Welcome to, The RoundUp! This is our news post summarising the past month in PC gaming, PC tech and new Thermaltake products. On today’s RoundUp for February 2020: there is so much gaming news we had to make sub SUB headings, a recent survey shows a TON of people suffer from post game toxicity in LoL and AMD’s stocks show they are finally closing the gap. All that and more, in the RoundUp for February 2020!
GAMES RELEASED
February is looking like it will be the final month of quiet game releases (Thank the Maker!). Only a few games of note came out for the PC this February, including Zombie Army 4: Dead War on February 4th. This was followed by Street Fighter V: Champion Edition on February 14th, which is a revamped version of the 2016 game including all fighters, stages and costumes. Lastly, a game based on popular anime One Punch Man, released on the 27th, called One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows.
GAMES NEWS
Despite the lack of new games, last month was FULL of games news! So strap yourselves in, cos I’m going to have to add sub SUB headings and EVERYTHING!
Announcements
The Sims 4 announced that it recently hit 20 million players with the celebration of it’s 20th birthday. In addition to this, EA CEO Andrew Wilson, talked about their plans for future sims games, wanting the Sims 5 and beyond to have an emphasis on, “social interactions and competition”.[1]
Nier: Automata developer PlatinumGames have had a busy month, teasing 4 new projects. The first project unveiled is a remaster of their 2013 game, The Wonderful 101. It’s rumoured to be releasing on the Switch, PS4 and PC in April, 2020. Their second project, unveiled on February 27, is currently called Project GG. This looks like a Godzilla style monster fighting game.[2] There doesn’t seem to be a release date for it, nor any further information on what platform it will be on.
Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser announced his departure from the company earlier last month. This announcement came as a big shock as he and his brother Sam founded the studio back in 1998.[3] There is no confirmed reason for his departure as of this post’s published date.
Activision announced there will be another new Call of Duty this year. CEO Bobby Kotick also confirmed that more remasters are also in the pipeline.[4]
General Manager of Bioware, Casey Hudson, posted an update about their divisive game, Anthem. Hudson put forth that the company will be focusing on a long term re-design of the game, working to reinvent its core game play.[5]
Untitled Goose Game won the DICE game of the year! The little Aussie indie game beat out big name games like Death Stranding and Control.[6]
In sad news, the creator of the iconic Konami code passed away. Kazuhisa Hashimoto passed away at 61, and is best known for developing the powerful cheat code for the notoriously hard game Gradius.[7]
Updates
PUBG has announced a new 8v8 team deathmatch mode, that is now live on their testing server. The mode is first person only, with respawning, and no friendly fire enabled.[8]
Rainbow Six Seige is following popular game Apex: Legends and introducing a ping system. Players can now call out gadgets to teammates without the use of a mic. Players can only ping one item at a time though.[9]
The 2001 classic German RPG Gothic is officially getting a remake. It will available on PC and next generation consoles, however it will sadly not be released this year.[10]
Stardew Valley fans rejoice, as February was a big month news wise! First, the creator of Stardew Valley announced 2 new games in the works, both tying into the Stardew Valley universe, however they will not be farming games. They do sound a far while off though, and creator Eric Barone asks for people not to get too hyped just yet.[11] On top of this, Stardew Valley itself will be getting a new update soon. There is currently no information as to what will be in the update, or when it will be released.[12]
Blizzard
It’s been a busy month for Blizzard, and not always in the best ways.
First, they announced that both Diablo and Overwatch will be getting animated TV adaptations. This comes from the co-president of Blizzard’s LinkedIn profile listing himself as the executive producer of these shows. There have been no official announcements though.[13]
Overwatch introduced a new experimental mode. This mode is to test out ideas that the development team are not entirely certain about, and so this experimental mode introduces the idea of 3 dps, 2 healers and 1 tank.[14]
In further Overwatch news, three weeks of Overwatch League games have been cancelled due to the current issues with the Coronavirus. The South Korean based matches have been postponed indefinitely until the situation is resolved.[15]
Warcraft 3: Reforged. That’s all I need to say right? You know the rest. Basically, the remastering of Warcraft 3 did not go down well, giving the game the lowest score ever on Metacritic, 0.5.[16] Ouch.
2 senior Hearthstone developers have announced they are leaving the successful card game to work on a secret Blizzard project. The pair have confirmed it is something entirely new.[17]
Gears of War veteran, Rod Fergusson has announced his departure from The Coalition, to move to Blizzard. Fergusson has been working on the Gears series since it’s inception, but is now reportedly going to be running Diablo.[18]
Valve
Steams’ concurrent user count has officially passed 18.8 million users. Their previous record of 18.5 million was set back in January 2018.[19]
Valve have banned over 40,000 DOTA 2 smurf accounts. They were banned for “abusive matchmaking”, which is a big problem in DOTA 2.[20]
After just “March, 2020” for so long, Valve has finally revealed the official release date for Half-Life: Alyx. March 23 is now the day all of us Half-Life fans can finally return to the world we have missed for so long.[21]
CONTROVERSIAL NEWS
High schools in Kentucky have banned students from a Fortnite high school league. A Kentucky high school athletic association spokesperson stated that, “There is no place for shooting games in our schools”.[22]
It’s pretty safe to say that Warcraft 3: Reforged was a colossal disaster. And after this, Blizzard took the correct steps by offering no-questions-asked full refunds for the game.[23] So if you’re still seething with rage and holding onto the game, now’s your time to shine!
Activision has taken legal action against a Reddit user who leaked a image about a potential upcoming Cal of Duty: Modern Warfare Battle Royale mode. On top of this, Activism are taking big steps to issue takedown notices to anyone who shares the leaked image.[24]
FIFIA pro player and popular French streamer “Kurt0411” has been officially banned from all EA Games and services, including FIFA. This is due to him breaking several EA’s Terms of Service, specifically pertaining to his alleged “abusive and threatening” behaviour.[25]
GDC is looking in doubt for 2020 after a bunch of big-name developers pulled out of the conference due to concerns over the recent Coronavirus outbreak. This started with big companies like Sony and Facebook, before Hideo Kojima similarly pulled out, and lastly EA, Epic Games AND Microsoft all did also.[26] (** as of the posting of his RoundUp, GDC has officially been cancelled. Next months RoundUp will go more in depth)
In a community made survey, it was revealed that 79% of players deal with post game harassment in League of Legends. The creator also asked a number of different questions in the survey, ranging from time played on each character to, “how quickly do you get toxic.”[27] The full survey is here and is a very interesting insight into (sadly) one of gaming’s most toxic communities.
TECH NEWS
A number of Windows 10 users found a strange bug in which the Windows search feature constantly came up blank. This was caused by the integration of Bing into Windows search, and fixes have been found.[28]
AMD’s recently revealed shares illustrates that the gap is closing between them and Intel. The success of their Ryzen 3000 series is probably a big reason behind this growth. [29]
In further AMD news, their 3990X Threadripper launched in early February. They don’t come cheap though, costing almost 4 Thousand dollars each![30]
Moving onto Intel news now, and it seems their upcoming Core i7-10700K may outperform their current Core i9-990K! From the stats posted on Twitter, it seems they are aiming to produce a CPU to push higher clock speeds, despite having less cores.[31]
Intel has also promised to bring full memory encryption to its processors. AMD currently offers a similar system for their CPU’s, but it looks like Intel’s won’t be available for a while still.[32]
A new update Windows 10 has patched 99 total issues[33]. So, if you’re avoiding updates, maybe now’s the time just to suck it up and do it!
Contrary to some peoples beliefs, a Macbook Pro CAN get viruses, an apparently more often than you think! Macs are being attacked often by adware, and tend to get attacked by nearly 2:1 to Windows systems![34] Be careful out there Apple users!
While the HDD isn’t quite dead yet, sadly, due to SSD’s being lower in price, 93% if laptops sold in Western Europe in Q4 2019 had SSD’s as their primary storage. This increased dramatically from 2017, when it was just 66.7%.[35] This does make sense, due to SSD’s more compact size and faster speeds.
THERMALTAKE NEWS
After calming down finally from the VERY busy January we had, February still saw some amazing new releases and content from us.
We realized the stunning V250 ARGB mid tower case, which we also created an awesome First Look for.
Over on our YouTube channel, we had a busy month! We released an awesome How-To video on PETG Tubing for all the up and coming water coolers out there, as well as a great First Look at our View 51 case. On top of this, we produced a stunning “Dream Build” video in the View 51, showcasing the sights and sounds of building a PC.
Our podcast Thermal Talk is still going, finally reaching our TENTH episode this week. There are currently 2 new video podcasts up on our channel! Check out the audio versions a week early on Spotify, SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
Here on the blog we posted a countdown of our favourite game end credits sequence, as well as an essay on Game Crunch.
And that was the RoundUp for February 2020! See you next month!
[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/the-sims-4-hits-20-million-players-with-online-play-hinted-for-a-next-gen-game/ [2] https://four.platinumgames.com/02-GG/ [3] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/rockstar-co-founder-dan-houser-is-leaving-the-company/ [4] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/expect-a-new-call-of-duty-and-more-remasters-from-activision-this-year/ [5] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/anthem-seasons-are-being-dropped-as-bioware-pledges-to-reinvent-the-game/ [6] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/untitled-goose-game-wins-game-of-the-year-at-this-years-dice-awards/ [7] https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/26/21154655/konami-code-creator-dies-kazuhisa-hashimoto-obituary-contra-gradius-nes [8] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/pubg-is-getting-an-8v8-team-deathmatch-mode/ [9] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/rainbow-six-siege-will-adopt-a-pinging-system-similar-to-apex-legends/ [10] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/the-gothic-remake-is-happening-but-fans-want-it-to-be-grittier-than-the-teaser/ [11] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/stardew-valley-creator-is-working-on-two-new-games/ [12] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/stardew-valley-is-getting-another-free-content-update/ [13] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/diablo-and-overwatch-might-be-getting-animated-tv-adaptations/ [14] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/overwatchs-new-experimental-mode-coming-tomorrow-jeff-kaplan-says-dont-freak-out/ [15] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/more-overwatch-league-matches-cancelled-due-to-coronavirus/ [16] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/warcraft-3-reforged-has-the-lowest-user-score-for-a-game-on-metacritic/ [17] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/senior-hearthstone-developers-have-left-to-on-a-secret-new-project-at-blizzard/ [18] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/gears-of-war-studio-head-is-leaving-to-work-on-diablo/ [19] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/steam-just-broke-its-record-player-count-by-nearly-300k/ [20] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/valve-bans-more-than-40000-dota-2-accounts-for-abusing-matchmaking/ [21] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/half-life-alyx-release-date-is-march-23/ [22] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/kentucky-high-schools-ban-fortnite-league-over-concerns-about-shooter-games/ [23] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/blizzard-is-offering-refunds-upon-request-for-warcraft-3-reforged/ [24] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/activision-takes-legal-action-against-call-of-duty-modern-warfare-battle-royale-reddit-leaker/ [25] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/ea-bans-fifa-pro-and-streamer-from-everything/ [26] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/gdc-2020-shrinks-as-hideo-kojima-playstation-and-facebook-all-pull-out/ [27] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/79-of-league-of-legends-players-say-they-were-harassed-after-a-match-ended-according-to-a-community-survey/ [28] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/if-your-windows-10-search-results-are-coming-up-blank-heres-how-to-fix-it/ [29] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/amds-ryzen-onslaught-is-paying-off-in-pc-cpu-share-gains-against-intel/ [30] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/amds-extravagant-64-core-threadripper-3990x-is-now-available-for-dollar3990/ [31] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/the-upcoming-core-i7-10700k-should-easily-outperform-todays-core-i9-9900k/ [32] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/intel-is-finally-improving-its-cpu-security/ [33] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/this-months-windows-security-update-may-be-the-biggest-ever-with-99-fixes/ [34] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/macs-now-twice-as-likely-to-get-infected-by-adware-than-pcs-according-to-research/ [35] https://www.pcgamer.com/au/ssds-have-virtually-killed-off-laptop-hdds-in-western-europe/
