I'll be honest right off the bat. As a single player Elder Scroller, the Elder Scrolls Online's never managed to hook me for more than a few hours. I've given it a couple of goes, usually during periods when it's gone free to play, but have always bounced off its vast MMOiness. Might the slew of fresh additions coming across the next couple of years be able to change that and finally convince me to spend significant time with ESO in the same way I have Fallout 76 in the past few years? The answer could be yes, if the naval combat and underwater exploration Zenimax have just revealed are as fun as they sound on paper.

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Well, that's certainly a bold strategy. Mark Gerhard, CEO of MindsEye developers Build a Rocket Boy, has said that the studio are indeed planning to add a new mission to the game which will "share some of the evidence of the sabotage". That'd be the sabotage from a malevolent third party which the exec's been alleging MindsEye faced around launch for a while now, with Gerhard also claiming that an investigation into it is currently in the hands of "authorities" in the UK and US.

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If you've ever longed for your Steam library to be a bunch of shelves littered with physical games you can touch, sniff, and agonise about having to shift if you move house, let me introduce you to Boxroom. It takes all of the games you've either bought for pennies in a sale and never got around to playing or paid through the nose for on release and have put 1000 hours into out of sheer sunk-cost fallacy. It sticks their front covers onto boxes you can use to fill a cosy customisable computer room.

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Letters have been sent by the US Federal Trade Commission to the CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe, reminding them that there could be hell to pay if they deny customers access to their services because of said customers' political or religious views. Potential discrimination against those with Trumpy views are the body's main concern, but their push could also impact the buying of NSFW games.

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Eidos Montreal, developers of the most recent two Deus Ex entries, have laid off 124 staff. At the same time, they've announced that they're "parting ways" with veteran studio head David Anfossi, who'd been in that post for just under 13 years.

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With the first few months of its latest target release year drawing to a close, the modders behind Skyblivion are looking to make some "final" and "vital" veteran additions to their team in order to get the ambitious remake of Oblivion in Skyrim's engine over the line. This comes after a delay late last year, which saw Skyblivion's arrival pushed to 2026, following some accusations from a former dev that it was being rushed out of the door.

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I know exactly who Kliff, the protagonist of Crimson Desert, is. During my romp through the vast expanse of Pywel, he was a distant tower enthusiast with a side interest in lonely locomotives. Aside from those things, he's rather bland. Though, the actor who played him has now outlined that throughout the game's regularly shifting development - which included a name change for its main character - he pushed Pearl Abyss to make the character more than just a stoic line-grumbler.

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When James and I published our impressions of anime racer Screamer the other week, I mentioned I was keen to give its online races a go once it’d pulled out of the garage. Would the sights and sounds of sliding around its twisty tracks and slamming into real people make for as much fun as I’d had racing the computer in its story mode?

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Epic Games' mass layoffs led a programmer with terminal brain cancer to lose his life insurance, leaving him and his family struggling to find new coverage. Following news of the situation breaking, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has said the company have reached out to the programmer - Mike Prinke - and that they "will solve the insurance".

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Pearl Abyss' bashing of their massive open-world into a more palatable shape continues, with Crimson Desert's latest patch packing a bunch more tweaks to controls and adding some new animals to ride around on. It also looks to have begun swapping out those AI paintings the studio previously claimed were accidentally left in it on release, though the patch's wording around this change is fairly vague.

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Sundays are for deciding to re-watch The Sopranos. Specifically that episode in which Tony gets a bad tummy and then talks to a fish. You wonder what you might fever dream of, if you too were to go and eat at an Indian restaurant, then have enough room for a snack at Artie Bucco's fine Italian eatery? Would you too dream of surreal wandering down a boardwalk? Would you instead dream something different? Would you dream of a platypus sitting in a high-rise apartment, looking up from the newspaper as he reminds a house guest not to trip over a potted cactus when they exit his bathroom?

Would that be the-Oh. Oh no. It's happening again. The person who's emerged from the bathroom, tripping over the plant on the way, is bald and reeks of alternative comedy. Ready the words and prepare to fire.

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Crusader Kings 3's latest "Realm Maintenance" update, all about improving and adding to the base game's established systems, is out now in beta form. It includes a big ledger full of spreadsheets you can use to keep track of the world, a rework of accolades, and makes the lives of older rulers even more miserable.

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Though there are things to love in Crimson Desert if you're open to hobbies like tower ogling or ghost train riding, the mammoth action adventure blob's story is arguably its biggest weakness. Well, aside from those AI paintings which were left in it on release. Developers Pearl Abyss, currently in the midst of trying to patch up a lot of the other holes players and critics have pointed out, have now made clear they're aware that their tale of people witrh grey manes fighting evil bears isn't the best.

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Snap. Up until now, that's been the sort of sound you only hear in Resident Evil Requiem when a spooky monster may or may not be sneaking up on you. Thanks to a new patch from Capcom, though, it could now also signify that you've just taken a cute photo of the spooky monster about to ruin Grace or Leon's day.

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As hinted at by previous peeks at it, which were set in 1915 and 1943, Like A Dragon devs RGG Studio are jumping around in time with their upcoming historical brawler Stranger than Heaven. They've confirmed via a fresh trailer that it's set in five different decades and, arguably more surprisingly, five different Japanese cities.

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We've all been there. You and two other morally dubious alien treasure hunters have an expedition go wrong, and find yourselves having to tactically blast through some baddies in order to secure some relics in timely fashion. Well, at least that's situation the three protagonists of Vaunted, a newly announced tactical RPG, find themselves in.

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I dunno if you heard earlier this month, but PlayStation are reportedly breaking up with us PC folks, at least when it comes to the PS5's biggest singleplayer hitters. Asked where Returnal devs Housemarque's new game Saros - due out next month - fits into that, its director has opted to remain tight-lipped.

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Having re-launched Splitgate 2 as Spligate: Arena Reloaded late last year, 1047 Games have now kicked off early work on a new shooter. Details are scarce aside from the fact you'll be able to move around in it and that 1047 CEO Ian Proulx reckons it should appeal to fans of Titanfall and Call of Duty Blops 3. Oh, and that you can sign-up for to playtest it now.

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Up until Bethesda's announcement that it'll be getting some robot army DLC next month and the yassification of its faces by Nvidia's DLSS 5 tech, I'd not thought about seeing how Starfield's modding scene is getting on for a little while. That's now changed, because they've finally gotten seamless custom animations working.

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Players and developers should boycott Nvidia's AI-stuffed DLSS 5 tech, with hopes that it'll force the compny to "think about going back to giving us what we want". That's the appeal being made by Dave Oshry, CEO of indie studio New Blood Interactive, who's been asked for his take on the neural rendering gubbins Nvidia exec Jensen Huang's recently been adopting a multitude of tones as he's tried to convince critis that they've just got it all wrong.

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