While the response to Earth Defense Force 6, the latest in the gory sci-fi shooter series, has been generally positive, many PC users had complaints, specifically about how they were required to sign in with an Epic Games account to play online co-op.
The developers have good news for those players. On Thursday, developer Sandlot released a small update on Steam that removed that requirement. Now you can play online missions without the account. “This application has been modified so that you can play online missions without signing into your Epic Games Account,” the post reads.
Players who have already connected their Epic and Steam accounts can unlink them on the Epic Games website in a browser by following these steps.
This is just the latest instance of a video game team removing a second account requirement for a PC game. This practice has fallen out of favor with players and the industry, with players specifically often review-bombing games to protest those decisions. This has come up a lot with recent PlayStation PC releases such as Helldivers 2, where even developers at Arrowhead Game Studios spoke out against the PlayStation Network account requirement. Granted, this became an issue months after the game released, but the outcry was so loud that PlayStation walked back the decision.
However, it still hasn’t responded to similar criticism for its God of War Ragnarok PC port, which also needed a PSN account and caused it to launch to mixed reviews on Steam (although it’s now sitting at “Mostly Positive”). A community member even created a mod that allowed players to get around the account requirement, although it has since been taken it down.
But discussions around account or launcher requirements have moved to the forefront. Ubisoft just announced that it is going back to releasing its games day one on Steam after years of launching them on its own platform. Additionally, The Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be launching natively on Steam. This facilitates the experience of playing on Steam and — sort of more importantly — the Steam Deck.
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.