Dune: Awakening hopes to spruce up its endgame in its next major update, coming next week

Dune: Awakening has struggled a touch with its endgame pretty much since launch, but with the MMO’s next big update, Chapter 3, is promising to offer a revamp that you (yes, you! The person playing Dune: Awakening right now! Maybe!) have been after. A release date was also offered up for the big update, alongside some specifics on just what this new endgame might look like.

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Coral Social Club is like Webfishing where you’re the fish, or, uh, mermaids

A thing that was quite endearing, perhaps the main appeal even, about the early internet was how it was a place you could go to, with lots of other, unique places to go through, be they forums, chatrooms, or oddball social games. The last item in the list there kind of faded away for a while, replaced by MMOs and live service games like Fortnite, but these smaller scale, social-first games, or hangout games, are making a comeback, with games like Webfishing. And soon, for the more aquatic amongst you, there will be Coral Social Club.

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Unionised French Ubisoft workers put out call for an international strike held by all current employees

Last week, Ubisoft announced a major restructure that saw multiple games cancelled, including the Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time Remake, and more concerningly prospectively put layoffs on the horizon. Now, following an agreement made by a group of organised Ubisoft workers across multiple French unions, a call for an international strike across all studios at the company has been put out.

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Scare off legally distinct Victorian Ghostbusters with your legion of spirits in Ghost Keeper, out in early access now

I like playing a game where I get to defend myself from/ take down the likes of ghouls, ghosts, demons and other such and much paranormal, supernatural beasties, but how about a game where you’re the one doing the haunting? Ghost Keeper! Is a strategy, puzzley game where you “lead your fearsome minions against the living” by attempting to scare them off, and just launched in early access today.

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Dwarf Legacy turns Tolkien’s sturdy miners into bullet hell mountaineers – don’t mythril the demo

Remember in The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers when Gandalf falls down the big chasm with the Balrog, smacking the sawdust out of it while plummeting towards the waters of the underworld? Well, give Gandalf a gun, play that sequence in reverse, and swap the Balrog for a flock of Space Invaders, and you are playing something like the demo for Dwarf Legacy – a “bullet-hell precision platformer” from Wulo Games about a dwarf clambering up the inside of a mountain.

Oh wait, Gandalf needs to be listening to crunchy dancefloor music to complete the analogy. Also, he needs to stop periodically to buy better guns from a blacksmith. I’m pretty sure this is still within Peter Jackson’s budget.

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Earth Must Die publishers say an “alien orgy depicted as a gyrating lump on the floor” left the game’s Steam launch “unclear”

What Steam operators Valve are and aren’t prepared to allow onto their storefront has been a major talking point for the past year or so, especially when it comes to mature or sexually-themed content. Our Edwin’s done some fine reporting on the topic and how it relates to payment processors, as well as delving into individual cases like Santa Ragione’s Horses.

Now, the developers of point-and-click comedy Earth Must Die say things looked “unclear” for a bit in terms of whether they’d be able to launch on Steam, with the platform then offering a thumbs up after reviewing footage of an “alien orgy”.

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Arc Raiders update rips out one of the game’s most maddening puzzles

Arc Raiders has a new Headwinds game update that, amongst many other things, removes an extravagantly drawn-out puzzle from the game’s Buried City map. Introduced in December, the puzzle in question saw people tracking down and pushing 15 buttons in a certain order to unlock a secret chamber containing an actual, strummable guitar. As of this updating, you’ll now be able to buy that guitar at Shani’s, like a millionaire tourist paying to be flown to the top of Mount Everest.

I regard this as a dilution of the game, on paper, but I am not one of the players who’ve driven themselves crackers trying to get hold of the instrument (or paying real money for the battle pass to unlock it). Arc Raiders is a multiplayer game, of course, so even if you survive being shot at while stampeding between buttons, it’s possible another, distant player might innocently press one and reset your progress.

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Crusader Kings 3 has joined the big fleet of Paradox strategy games offering a paid DLC subscription service

Crusader Kings 3 developers Paradox have decided now’s the time for the medieval strategy game to take a leaf out of its predecessor’s book – as well as fellow strategians Hearts of Iron IV and Europa Universalis 4 – by getting its own DLC subscription service. Starting today, you’ll have the option to pay a monthly fee for access to all nine billion or so CK3 expansions and add-ons, if you don’t fancy paying to own them outright in the usual fashion.

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