Where to get Happy Pet Snacks in World of Warcraft

Happy Pet Snacks are treats for your battle pet in World of Warcraft and one of this month’s objectives in the new Trading Post (opens in new tab). Using five Happy Pet Snacks is one of the easier tasks you can perform, and it will net you 100 Travel Points for your troubles. 

The most challenging part is figuring out where to find these tasty treats, and I’ll explain what you need to know in this guide. Here’s where to find WoW Happy Pet Snacks and how to use them to earn Travel Points.

WoW Happy Pet Snacks: Where to find them 

You can buy Happy Pet Snacks from Breanni, the pet supplies vendor, in the Magical Menagerie shop in Dalaran. It’s the first building on your right as you leave Krasus’ Landing. Conveniently, you buy them in bundles of five, which will cost you 50 silver.

You can find Breanni and her Happy Pet Snacks in both the Northrend and Broken Isles versions of Dalaran, so the quickest way is via the hearthstone from Legion. If you didn’t play during Legion or would rather visit the WotLK version of the floating city, you can travel there from the portal rooms in Orgrimmar or Stormwind.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

How to use Happy Pet Snacks 

Once you’ve picked up the snacks, you need to summon one of your battle pets. Next, locate the Happy Pet Snacks in your bags, right-click on them, and then click on your pet. You’ll toss the snack to your pet, and a heart will hover over them. Do this five more times to complete the objective.  


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At long last, the Steam Deck UI has replaced Steam’s Big Picture mode

It’s been a long time coming, but Valve has finally taken Steam’s old Big Picture mode—with all its blurry visuals and tabs that straight-up don’t work—and replaced it with a new, Steam Deck-inspired UI. It came as part of a hefty Steam client update (opens in new tab) released yesterday, and in my testing seems to work pretty well, but some users are reporting a few kinks that still need to be worked out.

I’ve put some pictures of the new UI below, and it’ll be incredibly familiar to anyone who’s futzed around with a Steam Deck. It’s pretty much just the standard interface of Valve’s handheld blown up to fit the dimensions of a proper TV. The mode now drops you straight into a list of your recently-played games, rather than letting you pick between Store, Library, and Community (the first and third of which usually just crashed Steam whenever I picked them) like the old version.

On my Xbox One controller, navigation is now performed by whacking the glowy Xbox button at the top, which brings up a list of tabs like Recent, Store, Library and so on for you to flit between. It’s a sleeker system than the old one, where similar tabs just loomed at the left-hand edge of your screen while you browsed your games. I expect it works similarly for people using non-Xbox gamepads, too.

It ran pretty much flawlessly on my machine—a mardy clunker running a 1080 Ti, 16GB RAM, and a Ryzen 3700x CPU—but user caution is advised at this point. A lot of Reddit users are reporting Steam Big Picture issues (opens in new tab) with in-home streaming, black screens, high CPU usage, broken controller inputs, and general lag in the UI. There’s still work to be done, clearly, even if the only problem I had was that a bunch of the prompts still reference the Steam Deck instead of ‘Your PC’.

You shouldn’t have to delay the update if you want to give the new Big Picture some more time in the oven, though. You can still use the old mode by running Steam with the ‘-oldbigpicture’ command-line option. Valve will be removing that option in a future update, mind you, but we’ve got that safety net for now.

Still, as someone who used old Big Picture mode pretty much every day, and who hasn’t had any problems with the new version, I have to say it’s a marked improvement. Being able to actually use the store in Big Picture mode after years of it spitting errors at me feels like a minor miracle, and the whole thing just generally feels a lot more sleek and modern. It’s shallow of me, I know, but the way the new mode jumps between screens—all accompanied by Nintendo Switch-like clicks and whistles—just feels better. It’s nice to play games on my TV and feel like I’m using software made this decade.


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Wordle hint and answer today: Let’s solve #593, February 2

Win today’s Wordle (opens in new tab) in record time: the answer to the February 2 (593) puzzle is ready and waiting just below. Prefer to solve the daily challenge at your own pace? Then take a look at today’s clue, or refresh your Wordle strategy with our general tips and guides.

Two greens, three greens, done. I wouldn’t have leapt at today’s answer under most circumstances, but after taking a moment to thoroughly check the letters I’d already ruled out and what I had left to try, it strangely felt like the most sensible option.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Thursday, February 2

The word you’re looking for today means to consciously avoid doing some sort of job or task you were responsible for or deliberately failing to do it well. You only need to reveal one vowel today. 

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

No letters are used twice in today’s puzzle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

If you’re new to the daily Wordle puzzle or you just want a refresher after taking a break, I’ll share some quick tips to help you win. There’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day. 

  • A mix of unique consonants and vowels makes for a solid opening word. 
  • A tactical second guess should let you narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
  • There may be a repeat letter in the answer.

You’re not up against a timer, so you’ve got all the time in the world—well, until midnight—to find the winning word. If you’re stuck, there’s no shame in coming back to the puzzle later in the day and finishing it up when you’ve cleared your head. 

Today’s Wordle answer

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

What is the Wordle 593 answer?

Let’s keep your win streak going. The answer to the February 2 (593) Wordle is SHIRK.

Previous answers

The last 10 Wordle answers 

Keeping track of the last handful of Wordle answers can help to eliminate current possibilities. It’s also handy for inspiring opening words or subsequent guesses if you’re short on ideas for the day.

Here are the last 10 Wordle answers:

  • February 1: SCOLD
  • January 31: CROSS
  • January 30: CRAVE
  • January 29: FISHY
  • January 28: FLIRT
  • January 27: WORRY
  • January 26: BEEFY
  • January 25: MAIZE
  • January 24: COUNT
  • January 23: ELUDE

Learn more about Wordle 

Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes every day and the aim is to figure out the correct five-letter word by entering guesses and eliminating or confirming individual letters.

Getting off to a good start with a strong word (opens in new tab) like ARISE—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good tactic. Once you hit Enter, the boxes will show you which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.

Your second guess should compliment the starting word, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path.

After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips (opens in new tab), and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle (opens in new tab), as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle (opens in new tab), refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures (opens in new tab). Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 


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Ubisoft’s launcher broke Steam games on Linux and Steam Deck

The Steam Deck has been a huge hit for Valve, opening up the world to PC gaming on a portable console style PC. They’re great little machines that make wonderful travelling companions. Whether you’re headed to a bar or 2,500 ft above the surface of the Earth, the Steam Deck is ready to go. That is, unless you wanted to play some Ubisoft titles.

A new update for the Ubisoft Connect launcher completely stuffed launching Steam games on Linux platforms. According to GamingOnLinux (opens in new tab), trying to launch any Ubi titles on desktop Linux or Steam Deck resulted in an unrecoverable error popup from Ubisoft Connect. From there all you could do is click OK and accept you’re not getting on for that Division raid tonight.

Thankfully now there is a bit of a fix, using Proton Experimental. This is the testing version of Proton, the compatibility layer that allows Linux to run Steam games made for Windows. Here you get access to some upcoming features before they’re necessarily stable. 

First, Proton developers implemented a fix into the downloadable “bleeding-edge” beta for Proton Experimental, and now Valve has released a Proton Experimental fix that does not require opting into the beta. 

While it is being dealt with, this is yet another example of frustrating third-party launchers only making everyone’s lives more difficult. I don’t even want to know Ubisoft Connect exists, let alone have it flash up in my face and not be able to play my games because it’s not working properly. I understand these companies want my data but you’re supposed to be sneakier and better at getting it than this by now.

For now, at least there’s a workaround and every Ubisoft game I’ve tested on Windows is working just fine. Hopefully any further third-party launcher issues will only strengthen the argument to do away with them completely. One more thing to add for what we would like to see in a Steam Deck 2. 


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Amnesia: The Bunker delayed into May after a ‘tough winter’

Amnesia: The Bunker is the fourth instalment in Frictional Games’ survival horror series, and it’s a bit of a departure from earlier games. You could say that about 2020’s Amnesia: Rebirth too, with its sun-blanched Algerian setting, but The Bunker has guns. That’s quite something, because Amnesia basically popularised the cat-and-mouse format of modern survival horror, later adopted by games like Outlast and Visage, to name a few. 

Originally primed for a March 2023 launch, Amnesia: The Bunker will now release a couple of months later, on May 16. “The team here at Frictional has had a tough winter with a slew of illnesses that has affected the development,” the studio said in its announcement. “We are a small team and things like this heavily impact production.

“It is important to us to do the game justice, and in light of these halts in production we don’t wish to rush the end product. The team is working hard to make The Bunker the best it can be, and a few more weeks will make the necessary difference.”

Firepower isn’t the only novelty in Bunker. It’ll have a semi-open world, the result being that most of its encounters will be unscripted. According to creative lead Fredrik Olsson, the studio is going for a more “systemic, dynamic and emergent” approach to horror, which stands in contrast with the heavily scripted nature of previous Frictional games. In the same article, Andy Chalk says the game wends closer to stealth than pure horror, noting that “the alchemy that made The Dark Descent such a terrifying brain-melter just doesn’t have the potency it once did.”

Sounds like a tricky needle to thread. Amnesia: The Bunker hits Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG on May 16.



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EA has reportedly canceled a singleplayer Apex Legends game

A new Bloomberg (opens in new tab) report says Electronic Arts has cancelled development of a new game based on the Apex Legends and Titanfall series that was in development at Respawn Entertainment.

The report, which cites three sources, says the cancelled project was a singleplayer game codenamed Titanfall Legends and set in the shared Apex/Titanfall universe. It was reportedly being directed by Mohammad Alavi, until his departure from the studio in 2022.

That would presumably be the project Alavi teased on Twitter (opens in new tab) in July 2021. “We’re developing a brand new singleplayer adventure from Respawn Entertainment,” he said at the time. “We’re a small, but ambitious team with a history of dreaming big and making splashes.”

Alavi’s LinkedIn (opens in new tab) page indicates the same thing, saying he was “creative director on a brand new singleplayer adventure from Respawn Entertainment” prior to this departure. Before that, he’d spent 10 years at Respawn as narrative design lead and design director on Apex Legends, and nearly seven years before that as a senior designer on Titanfall.

That history naturally fuelled speculation (or hope) the new game was Titanfall 3, but unfortunately speculation is all it added up to: Alavi never revealed the nature of the project he was working on, and Respawn hasn’t given Titanfall fans anything more to hold on to than ‘never say never’ (opens in new tab) platitudes. 

But job listings at Respawn (opens in new tab) from 2022 seemed to point in a different direction. The openings were for something called the Apex Universe FPS Incubation Project, described as “a brand new Respawn singleplayer adventure.” Apex Legends was built out of the Titanfall setting, and naturally some diehard fans held on to hope that Respawn was trying to camouflage a new Titanfall game in the works. But there was no overlooking the fact that this new project was meant to take place in the “Apex universe,” seen by many as a meaningful change in verbiage. 

The Bloomberg report says there were roughly 50 people working on the game when it was shut down. EA will attempt to move some of them to other positions at the company, but those who cannot be placed elsewhere will be laid off.

Whatever this game was, it’s not the only Respawn project to take a bump: EA also announced yesterday that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has been delayed until April 28 (opens in new tab), in order to “achieve the level of polish our fans deserve.” Development of the mobile versions of Apex Legends and Battlefield has also been halted (opens in new tab).


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The February PC game releases and events you should know about

After a slightly frigid start to the early 2023 release schedule, things are starting to thaw in February. There are several undeniably large launches headed our way like Hogwarts Legacy and Company of Heroes 3, plus everyone will finally be able to get their hands on Kerbal Space Program 2’s early access and Atomic Heart’s retro-future FPS. It’ll be Like a Dragon: Ishin for me though, because I’ve nearly achieved the feat of making the Yakuza series my entire personality and don’t plan to stop now that there’s a big spinoff remake dropping in my lap.

Other members of the PC Gamer team are looking forward to the likes of the game whose name is either a threat or a promise (PERISH), the action roguelike Returnal, super cute black and white adventure Blanc, and survival sim The Pale Beyond. Oh, and it’s worth keeping an eye on Wild Hearts, which looks like Koei Tecmo’s take on Monster Hunter.

Don’t miss the events going on in February either. The Taipei Game Show kicks off early this month which will certainly deliver a bit of news, while the next Steam Next Fest will likely put more demos than any of us know what to do with in our libraries once again. Here’s what’s going on in PC gaming in February:

February PC game release dates and events

More games releasing in February


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The Day Before devs reverse course again, announce a 10 minute ‘gameplay extravaganza’ for Thursday

A reveal of “raw gameplay footage” from The Day Before that was planned for January was scrapped at the last minute because of a trademark dispute (opens in new tab) that also purportedly forced a lengthy launch delay. But now the show may be back on, and coming very soon: Levitate, a head moderator of The Day Before Discord (opens in new tab), announced today that a gameplay revealiew will take place on February 2.

“Get ready to immerse yourself in a world of pure hype, as we unveil a 10-minute gameplay extravaganza, on our YouTube channel,” Levitate wrote. “Tune in tomorrow, for an experience like no other. Trust us, this is one reveal you won’t want to miss! Stay tuned for more updates and information.”

(Image credit: The Day Before Discord)

The surprise announcement of a gameplay reveal is the latest twist in a saga that’s been suspicious, to say the least. As staff writer Morgan Park said in his rundown of the situation so far (opens in new tab), The Day Before had been slated to come out on March 1, yet the last time we had a real look at it was in April 2021—nearly two years ago—in a heavily scripted gameplay demo.

The nature of the game has also been kept very vague, and one of the Discord mods (not Levitate, for the record) recently came under fire for expressing doubt that the game exists at all. Last week, developer Fntastic confused things even further by saying that the launch delay had been planned before the trademark trouble (opens in new tab), even though they’d previously blamed it specifically on the dispute.

Today’s announcement on Discord doesn’t bring the situation into better focus. There’s no mention of the upcoming reveal on any of the official Day Before social media channels, and while Levitate said he was given permission to post the announcement on Discord, he declined to clarify whether this will be the “raw gameplay” footage that was promised in January, saying, “That mystery I will leave to your own imagination until it hits tomorrow!” More confusingly, he declined to say when the footage will be aired. There’s no countdown placeholder video on the Fntastic YouTube (opens in new tab) channel, so I guess we’re just supposed to wing it.

(Image credit: Fntastic)

It’s also interesting that the graphic announcing the upcoming gameplay reveal is just text laid overtop an old screenshot. That’s not necessarily significant but after all the controversy I would think that a new gameplay reveal warrants a new image, if only to solidify the idea that something “new” is indeed coming.

I’ve reached out to Fntastic directly to ask about what’s going on, but for now all we can do is wait and see what happens Thursday A long-overdue look at what The Day Before really has to offer, or another chapter in the strange tale of a game that may or may not exist at all? I’m sure it’ll be interesting either way.


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NASCAR bans real-life wall-riding: ‘We will penalize for that act going forward’

NASCAR driver Ross Chastain caused quite a stir last year when he used real-life wall-riding—a trick he apparently learned on his GameCube (opens in new tab) in 2005—to move up five spots and set a lap record in the final turn of the Xfinity 500. It was a bold, foolhardy, and absolutely spectacular maneuver, and today NASCAR (via Kotaku (opens in new tab)) announced that nobody ever better try something like that again.

“Chastain’s dash around Turns 3 and 4 at Martinsville Speedway last October made for an enthralling finish as the No. 1 Chevrolet gained five positions in one set of corners, earning enough points to advance to the Championship 4,” NASCAR said in a statement (opens in new tab). “While the move was thrilling and largely lauded for its creativity, it also came with an increased safety risk.”

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That’s a fair point—if anything, it’s understated. NASCAR race cars are fast—the average speed at the 2022 Xfinity 500 was 113.5 mph (182.7 km/h)—and heavy: NASCAR rules say cars must be a minimum of 3,300 pounds (1,500 kg), more than the curb weight of a 2023 Chevy Malibu four-door. Joke about driving around in big circles if you like, but slamming a beast like that into a corner wall at speed is extremely high-risk under the best of circumstances.

Because of that, NASCAR said it doesn’t need to make any new rules to put the brakes on future occurrences, it’ll just start enforcing the ones that already exist—specifically, rule 10.5.2.6.A:

  • Safety is a top priority for NASCAR and NEM (NASCAR Event Management). Therefore, any violations deemed to compromise the safety of an Event or otherwise pose a dangerous risk to the safety of Competitors, Officials, spectators, or others are treated with the highest degree of seriousness. Safety violations will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

And because real-life wall-riding is absolutely not safe, anyone who tries it in the future will be given a time penalty, which will undo any gains they might make.

“Basically, if there’s an act that we feel that compromises the safety of our competitors, officials, spectators, we’re going to take that seriously,” NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer said. “And we will penalize for that act going forward. Basically, what it would be is a lap or time penalty at the end of the race, so that move at Martinsville would be a penalty.”

It was a little surprising that NASCAR officials didn’t make this ruling the moment Chastain copped to doing it on purpose, but it was such a bizarre (and, let’s be honest, stupid) stunt that it’s understandable if they were left paralyzed by shock and confusion. But even before the rule clarification, the likelihood of a sudden onrush of NASCAR Cup drivers trying ridiculous videogame maneuvers was very remote: Chastain said after the race that he had no intention of ever trying to wall-ride again, “because it was not pleasant.”



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YouTuber’s pet fish commit credit card fraud on stream

Watch your aquariums: the fish know how to make digital purchases now.

YouTuber Mutekimaru runs a 24/7 livestream of their pet fish playing Pokémon games. Think Twitch Plays Pokémon, except the fish are playing Pokémon via a camera and motion tracking software. They swim over a grid of Nintendo Switch inputs which are then sent to the console. In 2020, the fish managed to finish Pokémon Sapphire in about 3,195 hours (opens in new tab). Unimpressive, frankly: I could do it in 30.

Last month, about five hours into the stream (opens in new tab), Pokémon Violet crashed while Mutekimaru was away and the fish were left sitting on the Switch’s main menu. With a whole world of possibilities in front of them, the fish navigated their way to the Nintendo eShop and used the saved credit card info to add 500 yen (around $4 USD) to Mutekimaru’s account, exposing their info to everyone watching in the process.

A list of fish crimes follows 

  • Before doing anything, the fish reviewed the eShop’s terms and conditions (Nobody with good intentions does this) 
  • The fish attempted to set up a PayPal account, which sent an email to Mutekimaru (Worth a shot) 
  • The slippery thieves changed the account name from Mutekimaru to “ROWAWAWAWA¥” (Clear misdirection) 
  • The fish opened Nintendo Switch Online and downloaded the Nintendo 64 emulator (Presumably to play Pokémon Snap) 
  • When the N64 emulator download finished, they turned the Switch off and acted like nothing happened (Pretense to blaming everything on a software glitch) 

Mutekimaru eventually caught them (opens in new tab) and had to explain the situation to Nintendo customer support. “I am very sorry, but is it possible to get a refund for items purchased in error by my pet fish?” they typed into the form with a link to the video evidence. It worked and Nintendo refunded their 500 yen, but unfortunately not the reward points.

Instead of being bothered by having their account information broadcast on Twitch, Mutekimaru seems rather impressed. In the video recapping the fish fraud, they jokingly ask if the fish were professionals and thank everyone for sharing their tweet about the situation.

“I hope [the fish] got [a] good talking to about responsibility and money spending,” one YouTube commenter wrote. Another YouTube commenter gave a word of advice that almost sounds like a threat from a fellow fish: “Never leave your pet fish unattended.”



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