Games Archive

Antonio G. Di BenedettoAug 27

Alienware’s flagship 5K OLED curved gaming monitor is now available for $1,099.

Alienware announced its fancy AW3926QW monitor back at Computex, and it’s now up for sale with an actual price. The 39-inch tandem OLED with a 165Hz refresh rate and 1500R curve uses an LG panel with RGB stripe subpixels for sharper text display. And it’s loaded with extras, like a KVM and a USB-C port with 90W passthrough power. All for a cool $1,099.

It just might ruin you.

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<em>The front and rear of the AW3926QW.</em>

<em>Lots of ports, including video via HDMI 2.1 FRL, DisplayPort 2.1, and USB-C.</em>

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The front and rear of the AW3926QW.

Image: Alienware

Of course Samsung made a 1,100Hz gaming monitor

Jess WeatherbedAug 27

Sean HollisterAug 27

Brütal Legend is free on PC to honor Tim Curry’s memory.

Till 6:06AM ET, technically, for Windows, MacOS and Ubuntu PCs. Even Curry’s video game roles were legendary.

“To honor Tim Curry's memory, we are making Brütal Legend FREE on Itch.io, for 666 minutes.”

[Bluesky Social]

Kallie PlaggeAug 26

Playing Pokémon Snap with Lego sets.

I’m in San Francisco for the Pokémon World Championships, and the Pokémon Center store here has a huge Lego display. I wasn’t sure how I felt about these when they were announced, but seeing Lego Squirtle in person made me want the set. Look at that burger!

Photography by Kallie Plagge / The Verge

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Jay PetersAug 26

1047 Games is ending development on the newest Splitgate and another multiplayer game.

The studio is reworking Splitgate: Arena Reloaded and Empulse to support peer-to-peer multiplayer but will no longer be providing dedicated servers, according to a message from cofounders Ian Proulx and Nicholas Bagamian. (Proulx wore a hat that read “Make FPS Great Again” at 2025’s Summer Game Fest, which he apologized for.)

The cofounders also note that “our focus is changing” and that “What we build next may look very different from what people expect from 1047 Games.”

A screenshot of a message from 1047 games. It reads: An Update on Empulse, Splitgate: Arena Reloaded, and What’s Next for 1047 Games Today, we have some difficult news to share: we are ending active development on Empulse and Splitgate: Arena Reloaded. This is a hard update for us to write. We love these games, and we know this will be disappointing and frustrating for a lot of people. We are sorry. The reality is that neither game is generating enough revenue to support the ongoing cost of dedicated servers. We have continued covering those costs because we wanted to give both games every opportunity to grow, but we have reached the point where that is no longer sustainable. We have loved working on these games, playing them, and building them with this community, and we wish we could continue supporting them. What we do not want to do is simply shut the games down. We believe people should be able to keep playing the games they love even after active development ends. The original Splitgate launched seven years ago. When its dedicated servers went offline last year, we moved it to peer-to-peer so people could keep playing. It remains playable today, including on console. Wherever technically possible, we want that to be true of every game we make. So we have reworked Empulse and Splitgate: Arena Reloaded to support peer-to-peer play. On Thursday, September 3, both games will move to peer-to-peer hosting with a server browser. Dedicated servers and matchmaking will shut down, but players will still be able to host matches, find games, and play with friends forever. Empulse will also receive one new map and lower its price across all regions. This will be the final version of Empulse. Active development may be ending, but we’ll still be playing Empulse and Splitgate: Arena Reloaded and hanging out in the Discord. If you see us in a lobby, come say hi.

The second part of a message from 1047 Games. It reads: “What’s Next We started 1047 Games ten years ago because we love video games. Since then, more than 25 million people have played our games, and many of the people we’ve met along the way have become lifelong friends. After ten years of focusing on live service shooters, our focus is changing. What we build next may look very different from what people expect from 1047 Games, but what has not changed is why we are here: we love making games. We have learned a lot over the years, and we will carry those lessons into what we build next. To everyone who worked on Splitgate, Splitgate: Arena Reloaded, and Empulse, including those no longer at 1047: thank you. You put years of your lives into them, and we are grateful for what you helped us build. And to everyone who played, gave us feedback, made videos, argued about balance changes, discovered ridiculous movement tech, or brought friends into a lobby: thank you for being part of this with us. Thank you for the last ten years. See you in the server browser. lan Proulx and Nicholas Bagamian Co-founders, 1047 Games”

1/2Image: 1047 Games

Jay PetersAug 26

Panic is passing Playdate tariff refunds on to customers.

“It just felt like the fair thing to do,” Panic says in an email shared on Reddit. The exact refund amount seems to vary; the email screenshot shows a refund of $12.36, while a couple other Reddit users mentioned refunds of about $23.

Nintendo and Sony, on the other hand, have kept their tariff refunds.

The Switch 2’s $50 price increase is happening next week

Cameron FaulknerAug 26

Jay PetersAug 26

Xbox’s new Fable embraces color and humor. Refreshing!

I dig just about everything in the new 18-minute video demo that you can watch on YouTube. (I can’t embed it because it’s age-gated.) The whole vibe is way more interesting to me than yet another grimdark fantasy.

Fable launches on February 23rd, 2027.

A screenshot from the video.

Image: Xbox

Jay PetersAug 26

GTA VI just got some more competition.

November 19th will also be the launch date for Volvy’s Adventure: Reslimed, a new retro-styled platformer that stars Devolver’s weird mascot. And both GTA VI and Volvy’s Adventure will be going up against November 19th’s launch of The Binding of Isaac: Repentance + Online on consoles that same day. Big day.

Emma RothAug 26

Xbox’s 25th anniversary controller is available to preorder now.

You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to preorder the $899.99 translucent green Xbox Series X (unless you received an early invitation from Microsoft), but you can preorder the matching controller now for $79.99. The device will begin shipping on October 20th.

Image: Microsoft

Xbox announces disc-to-digital feature that digitizes your physical games

Tom WarrenAug 26

Microsoft’s 25th anniversary Xbox will cost $899

Stevie BonifieldAug 26

Elden Ring on the Switch 2 isn’t tarnished

Andrew WebsterAug 26

Richard LawlerAug 26

Cyberleek responds to Rockstar with another GTA VI leak.

At about the same time Rockstar Games released a statement about leaked Grand Theft Auto VI videos, saying they’re “heartbreaking for our team,” another clip appeared on the internet from the source of the leaks, although it may have been posted before Rockstar’s statement. In this one, while what sounds like a Bad Bunny song plays in the background, the Jason character carjacks a vehicle with a “Rideout Customs” logo across the back window and attempts to evade the police, before the other main character, Lucia, appears briefly in a cutscene.

The leakers responded to comments about their bad driving in a caption, but didn’t say anything specific about Rockstar’s statement.