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After tallying up all of the votes cast during the most recent winter sale, Valve has now unveiled all of the 2023 Steam Award winners. Much like last year some of the games are truly worthy of their newfound crown, others are a curious yet reasonable choice, while a select few are completely undeserving of the throne and seem to have only gotten there thanks to a collective bout of insanity.
Before I say anything else, allow me to share with you the brief list of categories and their winners:
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Released back in 2021, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is a heavily story focused action-adventure that's perfectly happy to do its own thing rather than tie itself to any of the movies. Because of this it has managed to avoid many of the issues these types of games tend to run into, and so the end result is actually quite a fun and captivating experience!
With that in mind, you might be pleased to hear that Guardians of the Galaxy is currently entirely free to grab over at the Epic Games Store. As always, there is a bit of a time limit to the giveaway, so do make sure to grab yourself a copy before the whole thing ends on January 11th.
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[Update #2]: MTG Arena's Alchemy: Murders at Karlov Manor mini-set is launching on March 5th, and it brings with it a potential teaser for 4-player games!
[Update]: MTG Arena has buffed a whole bunch of Domain and Powerstone focused cards.
If you're tired of Standard and looking to branch out into other formats on MTG Arena, this would be a pretty good time to do so. Not only has Wizards of the Coast just recently unleashed the Khans of Tarkir set onto Arena for Historic and Explorer players to enjoy, but they've also launched a brand new format focused around using as many broken and banned cards as possible - Timeless. Perfect to fill the gap until the next major set comes out in February!
First things first, the Khans of Tarkir set has been re-released in its entirety, so there are thankfully no missing cards like in some of the previous remasters. This does also mean that half of the fetchlands are now present on Arena, though given their extreme power level they're currently only playable in Historic Brawl and the freshly launched Timeless. So if you're planning to play either of the two formats, make sure to grab some copies as you'll almost certainly need them.
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As a part of their holiday sale, the Epic Games Store has been giving away a generally interesting game every single day. Today's offering is no different, though it does somewhat break the streak of quality games as the new addition is the highly divisive Saints Row reboot.
That said, I wouldn't call Saints Row a bad game by any stretch as it's both perfectly playable and a decent bit of open world fun. The failure comes primarily from the name, as despite being called Saints Row it does very little to evoke the spirit of the first two games, or even the much wackier third and fourth ones. This, as you might imagine, makes recommending it a bit difficult.
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If you're a fan of World of Warcraft, whether this be the newest Dragonflight expansion or the various Classic versions, you'll be pleased to hear that the future looks bright! According to the freshly released Roadmap, both versions of the game will be getting a plethora of major updates throughout 2024!
The highlights for the 'Retail' side include things like world-wide dragonriding and a new assortment of quests in Winter, as well as remastered Dragonflight raids and a seemingly improved Timewalking option for the Pandaria expansion in Spring. All of this will eventually lead into The War Within expansion that will launch in late Summer and bring with it the usual array of new content like new zones, dungeons and raids, Earthern allied race, and the list goes on for a while.
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If you're looking for a game to cuddle up with during the cold (or surprisingly warm) winter months, you'll be happy to hear that Obsidian's The Outer Worlds and all of its DLC are currently up for grabs. All you have to do is head on over to the Epic Games Store, snag yourself a copy, and you'll be set to make a complete mess out of outer space.
The small catch, as always, is that there is a fairly tight time limit. The giveaway will end at 4pm GMT on December 26th, so do make sure to add The Outer Worlds to your account before it goes back to its regular price. Once you've done that you'll be able to play it whenever you want and for however long you want.
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[Update]: More good news! Obsidian's The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition is free to grab until December 26th.
If you're a fan of RPGs and you've somehow managed to avoid giving Fallout 3 a try all these years, consider this your lucky day. As a part of the Epic Games Store's Christmas giveaway, Fallout 3 and all of its DLCs are currently free to grab!
Naturally, there is a small catch, and that is the limited time window in which you have to snag yourself a copy. In this case the giveaway will run out at 4pm GMT on December 24th, so do make sure to claim your copy before the giveaway goes away. And then, once you've added it to your account you'll be able to play it whenever you want and for however long you want.
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[Update #2]: Dota 2's Patch 7.35d has reworked hero bans and brought in yet more balance changes.
[Update]: Dota 2's Patch 7.35c has arrived with much-needed nerfs to overplayed heroes and items.
With the recent Patch 7.35 Dota 2 has rebalanced a good chunk of its items and heroes, as well as added a variety of new items and neutral items for everyone to mess around with. Unsurprisingly, given the sheer scale of the changes, Patch 7.35 has also brought with it a whole host of balance problems!
So in order to smash some of these outliers back into place, Valve has now unleashed Patch 7.35b with another sizable batch of changes. The biggest one, and perhaps the most confusing, is the crippling nerf to Bloodstone - "Bloodpact no longer restores mana". Since only a couple of heroes ever bought Bloodstone, and since they did so mostly for the massive amounts of mana regeneration, I'm guessing the item is likely going to remain unused until it gets reworked yet again.
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In an announcement that came seemingly out of nowhere, CDPR has now revealed that they are working on a mod editor for The Witcher 3! The editor will be a reworked version of the REDengine 3 editor that was used to create the actual game, so skilled modders will be able to modify all of the existing content to their heart's content, as well as create entirely new quests and storylines!
While no exact release date has been announced just yet, The Witcher 3 editor will be heading over to PC at some point in 2024. And naturally, it'll be entirely free for everyone to mess around with!
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[Update #2]: Patch 7.35c has now launched with some much-needed nerfs to overplayed heroes and items.
[Update]: Dota 2's Patch 7.35b has arrived to fix some of the freshly introduced mistakes.
In an effort to prevent the meta from getting too entrenched, the Dota 2 team has now unleashed Patch 7.35. As you might expect, the update brings with it an absurd amount of balance changes to both items and heroes, a plethora of quality of life improvements, numerous new items and neutral items to toy around with, and since this is the holiday season we're talking about, some festive new cosmetics as well!
First and foremost, jungle creeps now offer less money, thus incentivizing a more active playstyle among core roles. Keeping with the theme, super creeps and mega creeps are now a fair bit stronger as well, so destroying an enemy team's base should be more than a simple inconvenience. And in order to give the dominant team a better chance to push, Roshan can now also drop a banner that greatly amplifies one lane's worth of creeps for 300 seconds.