Two weeks ago, the Helldivers 2 community was blindsided by a patch that sneakily added Gunships and gigantic AT-AT walkers to Automaton planets. It was a hectic 24 hours as players scrambled to react to the new threats and finally liberate Malevelon Creek. Super Earth prevailed, and while Gunships became a mainstay of Automaton missions, the walkers mysteriously vanished.
This morning, Arrowhead did it again. What was shared as a routine bug-fixing patch was actually a back door reintroduction of Factory Striders, four-legged “dreadnoughts” equipped with a top-mounted cannon, rotating front lasers, and a mobile factory that continuously spawns Devastators. Standing nearly as tall as a Bile Titan, Striders are by far the largest, most resilient enemy we’ve seen yet.
We have …
Read moreA year after putting on an Olympic esports event that didn’t include any actual esports games, the International Olympic Committee has joined up with the National Olympic Committee of Saudi Arabia to do it for real in the first-ever Olympic Esports Games, set to be held in 2025.
The Olympic Esports deal between the IOC and Saudi Arabia is planned to run for 12 years, with events held “regularly” over the duration.
“We are very fortunate to be able to work with the Saudi NOC on the Olympic Esports Games, because it has great—if not unique—expertise in the field of esports with all its stakeholders,” IOC president Thomas Bach said in the announcement (via Insider Gaming). “The Olympic Esports Games will greatly benefit from this experience.
“By partnering w…
Read moreIf everything goes to plan, a nuclear reactor at the famous Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania—the site of a major accident in the ’70s—will be restarted by power company Constellation Energy to fulfill an agreement with Microsoft for carbon-free energy to power its data centers.
The reactor coming back online is not the one that had a partial meltdown in 1979, which has remained dormant since the accident. That was TMI-Unit 2. The adjacent reactor, TMI-Unit 1, went back into operation in 1985 and continued to operate until 2019, when it was shut down due to “poor economics,” according to Constellation.
After refurbishing it and obtaining the necessary federal and state approvals, Constellation hopes to have TMI-Unit 1 operating by 2028, and says tha…
Read moreThe 2024 Steam Summer Sale is over, and that clears the way for the next big seasonal event in Steam’s lineup: The Team Fortress 2 2024 summer update.
Just like last year’s TF2 summer update, this one is chock full o’ stuff made not by Valve, but by the community: 10 new community maps (Embargo, Odyssey, Megaton, Cachoeira, Overgrown, Hadal, Applejack, Atom Smash, Canaveral, and Burghausen), 23 new “community-contributed items” in the Summer 2024 Cosmetic Case, four new community-created taunts, and 38 new community-made Unusual effects: 18 for hats and 20 for taunts.
Valve contributed to the effort too, of course. Somebody had to collect all this stuff together, ensure it complies with all requisite rules and regulations, and that it doesn’t actually break the game in any…
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