Hogwarts Legacy early access begins on February 7

The official launch date for Hogwarts Legacy is Friday, February 10 but, as these things go now, folks who pay extra get to slap that sorting hat on their heads a bit ahead of the class. You can get three days of early access to Hogwarts Legacy if you’ve bought the deluxe edition, meaning you’ll jump in starting on February 7, 2023.

If you’ve spotted Hogwarts Legacy gameplay videos popping up across YouTube and social media already, you are not late to the party on some extra special super early access. Hogwarts Legacy partnered with content creators to grant access to the game early for promotional purposes but all the rest of the regular folks out here will be waiting for either February 7 or 10 to play, depending on which version you’ve bought.

Hogwarts Legacy early access unlock details 

Hogwarts Legacy early access begins on Tuesday, February 7 for players who pre-ordered the deluxe edition, 72 hours ahead of its official launch on Friday, February 10. You can find both the normal and deluxe editions on Steam or the Epic Games Store.

As of February 1, WB Games support has said “we don’t have any details about specific release times for early access,” but to check the official accounts for Hogwarts Legacy closer to launch for that information. So we don’t know yet precisely what time on February 7 folks will be booting the game up.

An additional source of information will be the launch week livestreams that Portkey Games is hosting. There will be an “early release Q&A and launch livestream” on February 7 at 8 am PT (11 am ET and 4 pm GMT) hosted by one of its community managers over on the Hogwarts Legacy YouTube channel and Avalanche Software Twitch channel.



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Redfall requires a ‘persistent online connection’, even in singleplayer

Arkane’s upcoming vampire shooter Redfall (opens in new tab) puts a lot of emphasis on co-op multiplayer, but it also supports solo play: The Steam (opens in new tab) page describes it as “an open-world, single player and co-op FPS.” In case you’re not convinced, Bethesda communications chief Pete Hines has also specifically stated that you can “play it by yourself.” Unfortunately, even if you’re playing alone, you’ll still have to be online.

The “always online” requirement was revealed in a Redfall FAQ (opens in new tab), which states, “a persistent online connection is required for single player and co-op.” That’s about as unambiguous as it gets: If you want to play, you have to be connected. You’ll also have to link to your Steam or Xbox user ID in order to play. 

It might not seem like a big deal in this era of digital distribution and cloud gaming, where it seems like everyone is constantly connected anyway. But some people still don’t have solid, reliable connections, and as someone who is occasionally in that position, I can tell you that it is beyond frustrating—frankly, it’s absolutely infuriating—to be told you can’t play your singleplayer game because your internet has crapped out. 

The situation is better than it was a decade ago, when then Xbox chief Don Mattrick faced massive blowback for saying that people unhappy about the Xbox One’s online requirements were welcome to stick with the Xbox 360 (opens in new tab). (The “candid feedback (opens in new tab)” in response to Mattrick’s dismissive statement was so strong that Microsoft ultimately dropped the requirement.) 

But it still sucks for people in rural locations or on metered accounts, or anyone who doesn’t have the luxury to safely assume that their connection will always be there. And that doesn’t even take into account the principle of the thing: There is simply no good reason for requiring me to be connected to the internet in order to play a game by myself.

Redfall will no doubt lean heavily into its social element and that can absolutely make for a better game, but it doesn’t need to be mandatory. I much prefer the approach taken by the game I’m currently playing, Weird West (opens in new tab), which is excellent and, somewhat ironically, designed by a couple of Arkane founders: It offers an online mode that collects analytics data and enables “community events,” but you can switch it all off if you prefer. I play with it constantly connected, for the record, but I very much appreciate having the choice. 

Arkane’s Redfall is set to come out on May 2, and will be available on Game Pass at launch.


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GTA Online patch aims to fix exploit that let hackers steal money and corrupt accounts

Rockstar has released a patch for GTA Online that—hopefully—will fix the nasty security vulnerability (opens in new tab) discovered in January that enabled unscrupulous jerks to steal other players’ in-game money, reset their account progress, and even “corrupt” their accounts in a way that effectively leaves them banned from online play.

That’s all bad enough in itself, but was potentially only the tip of the iceberg. Speyedr, the creator of the unofficial Guardian firewall (opens in new tab) mod for GTA5 that aims to protect players from hackers, predicted that the vulnerability could eventually enable remote code execution, enabling hackers to run malware on any PC playing the game.

Rockstar acknowledged the problem (opens in new tab) shortly after it was reported, saying it aimed to take care of it in a “security-related title update.”

That update is now live, and while the patch notes don’t go into great detail, it’s clearly aimed at addressing the exploit.

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The patch notes, courtesy of Rockstar Support (opens in new tab):

Security

  • Implemented a new data protocol in GTA Online to improve the security of network sessions and player-to-player messaging
  • Fixed an issue that could result in a player’s GTA Online experience being modified by a third party, including:
  • Altering GTA$ balance, RP level, Bad Sport status, and other player stats
  • Manipulation of players being kicked or crashed

Game Stability and Performance

  • General stability improvements

Does it work? The general consensus seems to be, “Hopefully.” Players on the GTA Online subreddit (opens in new tab) are wading in and so far there aren’t any reports of unexpected catastrophe. Rockstar reporter Tez2, who made the initial report on the vulnerability, had a “good news, bad news” reaction to the patch notes.

“In terms of remote exploits, it should be safe now,” he said on Twitter when asked if the patch fixed the problem. “In terms of regular cheating, nope. You would still face them in public lobbies, but at least no cheaters should annoy you in invite-only lobbies.”

(Image credit: Tez2 (Twitter))

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Unfortunately, the changes mean potential headaches for Guardian users, as Speyedr warned that the fix means current and older versions of his mod will now only work with the “solo session” mode. A fix for that should be coming soon, though.

“R* don’t usually mess with netcode, but this time it makes sense,” Speyedr tweeted (opens in new tab). “Will investigate this ASAP and try to get the heuristics working again, if all goes well then I’ll just include it with 3.1.0b6.”

We’ll keep an eye on the subreddit to see how the patch shakes out. I’ve also reached out to Rockstar for more information on the patch, and will update if I receive a reply.



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AMD Ryzen 9 7000X3D CPUs to launch later this month, cheaper chip to follow

AMD has finally announced the availability date and pricing for its upcoming Ryzen 7000-series processors with 3D V-Cache stacking technology. You can expect the two Ryzen 9 chips imbued with heaps of cache later this month, February 28, but you’ll have to wait until April 6 for the cheaper Ryzen 7.

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Ryzen 7000X3D specs and pricing
Model Cores/threads Boost/base frequency (GHz) Cache TDP (Watt) MSRP Release date
Ryzen 9 7950X3D 16/32 5.7/4.2 144MB 120 $699 February 28
Ryzen 9 7900X3D 12/24 5.6/4.4 140MB 120 $599 February 28
Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8/16 5.0/4.2 104MB 120 $449 April 6

The top chip, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, is priced the same as the Ryzen 9 7950X (opens in new tab) was at launch, at $699. However, that non-3D chip has dropped in price significantly over the past few months. It’s around ~$600 today.

Both the Ryzen 9 7900X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D launch for $50 more than what their non-stacked counterparts arrived for last year. Considering the expected increase in gaming performance, I could see why that sort of price premium might be appealing to many. But, again, you can find both the Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 7 7700X (opens in new tab) going for a lot less nowadays.

Any decision between the non-3D and 3D chips is complicated by the fact that it’s possible to buy the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 7900X for $444, pretty much the same price AMD is asking for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, an eight-core/16-thread chip. Of course, the difference here is in all that cache that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D stores under its heat spreader. That cache works a treat in bolstering game performance.

Ultimately, you decide: higher multithreaded performance or better gaming performance?

3D V-Cache is a technology that AMD has used only sparingly in the past, namely with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D (opens in new tab) for us gamers. The technology essentially allows AMD to layer masses of cache on top of the chiplets that make up its Ryzen CPUs. In turn, this means the CPU can store more information within easy reach of the processing cores of the chip, thus improving performance in cache-dependent workloads.

One such cache-dependant workload is gaming, which tends to benefit massively from having plenty of cache nearby.

These chips should be pretty feisty when it comes to gaming performance, not only versus the Ryzen 7000-series processors available today but also Intel’s Raptor Lake chips. We’ll have to see how these chips perform to say for sure what’s best, but I do expect some serious gaming performance on offer from these new stacked chips.


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Turns out an ungodly amount of hidden rabbits was my perfect wind-down game this week

I don’t know why, but I’m always so damn stressed. These past seven days in particular have left me feeling pretty run down—playing and writing my Forspoken review (opens in new tab) while sick as a dog certainly didn’t help. It’s times like these when I’m itching for the ultimate game to wind down with, and I’ve found just what I needed from the adorable hidden object game, I commissioned some bunnies.

I’m a sucker for a hidden object game anyway, a byproduct of too many hours peering through Where’s Wally-style books in my local bookstore and all of those detective games on the Nintendo DS that had you relentlessly stabbing your stylus into the touchscreen. I commissioned some bunnies isn’t the first game in Follow The Fun’s hidden object series. There’s also I commissioned some cats and a number of games in the I commissioned some bees (opens in new tab) series.

(Image credit: Follow The Fun)

Each drawing is lovely, with the developer saying on its Steam page that it handed different artists the brief to “create a fantasy world, and hide as many bunnies and carrots as they can inside it.” There are over 1,440 bunnies and carrots to find across its 15 levels. You’ve got rabbits in space, rabbits playing football with monsters, and tie-wearing rabbits causing mischief in the office. It’s incredibly endearing, and bundled with a relaxing soundtrack has managed to placate my week’s worth of stress and writing woes.

I’ve yet to use one, but I commissioned some bunnies mercifully has unlimited hints if you’re missing that final pair of ears or some pesky carrot greens. If you’re wanting to forfeit a bit of relaxation in favour of competition, each level times you on how quickly you find everything. It did make me try a little harder to find everything in good time, but I’m an overly competitive monster. If you’ve ploughed through the whole game and want to re-challenge yourself, there’s also an option to re-add some bunnies back into a chosen artwork.

I commissioned some bunnies is super cheap on Steam (opens in new tab), and well worth picking up for an hour or two if you’re looking to alleviate some stress this week. 


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Nvidia publishes workaround to the Discord bug hobbling GPU memory

Owners of Nvidia GeForce graphics cards are reporting a bug that slightly hobbles GPU memory speeds when running the Discord instant messaging app. Reportedly, memory speeds are reduced by 200MHz.

That isn’t a huge hit, but it’s still suboptimal, especially as any reduction in memory frequencies is unwanted. The issue is thought to have first been identified by a user on the Linus Tech Tips forum.

On Monday, the poster noticed (opens in new tab) that the memory speed of their RTX 3060 Ti LHR (low hash rate) board dropped from 7,000MHz to 6,800MHz when Discord was running. Further investigation has revealed that the app is erroneously triggering a “CUDA – Force P2 State” lower power state in the graphics driver.

It’s not thought any other element of Nvidia graphics cards are impacted, such as GPU core clock speed. Numerous posters on Reddit (opens in new tab) have confirmed the issue.

A drop from 7,000MHz to 6,800MHz isn’t something you’d likely notice in terms of gaming performance. But lots of gamers use Discord in the background while gaming and the memory clockspeed drop is an unintended behaviour that needs fixing.

Happily, Nvidia has already done just that. In a knowledge base article published yesterday, Nvidia says an “over the air update” will be pushed to PCs at a later date, but in the meantime GPU owners can download the NVIDIA program GeForce 3D Profile Manager and follow the instructions here (opens in new tab) to resolve the issue. 

Given the complexity of modern PCs and the huge size and scope of driver software, it’s perhaps surprising that minor snafus like this aren’t more common.

Whatever, this one seems to have been swiftly identified and fixed. But is a reminder to keep your scanners peeled for similar issues. And also to shut down background apps that you won’t be using while gaming. You never know what might be kyboshing your GPU performance slightly.


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Doughnut-shaped laser beam used to create fibre optics from thin air

Much of this story is going to sound like hokum, but bear with me because doughnut-shaped laser beams have become my new favourite scientific innovation. Especially since scientists were able to effectively create a kind of optical fibre cable from thin air. Frickin’ laser beams, man. But why do we need laser-based fibre optics when we have standard glass fibre optics?

The base problem here is in using light to transfer data. While it is much faster than using metal cables, it’s easy to lose data through light beam expansion as it stretches down the beam. The tactic to minimise this kind of data loss right now, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, is by the use of fibre optic cables.

Fibre optic technology has been delivering us from dead-slow internet speeds since the ’70s, but the kind of light beams necessary for more intense work have the potential to melt generic fibre optic cables. So, the question has remained: How can we send light-based data over long distances when fibre optics aren’t an option?

Thanks to Howard Milchberg, and his team of researchers at the University of Maryland, that question may have been answered with a powerful laser beam, curled into the shape of a doughnut (via New Scientist (opens in new tab)).

By firing their laser for just 300 quadrillionths of a second, the researchers were able to create a 45 metre tubelike structure seemingly from thin air, which was able to guide a light pulse without the use of physical cabling.

The structure is known as an ‘air waveguide’, and works by blasting air particles with extreme heat to change their structure just enough that the light pulse stays confined. And while 45 metres may not seem like a long distance, it’s a darn sight better than a previous attempt in 2014, which resulted in an air waveguide just 70 centimetres in length—not much use to anyone, but a step in the right direction.

You may be disappointed to learn this kind of tech is unlikely to end up improving your broadband speeds with super high-powered lasers. While fibre optics is a very close analog, the applications for air waveguides sit in the more obscure field of biohazard detection. Soon we could see this tech seeking out radioactive materials from miles away, though much more powerful lasers will be necessary if those kinds of distances are to be achieved.


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World of Warcraft’s Trading Post is live now and will give you enough free cash to buy most of the stock

World of Warcraft’s Trading Post (opens in new tab) has flung open its doors today (though not literally, because it’s a stall and thus doesn’t actually have doors), letting the citizens of Orgrimmar and Stormwind do a bit of shopping. The Trading Post sells cosmetic items, some of which were previously only available for real cash, which will be refreshed monthly. 

The good news is that simply by logging in and taking a brief tour of the shop you’ll have enough of the new currency, Trader’s Tender, to clear it out, with the exception of a few of the more expensive items. 

Owners of the Dragonflight expansion will be awarded 500 Trader’s Tender just by hopping into the game, which you’ll be able to grab from the chest next to the shop. That’s in addition to your 500 Trader’s Tender monthly stipend, which you’ll continue to receive at the start of every month. So you’ll actually find 1,000 Trader’s Tender in the chest. 

That’s a decent amount, but with one more step you’ll earn even more. You’ll automatically receive a Trading Post quest, which simply involves talking to a couple of NPCs and reading a notice posted on the Trading Post itself. The reward for that is another 500 Trader’s Tender.

15 items are on sale (opens in new tab) at the moment, ranging from a gaudy pink cloak for 75 Trader’s Tender to the flashy Celestial Steed for 900.

(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

If you work your way up from the bottom, you’ll be able to afford 10 of the 15 items. Naturally, you’re probably more excited by the pricier stuff, but while you’ll have enough cash for the Celestial Steed, you won’t then be able to pick up the next most expensive item, the Fury of the Firelord weapon cosmetic, which is 750 Trader’s Tender.

Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to earn a bit more cash—500 Trader’s Tender to be exact. The new shop comes with its own progression system where you’ll earn Travel Points by completing a variety of objectives across six categories: Dragonflight, dungeons and raids, holidays and events, pet battles, professions, PvP, quests and, finally, special objectives. For every 200 points you earn, you’ll be rewarded with 100 Trader’s Tender. When you fill the bar you’ll also unlock a bonus reward on top of your final 100 Trader’s Tender, and this month it’s the Ash’adar, Harbinger of Dawn mount.

Since unlocking neat cosmetics is increasingly the main reason I play MMOs, I’m pretty happy with the Trading Post, and the wide range of objectives suggests that it’s not going to be too much of a grind to fill out the progress bar.

There do appear to be some teething problems, however, and as I was writing this I was booted out of the shop. On Battle.net, Blizzard has notified players that the Trading Post has been “temporarily disabled”. Looks like we’ll have to wait a bit longer to spend our free cash.


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EA’s final FIFA game is on-track to be the best-selling in series history

Electronic Arts has posted its financial results (opens in new tab) for the third quarter of financial year 2023, which is to say the last three months of 2022, and has said that FIFA 23 is on-track to be the most played and profitable entry in the series to date. The announcement is tinged with the slight irony that this will of course be the last FIFA game ever made by Electronic Arts (opens in new tab), which following its bust-up with football’s governing body is to re-launch the games this summer under the new EA Sports FC brand.

“In Q3, EA delivered high-quality experiences, driving record engagement across some of our biggest franchises and growing our player network. While our teams delivered for our players, the current macro environment impacted Q3 results,” said Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts.

What the publisher insists on calling the “EA player network” now stands at over 650 million players across its titles, while live services “and other net bookings” were up 4% year-on-year and now represent 75% of EA’s total net bookings. Yes, that is a lot of FUT packs and Sims cosmetics.

We’ll return to FIFA but in terms of more general tidbits EA chose to highlight NHL 23 and Need for Speed Unbound as “quality” AAA titles, said its teams provided 128 content updates across 36 titles in this period, and that the Sims attracted over 10 million new players during the quarter: “with daily active users, weekly active users and monthly active users all up double digits year-over-year”.

EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson got into the specifics on an investor call after the results were released, saying that FIFA 23 was “pacing to be the biggest title in franchise history” (thanks, VGC (opens in new tab)). “Year to date net bookings from the FIFA franchise have grown 4%”, said Wilson, “In North America alone, unit sales are up 50% year over year.”

The biggest factor in this does seem to be FIFA Ultimate Team, with the game’s “record engagement” over these months cited, but straight-up sales of the game are also huge: FIFA 23 had over 10.3 million players in its first week (FIFA 22 managed 9.1 million). There’s also of course the intangible world cup factor, with this entry releasing alongside what turned out to be a great footballing event.

What we’re going to see later this year is the mother of all re-branding exercises from EA. FIFA is the publisher’s golden goose and, while the suits may be bullish about its ability to move beyond the license (which is merely “four letters on the front of a box” (opens in new tab) according to Wilson), a change on this scale will always come with some degree of risk.

The thing that may really help EA is that the publisher actually knows what it’s doing, whereas without EA FIFA looks clueless about games and has ended up putting its name to some frankly crappy stuff already (opens in new tab). EA Sports FC may not have the name recognition of a numbered FIFA entry yet but, with no serious competition in sight, this is beginning to look like a walkover.


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Sims 4 players love the game’s new trans and disability-inclusive cosmetics update

The Sims 4 is getting a little more inclusive, thanks to a patch that adds new medical wearables, scars, and shapewear. Released yesterday, the Sims update (opens in new tab) adds trans-affirming top surgery scars and binders, as well as on-body medical devices like hearing aids and glucose monitors to more accurately and comprehensively reflect the wide, wide world of human experience. It also adds light switches. That’s not esoteric slang you don’t recognise, the patch just adds literal light switches.

The new cosmetics and accessories can all be found in the Create a Sim section. You can find the hearing aids in the face accessories section and glucose monitors under the body category. Top surgery scars can be added to teen and older male sims of any frame via the—you guessed it—body scars section. You can find the new binders and other shapewear in the clothing section, naturally.

Both disabled and queer members of the Sims community have responded positively to the new options. One much-upvoted Reddit thread from a deaf player says the new hearing aid “makes [their] heart whole (opens in new tab),” while another from a trans player comments that the “addition to top surgery scars and binders is amazing (opens in new tab)“. A viral Twitter post from queer activist Matt Bernstein (opens in new tab) succinctly captures the bulk of the reaction in a single word: “NICE”. I have to imagine that somewhere, someone is incredibly excited about that light switch, too.

There’s still work to be done, of course. One popular comment from RainApprehensive2566 (opens in new tab) says they love the update, and “hope one day we can have sims in wheelchairs and with prosthetics,” adding that their “tiny epileptic ass hopes for seizures one day too, but honestly that’d be a little dark for a game”.

It’s far from the only Sims update we’ve gotten in the last few days. It was only yesterday that we published a story that babies in the game will soon be unleashed from their cribs and allowed to ramble and gurgle about the house in the upcoming March 14 infants update (opens in new tab), and we also got comment from Maxis bosses that the next Sims game isn’t going to be an MMO (opens in new tab).



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