Terraria has sold 35M copies across all platforms https://www.pcgamer.com/terraria-has-sold-35m-copies-across-all-platforms/
As Wes Fenlon wrote in 2020, "After nine years of free updates, no paid DLC or microtransactions, Terraria remains an astonishingly good deal." A year later, that apparently remains true, as the 2D crafting sandbox has now sold 35 million copies. Of those 17.2 million copies were on PC, with 9.3 million on mobile and 8.5 million on console.This was announced as part of an update from the developers on Terraria's official forum. "We remain hard at work on the litany of updates across the board as we press forward into 2021", they wrote. "Things are really starting to come together, and we are beyond excited for what the rest of the year has in store. That said, we did our usual numbers updates to close out 2020 and we wanted to share that once again - thanks to your beyond-amazing support - Terraria has reached another units sold milestone!"The developers also pointed out that Terraria recently took the number one position on Steam250's ranking of games by user review, knocking Portal 2 from the top spot. Not to piss on the parade or anything, but it's worth noting that Steam250's algorithm places a high importance on number of reviews, while SteamDB's similar ranking still has Portal 2 in top spot, with Terarria at a very respectable number five behind Factorio, Hades, and The Witcher 3.Here are the best Terraria mods.
www.pcgamer.comOh my god guys look at this #Finally
Aaaand Moon Lord has been killed. Not my first rodeo (I may have 500h+ played 👀), but Terraria never disappoints. Thanks @jobe for this epic co-op experience! I had not played the latest update (1.4.4.9) before but once again Redigit and the team somehow was able to make the game even better than before. I can't wait for Terraria 2.0 and all the new experiences it will bring to us all! 🙌
CD Projekt has confirmed that a new Witcher game is in development, "kicking off a new saga for the franchise."The new game will be built using Unreal Engine 5 rather than CD Projekt's REDengine, which the studio said will begin "a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games.""It covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant," CD Projekt said. "We'll closely collaborate with Epic Games’ developers with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences."CD Projekt said that the change to the new engine was made to help streamline the development process.  "From the outset, we did not consider a typical licensing arrangement; both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership," CD Projekt Red CTO Paweł Zawodny said. "It is vital for CD Projekt Red to have the technical direction of our next game decided from the earliest possible phase as in the past, we spent a lot of resources and energy to evolve and adapt REDengine with every subsequent game release. "This cooperation is so exciting, because it will elevate development predictability and efficiency, while simultaneously granting us access to cutting-edge game development tools. I can’t wait for the great games we’re going to create using Unreal Engine 5!"  The studio also confirmed that despite the shift to a new engine, the new Witcher game is not planned as an Epic Games Store exclusive.
www.pcgamer.comMicrosoft to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion 👀
League of Legends looking at long lockouts for AFK laggards
Developers over at Riot Games are broadening their strategies when it comes to countering behavior they don't like, and are going to trial new penalties for players who leave or engage in AFK behavior during matches. According to Riot, about 9% of players worldwide engage in consistent AFK behavior.Riot defines AFK as two behaviors that waste time for others: people who idle during matches and people who just up sticks and leave the match entirely. Right now, the worst those players can get is a queue delay: "Queue Delays are a speed bump on an offending player’s way to their next few games: Upon clicking the play button, the queue blocks them behind a short timer. The purpose of this is to change behavior," says Riot.Now, however, players can get escalating penalties of between 1 day and 14 days of a queue lockout. That means no playing at all: They're removed from the player population entirely. "We're removing the player from the population for a while so they can't continue to AFK in games," says Riot.For now, the new punishments are being trialed in specific regions, as Riot is concerned about certain region-specific connectivity problems. (The SEA region, at least in other MOBAs, is infamous for connectivity issues that players can't control.) Players who would be immediately subject to the new punishments have been reset to a lower tier, so they have a change to change their ways before the new punishments are levied.You can read the whole developer log, with stats, on the League of Legends site.Nice spot, Eurogamer.
www.pcgamer.comBattlefield 2042 delayed by a month
Battlefield 2042, which was slated to release on October 22, has been delayed. Electronic Arts announced today that because of "unforeseen challenges" created by the Covid-19 pandemic, it has elected to push the game to November 19."Building the next generation of Battlefield during a global pandemic has created unforeseen challenges for our development teams," DICE studio general manager Oskar Gabrielson said in a statement. "Given the scale and scope of the game, we had hoped our teams would be back in our studios together as we move towards launch. With the ongoing conditions not allowing that to happen safely, and with all the hard work the teams are doing from home, we feel it is important to take the extra time to deliver on the vision of Battlefield 2042 for our players."
www.pcgamer.comOverwatch Reveals New Deathmatch Map Malevento