate perk slots that have to be earned throughout a match. The idea of building up to a powerful perk over time is cool, but most of the "ultimate" perks on offer are more about countering annoying killstreaks than empowering yourself. Ghost, a perk that I insta-lock on every class because of the constant annoyance of UAV scans (which are still an easy 3-kill reward), is an Ultimate perk. It now takes most of a match to achieve the base level of positional privacy that makes Call of Duty tolerable—Infinity Ward could address this by making Ghost a basic perk, or it could attack the source of the problem and finally get rid of killstreaks.
Are we really still rewarding the best players in the lobby with overpowered super weapons? That's like if the top fragger in every Valorant round was rewarded with a free Operator rifle. I know, I know: it's blasphemy to call for an end to one of CoD's most iconic systems, just imagine a world in which you can run across an open field without the risk of a VTOL jet dropping a $2 million payload of explosives on your face.
Modern Warfare 2 is Infinity Ward's first at-bat since it kicked off a new Call of Duty era with MW2019 and the free-to-play juggernaut that would eventually engulf the entire franchise, Warzone. As the series prepares to go on hiatus for standalone releases in 2023, Activision is placing its full faith in the studio that put CoD on the map twice. I like where it's going so far, but CoD can be even better when its fans are open to incremental change. Today, it's red dots on minimaps. Later this year, it's Warzone 2.0's long-awaited extraction mode, DMZ.
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The lead hero designer behind Overwatch's huge roster of characters—and the ones to come in its upcoming sequel—has left Blizzard, the company confirmed to PC Gamer.
Geoff Goodman "made the decision to leave Blizzard earlier this year," a Blizzard spokesperson said. The last public appearance by Goodman was in a group interview alongside senior game designer Josh Noh in June.
Blizzard provided a statement about Goodman's departure:
"We thank Geoff for his many years of service at Blizzard and wish him all the best. His ability to bring to life Overwatch’s diverse hero roster through gameplay has been incredible, and the mark he’s left on the Warcraft and Overwatch teams will be felt for years to come."
Goodman's history with Overwatch goes all the way back to before it was known as Overwatch, when the team was still working on project Titan. Titan was cancelled and resurrected into the team-based hero shooter that launched in 2016. Outside of the game's former director Jeff Kaplan, who left Blizzard in 2021, Goodman was one of the few faces of Overwatch, frequently asked to discuss balance changes and new heroes in interviews and events.
Goodman helped design major reworks for Doomfist and Orisa, new heroes Sojourn and Junker Queen, and likely had a hand in several of the game's upcoming heroes, including new support hero Kiriko.
Although no reason was given for Goodman's departure it comes after a series of high-profile Blizzard departures in the buildup and aftermath of the lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing for workplace harassment and discrimination last year. Overwatch's executive producer Chacko Sonny left the company in 2021 and producer Tracy Kennedy left last September.
Speaking of the turmoil at Blizzard in a group interview with PC Gamer in April, Goodman said the team made sure everyone was in a "good spot," and felt "safe," before returning to work on the game. "It seems to be everyone's, you know, much happier now and things are going forward. But I think it's it's still there and still lingers. It's definitely a morale hit."
Overwatch 2's October free-to-play launch is imminent, but some fans of the original game are dismayed by what will change in the sequel. The game recently detailed its seasonal battle pass model and how it will lock each new hero behind tier 55 (out of 80) of the free track. In a group interview with PC Gamer last week, Overwatch general manager Walter Kong said that "heroes are the single most engaging content that we have in the game," and that "it seemed to be a very strong fit to put those heroes into our new engagement systems."
Overwatch 2 will launch and replace the original game on October 4.
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As the Dragonborn in Skyrim you quickly collect more suits of armor than you can wear in a single lifetime, and at a certain point there's no reason to sell them because you've got more coins than Scrooge McDuck. Thus: mannequins, wooden statues that reside in your various homes that you can dress up in your spare outfits and armor sets. There's no point in killing all those brave warriors and stripping them naked if you can't show off your accumulated loot, after all.
But Skyrim's mannequins can be a bit buggy. In the past, players have reported armor placed on mannequins going missing, or sometimes being duplicated. Occasionally the wooden statues will hover a bit above the ground. Certain items aren't displayed on them properly, and some helmets can cause a mannequin's head to simply disappear when equipped. Stuff like that.
But far more chillingly, mannequins will sometimes move. Imagine playing Skyrim late one night and you're walking around your house at Honeyside or Proudspire and the mannequin in the corner turns and looks at you as you walk by. It's downright terrifying. And at times it wasn't just an eerie head-turn but a complete idle animation playing on your lifeless wooden armor display unit. You can see how disturbing it is in this video.
Bugs in Bethesda games are obviously nothing new, nor is the fact that in many cases Bethesda simply never fixes them. And sometimes these bugs are strange or silly enough that players actually wind up enjoying them, just another goofy quirk in the open world RPG.
So when Bethesda abruptly does fix a bug that's been around for a decade, as they recently did with the moving mannequins, it almost feels like the removal of a beloved feature rather than a patch for an annoying problem.
After 10 years, Bethesda has fixed mannequins coming to lifein Skyrim. The end of an era :( pic.twitter.com/0RVJVjBqD3September 19, 2022
See moreWell, that's what we have modders for. Not only do they fix bugs Bethesda doesn't, they unfix bugs Bethesda does. A modder has unfixed Bethesda's fix, or as I like to think of it, they've corrected Bethesda's correction. The Mannequins Move mod on Nexus mods re-enables the wooden statues creepy ability to move so once again you can enjoy puttering around your Skyrim home and suddenly having your heart leap into your throat because your dress-up doll turned to look at you.
"Mannequins should no longer not move," the mod's page says. After reading that a couple times to be sure I've understood it, I can safely say everything is right in the world of Skyrim again.
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An all-new game based on the Marvel superhero Iron Man is in development at EA Motive, Electronic Arts announced today, headed up by Marvel's Avengers and Guardian of the Galaxy producer Olivier Proulx.
EA Motive's Iron Man project will be a third-person, singleplayer action-adventure game telling an original story "that taps into the rich history of Iron Man, channeling the complexity, charisma, and creative genius of Tony Stark," EA said. It's being developed "in collaboration with Marvel," and is currently in pre-production, which means we won't likely see anything of substance about it—or word of a launch date—for a long time yet.
"It’s an honor and privilege to have the opportunity to make a videogame based on one of the most iconic superheroes in entertainment today," Proulx said. "We have a great opportunity to create a new and unique story that we can call our own. Marvel is encouraging us to create something fresh. We have a lot of freedom, which is so engaging for the team."
The announcement also invites to check out EA Motive job listings "if you're interested in helping them craft the ultimate Iron Man videogame adventure." Unfortunately, none of the listings make specific reference to Iron Man at this point, so we're not going to glean any further insights that way.
I'm not a superhero expert—my comics-collecting days tended more toward Vertigo-style fare and spinoff tales like Legends of the Dark Knight and Marvel Comics Presents—but I can't help wondering whether Marvel is a little behind the curve on this one. Star Wars, another license EA has leaned into, is relatively timeless and open-ended at this point, but Iron Man is something entirely different: A specific character whose arc has concluded with absolute finality. Iron Man is still rolling in the comics, sure, but the character's popularity emerges entirely from the Marvel films, not the books. And even if the impact of the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to resonate (which I think is far from certain), the spectacular failure of Marvel's Avengers clearly demonstrates that success on the big screen does not by default translate into a videogame hit.
That's not to say EA's Spider-Man game can't succeed—Marvel's Spider-Man is proof of that—but at least Spider-Man is an interesting character. Iron Man, well, he's really more of a good Black Sabbath song.
This of course won't be the first Iron Man game based on the films: That honor goes to the 2008 release developed by Artificial Mind and Movement, known these days as Behaviour Interactive, which featured voice work from Robert Downey Jr. and Terrence Howard, and wasn't very good. A few years later, Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios went to work on an Iron Man game of its own, but that project fell apart after a couple of years because of "company politics."
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090: Release date, price, and specs
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The wait is over. The rumour mill can stop spinning, however briefly, and we can pore over the details Nvidia has released for its new top card. And with Nvidia claiming that the top-end card, the GeForce RTX 4090, is 2-4X faster than its current fastest offering, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, it's a generation that is worth paying attention to, even if you can't quite muster the cash to buy one just yet.
We now have the release dates, pricing, and core specifications for Nvidia's new GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs thanks to its GTC 2022 announcement. Built on its Ada Lovelace architecture and produced using TSMC's N4 process (nominally 4nm), there's plenty to get excited about Nvidia's newest silicon.
Top of the pile is the GeForce RTX 4090, which will be the first card to be released. It's the most expensive offering of those announced so far, but it also packs a mighty punch when it comes, if Nvidia's own benchmarks are to be believed. Here's the lowdown on what's on offer.
Release Date
Only the top of the range GeForce RTX 4090 has a firm release date so far, and that's set for October 12.
You can sign up to be notified when the cards are available over on Nvidia's site. Resellers are expected not to be taking pre-orders ahead of time either, which is all good by us.
We're expecting review samples ahead of this date because obviously, you wouldn't want to drop serious cash on a card without seeing reviews first. Generally, review embargos lift a few days before the actual launch.
There's nothing official from Nvidia on this front yet though.
Price
You can expect demand for these cards to be high, particularly at launch, so don't be surprised to see higher prices from resellers.
The GeForce RTX 4090 has a starting price of $1,599. This makes it $100 more expensive than the GeForce RTX 3090 was at launch, although notably $400 cheaper than the $1,999 RTX 3090 Ti, which is the card Nvidia is comparing the performance of these new models to.
It's worth noting that both the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti weren't really aimed at gamers, but more at the semi-professional crowd. This does help make sense of that price point, especially if you're using such cards for rendering and creative work. You know, where time is money.
Performance
We haven't got our hands on the GeForce RTX 4090 yet, so haven't been able to run our own suite of benchmarks on it. In the meantime, Nvidia has released some figures, just to show how its latest architecture compares with its previous best Ampere offering, the RTX 3090 Ti.
In Microsoft Flight Simulator and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide you're looking at a respectable doubling of the frame rate. Nvidia boasts a more than quadrupling of the performance in Cyberpunk 2077 though, albeit using a new ray tracing setting called Overdrive, so we don't have anything we can compare that to just yet.
The likes of Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Division 2 showing more modest improvements. Still, given the RTX 3090 Ti was no slouch when it came to high-end gaming, this is a good sign for the overall performance.
Specs
The GeForce RTX 4090 uses Nvidia's new Ada Lovelace architecture, boasts support for the new 3rd generation Ray tracing cores, 4th generation Tensor cores, and DLSS 3. Nvidia has stuck with the PCIe 4.0 interface for this generation and the card support Resizable BAR, Microsoft DirectX 12 Ultimate, and Vulkan RT API.
Nvidia will be producing Founder Editions of the GeForce RTX 4090, although third parties will also be producing their own versions with their own cooling solutions. Such cards can be factory overclocking too, although the difference this makes in game can be slight.
The GeForce RTX 4090 boasts an incredible 76.3 billion transistors, making it a significantly beefier chip than the existing Ampere GPUs, which rolled in at 28.3 billion.
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