It’s been roughly a year since Embracer Group acquired an absolute killer of a catalog of gaming IPs from Square Enix. We have laughed, we have cried, and most of all, we speculated. With no strong feelings one way or another, I am here to report that we are more than welcome to jolly continue speculating.

As Elias Toufexis, voice of no other than Adam Fucking Jensen, has recently tweeted, all is indeed quiet on the Embracer front. While he does seem happy to be keeping himself busy these days, a return of the augmented air vent menace is nowehere near. And that’s a damn shame. Not that all of the other juicy IPs Embracer gobbled up resting on their laurels isn’t. Remember, speculation is the name of the game, the comments section awaits.

In a since-deleted Reddit post, a developer has anonymously claimed that Valve’s Steam platform has blocked their game created with the help of generative AI. Weird, huh? Backward, almost. Given Valve’s appetite for automation and practices regarding its high-profile digital storefront, one would even be tempted to accuse them of hypocrisy.

Now, I was fully prepared to grab onto this angle and roll with it in a little more elaborate article than what you’ve landed on. Especially after seeing Valve’s comments on the matter made to Eurogamer, things are much simpler than that. It has little to do with topics of uncertainty over emerging new technology such as AI, and a whole lot more to do with the subject of copyright.

There is no reason to doubt that they mean it when Valve says they’re still learning about AI. In this case, tools utilizing deep learning, such as Stable Diffusion, are one thing. AI, or as Neo felt for whatever reason to explain to Morpheus in The Matrix (yeah, yeah, I know the reason, it’s called bad writing, and I’ll never get over it), artificial intelligence is wholly another. Will we one day witness AI creating, deliberately and all by itself, something as impactful as, I don’t know, Ori and The Blint Forest? And if so, doesn’t that inevitably mean that it has already learned enough to be able to manipulate us? Will we even notice? It’s all bloom and boom, until it’s doom and gloom if you catch my drift.

I think Valve is 100% correct to boil this down to copyright, for now; “In particular, there is some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models. It is the developer’s responsibility to ensure they have the appropriate rights to ship their game.” In other words, use your assets to train the AI or be booted off our platform on legal grounds.

Deep Rock Galactic may have been bringing danger, darkness, and dwarves to PC and consoles since 2020 – and two years prior in Steam’s Early Access – but the heart-warmingly unpretentious co-op shooter isn’t running out of energy. Its awesomeness in fluid gunplay, balanced difficulty, dwarves-and-beer jokes, and more than few digs (ha-ha) at corporate culture only grows into pure genius in its class system demanding actual co-operation.

Recently launched fourth season dubbed Critical Corruption provides new toys to help fight off the ever-growing rockpox contagion, and, as has become tradition, a whole range of unlockable cosmetics to fancy up your pickaxe-wielding alcoholics. There is no pay-to-play, no pay-to-win, no subscription, no online casino, hell, there isn’t even any ‘meta’ to speak of. There are cosmetic DLC packs that you can, and, trust me on this, happily will purchase. Deep Rock Galactic is just honest-to-heart video game fun and that’s why I won’t ever hesitate at any opportunity to dive back into the caves of Hoxxes.

What’s your feel-good, never-hesitate-to-jump-back-in video game? Hit that comments section as hard as you wish, be it for Carl or not. Rock and stone, brothers!

Two years in the making, the much-anticipated update to Derail Valley has landed in Steam Early Access last weekend and I’ve been an absolute menace to its otherwise pristine environments since. The update adds stuff that’ll have one railfanning for weeks on end. New locos and powertrains, dynamic weather, day-night cycles, or all-new simulation systems. But one does not watch NASCAR for the racing, do they?

The Simulator update takes massive train wrecks to a whole another level as the updated physics now allow for more realistic ragdolls, and flammables to spill onto the tracks and down slopes, even into the valley’s numerous water bodies. The new, pretty much consequence-free sandbox mode lets you create mayhem never before seen. And did I mention you can pay homage to Mr. Addams greatest hobby in VR too?

Derail Valley Simulator, the game’s most impressive version yet by far, is available now on PC.