Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

To speedily summarise a lot of very knotty reporting, last month a bunch of credit card companies and payment processors forced Steam and Itch.io to alter their definitions of acceptable sexual material in PC games. Seemingly faced with the prospect of having all transactions blocked, the two storefronts now require developers to comply with the extremely open-ended adult content policies of their financial partners. This has led to a spate of delistings or outright takedowns across Steam and especially Itch, with projects affected ranging from anime stepdaughter fantasies on Steam to bundles of self-described “games for girlthings with something wrong with them”.

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Waiting’s been a bit of theme during the early stages of the Battlefield 6 open beta, which has otherwise been earning a lot of thumbs up from FPS heads. If you’ve recently run into an never-ending loading screen while trying to jump into a Conquest match, the good news is that the devs have been working to solve those issues.

While EA reckon the problem’s specific to that game mode and the Siege of Cairo map, that doesn’t look to have stopped plenty of players from running into it over the past 24 hours. Cue a number of frustrated Reddit posts that boil down to the word ‘stuck’ being yelled so loud it could bring down a helicopter.

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Wake up, it’s the 90s again. Ok, so maybe I’ve lied to you there, but two classic shooters from the decade that I as a child of 1999 definitely remember fondly have been re-released as one handy bundle with some extra features. Heretic + Hexen is out now.

The surprise re-release of these virtual spell boxes came as part of QuakeCon, with Nightdive Studios and id Software collborating to revamp more old school shooty things after doing the same with Doom and Doom 2 last year.

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Microsoft have brought development work on Contraband, the co-op smuggling game that Just Cause developers Avalanche Studios announced back in 2021, to a standstill. That’s the official line, while a report from Bloomberg claims the game’s been cancelled outright.

Nothing had been been seen or heard of Contraband since its reveal to the world at E3 four years ago, and this sudden status update comes just weeks after Microsoft cancelled Perfect Dark, Everwild, and an unannounced MMO from ZeniMax as part of mass layoffs that saw around 9,000 staff lose their livelihoods.

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As an old man yelling about deals at the clouds, I’ve often felt a bit jealous of these back-to-school sales. By my recollection, unless you wanted a new writing pad, some stationery, or a backpack, these deals didn’t really exist.

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Oh, hello there, Is This Seat Taken? The logic puzzler with a name that’s real awkward to stick midway through a sentence has surprise-released today, August 7th, right off the back of an appearance in a Nintendo Indie World showcase.

When we woke up this morning, all we knew was that this game about telling people where to stick their bottoms would be coming out in August – a vague window previously announced during June’s Whole Direct. Now, it be here.

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Promise Mascot Agency, Kaizen Game Works’ thing about running a business that revolves around costumed weirdos, fairly intense menu shuffling and a lot of driving around, has gotten a free update that adds in a host of new features. The ability to grind along rails like Michi’s truck’s a skateboard, for instance.

Sure, you can already unlock the ability to fly said truck around the spooky Japanese countryside, but come on, if there’s something every management game needs, it’s tricks from the X Games.

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Sony remain confident that Bungie’s live service shooter reboot Marathon will launch within their current fiscal year – that is, before March 31st 2026 – and are fairly sure they’ll be able to share an exact release date this autumn. They’ve factored it into their financial forecasts, see.

They’re also pretty upbeat about their live service business at large, which accounted for around 40% of first-party software revenue in their last financial quarter, though they acknowledge that they screwed the pooch with Concord, which got to exist in public for a whole couple of weeks before Sony kicked it into the sun.

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I’m sure Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Battlefield 6 won’t be exactly the same game, despite their obvious bullet casing-littered common ground. However, they are opting to mirror each other in one manner – both will require you to enable secure booting on your PC.

As if summoned to do so by EA letting everyone know that this week’s BF6 open beta would necessitate a delve in your BIOS to click yes on a thing in the name of eliminating cheating, Activision have revealed Blops is doing the same thing.

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If you’ve tried to hop into the Battlefield 6‘s open beta’s early access period this morning and have ended up sitting a queue behind thousands of other folks in camo gear, then don’t panic. Or at least that’s what EA say, as their wrenches slam against the game’s servers in an attempt to let more people in.

With players stuck twiddling their thumbs in lines that can stick you as far away as 240-something thousandth from the front, the developers have been jolted into action. After all, you don’t want to anger the sorts of folks who’re up for shooting some blokes on an otherwise chill Thursday morning.

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