Epic Games kicked off the Unreal Fest in Seattle earlier this week with a keynote that revealed some interesting details about the company's marketing and publication strategies going forward. Also during that same keynote, Riot Games executive producer, Anna Donlon, teased that there will be more "playable experiences" coming to the "Valorant universe."

While Donlon was deliberately vague about any upcoming Valorant-adjacent games currently in development, she was a little more candid about Valorant's Unreal Engine 5 update, admitting that limitations in Unreal Engine 4.27—Valorant's current underpinnings—were what prompted the move to UE5 in the first place. However, a shift to Unreal Engine 5 will not immediately change how the game performs, feels, or looks.

Gear up with gratitude for more gaming time. GeForce NOW brings members a cornucopia of 15 newly supported games to the cloud this week. That's just the start - there are a total of 54 titles coming in the month of November. Members can also join thousands of esports fans in the cloud with the addition of Virtex Stadium to the GeForce NOW library for a "League of Legends" world championship viewing party.

Esports Like Never Before
This year's League of Legends world championship finals are coming to Virtex Stadium - an online virtual stadium now streaming on NVIDIA's cloud gaming infrastructure. In Virtex Stadium, esports fans can hang out with friends from across the world, create and personalize avatars, and watch live competitions together - all from the comfort of their homes. Starting on Thursday, Nov. 2, watch League of Legends Worlds 2023 in Virtex Stadium with thousands of others. Use props and emotes to cheer players on together via chat.

As we're about to enter the month of November, October leaves us with a couple of final game releases. This week's AA release is a sequel to a puzzle game that was quite popular when it launched at the end of 2014. The remaining titles this coming week includes RPGs, something musical, something to do with leagues and legends, a cop that's a robot and some seasons greetings.

The Talos Principle 2 / This week's AA title / Thursday 2 November
Born into a new world where biological humanity is extinct but human culture lives on in a city of robots, you find yourself swept up in a mind-bending adventure involving a mysterious megastructure hiding enormous powers. The more you discover, the more you will be confronted with questions about the nature of the cosmos and the purpose of civilization. The broken promise of a better tomorrow, the fear of repeating humankind's mistakes, faith in reason or renouncing humanity altogether - the choices you make and the sides you take will determine the course of events.

LG Electronics (LG) is releasing a limited-edition UltraGear OLED gaming monitor (model 27GR95QL) for League of Legends fans. In addition to a vibrant 27-inch OLED display boasting a fast 240 Hz refresh rate, the monitor features distinctive League of Legends-themed designs and icons applied to its exterior and on-screen menus, developed with valuable feedback from League of Legends gamers. As one would expect of an UltraGear product, the 27GR95QL delivers smooth, immersive gaming experiences and comes packed with gamer-centric features.

The limited-edition League of Legends UltraGear OLED gaming monitor is the latest example of LG's strong partnership with Riot Games, the developer and publisher of League of Legends. First released in 2009, the beloved multiplayer online battle arena game now has the largest gaming fandom in all of esports. Over 600 million fans have played League of Legends over the past decade and the game has amassed an average of 180 million players per month.

To call this a busy week of game releases would be an understatement and there should be something for everyone except those that want a new sports or racing game of some kind. This week's AAA title is all about precious things, but we also have games covering the post-human world on earth, rescue missions, hammers of war, the colour yellow and snakes, for those that are into those kinds of things. Oddly enough, most of the games this week are released on Tuesday, so we included a whole bunch of new releases on the same day of week this time around due to this, not because we hate the other days of the week.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum / This week's AAA title / Thursday 25 May
Play as Gollum on his quest to retrieve his Precious. You will need to climb the mountains of Mordor, sneak around Mirkwood and make difficult choices. Who will gain the upper hand: the cunning Gollum or the innocent Smeagol?

In February, we brought a preview of PC Game Pass to 40 new countries for the first time ever. The response was incredible. Thank you to all the players who jumped in to test the experience and help us shape the preview. New members looking to join PC Game Pass can head to PC Game Pass website to learn more about local pricing as well as how to sign up.

To celebrate the launch, new members will receive a special welcome offer for their first three months for a limited time. Those who were a part of our Insider Program will receive two free months of PC Game Pass membership, with no further action needed, as a thank you for helping us shape the experience and being one of the first PC Game Pass members in your country. This will be available directly in member's accounts in the coming days.

Riot Games provided its first response to last week's cyberattack on its company network. The company alleges that the attackers have exfiltrated with the source-codes for "League of Legends," "Teamfight Tactics," and a proprietary anti-cheat software that's no longer in use. Riot Games assures all that no game user data was compromised with this attack (particularly passwords or payment-instrument details); and at worst the stolen source code could help the attackers create cheats. The company also received a ransom e-mail from the attackers demanding payment, failing which they threaten to release the source code to public; but Riot said that it does not intend to pay. Since user information isn't compromised, and the games themselves are protected by IP laws globally, there's little reason to pay up.

LG Electronics' (LG) latest UltraGear gaming monitor (model 25GR75FG) has been named the official display of the League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) 2023. The new monitor will make its debut during the upcoming LEC season, which begins this weekend, supporting players from the region's top teams as they battle it out for tournament honors. LG UltraGear is proud to continue its strong partnership with LEC, one of the world's most popular esports leagues, and remains committed to fostering the growth of esports internationally.

Designed for competitive esports, the latest LG UltraGear gaming monitor delivers outstanding picture quality and speed thanks to a 24.5-inch Full-HD (1,920 x 1,080) IPS display with a 360 Hz refresh rate and 1 millisecond Gray-to-Gray (GTG) response time. The performance of LG's new gaming display is further boosted by the integration of NVIDIA G-SYNC technology, which minimizes screen-tearing for seamless visuals, and NVIDIA Reflex, which helps to reduce click-to-display latency for more precise control of the onscreen action. VESA Display HDR 400 certified, the 25GR75FG also ensures bright, clear images and has a 3-sided borderless design that helps increase players' sense of immersion, making it easier to focus during fierce competition.

Chinese company Moore Threads has unveiled their MTT GPU series just 18 months after the company's establishment in 2020. The MT Unified System Architecture (MUSA) architecture is the first for any Chinese company to be developed fully domestically and includes support for DirectX, OpenCL, OpenGL, Vulkan, and CUDA. The company announced the MTT S60 and MTT S2000 single slot desktop graphics cards for gaming and server applications at a recent event. The MTT S60 is manufactured on a 12 nm node and features 2,048 MUSA cores paired with 8 GB of LPGDDR4X memory offering 6 TFLOPs of performance. The MTT S2000 is also manufactured on a 12 nm node and doubles the number of MUSA cores to 4096 paired with 32 GB of undisclosed video memory allowing it to reach 12 TFLOPs.

Moore Threads joins Intel in supporting AV1 encoding on a consumer GPU with MUSA cards featuring H.264, H.265, and AV1 encoding support in addition to H.264, H.265, AV1, VP8, and VP9 decoding. The company is also developing a physics engine dubbed Alphacore which is said to work with existing tools such as Unity, Unreal Engine, and Houdini to accelerate physics performance by 5 to 10 times. The only gaming performance shown was a simple demonstration of the MTT S60 running League of Legends at 1080p without any frame rate details.

One of the world's leading gaming monitor and IT accessories brands, AGON by AOC, partnered up with Riot Games to present the first monitor inspired by League of Legends and its iconic Hextech technology. The AGON PRO AG275QXL - AGON League of Legends Edition sports a unique design and special features crafted specifically for the MOBA experience. The AG275QXL will be available in March 2022 on Amazon for $479.99 USD.

League of Legends is the most played PC game in the world with millions of players working together in high stakes competition. AGON by AOC has created the first monitor specifically designed to bring the best experience of the rift to players everywhere with unique features such as reactive lighting to in-game events. Players of the renowned title will immediately notice the distinct style of the AG275QXL with its exciting Hextech inspired design that brings the world of magic & technology together.

Logitech G, a brand of Logitech and leading innovator of gaming technologies and gear, in partnership with Riot Games, creator of League of Legends, introduced today a series of collectible League of Legends PC gaming gear. Offering the same high-performance that gamers have come to expect from Logitech G, this collaboration is designed with the League of Legends proprietary Hextech look and feel across a suite of products that includes the Logitech G PRO X Gaming Headset, the Logitech G PRO Wireless Gaming Mouse, the Logitech G PRO Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, and the Logitech G840 XL Gaming Mouse pad.

"When you love a game like League of Legends, you immerse yourself in it like it's your real world," said Peter Kingsley, CMO of Logitech G. "We built this collection in collaboration with the League of Legends team, based on the idea of marrying our pro-level products and technologies with League of Legends iconic Hextech designs. The headset, keyboard, mouse and mousepad are clad in special League colors, creating a unique collection designed to inspire transcendent levels of gameplay."

HyperX, the gaming division of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., today announced the re-signing of top female content creator Pokimane. Under the sponsorship, Pokimane will be using HyperX gaming headsets, keyboards, mice, and mouse pads exclusively in her streaming content and other marketing initiatives.

"It was an easy choice for me to renew my partnership with HyperX after another incredible year with them," said Pokimane, content creator, HyperX ambassador. "My Cloud Alpha S headset already goes with me everywhere and I can't wait to see what HyperX creates in the future!" Pokimane began her streaming career as a League of Legends streamer after diverting from a chemical engineering career path. She rapidly became one of the top female content creators with successful channels across multiple platforms. As a HyperX brand ambassador, Pokimane will continue to help deliver the HyperX gaming story to her growing audience of more than 28 million fans.

Colorful has announced a limited-edition, six-part reinvention of its RTX 3090 iGame Vulcan graphics card. The new card simply adds RNG to the name, a homage to Chinese e-Sports team RNG (Royal Never Give Up), who have climbed to fame through their League of Legends antics - the perfect use-case for an RTX 3090 GPU, obviously.

Colorful has changed the color profile of the card, trading in the gray color found in the vanilla RTX 3090 iGame Vulcan for a satin gold finish. The backplate has also received a special treatment, with a golden graphic depicting all six team members of the e-Sports team. Five of these cards will be given to clan members - a great partnership payment if I've ever seen one), while the last one will be offered via social media. We're looking at another collector's graphics card, although its development nature and graphics might affect its final selling price. All in all, this 6-card edition likely represents at least half of the available stock for the RTX 3090 GPU.

Logitech G, a brand of Logitech and leading innovator of gaming technologies and gear, and Riot Games, creator of League of Legends, the most-played PC game in the world, today announced an exclusive new multi-year partnership. As a part of the agreement, Logitech G will introduce a portfolio of officially licensed League of Legends (LoL) gaming products, the first of which is inspired by the aesthetics of the global virtual music group, K/DA, and their 2020 comeback.

"We're honored to be selected as the official and exclusive partner to RIOT Games for the world's biggest games ever, League of Legends," said Peter Kingsley, chief marketing officer at Logitech G. "Our multi-year partnership will bring several product, technology and design collaborations that will give League of Legends fans the best way to play."

Samsung Electronics, the global gaming monitor market leader today announced its official partnership with global esports organization, T1 Entertainment & Sports (T1). With this partnership, all teams and players located at the T1 headquarters training facility in Seoul will practice using Samsung's latest curved gaming monitors, the Odyssey G9 and G7. The Odyssey portfolio delivers a powerful combination of high-performance 1000R curvature, QLED picture quality, rapid 1 ms response time and 240Hz refresh rate for the most immersive gaming experience.

"We are proud to partner with T1, the leader in professional esports, helping them in their continued success and global growth as official display partner," said Hyesung Ha, Senior Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. "Our line-up of Odyssey monitors provides the latest in gaming monitor technology with lightning-fast speed, comfortable curvature and a sleek design, offering professional esports gamers the competitive edge they need to make every split second count."

AMD Monday posted the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition. Version 19.8.2 beta comes with optimization for the week's big AAA launch, "Control," with up to 10 percent higher frame-rates compared to the older 19.8.1 drivers. The new drivers also include optimization for the interactive novel "Man of Medan." The drivers add HDCP 2.3 support for Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards.

Among the bugs fixed are a "Rocket League" application hang on task-switch, performance-drops with "League of Legends" when performing a task-switch; system instability seen with Radeon RX 5700-series when memory-overclocking while a 3D application is running; and minor stutter noticed with "Fortnite" in the first few minutes of gameplay. Grab the driver from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.8.2 betaThe change-log follows.

AMD today posted the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition. Version 19.7.3 beta comes in the nick of time with optimization for "Wolfenstein: Youngblood," with up to 13 percent higher frame-rates on offer compared to 19.7.2. The release also adds Radeon GPU Profiler and Microsoft PIX for Radeon RX 5700 series. AMD also expanded its Vulkan API support by adding six new extensions, two of which are AMD-exclusive, and four standard. These include VK_EXT_display_surface_counter, VK_AMD_pipeline_compiler_control, VK_AMD_shader_core_properties2, VK_EXT_subgroup_size_control, VK_KHR_imageless_framebuffer, and VK_KHR_variable_pointers.

Among the fixed issues are "League of Legends" failing to launch with RX 5700-series on Windows 7; RX 5700 series experiencing application crashes with DirectX 9 applications after an Express Upgrade, Windows Mixed Reality not launching with Radeon Image Sharpening enabled on RX 5700-series; out-of-sync audio with ReLive VR; incorrect Radeon Wattman power gauge values for Radeon VII; AMD Log Utility not correctly installing; performance drops with Radeon Anti-Lag; minor stutter noticed in the first few minutes of "Fotnite" gameplay on RX 5700-series; Radeon Overlay flickering over Vulkan apps with Image Sharpening enabled; and some corruption noticed when running Adobe Premier Pro 2019 benchmarks. Grab the driver from the link below.DOWNLOADS: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.7.3

The change-log follows.

ASUS today announced TUF Gaming FX505DY and TUF Gaming FX705DY, a pair of gaming laptops powered by the latest AMD Ryzen 5 3550H processor, with up to 32GB of RAM, and a range of storage options. This new platform is paired with discrete Radeon graphics tightly coupled to vivid FreeSync displays. Slim bezels frame the NanoEdge displays to further enhance immersion and shrink the overall footprint, while the reinforced chassis help the machines survive everyday life. Intelligently designed and carefully built, FX505DY and FX705DY balance performance, battery life, and affordability to provide a better gaming experience.

AMD's Ryzen processors have taken desktops by storm, and TUF Gaming laptops lead the deployment of the newest version. Otherwise known as Picasso, this 2nd Gen Ryzen Mobile APU is built with industry-leading 12 nm technology. The Ryzen 5 3550H chip powering FX505DY and FX705DY boasts four cores and eight threads that deliver capable performance for popular games and everyday work. Multithreaded performance is particularly strong, yet the processor fits into a 35W power envelope that doesn't compromise battery life.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, today announces that is has formed a partnership with one of Taiwan's biggest names in eSports, the Flash Wolves. This partnership comes on the heels of ADATA's recent sponsorship of the IeSF World Championship 2018 in Kaohsiung, signaling its continued commitment towards supporting the growth of eSports in Taiwan and around the world.

"We are thrilled to be sponsoring the Flash Wolves as it is an extension of our mission of delivering high-performance hardware that enhances the experiences of gamers of all levels, from beginners to professionals," said Simon Chen, Chairman and CEO of ADATA. "Going forward, ADATA will continue to promote the development of eSports in Taiwan and other regions by working closely with all stakeholders, from eSports teams and event organizers to government entities.

In what ended up overshadowing most of the news coming out of PAX West 2018, Riot Games delivered a masterclass in how not to handle things in a politically-correct environment. The situation in question concerned a series of sessions that were targeted to, and I quote, "women and non-binary folks" which was well intended and meant to be more of an acknowledgement of the minorities in the gaming industry.

Unfortunately, this wording and then poor-execution and follow-up from their part meant that things quickly turned sour. People at the event were quick to notice that the room reserved for these sessions appeared to have volunteers attempt to keep them away. What was intended to be a support session then turned into allegations flying all around, and social media lit abuzz with what seemed to be discrimination against straight men by the company.