Month: September 2024

NetherRealm recently announced that Mortal Kombat 1 will be coming out in September, and will be both a reboot and a sequel. Now it’s got a Steam page too, and that Steam page includes its system requirements.

They’re not too steep, still only asking for 8GB of RAM and even on the Recommended tier a GTX 1080 Ti or a Radeon RX 5700 XT. Since fighting games usually target a framerate of 60fps, they’re often not that demanding. It’s worth noting that Mortal Kombat 1 asks for 100GB of available storage space, simply to add it to the list of games proving the era of 100GB games is upon us.

Install sizes have come a long way from Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition fitting tidily in 20GB a decade ago. To be fair, Mortal Kombat 11 took up a similar amount of space, thanks largely to its 4K cinematics. (I suspect all the cosmetics demanded a fair amount of real estate too.)

There’s no mention of what resolution or framerate they’re targeting, but here’s the kind of system you’ll need to play the next in NetherRealm’s series of fighting games where people keep going at it even after having all their bones repeatedly broken:

Mortal Kombat 1 minimum system re…

Stardew Valley’s 1.6 update has been in the works for just under a year—I know because I can’t stop checking my watch. As the release date (March 19) approaches, developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has teased that the update packs in a lot more than what’s been revealed. 

Thanks to a sneak peek last year, we already know that 1.6 will include a new major festival, two mini-festivals, late-game content, new items and crafting recipes, 100+ new lines of dialogue, and winter outfits for the villagers. However, in an interview with Polygon, where Barone discussed the Stardew Valley soundtrack concert, he also teased that “there’s a lot more of the update than people think.” 

“It’s more focused on the valley and the core areas of the game,” Barone continued. “It just adds so much stuff to all the different aspects of the game. It’s also a time of high intensity. The patch is pretty much ready to go. But there are a few things I still need to do. Until everything is totally sealed, it’s going to be a little bit stressful.” 

There are a few small updates that I would love to see added in 1.6, such as making fish roe accessible without needing to …

Larian Studios kinda knocked it out of the park with Baldur’s Gate 3—and while it’ll be leaving Dungeons & Dragons for some time, I’m nonetheless hyped beyond belief to see what Swen Vincke & Co. are cooking. 

It’s been known that Larian’s tackling two projects since April, as per a Steam community update shared by founder Swen Vincke, but he noted that it was “still early days”. While I wouldn’t think Larian’d tease and then ding-dong ditch in such a fashion, it wouldn’t be the first time an early promise turned out to not be feasible.

But it really looks like it’s full steam ahead for Larian—as per a recent tweet made by the developer announcing the opening of a studio in Warsaw, Poland: “With two very ambitious RPGs now starting development, what better way to see our visions realised than by growing the team and opening a 7th studio in the heart of Poland’s lively gaming scene!”

In a press release, Vincke adds: “Visiting [the Game Industry Conference in Poland] last year confirmed what I’d been thinking for a while—there’s a lot of talent here and a lot of devs who think like us. On top of that, many of them want to work…

In a new and frankly embarrassing interview with Variety, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said there’s actually never been a problem with “systemic” harassment at the company, and that reports of such things were mainly the result of unions trying to cause trouble.

2021 was a very bad year for Activision Blizzard. In July of that year, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing—now known as the Civil Rights Department—filed a lawsuit alleging widespread discrimination and sexual harassment at the company; that was followed by other investigations, the departure of numerous high-level employees, apologies, fines, multiple additional lawsuits, and significant pushback from employees, who founded the ABK Workers Alliance to help drive unionization efforts and bring about other meaningful change at the company.

Despite all of that, Activision Blizzard’s board of directors said in June 2022 that, after conducting its own internal investigation, there was no evidence of systemic gender-based misconduct at the studio. Now, Kotick is not only sticking to that story, he’s taking it a step further by pointing the finger at labor organizers.

“…