A small update has gone out for Starfield on Xbox Series X|S, Microsoft Store, and Steam. This update addresses some issues with performance and stability as well as a few general gameplay issues. We are continuing to work on a larger update that will add features and improvements that we noted in our last update notes. Thank you so much for your continued feedback and support of Starfield and we look forward to a future with you on this journey.

General

• Characters: Fixed an issue that could cause some characters to not be in their proper location.
• Star Stations: Fixed an issue where Star Stations would be labeled as a player-owned ship.
• Vendors: Addressed an issue that allowed for a vendor’s full inventory to be accessible.

Graphics

• AMD (PC): Resolved an issue that caused star lens flares not to appear correctly AMD GPUs.
• Graphics: Addressed an upscaling issue that could cause textures to become blurry.
• Graphics: Resolved an issue that could cause photosensitivity issues when scrolling through the inventory menu.

Performance and Stability

• Hand Scanner: Addressed an issue where the Hand Scanner caused hitching.
• Various stability and performance improvements to address crashing and freezes.

Ships

• Displays: Fixed an issue that would cause displayed items to disappear when applied to in-ship mannequins.
• Displays: Fixed an issue that would cause items stored in Razorleaf Storage Containers and Weapon Racks to disappear after commandeering another ship.

Hardware Busters put the new 12V-2x6 connector—which is part of the ATX v3.1 standard—to the test to see how it compares to the 12VHPWR connector and the results are very encouraging. Not only does the 12V-2x6 cables appear to run at much cooler temperature, even at a 55 Ampere load, although the setup that was tested had only been running at this load for around 30 minutes. Even so, the cable and connector was only reading a surface temperature of around 46 degrees, which is well within specs.

...

YouTube Video - Hardware Busters

Celebrate our 15th anniversary with incredible discounts! Enjoy up to -90% off on a wide range of classic and newer games. Explore the deals now and level up your gaming experience!

Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption - Reawakened, the mod project to rebuild the first VtM videogame in Skyrim, has shown off new gameplay of its Prague early game. The original game, which follows the story of a crusader knight from the Middle Ages all the way to the modern day, is one of those hyper-ambitious, turn of the millennium RPGs that just doesn't come all the way together, and is a prime candidate for a fan revival.

We last checked in on Redemption - Reawakened a year ago. The mod team had shown off some of its later hub areas and more dungeony levels, but project lead Galejro's latest videos show off a significant portion of the early game in Prague.

...

YouTube - Daytime & Silver Mines
YouTube - Nighttime

There's a long tradition of connections between Dungeons & Dragons and the videogames based on it. Pool of Radiance, the 1998 videogame that kicked off the Gold Box series, was also released as a pen-and-paper adventure called Ruins of Adventure in the same year. More recently, Baldur's Gate 3 incorporated parts of the adventure Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus—if you want to know more about why there are so many tiefling refugees fleeing Elturel, that book has your answer. (Wyll's dad shows up in it too.)

The next D&D supplement is Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse, and it includes at least a few things players of 1999's Planescape: Torment will recognize. For starters, one piece of official artwork shows the Smoldering Corpse Bar, which either still has Ignus the burning wizard on display or has found a replacement for him.

What's more, the supplement's adventure book, Turn of Fortune's Wheel, opens with a familiar scene. "You wake up in the mortuary," senior game designer F. Wesley Schneider said in a first look video. "I'm sorry to say that you've died. Morte, the snarky floating skull, greets you and you realize that there's a mystery. Your memories are fractured and every time that you come back from the dead, you come back a little different."

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is a preem spy thriller adventure. However, if your V really isn't that interested in working with government types, you can choose not to sign on to a life of martinis shaken, not stirred.

Only issue is, choosing to do so locks you out of the questline—and from what I've tested, it's permanent. At minimum it'll delay your progression through the DLC's story substantially, but I don't get the sense Reed's gonna call me back.

Here's the mostly spoiler-free rundown: at the end of a mission called Lucretia My Reflection, you'll be given a choice to stay or go. If you go, you really do go—you fail the mission, and are roadblocked from proceeding.

You can still run around Dogtown, but there'll be no suit and tie galas with Mr. Elba, which is a crime in itself. Just make sure to play ball with your new friends, and you'll be golden. If you're really worried about accidentally dropping the new DLC, here's the specifics.

“Nobody uses water,” one man in a Dodgers cap said in Spanish when Maria Cabrera approached, holding flyers about silicosis, an incurable and suffocating disease that has devastated dozens of workers across the state and killed men who have barely reached middle age.

...

The disease dates back centuries, but researchers say the booming popularity of countertops made of engineered stone, which has much higher concentrations of silica than many kinds of natural stone, has driven a new epidemic of an accelerated form of the suffocating illness. As the dangerous dust builds up and scars the lungs, the disease can leave workers short of breath, weakened and ultimately suffering from lung failure.

“You can get a transplant,” Cabrera told the man in Spanish, “but it won’t last.”

In California, it has begun to debilitate young workers, largely Latino immigrants who cut and polish slabs of engineered stone. Instead of cropping up in people in their 60s or 70s after decades of exposure, it is now afflicting men in their 20s, 30s or 40s, said Dr. Jane Fazio, a pulmonary critical care physician who became alarmed by cases she saw at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. Some California patients have died in their 30s.

...

According to the voice of Astarion himself, there's a whole two hour section of Baldur's Gate 3 no one has played yet.

...

"There's even something I know about that you can't get to unless you do something that I don't think anyone's going to work out," Newborn said in the livestream, which you can see him talk about in a clip above. "I was told this in confidence and I think I'm one of the few people who knows about it as well." In the stream Newborn was even asked if he could tell the person he was talking to what it is, but noted "it's one of those few things I cannot friend-DA." Just to clarify, Newborn will have signed an NDA to work on this project, unsurprisingly, but people are people and they do tell their friends things, but this seems like something so secretive he can't even do that.

Update: Sounds like this article is old and it has been found

You can already guess the third sentence: the servers have been a disaster at launch, with players forced to queue for long periods just to play alone, if they can manage to play at all. It currently sits "Mostly Negative" reviews on Steam - that's 31% positive after almost 19,000 reviews.

"Online only was a huge mistake," says one review. "Imagine waiting for an hour and ten minutes and still not being able to get into a private game," says the one underneath. "this game makes me feel the developers made this game just so they could pull off the biggest heist of all time. robbing us of an offline mode," says another. There are hundreds more like this.

The official Payday X (formerly Twitter) account has been tracking the issues, noting "slow matchmaking" on September 21st, and an outright "matchmaking outage" yesterday on September 22nd. As of twelve hours ago, the account posted that they're "seeing players being able to create lobbies again," but that there "still might have a few issues" that they're working on. Throughout it all, the account has been getting roasted by players who can't play, or who simply want an offline mode.

According to the voice of Astarion himself, there's a whole two hour section of Baldur's Gate 3 no one has played yet.

...

"There's even something I know about that you can't get to unless you do something that I don't think anyone's going to work out," Newborn said in the livestream, which you can see him talk about in a clip above. "I was told this in confidence and I think I'm one of the few people who knows about it as well." In the stream Newborn was even asked if he could tell the person he was talking to what it is, but noted "it's one of those few things I cannot friend-DA." Just to clarify, Newborn will have signed an NDA to work on this project, unsurprisingly, but people are people and they do tell their friends things, but this seems like something so secretive he can't even do that.

Update: See below, it has been found.

Panos Panay did not present at Microsoft's recent Windows event in New York City—his departure from the titanic technology corporation was announced on September 18; so only three days before an official unveiling of new Surface products. Panay and his (now former) executive colleagues painted a positive picture regarding the move onto pastures new. News reports emerged about an alleged high level hiring by Amazon, with Panay overseeing Alexa and Echo divisions—replacing Dave Limp, SVP of Amazon Devices & Services. A Business Insider report suggests that Microsoft's former chief product officer was unhappy about budget cuts affecting his Surface division—certain insiders were not surprised when Panay announced his retirement from the big M.

The transfer to Amazon was in the works for a while, according to cited inside sources—Microsoft reportedly implemented a round of major budget cuts and product cancellations that did not sit well with Panay. The Surface department experienced "significant" downscaling, and plans for next-generation Surface Headphones were jettisoned. Business Insider proposed that funds had been reassigned to more important internal ventures—mainly artificial intelligence. Many folks were looking forward to Panay taking the stage in NYC earlier this week, but Brett Ostrum (Corporate Vice President of Surface Devices) ultimately acted as his replacement—with a showcasing of the company's latest portable Windows devices. Attendees were somewhat surprised to see Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella turn up as well—it is possible that he was added to the roster for "some extra firepower."

Right to repair has no cannier, more dedicated adversary than Apple, a company whose most innovative work is dreaming up new ways to sneakily sabotage electronics repair while claiming to be a caring environmental steward, a lie that covers up the mountains of e-waste that Apple dooms our descendants to wade through.

...

Today, it costs about a quarter to add a system-on-a-chip to even the tiniest parts. These SOCs can run DRM. Here's how that DRM works: when you put a new part in a device, the SOC and the device's main controller communicate with one another. They perform a cryptographic protocol: the part says, "Here's my serial number," and then the main controller prompts the user to enter a manufacturer-supplied secret code, and the master controller sends a signed version of this to the part, and the part and the system then recognize each other.

This process has many names, but because it was first used in the automotive sector, it's widely known as VIN-Locking (VIN stands for "vehicle identification number," the unique number given to every car by its manufacturer). VIN-locking is used by automakers to block independent mechanics from repairing your car; even if they use the manufacturer's own parts, the parts and the engine will refuse to work together until the manufacturer's rep keys in the unlock code: