gaming – Page 5

Switch 2 pub backs off Game Key Cards after leaking lower-cost cartridge options

cartridges, cost, game key cards, gaming, memory, Nintendo, production, switch 2 / Beth Washington / December 19, 2025

The Switch 2’s data-free, download-enabling Game Key Cards have proved controversial with players who worry about long-term ownership and access issues to their purchases. But they’ve remained popular with publishers that want to save production costs on a boxed Switch 2 game release, since Game Key Cards don’t include any of the expensive flash memory found on a standard Switch 2 cartridge.

Now, though, at least one publisher has publicly suggested that Nintendo is offering cheaper Switch 2 cartridge options with smaller storage capacities, lowering production costs in a way that could make full cartridge releases more viable for many games on the console.

Earlier this week, R-Type Dimensions III publisher Inin Games explained to customers that it couldn’t switch from Game Key Cards to a “full physical cartridge” for the retail version of the Switch 2 game without “significantly rais[ing] manufacturing costs.” Those additional costs would “force us to increase the retail price by at least €15 [about $20],” Inin Games wrote at the time.

In an update posted to social media earlier today, though, the publisher said that “there is no better timing: two days ago Nintendo announced two new smaller cartridge [storage capacity] sizes for Nintendo Switch 2. This allows us to recalculate production in a way that wasn’t possible before.”

As such, Inin said it has decided to replace the Game Key Cards that were going to be in the game’s retail box with full physical cartridges. That change will result in the game’s asking price going up by €10 (about $13) “due to still higher production costs,” Inin explained. Still, that’s still less than the “at least €15” Inin was speculatively quoting for the same change just days ago. And Inin said early pre-order customers for R-Type Dimensions III won’t have to pay the increased price, essentially getting the full cartridge at no additional cost.

Switch 2 pub backs off Game Key Cards after leaking lower-cost cartridge options Read More »

Riot Games is making an anti-cheat change that could be rough on older PCs

AMD, anti-cheat, gaming, intel, Riot games, Tech, valorant, Vanguard / 9u50fv / December 19, 2025

But Riot says it’s considering rolling the BIOS requirement out to all players in Valorant‘s highest competitive ranking tiers (Ascendant, Immortal, and Radiant), where there’s more to be gained from working around the anti-cheat software. And Riot anti-cheat analyst Mohamed Al-Sharifi says the same restrictions could be turned on for League of Legends, though they aren’t currently. If users are blocked from playing by Vanguard, they’ll need to download and install the latest BIOS update for their motherboard before they’ll be allowed to launch the game.

Newer PCs are getting patched; older PCs might not be

An AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D in a motherboard with a 500-series chipset. It’s unclear whether these somewhat older systems need a patch or will get one. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The vulnerability is known to affect four of the largest PC motherboard makers: ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. All four have released updates for at least some of their newer motherboards, while other boards have updates coming later. According to the vulnerability note, it’s unclear whether systems from OEMs like Dell, Lenovo, Acer, or HP are affected.

ASRock’s security bulletin about the issue says it affects Intel boards based on the 500-, 600-, 700-, and 800-series chipsets; MSI only lists the 600- and 700-series chipsets. Asus is also missing the 800-series, but says the vulnerability affects boards based on even older 400-series Intel chipsets; Gigabyte, meanwhile, covers 600-through-800-series Intel chipsets, but is also the only vendor to mention patches for AMD’s 600- and 800-series chipsets (any motherboard with an AM5 socket, in short).

Collectively, all of these chipsets cover Intel’s 10th-generation Core processors and newer, and AMD Ryzen 7000 series and newer.

What’s unclear is whether the boards and chipsets that go unmentioned by each vendor aren’t getting a patch because they don’t need a patch, if they will be patched but they just aren’t being mentioned, or if they aren’t getting a patch at all. The bulletins at least suggest that 400- and 500-series Intel chipsets and 600- and 800-series AMD chipsets could be affected, but not all vendors have promised patches for them.

Riot Games is making an anti-cheat change that could be rough on older PCs Read More »

We asked four AI coding agents to rebuild Minesweeper—the results were explosive

Agent, AI, AI gaming, Claude Code, coding, gaming, Gemini, test / Mike M. / December 19, 2025

How do four modern LLMs do at re-creating a simple Windows gaming classic?

Which mines are mine, and which are AI? Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

The idea of using AI to help with computer programming has become a contentious issue. On the one hand, coding agents can make horrific mistakes that require a lot of inefficient human oversight to fix, leading many developers to lose trust in the concept altogether. On the other hand, some coders insist that AI coding agents can be powerful tools and that frontier models are quickly getting better at coding in ways that overcome some of the common problems of the past.

To see how effective these modern AI coding tools are becoming, we decided to test four major models with a simple task: re-creating the classic Windows game Minesweeper. Since it’s relatively easy for pattern-matching systems like LLMs to play off of existing code to re-create famous games, we added in one novelty curveball as well.

Our straightforward prompt:

Make a full-featured web version of Minesweeper with sound effects that

1) Replicates the standard Windows game and

2) implements a surprise, fun gameplay feature.

Include mobile touchscreen support.

Ars Senior AI Editor Benj Edwards fed this task into four AI coding agents with terminal (command line) apps: OpenAI’s Codex based on GPT-5, Anthropic’s Claude Code with Opus 4.5, Google’s Gemini CLI, and Mistral Vibe. The agents then directly manipulated HTML and scripting files on a local machine, guided by a “supervising” AI model that interpreted the prompt and assigned coding tasks to parallel LLMs that can use software tools to execute the instructions. All AI plans were paid for privately with no special or privileged access given by the companies involved, and the companies were unaware of these tests taking place.

Ars Senior Gaming Editor (and Minesweeper expert) Kyle Orland then judged each example blind, without knowing which model generated which Minesweeper clone. Those somewhat subjective and non-rigorous results are below.

For this test, we used each AI model’s unmodified code in a “single shot” result to see how well these tools perform without any human debugging. In the real world, most sufficiently complex AI-generated code would go through at least some level of review and tweaking by a human software engineer who could spot problems and address inefficiencies.

We chose this test as a sort of simple middle ground for the current state of AI coding. Cloning Minesweeper isn’t a trivial task that can be done in just a handful of lines of code, but it’s also not an incredibly complex system that requires many interlocking moving parts.

Minesweeper is also a well-known game, with many versions documented across the Internet. That should give these AI agents plenty of raw material to work from and should be easier for us to evaluate than a completely novel program idea. At the same time, our open-ended request for a new “fun” feature helps demonstrate each agent’s penchant for unguided coding “creativity,” as well as their ability to create new features on top of an established game concept.

With all that throat-clearing out of the way, here’s our evaluation of the AI-generated Minesweeper clones, complete with links that you can use to play them yourselves.

Agent 1: Mistral Vibe

Play it for yourself

Just ignore that Custom button. It’s purely for show. Credit: Benj Edwards

Implementation

Right away, this version loses points for not implementing chording—the technique that advanced Minesweeper players use to quickly clear all the remaining spaces surrounding a number that already has sufficient flagged mines. Without this feature, this version feels more than a little clunky to play.

I’m also a bit perplexed by the inclusion of a “Custom” difficulty button that doesn’t seem to do anything. It’s like the model realized that customized board sizes were a thing in Minesweeper but couldn’t figure out how to implement this relatively basic feature.

The game works fine on mobile, but marking a square with a flag requires a tricky long-press on a tiny square that also triggers selector handles that are difficult to clear. So it’s not an ideal mobile interface.

Presentation

This was the only working version we tested that didn’t include sound effects. That’s fair, since the original Windows Minesweeper also didn’t include sound, but it’s still a notable relative omission since the prompt specifically asked for it.

The all-black “smiley face” button to start a game is a little off-putting, too, compared to the bright yellow version that’s familiar to both Minesweeper players and emoji users worldwide. And while that smiley face does start a new game when clicked, there’s also a superfluous “New Game” button taking up space for some reason.

“Fun” feature

The closest thing I found to a “fun” new feature here was the game adding a rainbow background pattern on the grid when I completed a game. While that does add a bit of whimsy to a successful game, I expected a little more.

Coding experience

Benj notes that he was pleasantly surprised by how well Mistral Vibe performed as an open-weight model despite lacking the big-money backing of the other contenders. It was relatively slow, however (third fastest out of four), and the result wasn’t great. Ultimately, its performance so far suggests that with more time and more training, a very capable AI coding agent may eventually emerge.

Overall rating: 4/10

This version got many of the basics right but left out chording and didn’t perform well on the small presentational and “fun” touches.

Agent 2: OpenAI Codex

Play it for yourself

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate those chording instructions at the bottom. Credit: Benj Edwards

Implementation

Not only did this agent include the crucial “chording” feature, but it also included on-screen instructions for using it on both PC and mobile browsers. I was further impressed by the option to cycle through “?” marks when marking squares with flags, an esoteric feature I feel even most human Minesweeper cloners might miss.

On mobile, the option to hold your finger down on a square to mark a flag is a nice touch that makes this the most enjoyable handheld version we tested.

Presentation

The old-school emoticon smiley-face button is pretty endearing, especially when you blow up and get a red-tinted “X(“. I was less impressed by the playfield “graphics,” which use a simple “*” for revealed mines and an ugly red “F” for flagged tiles.

The beeps-and-boops sound effects reminded me of my first old-school, pre-Sound-Blaster PC from the late ’80s. That’s generally a good thing, but I still appreciated the game giving me the option to turn them off.

“Fun” feature

The “Surprise: Lucky Sweep Bonus” listed in the corner of the UI explains that clicking the button gives you a free safe tile when available. This can be pretty useful in situations where you’d otherwise be forced to guess between two tiles that are equally likely to be mines.

Overall, though, I found it a bit odd that the game gives you this bonus only after you find a large, cascading field of safe tiles with a single click. It mostly functions as a “win more” button rather than a feature that offers a good balance of risk versus reward.

Coding experience

OpenAI Codex has a nice terminal interface with features similar to Claude Code (local commands, permission management, and interesting animations showing progress), and it’s fairly pleasant to use (OpenAI also offers Codex through a web interface, but we did not use that for this evaluation). However, Codex took roughly twice as long to code a functional game than Claude Code did, which might contribute to the strong result here.

Overall: 9/10

The implementation of chording and cute presentation touches push this to the top of the list. We just wish the “fun” feature was a bit more fun.

Agent 3: Anthropic Claude Code

Play it for yourself

The Power Mod powers on display here make even Expert boards pretty trivial to complete. Credit: Benj Edwards

Implementation

Once again, we get a version that gets all the gameplay basics right but is missing the crucial chording feature that makes truly efficient Minesweeper play possible. This is like playing Super Mario Bros. without the run button or Ocarina of Time without Z-targeting. In a word: unacceptable.

The “flag mode” toggle on the mobile version of this game is perfectly functional, but it’s a little clunky to use. It also visually cuts off a portion of the board at the larger game sizes.

Presentation

Presentation-wise, this is probably the most polished version we tested. From the use of cute emojis for the “face” button to nice-looking bomb and flag graphics and simple but effective sound effects, this looks more professional than the other versions we tested.

That said, there are some weird presentation issues. The “beginner” grid has weird gaps between columns, for instance. The borders of each square and the flag graphics can also become oddly grayed out at points, especially when using Power Mode (see below).

“Fun” feature

The prominent “Power Mode” button in the lower-right corner offers some pretty fun power-ups that alter the core Minesweeper formula in interesting ways. But the actual powers are a bit hit-and-miss.

I especially liked the “Shield” power, which protects you from an errant guess, and the “Blast” power, which seems to guarantee a large cascade of revealed tiles wherever you click. But the “X-Ray” power, which reveals every bomb for a few seconds, could be easily exploited by a quick player (or a crafty screenshot). And the “Freeze” power is rather boring, just stopping the clock for a few seconds and amounting to a bit of extra time.

Overall, the game hands out these new powers like candy, which makes even an Expert-level board relatively trivial with Power Mode active. Simply choosing “Power Mode” also seems to mark a few safe squares right after you start a game, making things even easier. So while these powers can be “fun,” they also don’t feel especially well-balanced.

Coding experience

Of the four tested models, Claude Code with Opus 4.5 featured the most pleasant terminal interface experience and the fastest overall coding experience (Claude Code can also use Sonnet 4.5, which is even faster, but the results aren’t quite as full-featured in our experience). While we didn’t precisely time each model, Opus 4.5 produced a working Minesweeper in under five minutes. Codex took at least twice as long, if not longer, while Mistral took roughly three or four times as long as Claude Code. Gemini, meanwhile, took hours of tinkering to get two non-working results.

Overall: 7/10

The lack of chording is a big omission, but the strong presentation and Power Mode options give this effort a passable final score.

Agent 4: Google Gemini CLI

Play it for yourself

So… where’s the game? Credit: Benj Edwards

Implementation, presentation, etc.

Gemini CLI did give us a few gray boxes you can click, but the playfields are missing. While interactive troubleshooting with the agent may have fixed the issue, as a “one-shot” test, the model completely failed.

Coding experience

Of the four coding agents we tested, Gemini CLI gave Benj the most trouble. After developing a plan, it was very, very slow at generating any usable code (about an hour per attempt). The model seemed to get hung up attempting to manually create WAV file sound effects and insisted on requiring React external libraries and a few other overcomplicated dependencies. The result simply did not work.

Benj actually bent the rules and gave Gemini a second chance, specifying that the game should use HTML5. When the model started writing code again, it also got hung up trying to make sound effects. Benj suggested using the WebAudio framework (which the other AI coding agents seemed to be able to use), but the result didn’t work, which you can see at the link above.

Unlike the other models tested, Gemini CLI apparently uses a hybrid system of three different LLMs for different tasks (Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite, 2.5 Flash, and 2.5 Pro were available at the level of the Google account Benj paid for). When you’ve completed your coding session and quit the CLI interface, it gives you a readout of which model did what.

In this case, it didn’t matter because the results didn’t work. But it’s worth noting that Gemini 3 coding models are available for other subscription plans that were not tested here. For that reason, this portion of the test could be considered “incomplete” for Google CLI.

Overall: 0/10 (Incomplete)

Final verdict

OpenAI Codex wins this one on points, in no small part because it was the only model to include chording as a gameplay option. But Claude Code also distinguished itself with strong presentational flourishes and quick generation time. Mistral Vibe was a significant step down, and Google CLI based on Gemini 2.5 was a complete failure on our one-shot test.

While experienced coders can definitely get better results via an interactive, back-and-forth code editing conversation with an agent, these results show how capable some of these models can be, even with a very short prompt on a relatively straightforward task. Still, we feel that our overall experience with coding agents on other projects (more on that in a future article) generally reinforces the idea that they currently function best as interactive tools that augment human skill rather than replace it.

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

We asked four AI coding agents to rebuild Minesweeper—the results were explosive Read More »

Reminder: Donate to win swag in our annual Charity Drive sweepstakes

charity, charity drive, gaming / Shannon Garcia / December 18, 2025

How it works

Donating is easy. Simply donate to Child’s Play using a credit card or PayPal or donate to the EFF using PayPal, credit card, or cryptocurrency. You can also support Child’s Play directly by using this Ars Technica campaign page or picking an item from the Amazon wish list of a specific hospital on its donation page. Donate as much or as little as you feel comfortable with—every little bit helps.

Once that’s done, it’s time to register your entry in our sweepstakes. Just grab a digital copy of your receipt (a forwarded email, a screenshot, or simply a cut-and-paste of the text) and send it to [email protected] with your name, postal address, daytime telephone number, and email address by 11: 59 pm ET Friday, January 2, 2026. (One entry per person, and each person can only win up to one prize. US residents only. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. See Official Rules for more information, including how to enter without making a donation. Also, refer to the Ars Technica privacy policy (https://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy).

We’ll then contact the winners and have them choose their prize by January 31, 2026 (choosing takes place in the order the winners are drawn). Good luck!

Reminder: Donate to win swag in our annual Charity Drive sweepstakes Read More »

RAM and SSD prices are still climbing—here’s our best advice for PC builders

AMD, gaming, intel, NVIDIA, Tech / 9u50fv / December 18, 2025

I would avoid building a PC right now, but if you can’t, here’s our best advice.

The 16GB version of AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT. It’s one of the products to come out of a bad year for PC building. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The first few months of 2025 were full of graphics card reviews where we generally came away impressed with performance and completely at a loss on availability and pricing. The testing in these reviews is useful regardless, but when it came to extra buying advice, the best we could do was to compare Nvidia’s imaginary pricing to AMD’s imaginary pricing and wait for availability to improve.

Now, as the year winds down, we’re facing price spikes for memory and storage that are unlike anything I’ve seen in two decades of pricing out PC parts. Pricing for most RAM kits has increased dramatically since this summer, driven by overwhelming demand for these parts in AI data centers. Depending on what you’re building, it’s now very possible that the memory could be the single most expensive component you buy; things are even worse now than they were the last time we compared prices a few weeks ago.

Component	Aug. 2025 price	Nov. 2025 price	Dec. 2025 price
Patriot Viper Venom 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR-6000	$49	$110	$189
Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 500GB	$45	$69	$102*
Silicon Power 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200	$34	$89	$104
Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 1TB	$64	$111	$135*
Team T-Force Vulcan 32GB DDR5-6000	$82	$310	$341
Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 2TB	$115	$154	$190*
Western Digital WD Black SN7100 2TB	$130	$175	$210
Team Delta RGB 64GB (2 x 32GB) DDR5-6400	$190	$700	$800

Some SSDs are getting to the point where they’re twice as expensive as they were this summer (for this comparison, I’ve swapped the newer WD Blue SN5100 pricing in for the SN5000, since the drive is both newer and slightly cheaper as of this writing). Some RAM kits, meanwhile, are around four times as expensive as they were in August. Yeesh.

And as bad as things are, the outlook for the immediate future isn’t great. Memory manufacturer Micron—which is pulling its Crucial-branded RAM and storage products from the market entirely in part because of these shortages—predicted in a recent earnings call that supply constraints would “persist beyond calendar 2026.” Kingston executives believe prices will continue to rise through next year. PR representatives at GPU manufacturer Sapphire believe prices will “stabilize,” albeit at a higher level than people might like.

I didn’t know it when I was writing the last update to our system guide in mid-August, but it turns out that I was writing it during 2025’s PC Building Equinox, the all-too-narrow stretch of time where 1080p and 1440p GPUs had fallen to more-or-less MSRP but RAM and storage prices hadn’t yet spiked.

All in all, it has been yet another annus horribilis for gaming-PC builders, and at this point it seems like the 2020s will just end up being a bad decade for PC building. Not only have we had to deal with everything from pandemic-fueled shortages to tariffs to the current AI-related crunch, but we’ve also been given pretty underwhelming upgrades for both GPUs and CPUs.

It should be a golden age for the gaming PC

It’s really too bad that building or buying a gaming PC is such an annoying and expensive proposition, because in a lot of ways there has never been a better time to be a PC gamer.

It used to be that PC ports of popular console games would come years later or never at all, but these days PC players get games at around the same time as console players, too. Sony, of all companies, has become much better about releasing its games to PC players. And Microsoft seems to be signaling more and more convergence between the Xbox and the PC, to the extent that it is communicating any kind of coherent Xbox strategy at all. The console wars are cooling down, and the PC has been one of the main beneficiaries.

That wider game availability is also coming at a time when PC software is getting more flexible and interesting. Traditional Windows-based gaming builds still dominate, of course, and Windows remains the path of least resistance for PC buyers and builders. But Valve’s work on SteamOS and the Proton compatibility software has brought a wide swath of PC games to Linux, and SteamOS itself is enabling a simpler and more console-like PC gaming experience for handheld PCs as well as TV-connected desktop computers. And that work is now boomeranging back around to Windows, which is gradually rolling out its own pared-down gamepad-centric frontend.

If you’ve already got a decent gaming PC, you’re feeling pretty good about all of this—as long as the games you want to play don’t have Mario or Pikachu in them, your PC is all you really need. It’s also not a completely awful time to be upgrading a build you already have, as long as you already have at least 16GB of RAM—if you’re thinking about a GPU upgrade, doing it now before the RAM price spikes can start impacting graphics card pricing is probably a smart move.

If you don’t already have a decent gaming PC and you can buy a whole PlayStation 5 for the cost of some 32GB DDR5 RAM kits, well, it’s hard to look past the downsides no matter how good the upsides are. But it doesn’t mean we can’t try.

What if you want to buy something anyway?

As (relatively) old as they are, midrange Core i5 chips from Intel’s 12th-, 13th-, and 14th-generation Core CPU lineups are still solid choices for budget-to-midrange PC builds. And they work with DDR4, which isn’t *quite* as pricey as DDR5 right now. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Say those upsides are still appealing to you, and you want to build something today. How should you approach this terrible, volatile RAM market?

I won’t do a full update to August’s system guide right now, both because it feels futile to try and recommend individual RAM kits or SSD with prices and stock levels being as volatile as they are, and because aside from RAM and storage I actually wouldn’t change any of these recommendations all that much (with the caveat that Intel’s Core i5-13400F seems to be getting harder to find; consider an i5-12400F or i5-12600KF instead). So, starting from those builds, here’s the advice I would try to give to PC-curious friends:

DDR4 is faring better than DDR5. Prices for all kinds of RAM have gone up recently, but DDR4 pricing hasn’t gotten quite as bad as DDR5 pricing. That’s of no help to you if you’re trying to build something around a newer Ryzen chip and a socket AM5 motherboard, since those parts require DDR5. But if you’re trying to build a more budget-focused system around one of Intel’s 12th-, 13th-, or 14th-generation CPUs, a decent name brand 32GB DDR4-3200 kit comes in around half the price of a similar 32GB DDR5-6000 kit. Pricing isn’t great, but it’s still possible to build something respectable for under $1,000.

Newegg bundles might help. I’m normally not wild about these kinds of component bundles; even if they appear to be a good deal, they’re often a way for Newegg or other retailers to get rid of things they don’t want by pairing them with things people do want. You also have to deal with less flexibility—you can’t always pick exactly the parts you’d want under ideal circumstances. But if you’re already buying a CPU and a motherboard, it might be worth digging through the available deals just to see if you can get a good price on something workable.

Don’t overbuy (or consider under-buying). Under normal circumstances, anyone advising you on a PC build should be recommending matched pairs of RAM sticks with reasonable speeds and ample capacities (DDR4-3200 remains a good sweet spot, as does DDR5-6000 or DDR5-6400). Matched sticks are capable of dual-channel operation, boosting memory bandwidth and squeezing a bit more performance out of your system. And getting 32GB of RAM means comfortably running any game currently in existence, with a good amount of room to grow.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. Slower DDR5 speeds like DDR5-5200 can come in a fair bit cheaper than DDR5-6000 or DDR5-6400, in exchange for a tiny speed hit that’s going to be hard to notice outside of benchmarks. You might even consider buying a single 16GB stick of DDR5, and buying it a partner at some point later when prices have calmed down a bit. You’ll leave a tiny bit of performance on the table, and a small handful of games want more than 16GB of system RAM. But you’ll have something that boots, and the GPU is still going to determine how well most games run.

Don’t forget that non-binary DDR5 exists. DDR5 sticks come in some in-betweener capacities that weren’t possible with DDR4, which means that companies sell it in 24GB and 48GB sticks, not just 16/32/64. And these kits can be a very slightly better deal than the binary memory kits right now; this 48GB Crucial DDR5-6000 kit is going for $470 right now, or $9.79 per gigabyte, compared to about $340 for a similar 32GB kit ($10.63 per GB) or $640 for a 64GB kit ($10 per GB). It’s not much, but if you truly do need a lot of RAM, it’s worth looking into.

Consider pre-built systems. A quick glance at Dell’s Alienware lineup and Lenovo’s Legion lineup makes it clear that these towers still aren’t particularly price-competitive with similarly specced self-built PCs. This was true before there was a RAM shortage, and it’s true now. But for certain kinds of PCs, particularly budget PCs, it can still make more sense to buy than to build.

For example, when I wrote about the self-built “Steam Machine” I’ve been using for a few months now, I mentioned some Ryzen-based mini desktops on Amazon. I later tested this one from Aoostar as part of a wider-ranging SteamOS-vs-Windows performance comparison. Whether you’re comfortable with these no-name mini PCs is something you’ll have to decide for yourself, but that’s a fully functional PC with 32GB of DDR5, a 1TB SSD, a workable integrated GPU, and a Windows license for $500. You’d spend nearly $500 just to buy the RAM kit and the SSD with today’s component prices; for basic 1080p gaming you could do a lot worse.

Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.

RAM and SSD prices are still climbing—here’s our best advice for PC builders Read More »

Reporter suggests Half-Life 3 will be a Steam Machine launch title

gaming, half-life, Half-Life 3, hl3, rumor, steam machine, valve / Kelly Newman / December 16, 2025

If you can take your mind way back to the beginning of 2025, you might remember a fresh wave of rumors suggesting that Half-Life 3 was finally reaching the final stages of production, and could be announced and/or released at any moment. Now, though, 2025 seems set to come to a close without any official news of a game fans have been waiting literal decades for.

That doesn’t necessarily mean a Half-Life 3 announcement and/or release isn’t imminent, though. On the contrary, veteran journalist Mike Straw insisted on a recent Insider Gaming podcast that “everybody I’ve talked to are still adamant [Half-Life 3] is a game that will be a launch title with the Steam Machine.”

Straw—who has a long history of reporting gaming rumors from anonymous sources—said this Half-Life 3 information is “not [from] these run-of-the-mill sources that haven’t gotten me information before. … These aren’t like random, one-off people.” And those sources are “still adamant that the game is coming in the spring,” Straw added, noting that he was “specifically told [that] spring 2026 [is the window] for the Steam Machine, for the Frame, for the Controller, [and] for Half-Life 3.”

For real, this time?

Tying the long-awaited Half-Life 3 to a major hardware push that has already been announced for an “early 2026” window certainly sounds plausible, given previous leaks about the game’s advanced state of development. But there are still some reasons to doubt Straw’s “adamant” sources here.

For one, Straw admitted that the previous information he had received on potential Half-Life 3 launch and/or announcement dates was not reliable enough to report in detail. “I had been told a date. I was not going to report that date because they weren’t 100 percent confident in that date,” he said. “That date has since passed.”

Reporter suggests Half-Life 3 will be a Steam Machine launch title Read More »

Microsoft takes down mod that re-created Halo 3 in Counter-Strike 2

counter-strike 2, CS2, DMCA, engine, gaming, Halo, microsoft, source 2, takedown, valve / DJ Henderson / December 15, 2025

Last month saw the release of Project Misriah, an ambitious modding project that tried to re-create the feel of Halo 3 inside Valve’s Counter-Strike 2. That project has now been taken down from the Steam Workshop, though, after drawing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint from Microsoft.

Modder Froddoyo introduced Project Misriah on November 16 as “a workshop collection of Halo ported maps and assets that aims to bring a Halo 3 multiplayer-like experience to Counter-Strike 2.” Far from just being inspired by Halo 3, the mod directly copied multiple sound effects, character models, maps, and even movement mechanics from Bungie and Microsoft’s popular series.

In the weeks since, Project Misriah has drawn a lot of praise from both Halo fans and those impressed by what modders could pull off with the Source 2 engine. But last Wednesday, modder Froddoyo shared a DMCA request from Microsoft citing the “unauthorized use of Halo game content in a [Steam] workshop not associated with Halo games.”

A trailer announcing Project Misriah, posted last month.

In a social media post sharing that DMCA text, Froddoyo ruefully said that players should “make sure to give your thanks to Microsoft” for the project’s fate. But in a comment on Project Misriah’s YouTube trailer, Froddoyo noted that, following the takedown, the project “will not be worked on or uploaded in the future. But hey, it was fun while it lasted. Thank you to all of the players and supporters of [the] project. We will use the knowledge and skills obtained from this to cook up something else!”

Microsoft takes down mod that re-created Halo 3 in Counter-Strike 2 Read More »

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic announced as a KOTOR spiritual successor

Bioware, casey hudson, gaming, KOTOR, old republic, star wars / 9u50fv / December 13, 2025

Over two decades after the release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, a new project described as a “spiritual successor” to that seminal RPG series was announced at The Game Awards Thursday night. Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic will be a collaboration between Lucasfilm Games and Arcanaut Studios, a new development house being launched by original KOTOR director Casey Hudson.

Hudson, who will serve as director on the new game, said in an interview with StarWars.com that he has remained in contact with Lucasfilm since the KOTOR days, in the hopes of being able to collaborate in the Star Wars universe again. “It took the right conditions to get everything to line up,” he told the site.

Calling KOTOR “one of the defining experiences of my career,” Hudson said he wants to “explore a contemporary vision” of the Star Wars universe and “deliver on the combination of player agency and immersion in Star Wars” that defined the original games. As director on the upcoming game, Hudson said he sees his role as “to gather and shape a cohesive vision that the entire team contributes to. Ensuring that everyone shares that vision and understands their part in creating it is critical to the success of a project.”

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic announced as a KOTOR spiritual successor Read More »

Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles for you

gaming, jonathan blow, Order of the Sinking Star, puzzle, The Witness / Mike M. / December 13, 2025

For many independent developers, of course, spending nine years on a single game idea is an unthinkable luxury. Financial constraints mean many game ideas have to be shipped “as soon as you get to the point where it’s fun and shippable,” Blow said, leading to games that “kind of converge to a certain level of complexity and then stop there.”

But thanks to the sales success of The Witness—which reportedly grossed over $5 million in just its first week—Blow said he and his team have had the freedom to spend years “generat[ing] this giant space that’s much more complex than where you go with a typical puzzle game… When we create that much possibility, we feel like we have to explore it. Otherwise we’re not doing our duty as designers and correctly pursuing this agenda of design research.”

The sales success of *The Witness* helped enable the extended development time for *Order of the Sinking Star.*

Blow also said the size of this project helped get him past his general distaste for playtesting, which he said he was “not that big on” for his previous games. “Even The Witness didn’t have that much play testing, because I always felt like that was a way to make games a little more generic or something, you know? Like playtesters have complaints and then you file down the complaints and then you get a generic game.”

After being immersed in Order of the Sinking Star development for so long, though, Blow said he realized it was important to get a fresh perspective from playtesters who had no experience with the idea. “We have to playtest it because it doesn’t fit in my brain all at once, you know?” he said.

Some might say a nine-plus-year development cycle might be a sign of perfectionist tinkering past the point of diminishing returns. But Blow said that while he “might have been a perfectionist” in his younger days, the difficult process of game development has beaten the tendency out of him. “But I have the remnants of perfectionism,” he said. “I have… wanting to do something really good.”

And eventually, even an idea you’ve been tinkering with for roughly a decade needs to see the light of day. “Even for us, this was very expensive,” Blow admitted. “Man, I’ll be happy to get it out and have a new game making some money, because we need to make that happen at this point.”

Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles for you Read More »

Instead of fixing WoW’s new floating house exploit, Blizzard makes it official

Blizzard, exploit, floating house, gaming, Glitch, Housing, World of Warcraft, wow / Beth Washington / December 13, 2025

In a forum post formally announcing the official UI change, Community Manager Randy “Kaivax” Jordan noted that the team “quickly” got to work on enabling the floating house UI after seeing the community “almost immediately” embrace the glitch. But Kaivax also notes that the undersides of houses were never intended to be visible, and thus “aren’t modeled are textured.” Players who make floating houses “may decide to hide that part behind other things,” Kaivax suggests.

Players with houses that float too high may also have problems positioning the camera so they can click the door to enter the house. For this problem, Kaivax suggests that “you might want to consider building a ramp or a jumping puzzle or a mount landing spot, etc.”

WoW‘s floating houses join a long legacy of beloved game features that weren’t originally intended parts of a game’s design, from Street Fighter II‘s combo system to Doom‘s “rocket jump.” Now if we could only convince Blizzard to make Diablo III gold duplication into an official feature.

Instead of fixing WoW’s new floating house exploit, Blizzard makes it official Read More »

Reminder: Donate to win swag in our annual Charity Drive sweepstakes

gaming / Shannon Garcia / December 12, 2025

How it works

We’ll then contact the winners and have them choose their prize by January 31, 2025 (choosing takes place in the order the winners are drawn). Good luck!

Reminder: Donate to win swag in our annual Charity Drive sweepstakes Read More »

Apple loses its appeal of a scathing contempt ruling in iOS payments case

Apple, epic, epic games store, gaming, iOS, IPhone, legal, payments, Policy / 9u50fv / December 12, 2025

Back in April, District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers delivered a scathing judgment finding that Apple was in “willful violation” of her 2021 injunction intended to open up iOS App Store payments. That contempt of court finding has now been almost entirely upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a development that Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney tells Ars he hopes will “do a lot of good for developers and start to really change the App Store situation worldwide, I think.”

The ruling, signed by a panel of three appellate court judges, affirmed that Apple’s initial attempts to charge a 27 percent fee to iOS developers using outside payment options “had a prohibitive effect, in violation of the injunction.” Similarly, Apple’s restrictions on how those outside links had to be designed were overly broad; the appeals court suggests that Apple can only ensure that internal and external payment options are presented in a similar fashion.

The appeals court also agreed that Apple acted in “bad faith” by refusing to comply with the injunction, rejecting viable, compliant alternatives in internal discussions. And the appeals court was also not convinced by Apple’s process-focused arguments, saying the district court properly evaluated materials Apple argued were protected by attorney-client privilege.

While the district court barred Apple from charging any fees for payments made outside of its App Store, the appeals court now suggests that Apple should still be able to charge a “reasonable fee” based on its “actual costs to ensure user security and privacy.” It will be up to Apple and the district court to determine what that kind of “reasonable fee” should look like going forward.

Speaking to reporters Thursday night, though, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said he believes those should be “super super minor fees,” on the order of “tens or hundreds of dollars” every time an iOS app update goes through Apple for review. That should be more than enough to compensate the employees reviewing the apps to make sure outside payment links are not scams and lead to a system of “normal fees for normal businesses that sell normal things to normal customers,” Sweeney said.

Apple loses its appeal of a scathing contempt ruling in iOS payments case Read More »