After five years of development, Pistol Shrimp Games has launched a free public demo of Free Stars: Children of Infinity, the sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters made by that game's original creators. The demo focuses solely on the melee combat mode, letting players choose from 38 ships—including nearly all classic Ur-Quan Masters vessels plus new additions—for head-to-head arcade battles. It's available now on Steam and GOG for Windows, Mac, and Linux, with console versions still to come.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-08
A hardware comparison finds that Nintendo's Switch 2 and Valve's Steam Deck are closely matched in handheld mode, with the Switch 2's Nvidia Ampere GPU offering a slight graphical edge over the Deck's AMD RDNA 2 chip. The gap widens dramatically when the Switch 2 is docked, boosting its GPU output from about 1.71 to 3.7 TFLOPS, enabling 4K/60fps in titles like Metroid Prime 4, while the Deck sees no docked performance boost. Meanwhile, the Steam Deck's Zen 2 CPU can hit higher clock speeds and it also carries more unified memory, 16GB versus the Switch 2's 12GB.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-08
New handhelds like the Asus ROG Xbox Ally, Ally X, and Lenovo Legion Go line now outperform the Steam Deck in benchmark tests and frame rates, though the gap is often small. Despite a price hike from $450 to $500 in September 2026, the Steam Deck remains cheaper than these rivals, while the Nintendo Switch 2 also stands out as a pricier but capable alternative with DLSS and HDR support.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-05
Two new indie titles are drawing attention this week: Worming from Home, a $10 remote-work life simulator where players control a worm navigating office tasks and social interactions, and Marsupilami 2: Salsa Palombia, a $30 mascot platformer from Ocellus Studio and Microids that lets players swap between three characters with different abilities across multiple platforms including Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-05
At IFA, Acer showed off a concept called the DualPlay Mini, a small handheld gaming device that can flip open to reveal a keyboard and become a mini laptop. Acer hasn't disclosed specs, but reports say it ran Forza Horizon 6 smoothly with rumble support, and its keyboard is large enough for mouse-and-WASD play.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-05
Roborock used IFA 2026 to expand its robotic cleaning lineup, showcasing the Saros Rover with its wheel-leg design for climbing stairs, alongside the Saros 20 Flow Complete and Saros 20 Neo mop-vacuum hybrids. The company also introduced the F25 Ultra Steam Gen 2 upright steam cleaner, the modular F25 Pro Turbo Combo, plus new outdoor devices: the RockNeo Q2 lawnmower and RockAqua P1 pool cleaner.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-03
Star Wars Zero Company has earned strong reviews and an 85 Metacritic score for its X-COM-style tactics gameplay and story, but many players report severe technical problems including traversal stutter, input lag, crashes, and a bug that forced a mission restart. Nearly 9,000 Steam reviews rate it 'mostly positive' overall, yet a large share of them describe frequent crashes and performance issues, with complaints also surfacing from console players and even high-end PC owners.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-02
Epilogue makes USB-C cartridge readers, the $50 GB Operator for Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance carts, and the $60 SN Operator for Super Nintendo and Super Famicom titles, with an N64 version in development. The devices connect real cartridges to Windows, Mac, Steam Deck, Xbox Ally or even phones, letting users back up save data and play games through companion Playback software that pulls the ROM and runs it in an emulator.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-02
Acer has shown off a concept device called Project DualPlay Mini, an 8-inch Windows gaming handheld resembling its Predator Atlas 8 that can flip open and swivel its screen to reveal a small backlit keyboard underneath. The device runs on an Intel chip and uses a dual-fan cooling setup similar to the Atlas 8, but Acer has not detailed further specs since it remains a concept with no confirmed retail release.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-02
Ubisoft announced that For Honor will stop working on SteamOS and Linux systems, including Steam Deck, starting September 10. The publisher says it is disabling Easy Anti-Cheat support for Linux because it cannot adequately guarantee protection against cheaters on that platform, though it left open the possibility of restoring access later.
gamingonlinux.com
· 2026-09-01
Roughly 12 terabytes of data from Valve's old Steam2 backend, covering games published between 2003 and 2013, has surfaced online after being left exposed in a public repository. The trove reportedly includes prototype builds like an early version of Left 4 Dead with a different HUD, materials tied to the canceled Half-Life 2: Episode 3, and files from non-Valve titles such as Grand Theft Auto 5. Content creators covering Valve say no hacking was involved, and only game data was exposed, not player information.
cnet.com
· 2026-08-31
A 12-terabyte trove of Steam2-era content dating from 2003 to 2013 has appeared online, reportedly containing nearly every uploaded build for that decade, including cut Portal 2 assets, Half-Life 2: Episode 3 files, and beta versions of Left 4 Dead 2, CS:GO, Spore, and Dragon Age: Origins. Researchers say the material came from an unsecured public API tied to Valve's old distribution system, which was replaced by SteamPipe in 2013 and left this data exposed without any password protection.
games.slashdot.org
· 2026-08-31
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