It felt like it'd been forever since we'd had a big MMO launch—until this summer. Between Crowfall, Swords of Legends Online, and Amazon's upcoming New World, there's now a sudden glut of them. But of those three, New World seems to be the most popular, judging by the 190,000 players who jumped into its closed beta simultaneously yesterday.According to SteamDB, New World peaked at 190,811 concurrent players and currently has just over 160,000 playing. That's enough to make New World the fourth biggest game on Steam, just ahead of Grand Theft Auto 5 and Apex Legends. It's also dominating on Twitch, where it's currently the second most popular game with just over 300,000 viewers.There are some caveats to these numbers, though. Currently, the closed beta is accessible to those who have pre-ordered the game, but because the beta and the actual game are separate listings on Steam it's likely that some players could've pre-ordered and refunded that purchase just to get beta access. There's probably also a lot of players who jumped in without having to pay any money through giveaways or because they already had access from earlier tests. It'll be interesting to see how the closed beta numbers compare to the actual launch on August 31.Still, New World is looking like it'll be the big MMO hit of the summer. For comparison, Sword of Legends Online has reportedly sold 200,000 copies in the week of its launch—which is still a lot of copies—but has only peaked at just over 18,000 concurrent players. It's a pretty good MMO, though, once you persevere through its boring and repetitive leveling process.As for New World, it's changed a lot since it first was announced. Tyler played it back in May and said that it had become a more conventional MMO than suggested by early looks at its PvP keep defense battles. We'll have updated impressions next week.If you're planning on jumping into the New World closed beta (you can get access by pre-ordering it on Steam), be aware that users with EVGA RTX 3090s are reportedly having their cards bricked while playing. There doesn't seem to be a clear consensus on what's happening or why, but it's something to be careful of.New World's closed beta lasts until August 2. The full game launches on August 31.

We are thrilled to announce that The Witcher Remake is being worked on!

Experience the true meaning of joyful chaos in Warcraft Arclight Rumble, a mobile action strategy game developed by Blizzard Entertainment.

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.

Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday it would buy videogame publisher Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in cash, the largest deal in the sector.

Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 have been delayed from 2022 to possible 2023 release dates, Blizzard Entertainment announced Tuesday.

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.