It's time! The Vault is open, and the Epic MEGA Sale 2023 starts…. Now! There are more opportunities to save than ever in one of the biggest sales we've ever had. We have enormous discounts of up to 75% off select titles. The Epic Coupon returns, with additional savings of 25% on eligible games. And we just launched a brand new Epic Rewards program that lets you earn 5% of your purchase back to spend on your next eligible Epic Game Store transaction.

There's more! Over the next four weeks, four free games and four giveaways will be up for grabs during the sale. Check in every Thursday, between May 18, 2023 (11 AM ET) to June 15, 2023 (11 AM ET), to see what's new. If you're reading this, the sale has already begun. It's live from May 18, 2023 (11 AM ET) to June 15, 2023 (11 AM ET). Go, go, go!

We're excited to announce that Unreal Engine 5.2 is now available. With this release, we've further expanded UE5's groundbreaking toolset as it continues to deliver on the promise of making Unreal Engine the most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool in the world. Alongside feature refinements and stability improvements, Unreal Engine 5.2 pushes the boundaries of what creators can expect out of the box, delivering innovative new functionality.

Procedural Content Generation framework
Unreal Engine 5.2 offers an early look at a Procedural Content Generation framework (PCG) that can be used directly inside Unreal Engine without relying on external packages. The framework includes both in-editor tools and a runtime component. The PCG tools enable you to define rules and parameters to populate large scenes with Unreal Engine assets of your choice, making the process of creating large worlds fast and efficient.

Ubisoft is slowly migrating availability of its flagship games over to the Steam store, and gaming fans will be happy to find out about this move. A lot of the French video game publisher's popular titles (on PC) have been locked to their own Connect service and the Epic Games Store. Far Cry-series fans on the PC platform having been shouting and complaining about one particular entry being tied to the pair of e-shops since launching back in October 2021. That timed deal between Ubisoft and Epic Games is soon to expire, and Far Cry 6 will become available via Steam on May 11.

Ubisoft implemented a reversal of releasing games on Steam back in 2019, a decision that attracted almost instant negative feedback from PC Gamers. The Division 2 was announced as being the 2019 headliner for release on Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games Store, and (at the time) other upcoming titles would follow the same path. Murmurs of a possible return to Steam emerged in late 2022, and shortly thereafter Ubisoft proceeded to rollout big franchise titles on that platform, including Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Immortals Fenyx Rising. The latest batch to get the Steam store release day treatment are (the aforementioned) Far Cry 6 on May 11th, Riders Republic on June 8th, Rainbow Six Extraction on June 15th, and finally Monopoly Madness on June 22nd.

Paradox Interactive today revealed more details about Life by You, created to be the most moddable and open life simulator from the Berkeley, CA based Paradox Tectonic. In Life by You, players will create humans and live out their lives without loading screens. Paradox Tectonic is led by Rod Humble, a games industry veteran known for his pioneering work on the life simulation genre. Life by You will be available in Early Access on September 12, eager players can pre-order today on the Epic Games Store for a suggested retail price of 39.99USD / 39.99 EUR / 34.99 GBP, wishlisting will also be available on Steam.

Life by You allows players to design and live out the lives of the humans that they create in an open game world where everything is customizable. Players create their households, build their homes and tell life's many stories. With real language conversation and the ability to switch from third-person to direct control gameplay, players will connect with their humans on an emotional level. A wide variety of Creator Tools and Editors will allow players to tweak every aspect of their experience, giving them the ability to live life to the fullest - or break the rules, as they see fit.

On Tuesday, Microsoft and NVIDIA announced the companies have agreed to a 10-year partnership to bring Xbox PC games to the NVIDIA GeForce NOW cloud gaming service, which has more than 25 million members in over 100 countries. The agreement will enable gamers to stream Xbox PC titles from GeForce NOW to PCs, macOS, Chromebooks, smartphones and other devices. It will also enable Activision Blizzard PC titles, such as Call of Duty, to be streamed on GeForce NOW after Microsoft's acquisition of Activision closes.

"Xbox remains committed to giving people more choice and finding ways to expand how people play," said Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. "This partnership will help grow NVIDIA's catalog of titles to include games like Call of Duty, while giving developers more ways to offer streaming games. We are excited to offer gamers more ways to play the games they love."

Fortnite maker, Epic Games, has on Monday reached a settlement in court in an investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to pay a total of 520 million US Dollars in fines. This fine is because Epic deployed shady tactics of manipulating children into purchasing Fortnite V-bucks, skins, etc., without proper consent forms and purchase order confirmations. Even with millions of complaints from parents, Epic decided to proceed with its tactics and used dark patterns that deceived the original intent. Thus, the FTC has made a case that this violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule, and Epic Games will have to pay the fine.

The fine is consists of two separate causes. The $275 million monetary penalty for violating the COPPA Rule—the largest penalty ever obtained for violating an FTC rule, and the $245 million to refund consumers for its dark patterns and billing practices. The refund fine is FTC's most considerable refund amount in a gaming case and its most significant administrative order in history. Epic said, "Over the past few years, we've been making changes to ensure our ecosystem meets the expectations of our players and regulators, which we hope will be a helpful guide for others in our industry. " The official statement is far longer, and you can read about it here.

Epic Games is excited to announce that Unreal Engine 5.1 is now available. With this release, we've built upon the groundbreaking feature set introduced in UE5, making it more robust, efficient, and versatile for creators across all industries. As part of this effort, we've been stress-testing the engine against different workflows, making it applicable to more sectors. We've laid the groundwork for the Lumen dynamic global illumination and reflections system, the Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry system, and Virtual Shadow Maps (VSM) to support games and experiences running at 60 FPS on next-gen consoles and capable PCs, enabling fast-paced competitive games and detailed simulations to run without latency.

Meanwhile, Nanite has also been updated with a Programmable Rasterizer to allow for material-driven animations and deformations via World Position Offset, as well as opacity masks. This exciting development paves the way for artists to use Nanite to program specific objects' behavior, for example Nanite-based foliage with leaves blowing in the wind. This release adds a number of features to improve efficiency for developers of games and other large-scale interactive projects, helping teams be more productive.

Atari—one of the world's most iconic consumer brands and interactive entertainment producers—today launches its new title, Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, commemorating 50 years of success, growth, and progress in the video game industry. Available now on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Series X|S, PlayStation 4|5, and Windows PC, Atari 50 functions as an interactive trek through Atari's historic past, featuring a selection of the publisher's most iconic games, and brands, as well as showcasing the creative individuals who launched the video game industry.

A mix of video game collection-meets-anthology, Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration showcases the history of Atari through a combination of retro and modern playable games, short videos, never-before-seen interviews, early development diaries, and more. Emulating seven separate console platforms, and containing titles spanning five decades, the library-styled interface presents over 100 video games sorted by era in an intuitive linear timeline. Other files and materials are also part of the package, including early development sketches, hardware schematics, internal memos, pictures, films, and other "artifacts," the majority of which have never been made public.

SOEDESCO launches first-person horror mystery game Charon's Staircase on Steam, Epic Games Store, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. In order to announce the news, SOEDESCO and Indigo Studios released an exciting launch trailer, available in multiple languages.

Uncover the dark secrets that lie beneath Oack Grove
In Charon's Staircase, you set out to bury the horrible past of an institution called "The Ministry" by retrieving and destroying classified documents. Venture through nightmarish landscapes, solve puzzles, decipher codes, and avoid dangers to unravel the macabre events that took place years ago in the experimental facility of Oack Grove. Charon's Staircase is a story filled with mystery while telling a dark and dramatic narrative through its ominous environments, chilling details and fully-voiced narration. Will you discover the terrifying truth and find your way out?

Verizon, the Network America relies on, together with Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers, today unveiled the Razer Edge 5G, the ultimate 5G handheld gaming device during the keynote address of RazerCon 2022. This groundbreaking collaboration will bring to market the world's first dedicated 5G handheld console—equipped with the world's most advanced display of any gaming handheld, powered by the latest Snapdragon G3xFort Gen 1 Gaming Platform, and running on Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband, the 5G network for gaming. It is specifically engineered to provide the best gaming performance while on the go.

"The core concept of every product we put out always boils down to one thing, our 'For Gamers. By Gamers.' motto," said Richard Hashim, Head of Razer's Mobile & Console Division. "With the Razer Edge, we've created the ultimate handheld gaming platform. Together with Verizon and Qualcomm, we designed the Razer Edge 5G to be a true gamer device, capable of supporting gamers' entire catalogs of AAA games or allowing them to stream endlessly online, taking their gaming experience on the go with low latency."

Western Digital Corp., an industry-leading provider of storage technologies and solutions, today announced a new partnership with Epic Games and Nintendo to deliver the first officially licensed Fortnite SanDisk microSDXC card for Nintendo Switch. The exclusive Fortnite branded memory card for Nintendo Switch is designed to provide players with consistent and reliable storage as they drop into Fortnite, no matter how they play. The card has also been tested and approved for use with all Nintendo Switch Systems and is backed by a limited lifetime warranty to give gamers the peace of mind needed to land in command.

Inspired by the epic Skull Trooper (128 GB) and legendary Cuddle Team Leader (256 GB) Outfits, the exterior design of the cards pay homage to some of the most rare and popular Outfits in the game. As a bonus, fans who purchase the card will receive a code to redeem the rare Angular Flow Wrap, sure to mesmerize any squadmate.

Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, a 4v1 hunt or haunt action-packed asymmetrical multiplayer is available for pre-order, August 18, 2022, 8 a.m. PT. The latest game from IllFonic, Inc. will be playable Tuesday, October 18, 2022, on PC via Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4|5, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One. Form a team with up to three other Ghostbusters to track down Ghosts haunting a number of locales. Sniff out paranormal activity with the P.K.E. Meter and charge it to unleash a short-range pulse disabling Ghost movement. Unveil hidden rifts acting as the Ghost's spawn points and teleportation portals, and destroy them. Use the powerful Particle Throwers to capture the Ghost, deploy a trap, and wrangle them into it before they escape!

Meanwhile, the Ghost works alone, roaming around stages like the Museum, an abandoned Prison, and other spooky locations, including a new one to be revealed at Gamescom. Frighten civilians to scare them away. Possess objects to raise the overall Global Haunt percentage, to regain ghost power, or just cause mass hysteria. Use slime to temporarily stun Ghostbusters. Move the rifts to keep them guessing, summon minions to make an escape, and show the Ghostbusters they should be afraid of this Ghost!

We've just updated the Epic Games Store with a new feature we know players have been waiting for—Ratings and Polls. These new features allow players to provide direct feedback to the Epic Games Store community for the games they're playing. Responses will populate the store product pages with information about games and apps, creating a better experience and helping players find games they're more likely to love. After playing a game or using an application, players may find the Epic Games Store launcher requesting feedback at the end of your session.

Independent developer Free Range Games and publisher North Beach Games today revealed The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, the only survival crafting video game set in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth, the iconic fantasy world created by J.R.R. Tolkien. Unveiled in the Epic Games Summer Showcase during Summer Game Fest, The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria follows the Dwarves of Middle-earth as they embark on an original adventure to reclaim and restore their Dwarven homeland of Moria. The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria will be available exclusively on PC via the Epic Games Store when it launches in Spring 2023. Players interested in securing their role in the adventure can add the game to their wishlist starting today. "We're beyond excited for the Dwarves to return to Khazad-dûm! Thanks to our friends at North Beach Games and Free Range Games, we'll delve deep into the Misty Mountains together, by this time next year. We do hope you'll join us!" Middle-earth's Fredrica Drotos enthusiastically exclaimed.

The story of The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria takes players beyond the books and into the Fourth Age of Middle-earth, the fantastical world created by J.R.R. Tolkien. Summoned to the Misty Mountains by Lord Gimli Lockbearer, players take control of a company of Dwarves tasked to reclaim the lost spoils from the Dwarven homeland of Moria—known as Khazad-dûm or Dwarrowdelf—in the depths below their very feet. Their quest will require fortitude, delving deep into the Mines of Moria to recover its treasures. Players will join forces to survive, craft, build, and explore the iconic, sprawling mines. Courageous expeditioners will need to be vigilant as mysterious dangers await.

For the Summer Game Fest 2022, Coffee Stain Publishing, Coffee Stain North and Koch Media are udderly proud to announce the long dreaded sequel to the global annoyance 'Goat Simulator'. Goat Simulator 3 releases this fall on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 and on PC exclusively on the Epic Games Store. This follow up to 2014's Goat Simulator starts an all-new adventure, once again featuring Pilgor the goat. This time she's found new pastures on the sprawling sandbox island of San Angora, a place where mysteries and chaos follow wherever you go. Players are free to roam around and discover the island's secrets or, well, just destroy stuff. This is a Goat Simulator, after all.

Built from the gravel up, this next generation of goat simulation has it all; Goats, goats wearing hats, goats riding a goat wearing a hat. There are also unnatural disasters, secret animal societies, triple jumping and probably any other nonsense you could think up. But truly, what is all this exciting newness without friends to explore it with? In Goat Simulator 3, you can gather as a herd of up to 4 friends to be the goats of your dreams, together. Yes, Goat Simulator 3 has online multiplayer!

2K and Marvel Entertainment today announced Marvel's Midnight Suns will launch on October 7, 2022. Created by Firaxis Games, the legendary studio behind the critically-acclaimed, world-renowned Civilization and XCOM franchises, Marvel's Midnight Suns is an all-new tactical RPG set in the darker side of the Marvel Universe. It will be available on PlayStation 5 (PS4 ), PlayStation 4 (PS4 ), Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows PC via Steam and Epic Games Store. The Nintendo Switch version of the game will be available at a later date. Rated T for Teen by the ESRB, Marvel's Midnight Suns is now available for pre-order.

When the demonic Lilith and her fearsome horde unite with the evil armies of Hydra, it's time to unleash Marvel's dark side. As The Hunter, your mission is to lead an unlikely team of seasoned Super Heroes and dangerous supernatural warriors to victory. Can legends such as Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and Blade put aside their differences in the face of a growing apocalyptic threat? If you're going to save the world, you'll have to forge alliances and lead the team into battle as the legendary Midnight Suns - Earth's last line of defense against the underworld.

Hello, bean fans. We're so excited to share that soon you'll be able to play Fall Guys for free on all platforms—including the introduction of Nintendo Switch, Xbox and the Epic Games Store. Since Fall Guys first hurtled into the world in August 2020, we've come together for six Seasons of stumbles, united in a ridiculous quest for the Crown. Through jungle-dome japes by way of Medieval mayhem. From Custom Lobbies hype to that very first Squad win with your pals, we couldn't have done any of this without the support, dedication and compassion of our incredible community.

From June 21, we're welcoming more players than ever before to the Blunderdome to compete for the Crown - and we've been working hard behind-the-scenes to make sure that everyone enjoys the same great Fall Guys experience no matter where you play. If you haven't checked out our reveal event stream, feast your eye on this marvelous motion picture broadcast immediately.

Today Epic Games announced a $2 billion round of funding to advance the company's vision to build the metaverse and support its continued growth. This round includes investments from existing investor Sony Group Corporation as well as KIRKBI, the family-owned holding and investment company behind The LEGO Group, with each party investing $1 billion respectively. All three companies highly value both creators and players, and aim to create new social entertainment exploring the connection between digital and physical worlds. Epic continues to have only a single class of common stock outstanding and remains controlled by its CEO and founder, Tim Sweeney.

"As a creative entertainment company, we are thrilled to invest in Epic to deepen our relationship in the metaverse field, a space where creators and users share their time." said Kenichiro Yoshida, Chairman, President and CEO, Sony Group Corporation. "We are also confident that Epic's expertise, including their powerful game engine, combined with Sony's technologies, will accelerate our various efforts such as the development of new digital fan experiences in sports and our virtual production initiatives."

Epic Games is excited to announce that The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is now available to download for free on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. This boundary-pushing technical demo is an original concept set within the world of Warner Bros' The Matrix. Written and cinematically directed by Lana Wachowski, it features Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss reprising their roles as Neo and Trinity and—in a reality-flipping twist—also playing themselves.

The project reunited many of the crew that worked on the seminal The Matrix trilogy, including James McTeigue, Kym Barrett, John Gaeta, Kim Libreri, Jerome Platteaux, George Borshukov, and Michael F Gay, in collaboration with teams across both Epic Games and partners, such as SideFX, Evil Eye Pictures, The Coalition, WetaFX (formerly Weta Digital), and many others.

The wait is over—we're very excited to announce that Unreal Engine 5 is now available to download! With this release, we aim to empower both large and small teams to really push the boundaries of what's possible, visually and interactively. UE5 will enable you to realize next-generation real-time 3D content and experiences with greater freedom, fidelity, and flexibility than ever before. As you may have seen, the new features and workflows have already been production-proven for game development in Fortnite and The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience demo.

Meanwhile, although some major new features like Lumen and Nanite have not yet been validated for non-games workflows (this is an ongoing goal for future releases), all creators will be able to continue using workflows supported in UE 4.27. But they'll also benefit from a redesigned Unreal Editor, better performance, artist-friendly animation tools, an extended mesh creation and editing toolset, improved path tracing, and much more. See the documentation for full details.

CD PROJEKT RED today revealed that the next installment in The Witcher series of video games is currently in development with Unreal Engine 5, kicking off a new saga for the franchise and a new technology partnership with Epic Games.

Today's announcement marks the first official confirmation of a new game in The Witcher series since the release of CD PROJEKT RED's previous single-player, AAA RPG in the franchise—The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt—which won a total of 250 Game of the Year awards and was later expanded upon with the Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine add-ons.

Today we're excited to share something we've been making in the background for quite a while - PC Building Simulator 2. Working alongside the development team at Spiral House, and with nearly every major hardware vendor in the PC scene, announcing a sequel means a chance to step up and push the limits on virtual PC creation to new heights (and of course, add better RGB).

Sam 'Caliburn' Hills, Senior Community Manager of PC Building Simulator, explained "It's a chance for us to do a lot of the things we couldn't do before on a technical level. We're aiming to simultaneously add more depth to the simulation, increase options for customization, improve the ability to tinker, and to make a better-looking game... It's hard work but right now everyone on the team is really hyped."

Today, we are thrilled to announce that Bandcamp will become part of Epic Games. Bandcamp is an online music store and community where fans can discover, connect with, and directly support the independent musicians they love. Fair and open platforms are critical to the future of the creator economy. Epic and Bandcamp share a mission of building the most artist friendly platform that enables creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money. Bandcamp will play an important role in Epic's vision to build out a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music and more.

"Bandcamp's mission is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans," said Ethan Diamond, CEO and co-founder of Bandcamp. "In Epic, we've found a partner who believes as deeply as we do that the future of music, and art itself, depends on the creation of equitable and inclusive communities like the one our fans and artists have helped to build. We're excited to work alongside the Epic team to accelerate the realization of our mission and pursue our shared goal of empowering more creators in a fair and open way."

NVIDIA on Tuesday released the latest version of its GeForce Game Ready software. Version 511.65 WHQL comes with support for the new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU and RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU. The drivers also come with optimization for "Dying Light 2: Stay Human," and "Sifu." The drivers also add a few security updates, improvements to the interoperability between OpenCL and Vulkan APIs, an updated NVIDIA OpenCL compiler; and application profile for "Dead by Daylight Epic Games version."

Among the bugs fixed are geometry corruption for "Far Cry 6" in Windows 11, stuttering noticed in multiple apps; a black screen noticed in notebooks with Advanced Optimus configured for dGPU mode; DLDSR causing black screens on certain 3440 x 1440-pixel displays; GeForce Experience filters causing flickering in certain DirectX 12 games; and "Forza Horizon" game freezing noticed when applying certain trims on cars. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 511.65 WHQL

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney recently spoke at the Coalition for App Fairness conference in Seoul where he called for a unified digital store for game platforms. Sweeney stated that Epic Games had already begun working with publishers and service providers to create this vision of a unified store where customers could be confident that their purchases would work across all platforms. The system described by Sweeney would be a radical departure from existing ecosystems such as Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, Nintendo, and Epic where digital purchases are often limited to an individual companies platform.

This new system would allow games purchased from any ecosystem to be fully playable on all supported platforms without requiring multiple purchases. The success of this vision is entirely dependent on game studios signing up to the program which will likely be a hard sell given the expected fall in sales. While there are limited options currently exist for cross-buy games the movie industry has implemented a similar program with Movies Anywhere which boasts large studios such as Disney, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.

Tim SweeneyWhat the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms