Welcome to The RoundUp! This is our monthly news post summarising the past month in PC gaming, PC tech and new Thermaltake products. On today’s RoundUp for February 2021: an upcoming AAA game is delayed indefinitely and hackers threaten to release CD Projekt Red’s source code. All that and more in this RoundUp for February 2021.
GAMES NEWS
Games Released
February has been a bit quiet on the PC games release front, but there was still a good few releases worth checking out if you haven’t already!
Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood released on February 4. This was followed then by Nioh 2 – Complete Edition on February 5.
Next came the sequel to the eerie Little Nightmares, Little Nightmares 2 on February 11. Lastly, Persona 5: Strikers released on February 23.
Announcements
This month saw the announcement of a few cool PC ports coming out soon.
First, the Kingdom Hearts series is on the way! 4 of the games are coming to the PC exclusively to the Epic Games store on March 30.
Additionally, Overcooked! All You Can Eat is also coming to the PC on Steam. The game includes the first 2 Overcooked games as well as new levels and features that were previously only coming to consoles. The game will release on March 23.
Delays
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is delayed indefinitely. The game was originally due to release last year. Now it looks like the future of the game is in doubt after developer Hardsuit Labs were removed from the project. Fingers crossed the new team can finish the game sooner rather than later!
Blizzcon
Overall, there wasn’t a whole ton of news from Blizzcon, but here are the best bits if you missed it.
World of Warcaft’s next update for Shadowlands was revealed. Chains of Domination looks like a big addition to the already widely well received Shadowlands. There is no set official date for this release.
Diablo 2 is getting a remake. It releases sometime in 2021 to PC and consoles, with added cross-platform progression. Sadly, there wasn’t a whole lot about the upcoming Diablo 4, apart from some info on the rogue class and how the open world PvP will work.
Hearthstone will be getting a new mode titled, Mercenaries. Additionally, the next expansion, Forged in the Barrens looks very Horde orientated.
Finally, there was a bit of information in the Overwatch world. The team showcased OW2’s new character Sojourns’ weapon, which is a cool looking railgun. The team are also looking into implementing passive abilities to every role.
Everything Else
Hollywood has reportedly purchased the rights to the Gamestop/Reddit story. If you somehow missed this story, last month Reddit took over the stock market, pushing Gamestop shares higher and higher. Film studio MGM have decided this sounds like a great feature film idea, and bought the rights to a film based on the true story.
EA will still make Star Wars games, despite losing exclusivity. Even with Lucasfilm Games coming back into the picture, their partnership with Disney doesn’t seem to be over quite yet.
The latest in the Battlefield series will be revealed this spring. There hasn’t been a new game in the series since 2018 with Battlefield 5. EA CEO Andrew Wilson has stated that the next Battlefield experience is due this holiday season, and more will be revealed soon.
The CEO and co-founder of ZeniMax Media has sadly passed away. Robert A. Altman founded the company in 1999, launching the media company alongside Bethesda Softworks founder Christopher Weaver.
Anthem is no more. Bioware has offically ended further development of the game. The company cites the ongoing global pandemic as one of the major reasons for pulling the plug on it. This does not mean the game will suddenly stop working though, but there will be no further updates.
In better Bioware news, Dragon Age 4 is ditching its live service features. This is reportedly due to the well received response to Jedi: Fallen Order, a fully single-player experience, and the negative response to the fully online Anthem. It seems this news is a step in the right direction for the mainly single-player series.
Dying Light 2 might be delayed even further if the reports of how troubled the development is are true. Multiple sources from past and present workers on the game have explained how the oppressive leadership of Techland’s CEO might be putting the game in jeopardy.
Sony announced that a lot more of their previously exclusive games will be heading to PC. CEO Jim Ryan stated that a whole slate of first party titles is reportedly on the way, with Days Gone first expected to arrive this spring.
Finally, E3 will be returning in 2021. But as expected, as an online only event. The coverage will run over June 15 – 17, and will include: keynote sessions, award shows, preview nights and more. While it won’t quite be the same, at least it’s something!
TECH NEWS
AMD’s 6800 XT cards are expected for release during Q1 2021. Additionally, it seems like their 6700 XT’s will be releasing in March. This comes after Gigabyte registered 6 cards. While it still hasn’t been confirmed, AMD did announce more about the RX 6000 family will be revealed on March 3. So, perhaps some solid release dates are finally coming.
Intel have already started bench marking their upcoming high end gaming GPU. Raja Koduri, chief Intel architect, tweeted out an image referencing the Intel Xe card and it being bench marked in programs such as 3D Mark. So, if they are in the benchmarking stage now, hopefully it won’t be long until we get some more concrete information on the card.
In further Intel news, their new Alder Lake CPU’s latest benchmarks are looking good. Some new leaked benchmarks either show the CPU being insanely beefy, or there was an error. This is due to it reporting a max frequency of 27.5 GHz!
NVIDIA recently dropped the next card in their RTX 30 series line-up, the RTX 3060. The card went on sale on February 25, and if you are just hearing about this now and are thinking of going to buy one… you’re probably too late.
Google Stadia has closed its internal studios. This reportedly comes just 5 days after Google told Stadia developers that their progress had been great so far. The close is due to Google deciding to shift their focus to purely using external developers.
Jeff Bezos is stepping down as Amazon’s CEO. Bezos will now take the role of executive chair, with Andy Jassy who currently runs Amazon’s Online services taking over the CEO role from Q3 2021.
GDC will also be going digital in 2021. The Gamer Developers Conference will be running a series of online events throughout 2021, instead of just a few days like many other online conferences. This begins on March 4.
CONTROVERSIAL NEWS
Another former Riot Games employee has filled a sexual harassment lawsuit against the company and CEO. The employee had been the CEO’s executive assistant. This comes after several other sexual harassment and sexism claims have plagued the company in the last few years.
Things just keep looking rough for CD Projekt Red. The company faced issues with some hackers recently, who got hold of the source codes for some of the company’s most popular games. After not giving into the hackers, they first released the code for Gwent, the Witcher card game. CD Projekt Red quickly began issuing DMCA take downs to stop it spreading, but there has been no word on how successful this has been.
Activision made a bit of a boo-boo recently. After accidentally announcing a new zombies mode coming to Call of Duty on the game’s app and website, the company quickly removed it with no explanation. Since then, Activision have officially confirmed the mode, which will begin with the start of Season 2 of Black Ops – Cold War.
A recent email phishing scam has been targeting Far Cry fans. A fake beta invite for the upcoming Far Cry 6 has been making the rounds, the email itself looking legitimate despite its fake status. Ubisoft have confirmed this indeed is a scam and to not respond to the email if you do receive it.
Bethesda has found itself in trouble again, but this time not for Fallout 76! Fallout 4 released back in 2015 with a season pass which promised that all DLC would be inclusive. Well, turns out that is not the case! After release, Bethesda introduced the ‘Creation Club’, and the items on this were not included on the pass. So, now they are facing a class-action lawsuit because of it!
THERMALTAKE NEWS
It’s been a bit of a quiet February for product releases here at Thermaltake Australia, however we have some awesome stuff coming out really soon!
The biggest release of the month was our stunning Divider 300 ARGB Mid Tower Case, part of our full upcoming Divider series of cases.
Over on our YouTube channel we uploaded a First Look of our gorgeous Argent M5 Gaming Mice, as well as a Q&A video about All-in-one coolers.
Here on the blog, you may have missed our post about how to upgrade your streaming setup for under $200. We also made a post about how to create a pet friendly setup if you are now working at home alongside your furry friend. Finally, we created a bit of a fun post around PC upgrades you don’t need, but you will probably buy anyway.
Thermal Talk is BACK! We are also FINALLY back in the studio after months of having to record from home. Check out our latest episode on your podcast platform of choice: Spotify, SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
