We recently released a patch containing our first round of balance changes to Helldivers 2 and our Head of Product Testing has some valuable insight into our philosophies and practices when it comes to balancing. Hello everyone! My name is Patrik Lasota, I was the designer on the first Helldivers and am currently Head of Product Testing at Arrowhead. A bit of a grandiose title, but what it means in this context is that I'm responsible for how Arrowhead listens to feedback and balances its games. I'd like to talk about the changes we made in this patch and why.

Primary weapons
First I'd like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren't powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively. Either by Eagle Airstrikes, Orbitals, Support Weapons, or Turrets, some of your loadout/team should be tailoring their loadout to killing the weaker stuff more efficiently. This doesn't mean that your primary weapon shouldn't feel good to use, but please understand that it is primary only in the sense that it's something you always spawn with.

We're thrilled to announce the addition of Crossplay, a highly anticipated feature in Remnant 2! Now, players can unite against the Root, irrespective of their chosen platform. Team up with friends or discover open games across platforms and embark on your journey together. Dev Note: For console players, Crossplay is set to on by default. This setting will affect your ability to see other games (including friend's games) within the game if their Crossplay setting is set to "off." If you can't see a friend's game in-game, then confirm that you have matching Crossplay settings. The "off" setting will prevent you from joining another game that have Crossplay enabled. Additional Dev Note: Settings on PC that use frame generation currently blocks the Epic Online Services Overlay, which is required for Crossplay functionality of joining friends in game. You can still accept invites using the Epic launcher prior to starting the game and join that way if you wish to use frame generation in game.

Aberration Domination Event
The Root have seized yet another opportunity to unleash a horde of menacing Aberrations across all worlds! From February 29th to March 5th, gear up and face this challenge head-on. Defeat these sinister foes and collect the elusive Corrupted Shards, a rare material with untold potential. Head over to the enigmatic Dwell in Ward 13, where you can trade these Corrupted Shards to craft corrupted versions of some NEW special weapons. Show the Root that even in the darkest of times, our resolve shines brighter than ever! Dev Note: This is our second big aberration event; we figured why not celebrate the addition of Crossplay with another Aberration event! We've added even more corrupted weapons to acquire, so group up and take on the Root!

Arrowhead Game Studios has released a new update for Helldivers 2, that addresses AFK players, fixes some stability issues and crashes, as well as improves backend performance. Due to the limited server capacity, lots of players were staying logged in but, thankfully, AFK players will now be kicked back to the title screen after 15 minutes.

In addition to fixing the server hogging issue, the new patch 1.000.11 fixes multiple crash issues, including those triggered when exiting ADS or joining other players' ships, various GameGuard and other issues, as well as brings improvements on client to backend communications.

Phoronix has spotted intriguing new Linux kernel patches for Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors—the Monday morning notes reveal in-house software engineers are implementing default power profile adjustments. Meteor Lake CPUs have been operating on a default "balanced_performance" mode since their December 2023 launch—Linux adjustments will affect the processor's Energy Performance Preference (EPP) under Linux (similar to Windows Power Plans). Michael Larabel (Phoronix head honcho) laid out some history: "We've seen EPP overrides/tuning in the past within the Intel P-State driver for prior generations of Intel processors and this is much the same here. The ACPI EPP value is typically a range from 0 to 255 for indicating the processor/system power to performance preference."

He continued onto present day circumstances: "To date though the Intel P-State EPP override/tuning has been focused on the default "balanced_performance" mode while the first patch (from Monday) allows for model-specific EPP overrides for all pre-defined EPP strings. The second patch then goes ahead and updates the EPP values for Meteor Lake so that the balanced_performance default is now treated as 115 rather than 128 and the "performance" EPP is set to 16 rather than 0." Larabel is hopeful that a public release will coincide with the "upcoming Linux v6.9 cycle." Intel software engineers reckon that their tweaks/overrides have produced higher performance results—for "small form factor devices"—while reducing CPU temperatures and thermal throttling. Meteor Lake is considered to be quite energy inefficient when compared to the closest mobile processor architectures from AMD and Apple. Team Blue's next-gen Arrow Lake family is expected to launch later this year, but the current crop of CPUs require a bit of TLC and optimization in the meantime.

Last Epoch is releasing Wednesday, February 21st, 2024, at 11:00am CT! Welcome everyone to the patch notes for Last Epoch's Release! It's been an amazing road to this point, and it's unreal to be writing patch notes without using the term "Beta Patch". With this patch Last Epoch will officially be leaving Early Access. We couldn't have made it to this point without all of you, our amazing community driving the world of Eterra alongside us. We can not say it enough, Thank you.

We also want to mention again here that to prepare the servers for our release on February 21st, we will be shutting down our servers 24 hours before the patch, starting: Tuesday, February 20st, 2024, at 11:00am CT. While the servers are down, authentication will not be possible. If you are already playing in offline mode before we take down the servers, you should be able to continue your play session, however offline will not be able to authenticate to log in once the servers are down. This is also a good point to note that one of the features being added with 1.0 is a true offline mode, which will prevent this kind of interference with offline mode in the future.

Intel appears to working on an intriguing next generation adaptive sharpening filter—as revealed in mid-week published patch notes. Lunar Lake's display engine seems to be the lucky recipient here—its Xe2 "Battlemage" graphics architecture is expected to debut later this year. Second generation Intel Arc integrated graphics solutions have been linked to mobile Lunar Lake (LNL) processors—driver enablement was uncovered by Phoronix last September. The notes reveal that Team Blue is exploring a more intelligent approach to improving visual enhancements across games and productivity applications.

Author, Nemesa Garg (an engineer at Intel India) stated: "Many a times images are blurred or upscaled content is also not as crisp as original rendered image. Traditional sharpening techniques often apply a uniform level of enhancement across entire image, which sometimes result in over-sharpening of some areas and potential loss of natural details. Intel has come up with Display Engine based adaptive sharpening filter with minimal power and performance impact. From LNL onwards, the Display hardware can use one of the pipe scaler for adaptive sharpness filter. This can be used for both gaming and non-gaming use cases like photos, image viewing. It works on a region of pixels depending on the tap size."

The PC version of Helldivers 2 has shot up the Steam charts since yesterday's launch (also available on PlayStation 5)—according to tracking sites, peak player population sits at 151,927. Games industry watchdogs believe that this is Sony PlayStation's most successful launch title on PC platforms—24-hour peak telemetry has Helldivers 2 attracting 81,840 players versus God of War's 68,000 (January 14, 2022). An abundance of technical issues has prompted the submission of negative feedback—around 12,200 reviews have been left on the game's Steam Profile. Its current status is "Mostly Positive," but launch evening impressions were "Mixed" following 5300 review submissions. Eurogamer has summarized the problematic period: "Chief among criticisms are complaints about persistent crashes, while others have singled out server and matchmaking issues. Then there's ire directed towards PC optimization, and its kernel-level GameGuard anti-cheat software, which some feel is cause for concern, as well as complaints around Helldivers 2's monetization—which includes a battle pass and premium currency in-game shop, despite its £34.99/$39.99 price tag."

The development team at Arrowhead Game Studios implemented day-of-launch matchmaking fixes and addressed the most common crash problems. Helldivers 2 Game Director, Mikael Eriksson, stated that a patch was in the making: "If it's a success, we'll trigger a hotfix and get it out to the Steam community first, then roll it out to PS5 players as quickly as we can. Thank you—seriously—for your patience. We really want you all to have a blast playing this game. Bear with us, we're almost there." Arrowhead have followed up on their promise(s) today with another set of fixes pushed out to PC gamer population—Eriksson shared some good second day news: "We've uploaded a patch to Steam that should improve matchmaking for PC. The patch also includes some other crash fixes we've identified. We know there's more to solve, and we're working our way through it. Nevertheless, we hope this rapid patch goes a long way to making your experience better. Now go smash some bugs (and bots)!"

Phoronix head honcho, Michael Larabel, has noticed another set of interesting updates for AMD Graphics on Linux—albeit in preparation for next generation solutions: "engineers on Monday (February 5) posted a few new patch series for enabling some updated IP (intellectual property) blocks within their open-source AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver. This new IP is presumably part of the ongoing hardware enablement work for their next-gen RDNA 4 graphics." Team Red GitHub patches for "GFX12" targets appeared online last November, again highlighted by Larabel's investigative work—AMD engineers appear to be quite determined with their open-source software endeavors, as seen in LLVM-Project notes regarding GFX1200's enablement.

The new "IP block" updates included patches for the enabling ATHUB 4.1, LSDMA 7.0, IH 7.0, and HDP 7.0—presumably for next generation Radeon graphics solutions. Larabel provided a quick breakdown of these components: "ATHUB 4.1 is needed for clock-gating / power management features, LSDMA 7.0 is the latest IP for Light SDMA for general purpose System DMA (SDMA) on the GPU, IH 7.0 for the Interrupt Handler on the GPU, and HDP 7.0 for the Host Data Path support for CPU accessing the GPU device memory via the PCI BAR. As far as code changes, the big chunks of the work are from the auto-generated header files." He believes that AMD's engineers have largely moved on from current generation tasks: "The big version bumps for these IP blocks all the more are likely indicative of these bits being for next-gen RDNA 4 as opposed to further iterating on RDNA3 or similar." The patches could be merged into the upcoming Linux 6.9 release, possibly coinciding with a Radeon RX 8000 series rollout.

Patch 2.11 for Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty is being rolled out on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. In this update we focused on fixing the most common issues encountered by players, including Finisher animations, and added a little something for Rayfield enthusiasts! PC-specific changes include the addition of a Hybrid CPU Utilization setting, which can be found under Gameplay → Performance. It can be set either to "Auto" (lets the operating system automatically decide how to distribute threads among the cores) or "Prioritize P-Cores" (prioritizes performance cores). It is set to "Auto" by default. We have also implemented a fix that improves graphics performance, especially on AMD Radeon RX Vega GPUs.

Visual Changes
Patch 2.11 adds Neon-lit rims for the Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X—these parts will now light up properly. We also fixed shadows appearing on V's torso when wearing tank tops, as well as dark shadows appearing on V's hands when holding some weapons with Ray Tracing enabled. The Devil and Judgment tarot cards will now be properly displayed on the end-game reward screen. For complete patch details, check out the full list of changes below.

Hi everyone, in January we shared with you all a status update on 3 key areas of feedback from the Forza Motorsport community that our team is working to improve—Car Progression, Forza Race Regulations and Drivatar AI. For Car Progression, today we began collecting feedback from various sources on changes that will give players freedom to equip the parts they need regardless of car level. We have additional changes to the system in various states of design and testing with plans to implement these changes as soon as possible. For Forza Race Regulations, we have enabled Race Marshals and some content creators the ability to flag in-game incidents for review to help feed changes to the adjudication model that will improve the system. Lastly, we're testing out fixes to the Drivatar AI to alleviate competitors bunching up around Turn 1 and causing the first few AI opponents to reach insurmountable leads. Beyond those key changes, we're investigating other priority fixes for the AI that improve their overall driving behavior and reduce how aggressively they stick to the racing line. These are just a few examples of where we are prioritizing work in these areas, and we will be sharing more on each soon.

While we have 3 distinct teams here at Turn 10 working on these key improvements, we're also actively developing fixes and improvements to other areas of the game. These will begin rolling out alongside Update 5 in February and will include a Skip Practice option to the Career mode pre-race menu to make it more discoverable, and a save point after finishing a Practice session so you can complete the Featured Race later. We're also developing fixes and quality-of-life improvements to the Livery Editor based on the reports you've shared with us, including custom advanced zoom for applying decals, the ability to paint upgraded brake calipers, and a prompt to save your design when exiting the Livery Editor. While this update is in active development, we wanted to share an earlier-than-usual look at some of the changes we're targeting for this release.

Intel presented its next generation Xeon "Clearwater Forest" processor family during September's Innovation Event—their roadmap slide (see below) included other Birch Stream platform architecture options. Earlier this week, Team Blue's software engineers issued a Linux kernel patch that contains details pertaining to codenamed projects: Sierra Forest, Grand Ridge and the aforementioned Clearwater Forest. All E-Core Xeon "Sierra Forest" processors are expected to launch around the middle of 2024—this deployment of purely efficiency-oriented "Sierra Glen" (Atom Crestmont) cores in enterprise/server chip form will be a first for Intel. The Sierra Forest Xeon range has been delayed a couple of times; but some extra maturation time has granted a jump from an initial maximum 144 E-Core count up to 288. The latest patch notes provide an early look into Clearwater Forest's basic foundations—it seems to be Sierra Forest's direct successor.

The Intel Xeon "Granite Rapids" processor family is expected to hit retail just after a Sierra Forest product launch, but the former sports a very different internal configuration—an all "Redwood Cove" P-Core setup. Phoronix posits that Sierra Forest's groundwork is clearing the way for its natural successor: "Clearwater Forest is Intel's second generation E-core Xeon...Clearwater Forest should ship in 2025 while the open-source Intel Linux engineers begin in their driver support preparations and other hardware enablement well in advance of launch. With engineers already pushing Sierra Forest code into the Linux kernel and related key open-source projects like Clang and GCC since last year, their work on enabling Sierra Forest appears to be largely wrapping up and in turn the enablement is to begin for Clearwater Forest. Sent out...was the first Linux kernel patch for Sierra Forest. As usual, for the first patch it's quite basic and is just adding in the new model number for Clearwater Forest CPUs. Clear Water Forest has a model number of 0xDD (221). The patch also reaffirms that the 0xDD Clearwater Forest CPUs are using Atom Darkmont cores."

Bethesda has released its latest beta patch for Starfield, adding official support for NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation, fixing several issues, and implementing further CPU and GPU optimizations. The November 8th Beta Update, as it is called, is only available via Steam Beta Update, and it should go live to all Xbox and PC players later this month.

According to the release notes, the new update adds NVIDIA DLSS support with DLSS Super Resolution, Deep Learning Anti-aliasing (DLAA), Nvidia Reflex Low Latency, and DLSS Frame Generation. The update also fixes several performance and stability issues, including a fix for a number of memory related issues and leaks, additional GPU optimizations that will benefit higher-end graphics cards, and improvements to the renderer threading model that should improve CPU usage on higher-end systems. The update also includes various stability and performance improvements.

Lords of the Fallen got plenty of patches in the last few days, with two of them, Patch 1.1.199 and 1.1.203, launched yesterday, and the latest, Patch v1.1.207, launched earlier today. The previous two fixed GPU crashes on AMD graphics cards, as well as a big fix for the issue in communication between the drivers and DirectX 12. The Patch 1.1.203 also brought a reduction in VRAM usage that should provide additional headroom for GPUs operating at the limit, which in turn should provide a substantial performance improvement, at least according to Paradox Interactive.

The latest Patch 1.1.207 brought further stability improvements, fixing several crash issues as well as implementing various optimization, multiplayer, gameplay, AI, Quest and other improvements. The release notes also note that the fix for the issue that causes the game to crash on Steam Deck has been fixed, and should be published as soon as it passes QA.

Lords of the Fallen only launched yesterday, and it has been plagued by various performance and stability issues, but luckily, Hexworks has already launched the new Patch 1.1.191, which should fix some of those issues. Unfortunately, the new patch also disables the NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation in order to "prevent the crashes that some players are experiencing with their brand-new 40 series GPUs." Hexworks added that they are working with NVIDIA to deliver more stable drivers that should fix the issue.

In addition to DLSS 3 Frame Generation problems, the new patch will also check for outdated drivers at launch. It also fixes an engine error that was happening on certain NVIDIA RTX 30 and 40 series GPUs, causing the game to crash, as well as the crash after the first cinematic during shader compile. The new patch also brings some other performance, balancing, bosses, PvP, visuals, audio, and other fixes.

Update Oct 15th: Hexworks has just released yet another Patch, version 1.1.193, which brings a couple of updates, including fixes for various crashes, a workaround to the POS Calculation Crash, as well as an option to manually activate DLSS Frame Generation. You can find the full release notes for Patch 1.1.193 below.

Blizzard has released the release notes for Diablo IV 1.2 Patch that will be launching on October 17th, alongside Season of Blood. According to Blizzard, some updates come as a result of the community feedback, and include fixes for specific platforms and some that are general updates for all platforms.

The biggest update is that new Unique Items, that can only be acquired by playing on World Tier IV in either the Eternal or Seasonal Realms, are now much more powerful, something that has been requested by community. Blizzard has also updated Elemental Resistances, that will now be much more important, and includes extensive class overhauls, updating pretty much all classes and their abilities. The new Diablo IV 1.2 Patch also includes a bunch of gameplay, experience, balance, and Battle Pass updates, as well as comes with an extensive list of bug fixes.

Tune up your boltgun and prepare for the hoard, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is swarming onto Xbox Series X|S today. A spiritual successor to Warhammer: Vermintide, Darktide takes developer Fatshark's ferocious, co-op-focused combat and drops you right into the blistered heart of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

Alongside its Game Pass launch, Darktide is also set to drop its biggest and most game-changing update yet. Patch 13 will introduce new class systems for each playable archetype and a ton of other game-play refining updates. This is the ultimate version of Darktide, so ahead of its console release, we had the opportunity to chat with three developers from Fatshark about why now is the perfect time to get stuck in.

Microsoft put up the latest Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11 on Windows Update (retail channel). Referenced in KB5030310, this update to Windows 11 has been found to break the usability of the AMD Software application, or the main control panel utility of AMD Software Adrenalin drivers. The latest Windows 11 cumulative update preview causes AMD Software to reset custom user settings upon each system reboot (hard reboot, which reloads drivers and starts a new user session, not fast startup). The bug does not, however, affect the core display driver functionality. It's more likely that this issue will be addressed by an AMD Software update, than having to wait for the next Windows 11 Patch Tuesday.

Hey, all! We hope you're enjoying the game since it launched last week! We wanted to thank you all for the support, feedback and bug reports. Our second patch update that goes live today across PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S brings a lot of key fixes, so please be sure to read over the release notes below.
As always, be sure to follow our social channels for the latest on Immortals of Aveum, including any future updates for the game, as we're going to continue making it better and adding more options and features that you've been requesting.

Immortals of Aveum is a single-player, first-person magic shooter powered by the groundbreaking Unreal Engine 5.1 technology and set in an original fantasy universe. Developed by a new independent AAA studio made up of award-winning industry veterans and published under the EA Originals label, Immortals of Aveum puts players in a visceral and cinematic fantasy universe that combines modern characters and a story-driven campaign with intense magic-based action, world exploration and puzzle-solving. Summon your power, stop the Everwar, and save the realms starting now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via the EA app, Steam and Epic Games Store worldwide.

Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment have today issued Patch No. 7 for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, arriving roughly two and a half months after the last batch of fixes and improvements. The most significant update for PC gamers running NVIDIA GPUs is the addition of official DLSS support, likely coinciding with the end an agreement between EA and AMD to advertise Star Wars Jedi: Survivor as a Team Red sponsored title—their FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.1 system was the only upscaling technology available on day one. Community modders managed to implement unofficial DLSS support a few months later.

It is encouraging to see the game's developer and publisher rolling out a semi-regular release of patches—parts of the gaming community were worried about Respawn Entertainment's recruitment cycle pointing to work starting on a potential sequel two months ago—with priorities shifting to the new project. It seems that a number of team members (software engineering and QA) are still working on refinements for Jedi: Survivor—hopefully we will see further work undertaken following today's release of performance and optimization improvements on PC, as well for Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 consoles.

Hello everyone, we have released our first major patch for Baldur's Gate 3, addressing over 1000 bugs, balancing, flow issues and much, much more. So what can you expect from this update? Well, we've eliminated issues like NPCs who sometimes spot you when they really shouldn't be able to, floating items like mugs and newspapers that should abide the laws of gravity, and the conclusion to Shadowheart's romance scene not triggering for some players, among others. With expansive systems come many unknowns, so our support team continues to work with you to relay any issues to us. Please don't hesitate to reach out with further reports. Patch 1 also tackles a few visual bugs, and sprinkles on more post-launch polish. We're bringing back Short King Summer with better kissing contact for short races!

You won't be waiting long for Patch 2, which is right around the corner. This update will feature significant performance improvements - but we'll go into more detail about that closer to its release. In the meantime, did you know that collectively you've played over 200,000,000 hours of Baldur's Gate 3 since launch? That's over 22,000 years! The most popular class choice is currently Paladin, followed by Sorcerer, while the award for least popular class goes to Cleric. Human and Elf characters reign supreme in Faerûn, followed swiftly and unsurprisingly by Half-Elf. On the opposite end of the spectrum we find Dwarf, Gnome, Githyanki, and Halfling. We get it, they're not exactly the most ethereal beauties of the Realms but they'd still form a rad metal band. For now, as we focus on fixes, thank you for playing Baldur's Gate 3 and continuing to share this adventure with us.

Blizzard has revealed full Diablo VI Patch 1.1.1 details although it won't be available until August 8th. The new patch mostly focuses on class balance changes and other various gameplay updates, but it does also bring some bug fixes as well.

The biggest improvements come to Sorcerers and Barbarians classes, with improved survivability for Sorcerers class and increased Fury generation on Basic Skills and increased power of Unique items for Barbarians. The patch also diversify the use cases for Legendary items and strengthen builds that aren't reaching a high power level. The full patch notes also include detailed adjustments for Rogue, Druid, and Necromancer classes as well. There is also an extensive list of gameplay updates which brings better rewards, but also higher health levels of bosses. There are plenty of other bug fixes and this patch comes to all platforms.

Hello everyone! Today I'm happy to announce that we're putting the next update for Age of Wonders 4 into Open Beta! This previews some of the improvements that are part of the Watcher update, due later this summer. This coming update focuses on what we feel are the issues which are most important to you, and we'd love to get your feedback on what we've managed to do so far.

It's important to remember that this is a work in progress patch. This means that it may be unstable or imbalanced, and that the features we've added may not work entirely as we want them to. It also means that we may revert certain changes later if we feel that they aren't achieving what we want them to or if we're inspired to replace them with something better! Instructions, Patch Notes and F.A.Q. are provided below...

Blizzard has released the Patch 1.0.3 for Diablo IV fixing various bugs and issues as well as brings balance tweaks for all classes and other game improvements. As expected, Battlenet will automatically download the 200 MB update next time you launch the client.

According to the rather extensive changelog, the Patch 1.0.3 fixes various dungeons, events, activities, gameplay, local co-op, quests, UI, and other miscellaneous issues. When it comes to specific and important fixes, Blizzard has boosted XP award after completing Nightmare Dungeons, as well as Helltide events. Bosses in Helltide also drop higher quality loot, and The Tree of Whispers also gives higher XP rewards. Blizzard has also increased skill boosts for each of classes, and some balance tweaks.

Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment has released the latest patch version 6 for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor that fixes some issues across all platforms, and it should be already available for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Unfortunately, there is no word on DLSS support or any visual improvements with Ray Tracing effects, so hopefully, we'll see these in future updates.

According to the release notes, the new Patch 6 should fix various crashes across all platforms, fix some general game issues like collision improvements, blaster handling, and holomap map data, various mission issues, and brings other "various bug fixes and improvements."

CD Projekt RED has released the new Patch v1.63 for Cyberpunk 2077 which includes several quest, open world, UI, visual, as well as PC-and console-specific improvements and fixes, as it is rolling out on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. While there are plenty of changes, PC users will be glad that it improves performance of DLSS Frame Generation on AMD CPUs, which had been hit by stuttering issues. The Cyberpunk 2077 Patch v1.63 also fixes visual color issues with DLSS and Path Tracing.

The new patch also fixes Photo Mode issues, as well as a crash issue when using Razer Chroma. There are plenty of other quest, open world, miscellaneous, console-specific and REDmod fixes, which you can check out it the full release notes.