Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Valve recently changed Steam’s rules and regulations to give banks, payment processors, and internet service providers some control over the definition of acceptable “adult content” on Steam, in line with their own respective policies. As Valve suggested to RPS in a statement, it was either that or risk a credit card firm or bank blocking Steam purchases at large. Alongside all this, Valve also delisted a bunch of sexually explicit games, including a number of games that depict incest.

Valve have yet to specify which games they’ve delisted as a direct result of the policy change, or which particular institutions prompted them to make this rather momentous shift. But it looks increasingly like the result of an anti-violent pornography game campaign directed at Valve, Mastercard, Paypal, Visa, Paysafe Limited, Discover and the Japan Credit Bureau in early July, carried out by Australian pressure group Collective Shout. This is the conclusion offered by Collective Shout themselves, anyway – they’ve described the Steam delistings as a “victory for child safety campaigners”, while commenting that they are now being sent misogynistic abuse and threats by players in retaliation.

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Greedfall 2 developers Spiders are going ahead with a layoff plan that’ll see “most” of their animating and rigging team affected, according to a post from a lead animator at the Nacon-owned studio.

This LinkedIn post by Erwan Perrin, whose profile cites him as having been a permanent Spiders staffer since 2021, has been reposted by at least four other workers at the the studio.

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Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot has responded to a shareholder question about the Stop Killing Games campaign – and in a very newsworthy corporate question and answer session, revealed that a new Ghost Recon game’s in the works.

To quickly recap, Stop Killing Games aim to stop publishers rendering online games unplayable after the cessation of official support. They were inspired to take action by Ubisoft themselves ‘sunsetting’ online racer The Crew.

Ubisoft’s response to their campaign comes around the time the group’s petition to the EU to take action against the mass extinction of online games hits 1.4 million signatures. Despite some doubts about potential signature spoofing, the petition’s recently attracted support from EU politicians and industry trade bodies, so it’s no surprise Guillemot’s fielding questions about it from moneyfolk.

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$2,699.99 (was $2,949.99)

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There are lots of games in the same way there are lots of crisps. Many of those games are good, in the same way that many crisps are shaped a bit like Jesus. But even a crisp shaped like Jesus ceases to delight after you’ve seen a few. Great, you think. Another bloody Jesus Dorito. Hurl it on the pile. You crave something transcendent. Like a Möbius strip Wotsit. Or a Salt ‘n Vinegar Disco inscribed with the Corpus Hermeticum. Something that changes the way you look at crisps forever.

Anyway, Hell Clock is not that, but it does has a wicked sick knife spin attack, so carefree in its centrifugal flesh mangling that I resented every screenshot I had to take for making me move my finger off the funny spin button.

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I’ve had Le Mans Ultimate on my radar of things that let you drive around in realistic circles for the past couple of years, but I’d never dived into its early access. Part of that was being utterly spoilt for choice in terms of existing options when it came to getting my GT racing on, with the likes of Automobilista 2, Assetto Corsa Competizione, and even slightly older sims like Raceroom competing for pole position in the racing bit of my Steam library. Add in the behind-the-scenes turmoil that’s frequently surrounded publisher Motorsport Games over the past half-decade, and you get ample reason to take a wait-and-see approach with their latest offering.

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A few of the UK’s fanciest former indie developers are going indie again… with help from venture capital. Still Wakes The Deep and Dear Esther creators The Chinese Room have slipped the surly bonds of former parent company Sumo Digital in the course of a management buyout, with “facilitation” from Hiro Capital. Now “fully independent”, they’re focussing on the creation of original games, with two unannounced projects in the offing once they’ve finished developing Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2.

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Turtle Rock’s Evolve was, for me, an almost-brilliant asymmetrical shooter straining to extract itself from the jaws of a live service kaiju maddened by a sludgy diet of unlocks and micro-transactions. It was a huge round of hide-and-seek featuring one, very large and fast, upgradeable alien monster and four hunters equipped with jet packs, trackers, forcefield nets and assorted demolition gear. I had a grand old time at launch as the Wraith, a godawful sneaklizard with warping capabilities, like a xenomorph moonlighting as Corvo Attano. But such thrills were sabotaged by the grindiness of the early game and by an infuriating deluge of paid DLC. Publishers 2K Games delisted it in 2018, after attempting to reboot Evolve as a free-to-play game. The beast clings onto a little life care of a community Discord for existing owners.

Even given the reaction to Evolve’s nickel-and-diming, it seems unlikely a sequel would have stripped out the live service progression elements and reverted to something like the menu-light horror movie sandbox approach of the developer’s previous Left 4 Dead. After all, Turtle Rock went onto make Back 4 Blood, a zombie blaster marinated in grindogubbins. Still, I’d have liked to see them try it. And look, they almost did.

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Warframe scares me a bit. Ok, it scares me a lot. Here’s this big free-to-play MMO that’s been growing for over a decade, adding layers upon layers of complex sci-fi lore and context to its imposing metal form.

I couldn’t tell you before googling it why one of my fellow article writers had declared in the chat for a recent press preview that Excalibur Prime users won’t be spared when the revolution comes. I can tell you that its end of year 2025 update is called The Old Peace, and looks like it’ll be a hoot.

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Soulframe is getting a Wazzard. No, not a wizard, a Wazzard.

What’s a Wazzard, you ask? Same, friend. You best believe that when I got a chance to talk to Geoff Crookes and Sarah Asselin, creative director and senior community manager on Digital Extremes’ still-in-alpha fantasy MMORPG, I asked them. Is there a difference between the Wazzard of Wastes the player fights in the demo of the game shown off at this year’s TennoCon, and your regular neighbourhood wizard?

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