Valve has banned roughly 40 CS:GO accounts for trading, with the result that more than $2 million worth of in-game items have been lost. Any account that receives a community ban can no longer trade items, and so their stockpiles of CS:GO skins, stickers, gloves, knives, and the like are now in limbo. Other traders are apparently taking this as a warning, and selling everything they’ve got

Back in June, gambling site CSGOEmpire released a spreadsheet listing CS:GO traders they accused of being part of a scheme to launder cryptocurrency through CSGORoll, a rival gambling site. According to Dexerto, all but one of the accounts in that document were among those caught in this latest ban wave, and there has been speculation that Valve targeted them deliberately.

We’ve reached out to Valve to ask if these accounts were chosen because of their connection to CSGORoll, but have not received a reply. Without that confirmation there’s no way to know for sure if that’s why they were chosen, or if they or simply happened to be caught in the same ban wave. 

CSGOEmpire has been taking it as definitive proof of a victory over its rival, however, who it accused of having “illegally laundered $12.7m in crypto over the last month alone” as well as attempting blackmail to prevent the list being made public.

CSGORoll’s owner made a public statement on Twitter to deny the accusations of money laundering, as well as declaring the site is not engaging in gambling. “I own a gamified skins trading platform,” he wrote, “by law, this is not classified as a casino in our largest markets because we do not offer cash withdrawals.”

Steam’s online conduct rules restrict users from engaging in “commercial activity” on the platform, including “running contests; gambling; buying or selling Steam accounts; selling content, gift cards, or other items”.



Source link

This is a tough call to make: Should RTS units cycle through the comforting traditional acknowledgments when you click on them—”ready,” “awaiting orders,” that kind of thing—or should unit barks finally evolve past the generic assertions of Command & Conquer and Warcraft? For the upcoming Homeworld 3, Blackbird Interactive is taking the latter position, saying that it’s innovating on unit barks and that “the scale of chatter design” in the RTS is greater than the series has ever seen.

Those comments come from a new Homeworld 3 developer update which also teases the work Blackbird has done on pre-rendered cutscenes and in-engine environment rendering. There’s some strong nebula work to admire near the bottom of the post, but the big section in the middle titled “No one can hear you scream” is what caught my attention, because I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered such a thorough breakdown of RTS unit bark theory.

“Of the four audio design pillars we have for Homeworld 3, the one that has driven ship pilot speech the most is: ‘Humanize the fleet,'” writes audio director Dave Renn. “If you’ve played a lot of real-time strategy games, then you’re all-too-familiar with the ‘barks’ that units give as you order them around. Y’know, ‘Zug, zug’ and all that. 

“A lot has changed since that golden era of real-time strategy, though. While we could’ve stuck to tradition, we chose to innovate and create a speech system that’ll bring your fleets to life and immerse you in their moment-to-moment interactives and battles.”

According to Renn, unit barks in Homeworld 3 should deliver two things to the player: “information and flavor.” To do that, Blackbird has borrowed a format from sports broadcasting, giving each ship a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator. There’s a commander who’s “focused on direct responses to player commands, notifications for important events such as coming into contact with enemy ships, and a select few flavor events,” and a tactical officer who’s “focused on contextual conversational chatter,” the flavor.

You talkin’ to me? Oh, you’re not

What I find most interesting is that Blackbird has decided to do away with the idea that the units are talking to you, the player who’s clicking on them, which they did in Homeworld 2 and every other RTS I can think of. (I have not played every RTS that has ever existed, so perhaps there are true chatter trailblazers out there that were doing this in the ’90s, but I don’t remember ’em.) 

“In both the writing and the design of speech events, an important guiding principle is that ships are not responding to the player,” writes Renn. “They are responding to each other.” 

So, rather than saying something like, “Confirmed, initiating docking procedure,” a ship that you’ve ordered to dock with a carrier will tell the carrier’s docking control, “This is flight lead looking to put down, echo back,” and the carrier’s docking control officer will respond. You can see that example dialogue in the video below.

If you’re far away from the docking ship—whatever you are as a floating order-giver in space—you’ll only hear that first line, not the full conversation. “In this way we ensure that the acknowledgment to the player command is always heard, and that the additional flavor lines don’t clutter the soundfield or confuse things,” Renn writes.

Here’s another example:

Ships won’t only talk to each other when you’re interacting with them: The tactical offers have “a selection of 5 to 15 contextual call-outs and 5 to 15 contextual responses” for various situations, such as flying through a nebula, and you’ll catch bits of those conversations as you play.

There’s something to be said for the classic Warcraft peon’s “ready to work”—you really become attached to those stupid barks after hearing them 20,000 times. I don’t know if I’m ready to accept RTS units that don’t talk to me, fourth wall be damned, but I respect Blackbird for defying institutional RTS thinking.

You can read the full chatter breakdown (and all that cinematics and graphics stuff) in the Homeworld 3 developer update on Steam. The strategy game was delayed earlier this year, and is now scheduled to release in February of 2024. The reason for the delay, Blackbird said at the time, was simply that they want to make the game better: “This work takes time, especially when we are raising the bar on what players will experience in the Homeworld universe.”


Source link

Get as much or as little help as you want with the Wordle of the day—whatever you think you need to enjoy today’s game, you’ll find it right here on PC Gamer. There’s a helpful clue waiting below as well as plenty of tips. And if you just need the answer to the July 1 (742) game in a hurry there’s a quick link close by. 

One of today’s slots turned green on the first go—and ended up making everything else seem that much more complicated than usual. Everything that did fit was wrong, and the yellows I uncovered made little sense until the very end when I took an all-or-nothing stab at today’s Wordle answer—and won.

Today’s Wordle hint

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

A Wordle hint for Saturday, July 1

Today’s answer is a short electronic sound, the sort you might expect to hear when starting up an old PC or an LCD alarm clock goes off. Sometimes speech is censored out using a similar sound too. There’s one vowel to find today. 

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

Yes, a vowel is used twice in today’s Wordle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

If there’s one thing better than playing Wordle, it’s playing Wordle well, which is why I’m going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success: 

  • A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants. 
  • A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
  • The solution may contain repeat letters.

There’s no time pressure beyond making sure it’s done by midnight. So there’s no reason not to treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. 

Today’s Wordle answer

(Image credit: Future)

What is the #742 Wordle answer?

Here’s your first win of the weekend. The answer to the July 1 (742) Wordle is BLEEP.

Previous answers

The last 10 Wordle answers 

The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today’s Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that’s already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.

Here are some recent Wordle solutions:

  • June 30: STRAW
  • June 29: DINER
  • June 28: TRACT
  • June 27: ABOUT
  • June 26: GUEST
  • June 25: RODEO
  • June 24: GRAND
  • June 23: COVET
  • June 22: TASTE
  • June 21: CRANE

Learn more about Wordle

(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)

Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it’s up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.

You’ll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and 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.

You’ll want your second go to compliment the first, 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.

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, 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, 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, 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. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 


Source link