Latest articles by Austin Wood
I tried an Arc Raiders community tip for hunting blueprints after 40 hours of next to nothing, and I found my most-wanted blueprint almost immediately
Feature That's one Wolfpack blueprint into the pocket
"When I was growing up, games were designed to be fun, not manipulative": Path of Exile co-creator shines a blacklight on the "bulls**t" design tricks infesting all my live service games
News Chris Wilson interrogates the "Dark Patterns" of modern game design
MMO players are unstoppable: Handed a new skill after 19 years, Old School RuneScape fans instantly force the devs to hotfix a Sailing XP flood over "Daddy's Special Water's special water"
News Old School RuneScape Sailing release sees predictable early XP exploit
"Gen Z loves AI slop," says former Square Enix exec, which means that Arc Raiders' controversial AI usage is just "the tip of the spear"
News "Activision isn't shying away from AI, neither is ARC Raiders," reckons Jacob Navok
"Hytale is saved": Riot sells Hytale back to Hypixel founders, who promise 10 years of support, an early access date soon, and a return to the "original vision"
News Hytale is back, again
Dispatch dev says "there was no glitch" causing a bad ending, it's just you
News AdHoc explains concerns of bugged episodes
Lore hero condenses all of Silksong, including a cut ending, into a lightweight 77 minutes: "THE SACRED TEXTS ARE HERE"
News Bring some popcorn
Elden Ring Nightreign "performed well beyond initial expectations," FromSoftware parent company says, and DLC could take it even further
News Elden Ring Nightreign bodes well for The Duskbloods
Genshin Impact dev seemingly ditching anime art to take on the MMO money pit with a new game called Genesis packing an open world, PvP, and a whole load of AI
News The latest HoYoverse game is apparently a big MMO made in Unreal Engine 5
Steam expert hails PC gaming "golden age" of rough-but-fun games that devs can make quickly and players love, from Peak to Megabonk: "Steam players want fun first"
News Lethal Company, RV There Yet, Slots & Daggers, Cloverpit, the list goes on
Mass layoffs hit Square Enix hours after it shares plans to have AI handle "70%" of its quality assurance and debugging soon
News Square Enix also revealed plans to shift development to Japan
Analysis of 260,000 Silksong Steam reviews shows what players love and hate about Team Cherry’s brutal sequel: 2 damage, long runbacks, and... Elden Ring?
News Bosses, difficulty, and other top trends among Hollow Knight: Silksong Steam reviews
Helldivers 2 lead says "our features would be considered ready and implemented in the release build at the very last minute," so Arrowhead wants to "stop that" with the game cracking
News That could explain some of the recent issues
Another roguelike success story has hit Steam: D&D flavored slot machine Slots & Daggers sells 100,000 copies in 10 days, "a surreal number for a solo dev like me"
News Behold, a fantasy RPG where you cast gambling
In defiance of god and Team Cherry, players mod the Knight from Hollow Knight into Silksong: "Most bosses are pretty easy it turns out"
News It's him, the Hollow Knight
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 boss hands The Outer Worlds 2 a "7/10," hopes Obsidian spends "all of Microsoft's money" on RPGs more like Fallout New Vegas and, also, like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
News "I would bet that budget for KCD2 was WAY LOWER than Outer Worlds 2"
Remembering its MMO has an expansion out soon, Bungie addresses Destiny 2's missing roadmap as player counts hit a new low on Steam
News Third-party tools suggest Destiny 2 is down across the board as well
Pokemon Legends Z-A speedrunners are all using the same one Pokemon: a free, heroic Heracross named Bois
News All hail bois
"In other words, 72% don't know what a monopoly is," analyst says of study that finds 72% of game devs "see Steam as a monopoly"
News "Market share isn't what defines a monopoly, folks"
In decades of watching anime, I have never wanted a season 3 more: My Dress-Up Darling season 2 was a huge step up, and the manga has so much more to give
Feature Opinion | My kingdom for My Dress-Up Darling season 3
Solo dev behind one of Steam's biggest viral hits, Lethal Company, gives his new game away for free after 10 years of work: "I only want to sell a game if I'm very certain that most people will enjoy it"
News Lethal Company creator Zeekerss says "I just don't have a reason to put unnecessary pressure on myself"
Life after Lethal Company: solo creator Zeekerss says "weirdly, not a lot has changed" after one of the biggest indie hits in recent memory, and he still has "a good handful of ideas for games"
Feature Interview | Lethal Company 2 is just one of many ideas for Zeekerss
Arc Raiders gives players 500 free Raider Tokens to apologize for servers buckling under the weight of 350,000 Steam players alone over the weekend
News 500 tokens to all, and to all a good night
Assassin's Creed is a "forever brand" because Ubisoft supported huge risks with it, ex director says: "Whereas, say, EA, you get these awful execs and they never made games and they came from toothpaste companies"
News Assassin's Creed's shift to open-world RPGs would never have happened at many companies, Alex Hutchinson says
