Hello everyone… and happy 2024!!! We're at the start of the new year, I thought it would be a great idea to talk about our view of 2024. This Director's Take will be one part of a series where we frame up the year according to a set of values we're using to develop the game. These values translate into goals and specific additions and changes to the game. There's a lot of different things coming up this year that I want to share, so think of this as the first in a series of topics to cover.

One of the biggest values of the team is to improve Overwatch's individual and team focused gameplay to meet the needs of our core audience. When I look at the future of Overwatch, a year or two out, I don't see the exact same game that we're playing now, but with a few more heroes and maps added to it. The game should always evolve with new systems and features that serve our players. Some of these features could live just outside of a match, such as a map voting system.

Best-selling gaming headset and accessory maker Turtle Beach Corporation, today announced the latest addition to the brand's esteemed line of gaming simulation gear with the Turtle Beach VelocityOne Race. Designed for Xbox and Windows PCs by Turtle Beach's multi-award-winning VelocityOne simulation group, this groundbreaking universal wheel & pedal system is engineered to take the pole position and checkered flag as it resets the bar in racing simulation performance.

"Our VelocityOne gaming simulation products have already dominated the flight sim accessory market, and we're excited to expand Turtle Beach's catalog further by bringing this same level of ultra-realism and premium simulation performance to the world of racing"

Dear stalkers, last year, during Gamescom 2023, we finally had the chance to meet in person. We gathered around the campfire with you to share something valuable that we have been creating for you for all these years—a small part of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Publicly, for the first time ever. Our one-time initiative then transformed into a journey from campfire to campfire across France, Brazil, Singapore and other countries. Thousands of players were able to play the game themselves and give us the much-needed feedback afterwards. And as true friends always do, you shared your honest thoughts about the game. Both positive and negative, and we are thankful for that. From your insights, we figured out two key points: the one to celebrate and the one to consider seriously.

The first one: the Zone remains the Zone. In its true beauty and after our likeness. The game absolutely feels and plays like S.T.A.L.K.E.R, the atmosphere, hardcore style, harsh and unwelcoming environment are ready to cook, and we can't be more grateful for these words, as they basically sum up both the key intention and the main inspiration for the project from the very beginning at the same time. The second one was: the gear in the backpack should be checked one more time to be completely sure it will not fail us in the most needed moment. On the technical side of things—the game needs more time.

Forza Motorsport Update 4 introduces the prestigious Daytona International Speedway—a truly iconic racetrack renowned for its marvels in engineering. Meanwhile, a new Italian Challengers Featured Tour invites you to build four staples of Italy's automotive heritage! Let's dive into the details. Update 4 will be available to download on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PCs and Steam beginning on Tuesday, January 16. New events across the Career, Featured Multiplayer and Rivals will start on Thursday, January 18.

Get ready for race weekend with Daytona, new Spotlight cars and the Italian Challengers Tour
On Tuesday we'll share details about the fixes contained in Update 4. This version is focused on new content and events, and contains only minor fixes for car and track content compared to our previous updates. Work on game fixes to address top community issues is ongoing—look out for additional improvements in Update 5 and beyond.

The Finals—a free-to-play online first-person shooter—has pulled in a large population of gamers across Windows PCs and current-gen gaming consoles since its surprise launch last month, but players on Linux Desktop + Intel Arc hardware were missing out on this experience...until very recently. Phoronix reports that Embark Studio's Unreal Engine 5-powered title has started to work in a Linux environment "thanks to Valve's Steam Play (Proton + VKD3D-Proton). With the latest Mesa driver activity, Intel Arc Graphics on Linux with their open-source driver can now handle this popular game." GamingOnLinux owner, Liam Dawe, created a post about this development, although he noticed a multitude of stability problems and glitches in-game, but was largely up and running with an AMD Radeon 6800 XT GPU on Mesa 23.3.3.

Phoronix's Michael Larabel noted some (Intel Arc-specific) feedback on GitLab: "when launching The Finals on Linux with Intel Arc Graphics using the default DirectX 12 renderer, it was reported that the game is stuck at a black screen for Intel Arc Graphics and then simply closes... Well, it's an easy fix and one that has come up before." He has witnessed similar problems with other games—notably Diablo IV and Cyberpunk 2077: "due to The Finals using Intel's XeSS upscaling tech but that not behaving well on Linux. The Windows game sees Intel Graphics being utilized and by default tries to leverage XeSS...Intel Arc Graphics on Linux can run The Finals when concealing the fact that it's Intel Graphics inside."

Today is an exciting day for the entire studio, and especially our ENDLESS Dungeon team that has worked super hard these past years to make this game a reality. We've put a lot of passion and dedication into this project, and we're extremely proud of releasing our game today! We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed making it.

Endless Dungeon is out, at least the advanced access (aka early unlock) for those of you who bought the "Last Wish Edition". For those who own the Standard Edition you will be able to play starting Thursday (16:00 CEST / 15:00 BST / 7:00 PST).

Today marks a very special launch at Glorious. We are thrilled to release four tournament-grade mice, crafted for gaming enthusiasts in need of high performance gear. Introducing the Model O 2 PRO and the Model O 2 PRO 4K/8KHz Edition, as well as the Model D 2 PRO and the Model D 2 PRO 4K/8KHz Edition. In this article, we'll break down how we came to develop these gaming mice, and dive into each of the features for all four devices.

A HIGH-PERFORMANCE GAMING MOUSE, YEARS IN THE MAKING
When we first released the original Model O back in 2019, it took the gaming community by storm. We designed it with direct feedback from gamers worldwide, and we were thrilled with the overwhelmingly positive response it received. Fast-forward a few years later, we hosted a limited edition group buy, featuring an enhanced version of this device: Model O PRO Forge Edition. It was a stripped down version of the original mouse, sporting only the necessary cutting-edge tech for optimal performance at the lightest weight possible. Though we will no longer be hosting group buys, we decided to take this optimized mouse, turbocharge it with next-generation technology (more on this later), and make it one of our mainline products.

Welcome to the launch of The Lamplighters League! It goes without saying, maybe, but this is a special day for us, and we are so excited to be sharing this game with you. Games like this take a long time to bring to life from the first pitches to the final product you can finally play today. At each stage there are unique challenges—especially when bringing to life a brand new game world and working out new twists for an established and complex genre like turn-based tactics. It can be grueling, especially when the build isn't feeling fun, or a production deadline is looming. Or, worse, when those two things are happening at once.

It can also be incredibly rewarding. There was a moment during development where we were, in fact, facing down the fact that infiltration just wasn't fun and there was a big deadline coming up fast. We needed to rethink things, and we needed to do it quickly. Under that pressure the team prototyped and implemented the real time takedowns in just a few weeks. I jumped up in the air the first time I saw the shock from a mine travel through the water on the ground to take out an unaware enemy. It was a big victory right when we needed it as a team.

During launch-weekend, Payday 3 had a peak of concurrent players (CCU) across all platforms of 218,250, and a peak of 1,347,510 unique players (DAU). Starbreeze Nebula currently has 3,794,172 registered users. Payday 3 matchmaking infrastructure has not performed as tested and expected. Matchmaking software encountered an unforeseen error, which made it unable to handle the massive influx of players. The issue caused an unrecoverable situation for Starbreeze's third-party matchmaking partner.

A new version of the matchmaking server software was gradually deployed across all regions leading to improved performance. However, a software update made by the partner during late Sunday again introduced instability to the matchmaking infrastructure. The partner continues to work to improve and stabilize Payday 3's online systems.

The launch of Payday 3 is finally upon us! Police and criminals alike quake at the rumors of the Payday Gang arriving in New York City. And today, they arrived. A brand new chapter in the Payday universe is revealed to the world and we're thrilled to have you join us on the journey. We've already shared the roadmap for the first year of Payday 3, check it out here.

The Medic Bag
Should you have any issues with the game, don't hesitate to contact our support team, if you'd like to leave us any feedback we do have a feature upvote page where you can either write your own suggestion or vote on the suggestions of others.

Sure, 2023 ain't over yet...but 2024 isn't that far away, and we wanted to share the official Steam events planned for the first few months of next year so you can choose in which events you'd like to participate and plan your promotional activities accordingly. In addition to a quick refresher on Steam events, the events schedule for the first quarter of 2024 is below—including links to documentation with additional details and eligibility criteria—and you can register and start entering discounts now.

For seasonal sales and themed sale events, simply visit your Discount Management page in Steamworks, where you can see upcoming events and which of your games are eligible for each. For Steam Next Fest, visit the registration URL in the event-specific documentation linked below. Not ready to register? Not to worry: we'll send registration invitation emails to the developers of eligible titles about two months prior to each themed sale event and five months prior to each Steam Next Fest.

Back in June, we unveiled the all-new Ubisoft Connect PC Beta rolling out gradually throughout the summer. Today, we're happy to say all PC players can jump in and test it out. This version of Ubisoft Connect PC was built from the ground up to meet your needs, improve usability, and enhance your experience while playing games. If you haven't tried it yet, go ahead and click the toggle switch at the top right of your desktop app to switch to the Beta version.

We've worked on several improvements in the past three months, and there's more in our pipeline. As we expand Ubisoft Connect PC, we're continuously looking for feedback. Please don't hesitate to switch to the new version every now and then (or just keep using it!) and let us know what you think: Ubisoft Connect PC Beta Feedback Form.

Back when we first revealed Hades II at The Game Awards in 2022, we said to expect more information on our plans for Early Access sometime in 2023. It's time we shed some light on those plans! We now can confirm we're planning for Hades II to launch in Early Access in Q2 2024 on Steam and the Epic Games Store. We'll have more details on the exact date, pricing, and system requirements closer to that time.

Thank you for your patience as we gear up for this launch! You may be wondering, why can't we launch in Early Access, like, right now?! The game looked pretty far along in the first trailer! The reason is, Hades II will have at least as much content from day one in Early Access as the original game did back when it launched in Early Access on Steam. And, even though Early Access inherently means a game is not yet complete, we still want to do everything we can to make sure Hades II is worth your while as soon as you can play it in any capacity.

Hello! We're now at a stage of Train Simulator Classic's development process where we are ready to invite you to take part in Beta Testing the new improvements to the core builds. Your feedback from the last phase of development work was clear in that you wanted to be able to opt into the updates and leave yourself with a fallback option. So, this is how we'll proceed moving forward. You'll therefore need to opt into the Beta to try out the new features/bug fixes, etc. We provide full instructions further into this article - see the section on Opting in and Opting Out.

The Beta is planned to be what we call a "Rolling Beta". This means that the Beta will continue over a period of a year or more with the new features and fixes coming to the Beta first, and after receiving your feedback and any fixes applied, will then get rolled out to the Live Public branch. This process will continue throughout the Public Beta with builds coming in regularly depending on the work being done.

Hello XDefiant Fans! I've got an update for you and it's a big one! We want to explain further why we haven't given a specific date yet for our launch. And sometimes full transparency is like drinking from a firehose so hope you all are thirsty! First things first. Here is a detailed description of how the submission process goes: Submission is the part of development where we give the game to the 1st parties (Sony, Xbox, etc.) to check that the game works correctly in their environments. To get to that we have to self-test with internal QA/Compliance teams to try and find any issues that might get flagged in the submission process. Once we have fixed or completed all of the tasks that we want/think we need for submission we then spend about 2-3 weeks prepping and validating a CM (Candidate Master) that we think is the final version of the game for submission.

It then goes through 1 week of heavy QA & Compliance testing by several Ubisoft teams. If it passes, then it goes to the 1st parties to be certified for release. 1st parties take a week to get their final report on the submission and give us a Pass or Not Pass with a list of must fixes for the next submission. Also, to be clear during this submission process, the QC team at Ubisoft are putting the build through the ringer looking for functionality bugs and another team at Ubisoft, divided up into PC, Sony and Xbox groups are looking for compliance bugs.

Yesterday we pre-announced that we're developing an SD Expansion Card. Normally we don't announce a product until we've fully locked the feature-set, brought up the necessary suppliers and manufacturing environment, completed most of the engineering and a substantial level of testing and validation, and are on a high confidence path to a specific release date at a specific price. This is because development of brand new products requires charting a course into the unknown. We set a target for what the product will be from the start, but as we proceed and learn, we often need to adjust the schedule, scope, and cost, and sometimes even need to outright pause or cancel development. Announcing just before shipping is how most companies operate to reduce churn and public uncertainty, but it means the product development process ends up extremely opaque.

We decided we're going to treat this one product on our roadmap a little differently. A full-size SD Expansion Card is consistently the most requested Expansion Card by the community, which makes it a great one to open up. We're just at the start of the process now, and Hyelim on our Marketing team is creating a new YouTube series to share updates and insights as we go through the New Product Introduction (NPI) process. Take a look at the first video (below) and let us know what you think as we complete (or don't complete) the product.

The new cosmic adventure game, Void Crew, is now available on Steam Early Access. Publisher Focus Entertainment and Danish indie studio Hutlihut Games are delighted to invite you on a journey into deep space. Gather your crew, set your course for uncharted galaxies, and prepare for epic journeys beyond the stars. With a 20% Early Birds limited time discount and a groundbreaking Early Access Launch Trailer, Void Crew gives you a taste of what "co-operation" truly means.

In space, no one can hear you scream…
…except your friends! In Void Crew, humanity unites against a mysterious aggressor - the Hollow. As the chosen ones, you and your crew of up to 4 mavericks must brave the void and bring order to the galaxy! Embark on a cooperative journey that will test your strategic prowess and communication skills. In Void Crew, teamwork isn't just an option; it's the key to reclaiming humanity's lost territory.

Hello Everyone! First up, thank you all for all the feedback following the announcement of House Ecaz. We're very happy with how the faction is coming together and we can't wait to hear your thoughts on Arrakis' newest arrival when the game launches out of Early Access later this month, which conveniently leads us to our next announcement...

We are very proud to share that Dune: Spice Wars launches out of Early Access and into 1.0 on the 14th of September! With release now within spitting distance, we thought it would be a good time to address some of the burning questions we've been getting of late and give some details on what to expect from this major milestone in D:SW's development! So read on for the official Dune: Spice Wars 1.0 F.A.Q...

Focus Entertainment, in partnership with Hutlihut Games, an indie studio based in Copenhagen, is thrilled to announce the Early Access Launch of their groundbreaking space odyssey: Void Crew. Brace yourselves for an unparalleled co-op gaming experience that will redefine your journey through the cosmos on September 7.

Get a sneak peek of the game during an engaging gameplay session this Saturday on the Jesse Cox Twitch Channel! Join the dedicated streamer as he dive into the heart-pounding action of Void Crew alongside seasoned developers. As the stars align, prepare to unravel the mysteries of the universe and forge a formidable crew of 2-4 players. Team up with your closest companions for a journey as exhilarating as a wild space ride!

We are constantly improving our safety measures and bringing more systems and tools in place that empower players to respectfully interact with one another - because everyone deserves a place to comfortably be themselves online, free from harassment and bullying. One of the most common questions we get from players through feedback, posts, and appeals is how repeated enforcements impact their gameplay, how they escalate, what they escalate to, and how they know when their account is back in good standing. To help address this, we are introducing a new enforcement strike system.

The new system attaches strikes to every enforcement, ranging in severity based on inappropriate activity. Each player will now have a view of their enforcement history including strikes and the overall impact these have on their player record. This revised system gives players a better understanding of enforcement severity and the cumulative effect of multiple enforcements. Enforcement transparency is about giving players clarity into how their behavior impacts their experience. Our content moderation efforts are not changing as a result of the new enforcement strike system.

Ben Limare, CEO at 2.21: "Dear friends and supporters, I'm tasked with sharing a disappointing update. Despite our earnest efforts, we were unsuccessful in securing a publisher for the reboot of Twinsen's Little Big Adventure.

What's the path forward? With a heavy heart, we've halted our work on the reboot and, for the moment, regard the project as canceled. This allows us to channel our focus and energy into the remastered version of Twinsen's Little Big Adventure (TLBA Remastered). We will explore whether we can reincorporate the reboot's ideas into the remaster, but that's a conversation for another time."

With each PlayStation 5 system software release, we've introduced new features designed to enhance the many ways you can access your favorite content, navigate your console, or create new gaming memories with friends. Today, we're thrilled to roll out a new PS5 system software beta that introduces new accessibility features as well as audio options that allow 3D Audio powered by Tempest 3D AudioTech to be enjoyed on compatible Dolby Atmos-enabled HDMI devices such as sound bars, TVs, or home theater systems. The beta also includes more options to quickly find games and console tips, new ways to connect with other players and customize your multiplayer sessions, and support for larger-capacity M.2 SSDs (up to 8 TB).

While beta access will be limited to invited participants in select countries*, we plan to release the update globally later this year. If you're selected to participate in the beta, you'll receive an email invitation today when it's available to download. Some features available during the beta phase may not make it into the final version or may see significant changes. Without further ado, here are some of the highlights from the beta release...

Heisters! We are thrilled to announce that PAYDAY 3 is hosting a technical Closed Beta from August 2nd to August 7th. Players can sign-up for a chance to play the game on Steam and Xbox Series S|X. We have prepared a FAQ regarding the Closed BETA (see below).

PAYDAY 3 is the much anticipated sequel to one of the most popular co-op shooters ever. Since its release, PAYDAY-players have been reveling in the thrill of a perfectly planned and executed heist. That's what makes PAYDAY a high-octane, co-op FPS experience without equal.

We launched PlayStation 5 in November 2020 and the world was in a strange and different place than when we announced the console in 2019. Despite the unprecedented challenges of COVID, our teams and our partners worked diligently to deliver PS5 on time. We continued to face headwinds with the pandemic, and it took months for supply chains to normalize so we could have the inventory to keep up with demand. For more months than I care to remember, we kept thanking our community for their patience while working through these issues. But now PS5 supply is well-stocked and we are seeing that pent up demand finally being met.

With the support of PlayStation fans, we have reached a milestone of 40 million PS5 consoles sold through to gamers since launch. Thank you so much to our community of gamers - without you this would have been an impossible task. PS5 launched with the best catalog of games in our history and the momentum for great content keeps getting stronger. From innovative indie games to AAA blockbusters, there are more than 2,500 PS5 games now available, and it has never been a better time to experience PS5 In the last two months alone, we have seen incredible new games from our partners, including Final Fantasy XVI, Diablo IV, and Street Fighter 6.

We're extreme optimists by the nature of our mission, but the response to the Framework Laptop 16 pre-order launch last week was beyond anything we could have imagined. We expected to sell the first five batches over the course of a few months. Instead, we sold through them in 12 hours. The currently open pre-order batch will ship in Q1 2024, and we're working with our suppliers to ensure we have the production capacity to avoid pre-order timing going deeper into 2024. AMD was also able to provide more game codes for Starfield Premium Edition to let us continue offering it for additional pre-orders that include a Radeon RX 7700S (while quantities last).

A couple of great write-ups and videos went live alongside the launch. First, Sean Hollister at The Verge shared his detailed thoughts from an exclusive hands-on with a pre-production Framework Laptop 16, stating "I am staggered that Framework 16 even exists". AMD also prepared a video featuring Frank Azor, Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions & Marketing, explaining how we partnered to make it exist! Watch this featurette below.