Key Note Gaming

One of the big appeals of cryptocurrency is anonymity: Unlike actual money and conventional financial transactions, crypto is very difficult to track. Not everyone thinks that's a good thing, of course. In 2018, for instance, Bill Gates said the anonymous nature of crypto was making it more difficult for government agencies to combat criminal activity such as money laundering, tax evasion, and terror funding. The values of Bitcoin and Ethereum also took a big hit in 2021 when the EU proposed new regulations on cryptocurrencies that included the prohibition of anonymous crypto wallets . According to The Intercept , however, Coinbase—the largest cryptocurrency exchange in North America—has made a deal with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, that grants the government agency access to a suite of tools used to track and identify crypto users. The report says the arrangement began with the sale of a single software license in August 2021 for $29,000, and the

Crytek has prepared a swathe of improvements for its stealthy shooter Hunt: Showdown, including a fix for a longstanding technical issue: the dreaded desync teleportation that most of us have experienced when climbing ladders or trying to wedge yourself through the same doorway that your teammate's in. The forthcoming 1.9 update is currently being put through its paces on Hunt's public test server, but a full release date for the changes isn't set yet. Although there are new gun skins, Legendary Hunters, map adjustments, and other stuff on the way, most of the changes are technical in nature. Here's the biggest stuff that stands out to me in Hunt's 1.9 update as someone who's put 200 hours into the game this year. Gunfire sound propagation Crytek says: "Improved the audio tied to distant interior gunshots for better readability over distance. This should make it easy to determine if a shot was fired indoors or outdoors." Are those gunshots someon

RadioShack, which you may remember as a retailer of consumer electronics endemic to strip malls of the '90s and early aughts, has relaunched with a corresponding cryptocurrency and positively nauseating Twitter account. It is the latest example of crypto's strange, continuing overlap with edgelord internet behavior. The 'Shack used to sell batteries, RC cars, DIY electronics tools, and all matter of wires and transistors for the solderer in your life. It was a ubiquitous sight in the parking lots of America until it wasn't, with the ecommerce boom driving the company to bankruptcy in 2015.  Sportswriter Jon Bois, a former RadioShack employee, wrote a great obituary of sorts for the company that rings true to anyone who's worked a dead-end service or retail job. Bois writes of the former giant, "RadioShack is a rotten place to work, generally not a very good place to shop, and an untenable business to run. Everyone involved loses." RadioShack was purch

In this week's episode of  The Game Informer Show , the crew discusses our Sonic Frontiers cover story and divulges new details about the game's open zones, combat, and a few returning characters, including Big The Cat. During The Playlist, we chat about our time playing Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course, Overwatch 2's new tank Junker Queen , and several promising games from Steam Next Fest. Follow us on Twitter:  Alex Stadnik  (@Studnik76),  Alex Van Aken  (@itsVanAken),  Jill Grodt  (@Finruin), Brian Shea (@BrianPShea) The Game Informer Show  is a weekly gaming podcast covering the latest video game news, industry topics, exclusive reveals, and reviews. Join hosts  Alex Stadnik  and  Alex Van Aken  every Thursday to chat about your favorite games – past and present – with  Game Informer  staff, developers, and special guests from around the industry. Listen on  Apple Podcasts ,  Spotify , or your favorite podcast app. Check out the timestamps below to jump to a pa

Since Skate 3’s release over 12 years ago, fans and newcomers alike have eagerly awaited the release of Skate 4 (also known as skate.). Though it’s been almost a year since Full Circle's last update, the newly-formed team wants players to know that they're “still working on it.” Today, the team released a trailer for the game showing footage of the game’s various prototypes (or, as the trailer puts it, “pre-pre-pre-alpha” versions). The trailer is noticeably transparent about the game development process, giving players a glimpse of various processes like character rigging and dealing with bugs, though there are a few segments of gameplay with more polished graphics to show players what the game's future might have in store It also seems that player feedback is a big component of Skate 4 — the trailer shows a variety of comments that the development team took into account, supposedly confirming features like nonbinary player customization options, the ability to cli

Cats are better than dogs, if we're talking about which animal makes for a better videogame protagonist. I'm not saying that cats are better pets than dogs, or that they have more complex inner lives, or that their companionship carries more meaning. I'm just saying that cats are superior to dogs in every way that is related to being a videogame protagonist. Any dog would be subdued by a security bot within 10 seconds. On a general note, I want more games that star animals of any kind so long as they're regular animals , not anthropomorphized cartoon characters like Sonic the Hedgehog, Conker the Squirrel, or Jazz Jackrabbit. I've had enough of characters whose last name is the kind of animal they are, which for whatever reason almost always belongs to the 'animals you can picture Huckleberry Finn shooting with a Winchester Model 1866' family. The public clearly agrees, because soon-to-release housecat platformer Stray is one of the most wishlisted

Treehouses in Minecraft provide a wonderful way of incorporating unique and cool designs into your home. Whether you're just starting out and want some more niche house ideas to work from, or you're a pro in Minecraft but want to think outside the box, we've got ideas and tips for you. There are two things to consider as you scroll through our favorite treehouse build concepts: In order to dictate the size of your treehouse, it will depend if you’re working on your main hub or an addition to an existing build. Furthermore, the biome you choose to build in will control the extent to which you can use naturally generated trees versus trees that you artificially create yourself. That said, we’ve rounded up some of the best treehouse build ideas for Minecraft, from simple, starter tree houses to next-level designs and challenging builds, and everything in between. 1. Simple Treehouse If you’re struggling with how to build a treehouse in Minecraft, just go basic

Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang has explained the rationale behind a recent change to the handheld gaming PC's storage options, saying that the team at Valve has "determined that there is no impact to performance between the two models" of SSD now being used. HardwareLuxx brought to light that the Steam Deck's 256GB and 512GB versions can now ship with either a two-lane or four-lane PCIe SSD , a spec change made at the end of May. We reached out to Yang to ask what the difference will mean for the end user. According to Valve's design team, there is no difference between the two drives except in "extremely uncommon cases." The original Steam Deck spec states a PCIe Gen3 x4 SSD for both the 256GB and 512GB versions of the device, but those SKUs are now listed with either PCIe Gen 3 x4 or PCIe Gen 3 x2 drives. It states that some models will ship with one kind of drive and some with the theoretically slower SSD. Valve's rationale for the change

There's a lot going on in Wild West Dynasty: roleplaying, survival, life simulation, resource management, and city building, according to the game's Steam page . You can see a bit of that (or a bit of some of that, anyway) in the first gameplay trailer above, which includes a cowboy shooting a boar before exploring a mine shaft, chopping down a tree, hitting a rock with a pickaxe, and then building a house.  Standard survival game stuff, in other words. But our rugged hero isn't just knocking together a homestead. He's building, growing, and managing a town around it in an effort to "become the most powerful man in the West."  "Survive the harsh environment, find a place to settle, build a ranch, raise a family and eventually become one of the most famous real estate tycoons the Wild West has ever seen," says the developer. "But be careful: The more fame and respect you garner, the more you’ll be in the crosshairs of outlaws." It

One of the biggest rumors heading into the week was potential information surrounding God of War: Ragnarok, possibly even a release date. But with June almost over and no mention of the next God of War game, Santa Monica Studio’s Cory Barlog is asking fans to keep the faith. “If it were up to me I would share all the information hen I know about it. But it is not up to me,” Barlog tweeted. “So please, be patient.” dear all, if it were up to me I would share all the information when I know about it. but it is not up to me. so please, be patient. I promise things will be shared at the earliest possible moment they can be. we make games for you. we get to make games because of you. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/aw7dje5XxF — cory barlog (@corybarlog) June 29, 2022 Barlog also added that information “will be shared at the earliest possible moment they can be,” meaning any information, or lack of is for a reason. For the past week, there have been rumors that there will be some kind of

Amazon has added a trio of new names to the cast of its upcoming Fallout television series , according to a new Variety report, which says that Xelia Mendes-Jones, Aaron Moten, and Kyle MacLachlan—yes, that Kyle MacLachlan—have all signed on to play regular roles. Mendes-Jones and Moten are relative unknowns. The report says Mendes-Jones just finished a stint at the Identity School of Acting in 2021, and she only has two credits to her name on IMDB: An appearance in the online comedy sketch show Sans Comic, and a small role in the 2022 flick Havoc.  Motem's CV is beefier, with short film and television appearances stretching as far back as 2006. In fact, he had a shot at serial TV stardom in the US in 2014 when he appeared as a forensic scientist in the backdoor pilot for NCIS New Orleans , but he was replaced in the actual show by Sebastian Lund. MacLachlan, on the other hand, is very well known. He starred as Paul Atreides in David Lynch's infamous 1984 bomb Dune, but

Desync, simply put, is when an online game server and client don't agree on a player's location: The client says a player is here, but the server says they're actually over there. As you can imagine, it's a real problem when you're trying to put bullets or blades into someone, and it's been an issue in Halo Infiinite since before the game released. "Players have found cases where you can permanently desync the client from the server," 343 Industries wrote in a February blog post , referencing a December 2021 thread on Reddit . "Usually, the moment we detect a desync, no matter how small, the client should begin correcting to the server’s position. In bad cases this results in rubberbanding, but in normal scenarios these changes should be unnoticeable. The cases where you permanently desync occur when our systems fail to detect and respond to desyncs." 343 said at the time that it had identified multiple situations in which Halo Infinite p

Allegations surfaced earlier this month that the development of Fallout 76 was plagued by, among other things, a heavy reliance on crunch . One source described it as "voluntold overtime," because employees were told that if nobody volunteered to come in to work over a weekend, the entire dev team would be called in. Bethesda's acquisition by Microsoft a couple years later reportedly hadn't changed the situation much, as sources said the new ownership was largely taking a hands-off approach to the studio. In a recent all-hands meeting reported on by Kotaku , however, Xbox Game Studios chief Matt Booty said he's "confident" the situation has changed, and that Bethesda and its parent company ZeniMax Media are no longer crunching as part of their regular process. He also made a point of noting that crunch wasn't a problem with Bethesda specifically, but just the way things were done across the industry as a whole. "Crunch culture is… if you go b

Nearly two years after its early access launch, I'm still playing Phasmophobia with my pals and we're pretty efficient ghost hunters. Compared to speedrunners though, we're just a bunch of teens poking around haunted houses. Twice-annual charity marathon Games Done Quick is on this week and a group of four totally pro ghost hunters spent thirty minutes bullying ghosts out of six different houses. The Phasmophobia speedrun was commentated by one of its participants, Brossentia, joined by Peace Egg, FlannelKat, and NPC_Lives. They showcased an Any% Small Maps run, meaning that they were attempting to identify (successfully or not) ghosts in all six of Phasmo's small size maps. As Brossentia put it, "We do not randomly guess. Instead we are doing it based off of evidence and based off of deduction," since selecting a ghost at random would be very fast but also very boring. SGDQ hasn't uploaded the Phasmo run on its own, but you can hop to the beginning of

Your eyes aren't deceiving you, Sony is making PC gaming hardware now. Inzone is a PC gaming-focused hardware brand within Sony that's entirely separate from PlayStation. Inzone is tasked with breaking into the PC market, and it plans on doing so with a line of new headsets and gaming monitors that appear to take some heavy design inspiration from its console cousin.  The Sony Inzone M9 is a stunning 4K 144Hz gaming monitor that makes a hell of a first impression. It offers up firm competition for some of the best high refresh rate 4K monitors by bringing a handful of neat little features that set it apart. For its first PC gaming monitor, Sony went with an 'everything but the kitchen sink approach'. This 27-inch 4K monitor runs at a 144Hz refresh rate and is G-Sync compatible with HDMI 2.1 VRR support. This means you can plug in both an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 and enjoy games at 4K at 120Hz. Something even some of our favorite 4K gaming monitors can't do

The best curved monitors for gaming pull you directly into your favorite games. It's a level of immersion you don't get from a dinky 19-inch flat panel display. With larger curved screens, having a monitor wrap around the corners puts the game into your peripheral vision. From colossal ultrawides to monitors with more subtle bends, I hand-picked some of my favorite curved displays I tested that are perfect for gaming.  Ultrawide displays like the Alienware 34 QD-OLED or Acer Predator X38 need one of the best graphics cards to play at resolutions like 3440 x 1440 comfortably. Matching the monitor's high refresh rate with high frame rates is how you'll ensure your money's well spent, and only a powerful GPU will get you there.  You don't need to spend over $2,000 on a decent curved monitor either; gamers on a budget might consider something smaller than an ultrawide beastie, such as the Dell S3220DGF or Pixio PXC273. These won't break the bank, but they