According to users on Reddit and ResetEra, Bethesda launched Doom Eternal with a DRM-free copy of the game's executable sitting in plain sight amid the download package. Ars Technica reports: Forum users on Reddit and ResetEra were among the first yesterday to report on the "official" DRM-free leak, which sat in a sub-folder titled "Original" for the Bethesda Launcher version of the game. That 67MB file can reportedly replace the 370MB, DRM-protected executable in the main game folder with minimal effort and no practical effect on playability. Ars has been unable to independently verify these reports, as a subsequent patch has apparently removed the DRM-free executable. But the trackers at CrackWatch and repackers in the cracking community have confirmed that the DRM-free version was distributed and working shortly after launch. And while the DRM-free version still requires a Bethesda account login the first time it's run, forum reports suggest crackers have already discovered a simple method to patch that check for a completely offline pirated experience.

As if there weren't enough doom in the world right now, this week sees the release of not one but two new Doom games. Doom Eternal is the flashy AAA sequel with incredible graphics and accurately modeled viscera, of course, but you shouldn't sleep on the other: the first rerelease of Doom 64, an underappreciated entry in the series's history. From a report: Doom 64, as the name suggests, was originally designed for the Nintendo 64. It came out in 1997 and, unlike id Software's previous two Doom titles, it was developed by Midway Games. It was the first Doom game to offer any sort of significant graphical upgrade on the original, had all-new levels, and -- depending on your perspective -- could easily have been considered a "Doom 3" had id not released its own game with that name in 2004. Given its original platform, Doom 64 is also a pretty unusual game. Nintendo strongly promoted "real" 3D titles on its 64-bit console, and Doom 64 is only kind of-sort of one of those. The environments are constructed of polygons, and the textures are filtered. But just like the original Doom, you're still limited to movement on a flat plane without the ability to look around you. Next to something like GoldenEye 007, you could have been forgiven for considering Doom 64 a little archaic at the time.

A new DirectX badge is going to start showing up on graphics hardware: It's called DirectX 12 Ultimate, and it denotes support for "ALL next generation graphics hardware features," Microsoft announced today. From a report: DirectX is a collection of application programming languages (APIs) that developers use to communicate with your hardware. You can think of it like a conduit between software (especially games) and hardware. Up until now, DX12 was the latest version, supported in Windows 10 (and also in Windows 7 for some games). Now that distinction belongs to DX12 Ultimate. It's not an overhaul of the API, but a culmination of the latest technologies bundled into one. This notably includes DirectX Raytracing (DXR), variable rate shading (VRS), mesh shaders, and sampler feedback.

One of the reasons Microsoft is doing this is to unify experiences across the PC and its upcoming Xbox Series X, which will launch November 26, 2020 (Thanksgiving Day). "These features represent many years of innovation from Microsoft and our partners in the hardware industry. DX12 Ultimate brings them all together in one common bundle, providing developers with a single key to unlock next generation graphics on PC and Xbox Series X," Microsoft explains. The main benefit for gamers is knowing, at a glance, if the graphics card they are about to buy supports all the latest features. Spotting the DX12 Ultimate badge is the key, and I suspect hardware makers will be quick to promote it. Related to that, Microsoft is pitching this as a way of ensuring "future-proof" feature support. There's no such thing as future proofing, of course, but DX12 Ultimate should remain relevant for at least the next couple of years.

The Steam Game Festival is returning for a spring edition starting today, featuring more than 40 indie games you can preview with free-to-play demos. The Verge reports: Geoff Keighley, The Game Awards executive producer and host, first announced the event yesterday on Twitter, saying it was put together to help feature games from indie developers who lost the opportunity to demo their titles at the now-canceled GDC, which was to take place this week in San Francisco. The Steam Game Festival will run from March 18th to March 23rd. The collection features games from a number of the more well-known indie demo day events, many of which participate every year at GDC. That includes Indie MegaBooth and The Mix, as well as smaller events like Day of the Devs and Wings Fund.

Now that Microsoft and Sony have published the technical specifications of their respective next-gen gaming consoles, we can compare them head-to-head to see which one has the edge. While Sony appears to lag behind Microsoft when it comes to specs, the PS5's speedy custom SSD may be its secret weapon. Engadget reports: Sony's lead PlayStation architect, Mark Cerny, finally gave us an in-depth look at the PS5 in a livestream event, in lieu of a major GDC keynote. [...] Cerny confirms that the PlayStation 5's graphics processor will feature 36 compute units and up to 10.28 teraflops worth of compute performance. That's a bit less than the Xbox Series X's 12-teraflop GPU, but realistically you might not see many differences in performance. There are plenty of other system optimizations, like the company's focus on a custom 825GB SSD, that'll be a huge leap over the PlayStation 4. That SSD will push 5.5 gigabytes per second compared to a mere 50 to 100 MB/s, meaning it can fill the system's 16GB of GDDR6 RAM in two seconds. And on the plus side, Sony will let you plug in a standard NVMe SSD to expand storage while Microsoft will rely on specialized 1TB SSD expansion cards.

Cerny was quick to point out that teraflop numbers are a "dangerous" way to measure absolute levels of performance. A teraflop from the PlayStation 5 translates to much more gaming performance than a teraflop from the PlayStation 4, thanks to the new console's more-efficient architecture. Still, it's not exactly unfair to compare the PS5 to the Xbox Series X, since both systems will be based on AMD's CPUs and GPUs. It's interesting to see how Sony and Microsoft devices take advantage of AMD's hardware. The PS5's eight-core Zen 2 CPU will run up to 3.5GHz with variable frequencies, so it can slow down when necessary. The Xbox Series X, meanwhile, will lock its Zen 2 processor at 3.8GHz, and devs can also choose to run their games at 3.6GHz with hyper threading. Sony also chose to use 36 RDNA 2 compute units running at up to 2.23GHz with a variable frequency while Microsoft stuffed its system with 52 compute units running at 1.825GHz. Cerny argues that running fewer cores at a higher frequency rate is more beneficial than running more cores at a lower rate, since it will lead to a speed bump across many GPU tasks.

Sony definitely has the lead with its custom SSD with 5GB/s of raw bandwidth and 8 to 9GB/s of compressed throughput. The Xbox Series X's SSD will be limited to 2.4GB/s of raw data and 4.8GB/s compressed. Again, while the numbers are significantly different, it's unclear how the performance will vary in real-world use. Microsoft also has a slightly higher GDDR6 memory bandwidth -- 10GB at 560GB/s and 6GB at 336GB/s -- than Sony's 448GB/s, which could make up for the slower storage. As for backwards compatibility, Sony announced that the PlayStation 5 will support PS4 and PS4 Pro games, but the company made no mention of retro PS1, PS2, and PS3 titles. Microsoft, on the other hand, stated that the Xbox Series X will support all games playable on the Xbox One, including those Xbox 360 and original Xbox console titles currently supported through backwards compatibility on the Xbox One.

During today's PlayStation 5 livestream, Sony announced that the PlayStation 5 will be backwards compatible with PS4 and PS4 Pro games, but the company made no mention of retro PS1, PS2, and PS3 titles. From a report: Mark Cerny, Sony's lead system architect for PlayStation hardware, said the following about the PS5's backwards compatibility: "The PlayStation 5 GPU is backwards compatible with PlayStation 4. What does that mean? One way you can achieve backwards compatibility is to put the previous console's chips at in the new consoles like we did with some PlayStation 3s, but that's of course extremely expensive. A better way is to incorporate any differences in the previous console's logic into the new console's custom chips, meaning that even as the technology evolves, the logic and feature set that PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro titles rely on is still available in backwards compatibility modes. One advantage of this strategy is that once backwards compatibility is in the console, it's in, and it's not as if a cost-down will remove backwards compatibility like it did on PlayStation 3. Achieving this unification of functionality took years of efforts by AMD, as any roadmap advancement creates a potential divergence in logic."

Sonic the Hedgehog's latest weekend total allowed it to surpass Detective Pikachu and become the highest-grossing video game movie ever in the US. TheRichest reports: Sonic has now amassed $145.8 million domestically, while Detective Pikachu managed $144.1 million by the end of its run. Sonic has definitely taken a hit as it only brought in $2.58 million last weekend to limp past Detective Pikachu's record. As for the worldwide record, it seems as if that will belong to Detective Piakchu for the foreseeable future. That's the one element of Sonic's success that has been affected by the worldwide pandemic we are in the midst of. The movie's release has been delayed in China and as it stands as brought in $306.5 million worldwide. That's a long way off the $433 million record set by Detective Pikachu.

Microsoft has provided detailed tech specs for its forthcoming Xbox Series X gaming console, reader Dave Knott shares. Full system specs are as follows: CPU: 8x Cores @ 3.8 GHz (3.6 GHz w/ SMT) Custom Zen 2 CPU
GPU: 12 TFLOPS, 52 CUs @ 1.825 GHz Custom RDNA 2 GPU
Die Size: 360.45 mm2
Process: 7nm Enhanced
Memory: 16 GB GDDR6 w/ 320b bus
Memory Bandwidth: 10GB @ 560 GB/s, 6GB @ 336 GB/s
Internal Storage: 1 TB Custom NVME SSD
I/O Throughput: 2.4 GB/s (Raw), 4.8 GB/s (Compressed, with custom hardware decompression block)
Expandable Storage: 1 TB Expansion Card (matches internal storage exactly)
External Storage: USB 3.2 External HDD Support
Optical Drive: 4K UHD Blu-Ray Drive
Performance Target: 4K @ 60 FPS, Up to 120 FPS. Digital Foundry visited Microsoft and provides a deep dive article detailing their hands-on experience with the new hardware including the following information.

Italy's school shutdown is driving a surge in internet traffic as kids turn to online video games to stave off boredom. From a report: With schools, shops and restaurants closed in an attempt to limit Europe's worst coronavirus outbreak, the amount of data passing through Telecom Italia SpA's national network has surged by more than two-thirds in the past two weeks, the company said. A lot of that extra activity is due to online games such as 'Fortnite' and 'Call of Duty,' which can involve multiple players and take up more bandwidth than the business programs and conference call apps used by adults working from home. Gaming traffic can spike even higher when the games are refreshed and millions of kids download the latest 25-gigabyte update at once. "We reported an increase of more than 70% of Internet traffic over our landline network, with a big contribution from online gaming such as Fortnite," Telecom Italia Chief Executive Officer Luigi Gubitosi said Wednesday on a call with analysts.

E3 2020 as we know it is over. From a report: Multiple sources familiar with the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)'s plans have confirmed to Ars Technica that the organization, which is responsible for the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), will soon cancel the three-day expo. Like in prior years, E3 2020 was scheduled to play out in early June as a three-day event at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Shortly after we received the tip, indie game publisher Devolver Digital posted a brief, ominous message on Twitter: "Cancel your E3 flights and hotels, y'all." The ESA had not made any announcements about E3 2020 at that time.

One source who spoke to Ars on background said they'd heard the news of E3 2020's cancellation "directly from ESA members" and that an official, public statement on the matter "was supposed to be today [Tuesday, March 10] and slipped." Representatives for the ESA did not immediately respond to Ars Technica's questions about the state of E3 going forward or whether the event's seismic shift may instead mean a delay, a move to a completely different venue, or a wholly virtualized, live-streamed event.

bigwophh writes: As the number of publishers pulling out of Nvidia's GeForce Now cloud game streaming service continues to grow, the company has found an ally in Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, who vowed on Twitter to "wholeheartedly" support the company's efforts. He also took potshots at Apple and Google over the royalty rate each one charges on their respective app stores and expects them to go to battle as game streaming gains momentum. "Just waiting till later this year when Google is lobbying against Apple for blocking Stadia from iOS, while Google blocks GeForce Now, xCloud, and Fortnite from Google Play, and this whole rotten structure begins collapsing in on itself," Sweeney added. It remains to be seen how things will pan out with GeForce Now. Nvidia maintains that "game removals will be few and far between" and that it has 1,500 additional games queued up. However, Nvidia only has so much control over the developers willing to continue supporting the platform. "Epic is wholeheartedly supporting Nvidia's GeForce Now service with Fortnite and with Epic Games Store titles that choose to participate (including exclusives), and we'll be improving the integration over time," Sweeney wrote. He also called GeForce Now "the most developer-friendly and publisher-friendly of the major streaming services," which is based on Nvidia not charging any "tax" on game revenues.

"Game companies who want to move the game industry towards a healthier state for everyone should be supporting this kind of service!" Sweeney wrote.

Target quietly soft-launched a new concept store in downtown San Francisco a few days ago: The Game Room lets people try out Magic Leap and Oculus Quest headsets, gaming PCs and mobile gaming rigs. It's an obvious play to make Target look hip to San Francisco's tech-savvy clientele, but it's also indicative of bigger industry changes. From a report: Missing from the store are the typical gaming fodder you'd find in your neighborhood Target. No physical discs or accessories for current-generation consoles. Instead, the Game Room is all about the future of gaming, from phones hooked up to Google's cloud gaming service Stadia to a corner that explains Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass to multiple VR/AR areas. You can buy some, but not all, of the items on display. (Target doesn't currently sell the Magic Leap headset, for instance.)

The store is largely a test of how Target can capitalize on the growing interest in gaming even as the huge amount of money being spent by gamers is increasingly on digital goods and services not sold in stores. It also shows what a big retailer like Target considers the cool fun new thing right now. Until recently the space housed the Target Open House: a display-room for the Internet of Things, which first opened in 2015, to show off products like smart speakers and connected doorbells. It was meant to be a splashy, experiment space to demonstrate how a smart home actually works, back when that seemed exciting.

The PlayStation 2 is celebrating its 20th anniversary as it launched in Japan on March 4, 2000. "It was released in the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world a year later and would go on to become the best-selling console of all time," reports GiveMeSport. From the report: To put this into context, its main rivals at the time, Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube, would sell 25 million and 22 million consoles worldwide respectively on their first release versus Sony PS2's 155 million! It certainly helped that the PS2 was able to release such memorable games like RockStar Games 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas', which sold 17.3 million copies. Other games included 'Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater', which was part of PlayStation's iconic series that was set in the 1960s during the Cold War. Not to mention there was zombie filled 'Resident Evil' franchise and the terrifying 'Silent Hill'.

The success of the PS2 was widely due to Ken Kutaragi. His big idea in the latest round of console battles at the time was to add in a DVD player compatibility with the PS2. DVDs were the latest new format to view movies on at the time and an entry-level price for a DVD Player was $700. The other unique selling point was the backward compatibility; with some exceptions you could play your favorite PlayStation games on the new PS2. Kris Naudus from Engadget writes about how the PlayStation 2 was the first game console she ever bought -- "a big deal at a time when I was only making $135 a week," she. says. Her favorite feature? It could play DVDs.

Microsoft is bringing the original Halo campaign to Windows PCs today. The Verge reports: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary has been remastered with 4K support for PC, and it arrives 18 years after the game debuted as a launch title for the original Xbox. Microsoft is also including 60fps support, variable frame rates, and even native keyboard and mouse support. You'll also be able to use the classic audio in multiplayer and customize Spartans further. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is part of Microsoft's ongoing effort to bring all of the Halo: The Master Chief Collection to PC.

After years of development and hype, Google's long-rumored push into video games arrived last November, with the launch of Google Stadia. Google Stadia isn't a game console, nor is it a game platform, really -- it's a digital storefront run by Google where you can buy individual games. It's a hugely ambitious new platform, and it aimed to be the Netflix of gaming. What makes Stadia so ambitious? Rather than downloading games or playing them off a Blu-ray disc, Stadia streams games to you wherever you are, like Netflix streams movies and TV shows. However, four months after Stadia's launch, the service is still extremely light on games: Just 28 titles are available as of this week. From a report: We spoke with game developers and publishers who said there are two main reasons their games aren't on Stadia: Google didn't offer them enough money, and they don't trust the mercurial company to stick with gaming in the long term. "We were approached by the Stadia team," one prominent indie developer told me. "Usually with that kind of thing, they lead with some kind of offer that would give you an incentive to go with them." But the incentive "was kind of non-existent," they said. "That's the short of it." It's a statement we heard echoed by several prominent indie developers and two publishing executives we spoke with for this piece. "It's that there isn't enough money there," one of the publishing executives we spoke with said. The offer was apparently "so low that it wasn't even part of the conversation." The "incentive" isn't solely financial, but it's the main part of the equation. "When we're looking at these types of deals," another prominent indie developer said, "We're looking at 'Is this enough money where we have the resources to make what we want, or is this an exclusivity deal that gives us security?'" they said.

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen has been sneaking onto online chess sites using stupid pseudonyms and taunting his opponents by using pointless maneuvers with names like "the Bongcloud." One YouTube commenter calls it "a revolution in the history of chess."

Slate documents the antics in an article titled "DrDrunkenstein's Reign of Terror." "DrDrunkenstein" is one of many aliases Magnus Carlsen has played under during the past two years, when he went on a killing spree across the speed chess tournaments of the internet. Since winter 2017, Carlsen has taken to livestreaming his games on a variety of platforms, which has provided a surprisingly entertaining window into the mind of an all-time great.

Lichess.org is a free, ad-less web platform for chess players, a favorite in the online chess community... Carlsen appeared incognito as "DannyTheDonkey" and won, donating his small prize money back to the website. Carlsen's first showing as DrDrunkenstein was in Lichess' second Titled Arena the following month... Carlsen streamed the games on Twitch, where he lived up to his username, pounding Coronas while bantering in Norwegian with his friends. Chess fans were astonished. There's something hypnotizing about watching a guy known as "the Mozart of chess" — a player who is quantifiably better than Bobby Fischer — taking a big gulp of beer, announcing his position as "completely winning," then singing along to Dr. Dre saying "motherfuck the police" while coasting into another quick checkmate...

In an interview with a Norwegian newspaper in October, Carlsen admits he quit drinking for his health. "I wouldn't say I was an alcoholic exactly," he said, "but I found out this year, if I'm going to travel and play a lot... I need to prioritize differently...." On the eve of his world championship defense, Carlsen appeared in the next tournament as "manwithavan," playing a large chunk of his games on a phone from a minivan, where the touch screen presented a massive handicap. He again earned the adoration of spectators, this time for riskily walking his king into the center of the board against one of the most dangerous players in the tournament. He came in third... As DrNykterstein, he alternated between two ways of wasting his early, important opening moves. Sometimes, he'd take his queen on a four-move tour of the board before swapping her home square with the king's, letting his opponent develop their pieces while he showboated... Other times, he'd fidget his knights back and forth from their starting squares, offering his challenger a six-move time advantage. In this tournament he filled with gags, he came in first again...

One of the sweetest benefits of watching these matches is enjoying Carlsen's dry, self-deprecating sense of humor — something no chess prodigy has any right to have.
In December, Magnus also reached the #1 spot, beating seven million other players, on a fantasy football table.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Rockstar refuses to let GTA Online die, and why would it when it's one of the company's biggest moneymakers? If you haven't played GTA 5's online component in a while, today's update may convince you to step back into the world of San Andreas. Rockstar is adding a new competitive racing mode to GTA Online called Open Wheel Races that allows you to drive the game's equivalent of F1 cars against other players. As part of the update, Rockstar is adding two new cars, the Ocelot R88 and the Progen PR4. You can purchase both through the in-game Legendary Motorsport store and customize them with different tires, spoilers, engine mods and more through Los Santos Customs.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last year, Forbes published an article titled "'Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice' Needs to Respect Its Players and Add an Easy Mode." In the piece, Dave Thier, the author, argues that the title's egregiously high difficulty settings detract from the superb world and character design. "The difficulty is only one part of what defines these games for me, and honestly, it's not the most important part," wrote Thier. Easier difficulty settings would allow those with physical or cognitive limitations -- or just limited time to play games -- the opportunity to experience the studio's artistic vision. It was the latest salvo in a debate that has taken on a culture war-level valence among players online, a debate that has been litigated and re-litigated to no apparent end.

Fans of the series, angered by the article, argued that not all games are meant for disabled players. Futzing with difficulty settings, they said, tampers with the creative intent of a game, especially in genres where a game's key selling point may be its difficulty (as is the case with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice). But the recent efforts of accessibility consultants and developers to create inclusive products tell a different story. Unbeknown to many, accessibility consultants have been pushing for an accessible industry for years. From menus containing a plethora of options, including the ability to customize controls and adjust subtitle size, to disabled inclusion within the workspace and gaming community, the often-hidden efforts of accessibility consultants are beginning to become standard practice within the industry.

Kazuhisa Hashimoto, a producer credited with implementing the fabled "Konami Code" that gave players godlike cheats in Contra, Gradius, Castlevania, and other Konami games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, died on Tuesday. He was 61. Polygon reports: Hashimoto was a programmer and producer for the home console port of Gradius, which in 1986 was the first video game to use the Konami Code. Hashimoto put it in the game as an aid for his playtesting, memorably saying that he "obviously couldn't beat it." For unclear reasons, the Konami Code was left in the shipped game, and was later used to playtest other games made by the publisher.

Contra, which launched on the NES in 1988, sold much better than Gradius and is more closely associated with the Konami Code's origins. In it, cheat-code sharers discovered video gaming's Charm of Making -- up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start! -- and were blessed with 30 lives, absolutely critical to a super-tough one-hit-kill side-scroller like Contra. Nostalgia for the Konami Code, if not gratitude for its usefulness to many difficult games of the day, led to its inclusion in numerous other works. A Wikipedia entry on the code counts more than 100 Konami games with the cheat or some version of it inside them. Another 22 games made by other publishers included the code as a tribute, often revealing an Easter egg or secret message. It has also shown up elsewhere in popular culture, most recently in Google Stadia's website (and on its controller), and as a pastime Easter egg in Fortnite in October.

Microsoft revealed new details on its next-generation console, text, on Monday morning, confirming specifications on what the company calls its "superior balance of power and speed" for its new hardware. From a report: The next-gen Xbox, Microsoft said, will be four times as powerful as the original Xbox One. The Xbox Series X "next-generation custom processor" will employ AMD's Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architecture, head of Xbox Phil Spencer wrote on the Xbox website. "Delivering four times the processing power of an Xbox One and enabling developers to leverage 12 [teraflops] of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) performance -- twice that of an Xbox One X and more than eight times the original Xbox One," Spencer said. He called the next-generation Xbox's processing and graphics power "a true generational leap," offering higher frame rates -- with support for up to 120 fps -- and more sophisticated game worlds.

That 12 teraflops claim is twice that of what Microsoft promised with the Xbox One X (then known as Project Scorpio) when it revealed the mid-generation console update back in 2016. Spencer also outlined the Xbox Series X's variable rate shading, saying, "Rather than spending GPU cycles uniformly to every single pixel on the screen, they can prioritize individual effects on specific game characters or important environmental objects. This technique results in more stable frame rates and higher resolution, with no impact on the final image quality." He also promised hardware-accelerated DirectX ray tracing, with "true-to-life lighting, accurate reflections and realistic acoustics in real time." Microsoft also reconfirmed features like SSD storage, which promise faster loading times, as well as new ones, like Quick Resume, for Xbox Series X.