Razer’s kicking off the new year in style with two world’s firsts when it comes to gaming laptops. In a collab with Samsung, its new Blade laptops are going to sport two new panels, a 16-inch 240Hz OLED and an 18-inch 165Hz 4K LCD. The full details of Razer’s new 2024 Blade gaming laptop lineup are getting a proper announcement early next week, in line with other manufacturers’ embargos.

But today it’s just talking about the screens going into two of those new Blade machines. The first is arguably the one I’m most interested in, especially considering how much I liked looking at last year’s Razer Blade 16 model. That UHD+ panel wasn’t without its faults—chiefly the weird dual-mode thing which only worked as a marketing bullet point—but the 3840 x 2400 mini-LED display …

With just a touch of bravado, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (or Europol) has announced “a major blow” to the Ragnar Locker ransomware group. To you and me, that name is mostly familiar because of the organisation’s 2020 attack on Capcom, which saw it demand $11 million and affect around 400,000 people’s data. 

To Europol, Ragnar Locker was more notable for its attacks on “critical infrastructure” around the world, most recently “against the Portuguese national carrier and a hospital in Israel.”

A “key target” of police agencies investigating Ragnar Locker was arrested in Paris on the 16th of October following an “international police swoop” that also saw ransomware infrastructure seized in the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden. 

Fiv…

We’re always keeping our eye on the ever-shifting fortunes of Steam’s most-wishlisted games, and there have been some interesting developments lately. A few weeks ago there was the whole The Day Before debacle, where one of the most-wishlisted games on Steam abruptly vanished due to a trademark dispute, a story that managed to only get weirder from there.

And this week horror survival sandbox Sons of the Forest took over the top wishlist spot from Starfield, Bethesda’s intensely-anticipated RPG. It looks like more Steam users are now interested in exploring a single creepy island than they are in visiting 1,000 planets in outer space.

‘Course, there are few explanations for why an indie survival game just trumped Bethesda’s next RPG on players’ shopping …

Treat yourself to a quick and easy Wordle win with our help—just click your way to today’s answer and then sit back and enjoy the sweet smell of success. Or take your time instead, keeping our clue for the May 12 (1058) game on hand just in case you need it.

This Wordle made perfect sense eventually—after I’d solved it and could look back on all the stumbles I’d made on the way down to today’s answer, anyway. If there were awards for guesses that were so close and also completely wide of the mark, I’d have won them all today.

Wordle today: A hint

Wordle today: A hint for Sunday, May 12

The layer of something that’s furthest away from the centre. The exterior. The edge. The surface. Shoes, outfits, gardens, galaxies… if there’s …

Helldivers 2 is a successful videogame by pretty much every measure, but what makes it so? Given the risk-laden rush towards lucrative live service games—and the seeming huge amounts of luck required for them to catch on—it’s likely a question many in the industry are asking. Speaking at the Nordic Game conference earlier this week, Arrowhead Games CEO Johan Pilestedt offered up his own thoughts on why Helldivers was a smash hit.

He’s quick to shoot down the oft-repeated theory that it’s the co-op shooter’s $40 price point that made all the difference. As he rightfully notes, there are many games that sell for $40, and not many have the same success that Helldivers 2 has had. There are a whole lot of other factors people point to, such as the release window, the balanc…

Alas, The Game Awards has come to an end—and while there’ve been plenty of exciting trailers and glitzy celeb appearances, it’s easy to get numb to the star factor. One returning guest, however, was far more welcome than any Hollywood name-drop: the man, the myth, the legend: Flute Guy. 

Arriving to the stage as part of The Game Awards orchestra, prolific musician and composer Pedro Eustache joined his contemporaries to play through the themes of this year’s winners. He took to the stage with his usual aplomb, advancing through several tiers of wind instrument before reaching his final form. Here’s a montage courtesy of Ratatoskr on YouTube, aptly titled “Flute Guy Goes Hard Again”—as well as some boots-on-the-ground footage by GameSpot’s managing editor Tamoor Hu…

After years of taking a hands-off approach to the pro CS:GO scene, Valve has very suddenly announced major changes to the rules governing tournament organizers that it says will help ensure that ability, and not money, determine which teams rise to the top of competitive events.

“Counter-Strike is at its best when teams compete on a level playing field and when ability is the only limit to their success,” Valve wrote. “Over the past few years, we’ve seen professional Counter-Strike drift away from that ideal. The ecosystem has become gradually less open, with access to the highest levels of competition increasingly gated by business relationships.”

A good example of this is the ESL Pro League’s “Louvre Agreement,” which enables “a select group of elite teams to partici…