Fortnite players are being targeted with malware in the latest bath of scams. Fake Fortnite cheats have been doing the rounds for a while, but since the beginning of Season 6, players have been specifically targeted with malware and Bitcoin mining scams. YouTube has been quick to pull videos advertising scams, but some – which claim to offer aimbots or free in-game currency for Epic’s battle royale – have amassed hundreds of thousands of views since the beginning of Season 6. Most of those videos don’t offer any particular threat, but some of them are more malicious than others. According to a post on the Malwarebytes blog, some videos are pointing players towards pages requiring you to subscribe to that YouTube channel. From there, a would-be cheat will be bounced around between a selection of sites and download links, before being pointed towards the ‘legitimately’ dangerous link. At time of writing, Malwarebytes claims that 1,207 people have downloaded that link. But instead of an aimbot, they all earned themselves a data stealer. Once that file’s been downloaded, the malware tries to send data to a Russian IP address. It takes particular interest in Bitcoin wallets, your Steam sessions, and browsing cookies. Attempts to disguise dodgy files as cheats for online games is nothing new, of course. Fortnite, however, has a particularly young audience, and an insatiable YouTube community happy to wolf down new content as quickly as it appears. Most of those videos are probably relatively harmless, but it’s safe to say that it’s probably not worth taking the risk just for a slightly easier Victory Royale. If you want a legitimate way to earn yourself that first place, check out our Fortnite tips guide. And if you want a hand with your Season 6 battle pass, check out our Fortnite week 2 road trip challenge guide, which should help you earn yourself those extra battle stars. Given that you need to deal damage with snipers for this week’s battle pass, you might be more tempted by those aimbots than normal, but trust us, it’s not worth it.

QLC SSD manufacturing has hit a brick wall. NAND memory promises to offer larger capacity SSDs at lower cost than currently possible with TLC, MLC, or SLC memory. However, manufacturers are reportedly facing low yield rates, under 50%, for the new memory tech. Industry insiders believe this could lead to some market disruption and a slowdown in adoption. Quad-level cell (QLC) memory has been touted as the best blend of solid state technology and spinning platter drives. It stores 4 bits per cell, which increases capacity of super fast SSDs considerably – albeit at the expense of reliability and performance. This could make it the perfect tech to render HDDs nonessential for gamers rigs sometime in the near-future. But the storage tech, which has been promised in many consumer drives before the end of the year, has potentially run into trouble during the manufacturing process. Despite Intel/Micron, Toshiba, and Samsung all prepping QLC drives as we speak, with Intel’s first QLC already on the market, yields are apparently falling short of expectation. That might lead to price confusion going into 2019. Industry insiders, speaking with DigiTimes, indicate that memory fabs are struggling to hit yields any higher than 50% with QLC. This problem might not have an easy fix either, with the sources indicating the tech may take some time to mature. Meanwhile, the same fabs have cracked higher yields with TLC memory. Manufacturers were similarly facing yield rates that were less than ideal for TLC memory earlier in the year. This led to the supply chain being inundated with substandard chips, the insiders report, but this process has now been improved and yields stabilised. Supposedly that all equates to a continued NAND oversupply in early 2019, and even higher volumes of substandard chips making it out to the market… just what gamers needed going into 2019.

League of Legends’ lead gameplay designer is the latest person to confirm that developer Riot Games is working on a new title. In a special episode of the studio’s ‘Ask Riot’ series, Andrei ‘Meddler’ Van Roon said that the company would release another “larger game some day.” That Riot is working on new games is one of its worst-kept secrets. Back in August, one of the company’s co-founders, Marc Merrill, confirmed that the developer is looking into projects across several genres. The overall aim seems to be to release a handful of new games every decade or so. But it now seems that Riot is potentially getting closer to an official announcement. Merrill’s interview was with Variety, but Van Roon’s latest comments came in a video posted on the official League of Legends YouTube channel. Admittedly, his tease was nestled right at the end of the video (which you can watch below), but this is the first direct admission to the game’s fanbase that a new game is on the way. The video features Van Roon alongside gameplay producer Jessica ‘Safelocked’ Nam, lead champion designer Ryan ‘Reav3’ Mireles, and personalisation lead producer Anna ‘Supercakes’ Donlon. Towards the end of the video, they answer a question about the pluralising ‘S’ at the end of Riot Games, and whether the studio is going to release a new game in the future. There are some comments about the Riot board game, and some of the smaller mobile and browser games they’ve released, but according to Variety, Merrill dismissed those as not representative of the studio’s second title. Right at the end of the video, Meddler asks whether Riot plans to release “any larger, other games someday.” Safelocked says that’s a “mystery,” but then Meddler stage-whispers a very pointed “yes” to the camera. That new game could be anything from the League of Legends fighting game that was rumoured after Riot absorbed Rising Thunder a few years ago, to the League of Legends MMO that Merrill himself tweeted about. As for when we might actually see that game, it’s anybody’s guess, but as I said above, it seems that Riot is finally willing to admit its new project directly to its audience.

Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson has said he “would seriously consider giving CD Projekt Red the rights to my books for free”, specifically citing Mistborn as an example. The news comes from Sanderson himself on Reddit, where he goes by the name u/mistborn. Posting on a thread about The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski’s recent decision to demand roughly $16 million in royalties from CD Projekt Red, Sanderson says he considered posting “Dear CD Projekt. You can have the Mistborn rights, if you want them.” He continues: “In all seriousness, I’d love to do something with CDPR. They’ve made by far the best book-to-video game adaptations ever. It’s the sort of thing the rest of us salivate over – if for the simple reason that the entire genre (books, film, and games) benefit from something high-quality on the market like the Witcher games. “I would seriously consider giving CD Project Red the rights to my books for free, because the overall cultural impact that a great story adaptation can have is enormous. Though… I suspect they’re done dealing with self-important fantasy authors, and are likely more interested in creating their own new IPs. True to his sentiment about ‘salivating’ over a Mistborn game, Sanderson has been trying to make one happen for a while. He even wrote an original story for a game called Mistborn: Birthright, which would have been a prequel to his novels, but it was passed around several developers over more than five years before eventually collapsing in 2017. Here’s Sanderson’s post in r/gaming. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people quickly got very excited about it and gave it its own thread, prompting another reply from Sanderson. He implores fans not to “put CDPR on the spot or bother them too much”, given the pressure game developers are already under as a matter of routine. “They need to pick their projects VERY carefully, because a flop has huge ramifications for all of their employees.” Indeed – and we’ve seen that all too often in recent weeks. Just yesterday, the last of Telltale’s employees were laid off. Sanderson promises he will continue to pursue “a good videogame adaptation of Mistborn and/or Stormlight – in part because I want to play them myself.” He also seems politely confused by Sapkowski’s attitude, saying “If you magically gave me the chance to have an adaptation on the level of the Witcher – but with no payment given to me – I’d take that in a heartbeat.”

Lost Words: Beyond the Page is a platformer with an unusual setting – a diary. You run and jump across both a fantasy world and written pages, using individual words to solve puzzles and help reshape the story. The title, from developers Fourth State and Sketchbook Games, has already pulled in a big set of awards over the past few years, and it’s now set to release in 2019. Written by prolific game scribe Rhianna Pratchett, Lost Words puts you in a young girl’s diary, getting through traditional platforming challenges while making use of the words themselves. The trailer shows, like when you run through a fiery forest under the phrase “the dragon had managed to extinguish all hope.” Pull out “extinguish,” and you can use that word to douse the flames and move forward. Another bit sees you swapping words around to direct the story, in this case picking a name for that scene’s protagonist. It’s a unique concept, and the developers are keen to promote the awards the game’s picked up, like the Indie Prize at Casual Connect 2018, UKIE’s UK Game of the Show at Gamescom 2017, and a ‘Best Story’ nod at Game Connection 2016. The folks making the game have already built some classics, too. This is their first project as a studio, but many of them come from among the UK’s most famous studios, including Lionhead and Rare, along with plenty more industry veterans from Ubisoft, EA, and 2K. Lost Words just got its Steam page, and you can head there to keep track of further developments on release date and price in the months leading up to the 2019 launch.

Surviving Mars: Space Race is the first big expansion for the red planet city builder, and it puts you on a mission of national patriotism to ensure your country represents the first and best colony on Mars. That means carefully selecting sponsors and competing against rival, AI colonies for the top spot. The competition is all of a peaceful sort, but you will be contending against rivals for the planet’s limited resources, and to be the first to complete milestones or find anomalies. You can also cooperate, getting into trade bargains with rivals or exchanging help via distress calls, but the focus is always on edging those other colonies out in the end. Japan and Brazil will join the list of sponsors in the expansion, and each sponsor will offer its own vehicles, buildings, and challenges as you progress. There’ll also be new random events to add a bit of procedural narrative during your colonisation efforts. Space Race is available for pre-order at a 10% discount for $11.69 / £9.26 / €11.69. You can also pick it up in a bundle with two smaller expansions, the Marsvision Song Contest and Colony Design Set, for $17.99 / £13.94 / €17.99. Those add-ons respectively bring new music tracks and 25 new building looks to the game. Check out some of the new options in the trailer below.

Telltale Games laid off a majority of its employees in September in advance of a full studio shutdown, but a small group remained with the company in order to close out development on certain projects. Today, one of those employees reports that this group has now been laid off, too. Narrative designer Rachel Noel tweets “Heeeeyyyy remember how there was going to be a skeleton crew staying on for a while and I was part of it? Nah, jk, we all just got laid off, too.” Telltale has not offered an official statement on the situation, though it’s unclear whether there’s anyone still at the studio who could offer such communication. Noel tweeted on September 25 that she was part of the small group that had remained at Telltale, adding both that “I am furious with how my now ex-coworkers were treated” and “I’m next.” Early reports suggested that this group would finish The Walking Dead: The Final Season, though later it seemed they would instead see a Minecraft project with Netflix through to completion. Now, neither release seems especially likely. The Final Season isn’t cancelled yet – at least not officially – and Telltale is reportedly in talks to hand off development to an external studio, which would in turn offer contract work to former members of the development team. The state of those talks (which, again, were never officially confirmed) is unknown following this news. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,” Noel tweeted shortly after the news. “80-hour crunch weeks. Mismanagement of some of the industry’s top talent. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” Even if there’s a bit of humour in the Blade Runner reference, Telltale’s closure has been grim not just for the 200-plus affected employees, but for the industry as a whole. Game Workers Unite had harsh words for studio management following the surprise layoffs. The AsAGamesWorker hashtag has seen many in the industry calling for better working conditions across the board following the closures of Telltale and Capcom Vancouver, and many others over the past year.

Fortnite’s spooky celebrations are just getting started, and true to the season we’re getting a variety of Halloween skins to dress up with. As usual, datamines have revealed what to expect ahead of release, so scroll on down for details on what’s coming. The principle additions are two scarecrow skins called Hay Man and Straw Ops. They’re accompanied by Hay Nest and Birdhovel back blings, and an appropriately creepy skeletal glider called Field Wraith. Grim tidings continue with the dark unicorn axe, Thunder Crash, and it seems even Kevin is making his evil power known with the Dark Glyph glider. That info – and an image of everything – comes courtesy of the Fortnite Leaks subreddit, and FNBRLeaks on Twitter has provided video of a new T-Pose emote, which will go very nicely with the scarecrow skins. Fortnite’s Halloween celebrations have already officially begun with new decorations around the map. Tilted Towers has seen some changes, with ghosts being suspended from a number of streetlights throughout the game’s deadliest drop-spot. Further north, however, in Pleasant Park, things are looking very spooky indeed. In the wooden house in the south-east, there are a few more ghosts, but in the small house on the other side of town, Epic has gone all-out. That house is almost entirely covered with cobwebs, and if that weren’t enough to set your arachnophobia tingling, there’s a giant spider lurking in the front garden. Knowing Epic, the game’s Halloween content is likely to roll out gradually over the next few weeks – there’s a lot of hype on the main subreddit, hoping for everything from more decorations all the way up to fog rolling across the map. Many players are also still hoping that last year’s Halloween skin, Skull Trooper, will make a return to the game. My guess would be that some of the other residential spots across the map will be getting spooky soon, so keep an eye on Salty Springs and Retail Row over the course of the next month.

Dirt Rally 2.0 will not launch with VR support, but developer Codemasters says that’s not the final world. VR could eventually be part of the rally racing sequel, but that depends entirely on how badly the community wants it. Judging by the comments we’ve seen there’s no shortage of desire, but apparently it’s going to take a bit more to push the feature over the edge. “We won’t be having VR in the game for launch,” says chief game designer Ross Gowing. “But it is something that we’re listening to everybody’s comments and all the things the community have to say about it, and we are all ears. If there’s enormous demand for it then yeah, we can do it. It’s no small undertaking but if it’s what people want then we’ll try and get it done.” Gowing’s comments were noted by VRFocus, and you can hear them for yourself at 6:00 in the video below. It’s a pretty boilerplate answer, and the wait for VR support will be disappointing to headset owners, but at least it’s not a no. The previous Dirt Rally also got VR support well after release, and not until long after the game had left Early Access. But the wait was worthwhile by most accounts, as Rally’s VR implementation stands among the best of any sim. Our Dirt Rally 2.0 hands-on impressions can provide much more detail on what to expect from Codemasters’ follow-up, along with a small, tasteful dose of Phil Mills fan fiction.

October is here, and that means it’s time to replay your favourite horror games – and if you want to revisit Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Frictional Games has just added a bit of spooktacular spice to keep things fresh. A new hard mode just dropped on PC, and it promises to make your next trip through Amnesia even more daunting. You can enable hard mode at the start of a new game, and you’re locked into your choice once things start. The mode will subject you to a Resident Evil-style save system that disables checkpoints and forces you to spend tinderboxes for manual saves. You’ll also find fewer tinderboxes and less oil, making those resources even more precious. Punishment are even harsher when your sanity drops, as when it hits zero you simply die. Monsters have better vision, move faster, deal more damage, and are more persistent – plus you won’t have danger music warning you of their presence anymore. If you want a reward for all your suffering, it comes in the form of an achievement called Masochist – as Frictional says, that’s because “you pretty much have to be one to complete the mode.” For those serious about meta rewards, the tinderbox limitations mean you can’t get the Illuminatus achievement while hard mode is active. Hard mode initially went live alongside the new release of the Amnesia Collection on Xbox One, and is now available to test your will on PC after an initially indeterminate delay. If that’s all a bit much, Frictional’s own SOMA safe mode offers a polar opposite experience, letting you ditch the terror of dangerous monsters in favour of a story-focused trip through the game.

The Sims 4’s upcoming patch lets your Sims become Insta-famous. Ok, Instagram itself might not be involved, but the update will let you turn your sims into influences, themselves molded by the unstoppable juggernaut of The Brand. Traditionally, your sims’ clothes haven’t really had much of an impact on the game. Chucking on any old t-shirt and pair of jeans had the same effect as making sure your Sim was suited and booted at every occasion, but that’s about to change. When the new update (which has been pushed back from its planned release this month) drops, you’ll be able to turn your Sims into Style Influencers. Of course, you don’t jump straight to having millions of followers. At the humble beginnings of your social media career, you’ll be a simple Rag Reviewer, carefully crafting your fashion blog from home. As other characters drop by to visit, you’ll be able to suggest a makeover for them. Those who know you well are likely to agree to your bold new look, but those who you don’t get on with will probably snub your fashion advice. If the makeovers you offer are successful, you’ll start to see your custom fashion trends catch on in the wider neighbourhood. I’m sure that there are people who’ll use this power for good, but personally, only two ideas have come to mind. The first is convincing people to dress themselves up as complete idiots, but the second is potentially more wholesome. I forsee a future in which someone creates a house full of five male Style Influencers, and sends them out into the neighbourhood to make over the most fashion-adverse Sims they can find. This is my chance to recreate Queer Eye in The Sims, and by God I’m going to take it. I can even remake the Fab Five’s iconic Atlanta loft. Also included in the new update will be Sim City-style terraforming. As well as building on a plot, you’ll be able to shape the land underneath it. That’s a feature that’s been in previous Sims games for years, but until now it looked as though it wouldn’t be coming to The Sims 4. Either way, the editor looks pretty detailed, allowing players to raise, edit, and sculpt terrain. All this information comes from the first Maxis Monthly livestream, which took place yesterday. Sadly, however, the latest update has been delayed, and we don’t yet have a new release date – expect the new features later this year.

Skywind, the fan-made project aiming to give Morrowind a new lease of life within the Skyrim engine, has a new trailer. The video, which you can watch towards the bottom of this article, shows off the hidden ruins of Morrowind’s forgotten Sixth House, Dagoth. In Morrowind lore, House Dagoth was thought to be dead, its leader, Dagoth Ur, defeated by Nerevar and the Tribunal Temple. Dagoth and his blood brothers had, however, fled to the ruins of their home within the Red Mountain, and spent 3,000 years hiding and growing stronger before returning to Morrowind during the events of The Elder Scrolls III. The new trailer (via DSOGaming) is a story teaser, documenting the fall (and eventual return) of House Dagoth, and attempting to capture the sinister presence the house was famous for. Narrated by Dagoth Endus, it shows off the ruins of the house, but then heads into the lava-filled hideouts beneath the Red Mountain. There’s also closer look at the Dwemer Ruins that Dagoth Ur originally pledged to protect. Footage and screenshots of Skywind have been doing the rounds for a while now, but for my money, this is the closest to Skyrim the mod has ever looked. That’s in part down to TESV’s very recognisable combat, but weaving through those underground hideouts is also reminiscent of the latest game in the series. Sadly, there’s still no news on a release date for Skywind, but it seems that work on the mod is continuing at a reasonable pace. If you want into the mod when it eventually becomes available to the public, you will need to own both Skyrim and Morrowind, but at this point, that shouldn’t set you back all that much.

The BlizzCon 2018 schedule has been revealed, and it offers some promising hints for Diablo fans. There’s nothing concrete to go on at this point, but some players are pointing towards some specific scheduling details as evidence of a major Diablo announcement. Every major Blizzard game will have a ‘What’s next’ panel at this year’s convention, which begins next month. From World of Warcraft to Heroes of the Storm to Overwatch, Blizzard devs will be taking convention attendees through the future of the company’s games. And some fans have noticed that Diablo’s panel seems to have taken pride of place. As WoW and Hearthstone podcaster Brian Black pointed out on Twitter, Diablo’s What’s Next panel is the first on the schedule (which you can check out here). That in itself isn’t massively notable, but when you look deeper into that spot, it suggests that Blizzard might have something major to reveal. The Diablo What’s Next is set to take place immediately after the convention’s opening ceremony. What’s more, it’s going to happen in the main hall of the convention. By itself, that doesn’t really tell us anything, but if you look at what else we know, it bodes pretty well for fans of the series. For the past couple of years, Blizzard has been hiring for roles that are largely considered to be for a new Diablo project. Diablo barely featured at BlizzCon 2017, as the devs said they didn’t have anything new to show. More recently, Blizzard confirmed a “new, unannounced Diablo project,” before teasing a Diablo reveal “later this year.” Diablo 3’s Nintendo Switch reveal has already happened, so we know it can’t be that, further pointing towards a brand-new Diablo announcement. We’ll have to wait for the start of BlizzCon to learn what this announcement really is, but I’d say that there’s a pretty good chance of Diablo 4 at this point. Doubtless, you’ll find out either way on November 2.

With a fresh generation of graphics cards promising great performance at absurd resolutions, you might think that PC gamers are largely ready to move beyond 1080p. But according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, 1440p and 4K are the domain of only a tiny fraction of players – the vast majority play at 1080p, and many more play at even less than that. 1920 x 1080 is the primary display resolution for over 62% of Steam users. That’s not surprising on its own, but over 30% game at even lower pixel counts. The second most popular resolution is the budget laptop-friendly 1366 x 768, accounting for over 13% of users. That percentage dwarfs even 2560 x 1440, which has a share just under 4%. Intensely demanding 4K resolutions fair even worse, at barely over 1%. Ultra-wide resolutions, including 2560 x 1080 and 3440 x 1440 have less than 1% each. Somehow, a tiny fraction of players – little more than half a percent – are still gaming at 1024 x 768. (They’re likely happy about the relatively recent Windows XP Steam compatibility fixes.) The results suggest power gamers are far from the majority on Steam. Statistically, developers are better off supporting a resolution like 1366 x 768 rather than those high-end 1440p G-Sync displays that make up the best gaming monitors – though ideally we’d get both. You can find more fun stats in the full September survey. Of note for the hardware wars is that Nvidia and Intel continue to dominate their respective markets. The current most popular GPU is the GTX 1060, which accounts for nearly 14% of users. It’s certainly a nice card for those immensely popular sub-1080p resolutions.

It's interesting how the wheel of time turns. Way back in 1998, Baldur's Gate was credited with single-handled reviving the CRPG genre. Its fortunes have waned somewhat since then, but the past few years have seen a resurgence of interest in the style, with games like Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and most recently, Pathfinder: Kingmaker. And it might be possible that Baldur's Gate will be a beneficiary of the revival this time around. The evidence—which, to be fair, is more of an insinuation—comes to us courtesy of a tweet from inXile Entertainment boss Brian Fargo. The tweet was a response to a reference to a Rock, Paper, Shotgun story from 2012, in which Beamdog, the studio that made the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Editions and the Siege of Dragonspear expansion, said that making Baldur's Gate 3 was its long-term goal. "We’re totally thinking Kickstarter. It just makes so much sense and solves so many problems," the studio said at the time. "I think what Brian [Fargo] is doing with Wasteland is very interesting. But Beamdog told PCGamesN that it's not working on the game, and Larian shot down an entirely unsubstantiated RPG Codex rumor that it had acquired the Baldur's Gate license. As for Fargo, he declined to comment further, saying in an email only that he "really should not say more." I'd very much love to play more Baldur's Gate, but I can't help thinking that maybe it's best left alone. The Sword Coast is a brilliant setting, and it's hard to beat a "real" D&D experience, but as Siege of Dragonspear demonstrated, times have changed, and living up to those expectations is a tough trick to pull off.

Fortnite is an extraordinarily popular game, and because of that, scammers and con artists are (again, still) using it to distribute malware. A new report by Malwarebyte Labs says that the most recent round of scams goes beyond "typical low-level surveys and downloads that never actually materialize" by delivering software that can actually steal your data. After digging into links promising free V-bucks, season six passes, copies of Fortnite on Android, and "a lot of bogus cheats, wallhacks, and aimbots," the site found that most of them follow a familiar pattern of fake surveys that encourage players to unwittingly hand over their user information to unscrupulous actors—fairly conventional phishing scams, in other words. But in at least one case, a link found on a YouTube video promising "Fornite Aimbot | Fornite Hacks | Undetected | Season 6 | ESP, Aimbot + Look ESP Free Download!"—subtle, eh?—led to a page on Sub2Unlock. Instead of presenting players with a survey to fill out, it requires them to the referrer's social portal. But no validation takes place: The referrer's YouTube channel subscribe page pops up, Sub2Unlock presents a link to "a fairly good-looking portal claiming to offer up the desired cheat tools," and after some more clicking around, the download link appears. "Once the initial .EXE (which weighs in at just 168KB) runs on the target system, it performs some basic enumeration on details specific to the infected computer. It then attempts to send data via a POST command to an /index.php file in the Russian Federation, courtesy of the IP address 5(dot)101(dot)78(dot)169," Malwarebytes explained. "Some of the most notable things it takes an interest in are browser session information, cookies, Bitcoin wallets, and also Steam sessions." Other files the site encountered during its investigation "are packed in entirely different ways," although the IP address in the .exe file "has been seen many times in relation to similarly named/themed files." "While the subject of this blog probably isn’t that new, it’s still going to do a fair bit of damage to anyone that runs it," Malwarebyte said. "Combining it with the current fever for new Fortnite content is a recipe for stolen data and a lot of cleanup required afterward." It's definitely not new in the broad strokes—Epic warned against Fortnite Android phishing scams in May—but this new round of malware attacks sounds even more potentially destructive. Tyler Reguly of cybersecurity company Tripwire said that despite efforts to educate gamers, Fortnite's popularity means that some people will inevitably fall victim to it. "It was only last week that we saw news from BestVPN.com and Kaspersky Lab that over 250,000 infection attempts were seen on nearly 60,000 computers against viewers trying to pirate Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead," Reguly said. "Fortnite is the gaming equivalent of those TV shows in terms of popularity. Just one year ago, 2.8% of Twitch.tv viewers were tuning in to watch others play Fortnite, that number is now 12.8% making it the most watched game on Twitch.TV with an average of nearly 10,000 active channels, 140,000 active viewers, and a combined 103 Million hours watched." "

HP sells a wide range of gaming desktops and laptops under its Omen brand. If you're in the market for a good entry-level gaming laptop, this is the deal for you: HP has discounted the latest 15t and 17t Omen laptops to $849.99 ($350 off) and $799.99 ($300 off), respectively. The base configurations of both laptops have an 8th-gen Core i7-8750H processor, 8GB of DDR4 memory, a 1TB 7200rpm SATA drive (with 16GB of Intel Optane cache), and a GTX 1050 Ti graphics card. However, you can mix and match options to get the hardware you want. For example, you can add a 128GB NVMe M.2 SSD to the Omen 15t for $110 extra. You can buy the Omen 15t and Omen 17t gaming laptops from HP.

Normally we shy away from refurbished deals, though we're making an exception here because of the opportunity to save several hundred dollars, with a warranty to boot. Specifically, you can snag Acer's recently refreshed Predator Helios 300 gaming laptop with just $849.74. That price is after applying coupon code OCT25SAVE18 at checkout. Without the coupon code, this laptop sells for $1,132.99, while a brand new model costs $1,199 on Amazon. This is a 15.6-inch laptop with a 1920x1080 resolution. It's powered by a 6-core/12-thread Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a GeForce GTX 1060 GPU with 6GB of GDDR5 memory, and a 256GB M.2 PCIe solid state drive. That's a burly selection of components. As to the "factory recertified" status, this is coming direct from Acer with a 90-day warranty from the date of purchase. Follow this link if you're interested in picking one up. Alternatively, Dell is selling a brand new G7 15 laptop for $979.99 with similar specs. It's also a 15.6-inch laptop powered by a Core i7-8750H processor, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and GeForce GTX 1060. The primary differences are that the SSD is a SATA model, and GPU is a Max-Q variant, meaning it may throttle a little quicker to keep temps down.

My hands are too small to comfortably palm a basketball, but I'm confident I could hold one of EVGA's new power supplies without trouble. That's because they're much smaller than any PSU the company has released to date. Of course, they're not built for palming, but for powering compact PCs where space is in short supply. EVGA's new Supernova GM SFX power supplies are, as the model name implies, small form factor units. They measure 63mm (H) x 125mm (W) x 100mm (L) and are considerably tinier than standard ATX power supplies. To put the compact size into perspective, here's a shot of the Supernova GM SFX 650 model next to one of EVGA's standard 650W units:

Microsoft is rolling out its second annual Windows 10 update, known as the October 2018 Update (or Redstone 5), and some users report having trouble with it. The most egregious so far are reports of the October update deleting files. "I have just updated my windows using the October update (10, version 1809) it deleted all my files of 23 years in amount of 220gb. This is unbelievable, I have been using Microsoft products since 1995 and nothing like that ever happened to me," a user wrote on Microsoft's support forum. His is not an isolated incident. Other users chimed in with similar complaints, both in the forum thread and on social media, as spotted by MSPowerUser. There's also a growing Reddit thread on the topic. One of the suggestions raised in Microsoft's support forum is to try rolling back the update, though that doesn't appear to restore the deleted files. The exact cause is not known. However, it appears to be an issue that also plagued preview builds in the Windows Insider program. If so, this is another bug that managed to slip through to the final release. We reported on a far less severe annoyance yesterday, that being a Task Manager bug that causes it to miscalculate CPU usage. As always, it's recommend that you back up your files before attempting a major update. At the very least, be sure to save any mission critical documents to a non-connected drive, like a USB flash drive or external HDD. We'll let you know if this alleged bug is confirmed, and if it is, when it's fixed.

The Cargo Ship Update has brought a big, noisy boat to the shores of Rust, and it's filled with useful loot and heavily-armed scientists who'd really rather you kept your hands off of it. The ship, the CCSC Lazarus, will appear as a "periodic server event" that occurs every 2-to-4 in-game days. It will approach the island to a distance of about 200 meters, at which point you can ride out to it on a boat of your own and climb aboard via one of the ladders hanging down its side. At that point, you'll have to clear the defenders, hack two locked crates, and defend the ship while you're waiting for them to pop. One further complication: Everyone else on the server can hear the boat "from kilometers away" and see it on the map, and that could possibly open the door to opportunistic behavior on the part of unscrupulous competitors. Not that we'd expect something like that to happen in Rust, right? Best to be cautious, though—better safe than sorry.

The Forge is the first of seven DLC packs coming down the pipe for Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The Forge adds a challenge tomb playable solo and co-op. Completing the DLC will unlock a 'grenadier' skill, an outfit and the Umbrage 3-80 weapon. According to Square Enix Lara "must brave the lava-flooded Forge of the fallen gods to uncover the secrets of Kuwaq Yaku." "Throughout her journey, Lara will uncover details about a friend’s ancient legacy, and overcome a danger long thought to be lost in flame." Hopefully it's the Tomb Raider 1 T-Rex, back for revenge. The Forge is due out on November 13, and it will cost $4.99. To be honest we will mainly use this as an excuse to take more awkward vacation photos using Tomb Raider's photo mode. Here are some screenshots to set the scene.

I tend to enjoy Warhammer 40,000 game trailers more than the games themselves, but this faithful take on the Space Hulk tabletop game could be legit. Above we see a tableau of terminators locked in close combat with Tyranid genestealers as sad opera plays, and we learn that the opera is sad because the Space Hulk they are fighting for is about to kill a planet. It's just spare change in the Emperor's grand plan. In the video below we learn more about Space Hulk: Tactics' sharing features. You can build maps, set special conditions, write some sweet lore, and then share the mission with the entire Space Hulk: Tactics playerbase. The editor looks easy enough to use, so hopefully there will be little risk of running out of user-created battles to play. We've noted before that the genestealers look more threatening than they tend to in game adaptations of the universe. They, too, are playable, and more than capable of eating a squad of the Emperor's finest, even if they have flamethrowers. Space Hulk: Tactics is out next week, on October 9.

If you're bored of plonking down ready-made buildings in your favourite city-building sim then you might enjoy The Architect: Paris. In this game you design and manage individual buildings and seed them into custom districts in an effort to create the perfect Paris. It's going to be tough, by the sounds of it. You have to contend with climate change, energy crises, social upheaval and population surges to keep the city humming along. The trailer shows ambitious scope. The game transitions from modern architecture to a futuristic city buzzing with jets. “The Architect: Paris is an out of the box, innovative game that aims to shake the foundations of the genre," says Enodo Games president Jean-Baptiste Reynes in a statement from the publisher, Focus. It's a lovely trailer, and it will be interesting to see how the game models the social problems described in the video. No word on a release date yet, but keep an eye on the official site for more.