October is supposed to be spooky, but I have not seen one skeleton in my yard so far. What a farce. If any skeletons are reading this, please come rattle your bones on my lawn. If any regular people who have flesh on top of their skeletons are reading this, then please continue for a recap of the biggest PC gaming news of the week:
• Red Dead Redemption 2 system requirements and PC features revealed
The RDR2 system requirements aren't too demanding, and we were happy to hear that it'll have support for arbitrary resolutions and an unlocked framerate. We also learned more about the new stuff coming to the PC version. Horse enthusiasts will be pleased.
• Blitzchung removed from Hearthstone Grandmasters for 'liberate Hong Kong' comments
When a Hearthstone winner made a statement in support of the Hong Kong protests in his live interview, Blizzard rescinded his prize money and barred him from competing for a year. The two casters there to conduct the interview were also dropped. Widespread anger over the incident has been directed at Blizzard throughout the week, with calls to boycott its games and protest at Blizzcon.
Casters Nathan 'ThatsAdmirable' Zamora and Brian Kibler stepped down, and some Blizzard employees staged a walkout. Blizzard's only statement so far has been to say that Blitzchung breached of Section 6.1 of the 2019 Hearthstone Grandmasters Official Competition Rules. It'll likely have to do more than that, because the backlash is only growing as Blizzcon approaches. It'll be an interesting one.
Update: Blizzard released a statement late on Friday.
• The leaked Fallout Legacy Collection is real
...But only if you live in the UK or Germany.
• World of Warcraft's upcoming races revealed: adorable foxes and cyborg gnomes
A bit of a surprise reveal of WoW's 8.3 update gave us a look at its two new races. The foxes are the best, but the Mechagnomes are pretty cool, too, if you like a light cyberpunk flavor to your fantasy.
• Man allegedly broke into Valve and stole $40K worth of equipment and games with a recycling bin
The classic 'maintenance person' trick still works. And no, his haul did not apparently include the source code for Half-Life 3.
• Activision explains why Call of Duty: Modern Warfare needs 175GB of storage
The game won't be that big at launch, but may be in the future after "post-launch content" is released. A 1TB SSD feels too small, all the sudden.
More news
- Riot warns League of Legends streamers and players to avoid 'sensitive topics' on the air
- Fortnite 'Chapter 2' appears to have been leaked by Apple
- Unity of Command 2 will be out in November, beta signups are open
- Sea of Thieves will have private servers to support creative community events
- Steam's 'Remote Play Together' will introduce online support for all local multiplayer games
- Doom Eternal has been delayed until 2020
Around the office
This week we began work on articles that will be appearing closer to the end of the year, which is also the end of a decade, and you know what that means: retrospection. PC gaming changed immensely in the '10s, so there'll be a lot to talk about. (Left 4 Dead 2 will be 10 years old in November, if you can believe it.)
For now, though, our immediate concerns are all those games that keep releasing. We reviewed John Wick Hex (liked) and Ghost Recon Breakpoint (did not like), among others. Tom lamented that Indivisible's story is putting him off the game, though Lauren enjoyed the combat enough to recommend it.
Meanwhile, Wes gave us a look inside indie gaming festival Bitsummit, an interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and more from his recent trip to Japan. I highly recommend reading his interview with Katamari Damacy designer Keita Takahashi.
Finally, a bunch of us got together to predict the big stories we expect to play out for the rest of the year. Will we be right or wrong? I predict: yes.
Enjoy your weekend, and may all your automatic Windows updates go smoothly.
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