PCG Article Discussion for February 2026

[Zed Clampet]

No February articles yet...

 

[Colif]

Genie 3

A new frontier for world models

deepmind.google

I bet there is about this

 

[Zed Clampet]

Genie 3

A new frontier for world models

deepmind.google

I bet there is about this

Google's new AI 'world model' has seemingly spooked videogame investors, but it's hard to know what it will actually lead to

Can auto-generated "worlds" really be exciting?

www.pcgamer.com

@Pifanjr posted it in the January post awhile ago. It was probably February for you

 

[Zloth]

Aw man, I thought General Electric was starting a new GEnie service!
Oh well.

 

[dxchase]

'What a disappointment': Arc Raiders players aren't happy with the latest Trophy Display project, namely because there's no trophy at the end of it

All you get for finding stuff is more stuff.

www.pcgamer.com

I agree with the user's complaints from this article. Arc Raiders is roughly 75% of my gaming and there are SO MANY PROBLEMS with this game anymore. The patches they have released have made the game more intolerable imo. The problem here the reddit user discusses is getting virtually nothing after turning in supplies that are extremely hard (as a solo player) to obtain. My experience is that when fighting these powerful arcs that take several raiders to kil, i get killed by someone just doin nothing but waiting for me to kill and take the materials from arc enemies.

I dont really care about that happening, its apart of the game, its embark hinging progress on these situations, on top of having 280 slots to hold all your stuff which is a stupidly low amount of space for this game.

Lets not forget the other problems this game has including, name glitch (you cant see your teammates names during the match unless you let a tick jump on you or you go down), the extreme weapon in-balance (losing to a stitcher 1 with a torrente after unloading it into them is not fun lol) and of course cheaters.

This shows to me that the player retention is purely based on people just having fun with themselves, or groups doing things because it sure isnt Embark being a communicative, bug-squashing developer.

EDIT: The implementation of "dont shoot x amount of raiders to get into pve only lobbies" is NOT a solution at all, add a pve mode instead. They already added a pvp-style mode.

 

[Zed Clampet]

'What a disappointment': Arc Raiders players aren't happy with the latest Trophy Display project, namely because there's no trophy at the end of it

All you get for finding stuff is more stuff.

www.pcgamer.com

I agree with the user's complaints from this article. Arc Raiders is roughly 75% of my gaming and there are SO MANY PROBLEMS with this game anymore. The patches they have released have made the game more intolerable imo. The problem here the reddit user discusses is getting virtually nothing after turning in supplies that are extremely hard (as a solo player) to obtain. My experience is that when fighting these powerful arcs that take several raiders to kil, i get killed by someone just doin nothing but waiting for me to kill and take the materials from arc enemies.

I dont really care about that happening, its apart of the game, its embark hinging progress on these situations, on top of having 280 slots to hold all your stuff which is a stupidly low amount of space for this game.

Lets not forget the other problems this game has including, name glitch (you cant see your teammates names during the match unless you let a tick jump on you or you go down), the extreme weapon in-balance (losing to a stitcher 1 with a torrente after unloading it into them is not fun lol) and of course cheaters.

This shows to me that the player retention is purely based on people just having fun with themselves, or groups doing things because it sure isnt Embark being a communicative, bug-squashing developer.

EDIT: The implementation of "dont shoot x amount of raiders to get into pve only lobbies" is NOT a solution at all, add a pve mode instead. They already added a pvp-style mode.

Have to be extra careful with PvP. Dune Awakening wasn't, and everyone left the game.

Arc Raiders dropped a video on their 10 year plan. Can't imagine playing the same game for 10 years.

 

[Zed Clampet]

This morning rundown:

Sorry, but that countdown on Amazon's Fallout site didn't lead to a Fallout 3 or New Vegas remaster announcement… or any announcement at all

It's just another explorable behind-the-scenes widget about the show.

www.pcgamer.com

As I said at the time...

'Bethesda's in the bad position of having expectations being so high they cannot be met': Skyrim design lead reckons it might be hard for The Elder Scrolls 6 to live up to the ever-increasing fervor

"Boy, do they have their work cut out for them."

www.pcgamer.com

Bethesda hate is at an all-time high thanks to content creators/influencers. They know that "Bethesda sucks" creates engagement, and that's how they get paid. There are only 10 to 20 percent of humans who actively question everything, and they are the constant target of online mobs, cancel culture, etc. (It should be noted that 100 percent of humans believe they are in the 10-20 percent who think for themselves)

WD announces hard drive tech with 'flash-like' performance to save us all from the memory supply crisis

Either that or just more expensive HDDs.

www.pcgamer.com

Intel is going to build new GPUs and the man in charge of designing them was responsible for some of AMD's best graphics cards

Question is, will these new GPUs be purely about AI, or dare we hope for some gaming spin offs?

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Pifanjr]

This morning rundown:

Sorry, but that countdown on Amazon's Fallout site didn't lead to a Fallout 3 or New Vegas remaster announcement… or any announcement at all

It's just another explorable behind-the-scenes widget about the show.

www.pcgamer.com

As I said at the time...

'Bethesda's in the bad position of having expectations being so high they cannot be met': Skyrim design lead reckons it might be hard for The Elder Scrolls 6 to live up to the ever-increasing fervor

"Boy, do they have their work cut out for them."

www.pcgamer.com

Bethesda hate is at an all-time high thanks to content creators/influencers. They know that "Bethesda sucks" creates engagement, and that's how they get paid. There are only 10 to 20 percent of humans who actively question everything, and they are the constant target of online mobs, cancel culture, etc. (It should be noted that 100 percent of humans believe they are in the 10-20 percent who think for themselves)

I don't think most people actually "hate" Bethesda, they just like making fun of them. Bethesda has made quite a few mistakes and there has been a lot of grumbling about their most recent games, but they're still selling very well.

I also think the 10 to 20 percent is vastly overestimated. It's more a sliding scale of questioning, with one end being the people falling for every scam they come across and the other end are people with severe paranoia, philosophers and the best of the comedians.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I don't think most people actually "hate" Bethesda, they just like making fun of them. Bethesda has made quite a few mistakes and there has been a lot of grumbling about their most recent games, but they're still selling very well.

I also think the 10 to 20 percent is vastly overestimated. It's more a sliding scale of questioning, with one end being the people falling for every scam they come across and the other end are people with severe paranoia, philosophers and the best of the comedians.

You're just trying to prove you think for yourself by questioning my posts when all you are doing is exposing a flaw in your critical thinking /jk

 

[Zed Clampet]

I don't think most people actually "hate" Bethesda, they just like making fun of them. Bethesda has made quite a few mistakes and there has been a lot of grumbling about their most recent games, but they're still selling very well.

I also think the 10 to 20 percent is vastly overestimated. It's more a sliding scale of questioning, with one end being the people falling for every scam they come across and the other end are people with severe paranoia, philosophers and the best of the comedians.

The thing about the 10 to 20 percent number is that who is in it is constantly changing. It's also not actually a complement. It has nothing to do with intelligence, and the more that you are in that 10 to 20 percent, the more likely you are to be suffering from psychosis.

 

[neogunhero]

Pack it up, Game Freak: Modder turns RDR2 into the best Pokémon game since Ruby, complete with catching wild beasts and trainer battles

Just like Rockstar originally envisioned.

www.pcgamer.com

Blurbs has become one of my favorite Youtubers and modders as of recent. His ideas are wild and he actually goes through with making them. I've yet to try any he's made like the RDR2 Super Monkey Ball mod but eventually I will. The Pokemon one seems the most fun to me.

 

[Pifanjr]

Pack it up, Game Freak: Modder turns RDR2 into the best Pokémon game since Ruby, complete with catching wild beasts and trainer battles

Just like Rockstar originally envisioned.

www.pcgamer.com

Blurbs has become one of my favorite Youtubers and modders as of recent. His ideas are wild and he actually goes through with making them. I've yet to try any he's made like the RDR2 Super Monkey Ball mod but eventually I will. The Pokemon one seems the most fun to me.

That's an amazing feat for two weeks, but the title of this article shows a profound ignorance of fanmade Pokémon roms. The most impressive one I've seen is Super Mariomon, which is a Mario themed Pokémon game that took 3 years to make and has 151 creatures from Mario available to catch and an entirely new story and world.

 

[neogunhero]

That's an amazing feat for two weeks, but the title of this article shows a profound ignorance of fanmade Pokémon roms. The most impressive one I've seen is Super Mariomon, which is a Mario themed Pokémon game that took 3 years to make and has 151 creatures from Mario available to catch and an entirely new story and world.

Yeah, the title is over exaggerated. There are decades worth of Pokemon ROM hacks that could be considered actually better than the originals such as Pokemon Unbound which takes Fire Red and expands upon it immensley. It's probably the best Pokemon game made with another game that isn't from the series, not the best Pokemon game ever fanmade or not.

 

[Pifanjr]

Yeah, the title is over exaggerated. There are decades worth of Pokemon ROM hacks that could be considered actually better than the originals such as Pokemon Unbound which takes Fire Red and expands upon it immensley. It's probably the best Pokemon game made with another game that isn't from the series, not the best Pokemon game ever fanmade or not.

The best Pokémon game made with another game is probably Cobblemon, a mod for Minecraft which adds all Pokémon (I believe) which you can catch and battle with and adds Minecraft recipes to craft consumables and such. The only thing it lacks is a story.

 

[neogunhero]

AMD's next-gen Zen 6 CPUs will adopt Intel's 'FRED' interrupt handling and could be a major architectural leap

Just bear in mind that Intel's Panther Lake has a bit of FRED, too.

www.pcgamer.com

Highly technical stuff that I don't fully understand but I'm hearing "potential major performance increases". I've always been an AMD CPU user so I'm happy to hear they are making some major changes. The article goes on to say it may be called Zen 7 as its sounding like a major redesign rather than a small uplift from Zen 5. Let's hope that hardware prices start to decrease so I can one day hop on the latest architecture.

 

[Zed Clampet]

@Pifanjr @neogunhero Nintendo must not know about those mods. Is that Minecraft mod the same one Nintendo had removed, but just with a different name?

 

[neogunhero]

@Pifanjr @neogunhero Nintendo must not know about those mods. Is that Minecraft mod the same one Nintendo had removed, but just with a different name?

I'm certain they've heard of them, Cobblemon and Pixelmon are both still available with a simple search as well as countless ROM hacks. No idea why they haven't taken them down. They will go through the efforts to send Facepunch a cease and desist for having Gmod addons of Mario but won't go through removing an entire fan-made game using their IPs. Doesn't make any sense. I think Pixelmon is reaching 10 years old as well.

EDIT: After re-reading the Gmod announcement from 2024, I over simplified it. It was any Nintendo IP not just Mario, and the reason they decided to delete eveything is that it would be almost impossible to comb through all 20 years worth of addons, including the 1.8 million addons on the Steam Workshop alone.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I'm certain they've heard of them, Cobblemon and Pixelmon are both still available with a simple search as well as countless ROM hacks. No idea why they haven't taken them down. They will go through the efforts to send Facepunch a cease and desist for having Gmod addons of Mario but won't go through removing an entire fan-made game using their IPs. Doesn't make any sense. I think Pixelmon is reaching 10 years old as well.

EDIT: After re-reading the Gmod announcement from 2024, I over simplified it. It was any Nintendo IP not just Mario, and the reason they decided to delete eveything is that it would be almost impossible to comb through all 20 years worth of addons, including the 1.8 million addons on the Steam Workshop alone.

You would think their capricious use of copyright strikes would work against them in court, but there's just too much out there for them to handle. Your 1.8 million number kind of stunned me, and I had a moment of weakness and felt empathy toward Nintendo. But then that went away and I'm back to disliking them

 

[Pifanjr]

@Pifanjr @neogunhero Nintendo must not know about those mods. Is that Minecraft mod the same one Nintendo had removed, but just with a different name?

From what I understand these mods should fall under fair use laws as long as the developers don't profit off of them. Most of the mods Nintendo has taken down in the past were either paid or were hosted on a website getting ad revenue.

It seems that in the case of Garry's Mod they could've tried resisting the DMCA's, they just didn't.

 

[neogunhero]

It seems that in the case of Garry's Mod they could've tried resisting the DMCA's, they just didn't.

Which is very weird, I think a game like Gmod which champions user-created content before the likes of Roblox would fight for their users content uploaded for use in their game. However Garry Newman is known to be a very no-nonsense type of person who would rather focus on making games and running his company than have to go through legal proceedings. It was probably the easiest, least friction way to go about it. All of these mods are still easily available online, just not directly through the Steam Workshop.

1.8 million addons uploaded to the Workshop for Garry's Mod over the course of 12-13 years is still completely insane, but it does include things like saves and dupes which anyone can easily upload. Saves are exactly what it sounds like, basically a save file, typically a user-made "scene" with ragdolls posed and props placed around. I've uploaded saves of obstacle courses I made. Dupes are creations made by players that can be easily spawned in-game, such as a custom-made vehicle or machine. These two types probably make up the majority of that 1.8 million number, it's not 1.8 million user made maps, models and other entities.

 

[neogunhero]

I've always wanted to type these words: Keychron's made a concrete keeb

A keyboard of heft, presumably.

www.pcgamer.com

I often complain about mice not being heavy enough anymore... I suppose keebs don't have the same issue

 

[Zed Clampet]

I've always wanted to type these words: Keychron's made a concrete keeb

A keyboard of heft, presumably.

www.pcgamer.com

I often complain about mice not being heavy enough anymore... I suppose keebs don't have the same issue

God, I love this. I need a numpad, but I may still buy this.

Edit: I keep thinking about this. I'm beginning to feel desperate. Concrete is anti-hype. It's a revolt against black plastic. It is solid, heavy, beautiful, and if I could buy it right now, it would already be on the way.

 

[neogunhero]

God, I love this. I need a numpad, but I may still buy this.

Edit: I keep thinking about this. I'm beginning to feel desperate. Concrete is anti-hype. It's a revolt against black plastic. It is solid, heavy, beautiful, and if I could buy it right now, it would already be on the way.

Could concrete be the next big manufacturing material in gaming peripherals? Think about it... concrete keyboard, concrete mouse, concrete case, your desk would look like a playground of Soviet brutalist architecture.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Could concrete be the next big manufacturing material in gaming peripherals? Think about it... concrete keyboard, concrete mouse, concrete case, your desk would look like a playground of Soviet brutalist architecture.

Can you imagine the weight of all of this? Would be worth it, though.

 

[Colif]

concrete ultra light mouse might be a struggle.

Its sure in the opposite direction to the current trend. Hard sell to some who want really light mice

Not everything has to be gamer though, so sure... ultra heavy mice, Logitech already half way there with some of theirs. They losing to cheaper Chinese mice in the ultra light field, so why not fill a mouse with concrete and have reinforced mouse pads.

I for one don't want a concrete monitor... I have had CRT already. Once was enough... young people can go for it. I like monitors I can carry with one hand, not ones that need two people to carry them.

since i type with kb on my lap, I will skip the concrete kb as well. I will watch video as curious how quiet it is.

Concrete case:

Watch This Engineer Create a Desktop PC Case Made Out of Concrete

Carter Hurd created the case, joking that a heavier PC would inevitably make it more powerful.

au.pcmag.com