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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.

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 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 the executables themselves or other files around it directly (usually it can be DLLs, but not only), 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, or even using memory scanners/debuggers like Cheat Engine. Why widescreen fixes matter Many beloved PC games from the 1990s and early 2000s were designed for 4:3 or 5:4 monitors. On modern widescreen displays (16:9, 21:9, even ultrawide), they either stretch, letterbox, or simply refuse to launch at anything beyond their legacy resolutions. By applying a few straightforward tweaks - editing config files or hex‑patching executables - you can unlock native widescreen support, restore proper field of view (FOV), and keep the originals looking their best. 1. Check for built‑in widescreen support Before diving into hex editing, see if the game already supports custom resolutions: 1. In‑game settings: Browse graphics or display options. 2. Config file entries: Look for resolution, width or height in .ini, .cfg or .xml files in the game folder or the Documents folder (either user one or public one). 3. Registry keys: Search under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\<GameName> or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\<GameName>, or even look for the publisher or developer names as well. 2. Editing external config files When settings aren’t exposed in menus, try this first: Locate the file: Common names include settings.ini, user.cfg, or graphics.xml. Open in a text editor: Notepad++ or VS Code are ideal. Modify resolution lines: width = 1920 height = 1080 Save and test: Launch the game and verify. If it crashes or reverts, restore your backup and proceed to the next step. Tip: Always make a copy of the original file before editing. 3. Hex‑patching the executable If no external file can be changed, you must patch the game binary: Backup the EXE/DLL: Copy game.exe (or relevant DLLs) to a safe folder. Open in a hex editor: HxD (free) or 010 Editor (paid) work well. Search for known resolution values: 640x480 = 80 02 00 00 & E0 01 00 00 (little‑endian) 800x600 = 20 03 00 00 & 58 02 00 00 Replace with your resolution: For 1920x1080 use 80 07 00 00 and 38 04 00 00. Save and test: Run the game; if it fails, revert to the backup. Warning: Hex patching can permanently corrupt executables, so always work on copies. 4. Adjusting aspect ratio and field of view Even when resolution changes, the FOV may stay locked: Aspect ratio values: Some engines store a float (e.g. 1.3333 for 4:3). Look for 3F AA AA AB (IEEE‑754 for ~1.33) and replace with 3F 99 99 9A (~1.777 for 16:9). The value might be from the division of width by height or even the inverse, height / width. FOV multipliers: Search for common degree values (60° = 3C 70 00 00, in radians or as a multiplier). Increase by the ratio of new AR to old. Usually, the field of view is defined in the main executable or a DLL, most times close to where the far and near clip planes are calculated, see here for some documentation about clipping planes. DLL hooks: Enthusiast patches (e.g. Widescreen Fixer on GitHub) automate this by injecting a DLL at runtime. 5. Using memory scanners/debuggers & editing assembly When config file or simple hex patches aren’t enough, you can dive deeper with memory scanners (e.g. Cheat Engine) and debuggers/disassemblers (e.g. x64dbg, IDA Pro). This lets you locate values in RAM at runtime, inject code, or permanently patch the game’s machine code. 5.1 Memory Scanning with Cheat Engine Launch & attach Start the game and open Cheat Engine. Click the computer icon and select the game’s process. Finding values in RAM Exact Scan: If the game’s running at 800x600, scan for the integer 600 (4‑byte). Filtered Scan: After changing resolution in‑game to 1024x768, scan again for 768 - this narrows down candidate addresses. Pointer Scan: Once you’ve isolated the runtime address, use “Pointer scan for this address” to locate the static pointer chain. This lets you reapply your patch each launch without rescanning. Freezing or modifying values Double‑click the found address to add it to your table. Change its value to 1080 (for 1920x1080) or check “Active” to freeze it. Tip: Values can be stored as floats (e.g. FOV multiplier) or doubles—try scanning “Unknown initial value” and change the in‑game setting to filter. 5.2 Patching assembly in memory Instead of just editing data, you can hook the code that reads or writes to it: Find the instruction Right‑click your found address in CE → “Find out what accesses this address.” CE will break into the debugger showing the instruction(s) (for example, mov [eax+0x10], ecx). Code injection Use “Auto Assemble” in CE to inject a small script that overrides the value or skips a clamp routine. Example of a CE script to bypass a clamp at address 0x00401000: [ENABLE] aobscanmodule(CLAMP, GameX.exe, 89 91 10 00 00 00) alloc(newmem,2048,GameX.exe+401000) label(returnhere) newmem: mov [ecx+0x10], dword ptr [esi] // set custom width jmp returnhere GameX.exe+401000: jmp newmem returnhere: [DISABLE] CLAMP: db 89 91 10 00 00 00 dealloc(newmem) Saving this script in CE lets you enable it each play session. 5.3 Permanent assembly patching in EXEs/DLLs To avoid running scripts every time, you can patch the binary or DLL directly: Disassemble the module Load game.exe (or the relevant DLL) into IDA Free, Ghidra, or x64dbg. Identify the routine that handles resolution, aspect‑ratio clamping, or FOV calculation. Understand the Machine Code Little‑Endian: Multi‑byte immediates appear reversed in hexadecimal. Instruction Length: You cannot overwrite an instruction with a longer one without shifting downstream code; you may need to fill with NOPs (0x90) or use a jump instruction to a codecave that the game doesn't make use of. Apply the Patch Example: original bytes at 0x00401000: 0F 8C 1A 02 00 00 jl 0x40121C ; clamp if width < min To skip the clamp, change 0F 8C (JL - jump if larger) to 90 90 (NOP NOP), NOP means no operation, so the CPU won't execute anything and will continue execution after those: 90 90 1A 02 00 00 Save the patched binary or DLL and test. Warnings: Backups are mandatory. Keep copies of every original module. Checksums & signatures: Some games verify executable integrity, patching may trigger anti‑tamper or anti‑cheat and cause crashes or bans. Packers/compressors: If an EXE is packed (UPX, Themida), unpack it first or your patch may never be reached at runtime. 5.4 Best practices & cautions Always work on copies. Never patch a live install. Document your changes. Keep a changelog of offsets, original bytes, and replacements. Watch for side effects. Skipping a clamp may break UI layout or cause rendering issues. Legal considerations. Patching code for personal use is generally tolerated, but distribution of modified executables can violate EULAs. Community resources. Search forums (e.g. XeNTaX, PCGamingWiki) to see if others have already mapped the same functions. 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.

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!

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

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.

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.