As I write this, The Final Shape’s Steam rating sits at an eye-watering 42%—although it has been slowly climbing. Destiny 2—hell, live service gaming in general—is no stranger to a rocky launch, but day one of The Final Shape was particularly frustrating. Constant error codes meant getting regularly kicked to orbit, which for some meant broken encounters and missing cutscenes for this, the finale of Destiny’s first saga.

Now that the server issues have seemingly passed, I expect that Steam rating will keep climbing. The Final Shape’s campaign is very good—a major return to form after the disappointment of last year’s Lightfall.



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The last chapter of Destiny 2’s Light & Darkness Saga is here, with the launch of its expansion The Final Shape. At least, it’s here for some people. 

Others have had difficulties logging in, been kicked out part of the way through activities, or been able to play it only to realize they haven’t been seeing the swish cutscenes that are supposed to be shown at the end of some missions (if you didn’t see a fancy cutscene at the end of mission 1, 4, 5, 6, or 7, I’m afraid you’ve missed out).



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I think we can all agree that piracy is basically an inevitability for any piece of software. For years now, we’ve been living in an era where Denuvo gets cracked so quickly for new games that it’s not even worth running a headline about it. But while piracy might be inevitable, the question remains: is it morally acceptable? I mean, sure—according to Ultrakill dev Arsi “Hakita” Patala. Just make sure you tell people if you like it.

Hakita made his piracy position clear on Twitter earlier this week, quoting a user who posted a cell phone screenshot of Ultrakill being transferred from a .zip file with the caption “i ❤️ pirating indie games.” While he made sure to say you should support indie devs if you have the means, Hakita was more or less cool with it.

Hakita’s chill stance, assuming you’re of certain, very cool political and/or piratical persuasions, is that access to media shouldn’t be contingent on wealth. “Culture shouldn’t exist only for those who can afford it,” Hakita said. “Ultrakill wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t had easy access to movies, music, and games growing up.” Truly, where would any of us be today if it weren’t for those fateful years making ill-advised decisions with Limewire?

Explaining his position further, Hakita expressed a sentiment that you’ll hear from both sides of the game piracy equation (though more often from indie devs than AAA studios). Essentially, piracy doesn’t mean a lost sale if the person pirating the game couldn’t afford it in the first place. “If you pirate a game, then enjoy it, spread word about it and get someone else to buy it,” Hakita said, “that’s at worst an equal trade, at best an additional sale that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t pirated it.”

It’s not a surprising stance for one of the New Blood Interactive devs. David Szymanski, developer of Dusk, expressed a similar feeling back in 2019. Dave Oshry, New Blood’s CEO, certainly isn’t bothered by it:



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There’s a sense that developer KT Racing assembled this next installment of the long-running Test Drive racing series by throwing a handful of darts at a mind map of popular Steam store tags and taping them to a car bonnet. It is open world and live service. It caters to both simulation lovers and arcade racers. It is competitive, but also social. 

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, the developer is keen to insist, isn’t a ‘racing game’ but a ‘driving game’. The idea being that its faithful 1:1 reproduction of Hong Kong Island isn’t merely a 600km box in which to take laps around city streets and practice your handbrake turns on off-road mountain bends, but a space for car enthusiasts to admire the lovingly recreated Bugattis, BMWs and, er, Nissans. Much is made of their accurate looks, engine sounds and handling, and from the moment you’re asked to choose a starter car, you’re encouraged to open their doors, wind down the windows and try their plush leather interior—just to make sure you pick the motor of your dreams.

(Image credit: Nacon)

In practice, Solar Crown is a multiplayer open-world racing game with the usual glut of game modes. Circuits are multi-lap, eight-player races. Time Attack challenges you to set the fastest time against other players. Sprint is essentially a do-over of Circuits but with added checkpoints to stop you cutting corners. And Domination rewards you points based on your position in the race every time you cross a checkpoint. 



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I was on vacation last week, so I got to experience the reveal of Sony’s new multiplayer FPS like everyone else: forgetting a State of Play stream was happening, tuning in 15 minutes late, then rewinding to the beginning thanks to the magic of modern live streaming.

Sony only had two big games of its own to showcase—not unexpected, since “slowly” seems the permanent pace of big-budget game development—but I was surprised that while everyone around me was hooting and hollering about Astro Bot, I was the only one who wanted to see more Concord. I keep seeing variations of the same three reactions to Firewalk’s debut game: That it’s an Overwatch clone, or another dead-on-arrival service game, or a multiplayer game that should be singleplayer.



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In a Q&A session, after the Zen 5 and Ryzen 9000 series announcements, AMD was grilled on all things AI, data center, and mobile. One question raised pointed out that top-end desktop Ryzen processors have sported a maximum of 16 cores for nearly five years and asked AMD if that was sufficient for the gaming enthusiast PC market. CEO Dr Lisa Su responded that they could add more cores but game developers just aren’t routinely using that many cores in their software.

Specifically, she said that “for gaming, developers have not necessarily used all of the cores from time to time…there’s no physical reason we couldn’t do more than 16 cores…the key is just making sure that we are going at this at a pace that the software guys can utilise it and do utilise it.”



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