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New York State previously announced its plans to introduce three new downstate casino licenses. One of those licenses is expected to be awarded for New York City and there are plenty of leading gaming operators and developers who have already shown interest. Overall, there are nine bids for a casino license for the Big Apple.

Earlier this week, city lawmakers approved important changes to the regulations, paving the way for the development of one casino. On Thursday, the New York City Council voted and approved a text amendment that would “allow applicants, with a proposed gaming site in the city, to be considered by committees of local officials established by the State’s casino licensing process.”

The City Council greenlighted the Gaming Facility Text Amendment which makes changes to New York’s zoning. Previously, casinos were not p…

2024 Olympics: Gymnast Suni Lee Reveals Why She Fell Off Balance Beam

Turns out quiet makes Suni Lee feel off balance.

The Team USA gymnast—who has won two bronze medals and one gold medal at the 2024 Olympics—shared what caused her and fellow teammate Simone Biles to fall off the balance beam during their Aug. 5 competition in Paris.

"It was really silent when you get up there," Suni told reporters afterwards . "I don't like that just because it gives me too much time to think and I can hear everything."

The mix of stress and quiet caused issues for the gymnasts, including Romania's Sabrina Voinea, who also fell.

"I like the cheering," the 21-year-old continued. "I don't like the silence. I don't like it. I thrive off the crowd, so having the crowd's energy especially after you finish a routine is really helpful."

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Baldur’s Gate 3 just received its fourth major patch. Once more, the thing’s big enough to break the Steam notes. While there aren’t any new major features—like the third patch’s appearance-changing mirror or, equally as important, letting small characters kiss Karlach—it’s still packed with changes.

A huge quality of life improvement comes in the form of some much needed personal hygiene. You can now use sponges and soap to wash the grime off your party members—which is nice, since Baldur’s Gate 3 features Dragon Age: Origins levels of blood splatter which, while immersive, does undercut more sensitive moments by saddling you and your crew with axe murderer vibes.

Another gamechanger: when purchasing a statue from Boney in the Circus of the Last Days, you now have your choice of modesty—fully armoured, camp clothes, or butt naked. I’ll be disappointed if you don’t get any unique dialogues for just plonking down y…

It’s been many years since Microsoft implemented proper support for HDR monitors in Windows but trying to correctly capture the colours in a screenshot has been a constant problem. At long last, though, the Snipping Tool has been updated in the latest development versions of Windows to help solve this annoying issue.

As announced in a tweet by the DirectX 12 team, Microsoft’s latest Insider preview builds of Windows 11 contain an update to the erstwhile Snipping Tool that “should be able to better display colors” when taking a capture of a screen running in HDR mode.

If those three letters mean nothing to you, HDR stands for high dynamic range. Basically, it means more bits are used for the three colours (red, green, and blue) that make up every pixel in your monitor. So instead of the usual eight, HDR monitors will use 10 or 12 bits, to make colours more accurate.

HDR screens also tend to have a higher maximum brightness than standard monitors, to increase the amo…

I don’t watch TV. Not in a smart guy way, more of a “I have 200 hours of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous logged on Steam” kind of way. Still, despite such a cultural diet, even I know about Love is Blind, the Netflix show where emotionally unwell people agree to get married before they’ve even met. It turns out love may be blind because it’s afflicted with scarlet rot.

As reported by Huffpost, on a recent episode contestant Zack Goytowski decided to run some curious baby names by his shotgun bride, Irina Solomonova: “What about Godfrey,” he proffered, with Solomonova simply responding, “Ew.” While she was nonplussed at the name of the First Elden Lord, maybe Goytowski would have had better luck with “Hoarah,” as in, “Hoarah Loux, Warrior, Chieftain of the Badlands and Alter Ego to Godfrey.”

Undeterred, Goytowski then hits her with “Godrick,” referring to the first Great Rune holder most players are likely to encounter, a mythic coward who rides around in a me…

New co-op survival game Enshrouded has been picking up Steam in the past few days, as the survival-crafting action RPG has not just pretty compelling combat but a really nice, rather in-depth building system. Per our predictions last year, Enshrouded’s impressive system of terrain alteration and building is giving rise to some truly delightful community creations. I’ve rounded up some of the best I’ve seen in the handful of days since release.

Hobbit Hole (WIP) from r/Enshrouded

In a hole in the ground there lived a Flameborn. Not a nasty, dirty, we hole, but one that was pretty neat because on the exterior, creator Guntoucher gave it that nice tudor style look, but on the inside it’s hall of hardwood flooring with detailed stonework atop the walls. 

It’s important to have a cozy place to stay in Enshrouded, because as we recently discovered sleep is one of its coolest features.

Mah House…

Life By You looked set to be the game that finally gave The Sims a run for its money, until it was beset by delays and then, in June, a surprise cancellation followed almost immediately by an unsurprising closure of developer Paradox Tectonic. Now, as so often happens in cases like this, previously unreleased images from the game are starting to come to light, giving us a look at what might have been—and it looks like it might have been really good.

The images come from the online portfolios of former Life By You artists Richard Khoo, Eric Maki, and Chris Lewis, and were helpfully put together on Twitter by Sims enthusiast and content creator SimMattically. Many of the images are basic shots of the character creator, but others showcase more visually impressive indoor and outdoor locales.

The sad irony is that many of these shots look better than the official Life For You screens shared by Paradox prior to the game’s cancellation, and that hasn’t gone unnoticed in …

This graph seems so unbelievable it makes the thing a little hard to parse. But basically, cryptocurrency mining in the US sucked down more energy that every computer in the entire country. Every. Single. Computer. 

Yes, even Macs.

Hell, at 50 billion kWh, crypto mining in the US almost used more power than all the televisions. And there are quite a few TVs in the States, in case you’d forgotten.

I’ve seen all the stories about cryptocurrency mining using more power than [insert country here], and those stats are always pretty astounding. But they always relate to the entirety of the global crypto network, or just the bitcoin mining around the world. And it’s quite easy to insulate yourself against such broad terms.

But when it’s just about the output of a single country—albeit the single largest contributor to the bitcoin mining industry—to me it seems to hit home much harder.

This all comes from a White House report on the proposed Di…

Watch On

A first look at Splitgate 2‘s gameplay shows off how the idea of an arena shooter, but with portals, is still just as wild and interesting a concept as when we first saw it. The 4.5 minute gameplay reveal features a few skilled streamers as they pour over Splitgate 2’s combat, what sets it apart from the original Splitgate, and its three new classes—called factions. 

They especially note what’s new about Splitgate 2, particularly the introduction of factions. The original Splitgate had a traditional Halo setup with weapon pickups on the map and periodic power weapons, but Splitgate 2 pivots in a Call of Duty-shaped direction with classes and loadouts. Streamers also noted faster-paced movement, including a new sliding mechanic that punches up firefights. They also emphasize the new variety to matches, with abilities and utility powers like a deployable shield and self-boosting stim.

There are now three factions of Splitgate competitors to choos…

Embers of Neltharion, the first big update to World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, has brought a new zone, raid, and dungeons to Blizzard’s long-running MMO, and of course a whole bunch of new and interesting items—one of which requires a very old and uninteresting item to acquire.

As Starym on the Icy Veins forum (via GamesRadar) explains it, there’s a Blazing Shadowflame chest located at coordinates 28.8, 47.5 of the new Zaralek Cavern zone. The problem is that the Shadowflames surrounding the chest cannot be bypassed unless you have an Onyxia Scale Cloak. And the problem with that is that the Onyxia Scale Cloak is an item from Vanilla (read: old) WoW, and not many people have kept one lying around.

That, predictably, led to a surge in demand for relevant crafting materials, and a commensurate spike in prices for said materials. “Thanks to a recently discovered secret requiring an old cloak, farmed ingredients for the cloak which includes scale of Onyxia is now going…

We haven’t heard much about the upcoming Subnautica 2, apart from the devs reassuring fans that it won’t be a live service game, so fans are understandably excited at the discovery of secret new screenshots of the sequel. 

An eagle-eyed Subnautica player spotted what looked like a strange new creature in a time capsule. The picture includes a few new rainbow tadpole-like creatures, which we haven’t seen before. “Hey um, found this on my way to the rocket,” the image’s description says. “Is this thing new? Never seen it before! :O” 

This kicked up quite a fuss as even veteran players couldn’t identify the odd sea creature leading some to believe that this has to be from some kind of mod: “That looks quite similar to that screenshot they shared a few months ago,” one player says. “Could just be mods and a weird perspective tho.”

However, it turns out that this isn’t from any mod, it’s actually a new screenshot from the upcoming Subnautica 2. While a couple …

You can find many deals on SSDs today. That bit is relatively easy, especially as the Memorial Day PC gaming sales get into full swing. What’s tougher is knowing if any drive is actually worth your hard earned money. Some are, and I’ve dug them out for your easy browsing below.

First off, this Nextorage 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD for $136 over at Newegg. This is a drive that takes full advantage of the PCIe Gen 4 connection with write speeds of 7,400 MB/s and read speeds of 6,400 MB/s. It’s right up there with many of the best SSDs for gaming.

Nextorage actually started out as a company dedicated to building SSDs for the PlayStation 5, but relatively swiftly saw the opportunity in the wider PC market—as has Sony itself. We were impressed with the company’s PCIe 4.0 drive in our Nextorage NEM-PA 2TB review, and since then I’ve looked at the Gen 5 option—the Nextorage X Series NN5PRO—a much pricier drive but hella quick.

There’s also a Nextorage drive with a …

You know how Steam is famously strict about certifying new updates? No? I’ve just been handed a note, apparently Steam doesn’t give a hoot and the only explanation for Square Enix being so tardy with updates for the PC version of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters (and the mobile versions too) is that they forgot the rest of us exist.

Well, not any more. A light lit up on a board somewhere in Square Enix headquarters that said “maybe it’s time to fix the fonts on PC” and here we are in 2024, finally seeing the first six Final Fantasy games update to version 1.10.

The option to select the original “classic” font rather than the “modern” font is an important upgrade, but so are the assistance features added to the config menu. As the patch notes put it, “They offer options such as applying a x0 to x4 modifier to the amount of EXP, gil or Magic AP obtained or turning enemy encounters off.” Movement speed can also be adjusted on the same menu, which “allows you to switch the …

Continuing a long legacy of co-op games with wacky themes, Unrailed 2: Back on Track returned to today’s PC Gaming Show to share one of its coolest new features: the “terrain conductor” mode that lets you build your own levels. 

When we previously saw Unrailed 2, the team at Indoor Astronaut gave us a look at abilities and different wagons available—and the fact that everyone is an animal, an obvious upgrade over humans—but now we can see just how easy it is to use its level maker mode. Filling the blank canvas with grassy fields, thick groves of trees, and rocky mountain ranges is easy enough that it looks like a sort of voxel-based MS Paint. Being accessible and quick to use is a big plus, regardless of whether you want to create a cool puzzle for your friends or just draw rude pictures out of trees.

One of the examples shown includes a map separated into two halves by mountains, which are in turn bisected by conveyor belts. You can see the play…

The venerable online shooter Tribes made a surprise comeback in late 2023 as Tribes 3: Rivals, and with a launch set to happen later this year developer Prophecy Games has announced the first Rival Rumble tournament, an open-to-all competition that’s set to get underway on January 27.

The tournament could be a big one: Entry is free, there’s no cap on the number of signups, everyone who joins will play, and while there will be separate competitions for North America and the European Union, anyone can jump in, even if they don’t live in those regions. 

Signups will be open until January 25, after which team captains will be “determined based on interest,” according to Prophecy. Captains will then draft their teams—the exact drafting process is still being nailed down but probably won’t be too different from your average fantasy football league, except that captains presumably won’t know anything about who they’re signing up.

That promises to make things i…

Following Baldur’s Gate 3’s wildly successful PC launch and a few bug-squashing hotfixes, Larian CEO Swen Vincke says that the D&D RPG will get one more hotfix (there have been three so far) before its first big patch, which will include “+1,000 fixes and tweaks.” That patch will then be followed by—and you might’ve been able to guess this—another patch, one which’ll start to respond to player suggestions.

“We’re all very enthused by your feedback. It’s very rewarding,” wrote Vincke. “Our focus now is fixing any issues you report, but we are listening to suggestions. Current roadmap: a) Hotfix 4, b) Patch 1 (+1000 fixes and tweaks), c) Patch 2. The latter will already incorporate some requests.”

In an interview with PC Gamer last week, Vincke also confirmed that official mod tools are on the way, which is slightly juicer news than ‘game will get patches.’ We mentioned that tidbit in an article last week about Larian’s absence of expansion plans, but …

Here’s my toxic trait: I get annoyed when games aren’t on Steam. Not for any principled reason, not because I love my Steam Deck (though I do), and not even because Steam—per our own ranking of the PC’s many launchers—is the best client of the bunch. I just don’t like my collection being scattered all over various clients. It feels like having all your games on one shelf in your living room but being compelled, by some mysterious force, to occasionally go and put some of them on a different shelf upstairs. It’s not right, it’s unnatural, and I shan’t have it.

Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, right, I mention this because Dead Island 2—last year’s underwhelming zombie-basher that’s been hitherto Epic-only—is making the inevitable jump to Steam on April 22. You guessed it: that’s one year and one day after it came out on the Epic Games Store. If you close your eyes, you can visualise with almost crystal clarity the terms on the contract Deep Silver…

Steam’s latest hardware survey has been released. The key trends for December 2023 show that Windows 11 is inching towards parity with Windows 10, gamers are gradually shifting towards higher core count CPUs, and the share of systems with 8GB or less of RAM continues to shrink.

Although the wider market has not fallen in love with Windows 11, with just 26% of the desktop market share compared to the dominant Windows 10 at 67%, the picture is a little different for gamers.

In December’s Steam survey, Windows 11 made up ground, with 44% of surveyed users on Windows 11 compared to 51% on Windows 10. That’s a 4% swing compared to the previous month. With Windows 12 reportedly set to launch later in the year, Windows 10’s dominance should continue to erode over the course of 2024.

Data on the number of physical CPUs tends to be variable and Intel systems with e-cores make for some odd configurations, but it is interesting to see the number of users with eig…

You can spend a long time trying to nail down the exact parts required for a full custom loop build. In a way, that’s a part of it. You really come to appreciate the PC you’ve built by the end of the process, as it’s one you’ve created from the ground up. 

But if you’re less sentimental, you might just want someone else to put together a parts list for you. EZ PZ. That’s what EK does with its ‘Loop’ builds, and right now everything on its store is 24% off, which makes such a build that little bit more affordable.

Alright, affordable these builds ain’t, but every little helps when investing in something as expensive as a fully liquid-looped build. You’re looking at spending anything from $1,284 for the cheapest all-inclusive kit to around $2,628 for the so-called “Golden Sample”. Nice name, lovely build.

These kits include all the big bits, such as your CPU and GPU blocks, pump, radiators, and distro plate. Though it also includes the more finicky bits that can…

Win today’s Wordle exactly the way you want to with our help. There’s a clue for today’s game written up and waiting below if you just need a little nudge. There’s also the answer to the November 10 (874) puzzle in full if your win streak is in danger of leaving you forever. 

The neighbours must’ve heard the excited gasp I made this morning when my opening word revealed three yellow letters and a green: the Wordle answer was so very close, I knew if I was really clever with my follow up I could get this over in record time. So I checked and checked again before I committed and… a win in just two guesses? I’m so happy I could cheer (sorry, neighbours).

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Friday, November 10

You’d take a dog for a walk on one of these and this item is sometimes referred to as a lead. 

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Is there a double letter in Wordle today? 

No, there is no double letter in today’s …