Category: Video Games

Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare finally hit PC on October 29, 2024 — 14 years after Rockstar’s Wild West epic first launched on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 back in 2010.

“For the first time in its storied legacy, John Marston’s beloved journey can be experienced on PC in stunning, new detail, with both Red Dead Redemption and its iconic zombie-horror companion story, Undead Nightmare, arriving to PC on October 29,” Rockstar said.

The PC port, developed by Double Eleven (Double Eleven worked on the 2023 PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch ports of Red Dead Redemption), adds PC-specific enhancements including native 4K resolution at up to 144hz on compatible hardware, monitor support for both Ultrawide (21:9) and Super Ultrawide (32:9), HDR10 support, and full keyboard and mouse functionality.

There’s also support for Nvidia DLSS 3.7 and AMD FSR 3.0 upscaling technologies, Nvidia DLSS Frame Generation, adjustable draw distances, shadow quality settings, and more, Rockstar added.

The PC trailer is below:

Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare launch on PC across Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the Rockstar Store.

Confirmation of the PC port of Red Dead Redemption comes as little surprise, given Sony recently leaked its existence via the PlayStation Store and a datamine of developer Rockstar Games’ website in May 2024 also mentioned a PC port.

Rockstar has long neglected PC players, not even releasing Grand Theft Auto 5 on PC at the same time as consoles but a year later instead. It’s the same situation for Grand Theft Auto 6, which will likely be the biggest video game launch of all time despite no PC version being announced.

Now Red Dead Redemption is finally confirmed for PC, PC gamers are wondering whether Rockstar plans further upgrades for the game and its sequel on other platforms. Will Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, received a PS5 Pro Enhanced update, perhaps to add a 60fps and 4K resolution mode?

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla players have reacted with a mix of surprise and delight to an unannounced update that signals the arrival of Steam Achievements on Valve’s platform.

After Assassin’s Creed Valhalla launched on Steam in December 2022, some two years after its original Epic Games Store PC exclusive release, players complained about a lack of Steam Achievements. At the time Ubisoft simply said Valhalla didn’t support Steam Achievements, and left it at that.

Now, two years later, Ubisoft has updated Assassin’s Creed Valhalla to finally add Steam Achievements. The update, visible via SteamDB but not yet live in-game, has already sparked a positive reaction from players. “Is old Ubisoft coming back?” wondered one player on the Steam forum. “I finally can play the checklist simulator with a checklist,” declared another.

The Valhalla update comes amid Ubisoft’s high-profile return to Steam following years of Epic Games Store timed exclusivity for the PC versions of its games. The switch in policy was made following the poor performance of Star Wars Outlaws, which also skipped Steam at launch. Outlaws itself releases on Steam on November 21, 2024. Assassin’s Creed Mirage, meanwhile, launches on Steam later in October, a year after it launched exclusively on the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect on PC. Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches day-one on Steam on February 14, 2025.

Ubisoft’s return to Steam comes amid a tumultuous year for the company that’s seen disappointing returns from Call of Duty competitor XDefiant and the aforementioned Star Wars Outlaws. Ubisoft delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows into 2025 following lower than expected sales of Outlaws, and its staff have arranged a strike for later this month.

In its recent note to investors, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot acknowledged that the company’s “second quarter fell short of expectations” and vowed to launch “a review aimed at further improving our execution.” He also addressed some of the cultural conversations happening around Ubisoft lately, which have intensified around Star Wars Outlaws and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Last week, Ubisoft’s founding Guillemot family and shareholder Tencent were said to be considering teaming up to take the company private following the collapse of its share price.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Sony’s Until Dawn remake for PlayStation 5 and PC is having a rough launch, with not just technical issues but low player numbers too.

The remake of the 2015 horror game — which comes with updated graphics, technical improvements, and minor story changes — launched October 4 with a full price tag of $59.99 and no cheaper upgrade option for those who own the original.

This seemingly wasn’t too appealing for PC players, as Until Dawn has debuted to a peak concurrent player count of just 2,607 players on Steam, according to tracking website SteamDB. Other single-player PlayStation games performed much better when making the jump to PC, with Ghost of Tsushima reaching 77,154 concurrent players, God of War reaching 73,529, and Spider-Man reaching 66,436 on Valve’s platform. Until Dawn’s Steam launch is the worst Sony debut on Steam since the ill-fated Concord and Sackboy: A Big Adventure.

This small player base is reporting myriad issues too. Until Dawn currently has a “mixed” user review rating on Steam with just 69% of reviews being positive. The review deemed most helpful recommends the game but complains about the required PlayStation Network account, poor optimisation, music changes from the original, bugs, and poor controls at times.

Other reviews also comment on ray tracing and DLSS not working alongside graphical issues which “destroy immersion.” Others comment on the full price tag for the originally nine-year-old game and it still launching with issues.

Developer Ballistic Moon, which suffered a “significant” round of lay-offs even before the Until Dawn remake launched, has acknowledged the problems in an post released today, October 8. “We understand that some of you may have encountered some technical issues or bugs, and we’d love to hear from you so we can address these concerns,” it said.

“We are also aware of a couple of recurring issues, such as HDR and AMD FSR frame generation settings not functioning as intended, and issues with save/load. We hear you and we’re actively testing fixes for these issues (and more). We will provide further information with our next patch update.”

Issues are not exclusive to the PC version of the game, however. The tech experts at Digital Foundry noted that the PS5 version has frame pacing or frame ordering issues, 30 frames per second and 1440p output with significant aliasing on high contrast edges, and break up when there’s motion on-screen.

Ballistic Moon has at least said updates are coming, but these may be too little, too late for those who’ve already spent $59.99 on the remake. No release dates or windows have been shared for these fixes.

Until Dawn fans otherwise got a kick out of story changes in the remake (when it all leaked ahead of launch) with some even thinking a sequel is on the way. The universe is expanding elsewhere too, as filming wrapped on the Until Dawn movie adaptation earlier in October.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Throne and Liberty, the free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by NCSoft and published by Amazon Games, has seen more than three million players in just a week.

Originally billed as a Lineage sequel, Throne and Liberty is an MMO with PvE and PvP set in a dynamic and seamless world. It suffered numerous delays over the course of a development cycle spanning several years.

Throne and Liberty finally launched on October 1 across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S, and soon proved a hit on Steam with an impressive player concurrent peak of 336,300. That’s enough to make Throne and Liberty one of the most-played games on Valve’s platform right now. Neither Sony nor Microsoft make player numbers public.

Amazon added that Throne and Liberty players had amassed 24 million hours in the game, with more than 11 million hours watched on Twitch.

“Bringing Throne and Liberty to players around the world has been a huge shared undertaking by our team and our friends at NCSoft, and we’re so pleased to see the results as players join the game,” said Christoph Hartmann, VP, Amazon Games.

“We’re only getting started, and we have a series of updates planned including our first castle siege coming soon.”

Throne and Liberty’s early performance is all the more impressive in light of its ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam, with most of the negative reviews about server issues and the typical monetization you get from these sorts of F2P MMOs. IGN’s impressions of Throne and Liberty during its beta said the game “is fun but doesn’t do enough to stand out.”

For Amazon Games, Throne and Liberty’s success comes as it continues to support its own developed MMO, New World, and Smilegate’s action role-playing game Lost Ark, which it published in 2022. Amazon is also publishing Crystal Dynamics’ next Tomb Raider game, and has a The Lord of the Rings MMORPG in the works, among other projects.

In August, Hartmann told IGN the Lord of the rings MMO was “still early,” and the next Tomb Raider a “huge, huge task.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

For October Prime Day, Amazon is offering an excellent deal on the best gaming SSD. Right now you can get the blazing fast Samsung 990 Pro 2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 solid state drive (SSD) for only $139.99. This is the lowest price we’ve seen this year and $10 less than the previous Prime Day deal back in July. 4TB and 1TB models are also on sale. The 990 Pro is still considered one of the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market. It’s also compatible with the PlayStation 5 console right out of the box, especially since it’s pre-equipped with a low-profile heatsink.

Prime Day Deal: Samsung 990 Pro PS5 SSD with Heatsink

The 990 Pro is the successor to the venerable 980 Pro and is Samsung’s flagship SSD. The 990 Pro has been updated with Samsung’s newest Pascal controller and 7th gen TLC NAND flash chips which are manufactured in-house. It boasts sequential speeds of 7,450MB/s read and 6,900MB/s write and random speeds of 1400K read and 1550K IOPS write, which is up to 50% faster per watt than the 980 Pro. This is absolutely the best boot drive you can get for your gaming PC, especially since 2TB is currently the best compromise between capacity and price point.

For console gamers, the Samsung 990 Pro also happens to be one of the best SSDs for the PlayStation 5. In fact, performance-wise, it’s overkill since the stock PS5 SSD only has speeds of up to 5,600MB/s. This 990 Pro comes pre-equipped with a low-profile aluminum heatsink that’s guaranteed to fit in both the PS5 and PS5 Slim consoles. It also back by a 5 year warranty; by the time your warranty runs out, you might have already moved onto the PS6.

If you want to compare this deal with other PlayStation 5 compatible options, here’s a list of our favorite PS5 SSDs. If you’re looking for deals on other PS5 accessories, check out the best PS5 deals going on right now (we update it often). If you don’t yet own a PS5 console, you’re in luck. The PS5 Slim is currently on sale for Prime Day, and Sony recently announced a more powerful PS5 Pro that is currently up for preorder and ships out next month. For all other deals, head over to our Prime Day megapost to see our cherry-picked list of the best deals we’ve found.

Are October Prime Day Deals as good as Black Friday?

Although Black Friday is still the overall best time to buy just about anything every year, October Prime Day is just as good as Black Friday for many different items. Amazon’s own devices that are currently on sale likely won’t go much lower in price. The same goes for most of the deals we’ve featured on this list, which are at some of their lowest prices of the year so far. If you are unsure whether or not you’re getting a good deal on anything, you can reference specific products on the CamelCamelCamel website to see historical Amazon pricing.

More Prime Day Deals on Console Storage Upgrades

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.