Steam has releases its statistics for the state of gaming in 2018, where the company reveals which games provided the most engagement, either in sales or players, throughout the year. Top Sellers, Top New Releases, Top Selling VR Titles, Top Early Access Grads, and Most Played Games are the categories across which Steam divided 2018's games, and some of these found themselves on the top spot of more than one category.

Warframe, DOTA 2, Monster Hunter: World, PUBG and CS: GO all find themselves on the Platinum tier of both the Top Sellers and Top Played categories, with more than 100,000 concurrent players at some point in time. The Witcher 3 finds itself in the Gold category of the Top sellers, again, and in the Silver category for Top played. No man's Sky, Stellaris, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance all find themselves in the Gold tier of the Top played game as well, with more than 50,000 concurrent players - No man's Sky, for one, surprises here. The game with one of the worst receptions ever has actually managed to keep relevant for much, much longer than other, much more critically-acclaimed games. Check out the top tiers in the images below.

The launch of the new Epic Games store for the PC has created many an aftershock in the gaming industry, including Steam updating their revenue share model, but the games press and media alike were quick to discuss implications more so for the equally new Discord store that understandably is more in line as far as breaking into the market goes, and impact from competition accordingly. In a series of moves that no doubt pleases game developers and publishers alike, Discord announced that they are going to offer a 90/10 revenue distribution with 90% in favor of developers- an increase over the industry leading "up to 88%" from Epic Games until then.

There is a small catch in that Discord is allowing developers to self-publish the games if they so desire, which in turn is how they will get that 90% revenue share, so it remains to be seen how user friendly that process is. Discord in their blog post made a big point about how it does not cost 30% to distribute games in 2018, a move that will no doubt be examined throughout not only the gaming industry but every single online app distribution platform where a 70/30 split is the current industry standard. As long as this move enables the store to break even and churn out a profit, we would like to see more of this happening to where game developers get more money and do not feel compelled to work ridiculously long hours.

Epic Games has been pulling a few major moves in the PC gaming market lately, none bigger than creating their own game store and following up with shifting over some of their games from Steam. The company promises a more lucrative profit distribution share to developers (to which Valve had preemptively countered slightly with their own Steam revenue update), and that did help get some game developers and publishers on board, including Supergiant with their new games Hades.

To appease the cautious PC audience thus far, Epic Games has decided to begin with some free games for account holders. As of the time of this post, the excellent aquatic survival game Subnautica is up for grabs. The game was somewhat of a sleeper hit this year, and well worth the free price of admission for anyone interested. The game is available through December 27, after which Epic Games will offer Super Meat Boy for free the following two weeks.

The launch period of a game is the most important from the sales perspective, and piracy can seriously damage those initial earnings. Several anti-tamper systems have been launched to avoid this, but none seems to be really effective. Denuvo is well know on this front, but its protection has been defeated over and over (and over) again, for example. There's a new anti-tamper technology called Valeroa to fight these issues, and its approach is somewhat different.

As the developers explain, Valeroa "is not a DRM" and it doesn't affect the performance of games because "only a handful of functions are protected by Valeroa". This technique doesn't even require an internet connection, it doesn't read or write the hard drive continuously and "does not limit the number of daily installations or changes of hardware". The most interesting bit comes with its approach to the actual protection, which according to their developers Valeroa "is extremely difficult to crack before and closely after the game release date. The protection becomes a lot easier to crack after a predefined period".

Valve seemed to have the ambition to become a hardware company when he launched peripherals like his Steam Link and its Steam Controller. The scope of these products has been limited, and now the company reports that "the supply of physical Steam Link hardware devices is sold out in Europe and almost sold out in the US". Valve has discontinued the product, although the company will continue to offer support for the Steam Link.

The idea was (and still is) really nice: any decent PC or laptop can be converted into a video game and even video content server, allowing the user to enjoy those experiences on much less powerful devices through an Ethernet or a good wireless connection. They started supporting Linux and Windows desktop and laptops, but Steam Link made it possible to stream video games to Android devices (Apple rejected the application for iOS) and Samsung Smart TVs. The product, announced in 2015, therefore says goodbye, although surely those who already have it will be able to continue enjoying it for a long time.

Stardock's Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is currently available for free until November 18th from Humble Bundle. All you need to do is subscribe to the Humble Store Newsletter, at which point you can request a Steam key for what is considered one of the better space-based 4X grand strategy titles available. Although the title was originally released in 2012, Stardock has since further polished the game by optimizing the in-game graphics, removing the 2 GB RAM limit, adding larger worlds, better stability and improved mod support in an update back in April of 2017. All these changes made what I would consider a good game better, having played it quite a bit myself. That said if 4X strategy titles interest you give Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion a shot, after all, it is free so what do you have to lose?

With AMD's announcement of the new Radeon RX 590 graphics card we've learned something interesting: any user who buys a Radeon RX graphics card or a Radeon RX powered PC will get up to three games for free. "Tom Clancy's The Division 2", "Resident Evil 2" and "Devil May Cry 5", with a retail value of up to $180, will be the titles available for those users.

As mentioned on the press release, "gamers who purchase an AMD Radeon RX Vega or RX 590, or an eligible Radeon RX Vega or RX 590 powered PC, will receive free copies of all three games. Gamers who purchase an AMD Radeon RX 580 or RX 570 graphics card, or an eligible Radeon RX 580 or RX 570 powered PC, can choose two of these games for free".

Insomniac Games' Sunset Overdrive first released as an XBOX One exclusive in 2014, and it was generally met with positive feedback from critics and users alike who appreciated the art style and gameplay of the third-person shooter. This was arguably the developer's biggest attempt at an open world action adventure game before they set off working on this year's hit Spiderman game for the Sony PS4 platform. As with just about any Microsoft console title these days, however, this too appears to be coming to the PC sooner than later. The first hint at this came from a Korean Game Ratings and Administration Committee notice earlier in May, and today we got word of the ESRB having a listing for the game as filed for the PC platform.

The game description can be read in the source link, which is NSFW in writing only, and everything points to a game release that does not appear to be nerfed in content thus far. We do not yet know if this is a straight port or more options are added in, and neither do we know whether this comes from the developer (who presumably are also busy handling post-game content for Spiderman) or delegated to someone else. All that can be said at this time is the release of Sunset Overdrive on the PC is now more of a matter of when and at what price point, rather than if at all.

Proton is a new tool released by Valve Software that has been integrated with Steam Play to make playing Windows games on Linux as simple as hitting the Play button within Steam. Underneath the hood, Proton comprises other popular tools like Wine and DXVK among others that a gamer would otherwise have to install and maintain themselves. This greatly eases the burden for users to switch to Linux without having to learn the underlying systems or losing access to a large part of their library of games. Proton is still in its infancy so support is inconsistent, but regularly improving and the list of supported Windows games is growing each day.

In fact, this project has announced that it has now over 2,500 Windows games (2,663 at the time of writing) that work on Linux with Proton and Steam Play. Beyond those supported "whitelisted" games, there are several others that although not-whitelisted are supported and "play just as well as on Windows". Some examples are "No Man's Sky", "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt", "Wolfenstein: The New Order" or "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim". Any user can contribute and report about the titles in his game library thanks to ProtonDB.

A few weeks ago we learned that Battlefield V would have a battle royale mode called "Firestorm". PUBG and Fornite have made this game mode so popular that several games have tried to take advantage of this feature, and the latest title from EA and DICE won't be an exception. The problem is, that option won't be available at launch, and users will have to wait until March 2019 to enjoy this game feature. The roadmap for additional content has shown how Battlefield V will evolve in the next few months.

This gaming mode has been developed by Criterion Games in partnership with DICE, and 64 players in 16 squads will fight to be the last infantry squad. Before being able to play that mode users will be able to access other DLC such as "The Last Tiger" War Story, "Panzerstorm" (a new tank-focused map) and a new Practice Range mode. Between January and March we will see new content and co-operative modes such as "Combined Arms", and after that "Firestorm" and its Battle Royale mechanics will arrive. General availability for Battlefield V will start on November 20th.

Everyone's favorite charity game bundle store, the Humble Bundle, is back with another good game bundle option. This time it is the WB Games Classic bundle featuring games from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The games on offer are not necessarily new, but at the asking prices as of the time of this post they more than merit a strong recommendation if you have not played them before or are looking to gift them to friends and family.

For all of $1 USD, you can get Scribblenauts Unlimited, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY edition. This is a no-brainer by itself, but matching the current average of $4.21 also gets you the excellent Bastion, along with Mad Max, Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition, and a 10% discount off the recently released Lego The Incredibles. A tougher sale given memories of the game is at the $12 tier which adds Batman: Arkham Knight and the entire season pass for the game, coupled with a $2 Humble Wallet credit for their monthly subscription plan. Check out the link in the source on the post, and let us know if any of these games garner your recommendation as well.

Alienware has long been synonymous with custom-built gaming PCs and laptops, with appealing, exclusive designs that you can't find anywhere else and that boutique experience in tailoring your own machines. The company, however, seems to have plans to increase its hold in the PC gaming ecosystem by entering the PC components market, where gaming branding opportunities abound. Alienware already has an established foothold in the pre-built PC space, and it could always increase brand awareness even more not only by including Alienware-branded components on their machines, but by extending its presence onto other manufacturers' gaming PCs and components (read RAM, motherboards, graphics cards, standalone cases...).

Of course, Alienware will have to thread carefully, as already-entrenched manufacturers and suppliers have their heels well dug in the market - their brands already have strong market recognition and there are years and years of R&D poured into their solutions already. Frank Azor, Dell XPS General Manager, todl PC Games N that any foray into unknown markets has to be very well weighed in terms of investment and risk/benefit scenarios, while also adding that Alienware's brand identity wouldn't work with a simple rebrand of other company's solutions.

The RTS genre on PC has been left a little out in the cold in recent years; there are still some releases here and there, but the genre that was once the king of PC gaming has taken a dive in popularity. One series that was held in great regard by fans was Command & Conquer, which spanned a multitude of games (including a one-off FPS game in the form of Command & Conquer: Renegade) in both the Red Alert, Generals, and Tiberium universes.

No further work on the series occurred after the release of Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, designed to be the finale for that particular universe. The much-changed gameplay, which incorporated MOBA-style elements and more mobile armies instead of the usual static base-building, threw fans of the series off (not to mention the story). The series has since been relegated to mobile or browser gaming, but the pressure on EA to deliver another RTS game on the C&C universe has been mounting. The first step, according to EA Games' Jim Vessella, is celebrating the series' 25-year Anniversary, on which work is already going - apparently through remasters, since Vessella himself says that "we [EA] have been exploring some exciting ideas regarding remastering the classic PC games." That's not a bad idea, granted, and makes business sense - but we're still expecting a new installment, EA.

It was less than a month ago that we reported on GOG.com's Back to School game sale event, and today we got wind of an even larger one. Indeed, GOG.com (previously Good Old Games) is 10 today, and decided it was as good a time as any to celebrate the anniversary with us. First up, the entire website has received a visual makeover which offers a new color palette and also some user experience improvements as it pertains to the game collections and menus.

More important to you, I presume, is the free game(s) available via a vote. As of now, visitors can vote between Shadow Warrior 2, Superhot, and Firewatch for another ~36 hours as of this posting following which the winning game will be available for free for the next 48 hours after voting ends. There are also many, many other games on sale on the website now, and GOG.com has also added in support for their media partners to curate a list of recommended games including Eurogamer, PC Gamer, and GameSpot- a move that reminds us of Steam's own Curator system for game recommendations. The page also now includes a history section showing the website's humble beginnings to what is today the leading store front for DRM-free games. Go ahead and see if you find something you like today!

The whole concept of a Back to School game sale is confusing to many, given kids have less free time with school coursework to handle. Perhaps it is targeted more to parents, who have some time to spare now and also appreciate a good sale that brings monetary savings for games in general. GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of CD Projekt and aims to offer a DRM-free platform for PC gaming. The week-long sale ends 10 pm UTC on September 10 and lists over 500 games discounted by up to 90% on some titles. These also include flash deals (remember those, Steam?) as well as new additions to GOG Connect that offers DRM-free versions of games one may have purchased on Steam before.

Current flash deals as of the time of writing include Star Trek Starfleet Academy for $4.99, The Dwarves for $9.99, This Is The Police for $3.79, Prince of Persian: The Sands of Time for $2.49, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon for $2.49, and Shadowrun Dragonfall Director's Cut for $2.29. Head over to their website for more flash deals, and also deals that last the entire week featuring games both old and new alike.

Straight off the heels of Gamescom 2018, where Dell announced their new gaming monitors and the refresh of their Alienware desktops, the excitement continues at IFA 2018. Dell is unveiling a new suite of innovative devices that elevate the computing experience for the everyday consumer, mobile professional and fast-paced small business owner. The enhanced Inspiron, XPS and Vostro portfolio is built with a combination of beautiful design, superior materials and top performance dedicated to deliver a device for every function and user. In addition, Dell is expanding its monitor leadership with a stunning new Dell 27 USB-C Ultrathin Monitor built with beauty and function.

Dell's commitment to thoughtful design and truly immersive cinematic experiences on the PC continues with this generation of new products. Launched at CES 2018, Dell Cinema is the combination of several cutting-edge technologies all working in concert to give the viewer an immersive, captivating experience on their PCs. Dell Cinema is available across the XPS portfolio and new Inspiron products starting this autumn.

GOG as a platform has been the pioneer in delivering DRM-free games to people all around the world. The basic idea is that ownership in DRM-infused games really isn't; it's more of a time bomb contract that gamers make with a third party that may or may not fulfill their end of the bargain (or may very well end support for a game, disable DRM verification servers in for single player games, and all of that).

As part of its effort to fight against DRM's entrenchment in the industry, and part of GOG's reasoning that the way to garner loyalty is not achieved by not trusting consumers from the get go, GOG launched their FCK DRM initiative, via a blog post on their news section, pointing to their new, information laden website. GOG says that "We strongly believe that if you buy a game, it should be yours, and you can play it the way it's convenient for you, and not how others want you to use it", and that the goal of this initiative is to "educate people and ignite a discussion about DRM".

EA announced last week its new Origin Access Premier program, which launches today and introduces a new access tier which provides unlimited access to imminent-launch games five days before the official release. This program will cost £14.99/$14.99 a month or £89.99/$99.99 a year. Alongside this launch, EA has decided to axe the freebie On the House initiative - a strange correlation, because these programs hardly interfere with one another.

Users who have already gained access to these freebies will keep them, of course, but attempts to enter the "On the House" page are met with a redirect to the Origin Access webpage. However, users who hadn't grabbed the games will be left in the dust (even if just some metaphorical specks of it, since the games can be easily and quite cheaply had), such as Theme Hospital, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Dragon Age, Mass Effect or Battlefield series. Read on for EA's remarks on this decision.

CCP games, the company behind the deep and uniquely player-driven spaceship MMO game EVE Online, has confirmed that Unreal Engine 4 is the exclusive development tool for all of CCP Games' currently unannounced projects. CCP's commitment to Unreal stems from the engine's stability, quick prototyping and the solid cross-platform support for both established and new hardware.

CCP's development teams globally are taking advantage of the powerful and easy-to-use functionality of UE4, from fluid integration of third-party systems with plug-ins and modules to improved networking and cross-platform support. CCP's game developers have jumped on board the exclusive use of UE4, specifically its Unreal Editor that leads the way in terms of lighting and rendering solutions, world composition, landscape sculpting and Blueprint prototyping.

It has been a long five years since Aliens: Colonial Marines launched as a hot mess. Being critically panned by gamers and critics alike. One of the reasons behind the negative reception was the game's poor AI. The Xenomorphs had a tendency to run straight into gunfire. Or worse yet, would stand around or group up making them easy targets. Suffice to say the Xenomorphs were far from scary. A typographical error has been discovered as the reason behind some of those issues.

As noted on the ResetERA forums, a post by jamesdickinson963 on the ACM Overhaul ModDB page traced the problem to a spelling error in a single line of code within the game's ini file. The code shown below has "teather" instead of the proper "tether". This simple mistake in theory, results in the "zone tether" failing to load the AI parameters attached to the broken bit of code.

The highly anticipated horror-survival game Agony will launch on May 29th as developer Madmind Studios and publisher Maximum Games announced the release date for PlayStation 4, Xbox One the all in one entertainment system from Microsoft and PC today. A new teaser trailer revealed with today's launch date showcases the terrifying scenery and cursed creatures awaiting players brave enough to explore Agony's twisted realms.

Agony throws players in the midst of hell where they strive to stay alive and solve the riddle behind the mysterious Red Goddess; architect of this place of sorrow and pain, and the sole entity with knowledge of how escape… but there is more to the story than it seems. Haunted by nightmare creatures, players gain the ability to possess demons and other souls to find their way out of hell.

Telltale Games has hit on hard times lately, following on the restructuring of its staff, which saw some 90 staff members (25% of the studios' workforce) being cut. It may be a case of too fast a growth, with the company branching out in numerous ways, with numerous franchises - with quality arguably having suffered in the process. But the studio is able to deliver memorable, fantastic single-player, narrative-driven experiences, even if they've sometimes stretched a little far off the perfect mark. The first and second season of the studios' take on The Walking Dead series, however, was dead-on.

Telltale has now announced that they'll be giving gamers the chance to "finish Clementine's story". I don't know if I want to know how literal that sentence may be, however; I still remember all the feels from Lee Everett. The company seems to have its thematic circles well though-off, though, and the teaser image is enough to give e some semblance of confidence in their delivery of the game. The axe, the lighting, the thematic resonance in these two teasers is a beautiful thing. here's hoping they hide similarly well-crafted stories. The Walking Dead - The Final Season will be available later this year for gamers in the usual platforms.

As lootboxes have increasingly fallen on the radar of gamers looking for complete experiences that they don't need to invest a kidney to unlock the full content that's being "offered", the ESRB has moved to include a label on all future game releases that features in-game purchases of any kind. The new label will sit next to the age rating, but separate from the other content warning labels - such as graphical violence, nudity, and others. Its aim? To keep users "well-informed" on the content purchases that are included with the full game. Strangely, the label will not discriminate different types of content - so a game that has a dreaded lootbox system such as Star Wars: Battlefront II, or a well-implemented, non-obtrusive one such as Gwent, will see exactly the same label. As the ESRB puts it, any in-game transaction may live inside this label, such as "bonus levels, skins, surprise items (such as item packs, loot boxes, mystery awards), music, virtual coins and other forms of in-game currency, subscriptions, season passes and upgrades (e.g., to disable ads)". Talk about an informed customer decision.

Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption 2 has just seen an announced delay on its launch window. Previously slated for a Spring 2018 release, the sequel to Rockstar's famed, highly successful western Red Dead Redemption thus sees a push back from its previously planned calendar release. Gamers who expected to pick up a game that might tide them over through the summer now see their options reduced - tangibly so.

In a blog post this morning, Rockstar attributed the decision towards a "more polish is needed" scenario, which really isn't all that unexpected, considering the scale the game is expected to have. Release dates were something sacred, back in the days; not so much nowadays, as the general consensus seems to be that it's better late and working, than now and broken. To somewhat mend users' broken hearts, Rockstar also released some screenshots alongside the announcement, as if taunting players with that which they now know will take them longer to experience.

CI Games finally released the long-awaited multiplayer update for Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 last week. Although not mentioned publicly in the patch notes, the Polish publisher also eliminated the Denuvo protection from the game. For those readers who don't keep up with the Warez scene, Russian cracker BALDMAN cracked Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 one month after its release. Many would agree that there wasn't any point in keeping the anti-tamper tech in the game. But now, with it gone completely, DSOGaming re-tested the game to see whether there were any performance gains without Denuvo.

To make a long story short, the DSOGaming team noticed a significant reduction in the game's loading time. However, they weren't completely certain if the reduction was a product of the removal of Denuvo or game optimizations done by the developer. The previous performance issues still haunted the game, and there were zero improvement in graphics performance. This was expected to a certain degree taking into account that Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 is a GPU intensive title after all. It might be a different story with games like Watch_Dogs 2 or Assassin's Creed Origins, since they are more demanding on the processor. Now, we just have to wait until Ubisoft removes Denuvo from them.