MSI is committed to continuously enhancing the user experience, and we are proud to announce the upcoming launch of our new web-based RGB control platform - MSI PortalX. This platform eliminates the need for software installation - simply access it through your browser to easily manage your devices' RGB lighting effects, offering a more flexible lighting control experience.

When you connect to MSI PortalX and enter RGB Center (supported on Windows systems only), the platform automatically detects all MSI devices in your system. Just select a device, and you can freely customize the RGB lighting effects for each port, including brightness and speed, with three adjustable speed levels to choose from. To enhance usability, we've also provided an All Sync button, allowing you to synchronize the lighting effects of all devices with a single click, without the need for individual adjustments.

Splitgate 2's next open beta will take place stating on May 22, with the developer, 1047 Games, announcing the free-to-play multiplayer shooter's new beta test in a new YouTube trailer. The open beta is free-to-play, just like the game will be when it launches, and it's seemingly open to all, as well. The Splitgte 2 open beta will be open to gamers on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games. Splitgate 2 is planned for a full release sometime in 2025, but an exact date has not yet been confirmed.

Like the first Splitgate game, Splitgate 2 will feature the same portals-based combat, fast-paced gunplay, and high vertical mobility. However, the developers have apparently been working on some new tricks for the latest installment in the series, with the open beta boasting over 25 weapons, more than 10 game modes, and "infinite" maps. It's not clear how the new map system will work, but it's likely that some sort of tile-based procedural generation will be used to spawn a new map each time a new match starts, which is similar to how games like Warframe keep things interesting in what would otherwise be a repetitive gameplay loop. The new open beta announcement teaser trailer also seems to suggest that players will be able to create and edit their own maps, likely for custom games.

Grab your satchel, sharpen your blade, and dust off your negotiating skills—Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is officially set to open its doors in Summer 2025! The upcoming action-RPG from Digital Sun, creators of the beloved indie hit, Moonlighter, and published by 11 bit studios, returns with even grander adventures and deeper shopkeeping mastery. Step into the dual life of Wil—a shopkeeper-turned-hero—as he balances dangerous expeditions alongside the hustle of keeping his business thriving in a reality where fortune favors those bold enough to venture beyond the boundaries of what they know.

As you venture into the unknown, you'll clash with fearsome foes and gather precious loot in sprawling, dynamic dungeons. Take risks and reap rewards with the game's new layer of tactical depth—inventory management is no longer just about saving space. Relics carry special properties, adding tension and strategy to every expedition. On the shopkeeping side of things, you'll keep your store bustling by harnessing powerful boosts and charms to maximize sales and keep customers lining up at your door. And while you're stuck in Tresna for now—a brand-new location in the series, born from a dimensional mash-up—you might as well try to prosper together with the local townsfolk. Invest in the flourishing village of Tresna, shape its future, and unlock new opportunities for your own success.

NVIDIA has announced that the Half-Life 2 RTX Demo will be available on March 18th and include a two-hour gameplay demo with full ray tracing, remade assets, and animations. The demo is remastered with RTX Remix by Orbifold Studios and will be a free mod on Steam for all Half-Life 2 owners.

The demo will feature NVIDIA DLSS 4, NVIDIA RTX Neural Radiance Cache, RTX Skin, RTX Volumetrics, and other new NVIDIA technologies. The release of Half-Life 2 RTX Demo marks the official release of RTX Remix, which was released a year ago in beta. According to NVIDIA, over 30,000 modders have since used the platform to mod a bunch of classic titles, with over 1 million gamers playing those modded games like Portal with RTX and Portal: prelude RTX. As said, the new demo will go live on Steam on March 18th.

Hey, Splitfam. We're doing an Open Alpha preview of the work we've done on Splitgate 2, available to everyone for four days from Feb. 27 to March 2. Come play with us! This is your first chance to check out our new Multi-Team Portal Warfare, 8v8v8 battles of colossal proportions set on a massive map. Plus, we've got new arena maps, new weapons, new gear, and hundreds of improvements based on community feedback. Anyone with a Steam account, a PS5, or an Xbox Series X|S can register and play—for free, as always. Read on for more details about what will be included in the Open Alpha.

Portals Change Everything
Portal into the action as an elite Ace in Splitgate 2, the only free-to-play shooter where you can teleport across the map to outsmart your opponents. Team up, customize weapons, and master portaling skills as you compete for glory in epic showdowns. This is the future of Splitgate, bringing fast-paced portal gunplay with objective-based game modes, distinctive new maps, and a wild collection of weapons. Dominate the competition with the ultimate tool: a portal gun. Flank your foes and turn the tide of combat by portaling across the map, or defy gravity to launch yourself for jaw-dropping aerial kills. Recruit your friends and compete for the respect of the entire galaxy. Take control of the Hotzone while your friends hold off enemies portaling in from all sides. Stand together and steamroll your opponents to win the match and claim victory.

LG Electronics (LG) is bringing its Gaming Portal to a wide range of screens and platforms in 2025. Currently available on LG Smart TVs running webOS 23 and above in 19 markets, the service will extend to additional markets, platforms and devices - including LG Smart Monitors and StanbyME lifestyle screens - by the second quarter of the year. This expansion aims to enhance the overall game streaming experience by providing seamless access to popular and new titles.

The Gaming Portal serves as a central hub for gameplay options, offering an effortless way to discover new titles and enjoy the ones gamers already love. Through partnerships with leading cloud gaming services like NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Amazon Luna, Boosteroid, Blacknut and soon Xbox Cloud, along with many native webOS app games, LG delivers a wide variety of games across different genres.

It looks like Sony is joining Xbox in the development of a standalone handheld gaming console to compete with the likes of the Nintendo Switch and Valve Steam Deck. According to a Bloomberg's insider sources, a Sony gaming handheld is already in development, and would be designed with Sony PlayStation 5 games in mind. Unlike the PlayStation Portal, the future gaming console wouldn't be dependent on game streaming and would, instead, run games locally, meaning it would likely need significantly more powerful hardware than the Portal has. This would be Sony's first true foray into the portable gaming console market since the likes of the PS Vita, which is largely considered to be a commercial disappointment.

Sony isn't the first of the console giants looking into creating its own gaming handheld after Nintendo's Switch. Obviously, Valve, traditionally more of a software company, already has the immensely popular Steam Deck, but we also recently reported that Microsoft is in the early stages of developing its own handheld gaming console. Details on the future Sony gaming handheld are scant, and there has been no official word from Sony about the console. That said, it wouldn't be surprising to see it equipped with an AMD APU, similar to the likes of the Steam Deck and the PS5, since Sony already has history and a commercial relationship with AMD hardware.

NVIDIA RTX Remix enables modders to reimagine classic games with full ray tracing, also known as path tracing, and to update models and textures with modern rendering features that work hand in hand with ray-traced effects to deliver the level of graphical fidelity seen in Portal with RTX, our ray-traced reimagining of Valve's classic game. And with a few additional clicks, support for NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA Reflex can be introduced, accelerating performance and making gameplay even more responsive.

Following the launch of the RTX Remix Open Beta in January, we're today introducing new features and optimizations, headlined by the addition of NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction, an AI model that creates higher quality ray-traced images for intensive ray-traced games and apps. Additionally, we're taking a look at some work in progress RTX Remix mods, and checking in with Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, to demonstrate the toolkit's capabilities.

Welcome to the first week of new games of 2024, although the first week of the year isn't exactly starting with a bang. In fact, there are so few new releases that we couldn't even get one per day, but luckily there were enough new games being released on other days for a full roundup. We got everything from bootleggers to tiny cars and a point and click adventure to keep you busy this coming week.

Bootlegger's Mafia Racing Story / Monday 1 January
Step back in time to the roaring 1930s and immerse yourself in the high-stakes world of bootlegging during America's Prohibition era. Get ready to join John Hamerton, a retired car engineer and mechanic, as he embarks on a daring journey to save his house and pay off his tax debt.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) today announced the PlayStation 5 console (PS5) has surpassed 50 million units sold through to consumers, three years since its Nov. 2020 launch. Thanks to the support of PlayStation fans globally, the PS5 console has experienced strong momentum this year, driven by a slate of highly popular games and SIE's continued focus on bringing innovation to the gaming experience, including PS5 game streaming for PlayStation Plus Premium members.

"Achieving this PS5 sales milestone is a testament to the unwavering support of the global PlayStation community and their passion for the incredible experiences created by the talented developers from PlayStation Studios and our partners," said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. "We're grateful for all of our players who have joined the PS5 journey so far, and we're thrilled that this is the first holiday season since launch that we have a full supply of PS5 consoles—so anyone who wants to get one can get one."

On September 21st, NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 debuts in Cyberpunk 2077 and Chaos Vantage. NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 makes your games even more beautiful, immersive and realistic with the introduction of Ray Reconstruction, a new AI-powered technique that further enhances the quality of ray tracing. And in apps, ray-traced previews and viewports are greatly improved, enabling creators to better visualize the final result before time-consuming renders. DLSS 3.5 is available for all GeForce RTX and NVIDIA RTX users; for the complete breakdown on this new technology, head to our NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 announcement article.

In other DLSS news, Lies of P, Party Animals, Warhaven and Witchfire are all launching this week with day-one DLSS support, and gamers can check out an open beta for The First Descendant, an upcoming DLSS 3-accelerated game. In each game, GeForce RTX users will receive the definitive experience - read on for all the details.

It's a party this GFN Thursday with several newly launched titles streaming on GeForce NOW. Revel in gaming goodness with Xenonauts 2, Viewfinder and Techtonica, among the four new games joining the cloud this week. Portal fans, stay tuned—the Portal: Prelude RTX mod will be streaming on GeForce NOW to members soon. Plus, find out how members can score an upcoming Guild Wars 2 premium reward.

Get 'Em While They're Hot!
Choose from over 1,600 games in the GeForce NOW library, starting off with the titles making their cloud debut. Be among the first to experience Xenonauts 2, Viewfinder and Techtonica from a high-performance GeForce RTX gaming rig in the cloud, without worrying about download times or system specs.

DeepCool, at its 2018 International CES showed off the Quadstellar Electro limited edition case. This isn't simply whitewashing the original Quadstellar the company closed 2017 with, where white metal replaces black, while contrasting black-tinted tempered glass panels take over the clear ones; but a re-styling. The primary color is silver and not white. Silver-chrome accents frame the front ends of the four lobes instead of glossy black, there are hints of orange along its feet and main LED elements. The central LED ornament, which can be configured to the color of your choice, glows orange out of the box, which makes this case look like something out of the "Portal" or "Half Life" universes (we can't decide which). If you can imagine your next big mod to appease Lord Gaben to hurry up with his Rapture (read: next installment of "Half Life,") then you better haul. DeepCool is only making 100 of these, and the one on display is already 001/100.

We welcome all lucky applicants to Bridge Constructor Portal with our new vehicle-based test chambers, Quantum Tunnels and patented Aperture technology! For the last year we've been secretly working in our underground labs on the next iteration of the million-selling Bridge Constructor series. This new stand-alone title will release on PC, MacOS, Linux, mobile devices, and console, and fully embraces the Portal license, one of the most beloved video game franchises of the last decade.

Bridge Constructor Portal will blend the laws of structural engineering and technology straight from Aperture Laboratories into an exciting new game experience, all under the demanding gaze of GLaDOS. Bridge Constructor Portal will be released on December 20 2017 for Windows, MacOS and Linux as well as for mobile devices. The console versions will follow in early 2018.

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the second set of titles proceeding to worldwide distribution opportunities through Steam Greenlight. This second wave of titles was originally targeted to include at least 10 titles. Given the number and quality of games submitted, and the ship date of many of the top-ranking titles, the decision was made to increase the size of this group.

Steam Greenlight is a new platform feature that enlists the community's help in selecting some of the next games to be released on Steam. Launched on August 30, Greenlight allows developers and publishers to post information and media about their game in an effort to convince Community members that their game should be released on Steam.

Valve's hit online multiplayer game, Left 4 Dead 2, which was recently ported to Ubuntu along with the Steam client, is found to play faster on the platform than even Windows. The game generates higher frame-rates on Ubuntu with the new OpenGL renderer for Source engine than the Direct3D renderer it uses on Windows.

The disclosure comes as part of Valve's ongoing efforts to optimize the Source engine to the Linux platform, following which, it plans to port more of its game franchises, such as Half Life, Counter Strike, Team Fortress, and Portal. The games will be available on Ubuntu with SteamPlay, allowing users who already own a license for the Windows or Mac OS X versions to simply download and play the game on Ubuntu, without any purchases.

Valve, creator of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the open beta release of Source Filmmaker (SFM), for free, to everyone.

The SFM is a storytelling tool Valve developed inside the Source Engine to create all its animated short films, including those in the "Meet the Team" series of Team Fortress 2 shorts. The SFM condenses the production pipeline of an animation studio down onto a single gaming PC. To help the community get started, the SFM includes all assets from Team Fortress 2 along with assets from two of the "Meet the Team" short films.

Video games developer, publisher, and distributor, Valve Corporation is valued at US $3 billion. A privately-held company, Valve doesn't disclose its finances to the public. Forbes estimated its worth by consulting video game industry insiders, equity analysts, investment bankers, and technology analysts. Valve's co-founder and managing director, Gabe Newell, who owns over 50% of the company, has a net worth of $1.5 billion, making him the newest billionaire from the video games industry. He ranks 854th out of 1,226 global billionaires in Forbes' list. Apart from having largely successful game franchises such as Half Life, Counter Strike, Left4Dead, and Portal, Valve has arguably the most popular video games digital distribution platform, Steam. Steam distributes more than 1,800 titles, from 50 different publishers.

Today Kotaku is reporting the top 5 games pirated for major platforms this year according to TorrentFreak. As usual the PC platform is the most guilty almost doubling in pirated copies then its competitors.

Some of the titles listed are not surprising but the lack of a certain title filled with dragon slaying is. Why Skyrim didn't make the top five is anyone's guess. Either Steam is in fact the most user friendly DRM or people just love Skyrim. Either way this is just a small glimpse into the world of pirated software.

Top Five Pirated PC Games

1. Crysis 2 (3,920,000) (March 2011)
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (3,650,000) (November 2011)
3. Battlefield 3 (3,510,000) (October 2011)
4. FIFA 12 (3,390,000) (September 2011)
5. Portal 2 (3,240,000) (April 2011)

Welcome to the TechPowerUp 2011 PC technology Christmas special. We hope that you will enjoy reading it while tucking into your turkey, Christmas presents and a little too much wine... In this article, we go through the technology of 2011 that has had the most significance, the most impact and was generally the most talked about. It's not necessarily the best tech of 2011 which is the most significant though, since lemons can be just as significant as the ground-breakers in how they fail to deliver - and the backlash that goes with it.

January: Intel Sandy Bridge i5 & i7

Released on January 9th, the new Intel Core i5 & i7 processors were based on Intel's second generation Core architecture built on a 32 nm production process (HEXUS review). They included an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) physically on the same piece of silicon along with HyperThreading. These new dual and quad core processors soundly beat all previous generations of Intel processors in terms of processing performance, heat, power use, features and left AMD in the dust. Therefore, Intel badly needed some competition from AMD and unless you have been living under a rock, you will know how that turned out in October with the launch of Bulldozer. Sandy Bridge was a sound win and is generally considered to be the only architecture worth considering at this point. The i5-2500K is currently at the sweet spot of price/performance. It comes at a stock speed of 3.3 GHz, but typically overclocks to an amazing 4.5 - 5 GHz with a decent air cooler and without too much difficulty in getting there. Models in the budget i3 range were released at various times later. See this Wikipedia article for details.

SteelSeries, the leading global manufacturer of gaming peripherals, today introduced the first in a series of co-licensed products with Valve Corporation, creator of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source). The SteelSeries QcK+ DotA 2 Edition provides players with a smooth and consistent glide surface and a non-slip rubber base that keeps the mousepad in place regardless of the gaming environment. Optimized to achieve precision and accuracy for optical and laser technology, the oversized mousepad is 17.7 x 15.7 x 0.08 inches and features the vibrant colors of the Dota 2 black and red game logo.

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO).

Targeted for release via Playstation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, and Steam (for PC and Mac) in early 2012, CS: GO will expand upon the team-based action gameplay that it pioneered when it was launched exactly 12 years ago (CS beta 1, August 1999).

SteelSeries, the leading global manufacturer of gaming peripherals, today announced a new partnership with Valve Corporation, entertainment software and technology company and creator of the popular Steam platform and award-winning properties such as Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Portal and Left 4 Dead. Through a multi-title agreement, SteelSeries will work closely with Valve to design co-branded gaming surfaces, specific for Valve's most recognized game titles.

ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih has unveiled the highly-anticipated Padfone along with the latest ASUS innovations, which include new UX Series notebooks, redesigned N Series notebooks with SonicMaster audio technology, the revolutionary and versatile Eee Pad Memo 3D, ultra-thin Eee PC X101 netbooks, and unique home entertainment devices such as the motion-sensing WAVI Xtion and the 27" All-in-One high-definition ET2700XVT desktop PC. With "Break the Rules, Innovation Beyond Expectations" as the dominant theme this year, Mr. Shih has reiterated the company's strength in cutting-edge designs and superior engineering skills to help bring users the devices of their dreams. "Breaking the rules and changing the status quo are the keys to our success, and we strive to offer customers an experience that surpasses their expectations," said Mr. Shih.

Valve today officially introduced the Steam for Mac. The popular game content distribution and multiplayer game networking platform will bring a wealth of casual games as well as games developed by Valve to Mac users. To celebrate this launch, Valve is giving away a free copy of Portal to anyone who downloads Steam between today and May 24, 2010. Existing steam users who don't have the game yet can simply click on the install button on the game's Store page.

"The Mac is a great platform for developers," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "And it's also great that we now have the ability to connect with Mac gamers via Steam. This is the beginning of a groundswell of games coming out for and fully utilizing the openness and power of the Mac." Each Wednesday a new group of games highlighting an area of Steam functionality will be released. This week's titles, which show off Steam Play, include: