Family Sharing is a pretty great feature on Steam: Simply put, it lets you share your game library with friends and family, so if you and your brother and your mom all want to play Helldivers 2, for instance, you don’t all have to buy it separately—as long as you don’t all want to use the Steam account at the same time, anyway. That one-at-a-time restriction was removed today, though, as Valve announced a pretty big overhaul to the system that combines Steam Family Sharing and the Family View parental control system into one big package called Steam Families.
Steam Families functions very similarly to its predecessors, but makes a handful of improvements, the biggest being that members of the family can play different games at the same time.
Under the old system,…
Read moreYesterday’s State of Unreal 2023 presentation was rather overshadowed by a certain surprise game announcement, but Epic showed off some genuinely amazing tech coming to Unreal Engine 5 in the near future. We got to see impressive new procedural environment tools, Lords of the Fallen showing off the engine’s enhancements to character creation and realistic armour and clothing, and more. But what really blew my socks off was the MetaHuman Animator stage demo.
We’ve seen MetaHuman before—it’s a tool that allows developers to generate highly realistic human faces, fully rigged for animation. Actually animating those faces in a way that matches their realistic look—avoiding the uncanny valley—has been a difficult and time-consuming process thus far, however. Mot…
Read moreWar Thunder is generally in the news because some of its players, if you’ll excuse the phrase, are a little extreme. War Thunder is a free-to-play competitive game where a large part of the appeal is how accurately different military vehicles are represented, and arguments over the depiction of things like a tank’s turret have seen actual military secrets deployed in order to win forum arguments. War Thunder players take War Thunder very seriously. And for once they’re not mad at each other, but at developer Gaijin Entertainment.
The game has suffered an absolutely extraordinary and sustained review bombing campaign over the last week. It currently shows as ‘overwhelmingly negative’ on Steam’s recent reviews and the overall rating has dropped to ‘mixed’. One player who has 2,200 h…
Read moreYou’ll find all the help you need to solve today’s Wordle right here. We’ve got a selection of general tips available if you’d like to refresh your daily strategy, a clue for the October 1 (834) game if you’d appreciate a nudge in the right direction, and today’s answer on a handy plate if you’d prefer a direct approach.
Well, that was a fun one. I found myself staring at a good combination of yellows and greens after a few guesses, and I just knew I had enough to work out today’s Wordle answer there and then. I’d like to pretend the right word came to me in an instant, but there was a fair bit of brow-furrowing between that point and my next go. Still, there was no rush.
Wordle today: A hint
Wordle today: A hint for Sunday, October 1
You’ll need…
Read moreStonemaier Games has recently announced its new Wingspan-inspired title, Wyrmspan. And most importantly, yes… this dragon themed version of the modern classic will also contain premium coloured eggs, but this time they’re speckled. I’m excited.
According to the Stonemaier site the board game will initially launch on its store on January 31, with the worldwide retail release set to come in late March. Wyrmspan has been designed by Connie Vogelmann, designer of the recent space bee hive builder Apiary, which currently holds an impressive score of 8.0 on BoardGameGeek. The acclaimed Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave is credited as a developer on BGG and the new title is also listed as a reimplementation.
In Wyrmspan you’re an amateur dracologist who is attempting to e…
Read moreYou’ve saved Skyrim from Alduin the World-Eater at last. Surrounded by the souls of Sovngarde’s mightiest heroes, you watch his bones burn bright as the dawn, then fall away to ash. What sound accompanies this event? “Blink blink blonk!” Steam would like you to know you’ve just unlocked the Dragonslayer achievement, which it does by loudly playing a cheerily rinky-dink sound effect.
While Steam’s Big Picture Mode has had an achievement notification sound for a minute, as Steam Deck owners know full well, Desktop Mode remained classily silent when that little rectangle appeared in the corner of your screen. Now it makes a noise for every achievement, and when a game finishes downloading, and I hate it.
Fortunately, you can turn the noise off. As of an update earlier this mont…
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