AnotherGills

The Square-Enix and Acquire developed RPG, Octopath Traveler, was released on June 7th, 2019 for PC. As with many of Square-Enix's recent Japanese releases, this title was packaged with the Denuvo Anti-Tamper DRM solution. This copy-protection stayed uncracked for months, before finally being cracked by the Italian scene group CPY on September 8th, 2019.
On November 5th, nearly two months after being cracked, Square-Enix has finally removed Denuvo from Octopath Traveler. This is the first instance in which Square-Enix has removed Denuvo from one of their developed titles.
Square-Enix has not made any statement regarding this removal.
Perhaps in the coming months, Square-Enix will remove the DRM from their major backlog of titles containing Denuvo, such as Nier: Automata and Dragon Quest XI.

Ib4 343 gets flooded with Pizza again....

Today, 343 Industries released their latest Master Chief Collection Development Update, revealing the current development status of Halo: Reach.
One of the most interesting bits of information revealed was an infographic, curiously showcasing only the minimum system requirements for multiple resolutions.

The post also documents modes available in the beta, as well as how cross-play and progression will work between Reach's three platforms: Steam, Windows Store, and Xbox One.

Along with the graph, the post details more technical elements of the PC release, including new settings currently unavailable in the beta:
Even with all of this information, the post makes no reference to a release date or window for the final game. With the initial announcement of Reach coming to PC made nearly eight months ago, the odds of it launching this year seem slim.
Are you still excited for Halo: Reach's PC debut?

For years, Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding has been hinted to be receiving a PC release.
Less than two weeks before the launch of the PlayStation 4 version, the official Kojima Productions Twitter account announced that a PC version of Death Stranding would be released in summer of 2020.
Furthermore, 505 Games has announced that they would be publishing the PC version (unlike the PlayStation 4 version published Sony Interactive Entertainment) on their official Twitter account. They did not reveal which storefront the game would be releasing on.
Will you be playing Death Stranding on PS4, or will you hold out for the PC release?

For years, Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding has been hinted to be receiving a PC release.
Less than two weeks before the launch of the PlayStation 4 version, the official Kojima Productions Twitter account announced that a PC version of Death Stranding would be released in summer of 2020.
Furthermore, 505 Games has announced that they would be publishing the PC version (unlike the PlayStation 4 version published Sony Interactive Entertainment) on their official Twitter account. They did not reveal which storefront the game would be releasing on.
Will you be playing Death Stranding on PS4, or will you hold out for the PC release?

With less than two months until release, EA has finally revealed the system requirements for Respawn Entertainment's Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order.
The specs were posted on the game's Origin store page:

While most of the specifications are fairly run of the mill for typical triple-A releases, many are shocked at the extremely high recommended system memory, a whopping 32 GB of RAM.
Hours later, EA updated the specs, lowering the recommended memory to only 16GB of RAM. Ben Walke, Global Community Lead for EA released a tweet on the matter, simply stating:

Neither EA nor Respawn has given a comment as to why the initial recommendation was 32GB of RAM, and how or why they were able to reduce it to only 16GB of RAM. Also, there is currently no information regarding what settings and/or frame rate these recommended specifications correlate with.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order launches on November 15, 2019. Will you be picking this game up, regardless of the recommended specs?

On September 17th, the High Court of Paris passed judgment over a legal battle between Valve, and a French consumer rights group known as UFC-Que Choisir. The court ruled that, (according to a translation by Windows Central), publishers and hosts of digital content must allow the reselling of digital copies of games on the Steam platform:
While Valve intends to appeal this ruling, currently, they have three months to change their policy before being in violation of French law. While this would currently only impact Steam users in France, this can have ramifications for digital game services as a whole.
If Valve's appeal fails, other services in France may be forced to follow suit in order to compete with Steam's newfound software freedom. Furthermore, these services may adopt this new business model in other territories in an attempt to reach a degree of parity.
Still, until the case finishes development, only conjecture exists on the matter.

For people who aren't aware, there's a neat project called Flashpoint that's seeking to preserve Flash, Shockwave, and other browser plugin based games by downloading them and putting them into a client. It already has a lot of stuff in playable state. Here's the homepage for the project: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/

Flash games that works standalone are pretty much guaranteed to work for years to come, even without this project, as desktop Flash "projectors" have existed for years, both in official forms from Adobe and recently in third-party open-source alternative Flash "players" such as LightSpark.
The games that are questionable are the ones that relies on some form of online DRM solution (as in, they require a connection to a server and/or sign-in to play). Those are unlikely to function regardless of what third-party solution is used, if the servers it depends on are taken offline.

The law firm statement makes the matter even more confusing.
It starts by describing the vulnerability but then quotes the Epic page that addresses password dumps in general.
Here is the tweet Aemony mentioned:
 
AnotherGills has done a great job at writing for the news section but there should be more research done before re-posting news or outright fake news from the biased Steam-centric communities of reddit. The scope should also be widened. The recent Steam vulnerability that's only been patched in the beta so far is much more severe than the alleged Epic Games vulnerability in that it allows a malicious game creator to gain access to the owners' computers, not just one account from a link that needs to have been clicked on, yet we're not seeing big titles or much publicity for that.

I'm not surprised. The people who cared enough for the series to pre-order probably wouldn't be bothered enough by a storefront to drop the game.

While Microsoft’s Flight Simulator series has been dormant for many years, the franchise is finally making it's long-awaited return.


In a fashion similar to Microsoft’s handling of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, an Insider Program was established for Flight Simulator. Members of the Insider Program will be eligible to apply early next month for the title’s upcoming first preview build. The general public will be eligible to apply in late August.

There is currently no information regarding the actual launch date or window of the preview build.

Are you hyped to play the MIcrosoft Flight Simulator preview build?

XSEED Games has announced that the latest entry in the Senran Kagura franchise, Senran Kagura Peach Ball, will be released on August 14th, 2019.
Initially released on December 13, 2018 in Japan, and July 9th, 2019 in North America for the Nintendo Switch, this will be one of the timeliest PC release of a Senran Kagura spin-off. Unlike the previous beat-em up games in the franchise, Peach Ball is an anime-styled pinball title.
Peach Ball will be released on Steam with a launch week 10% discounted price of $35.99.

I'm not surprised. The people who cared enough for the series to pre-order probably wouldn't be bothered enough by a storefront to drop the game.

Since inception, one of the most criticized elements of Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform is the lack of support for file modification. After many years, it seems Microsoft is finally changing their tune. In the current build of Windows 10, Reddit user Pycorax has found a folder with an interesting name in their Program Files directory, titled “Modifiable Windows Apps”.
Microsoft’s official webpage provides more information, shedding light on the folder’s purpose.
While modding was definitely possible (albeit difficult) on UWP applications,
Microsoft finally supporting file modification will alleviate what is perhaps the most controversial issue plaguing the Universal Windows Platform.

In an attempt to minimize the chance of this happening, PCGW now recommends users who create archives containing such files to password-protect the archives using a standardized password. This should prevent browser-based automated filters from triggering on the archives as they will be unable to scan their contents.
Post-download it is expected that regular AVs will scan and flag relevant files accordingly during or after the extraction of the archive.
As part of this change, a relevant disclaimer about PCGW not guaranteeing the safety of any files hosted on the site have been added below the download button as well, to better reflect the proper community-contributed nature of files hosted here.

I guess console players won't have to worry about mouse and keyboard...
...since no one going to buy it on PC anyways.

I checked my library, and both Torchlight and Slime Rancher are there. 

Ubisoft has released their latest fiscal report, covering the 2019-2020 fiscal year. The report revealed that their most profitable platform was PC, making up for 34% of their profit. This was followed by PlayStation 4 at 31%, Xbox One at 18%, mobile games at 7%, and the Nintendo Switch at 5%.
Ubisoft attributes this success to the release of the PC-exclusive strategy title Anno 1800, as well as sales on Uplay (including games such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey).
Seeing this development is monumental considering Ubisoft’s views of the PC platform in the past. In 2012, Yves Guillemot (CEO of Ubisoft) had stated that:
This was partially used to excuse their (at the time) less-than-stellar support of the platform, such as Prince of Persia’s “Epilogue” DLC completely skipping the platform.
These current numbers have clearly painted a much different picture and shows how important PC gaming is to Ubisoft.

Since inception, one of the most criticized elements of Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform is the lack of support for file modification. After many years, it seems Microsoft is finally changing their tune. In the current build of Windows 10, Reddit user Pycorax has found a folder with an interesting name in their Program Files directory, titled “Modifiable Windows Apps”.
Microsoft’s official webpage provides more information, shedding light on the folder’s purpose.
While modding was definitely possible (albeit difficult) on UWP applications,
Microsoft finally supporting file modification will alleviate what is perhaps the most controversial issue plaguing the Universal Windows Platform.

Ubisoft has released their latest fiscal report, covering the 2019-2020 fiscal year. The report revealed that their most profitable platform was PC, making up for 34% of their profit. This was followed by PlayStation 4 at 31%, Xbox One at 18%, mobile games at 7%, and the Nintendo Switch at 5%.
Ubisoft attributes this success to the release of the PC-exclusive strategy title Anno 1800, as well as sales on Uplay (including games such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey).
Seeing this development is monumental considering Ubisoft’s views of the PC platform in the past. In 2012, Yves Guillemot (CEO of Ubisoft) had stated that:
This was partially used to excuse their (at the time) less-than-stellar support of the platform, such as Prince of Persia’s “Epilogue” DLC completely skipping the platform.
These current numbers have clearly painted a much different picture and shows how important PC gaming is to Ubisoft.

One of the few positively received features of the Epic Games Store is the offering of free games (in the vein of Origin’s “On The House” feature). It seems the free games are not being bound to a user’s account according to some users. Once a user uninstalls a free game from the Epic Games Store, they have no option to re-install it, leading to users losing access to the game.
The latest title impacted by this “practice” is Slime Rancher, which seems to have been removed from a user's account when 'uninstalled'.
Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, has since responded to the backlash on Twitter, blaming user error:
One problem is that it has been difficult to check whether free games were ever redeemed as the Epic Games Store website only ever showed 90 days of purchase history. Tim Sweeney responded:
Part of the issue is that when a user claims the 'free' games. Epic Games Store did not send out email notification confirmations. Tim Sweeney has responded:
The current free Epic game is Torchlight. Torchlight will be replaced with Limbo on July 18, 2019. Once Torchlight is cycled out, we will be able to confirm whether this was simply an isolated issue.

Today, Retroarch, one of the most popular emulation programs, has been announced to be receiving a Steam release on July 30th.
Retroarch is a modular program, essential a front-end for individual emulator programs referred to as “cores”. This allows emulation for a multitude of consoles (ranging from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Gamecube).
Seeing Retroarch receive a full Steam release is unexpected, mainly due to the general perception of emulation being correlated with software piracy. Regardless, it is a welcome addition, and perhaps could lead to more legitimatizing press for emulation.
The most interesting news to accompany the Steam release comes from the announcement, stating:
Who knows what sort of Steamworks functionality awaits Retroarch as the release becomes more polished.

In all fairness, at least GTAV supports aspect ratios besides 16:9 and framerates above 60.  EDF5 is yet another straight PS4 port, capped to PS4 resolution and locked to PS4 framerate.  I was going to just dismiss it for being Japanese, but a lot of newer Japanese ports are starting to support more arbitrary PC features.  Thank goodness I still have a 60hz 1080p monitor, I can't even imagine the displeasure of most games not supporting high FPS or ultrawide, I can barely stomach 30FPS anymore.

In 2000, Windows Millennium Edition (known as Windows Me) was released. The operating system was bundled with a series of games, known now as Microsoft Internet Games. Composed of five games, Internet Backgammon, Internet Checkers, Internet Spades, Internet Hearts, and Internet Reversi. The biggest feature of these games was the ability to play these games with other users over the internet. While primitive compared to modern online gaming, it was one of the first introductions to online gaming for many users.
Today, it was announced that the servers for Microsoft Internet Games for Windows ME and XP will be shutting down on July 31, 2019, while the Microsoft Internet Games servers for Windows 7 will be shut down on January 22, 2020.
If you still have a PC running Windows ME or XP, will you be going back to play any of these games before the servers shut down?