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Veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg announced on Tuesday he was deactivating his X (formerly known as Twitter) account, saying Elon Musk’s takeover of the site turned it into a “cesspool.”

Mr Mossberg is a well-respected name and expert in the US tech writing industry, who also co-founded media sites such as Recode and AllThingsD. He announced his boycotting of X on Meta’s new platform Threads, saying his reasons revolve around business tycoon Mr Musk’s threats to sue the Anti-Defemation League (ADL).

There are some great 30 minute dungeon runs in your future if you've got tolerance for—or enjoy—old school tropes.

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The ambitious sequel to 2013's Hammerwatch hits at a perfect time for me: this mini hack and slash takes Hammerwatch's action RPG combat and goofy fantasy setting and pushes it into a wider open world with a day-night cycle. It's a bit odd, like an early open world games fused with twin-stick combat out of classic Gauntlet.

Hammerwatch 2 welds the two really well. You can dive into a cave full of wolves and spiders and accomplish some quests, hop back to town, and save right quick in that half hour. The characters? They're all like King Reggie, Evil Lich Badguy, the Dragon Thundersnow, and the like. No complex lore to digest, just lots of fetch quests and frantic fights against overwhelming hordes of baddies.

The latest iteration of Konami's free-to-play successor to Pro Evolution Soccer, eFootball 2024, is live now. It introduces a new season and a slew of baffling bonus unlockables and currencies to celebrate, but the real draw is that they've continued to try to improve its football simulation after the abysmal launch of eFootball 2022.

Make friends or frenemies! Be a savvy schemer in this hybrid RPG party game!

Originally released for the PlayStation®2 and the Nintendo Wii, the hybrid party board game is back! The game is simple: spin the roulette and defeat whoever stands your way!

The new cosmic adventure game, Void Crew, is now available on Steam Early Access. Publisher Focus Entertainment and Danish indie studio Hutlihut Games are delighted to invite you on a journey into deep space. Gather your crew, set your course for uncharted galaxies, and prepare for epic journeys beyond the stars. With a 20% Early Birds limited time discount and a groundbreaking Early Access Launch Trailer, Void Crew gives you a taste of what "co-operation" truly means.

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Steam Link

The anniversary celebration starts later this month on September 19 and brings plenty of updates like hero tweaks, bug fixes, map changes, and more. But leading the celebration charge is the aforementioned Hero Mastery. Blizzard describes it as "a new, single-player game mode that allows players to test their skills with individual heroes on custom courses" and it's available starting today. Each hero can be played on three unique courses of increasing difficulty, and you can unlock up to five stars on each course. Hero Mastery courses are scored based on time, eliminations, heals, escorts, and more. Plus, each individual hero has stat tracking as well.

One of the most succinct yet exciting announcements from last year’s D23 Expo was Gargoyles Remastered, a modernized facelift of the classic (and challenging) side-scrolling Sega Genesis title based on the popular ‘90s cartoon. A new trailer revealed the game’s new presentation and an October release date.

YouTube Trailer

Following YouTube’s pushes into music, television, gaming livestreams, and podcasts, the service has now begun public testing of its “Playables” initiative, which adds games to YouTube.

The existence of Playables on YouTube was first reported earlier this year as “a product for playing online games.” At the time, few details were available, as it was only being tested by employees.

The only other tidbit reported was that one of the games being tested was “Stack Bounce,” a title that is also available to play through Google’s GameSnacks.

Today, YouTube has updated its ever-rotating list of tests and experimental features to announce that Playables are rolling out now to a “limited number of users to start.” If you’re among that group, your YouTube homepage will have a new “Playables” section.

[September 5, 2023] Testing “Playables” on YouTube: We’re starting to test a new experience on YouTube called “Playables”. Playables are games that can be played directly on YouTube on both desktop and mobile devices. If you’re part of this experiment, you’ll see a section on YouTube called “Playables” that will appear alongside other content on the home feed. We’re testing this with a limited number of users to start. You can view and control your Playables history and saved game progress in YouTube History.

Unfortunately, the company doesn’t provide any more details about what types of games are included as part of the Playables program, such as whether we should expect to see more advanced titles than GameSnacks offers or how interested game developers can get involved.

Rod Fergusson, general franchise manager of Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo IP, has confirmed that IV's post-release content release model is set for some adjustments—in an interview, conducted by Dextero, he said: "When you look at the launch of the game and this first season, we see that as building a foundation on which we can build for the future. So, as we look at our quarterly seasons, and we look at our annual expansions, those are the things that we're really focused on for our live service." Several media outlets have jumped on Fergusson's statement—comparisons have been made to Bungie's approach to keeping online multiplayer franchises alive for a long time. Paul Tassi (via Forbes) pointed out that Diablo IV's leadership is pushing for the: "exact same model as Destiny 2."

The curious case of Starfield's endgame.

Larian Studio Head Swen Vincke and @ToddKenreck talk about Baldur's Gate 3's launch, player creativity weird problems and endings.

Sometimes, a game sits at such a cross section of my interests that it almost feels made specifically for me. In the case of Affogato, it’s three of my favourite types of games mashed together: it’s Coffee Talk by way of Persona by way of any card-based tower defence game – only here it’s sort of "reverse tower defence", as the game's Steam page is keen to point out. It's your own card units that are the ones moving along pre-defined tracks wreaking havoc on stationary enemies, not the other way around.