The developer of the viral online multiplayer game Among Us is canceling its sequel to focus all of its resources instead on improving the original. In a blog post, InnerSloth wrote that the unexpected surge in the game’s popularity has made the studio reconsider its plans and abandon Among Us 2, which was announced just over a month ago.
InnerSloth adds that it will bring all of the features it had in the works for the sequel to the original game. More importantly, since Among Us is technically more than 2 years old, its outdated codebase has been unable to keep up the soaring number of players as well as support new-gen content, and to fix that, the developer says it will be reworking several parts of the game’s core.
“The main reason we are shooting for a sequel is because the codebase of Among Us 1 is so outdated and not built to support adding so much new content,” InnerSloth wrote in the blog post. “However, seeing how many people are enjoying Among Us 1 really makes us want to be able to support the game and take it to the next level. We have decided to cancel Among Us 2 and instead put all our focus into improving Among Us 1.”
InnerSloth also shared which improvements it’s prioritizing at the moment for the next couple of updates. Among Us will soon get a new Henry Stickmin-themed stage, better and more reliable servers, support for colorblind users (which means more color options), and a friends account system.
Among Us is a social deduction game where your job is to work with a team to identify imposters — which, despite being available for over two years, only recently went viral when a series of Twitch streamers picked it up. At the time of writing, Among Us is the second-most popular game on Steam with over 325,000 active players and the leading stream channel on Twitch hosting more than 330,000 viewers. In comparison, last month when InnerSloth announced the sequel, the original game had just over 70,000 players. Among Us is available for Windows PCs, Android, iOS and can be played on Mac as well.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.