Welcome to, The RoundUp! This is our monthly news show which summarizes the past month in PC games news, PC tech news, and new Thermaltake products that you may have missed. On today’s RoundUp: one of the biggest streamers left Twitch, security leaks from E3 2019 affects lots of past attendees, and the new AMD NAVI GPU’s are overheating!? All this and more, in the RoundUp for August, 2019!
GAMES RELEASED
We saw a few cool games released this August for the PC. The biggest of which being the new IP Control, from Remedy Entertainment. The classic version of World of Warcraft dropped, bringing many players back to the game. We also saw the release of the spooky Blair Witch, and the new survival game, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. Lastly, the creators of Until Dawn are back, with a new multiple-choice game called, The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan[1].
MAJOR GAME UPDATES
2016’s No Man’s Sky had a major expansion released on August 14. The expansion, No Man’s Sky Beyond, added VR to the game and a multiplayer experience.[2] Overwatch’s 2/2/2 role lock queue went to the live servers, and Apex: Legends trialed a limited time solo mode. Rocket League decided to stop using random loot crates entirely, the studio head stating, “later this year we will remove all paid, randomized Crates from Rocket League, replacing them with a system that shows the exact items you’re buying in advance” [3]. Lastly, season 10 of Fortnite kicked off, and everyone seemed to hate the new Mechs they introduced.[4]
GENERAL GAMES NEWS
One of the biggest gaming news stories from August, was the departure of streamer Ninja, from Twitch. The streamer signed an exclusive deal with Twitch’s rival streaming platform, Mixer.[5]
Gamescon, one of the world’s biggest gaming events, happened over in Germany. There was a bunch of new trailers that dropped, including: Kerbal Space Program 2, and the Dragon Age inspired, Greedfall[6]. It was announced that Cyberpunk 2077, would include a new game plus mode.[7] And fingers crossed, Death Stranding is going to have a PC port. They didn’t confirm it exactly, but they didn’t say no either, so we can only hope![8]
Borderlands 3 dropped a bunch of character trailers, showcasing all four playable characters. In a shock turn of events, Telltale Games are back… sort of. A brand new team of people have purchased the name and the rights to some of their old games. They will also potentially be rehiring old Telltale staff on a freelance basis[9].
After numerous tragic events of gun violence recently in the US, multiple politicians – including the President himself – decided to attribute the increase in gun violence, to video games.[10] Many people did speak up against these claims however, putting forth that these politicians were just trying to deflect from the real causes of gun violence.
CONTROVERSIAL NEWS
This past month wasn’t without it’s fair share of controversies in the gaming industry either.
There were some issues around privacy this past month, with the ESA leaking the private information of over 2000 media and content creators who had attended the recent E3 conference.[11] Yikes!
There was a whole debacle around Day Z this past month in Australia. The game’s use of an illicit drug as a healing mechanic, meant the Australian government refused to give the game a rating. This meant the game was illegal to sell physically or digitally in Australia. The game was finally given an MA15+ rating, after the developers removed the healing mechanic. [12]
Lastly, we have the 2K controversy. Earlier this month, private investigators allegedly visited a YouTuber at his home address. They accused him with leaking private information about the upcoming Borderlands 3, a game they distribute. The YouTuber believed he had done nothing wrong, and was only sharing information that was already publicity available. 2K also flagged a bunch of the YouTuber’s content, seemingly getting them (and the channel) taken down. It’s unknown exactly what the full story is, but 2K alleges that there is more stuff below the surface that the YouTuber was doing. However, they could not provide further details, due to following up with legal action. So, it seems, we may not know the full story for a while.
TECH NEWS
Compared to July, this past month was relatively quiet in PC tech news.
There were a few new CPU releases, but neither were focused on gaming. Intel released their 10th Gen 10nm Ice Lake Processors which are specifically for laptops[13], and AMD released their Epyc processors, which are specifically designed for server workloads.[14]
If you haven’t updated your NVIDIA drivers yet, it might be worth it. NVIDIA posted a security post earlier last month which said that any GeForce, NVS, Quadro and Tesla GPU users who updated recently, need to update again ASAP. This was due to a major security flaw in their previous patch.
Some owners of the new AMD NAVI graphics cards have been concerned about the increasingly high temperature of the new GPU. But AMD quickly came out to declare that a, “temperature reading of 110C during a “typical gaming” session is both “expected and within spec.”[16] So don’t stress if it’s getting a little warm in the GPU department, it’s all seemingly working as intended.
Lastly, Intel has complimented AMD on their recent CPU releases, but also threw some sneaky shade as well. Intel’s Troy Serverson stated, “they’ve done a great job closing the gap, but we still have the highest performing CPUs in the industry for gaming, and we’re going to maintain that edge”. [17] The gauntlet has been officially thrown…. again.
THERMALTAKE NEWS
This past month here at Thermaltake, saw a few new releases also.
Case wise, we saw the re-release of our award winning View 71 case, now with a stunning ARGB edition. We also launched the awesome A700 Aluminium full tower case. We did a post on the blog recently about our favourite Thermaltake cases as well. So, go check it out here if you want to see more pretty cases from us!
We also released the Pacific CL360 Max D5 Hard Tube Water Cooling Kit, for any custom water coolers out there. And for the rest of us, there is the stunning new Floe DX All-in-One cooler, which we also made awesome video about up on our channel!
Keep an eye out again for out for our amazing new ToughRAM, and the accompanying video, out soon!
Feel free to let us know your thoughts about this edition of The RoundUp and everything we covered, in the comments down below!
SOURCES:
[1] https://www.gamesradar.com/au/video-game-release-dates/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/2/20751573/no-mans-sky-beyond-release-date-virtual-reality-online
[3] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/rocket-league-is-dropping-randomized-loot-crates/
[4] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/fortnite-season-10/
[5] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/ninja-mixer-exclusive/
[6] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/every-pc-game-gamescom-2019/
[7] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/cyberpunk-2077-will-have-a-new-game-plus-mode/
[8] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/death-stranding-is-no-longer-listed-as-a-playstation-4-exclusive/
[9] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/telltale-games-to-return-under-new-management/
[10] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/republican-politician-blames-videogames-for-mass-shootings/
[11] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/e3-organizer-leaks-personal-info-of-over-2000-media-and-content-creators/
[12] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/dayzs-australia-ban-has-now-been-officially-reversed/
[13] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/intel-finally-launches-its-10th-gen-10nm-ice-lake-processors/
[14] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/amd-launches-three-64-core-128-thread-cpus-but-theyre-for-the-datacenter/
[15] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/play-it-safe-and-install-nvidias-latest-gpu-drivers-to-mitigate-five-security-flaws/
[16] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/fretting-over-high-gpu-temps-amd-says-110c-is-expected-and-within-spec-on-navi/
[17] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/intel-pats-amd-on-the-back-for-closing-the-gap-but-says-its-cpus-are-still-best-for-gaming/
