Eric Barone drops the biggest Stardew Valley 1.6 update patch note yet- A new Meadowlands farm type with ‘chewy blue grass that animals love’ and some bonus chickens too-
As PC Gamer’s BaroneWatch enters its ninth day, Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone has shared what is expected to be the final individual patch note for the Stardew Valley 1.6 update before it goes live. And folks, this is a big one: The update will include an all-new farm type called Meadowlands Farm.
Stardew Valley currently has seven farm types—standard, Riverland, Forest, Hilltop, Wilderness, Four Corners, and Beach—each with their own unique benefits, bonuses, and limitations. The addition of an eighth is a very big deal, because it gives players an opportunity (or excuse) to start all over again in a brand new setting. It’s also the first new farm type to be added to the game since the Beach farm in 2020.
- Added a new farm type: Meadowlands Fa…
HP Omen’s affordable new 14-inch Meteor Lake gaming laptop is already on sale with a chonky $300 discount and an RTX 4060 GPU-
I’ve had my hands on the new Meteor Lake-powered HP Omen Transcend 14 for a few weeks now and I’m very impressed. I love a good 14-inch gaming laptop at the best of times, but the fact this machine is already impressively affordable—at least in the context of the mega-bucks Razer Blade 14—and comes with a stellar OLED screen makes it an instant favorite.
That is only compounded by the fact that it’s already on offer with a $300 discount and you can find the Transcend 14 for just $1,270 at HP right now. You will have to configure it a little as that link will just take you to the RTX 4050 version, which I wouldn’t recommend as the much more powerful RTX 4060 edition is just $70 more. Seriously, why wouldn’t you?
With the 65W version of Nvidia’s latest low-end mobi…
I can’t make it 10 minutes in this free browser-based New York Times Sim without getting fired for commie agitprop-
Another day, another free browser game on Itch sucking up a frankly worrying amount of my time. Last week it was Social Democracy, which let me live my lifelong dream of being an obscure Weimar-era economist. Today? New York Times Simulator, in which I live my other lifelong dream of repeatedly getting fired from America’s newspaper of record.
NYT Sim comes from developer/rabble-rouser Molleindustria, the same person who brought you things like Democratic Socialism Simulator, Every Day The Same Dream: a game about alienation and the refusal of labour, and Booflag: the game where you boo the Confederate flag. Are you picking up on the vibe? I feel like the vibe should be coming through loud and clear.
The game carries on Molleindustria’s tradition of wrapping spiky satire in …
I can’t believe this keeps happening- leaked Ukraine War plans spread in part through a Minecraft Discord server-
Classified military documents have yet again been blasted out into the world by a gaming community, and for once it’s not War Thunder’s fault. The documents in question are related to US and NATO plans to support Ukraine’s military effort against the ongoing Russian invasion, and according to Bellingcat researcher Aric Toler (via Vice), an early leak point was an unofficial Minecraft Discord server.
Some of the leaked documents eventually found their way to 4chan, where—in classic internet fashion—they were being shared to win an argument. The 4chan docs appear to contain estimates of Ukrainian and Russian losses in the war, and a map of the contested city of Bakhmut.
The documents were also shared on Russian Telegram channels, although according to Toler, …
Nvidia driver’s ‘csgos2.exe’ reference reinvigorates CS-GO update speculation-
A long-circulating rumor that Valve is preparing to release a new version of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on its latest game engine was boosted this week after data miner Aquarius found a config profile called “Counter-strike 2” in Nvidia’s latest drivers. The profile references “csgos2.exe,” and there’s really not much that could stand for besides “CS:GO Source 2.” (Unless… CS:GO Splatoon 2 crossover?)
I had a peek at the driver data using Nvidia Profile Inspector and can confirm that the csgos2.exe profile is there (I don’t know why anyone would make that up, but it’s the internet, so I checked). A more explicit reference to a CS:GO “source2” Nvidia config was also posted on Twitter by Gabe Follower, whose name perhaps helps explain why the Valve founder hides out in …
Steam closes refund policy loophole, finally comes up with a name for the thing where you can play a game early if you preorder-
Few videogame marketing terms are more aggravatingly ambiguous than “early access.” Most painfully, it can refer to two very different scenarios: Sometimes it means putting an in-development game on sale before it’s done, and other times it means offering access to a finished game early, typically as a deluxe edition preorder bonus. Starfield offered several days of “early access” with its Premium Edition, for instance.
Steam, the platform responsible for popularizing the first meaning of early access, has had enough. It’s now designating the latter scenario, when a developer offers pre-launch access to a completed game, “Advanced Access.”
“Unlike Early Access, Advanced Access is not a unique model of development for a game, it’s simply an opportunity to play a game before i…