PCG Article Discussion for February 2026

[neogunhero]

I'm sad Deadlock is 'just' a MOBA—not because I don't like them, but because I'm in love with Valve's lore and characters enough to want any other game instead

An RPG, an MMO, an FPS—I'll take anything, man.

www.pcgamer.com

I feel the same way about Deadlock. I haven't played as much as the author, but I have the same love/hate relationship with it. I have been a lifelong Valve fanboy so I'll glaze them: they've made an absolutely amazing fictional world full of intriguing lore, great character designs, such unique artistry that you can tell Valve has poured their hearts over, yet... it's a MOBA. I hate MOBAs. Hate is strong word, lets say I have little to zero interest in playing a MOBA for very long at all. I have never found the genre engaging or fun to play. Strange because I generally do like RTS games, this is basically a different flavor of that, yet I just have always had this strong dislike for the genre.

I wish they would do something different with it, but with this huge cast of characters it seems the only options are a MOBA or a hero shooter, neither of which I'd like to play. I'd even play a fighting game with these characters.

I have played Deadlock and I can admire all the great aspects of it while not being a fan of the gameplay. In typical MOBA fashion, players take ages to kill, respawning takes forever, you're always traveling to where the action is when you do spawn in, it's just not the most engaging gameplay to my eyes.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I hope this is what happens. This bubble bursts, leaving all of these AI companies/shells of the former companies left with countless bits of hardware, and they start slinging them out at dirt cheap prices. Kind of like how corporations get new laptops every two years, they send all the old laptops to businesses to clean them, then they get resold on eBay for pretty cheap. It'll be like a large scale, international version of that, hopefully. I just hate seeing my favorite hobby that has been a part of my life since childhood become increasingly out of reach of my budget.

Sadly, this is not going to happen. AI adoption is skyrocketing, which is why there is a RAM shortage. People are sending in billions of prompts every day, and AI is beginning to catch up with search engines in usage. The only hope is that AI can be made vastly more efficient, which is the current push. For the large models, generative learning is no longer feasible, so now programmers have taken over.

 

[Pifanjr]

I just hate seeing my favorite hobby that has been a part of my life since childhood become increasingly out of reach of my budget.

I think hardware can easily become 5 times as expensive and PC gaming will still be a relatively cheap hobby as long as you're okay playing on lower settings or skipping the AAAA games.

If a medium performance PC costs $5,000 but you can get 10 years of entertainment out of it, that's only a $500 a year or $45 a month investment, which is really not that bad for a hobby you can do for multiple hours every day. And you could halve that if you're okay with a budget or second-hand PC.

Not that that means you're not allowed to be upset that gaming is becoming increasingly more expensive, especially since it seems that it's for no good reason. It's like those hobbies that get ruined because scalpers buy up the entire stock before anyone else can and selling it for heavily inflated prices.

 

[Pifanjr]

'It's my favorite feature': Dawn of War 4 is adding a way to multi-attack enemies using a dragbox

"Everyone knows you can multi-select units via rectangle with left mouse button, but in Dawn of War 4 you can multi-attack enemies."

www.pcgamer.com

I've definitely seen this feature in at least one other RTS before, though I have no idea which one.

 

[neogunhero]

I think hardware can easily become 5 times as expensive and PC gaming will still be a relatively cheap hobby as long as you're okay playing on lower settings or skipping the AAAA games.

If a medium performance PC costs $5,000 but you can get 10 years of entertainment out of it, that's only a $500 a year or $45 a month investment, which is really not that bad for a hobby you can do for multiple hours every day. And you could halve that if you're okay with a budget or second-hand PC.

You make a good point. The value proposition of building a gaming PC is pretty high. Every new build I've had started at under $1000, with new hardware being added in over the years that are all considered fairly mid-range. This GPU I have now is the single most expensive piece of computer hardware I've ever bought at just over $400. Even if these prices continue to raise, the longevity you get for the money spent is still really good.

Sadly, this is not going to happen. AI adoption is skyrocketing, which is why there is a RAM shortage. People are sending in billions of prompts every day, and AI is beginning to catch up with search engines in usage. The only hope is that AI can be made vastly more efficient, which is the current push. For the large models, generative learning is no longer feasible, so now programmers have taken over.

I think that should be the main focus, how to make the models as energy efficient and hardware efficient as possible. Nvidia put out a recent update for their DGX Spark that reduced idle energy consumption by over 30% which is a great starting point. Also figure out how the scale back on hardware. Does an AI model really need 50,000 RTX 5090s? Obviously yes for now, but I hope one day a solution to that can be found and the hardware requirements can start to scale back. Once those things are achieved, a lot of the negative public perception will start to fade.

 

[BeardyHat]

Just in general, there's also a lot of fun to be had using lower end hardware. You can pick-up a business laptop with an integrated Vega 8 graphics that'll run a huge swath of stuff. Sure, maybe not Cyberpunk, but there's heaps of old or low spec games out there that'll work. Just a few I've been thinking about lately that run on basically a potato:

https://www.slipseer.com/index.php?resources/quake-brutalist-jam-iii.549/

Diffusion mod for Half-Life

You, James Smith (served in SWAT for a decade with no failed ops), on vacation and driving your car to some nice place, to take a break from your usual work routines. Driving on a deserted road somewhere in Utah, the car breaks down. With miles of nothing...

www.moddb.com

Wolfenstein: Blade of Agony – Official Website of the Retro FPS

Welcome to Blade of Agony, a story-driven WWII shooter inspired by Wolfenstein and Doom. Download for free and experience a new kind of retro action.

boa.realm667.com

Not to mention all the random indies on Steam.

But yeah, I am also hoping for improved efficiency and developers slowing down on graphical fidelity. I kind of imagine it might be how things usually go at the end of a console lifecycle, where they understand how the hardware works and how to squeeze every last drop of performance and quality out of it.

This is also not even considering emulation. Even with the most basic iGPU you can easily emulate most older consoles.

 

[neogunhero]

After accidentally deleting their fiancée's Red Dead Redemption 2 save, someone paid $159 to enlist Arthur Morgan's voice actor to apologise for them

That's one way to do it.

www.pcgamer.com

If I did this, this is what I'd have Roger Clark say:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbdygECc6MU

 

[Zloth]

Catching up...

You will soon be able to add your PC specs to Steam reviews

This means you should be able to hunt down reviews from users with similar builds.

www.pcgamer.com

This will be a very welcome change. Sometimes I have major doubts when someone negatively reviews a game and says something along the lines of “I have a RTX 4080 Ti and I can’t hit 30fps at 1080p in this game”. Or they must have something incorrectly configured.

Can we have some volunteers with very high end and very low end PCs that will let me remote to their machines so I can make Steam reviews from them that prove the game is poorly/awesomely optimized?

'We lost things such as physics in games:' The dev behind my most anticipated RPG thinks players are craving more interactive games, not just 'moving around in a static 3D environment'

Well, I am, anyway.

www.pcgamer.com

I never really cared about physics. I played Amnesia and then watched a few lets plays and people were just picking up everything and tossing it or examining it by rotating it around. Then they'd find something they liked and try to carry it with them until the end of the game. I didn't do any of that.

I remember when PhysX showed up in City of Heroes, back before nvidia bought the place. Suddenly, my grav/storm controller's tornadoes and hurricanes were spinning trash all over the place if they happened onto a dumpster. The grav "singularity" pet could even get stuff going in a circular orbit around it! VERY cool! I would love to see a lot more of that kind of thing come back.

 

[Zed Clampet]

In the case of Valve vs Rothschild, it's an outright win for Newell's company

And possibly an even bigger win for those fighting against patent trolls.

www.pcgamer.com

Valve thrashes well-known patent troll.

 

[neogunhero]

'We lost things such as physics in games:' The dev behind my most anticipated RPG thinks players are craving more interactive games, not just 'moving around in a static 3D environment'

Well, I am, anyway.

www.pcgamer.com

I never really cared about physics. I played Amnesia and then watched a few lets plays and people were just picking up everything and tossing it or examining it by rotating it around. Then they'd find something they liked and try to carry it with them until the end of the game. I didn't do any of that.

One of the biggest "eye opening" moments in gaming for me was my first time playing Half Life 2. Immediately they show you how their physics work. The train you start in has props you can pick up, stacking boxes to jump through a window, and the infamous "Pick up that can" moment tells you how it works. Then throughout the rest of the game there were very cleaver physics puzzles such as using the buoyancy of barrels to raise a ramp that is submerged under water or using cinder blocks to weigh down another ramp to get to a higher platform.

After HL2, I rarely see physics-based puzzles like that, and it saddens me. I for sure thought this was the future of games and that every game moving forward will have the most realistic physics and puzzles attached to them.

Many games these days have physics engines but they aren't incorporated into the gameplay like in HL2. Bethesda games for example have realistic physics, but it's only there for eye candy. I can't think of many other games that ask you to use the physics of an object to complete a puzzle or objective.

It's not just about having objects you can pick up, examine, and throw around in realistic ways. What I want to see more of, and what I believe the dev in that article is trying to say, is that it has not been used to its full potential. Players clearly want interaction, if not then we wouldn't have these physics engines, but they're just throw in to make the world seem a bit more realistic, not to enhance the gameplay in fun, unique and innovative ways like HL2 demonstrated.

 

[neogunhero]

Pretty much all headphones contain toxic chemicals according to a new study

Use speakers, not headphones, if you can.

www.pcgamer.com

Interesting. We've known BPAs and other similar plastics were bad for a long time and are linked to many health issues. At least in the US, you'll often find reusable water bottles and baby bottles with a "BPA Free" tag on it. This suggests the manufacturers understanding of risks involved with using them. However, they are not completely banned, and only the EU has banned BPAs in all food contact materials.

It's hard to feel one way or another about this. On one hand we have evidence from at least one study saying that it's bad and we need to reduce our exposure to them, on the other hand in most households these types of plastics are so commonplace it's hard to get rid of them all. My setup is not in a position where using speakers is acceptable. The keyboards and mice we use probably contain these types of plastics. Maybe we need to move to all-natural materials in our peripherals.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Pretty much all headphones contain toxic chemicals according to a new study

Use speakers, not headphones, if you can.

www.pcgamer.com

Interesting. We've known BPAs and other similar plastics were bad for a long time and are linked to many health issues. At least in the US, you'll often find reusable water bottles and baby bottles with a "BPA Free" tag on it. This suggests the manufacturers understanding of risks involved with using them. However, they are not completely banned, and only the EU has banned BPAs in all food contact materials.

It's hard to feel one way or another about this. On one hand we have evidence from at least one study saying that it's bad and we need to reduce our exposure to them, on the other hand in most households these types of plastics are so commonplace it's hard to get rid of them all. My setup is not in a position where using speakers is acceptable. The keyboards and mice we use probably contain these types of plastics. Maybe we need to move to all-natural materials in our peripherals.

These chemicals are everywhere, not just in plastic. They are in a lot of clothing, almost all shoes, mattresses, bed sheets and pillow cases (they make things fire retardant among other things). They are in your keyboard, your phone, your car seat, your steering wheel, your mouse, your game controller. They are most likely in your furniture.

The good news is that this study is worthless nonsense produced by an activist group. It actually says nothing except that these chemicals are found in the plastic portions of headphones. Now it spends a lot of space speculating, and repeating well known science, but it doesn't even, in my estimation, qualify as a study unless asking ChatGPT if there are potentially harmful chemicals in headphones is what passes for a study these days.

Everyone should have stopped reading this when they talked about the "feminization of males" which is quite the way to frame a reduction in sperm count that only happens in extremely high doses that you would never get. This might as well be the Alex Jones Study on Headphones.

 

[neogunhero]

The good news is that this study is worthless nonsense produced by an activist group. It actually says nothing except that these chemicals are found in the plastic portions of headphones.

That's how I viewed it as well. There have been scientific studies on the effects of these materials, but this is not one of them. I didn't bother to go to their website to see their methodology used to come to that conclusion. However, I do think it does open up a conversation about the man-made materials we encounter in our daily lives and their safeness. I don't think anyone would argue that we shouldn't at least be a bit more mindful about these sorts of things. Almost the same as asbestos and lead paint, at one point in time we didn't see anything wrong with these materials and now they are practically banned worldwide to various degrees.

Everyone should have stopped reading this when they talked about the "feminization of males" which is quite the way to frame a reduction in sperm count that only happens in extremely high doses that you would never get. This might as well be the Alex Jones Study on Headphones.

Also I completely forgot to point that part out. That was pretty hilarious to read, and I was surprised that it wasn't brought up in more detail in the PCG article either. I don't even want to get into the weeds of what they meant by that.

Oh god. I just realized I enjoy wearing my headphones as I cook dinner and clean around the house. It must be true!!!!!

 

[neogunhero]

Todd Howard says there's no Starfield 2.0 coming: The next big update is for people who already love Starfield, and if you don't, 'I don't think this is going to change that'

Bethesda will start talking about the future of Starfield "really soon," but he warned that it may not be all that some fans are hoping for.

www.pcgamer.com

We are never obligated to free content but it's always nice for the players and can completely change the public perception of your company. Bethesda is not interested in doing that. CDPR went from being the most hated games company in the world to being amongst the most beloved between the release of Cyberpunk 2077 and it's 2.0 update.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Todd Howard says there's no Starfield 2.0 coming: The next big update is for people who already love Starfield, and if you don't, 'I don't think this is going to change that'

Bethesda will start talking about the future of Starfield "really soon," but he warned that it may not be all that some fans are hoping for.

www.pcgamer.com

We are never obligated to free content but it's always nice for the players and can completely change the public perception of your company. Bethesda is not interested in doing that. CDPR went from being the most hated games company in the world to being amongst the most beloved between the release of Cyberpunk 2077 and it's 2.0 update.

I've kind of come to the following conclusions:

1) Todd Howard has lost touch with what gamers want.

2) Todd Howard has decided that gamers have unreasonable expectations that are impossible to meet, so the next Elder Scrolls is just going to be the same game they always make but with slightly improved graphics.

 

[Pifanjr]

Todd Howard says there's no Starfield 2.0 coming: The next big update is for people who already love Starfield, and if you don't, 'I don't think this is going to change that'

Bethesda will start talking about the future of Starfield "really soon," but he warned that it may not be all that some fans are hoping for.

www.pcgamer.com

We are never obligated to free content but it's always nice for the players and can completely change the public perception of your company. Bethesda is not interested in doing that. CDPR went from being the most hated games company in the world to being amongst the most beloved between the release of Cyberpunk 2077 and it's 2.0 update.

I think this quote from the article sums it up pretty well:

But the very big stumbling block for Bethesda is that while Cyberpunk 2077 was a phenomenal game that was broken as hell, Starfield just isn't all that great.

I haven't played Starfield yet, but from what I understand the main problems people have with the game aren't the bugs, but more the fundamental design of the game, which is a lot harder to fix. I think No Man's Sky was similar, in that the design of the game was appealing to people, it just released broken and unfinished.

I've kind of come to the following conclusions:

1) Todd Howard has lost touch with what gamers want.

2) Todd Howard has decided that gamers have unreasonable expectations that are impossible to meet, so the next Elder Scrolls is just going to be the same game they always make but with slightly improved graphics.

From what I understand the main problem Bethesda faces is that they've grown too large and never figured out how to manage so many people.

I also don't think he's wrong when he says that gamers have unreasonable expectations for Bethesda games. If it was easy to make similar games other studios would've been churning them out already considering how much money Skyrim made.

 

[Zed Clampet]

From what I understand the main problem Bethesda faces is that they've grown too large and never figured out how to manage so many people.

I also don't think he's wrong when he says that gamers have unreasonable expectations for Bethesda games. If it was easy to make similar games other studios would've been churning them out already considering how much money Skyrim made.

Yes, gamers have unreasonable expectations, but that isn't a reason to remain the same. A lot of things gamers are complaining about are actionable, like boring quests.

Apparently they have 700 employees

 

[neogunhero]

1) Todd Howard has lost touch with what gamers want.

I haven't played Starfield yet, but from what I understand the main problems people have with the game aren't the bugs, but more the fundamental design of the game, which is a lot harder to fix.

Yes, gamers have unreasonable expectations, but that isn't a reason to remain the same. A lot of things gamers are complaining about are actionable, like boring quests.

Apparently they have 700 employees

These three statements sum up my thoughts on Starfield. It's fundamental game design choices that make me and most players dislike the game. Boring quests, robotic characters, unintuitive fast travel and space travel systems, uninspired story, thousands of planets but all extremely empty, these are the things players have complained about since the game came out in 2023.

Bethesda has the time and resources to fix at least some of these glaring flaws, yet they choose to completely ignore player input and add a car so you can explore the completely lifeless planets faster. What are we doing here? This is apparently Todd Howard's "dream game", he sure doesn't act like it though.

I don't think the expectations from gamers are unreasonable, they're just not based in reality. This is how Bethesda games have always been. The expectations is that Bethesda wouldn't make the exact same game 3 times in a row; Skyrim, FO4 and Starfield have major similarities across the board. Starfield came out at a time where you can point to many of it's contemporaries and say "your game design is outdated" because much better games have been around since the release of FO4 in 2015. If Skyrim never existed and came out exactly as it is today in 2026, it would not be the global smash hit that it was in 2011.

So combine unrealistic player expectations, uninspired game design, an out-of-touch project lead and an out-of-touch company like Xbox, then you'll have Starfield. Players expected too much, Bethesda doesn't innovate, Xbox egged them on consistently, the end result is a mediocre game that came out far too late. If Starfield came out during the PS3/XB360 era, it would have been received much better.

 

[Zed Clampet]

These three statements sum up my thoughts on Starfield. It's fundamental game design choices that make me and most players dislike the game. Boring quests, robotic characters, unintuitive fast travel and space travel systems, uninspired story, thousands of planets but all extremely empty, these are the things players have complained about since the game came out in 2023.

Bethesda has the time and resources to fix at least some of these glaring flaws, yet they choose to completely ignore player input and add a car so you can explore the completely lifeless planets faster. What are we doing here? This is apparently Todd Howard's "dream game", he sure doesn't act like it though.

I don't think the expectations from gamers are unreasonable, they're just not based in reality. This is how Bethesda games have always been. The expectations is that Bethesda wouldn't make the exact same game 3 times in a row; Skyrim, FO4 and Starfield have major similarities across the board. Starfield came out at a time where you can point to many of it's contemporaries and say "your game design is outdated" because much better games have been around since the release of FO4 in 2015. If Skyrim never existed and came out exactly as it is today in 2026, it would not be the global smash hit that it was in 2011.

So combine unrealistic player expectations, uninspired game design, an out-of-touch project lead and an out-of-touch company like Xbox, then you'll have Starfield. Players expected too much, Bethesda doesn't innovate, Xbox egged them on consistently, the end result is a mediocre game that came out far too late. If Starfield came out during the PS3/XB360 era, it would have been received much better.

I've never even played Skyrim, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think due to the genre and setting, that they don't necessarily have to break a ton of new ground in the next Elder Scrolls. These games feel to me like a perfect match for the game Todd Howard always makes. However, two major complaints from players need to be addressed: Density of the world and the quality of the quests. Same game with a more interesting world and better quests feels like a winner to me.

HOWEVER, if they do the paid mod things, the world will burn. And they are very likely to do this.