Mike Morhaime Mike Morhaime co-founded Blizzard as Silicon & Synapse in 1991. The co-founder and CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Morhaime, is a huge fan of esports. We got to have a chat with him about Blizzard’s development process, the future of esports, his favourite moments in the history of StarCraft, and—ahem—which Overwatch characters he ships. Diversity is and will be a problem in esports for a long time—do you feel like these games do more than others to improve diversity in esports

In what’s been a busy week for id’s incoming arena shooter, Quake Champions has teased its first arena—named Blood Covenant. As you’ll see in the trailer below, Blood Covenant looks a bit like a souped up version of Quake 3’s DM6 Arena—with its gothic masonry, incongruous metal plating, towering stone pillars, and weird blood bath/sacrificial altar-type central effect. “Warriors from all over the waking world have been trapped in the Dreamlands, where they must battle it out for eternity in Quak

Oculus’ co-founders Brendan Iribe and Palmer Luckey were forced to pay $150 million and $50 million respectively. John Carmack responded informally via Facebook thereafter—which ZeniMax in turn responded to—and has now sued ZeniMax formally for $22.5 million. “The jury flatly rejected Mr. Carmack’s complaint, and found for ZeniMax. The wiping occurred right after Mr. Carmack researched on Google how to wipe a hard drive. “Apparently lacking in remorse, and disregarding the evidence of his many f

Of course, there’s more to From Other Suns than FTL with three-player co-op. Handling movement in first-person VR games has been one of the biggest challenges for the genre—and it’s one that still lacks an elegant solution. Most VR games rely on teleportation to sidestep the nausea-inducing feeling of standing still physically while moving in-game. I watch from a fixed perspective as my character moves forward and when I stop moving my perspective snaps back into my body. To put it simply, it’s

When AMD and Nvidia promise performance gains from a new driver, it’s usually in the neighborhood of just a few percentage points. For those who are interested in taking in-game screenshots, Nvidia also added Ansel support to Ghost Recon: Wildlands. There are plans to add Ansel support to more games, including the upcoming Lawbreakers and Mass Effect: Andromeda. Nvidia’s 378.78 driver also brings full support for the mighty GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, for which we have a review in progress. In short, i

Which Resident Evil game is best? Through reinvention after reinvention, Resident Evil games may not always be great, but they’ve always been fascinating, curious objects. Problem is, no-one really wanted a Resident Evil game to be about those things, so I understand the criticism Resi 6 got. Resident Evil ZeroDeveloped: Capcom Published: Capcom2002 (PC, 2016)James: Resi Zero was actually my first Resident Evil game. It’s one of the truest remasters out there, and one of the best survival horror

We’re introduced to Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the historical protagonist of Assassin’s Creed 2, the moment he’s born. When designing Assassin’s Creed 2, Ubisoft Montreal first looked at reviews of the original to determine which areas needed to be improved. Work began on Assassin’s Creed 2 in early 2008 and, thanks to the tireless efforts of 300+ developers, it was released in November 2009. It was really tight.”Given this merciless schedule, it’s remarkable how well Assassin’s Creed 2 turned ou

The two tribes have been split between the factions, with Lyonar, Magmar, and Vetruvian getting new Golem synergies and Abyssian, Vanar, and Songhai getting Arcanyst synergies. So if you play an Arcanyst minion with Bond (like Nightshroud, shown below) and you don’t have any other Arcanysts in play, nothing will happen. Each Faction will get one Bond minion of its own, along with access to two more Neutral Bond minions for a total of eight in the set. You can unlock the Ancient Bonds cards in pa

Traditions (free patch feature)What’s new: Empires will now generate a new resource called Unity from building certain structures and taking certain actions. Prosperity helps you turn Space Resources and Space Labor into more sweet, sweet, space cash. Your pops can’t survive in non-Hive Mind empires, and non-Hive Mind pops in your own (including on worlds you’ve conquered) will be automatically consumed (literally turned into food) by the swarm. This, understandably, gives you a diplomatic penal

Facebook and Reddit pages were full of angry fans who were adamant that the changes to Bastion were too much. It didn’t do much for the hero’s popularity, as it felt like every single ladder composition included a Bastion regardless of map or point. So, how does a unique character like Bastion fit into the current meta? Here we see Liquid going for a 2/2/2 push on King’s Row that has Bastion complementing Soldier 76. Situations like this reward high levels of skill and execution, making the meta

In Ghost Recon: Wildlands’ massive map, one of the greatest tactical joys comes from hands-off infiltration in the form of sniping enemy soldiers from far away. You can get one of the better sniper rifles, the MSR, the moment you start. Most vehicles in Wildlands don’t have trouble driving up steep inclines and over boulders that would turn a genuine all terrain vehicle into scraps. Open it to find the MSR sniper rifle. Fast travel out of there and take it for a spin on those early missions.

Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite doesn’t release on console and PC until sometime later this year, but Capcom has thrown in a teammate to strike first: a PC release of 2011’s Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. A basic ‘PC Settings’ menu controls resolution, fullscreen or windowed options, antialiasing, texture quality, and VFX quality. The PC settings menu. Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 is $25/£20 on Steam. If that’s too steep for you, or you want to save your fighting game money for Marvel vs Capcom: Infinit

Welcome back to The PC Gamer Show , our weekly livestreamed podcast. You can catch the show live on Wednesdays at 1 pm PDT on our Twitch channel , or after the fact at any of the links below. This week we’ll be talking about Overwatch’s newest hero Orisa, the recently announced GTX 1080 Ti, AMD’s Ryzen CPUs, and more—including our usual Twitch chat Q&A! Bo breaks down the GTX 1080 Ti and AMD’s Ryzen CPUs. Listen:Download the MP3 directlySubscribe on iTunesGrab the podcast RSS feedWatch it on You

We’ve tested the DualShock 4, Xbox 360 controller, every official version of the Xbox One controller, and a few dedicated PC pads to pick our favorite. These are the best gamepads for PC, chosen for comfort, control, and how compatible they are with PC gaming. The software essentially tricks Windows into treating the DS4 like an Xbox 360 controller, so just about any game which supports an Xbox 360 controller (basically any game with controller support) should work with the default profile. Most

WHY I LOVE In Why I Love, PC Gamer writers pick an aspect of PC gaming that they love and write about why it’s brilliant. While he enjoyed games such as Dear Esther and Journey, there was little amusing happening from a contemporary perspective. Stobbart’s sense of humour is often observational, much of which is projected via his methodological thought processes and internal monologues. While writing about Broken Sword’s origins last year, I caught up with series mastermind Charles Cecil and ask

But Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War aren’t linear, heavily scripted adventures in the Call of Duty vein. They’re full of procedurally generated characters thanks to the Nemesis system, which makes your stories with AI enemies feel personal. Or, as de Plater jokingly called it when I asked if it’s still the Nemesis system when the Uruks are your friends, the Bro system. The Nemesis system encompasses your enemies and your own army, and the diversity of Uruks has been increased tremendously, wi

A new mission for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided set in a prison. The Penthouse is a maximum security prison balanced on top of a mesa somewhere in the Arizona desert. The story and characters are the weakest link in A Criminal Past—it’s the level design that makes it worth playing. Deus Ex is, when it’s at its best, a game about choices, and A Criminal Past offers plenty of that in its 6-7 hours. While previous DLC System Rift felt like a retread of Mankind Divided, this mission is much more distinct