Opera GX Browser Gets Flatpak’ed & Snap’ed On Linux
Last month Opera released the Opera GX gaming-focused web browser for Linux. It rolled out in RPM and Debian package format support while now for those interested is also available via Flatpak and Snap sandboxed app formats… ⌘ Read more

Godot 4.7 Will Finally Have HDR Output, Including On Linux With Wayland
The upcoming Godor 4.7 open-source, cross-platform game engine release is rolling out support for high dynamic range (HDR)… ⌘ Read more

Your Phone’s Next Speed Boost May Come From Magnetic Chips
alternative_right writes: A new technology has been proposed that could fundamentally solve the issue of smartphones overheating during high-spec gaming or extended video streaming. Researchers at KAIST have discovered the principle of processing signals using the minute vibrations of magnets (spin waves) instead of electrons. This method significantly reduc … ⌘ Read more

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Gets a Price Cut
Microsoft is cutting the monthly price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, but the tradeoff is that new Call of Duty releases will no longer arrive on the service at launch. Instead, they’ll show up about a year later. The Verge reports: After Xbox CEO Asha Sharma admitted last week that “Game Pass has become too expensive for players,” Microsoft is dropping the price of Xbox Game Pa … ⌘ Read more

PlayStation To Require Age Verification For Messages and Voice Chat
A new email from Sony says that PlayStation will require players to verify their age later this year to keep using communication features like messages and voice chat. Insider-Gaming reports: The initiative comes from the goal of providing “safe, age-appropriate experiences for players and families while respecting their privacy” and provi … ⌘ Read more

I won our only game of Magic for this week with my (yet-to-be published) “Bolas Triumphant” deck: 5 players over 3 hours, including 4 board wipes (one of which came from my Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh), and I even got to cast Omniscience via a Fae of Wishes. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I had a good time. 😁

Wine 11.7 Brings VBScript Fixes, DirectSound 7.1 Channel Support
For those using upstream Wine for running your Windows games/apps on Linux rather than the likes of the Proton 11.0 beta, out today is Wine 11.7 as the newest bi-weekly development release… ⌘ Read more

Proton 11.0 Beta Released With More Games Playable On Steam Play
Valve and CodeWeavers have just released Proton 11.0 Beta as their first beta milestone for this software that powers Steam Play now rebased against upstream Wine 11.0… ⌘ Read more

SDL Adds Policy To Forbid LLM/AI Generated Code Contributions
The SDL library widely used by cross-platform games and part of the Steam Runtime has now established a policy to block code contributions made using AI / Large Language Models (LLMs)… ⌘ Read more

Sunshine Game Streaming Introduces Vulkan Video Encode Support
Sunshine v2026.413.143228 released this week as a new feature release for this self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight, an open-source game streaming client that is an implementation of the NVIDIA GameStream protocol. Notable with this Sunshine release is Vulkan Video encode support as an alternative to using the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) for game streaming… ⌘ Read more

GreenBoost Memory Orchestrator For NVIDIA GPUs Introduces GreenBoost-Proton For Gaming
Last month we showcased GreenBoost as an open-source means of augmenting NVIDIA GPU vRAM with system RAM and NVMe storage. This memory tiering solution for NVIDIA GPUs was developed by an open-source developer with a focus on CUDA and allowing larger LLMs to be handled on graphics cards with smaller vRAM capacities. There was a setback to the project due to NVIDIA legal but now the project is going in new form and also has … ⌘ Read more

Roblox reveals sweeping changes amid Australian crackdown
Facing a $49.5 million fine threat and an eSafety investigation, the gaming giant has announced its biggest child safety overhaul – splitting the platform by age. ⌘ Read more

Amazon Luna Ends Its Support for Purchased Games and Third-Party Subscriptions
Amazon’s Luna cloud gaming service is making some changes, reports Engadget:

It’s no longer possible to buy Ubisoft+ and Jackbox Games subscriptions or standalone games through Luna. Amazon will automatically cancel any active subscriptions bought through Luna at the end of customers’ next billing cycle. If you have … ⌘ Read more

To Fill Air Traffic Controller Shortage, FAA Turns To Gamers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: As the Trump administration seeks to fill a national shortage of air traffic controllers, officials are targeting a new talent pool: gamers. The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday is making a recruiting push aimed at avid players of video games, as the agency strives to fill thousands of … ⌘ Read more

TIL that SSH actually stands for Secure Snake Home, a massively multiplayer snake game playable via the SSH protocol: ssh snakes.run

Of course, no one else was online when I was playing, so…

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FEX 2604 Released With Better Memory Savings For Running x86_64 Apps/Games On ARM64
Out today is the newest monthly update to FEX for this emulator for running Linux x86/x86_64 binaries on AArch64 (ARM64) Linux systems, including games and the likes of Steam Play with Windows games. This Valve-sponsored project that is quite important for the upcoming Steam Frame has rolled out more performance improvements, memory savings, and other improvements with FEX 2604… ⌘ Read more

ASUS Armoury Driver Supports A Few More Laptops With Linux 7.0
Merged back in Linux 6.19 was the ASUS Armoury driver to enhance support for the ROG Ally gaming handhelds and modern ASUS laptops. The ASUS Armoury driver enables various laptop features to be toggled under Linux and since its introduction it has continued expanding support for more ASUS devices. Ahead of Linux 7.0 coming out on Sunday, a few more devices are now supported by this upstream driver… ⌘ Read more

Security updates for Thursday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, postgresql-13, and tiff), Fedora (bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, cef, opensc, python-biopython, python-pydicom, and roundcubemail), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (ckermit, cockpit-repos, dnsdist, expat, freerdp, git-cliff, gnutls, heroic-games-launcher, libeverest, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, polkit, python-poetry, python-requests, python311-social-auth-app-django, and SDL2_image-devel), and Ubuntu (dogtag-pki, gdk-pixbuf, linux, linux-aws, … ⌘ Read more

Valve Developer Improves The Linux Gaming Experience For Limited vRAM Hardware
Natalie Vock of Valve’s Linux graphics driver team primarily working on the RADV Vulkan driver has come up with a new interesting creation: patches to the Linux kernel and KDE for sharply improving the gaming experience for those running systems with limited amounts of video memory. Such as for graphics cards with just 8GB of dedicated vRAM, the patches now available – initially on CachyOS for a nice out-of-the-box experience – p … ⌘ Read more

Valve Releases Native Steam Link App For Apple’s Vision Pro
Valve has released a native Steam Link beta for Apple Vision Pro, letting users stream their existing Steam games onto a large virtual screen in visionOS. It supports up to 4K resolution and will let you dynamically adjust the curve of the display. The Mac Observer reports: Steam Link does not support VR titles in this beta, and Valve clearly states that t … ⌘ Read more

New Jersey Cannot Regulate Kalshi’s Prediction Market, US Appeals Court Rules
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that New Jersey gaming regulators cannot prevent Kalshi from allowing people in the state to use its prediction market to place financial bets on the outcome of sporting events.
A three-judge panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Ci … ⌘ Read more

Wine Staging 11.6 Ships Big Patch Series For Working On DirectComposition
Following Friday’s release of Wine 11.6 with reviving the Android driver and improving game mod support as part of DLL loader updates, Wine-Staging 11.6 is out today with extra patches atop… ⌘ Read more

I went 1 for 2 at Magic this week… Temmet made a good showing the first game before being overwhelmed by an infinite number of Wylls (aka Fred Durst, on account of all his “rollin’, rollin’, rollin’!”). As a result, I unleashed Chatterfang on the group for the second game, and he lead his squirrel army to victory once again. Good times!

‘AI’ Is Coming For Your Online Gaming Servers Next
“Consumer PC parts aren’t the only things being gobbled up by the ‘AI’ industry,” writes PCWorld’s Michael Crider. “A Starcraft-inspired strategy game is shutting down its multiplayer servers because the hosting company got bought out for ‘AI.’” The game will still be playable offline for now, but the shutdown highlights the ripple effects of the AI boom on the gaming indust … ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.6 Begins Reviving Its Android Driver
Wine 11.6 is out as the newest bi-weekly development release for this open-source software enabling Windows games and applications on Linux, macOS, and other platforms… ⌘ Read more

14 years and $1.3 billion later, video game Star Citizen is nearing a major milestone
After 14 years, Star Citizen is nearing a major milestone. Creator Chris Roberts speaks with 9news.com.au about the ambition, community, and the billion dollars in funding behind the project — as well as the upcoming single-player campaign, Squadron 42.

The long-awaited game features a cast inc … ⌘ Read more

Why the prices of laptops, phones and game consoles keep rising
The AI tax is making memory more expensive, and it doesn’t show any signs of letting up. ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Rolls Out Its Fix For PC Gaming’s ‘Compiling Shaders’ Wait Times
Nvidia has begun rolling out a beta feature that automatically compiles game shaders while a PC is idle. It won’t eliminate shader compilation the first time a game runs, but Ars Technica reports it could help reduce those repeated wait times. From the report: Nvidia’s new Auto Shader Compilation system promises to “reduc[e] the frequ … ⌘ Read more

Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% In March
Valve’s March 2026 Steam Survey shows Linux gaming usage jumping to a record 5.33% share – more than double macOS’s 2.35%. Phoronix reports: Steam on Linux was never above 5% and easily an all-time high for the Linux gaming marketshare, especially in absolute numbers. It was a massive 3.1% spike in March while macOS also jumped surprisingly by 1.19% to 2.35%. The Steam Survey … ⌘ Read more

Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare
If Valve’s latest Steam Survey monthly figures are accurate, Steam on Linux enjoyed a very wild month of March. Steam on Linux is now above the 5% threshold and more than twice the size of the Steam on macOS marketshare… ⌘ Read more

UFC-Que Choisir Takes Ubisoft To French Court Over the Crew Shutdown
Longtime Slashdot reader Elektroschock writes: When Ubisoft pulled the plug on The Crew’s servers without warning, players were left with a worthless game they’d already paid for. Now, consumer watchdog UFC-Que Choisir is fighting back, demanding gamers’ right to play regardless of publisher whims. Supported by the “Stop Killing Games” mov … ⌘ Read more

RadeonSI Driver Lands Fixes For EDuke32 For Those Wanting To Enjoy Duke Nukem 3D In 2026
It’s fairly rare for the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver to hit OpenGL rendering game bugs these days as besides more games going opting for Vulkan API use, RadeonSI is rather robust and very mature at this stage. Recently though a Linux gamer that upgraded to a Radeon RX 9070 XT RDNA4 graphics card noticed that the open-source EDuke32 Duke Nukem 3D build and its derivatives were failing to render properly with the RadeonSI driver… ⌘ Read more

Sony is Raising PlayStation 5 Prices Again, Between $100 and $150
Memory and storage shortages and price hikes have “steadily rippled outward across all kinds of consumer tech,” reports Ars Technica.

“Today’s bad news comes from Sony, which is raising prices for PlayStation 5 consoles in the US just eight months after their last price hike.”

The drive-less Digital Edition will increase from $500 to $600; the … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6 Showing Frequent Performance Advantage Over GNOME 50 With NVIDIA R595 Driver
Earlier this week I provided benchmarks looking at KDE Plasma 6.6’s performance advantage over GNOME 50 for Linux gaming with AMD Radeon graphics. That raised the question if the same was true when using NVIDIA graphics with their official Linux graphics driver stack. Here are such benchmarks looking at the KDE Plasma 6.6 and GNOME 50 performance on Ubuntu 26.04 beta while using the new NVIDIA 595.58.03 Linux driver. ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6 Delivers An Impressive Edge For Radeon Graphics Over GNOME 50 On Ubuntu 26.04
In testing thus far on Ubuntu 26.04, the KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop with the Wayland session is working pretty darn well and delivering a performance edge across many games/graphics workloads compared to the default GNOME 50 desktop. At least as far as AMD Radeon graphics are concerned, Plasma 6.6 is in quite impressive shape for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release. ⌘ Read more

Unvanquished 0.56 Released With More Renderer Improvements, OpenMP Added To Engine
Unvanquished 0.56 is out today as the latest major update to this prominent open-source, community-driven shooter game. Unvanquished continues progressing after more than a decade in development for this open-source game and with today’s v0.56 release features improved visuals, OpenMP for CPU-based rendering of skeletal models, and other enhancements… ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Vulkan Linux Driver Lands New Feature To Boost DX12 Game Performance
Intel’s open-source “ANV” Vulkan driver for Linux systems enabled a new feature called BTP+BTI RCC Keying. You may be wondering what it means or stands for, but long story short it helps with the performance of Direct3D 12 (DX12) games running on Linux by way of Valve’s Steam Play with Proton + VKD3D-Proton… ⌘ Read more

Wine 11 Rewrites How Linux Runs Windows Games At the Kernel Level
Linux gamers are seeing massive performance gains with Wine’s new NTSYNC support, “which is a feature that has been years in the making and rewrites how Wine handles one of the most performance-sensitive operations in modern gaming,” reports XDA Developers. Not every game will see a night-and-day difference, but for the games that do benefit fr … ⌘ Read more

Near-death experience shapes actor’s role in new video game
Hannah Telle and Rhianna DeVries, the actors behind one of gaming’s most iconic relationships, are returning — and bringing deeply personal experiences with them.

Speaking with 9news.com.au, DeVries revealed how surviving a near-death experience shaped their performance in the upcoming game Life is Strange: Reunion. ⌘ Read more

Epic Games To Cut More Than 1,000 Jobs As Fortnite Usage Falls
Epic Games is cutting more than 1,000 jobs as usage of its flagship title, Fortnite, falls. “The layoffs aren’t related to AI,” CEO Tim Sweeney noted. Reuters reports: The cuts, along with more than $500 million in savings from lower contracting and marketing spending and unfilled roles would put the company in “a more stable place,” Sweeney said in … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 To Overcome Reporting Limitation For Multiple Batteries Per HID Device
A limitation affecting various gaming headsets, graphic tablets, wireless earbuds, multi-device receivers and more with Linux has been not being able to report multiple batteries per HID device. After patches were proposed last year for dealing with the increasingly common scenario these days of having multiple batteries per device, the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel is set to address this limitation… ⌘ Read more

Nvidia CEO Says He’s ‘Empathetic’ To DLSS 5 Concerns
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says he understands the concerns about “AI slop” with DLSS 5 but insists the feature preserves a game’s underlying geometry and artistic intent. “I think their perspective makes sense, ” said Huang during a recent appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast. “And I could see where they’re coming from because I don’t love AI slop myself. You know, all of t … ⌘ Read more

Bipartisan Bill Seeks To Ban Sports Betting On Prediction Market Platforms
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Senators Adam Schiff (D-CA) and John Curtis (R-UT) introduced (PDF) a bill on Monday that could prevent prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket from allowing users to wager money on sports events or play casino-style games. This bipartisan bill would not apply to Fa … ⌘ Read more

Qt 6.11 Toolkit Released With “The Same 3D Capabilities As A Game Engine”
Qt 6.11 is out as the latest version of this cross-platform toolkit used by the KDE desktop and widely by both open-source and closed-source applications… ⌘ Read more

Went 2/3 at Magic today: Prosper dominated game 1, Ash and his Knights came within a single planar die roll of winning game 2, and then Atraxa came up with the win in a fairly tight game 3. All in all, not a bad afternoon of Magic.

D7VK 1.6 Overhauls Interaction With DXVK’s D3D9 Backend
D7VK is the open-source project that began as a Direct3D 7 implementation atop the Vulkan API for Linux gamers and with time expanded to support all the way back to Direct3D 3. Out today is D7VK 1.6 with continuing to enhance this D3D compatibility layer atop Vulkan for enhancing retro/vintage gaming on Linux… ⌘ Read more

OneXPlayer Configuration HID Driver Posted For Linux By Valve Developer
Open-source developer Derek Clark of Valve’s Linux engineering team has been responsible for many improvements for gaming handheld devices. Such as Lenovo Legion improvements for Linux, Ayn gaming handheld improvements, and most recently Linux 7.1 set to introduce the new Lenovo Legion Go HID drivers. With the latest Lenovo Legion driver work wrapped up for Linux 7.1, Derek Clark today posted a set of patches providing a OneXPlayer Config … ⌘ Read more

Linux Driver Being Worked On For Pulsar Gaming Mice
A Linux HID driver is being developed for Pulsar branded gaming mice to expose additional information and capabilities… ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.5 Release Is Big: Syscall User Dispatch Feature Supported On Linux
Wine 11.5 is out today as the latest bi-weekly development release for this software to run Windows games and applications on Linux and other platforms. Most exciting with Wine 11.5 is the introduction of the Syscall User Dispatch feature on Linux… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.04 Delivers Enhanced Performance For AMD Radeon Linux Gaming
Earlier this month was a preview of the Ubuntu 26.04 performance benefits for NVIDIA Linux gaming while today’s article is providing an early look at how the open-source AMD Radeon gaming experience is looking for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release. ⌘ Read more