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Today more than ever, (fast) storage space is expensive. One thing that always makes me mad is the insane amount of unused Localizations, game modes (often dead/closed multiplayer modes) that are installed by default - this is literally dead content. Wasted storage. Wasted money. Now back in ye old days, it used to be a gigabyte at best. Not the end of the world, and not exactly worth the time investment. But old habits die hard, and I'm still doing it today. With games becoming larger and larger, storage has become an issue that can thankfully be alleviated. I'm going to list a few interesting examples, then propose a solution and finally suggest a way to integrate it to PCGW's structure. I'll also list a couple of issues with my proposal, potential flaws and uses cases etc. If you have a better idea or any suggestion to make this a thing, you're more than welcome. Please note that all the numbers given are taken from Steam, but GoG, Uplay, EGS & Origin are guilty of the very same thing. Uplay's even worse, as always. Any constructive feedback would be much appreciated - I never suggested a feature before, but this one has been on the back of my mind for at least a year. I feel like it could be very useful to many folks out there. So, let's get to it. Those are easy ones to "clean-up" (more on that later): Batman Arkham Origins. Had a multiplayer mode, servers are down. Delete one folder and the install size goes from 27.06Gb to 18.1Gb. 9Gb (33%) saved Final Fantasy XIII. Well documented, check the PCGW entry for it, you can remove ~20Gb if you don't want the Japanese audio. 57.6Gb to 37.7Gb. 19.9Gb (52%) saved (!!!) Doom 2016. Do you really play the MP or Snapmap modes? That's ~15Gb (11Gb if you only delete the MP) saved. From 69.68Gb to 54.68Gb. 15Gb (21.5%) saved Here's the problem. I can manually delete all localizations, "deluxe edition content", Readme/Support and redists safely from most MT_Framework, UE3 and Ubi games just fine because they use the same naming conventions. All I have to do is search in the root folder for any file with the _ita. suffix for instance and delete it - but that's because I know what I'm doing and I'm willing to take the time to locate and delete those files. Listing that would massively bloat any page of course, and not many users would do it anyways. The best way I can think of to implement a reliable and simple method to delete files that we're absolutely sure are safe to delete goes something like this: Add a "debloatable" boolean to the Other Information infobox, If True, how much can be shaved-off at best. Users like myself could build a database of games we know we can "shave" (much like SK/ReShade compat, with a dedicated page) The end user would download a batch file, hosted here and verified by members based on a template which would include one option for each localization, and a "clean-up" option (remove Readme, Deluxe content, redists if safe) So for instance, I can flag all the localization for Resident Evil 6 and write them down in the dedicated page. I don't have any experience making modular batch files like that however, so someone else would have to make a template. I can then edit that batch to point it to all the files we want to delete. The end user launches the batch file, delete all locales but the one he's/she's using and boom. That's money saved right there. I know there are programs that are much better than Win Explorer's Search feature - if we can feed such a program with a config file it should do the trick too. We'd still need to build a database though. I do realize that I make it sound much easier than it may be, or that it may sound overkill if we're talking about a Gb at best. But for extreme cases like Doom 2016, Far Cry 3/4, FF XIII, the Arkham series, The Evil Within - huge games basically, it would be very helpful and hey, I'm already doing it anyways so might as well share it. There's also games like Battlefront 2 (2005) where you can cut the install size in half. It's about 5Gb (vanilla) if memory serves, about 2-3Gb when cleaned. With that said, if anything I hope that this thread at least brings more attention to this issue. Last but not least, to everyone: Happy holidays! I hope you're all doing well, and ready for more PCGW grunt work for this year to come. "Keep on keeping on".

The events of the last year have been very tough for the entire world, but none have suffered more than the average PC gamer. Over the past 12 months we have seen PC gaming components like GPUs like the GeForce RTX 3070 rise exponentially in price due to the surge of cryptocurrency mining and price scalping, and this trend shows no sign of slowing down. Unfortunately our analysis shows that PC gaming will become completely unviable by 2022, with the price of a single average gaming GPU to exceed that of the US median annual salary in 2023. Once a PC gamer's components start to fail, it'll become impossible to replace one's CPU, GPU or motherboard or any other part, as PC gamers scavenge and compete for the last remaining working parts. *Prediction based on a fundamental misunderstanding of economics Traditionally PC gamers have been skeptical of gaming on Apple's line of Mac computers due to the perception that Apple computer design has favoured form over raw performance, and that games perform poorly on the Mac platform as a result. In addition, Apple computers tend to be relatively expensive and so it is no wonder that most gamers tend to gravitate towards the Windows operating system. Subsequently this is the reason that game developers have historically published their games on Windows rather than macOS. However this has now all changed - Apple's brand new ARM platform - the impressive M1 chip - signals a new era of gaming graphics performance that is set to overtake GPU performance of the average affordable PC desktop and laptop at a fraction of the price point, tipping PC gaming over on its head. The raw performance of the SoC M1, at a mere 10W of power, offers unparalleled performance rivalling high end CPUs, but also high end GPUs as well on a 20+ hour battery life. The M1 Apple silicon Mac linup: MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, starting at just $699 Not only is Apple's line of Apple silicon desktop computers some of the most powerful in this bracket, this lineup will also become the cheapest by mid-2021 and will become the ONLY viable desktop gaming platform by 2023. Our prediction shows that Apple computers will dominate the desktop market share within the next 12 months and that developers of AAA games will follow suit - porting their new releases onto macOS on a hypothetical successor to the M1 chip. This rumoured M2 chip will utilise 32 cores, 24 performance cores, 12 high efficiency cores, 64 GB RAM and will overtake in price and performance any close rival released by NVidia or AMD in the next decade. Can it run Crysis? This M1 chip can run this 14 year old game flawlessly! Therefore PCGamingWiki will respond to the new demand and refocus its attention onto Apple's ARM platform. We are excited to announce that we will be rebranding into AppleGamingWiki and we will solely focus on gaming on Macs, iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs. As of April 1st 2021, we will begin the process of removing redundant Windows/Linux game articles and retooling them into M1 ARM compatibility articles instead. Eventually we will move to the domain https://www.applegamingwiki.com - we hope you will join us there soon. Here's a summary of some of the many changes you can expect to see going forward: Rebranding of all logos from PCGamingWiki to AppleGamingWiki Overhaul of System Requirements boxes to only support ARM devices Transition to new AppleGamingWiki domain Siri Integration for search and user PC upgrade suggestions Removal of all Microsoft Store exclusive listings due to new contractual obligations Retiring of all articles for games that do not support macOS Catalina (version 10.15) or newer due to shifting market trends We know that this change will come to a shock for some users, but we are taking actions to ensure that the transition goes as smoothly as possible; as such, logos will soon see drastic redesigns to better accommodate the Apple-oriented future of AGW. We make this shift knowing that it will help us better reach our audience of gamers and truly capture the vision of a bolder and better future for gaming fixes. Let's fix Apple gaming! PS: This post is a joke, but the website is real! Visit https://www.applegamingwiki.com to help contribute to a new website dedicated to gaming on Apple's ARM platform.

Koroush announced recently that TweakGuides, one of the best sources of PC game tweaks, is sadly going to be shutting down. Koroush has graciously allowed third parties to mirror the TweakGuides website under the Creative Commons Attribution International (CC BY 4.0) license. PCGamingWiki articles contain multiple references to TweakGuides, and we have decided to mirror and preserve the content so that our links are not broken when the main site goes offline. You can find the mirror at tweakguides.pcgamingwiki.com and all the Wiki's internal links have been updated to the new address.

The website is too bright and it needs a "dark mode" to make it more comfortable for us. I made a very simple example in GIMP. The white parts are changed to value 95, the availability box to 90 and background is set to 80. Even this minor change makes it more comfortable to look at, while it doesn't impact the overall design. This would be a good enough start, but others may like even darker mode.

Expack3 is a staff member, as can be seen on https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PCGamingWiki:Staff In regards to the Essential improvements section, per the Editing Guide, it's meant for, well, "essential" improvements that we can assume is of a noteworthy addition to most players: From https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PCGamingWiki:Editing_guide/Essential_improvements Other non-essential mods goes below the Other information section: From https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PCGamingWiki:Editing_guide/Other_information The gist of Expack3's undo's is that the mod, while of interest to some players, isn't seen as being relevant or "essential" to most players due to it ultimately being just a content unlocker for content meant to be unlocked through regular play. Like it or not but the developers have consciously locked the levels behind difficulty levels for one reason or another, and a mod that bypasses said restriction isn't essential just because a few players disagrees with that design decision. And so, the mod -- the content unlocker -- isn't essential either as a result. It's a nice mod for some users that cares about it, and deserves listing, but not "essential" enough to be included under the "Essential improvements" section at the top.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to see a game with subtitles set to n/a for when all of the dialogue is text-based. Say I'm hearing impaired or I want to play a game at work but remain aware of the real world around me, or have any other reason to not want to hear any dialogue - I may use the wiki to look for games that have subtitles. If we had a list for such games, I would naturally sort to highlight the ones set to true, not something as obscure as n/a. You may convince me otherwise, but the real question is whether it would be as apparent to a newcomer. Besides, by dictionary definition subtitles do not have to accompany any voiced dialogue. One of the two Merriam-Webster definitions for subtitle is

It's a known limitation of the current SSO functionality of the wiki system. Our sysadmin is aware of the issue, however to fix it I believe he needs to rework it or something like that, something he have yet have had time to do. But yeah, we're all basically affected and it will be solved eventually 🙂

Actually having a 'Cinematic camera perspective' is quite a valuable piece of information - it tells you that the player has no control over the camera. Some players may prefer games with fixed camera angles, some cannot stand them. I don't think adding genre, camera perspectives etc can in any way hurt the 'fix PC games' project of ours, it can only help. I've always maintained that the addition of additional information is always going to be helpful for lots of reasons - for rich, descriptive lists of games that no one else has. Like 'Singleplayer games with microtransactions' or 'Adventure games that support controller' or 'Horror games that support LAN'. Additionally, taxonomy will have benefits for our SEO and lays the foundation for a new 'Introduction' section I'm going to be working on next. I respect that you feel it's a waste of time, however it's something we are going ahead it and I reserve the right to waste my own time 🙂. I would suggest turning off your watchlist for the next few weeks because there are going to be a lot of changes to every single article, taxonomy is just the beginning.

Literally made an account to tell you guys you got me and fuck you lol.

Welcome to PCGamingWiki's very first 'Progress report'! I thought it would be fun to put together an article where we provide information on updates and major changes to our website. Because so much has happened over the last year, we'll use this first article in the series to bring everyone up to speed over our work in 2019. Server administrator In January 2019 we welcomed Snuxoll to our ranks as our new paid server administrator. This is the first time we have hired outside the community rather than having a volunteer step up, and the decision to pick Snuxoll couldn't have gone better. Snuxoll has done a fantastic job a) keeping PCGamingWiki running, b) going far beyond the maintenance role we hired him for by developing brand new features (to be explained below) and c) integrating into our little PC gaming community. Not only this but he responds diligently (however please don't disturb him too much, he has a job to do!) and we are very grateful for all his great work this year. Server move to DigitalOcean In early 2019, we moved our image storage from Hetzner to DigitalOcean Spaces, the first step in modernising PCGamingWiki infrastructure. This change removed some pain points we faced with our legacy image storage and paved the way to making PCGamingWiki easier to scale and maintain. In October 2019, we completed the second phase of this move by migrating the wiki to DigitalOcean's managed Kubernetes service. This gives us greatly improved management of the site and the ability to rapidly scale up on-demand as needed. You may have noticed some substantial performance improvements as well. Make sure to check out the brand new status monitoring page, just in case PCGamingWiki ever goes down. New status monitoring page. PCGamingWiki's Single Sign-On (SSO) Account Between 2013-2018 we used a ‘bridge’ to unify accounts between the Wiki and the Community site. However due to a major security update for our forum software, we were forced to abandon the bridge and keep separate accounts. The advice I was given in 2018 was to abandon the bridge permanently and maintain two separate accounts so that it would be easier to keep security updates for both software packages. Thankfully when we explained the problem to our new server administrator, Snuxoll stepped in and suggested that we use Keycloak to create a true 'single sign-on' account, which he has now accomplished very successfully. Not only is the system live right now, it also allows users to create an account using Steam - something that has been on our wishlist for a long time and that MediaWiki doesn't natively support. To use the account on the wiki, just press the 'Login with PCGamingWiki Account' button instead of the standard form. To use the account on the forum, just click the 'Sign in faster with PCGamingWiki' green button. The PCGamingWiki Account is currently optional but it will soon be the only way to login once we disable native logins. If you register using the same email address as registered on the wiki/forum, you will inherit the account on both systems. Blocked in Russia It just so happened that our server move to DigitalOcean landed our webiste in an IP range that was banned by the Roskomnadzor, the Russian censorship agency. We soon discovered that our entire Russian readership could not access PCGamingWiki. This was due to Russia's long-standing ban of the app Telegram, and we happened to migrate our site to the same banned IP range. Banned in Russia. Snuxoll stepped in to create a solution that integrated PCGamingWiki into Cloudflare and allowed Russian visitors to use the Cloudflare CDN rather than the main host IP. Not only can our Russian friends now access the website, we also benefit from the speed of Cloudflare's caching and international content delivery network, which should speed up the site for users worldwide. WSGF Our friends at WSGF (widescreen gaming forum) suffered some major problems back in July 2019 when their website and domain were marked as hosting malicious content by Google. This resulted in WSGF visitors being met with a giant red warning sign when using Chrome on their website and forum. This was due to the fact that many of WSGF's files, despite being perfectly safe, were being automatically scanned by Google's antivirus software and were coming up as false positives. Virtually every WSGF page was met with a warning similar to this one. After we consulted with other websites that host similar mods (e.g. FearlessRevolution), we stepped in to help WSGF out. First order of business was to rehost all past and future WSGF files onto PCGamingWiki, which means we are now the proud host of hundreds of additional widescreen and ultrawidescreen mods. Don’t worry, we’ll keep them all safe! Many thanks to WSGF members Skipclarke, Justice and others for painstakingly preparing and uploading all the WSGF files to PCGamingWiki and updating the relevant WSGF detailed reports. To prevent Google from marking our own website as malicious, we have instituted a new files policy ourselves. Any file which might trigger a false positive virus alert will now be encrypted and password protected. As always, the risk is for the user to take whether they choose to download content from our Files section. I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank Rose, a member who came to us from WSGF, for being on a roll recently with authoring a very large number of ultrawide fixes for many big release games this year, including Red Dead Redemption 2, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and The Outer Worlds, which have ranked amongst our most popular destinations on PCGamingWiki this year. And I'd also to show our appreciation for all the other contributors who create mods and fixes and choose to host them on PCGamingWiki. We hope that these contributions allow us to remain one of the best places to find PC gaming fixes and mods on the internet. TweakGuides It was sad to hear that TweakGuides, the PC game tweaking website, was going to shut down this year. However Koroush was generous enough to provide an archive licensed under Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0. PCGamingWiki has stepped in to preserve over a decade of hard work, which is now archived in a mirror: tweakguides.pcgamingwiki.com, and we have updated all our own wiki article links to the new host. May the tweaks live on forever. Sponsorships Our sponsorships have been renewed in earnest this year with improved cooperation with all our partners. With GOG.com, we have established a firmer partnership and the creation of a new GOG.com shared account which gives us access to the entire GOG.com library as well as early access to GOG Galaxy 2.0. We also run giveaways with GOG.com keys in the Summer and Christmas sales on our Home page. With the retailer Gamesplanet, they have generously provided £300 game credit per month so that we can allocate these games to our Assignments (more on this below). This helps tremendously as many interesting new games are not available on GOG.com, or for which we would have to spend PCGamingWiki funds on. We are actively looking for new partnerships and opportunities so please get in touch if you would like to discuss more. Editor role We have implemented a new role in our community called Editor, which now provide elevated privileges including Files approval, access to the special #editors channel on Discord and access to our GOG.com shared account. More recently, we welcome AlRayes_BRN to the Editor role. If you are interested in joining the role then please get in touch with me on Discord. Assignments Assignments is the process PCGamingWiki uses to allocate or purchase review codes for newly released games to give to our volunteers to complete articles. After a period of absence, we 'rebooted' the Assignments system in early 2019. Our previous Assignments website system was a custom coded piece of software developed by a volunteer which wasn't quite fit for purpose. We decided to design a new Assignment system using wiki template, which Aemony stepped in and helped to develop for us. The new Assignments system tracks applications, assignments, completion and notes, and it all integrates into the Home page and replacing the deprecated 'Notable releases' widget. This has made the process of tracking new games and assignments much simpler. In addition, I'd like to thank Rose for taking on press responsibility and for keeping on top of review code requests and assigning review codes to volunteers. So far we have assigned a total of 460 games to volunteers, and we are looking for new volunteers to help take on review codes all the time. News and forum We have implemented a 'News' section which is designed to crowdsource news items and foster community interaction. Anyone can submit news, and selected news is featured on the Home page and Forum sidebar area. We have also consolidated our forums to help direct conversations, and keep individual forums feeling less empty. We are aware that our Discord is the go-to place for immediate responses, but our community site is much more accessible to our non-Discord users. We love comments so if you have anything good (or bad!) to say please take a moment and reply below. Corrupted images Due to an issue with a server move in 2018 that wasn’t spotted until it was too late, we had a large number of images that were irrevocably corrupted. The reason this wasn't noticed at the time was that thumbnails of images were not affected, but the original high resolution images had been damaged and would only load partially. By the time it was brought to our attention, the backups were already overwritten by the corrupted images. We are sorry that a lot of hard work put into images was lost. Thankfully, many of these images have been dutifully collated into its own category and I’m glad to say that the majority of screenshots have been recreated and replaced by our tenacious community. There are other still left so if you own a game on this list, please take a moment to submit a replacement screenshot. We are taking measures to make sure that the wiki database and image backups are versioned so that a data corruption like this can never happen again. Page popularity tracking Underneath the Home page's search bar, you'll now see game articles ranked by pageviews. Many thanks to Garrett who helped immensely in designing a way extract a list of our most popular pages from our Matomo analytics API to create this widget. It has been invaluable in allowing all our contributors us to see which articles are getting the most visits and where our attention should be drawn to. Take a look at our extended most visited page for a longer list of pages. YouTube Recently I have been expanding our small YouTube channel with some demonstrations of mod fixes in PC games, for example the below footage of Halo: Reach ultrawide cinematic fix or our video of Stranglehold's FOV fix. This has led to recent discussion about what to do with the channel. For now we are accepting gameplay and video footage which help to demonstrate quality of life fixes for PC games. We are also piloting other types of video content to follow, watch this space! Twitter I have also been doing a lot more work on social engagement on our Twitter @PCGamingWiki account, which has gained approximately 1.5k followers this year. It's been a really good resource for keeping on top of PC gaming news, making some friends and acquaintances in the industry and communicating with the wider community. If you're on Twitter, make sure to follow us! We've had a few viral tweets including this one about being rejected by a PR company for review code, and this tweet below about Tron: Evolution SecuROM woes: Traffic stats We are very happy with how PCGamingWiki has been growing over the last year with record numbers and growth, and we are breaking our own traffic records all the time. Over the last year we have had an increase in page views from 10.3 million to 12.7 million and unique visitors from 4.1 million to 5.4 million. This percentage increase is approximately the same year on year, and we expect 2020 to have good growth going forward. Article changes PCGamingWiki has always been focused solely on the technical and quantitative aspects of PC gaming. However I am planning some big additions to the standard article structure which have been many months in the planning. The crux of these changes will be a substantial shift towards including more descriptive and qualitative content and to become more 'Wikipedia-like'. As part of this change, we will include new article sections including: taxonomy, reception (reviews), port history and community. In addition, there are plans to majorly overhaul guides and to introduce a new type of 'how to' guide to cover multiple commonly asked questions in PC gaming, e.g. 'how to pack a PC on a plane' or 'how to buy games cheaply' etc. These new sections are currently being developed and will make their appearance sometime in 2020. Thank you Many thanks to all our contributors, moderators, donators and supporters of PCGamingWiki over the last year, you are what makes this website possible. We've had a great 2019, and our ambition is that 2020 is even better. As mentioned, some substantial improvements are due to happen soon, and we hope you are around to see PCGamingWiki grow even more in the year to come.

In my opinion the news section should be more focused on what this Wiki is like fixing games, compatibility issues and that kind of stuff. For example in the past few weeks new versions of nGlide, dgVoodoo and DosBox has been released, I think stuff like that deserves some attention, since these and other tools are very important for many games and you wont see mainstream media cover this stuff. Another example is Microsoft shutting down their games servers that were used on Windows 7 which is now causing serious issues for W7 users like some random games not starting and rundll.exe stressing their CPU. Here is a discussion about it on GOG. I think stuff like that are perfect for website like this to cover. https://www.gog.com/forum/general/old_games_not_launching_and_eating_100_of_the_cpu_on_windows_7/page1 These are some recent examples that I can think of.

This is a big thank you to the community who make PCGamingWiki work - the editors! Who can believe that we are 6 years old now? We are giving away Steam Gift Cards to members who have provide great contributions to PCGamingWiki over the last 2 years (since we last did a big anniversary celebration). The following will receive a £25 Steam Gift Card: Aemony Blackbird Expack3 Garrett (£50) Jigen123 Marioysikax mirh Pridit Silent SirYodaJedi Suicide machine ThatOneReaper Vetle If you are on the list please accept my Steam friend invitation as I'll be sending the gift cards through there. If you feel like there's a notable member who go missed out and deserves recognition, in the shuffle please contact me on Discord and also add me on Steam. Technically the website was founded slightly later in the year, but I've brought this forward because Steam Gift Cards are best spent at the Steam Winer Sale, which is due to start today. Merry Christmas! And thank all of you for bearing with my absence over the last year. I would like to let everyone know that I have returned to active admin duties and will be overseeing PCGamingWiki's development going forward. We are things in the pipeline, including hiring a new server admin, creation of a new screenshot comparison tool, an improved blog format (coming soon), more community features and articles. And one of the major projects I hope to achieve in 2019 will also be a wiki article overhaul. Exciting stuff ahead. Here's to another year of fixing PC games!

For remakes, we already don't list neither the original developers nor the original publisher in the infobox as remakes don't share code with the original games. For remasters, we list the original developers because remasters are improved (at least on paper) versions of games that keep the same core under the hood, but we don't list the original publisher. For games that are the exact same product but just, for example, change publisher in their digital forms or receive a post launch update from a different dev team, we list all. I truly believe this is already the best way to handle the infobox and i don't think any change to this modus operandi is needed.

Dear PCGamingWiki Team, I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to express my concerns regarding the current state of the mod section on PCGamingWiki pages. While I appreciate the effort to provide a comprehensive resource for PC gamers, I believe that the mod section, as it stands, is messy and convoluted. The primary issue is that this section has become a repository for personal preference mods rather than actual game fixes. This not only dilutes the purpose of the wiki but also makes it challenging for users to find essential fixes and improvements. The inclusion of numerous personal mods has led to bloated wiki pages, making navigation and information retrieval cumbersome. In my opinion, the creation of this section was a mistake. It detracts from the core mission of PCGamingWiki, which is to provide clear and concise information on game fixes and improvements. I suggest a reevaluation of the mod section’s purpose and a possible restructuring to ensure that it aligns more closely with the wiki’s primary goals. I look forward to any changes that can enhance the user experience on PCGamingWiki.

So, I've noticed nobody talks about modding old games here, so I'll break the tradition. Many people know old games have many issues running on newer monitors with aspect ratios different from what they used to be designed for, like 4:3 and 5:4, including no support for any kind of widescreen or wider resolutions, or when they do, they have a fixed field of view or it gets reduced with a wider resolution. Many old engines have the option to set a widescreen resolution, but just don't expose it to the user through the in-game settings, so editing through the Registry or external .ini/.cfg/.xml files or other similar kind of files might be needed. Usually when it's not possible to edit settings through external files or through Registry, it's needed to edit executables or other files around it directly (usually it can be DLLs, but not only), usually by using softwares that can edit the code in those files in hexadecimal form, like the so-called hexadecimal editors, or hex editors for short. HOW OLD GAMES STORE VALUES RESOLUTION Usually old games use 4-byte integers to store resolutions, so say a game supports 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x960. Each of those resolutions are stored as pairs of two 4-byte integers as hexadecimal numbers, so it means 640x480 is stored as 80 02 00 00 (640) and E0 01 00 00 (480), it might be represented in the file either one after the other (80 02 00 00 E0 01 00 00) or even inverted (E0 01 00 00 80 02 00 00), or even separated by other non-related bytes. Beware that not all games allow setting a custom resolution due to rendering API or engine's memory limitations, those limits might be hardcoded in certain files and might not be easy to fix those issues without experience. ASPECT RATIO For the aspect ratio, games might use a separate value to determine the aspect ratio or it might be tied with the resolution, it varies for every game. Usually games store aspect ratio just by dividing width by the height, so usually it might be 4:3, 5:4 or 3:2 (the values are 1.333333, 1.25 and 1.5 respectively). Although, some engines might determine aspect ratio from a multiplier, it can be a floating point number like 0.5, 0.55, 0.6, 0.75, 0.8, 1,0, or even a higher number like 20, 25, 30, 35, etc. FIELD OF VIEW For field of view, games usually either determine it from the aspect ratio, or might use a separate and different value for it, by using multipliers like 0.25, 0.5, 0.75. 1.0, setting it in degrees (60º, 65º, 70º, etc.), radians or through another kind of formula. EDITING FILES So to start editing files, a hex editor like it was mentioned above is needed. Usually HxD is a good choice, it's not too hard to learn and has all that's needed for a hex editor. 1. First open the file you want to edit on it either by dragging the file onto the HxD window, or press Ctrl+O and open it from there. 2. Then, when the file is opened, it's time to search for values. First press Ctrl+F, this window will appear, if wanting to find a hexadecimal number, change the datatype to "Hex-values", for integer numbers it's "Integer number" and for floating point numbers like those shown in the "Aspect Ratio" section, change it to "Floating point number". 3. Let's take this example for Lego Racers 2. The game only supports the following resolutions by default: 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768. 5. To find the right resolution, it's needed to find both width and height values that are close enough to eachother in a file. For that, this program made by myself can be used to determine that: https://github.com/alphayellow1/AlphaYellowWidescreenFixes/releases/tag/utilities 6. Put the downloaded executable in the same folder where the game exe is, run it, put the executable name, write one of the resolutions the game supports, set the byte search range to 15 and type Enter. 7. Since the 800x600 resolution has the least amount of close enough pairs in the executable (just 1), we'll go with it. 8. Go back to HxD, press Ctrl+G and search for the address that was found for the width: 0002A912 (just for info, each pair of numbers or letters represents 1 byte, so the highlighted value below is 2 bytes long). 9. 9. Highlight it, then go to the right side of the window in the "Data inspector" tab, and go to the row where it says Int16. 10. Change it to the desired width, and type Enter. 11. Do the same for the height, highlight the value in the right address you found in the program above and change the value in the Int16 row at the right side. Save the file. 12. Now inside the game, we can see the new resolution that was changed earlier above now appears in the graphics settings, but if it doesn't appear, just set it to the one you changed before (so change it to 800x600 and the resolution in-game will change to the one you set in the file). 13. Now during gameplay we can check the proportions look correct but the camera view looks cropped in relation to 4:3, which means the field of view is reduced with wider resolutions, this scaling behavior is called Vert-, because the vertical field of view is reduced to accomodate the new aspect ratio. This means we have to increase it. 14. For the field of view, it was found the game stores FOV values as degrees, and after some experimentation, it's found the value is 90º. Note that in some games, they might store FOV for different areas of the game in more than one place, it might be either the same value as normal gameplay one, or might be a different FOV value altogether, like using one FOV for menus and another FOV for gameplay, or even different FOVs for each mission. For first-person games, they might store a FOV value for the camera and another one different altogether for the weaponmodel. Also cutscenes might have its own FOV assigned to it (either a universal FOV value for cutscenes, or even different FOV values inside the same cutscene, or each type of cutscene having its own FOV), so beware. 15. In HxD, press Ctrl+F, change the tab to "Floating point number" and type 90, change "Search direction" to "All", and click in "Search all". 16. All the found 90 values are listed below: 15. To edit each value, double click on one of the results below, and then go to the right side, and change the value in the "Single (float32)" row. You can try editing each value to a much higher one like 130, noting in which address the value is before changing it (see the second screenshot below this one), then saving the file, starting the game and going into gameplay, and seeing if the FOV became much higher, then if not, closing the game and coming back to HxD, changing the value back to 90 in the address you noted before, and going to the next value and doing the same process again until the camera FOV changes in-game. 16. It won't take long to find out it's the second value responsible for the camera FOV ingame, highlight it and change the value according to WSGF's FOV calculator: https://www.wsgf.org/fovcalc.php . Leave it as it is, and change the "number of monitors across" to 1, and change the resolution to the desired one above (in my case it's 1920x1080). 17. Copy the value after where it says "New hFOV =", only copy the number in bold. Also note that if the standard FOV isn't 90º but another number, you can change the number that is after "Old hFOV:" to that one to get the correct FOV for your aspect ratio. 18. After copying the number in step 17, go back to HxD and paste it in the "Single (float32)" row of the second address that was found in the first screenshot of step 15. 19. Now going back in-game, we can see the resolution and field of view were successfully changed and the game is fixed! ADVANCED EDITING THROUGH MEMORY HACKING If changing resolution or FOV values in files doesn't change anything in-game, then memory scanning/debugging softwares like Cheat Engine and code disassemblers like OllyDbg and x32dbg are needed. I'll expand on this section later.

The "Early Access" state is complicated in that sense since the game hasn't "officially" been "released", but is still available for purchase during its development until it is finished. Some games use the EA phase properly, with a game under heavy active development, with frequent progress resets and whatnot. Others use it more as a post-release phase where additional content is either made available or finalized, while the foundation of the game remains relatively unchanged. For now, PCGamingWiki has decided to mirror Steam's handling of these types of games, where the "release date" and so "release state" of a game is only really set when the game leaves Early Access. This is also mirrored by how EA is set as a special "release date" in the infobox, which doesn't actually populate any date for the game. For the {{State|Early Access}} template/banner in particular, the "EA" state is right now handled as just another synonym for the "in development" type (the same banner is used for a bunch of previously separate but now generalized states such as "prealpha", "alpha", "beta", etc).

It all began with the recent release of The Sinking City on Steam. Some users quickly noticed the lack of achievements compared to the previous version available for a few hours of January 5. As the discussions began, some also noted the lack of cloud saves and DLC to purchase. Shortly after, the developer of the game made a post on the store page news feed to recommend against buying this version published by Nacon despite the publisher having been allowed to resume selling the game after a court ruling deeming the Frogwares' publishing contract termination "unlawful" and ordering "to refrain from any further action". With statements like "Further proof that France doesn't need to exist anymore" aimed at the publisher, Steam users began to purchase the game and review bomb, never going beyond the two hours refund threshold, while making claims about the version of the game being old, having no DLC or support, or the publisher stealing from the developer. PC Gamer and Polygon echoed some of the statements, relying on the top rated reviews which were "mostly negative" at the time, starting around 25% approval. - PC Gamer SteamDB immediately sided with the developer by quoting their statement on the app page in an unprecedented manner, while ResetEra also followed suit, with the OP of the dedicated thread stating "It also apparently lacks DLC". On our end, there were users who edited the article and inserted all the same unverified claims, while violating the style guidelines at the same time. I had the latest version of the Necronomicon Edition on Epic Games Store and decided to check for some of the claims by comparing my files to those of a friend who had the Steam version. As it turned out, the important files of the Epic version were created in October 2019, around the time the game received its last update, while the current Steam version was built in June 2020, just prior to the game becoming unavailable on Epic, with a GOG Galaxy integration file placed in preparation for release, and also just prior to Frogwares releasing the game on Origin and other platforms. This questioned the idea of the build being old. Now with the Frogwares' discouraging statement removed from the store page, legitimately interested users purchasing the game and looking into it, it was found and confirmed by multiple users that the standard and only offered edition of the game by Nacon is newer than the Necronomicon Edition on Epic, and on par with the Deluxe Edition offered by Frogwares on Origin and Gamesplanet, containing all the bonus missions in the game's existence and costing only $16 compared to the $65 of the Frogwares release. At the same time, the average user score was getting better, climbing up to 48%, or Mixed, as of this writing. Many still remained bitter and unwilling to accept being wrong, with PC Gamer and Polygon never correcting the articles, the current top-rated Steam review being negative, containing insults and saying "No DLC.", with /r/gaming and /r/TheSinkingCity quickly taking down links to the Steam thread discussing the presence of DLC in the game. Sometimes the truth is hard to find or seen as the biggest enemy in the comfort of existing beliefs, and maybe that is when PCGamingWiki comes into the picture to give you the latest technical facts and details. We just have to stay vigilant, never speculate, and always double check. Here's to it!

Hello🙂 I created a simple tool to apply generic tweaks to your desired games. Its a batch file that generates a GUI using the built-in mshta in Windows, but for simplicity, I converted that batch file to an exe with Bat_To_Exe_Converter to hide ugly cmd console. the ugly console is initially hidden by nsudo. How to use Method A: Open AIO per game tweaks.bat, an open-file dialog will appear. Choose executable of your desired game, next window will appear. In the next window you can apply/undo settings. Method B: Drag the game executable and drop on AIO per game tweaks.bat. A window will open and you can apply/undo settings in that window. Note 1: All settings are applied to the registry, which means you can close app when you're done. Note 2: Whenever you want to undo the changes, select the game exe and choose default settings. Change log v1.0 Initial release v1.1 New Large pages auto-test by @mbk1969 V1.2 Fixed a bug where the filepicker returns wrong exe path Added an option for restoring all settings to defaults ( Useful when you want to uninstall game) Added an option for Power saving in Graphics settings (Force an app to use integrated GPU) Added an option to fix zoomed UI elements in some games when using custom scaling (When you select "Disable fullscreen optimization + high DPI", the high DPI scaling override will set to Application) V1.3 By now the AIO per game tweaks.exe (due to about 15-20 detections in VirusTotal) has been replaced by the AIO per game tweaks.bat which shows no detection in VirusTotal: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/6e59ee6086bac11a63906c42c9c0b14a4522028aca2c098df8ef017f53ce672f Also, to avoid user confusion, the required tools have been moved to the Modules folder. V1.4 Fixed a bug where when you drag and drop the game shortcut on the AIO per game tweaks.bat, the settings are applied to the shortcut (.lnk) instead of the game executable (.exe) UI colors changed Font changed to Segoe UI Added a cool icon to create a shortcut of main batch, then you can send the shortcut to anywhere you want. Download latest version here: https://github.com/amymor/AIO-per-game-tweaks/releases/latest Virustotal: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/6e59ee6086bac11a63906c42c9c0b14a4522028aca2c098df8ef017f53ce672f Todo list: Add an option for restoring all settings to defaults (Useful when you want to uninstall game). Add an option for Power saving in Graphics settings (Force an app to use integrated GPU). Create a full guide in English. Credits The LargePagePerfTest created by @mbk1969.

Currently the option to Remember Me when logging in only has it so you don't have to visit the login screen and type in your account details, but it doesn't seem to keep you logged in the next time you visit the wiki when you close the window or browser, making it somewhat annoying and easy to forget when editing a page that you weren't logged in. This doesn't affect the forums however and only the wiki itself it would seem, and I have tested it across multiple browsers (including the age old Internet Explorer) that I highly doubt it is just me. Is it a purposeful design decision, something that simply hasn't been implemented yet or is it really just a bug on my end?

Sadly GOG have just changed their Terms and Conditions on their forums to forbid linking to or discussion of competing stores:- "I wanted to give you an update regarding our stance on threads/posts focusing on advertisements and referrals to other stores. After I warned one of our Forum users for advertising, they brought up several threads of similar theme to my attention and made a very good point that it wouldn’t be fair to moderate a user for advertising and leave threads like this open after it has been reported. After reviewing them internally, we came to a conclusion they violate our Code of Conduct. That also included this thread, so I will be closing it and any other similar threads that violate our Forum rules." https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gaming_deals_thread/post69035 As a result one of the threads closed includes the "Epic Store Games You Can Play Without The Epic Launcher" information thread that links to the related spreadsheet list:- https://www.gog.com/forum/general/epic_store_games_you_can_play_without_the_epic_launcher/page1 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16BjnaBO40vkt6kFVl0QWMWVh86UFnr-j_yWhQbASJ58/edit?usp=sharing Since the spreadsheet is based almost entirely on that GOG thread which is now permanently disallowed / uneditable, and speaking as the primary maintainer of the spreadsheet, would the PCGW Moderators here have any objection if I posted the following direct link into the spreadsheet, redirecting people directly to below related page? https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_Epic_Games_Store I thought I'd ask first! Thank you.

Here's a slight re-release

Hey, everybody, I'm the one who started the GOG topic for Steam games that can be played without the client, which was also closed, as mentioned above. I created a Steam group and migrated everything over to there, so we can continue contributing to the list. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/drm-free-and-client-free-games I still feel pretty burned that the topic got locked (especially since the original post didn't link to the Steam store or the Steam website in any way), but at least we can continue it at the source. Pretty ironic, considering that GOG obviously didn't want us talking about Steam over there; well, now we're just going straight to Steam and bypassing GOG, I guess.

Big necro, I know... But here's the good news: a friend of mine turned this idea into a little program. I feed it some "templates", and it deletes localizations, dead multiplayer modes etc. It also tells how much was actually deleted and gives a percentage, so that you know how much you shaved. I thought it may be of interest to some of you, so here it is: neatodev/InstallDebloater (github.com) Thanks a thousand times to Neato for coding this lil' tool!

By all means feel free to link to the list or any page on the Wiki for that matter,as while it's kind and thoughtful gesture it's by no means required to ask for permission to do so, as it along with all of the other lists exist for everyone's benefit to do with as they please.

Thanks for mentioning this -- I've moved the warnings section to be shown below the seriesbox. The change will be visible on pages after they've been purged. The warnings section is a fully automated section that dynamically changes its contents based on the rest of the page. Any additions should preferably match that, and be designed around automatic population so that they're added to all other articles as well were such a warning is applicable. What editors can do, however, is exploit the fact that the warnings are added to the very bottom of the infobox by, well, merely adding new bullets that they want to appear as part of the warnings list below the infobox. This, however, isn't technically supported nor established, so no guarantees are given -- such an approach might very well break in the future.

I would like to propose that the existence of achievements for a game be somehow catalogued. It can vary by platform like when Steam has achievements but Origin or Xbox does not. I think PCGamingWiki is the most suitable source for cataloguing this information.

OpenMW, the free open source engine, has announced implemention of the compressed BSA format to support the games Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim. The modern BSA files can be loaded, but much work remains and we are still a long way off from being able to play through these games fully. It is incredible that so much progress had been made on this free open source engine and the possibilities are exciting. The engine, which was originally designed to re-implement and extend the 2002 Gamebryo engine for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, has now been ported to Android, to VR, and it even has a multiplayer fork called TES3MP. The implications of support for modern Gamebryo engine games are very interesting and could eventually see new VR implementations with crossplatform support. Perhaps one day support could extend to Creation Engine games like Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 and have them run on the macOS and Linux operating systems. Until more progress is made on development, you can check out some of the very interesting videos creating by developer cc9cii showing off the new BSA support: Fallout: New Vegas map running in OpenMW Skyrim map running in OpenMW Fallout 3 map running in OpenMW

It says on the home page "PCGamingWiki aims to list fixes and workarounds for every single PC game." How is writing that Escape From Monkey Island uses "cinematic camera perspective" help anyone ? In my opinion everything not related to getting the games fixed or improved is a waste of people's time and spreads the project and community thin. Even if it is done with a bot it just makes it harder to keep track of all the constant changes on your watchlist. This site is slowly creeping into Moby Games territory adding stuff like this, the ratings or whatever comes next.

We are proud to announce that PCGamingWiki is launching a new microtransactions section in all of our PC game articles. Many PC gamers don't have a clue about what they are getting into before they install the latest 'free-to-play' game, 'game as a service' multiplayer shooter or new 'live service' singleplayer game. These games could contain manipulative loot boxes, hopelessly unfair grinds or game imbalancing pay-to-win unlocks. At PCGamingWiki, we want to provide absolutely clear information as to how each game is monetized and what microtransaction techniques are being employed. We want people to know whether the game includes solid DLC or expansion packs that deliver solid content post-release, or whether their game features real money gambling mechanics, or keeps their best content behind paywalls or premium subscriptions. Microtransaction categories and definitions Central to our project is the definition of each microtransaction category. We have got in contact with the creators of Microtransaction.Zone (a fantastic website which has sadly not updated since 2018) and they have kindly given some advice to adapt their microtransaction tags to our new categories on PCGamingWiki. These new Microtransaction categories are: Loot box - A variation of microtransaction where the player purchases a loot box where there is a chance to receive varying qualities of in-game item, similar to gambling. Cosmetic - Cosmetic microtransactions are any paid additional content that are designed to be cosmetic and does not substantially affect gameplay, such as skins, hats, decorative items etc. Unlock - Purchase of microtransaction content that affects gameplay and is not solely cosmetic. 'Unlocks' are normally chunks of a game that have been already developed and have been 'locked', and can be 'unlocked' with a purchase. This commonly includes individual characters, maps, levels, weapons, armors, etc. Boost - Allows player to pay to accelerate progress in a game, whether it is faster speed, levelling, level skipping, boosting % chance to find rare items, etc. Currency - Being able to purchase in-game currency whether it's gold, gems, tokens, crafting materials, credits, V-Bucks, etc. which in turn are used to buy other microtransactions, or can be traded for account credit. Infinite cap - Game has microtransactions that can be purchased over and over again without any limit. This is in contrast to finite cap games that have a limit. Pay-to-skip - The game's 'main' rewards can be achieved or grinded for without payment, but payment unlocks those rewards faster or instantaneously. This list is a first draft and we welcome feedback on definitions on how these will be implemented. We have also added the following Monetization categories: Ad-supported DLC Expansion pack Freeware Free-to-play Player trading Subscription New categories will appear in the Infobox Microtransaction/monetization categorisation is part of the Taxonomy project. Editors can simply add the tags by adding this code to the {{Infobox_game}} template at the top of the game article using this code: |taxonomy = {{Infobox game/row/taxonomy/monetization | ad-supported, dlc, expansion pack, freeware, free-to-play, player trading, subscription | ref= }} {{Infobox game/row/taxonomy/microtransactions | boost, cosmetic, currency, finite cap, infinite cap, loot box, pay-to-skip, unlock | ref= }} You can find up to date code and definitions on the Taxonomy project page, with detailed instructions on how to implement the new categories. You might notice that at the moment these categories barely contain any games. We need new editors and help from the PC gaming community to help us to sort and categorise each game article. You don't need an account to edit, but if you create an account and login, you can browse and edit our website without any ads. Microtransaction section We have also added a new text area under the Availability to precisely list and explain how each microtransaction affects the game. This valuable area will explain exactly how each game uses microtransactions and provides an opportunity to warn players of any particularly problematic microtransactions. Example of new Microtransactions header in game Apex Legends See these examples which represent a first draft: Apex Legends Destiny 2 World of Warcraft A new set of instructions is listed in the Editing_guide/Microtransactions, which contains a detailed guide. Each bullet point should match the Infobox category. The code for this area and also reproduced here: ===Microtransactions=== *'''[[Currency (microtransaction)|Currency]]''': Begin with this row to explain how real money is directly exchange for in-game currency, and also how it is earned in-game. Try not to mention other currencies unless necessary. *'''[[Loot box (microtransaction)|Loot box]]''': What drops from the loot box *'''[[Cosmetic (microtransaction)]Cosmetic]''': *'''[[Unlock (microtransaction)|Unlock]]''': *'''[[Boost (microtransaction)|Boost]]''': *'''[[Pay-to-skip (microtransaction)|Pay-to-skip]]''': Emphaisize that despite Boosts existing, all important content can be acquired through grinding on the base subscription/free tier. *'''[[Infinite cap (microtransaction)|Infinite cap]]''' / *'''[[Finite cap (microtransaction)|Finite cap]]''': We need editors Our project is quite ambitious and we are making new changes that needs more manpower, and we are looking for new editors to help categorise all these microtransactions and help our fellow PC gamers. Furthermore, this is a brand new section and we are really looking for feedback on the categories, names, definitions, suggesting new categories, layout and more! If you have a suggestion please leave a comment on this post, or hop onto our Discord onto the #projects channel for more immediate feedback. Let's fix PC gaming!

Crysis: Remastered has been leaked on the Crytek website, which has now been taken down. However the screenshots are preserved in this tweet: The game also seems like it will release on the Nintendo Switch, as well as the PS4 and Xbox One. This is surprising considering that in 2007, the original Crysis was the benchmark for high fidelity graphics on PC. Will you be picking up this remastered edition?

Based on the teaser they released like half a year ago, in an essence, yes, as it will run on CryEngine 5.6 (see the teaser at the end of the below tech trailer). The primary performance issue of Crysis was always that they optimized the engine for a future that didn't happen, and so it doesn't scale well at all. They solved that issue partially in Warhead, but even more in Crysis 2, and the optimization was what allowed Crysis 1 to eventually arrive to Xbox 360 and PS3 (where it was running on the same engine as Crysis 2 if I remember it correctly). So with CryEngine 5.6 behind the remastered version of Crysis, it is very unlikely to have those same performance issues.

Or introduce new level of graphics that no videocard could handle on maxed out settings. IIRC with Crysys was something like this: Devs: — We made game so that it will be actual for future years, set Normal for current top hardware. Gamers: — We set Ultra, your game has performance problems, wtf.

In the area under the game cover art there are links to Wikipedia, SteamDB, Wine... and other stuff. I recommend to add MobyGames there too, since Wikipedia is a general online encyclopedia and MobyGame is basically an online encyclopedia for video games and people often already add the links to it in the general info section. Many old obscure and less known games don't have a Wikipedia page, but I have yet to find an old game without a MobyGames page.

We have a big announcement. For the past few years, we have been trying to find ways of improving our user experience, learning from where our friends in the PC gaming space have succeeded and failed. At the end of the day, we are just gamers. Our wiki platform has simply grown far too complex and confusing to our staff and editors to use, and our templates are now impossible to understand or even modify. Therefore after eight long years, we have made the momentous decision to shut down PCGamingWiki. In its place, we have decided to go back to our gamer roots and the days of yore with a classic, and more importantly much easier to use, web forum. We are excited to announce that we are relaunching as PCGamingForum, a brand new forum that will continue our goal of helping users find PC game fixes. Our unique approach will succeed where all others have failed with our unique forum policies: To prevent out of date information being posted and 'necroposting', all threads will be locked after 2 weeks. Once a user has found a solution, simply reply to the thread 'Nvm I fixed it' and the thread will be automatically locked. Other users can also respond with their solutions - if you come across a game that works for you, just reply saying 'No problem here, it worked for me'. If you don't have a solution simply use one of our stock responses: 'Don't know, sorry', 'Format and reinstall your OS' or 'Have you tried Googling it'. If no one has told the opening poster to update their drivers, please remind them to update their drivers. We encourage our users to share their fixes privately, simply write: "If you want the fix PM me". When describing a problem, please do not list system specifications, these take up too much space and can be intimidating for new users. Fixes can come in any form - video tutorials made in Windows Movie Maker, links to compromised phpBB forums, Google Translated foreign language websites, archive.org mirrors, etc. anything goes! If a link to a fix is dead you should still link it, you never know if the website might come back online in the future. We should really learn to be more patient. To incentivize the publication of fixes, all file links must now be sent through AdF.ly link forwarders. All files must be in multipart .rar archives that are randomly password protected, and must be hosted on 1Fichier or MegaUpload. For more information about how your account will migrate to the new platform please check here for more information.

Jitterdoomer is now banned... not because of this comment though, although his behaviour did influence the final decision.

I would like to invite community to predict what major PC gaming changes will happen over the next decade, please comment below if you have any thoughts. My own predictions are rather dour, I can see the 'end of PC gaming' as we currently know it will happen at some point in the future, but will it happen in this decade or in 50 years from now? Current year 2020: Microsoft releases Xbox Series X and xCloud. Sony releases PlayStation 5. Future: Microsoft Xbox sales higher than Sony PlayStation spelling the beginning of the end of Sony’s gaming division. Xbox Game Pass and xCloud merge to become thede facto game subscription system on their unified console/PC platform. Steam release Steam Cloud, a desktop streaming service where you can play all your Steam games streamed directly from their content delivery network ala Stadia. It becomes a popular option for PC gamers that competes with Xbox Game Pass. Stadia shuts down in 2023 due to lack of consumer interest which is overshadowed by Xbox Game Pass and Steam Cloud. Microsoft release Xbox Series X Desktop, a new hybrid console and light PC that runs Windows X, a stripped down Windows OS that can only play Xbox games and run Microsoft Store apps and OneDrive/Office 365 and is designed to be used with keyboard, mouse and monitor. The next Xbox ‘console’ will run Word and Excel and kids will get them to do homework on. At the end of the decade, light PCs emerge as the dominant new product range in general - with locked down operating systems and heavy cloud integration but with good enough gaming capabilities. Think Chromebooks but with passable GPUs and frictionless access to game streaming services and cloud services. PC hardware begins to become relegated to enterprise and hobbyist pursuits. DRM like Denuvo becomes less relevant as games and consumers move to convenient subscriptions or streaming services. Game ownership question becomes far less important to gamers (see what happened to ‘music ownership’ once Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube became popular). PC games become far more consumable, one-time use products and general users stop caring as much about game preservation. Ultrawide resolutions rise from <2% to 25% adoption rate due to popular use in enterprise, replacing the 16:9 aspect ratio. 4K adoption languishes as computing performance begins to plateau and convenience of streaming takes over where 4K streams are heavily compressed. Oculus releases another all-in-one successor Oculus Quest 2 and discontinue all other product lines ie Oculus Rift. Overall sales of VR games still do not dominate. VR games will only peak at up to 20% of the market, and it will be focused on the all-in-one product line and not PC VR. Despite the short term success of Half-Life: Alyx, Valve Index sales slump and Valve step out of production of VR hardware due to low sales ala Steam Controller but still push SteamVR as the platform neutral choice. Third parties still compete on low cost VR headsets but Oculus Quest 2's Android platform will be the de facto place for VR gaming.

We are about to turn 8 years old, and we have achieved a hell of a lot in 2019. This is a post is a thank you to the community that makes PCGamingWiki happen. As in true PCGamingWiki style, we are celebrating early by giving out some presents right as Steam's winter sale begins. Spend wisely and I hope that you all have a good PC gaming winter break! Here's to 8 great years of fixing PC games. For our Editors - £10: AlRayes_BRN Baronsmoki Cptmold Hawaii Beach Jigen123 Marioysikax Mars icecream Nccvoyager Nicereddy Rose Silent SirYodaJedi For our Moderators - £25: Aemony Blackbird Expack3 Garrett Mirh Snuxoll Suicide machine Vetle Extra special bonus for Aemony, Rose and Snuxoll of £25 extra each. If you feel that anyone else deserves a reward please send me a message. To claim your reward, please add Andytizer on Steam and send a PM on Discord if you haven't received anything yet. Bear in mind if we are not already friends, then you will have to wait 3 days in order for Steam trading to be enabled.

Blade Runner, the iconic Westwood Studios adventure game, is now available on GOG.com - 22 years after its original release on Windows, Mac and Linux. We never thought that this game would see a release due to the legal limbo it remained in. However thanks to a deal between Alcon Interactive Group and GOG.com, we now have the game in its very first digital distribution release. This port of the game is possible thanks to recent developments in ScummVM which allows the game to be played on modern operating systems. The game is currently on 10% discount during the Winter Sale, which ends January 2nd, 2020. Make sure to check out our PCGamingWiki article for future fixes and information.

Players trying to launch Tron: Evolution are now met with a message telling them that the 'serial key has expired'. This applies to the retail version as well as the Steam version which is delisted from the store. Players who previously bought the game can no longer install the game, and are met with these messages when attempting to install: The cause of this problem appears to be Disney not renewing their 'subscription' to the SecuROM activation system for this game. This means that even existing owners of the delisted game cannot install it for the foreseeable future. User SillyWalk gives us ths update from SecuROM support: User raidebaron received this message from Disney Games & Apps Support: Tron: Evolution was never very popular, receiving a very low active player count on Steam throughout its life. However there are legitimate purchasers out there who want to play the game even 9 years after release. Hopefully Disney will be able to resolve the situation or else this is going to be another one of those black marks against DRM and another reason that legitimate game owners are 'punished' for buying games, whereas those who pirated this game arguably get a better DRM-free experience. Check out our Tron: Evolution wiki article for more information on the game, including its reliance on Games for Windows - LIVE DRM, as if you didn't need another reason not to be able to play the game.

It's because that's what the editing guide says to do. I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I believe there is another thread with discussion about it.

Sadly companies will keep getting away with this too, Disney doesn't care, and will do nothing. Shame on them.

The PC gaming community landscape has changed dramatically over the years. In my youth in the late 90s, PC gamers flocked around IRC and various web forums around the world. I was in a Quake 2 ‘clan’ that played in a league organised in one such forum (BarrysWorld, RIP). In modern times, PC gamers have migrated from the traditional forum to places like /r/pcgaming and Discord. Entire communities have formed around individuals that who stream and commentate on Twitch and YouTube. Gone are the days of the dedicated server community. I am fascinated by how gaming communities form and how they have changed over time. It’s a shame that there doesn’t seem to be a proper history of PC gaming communities (perhaps that’ll be another post..). However it strikes me that there isn’t even a contemporary ‘guide’ to what the current PC gaming community landscape looks like right now, which is why I’ve put together this little article. When you Google for ‘best PC gaming communities’ you get this rather paltry PC Gamer article which is barely representative of the PC gaming community. I’d like to attempt something more comprehensive. Another thing to note is that reddit has entirely dominated the PC gaming ‘forum’ concept in the English speaking world. As of right now /r/pcgaming has over 1.5 million subscribers. Other niche subreddits also exist such as /r/battlestations /r/mechanicalkeyboards /r/ultrawidemasterrace - these would have been very niche communities in the past, but by virtue of being on reddit, they probably account for some of the most visited PC gaming community sites on the internet. I am not going to include any subreddits on the list as they are so popular they could easily make a list all on their own. In this article I am also not going to attach the forum juggernaut - Steam Discussions - which has a subform for every single Steam game, is clearly the de facto place to to post discussion and technical support. For example when Metro Exodus was released exclusively on the Epic Game Store (which didn't have its own forum), gamers used the Steam Discussion forum to discuss technical problems with that platform (or to moan!). Similar to Steam Discussions, GOG forums where the most active discussion about games still take place. However although these are amazing resources, I would like to draw our attention to smaller PC gaming communities. What excites me the most about writing this article is the comments that will inevitably come up where readers will reply with new and exciting PC gaming communities that we have never heard of. My plan is to later collate this information to help expand our wiki article: PC gaming online communities. Criteria: A community is a place where a member can create threads of discussion (not just comments on posts) Not exclusively on reddit Not attached to an individual company (e.g. Overclockers) Communities that span multiple games, not just a single game or series WSGF The Widescreen Gaming Forum was founded back October 13th, 2003, back when widescreen displays were just becoming popular. At the time, many games didn't support 16:9 resolution, or if they did the game would stretch the interface from 4:3 to 16:9 or there would be presented in the dreaded Vert- format (Vert-/+ and Hor-/+ being terms coined by WSGF at the time.). You can read all about the origin of this community in an interview we conducted a few years ago. Now, WSGF is at the forefront for multi-monitor support, FOV fixes and support for new aspect ratios such as 21:9 and 32:9. The community members have been creating fixes and hacks to add PC game support for these aspect ratios for years and it is often the very first place to find them published. Unfortunately due to some issue with Google - as of 2019 - much of the website is currently incorrectly flagged as holding malicious content. These are false positive results due to the nature of the files being hosted (trainers, hacks, etc.). PCGamingWiki are currently in the process of migrating files to our Files section, and discussion forums have been archived and moved to a new subreddit. The main bulk of their 'Detailed Reports' remain on the main website, and community members are encouraged to submit reports. VOGONS VOGONS stands for Very Old Games On New Systems. There's a huge crossover of content between this old school forum and PCGamingWiki, as we both aim to get older games working on new computers. However where VOGONS really shines is the exploration of old PC hardware - your pre-Window XP beige box, which many would argue is the correct way to play many older games. On the forums there are threads about capturing video from a GeForce MX 440 or identifying 286 and 386 motherboards. Adventure Game Studio forum The adventure game may have waned in popularity on PC, but it is thriving more than ever on the Adventure Game Studio platform. These forums are the place where players, hobbyists and professionals come together to discuss adventure games built in the Adventure Games Studio engine, or to talk about the classic 2D adventure game genre in general. Many developers with successful Steam releases will hang out and make announcements and updates here like Wadjet Eye games. Other games you’ll see in development which - if you follow long enough - you may see on more mainstream releases. It's fascinating to see indie games like Tardigrades announced on the forum, slowly get updates and then see how it slowly became entangled in the Star Trek: Discovery lawsuit. SimHQ SimHQ's forums remains one of the best places to discuss very deep 'simulation' games that have often been the exclusive realm of PC gamers: flight simulators. air combat games, tank games and in-depth grand strategies. Dig out your HOTAS! Here you can discuss the best mods and hardware setups for games like Falcon 4.0, IL-2 Sturmovik and DCS World. GamingOnLinux This gaming community for Linux gamers founded in 2011 by Liam Dawe. It is the premier place to find information and reviews on Linux games. This community is particularly passionate about any new releases or Linux ports of games and crowdfunded Linux port promises, and has enough momentum to be able to turn the fortunes of smaller developers who offer Linux ports, for example, Space Mercs received 35% of its sales through Linux users. The website itself receives daily updates and the community is active on its forums. Space Sim Central In 2019, Space Sim Central's forums aren't as active as they used to be, but there is a forum with thousands of posts all about the latest and greatest space simulator games whether you're into recent releases like Everspace and Rebel Galaxy Outlaw or classic space games like Freespace or Wing Commander. Special mentions to Hard Light Productions (Freespace modding forum) and Wing Commander Combat Information Center, which have very active space game communities too. Mouse Sensitivity Perfected your aim in CS:GO and want to those transferable skills to work in Apex Legends? These community profiles and tools are shared in this active forum dedicated to having the same mouse sensitivity feel in multiple games. Find out what the best mice and mousepads from the experts, or find out the 'optimal' sensitivity in this megapoll of over 1000 users. Simtropolis Teeters on the edge of being a game series community for SimCity, but manages to span multiple ‘city builder’ style games - specifically SimCity 4, SimCity 2013 and Cities: Skylines. I’m sure if other worthy city building games were released they would also be included here. This community shares swathes of modding tools, packs and content like new buildings, animations, and things to fill your simulated city. TCRF The Cutting Room Floor is a very specialised wiki dedicated to finding cut content from games that are still left on disc or in the data files. These unused files often contain clues as to what the developer initially envisioned the game to be, but simply didn't have time to implement - such as unused audio files, textures, dialogue trees, etc. This isn’t specifically a PC gaming community, but has some fantastic PC content - for example - Deus Ex music files contain all sorts of secret cryptic text messages or the prototype of Half-Life 2 that was leaked by hacker Axel Gembe in 2003 contains references to a mysterious 'Spire' set in a snowy location, which sounds awfully a lot like a destination in Episode 3 'Borealis' location. Its counterpart old-school forum is run by the same founders and is called Jul, and is a proper sleuth's view into the archaeology of games. Fantastic threads include this one on Fallout: New Vegas, which unearthed data which suggested that Obsidian planned for a much more ambitious game world - for example The Strip would have been a huge single open environment, and there were plans to have world map locations dynamically change hands following successful Legion or NCR quests. FearlessRevolution A community dedicated to creating cheats for games - whether these are single player titles where cheating is ‘harmless', or multiplayer games for cheats, aimbots. These cheat mostly mostly come in the form of CheatEngine tables. Notably made the rounds in recent news due to cheating and microtransactions being patched in Wolfenstein: Youngblood. If you enjoy getting an advantage in games then this is the best place to download or submit your cheats and trainers for virtually every PC game. Linus Tech Tips Yes this is a forum based around a YouTuber - but this is more of a media company of over 20 staff of PC hardware enthusiasts, rather than just an individual personality who happens to be an avid PC gamer. The forums are a great resource for every aspect of PC hardware and building and has an active PC gaming forum. NexusMods Probably so ubiquitous it barely deserves a mention, but NexusMods is the forefront PC game modding community consisting of game content, mods, and clients. Primarily this was a modding site for Skyrim, and has expanded to hundreds of different games, the most popular being Bethesda titles like Fallout 3, 4 and New Vegas, as well as titles like Dark Souls. It has been a real boon to PC gaming, where you'll find many quality of life fixes as well as additional game content mods. HowLongToBeat HowLongToBeat is a fantastic resource for information about how long it takes to complete a game. For a game like Skyrim, you'll be pleased to know that the main story takes a generous 25.5 hours to complete. However a 'completionist' run time averages out at 226 hours. The community invites users to submit their playtimes to help make their information more accurate. The forum itself is kind of like a support group for the typical gamer's Steam backlog (although note this is a multiplatform website). Each user profile encourages players to increase their percentage of 'completed' games. They even coined the term of 'retirements' or games that aren't worth completing, and they host a monthly game club (like a book club, but for games!). PCGamingWiki And there's us! We are a passionate group of PC gamers who enjoy collating fixes and cataloging information about PC games. We have over 300 active editors and produced over 750,000 edits since our project began in 2012. If you'd like to help out please check out our Assignments system and join us on our Discord, we'd love to welcome new members to the community.

Tim Sweeney in 2016: Microsoft wants to monopolise games development on PC. We must fight it. Tim Sweeney in 2019: I want to monopolise games distribution on PC. You must buy it.

This is a great idea. Notes about VirtualStore redirection are now displayed for Windows paths pointing to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, %WINDIR%, and <path-to-game>. Feel free to suggest any improvements to the wording or other path types that need notes.

Similar to CD Audio Red Book: it would be beneficial to add "MIDI" into https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Template:Audio. Users playing MIDI-backed games under Wine in Linux may not notice anything unusual. So sharing this knowledge will help them to extend their gaming experience significantly.

Hey there. Specific modern applications can keep old installers and similar programs from running. An example are 32-Bit Setups not starting. Usually they can be found running but not progressing in the Task Manager. (As is the case here). It is extremely likely that another process is causing this hang-up because the Setup is "waiting for it". Here is what you can do: On Windows 10 the Task Manager has a feature called "Analyze Wait Chain" on the "Details" tab to find out what program the hanging process is waiting for. So open it up, move to the Details tab and rightclick your hanging Setup process. Then click on "Analyze Wait Chain". If another process is blocking it, the Task Manager will show you which one it is and offer you to terminate it directly. Windows 7 does not have that functionality, but there are programs that can fill in that role. (WaitingOn.exe for example). Prominent culprits: - Logitech Gaming Software and its drivers can keep most 32-Bit applications / setups from running. (Especially "logitechg_discord.exe" is a problem). - NVIDIA Experience and its overlay can be the second-in-command when it comes to the Setup-saboteurs. (nvcontainer.exe seems to be responsible. Kill that process chain or all of NVIDIA's running programs like Experience and Shadowplay). I hope that helps. Personally I have had that issue for a long time because of the 2 evildoers mentioned above, but killing those processes has solved every case of hanging Setups for me so far.

Yes that's right, that Grand Theft Auto V game is now completely free on Epic Games Store, however you might have a little trouble grabbing it as the website is experiencing 'difficulties' probably due to the overwhelming popularity of the game. Remember to check out our wiki article for the latest issues and fixes for the game.

Pretty much what Mirh said. When I was a wee bit newbie just starting out with PCGW editing I also brought it up and was subsequently outvoted. But nowadays I would actually argue to leave it alone over moving it. It is often mentioned as one of the key enjoyments of PCGW, meaning it should be featured more prominently than stuffed away in a rarely seen section. As Mirh mentioned it is also for many games the one fix/improvement we provided. And another, for me critical, reason to retain it as is is that it also serves a triple-purpose in basically: provides a basic and understandable introduction to the sort of stuff we might cover for new visitors; are one of the easiest ways for users to follow and implement on their own; are also one of the easier ways for new contributors to “dip their toes” into the world of wiki editing. All around, while the subject matter itself might not be very “essential,” the section itself very much is IMHO.

Epic Games just posted an August update on the recently shipped and upcoming features of the store. Although cloud saves were enabled with the giveaway of Moonlighter and This War of Mine on July 25, which was promptly reflected on the wiki, followed by the creation of the list of games that support EGS save game cloud syncing, more games have become supported since then. The addition of cloud save support to World War Z and The Sinking City is new and especially important because of the progression loss issues that some of the World War Z players struggled with at launch. Among the other released features are the support of keyless Humble Bundle integration, product pages UI refresh and game videos hosted by Epic Games. The more notable announcements were the showcasing of the upcoming library UI redesign and the statement on game time tracking being close to release.

Why even put it on GOG then if they are so concerned of people stealing it? Atleast people will buy it on GOG so they can get a DRM free experience without pirating it. Absolute morons.