Last Week in Gaming – Catch up With all the Important News (February 24 – March 1)

Welcome to Gamepressure’s week summary. Here’s all the news and stories you need to catch up with before you start a new gaming week.

Last week’s headline: Coronavirus ruins everything

1. Coronavirus turned Intel Extreme Masters into a ghost championship. See unsettling photos of empty hallways and lifeless tribunes in our photo story.
2. GDC 2020 got moved to summer and several developers skipped PAX East due to the outbreak of the disease. Among them were CD Projekt RED, Sony, and Hideo Kojima. Follow out live updates.
3. In a peculiar turn of events, Plague Inc. got removed from one of the biggest Chinese app stores. The reasons remain unclear, especially since the game was getting wildly popular since the disease began showing its horns.

What happened on Monday, February 24

1. 12 teraflops, 120 fps, but no 8K (for now) – Microsoft unveiled some of Xbox Series X specs. Read more.
2. CD Projekt RED promised Xbox One X owners that they would receive a free copy of Cyberpunk 2077 for Xbox Series X once the next-gen version is released. This also confirmed the existence of the next-gen version of Cyberpunk 2077, so yeah. What about PlayStation 4 owners? Not much is known (as of now).
3. A bunch of screenshots from Resident Evil 3: Remake got leaked. Spoiler: Nemesis is as ugly and as terrifying as ever. Below is one of the screenshots, the rest can be viewed here.

Who else loves the smell of fear in the morning?

What happened on Tuesday, February 25

1. After 8 years, Black Mesa was finally scheduled to leave Early Access on March 5. That’s in just 3 days. The price tag on the game is $19,99. Read more and prepare for the ride.
2. Red Dead Redemption 2’s hot coffee mod disappeared from the web, and nobody knows why. Here are the two possible explanations.
3. Limited edition of Cyberpunk 2077-themed RTX 2080Ti got unboxed. Watch the unboxing below, and don’t bother buying the GPU – you ought to win it:

What happened on Wednesday, February 26

1. GOG launched its 30-day refund policy. “Return any game anytime, we’re putting full trust in you,” could be its slogan. Shortly after we’ve asked some indie devs what their thoughts on this new policy were. "Easily exploitable,” one said, while other added that the policy enforced a “pay if you want” model. All in all, it’s not pretty. Read their stories here.
2. Horizon Zero Dawn is heading to PC. At least according to this French Amazon store. However possible the PC version might seem now, you should probably take this revelation with a grain of salt.
3. Patent suggested that PlayStation 5’s DualShock controller could read your heart rate to make the gaming experience more immersive. Now, some fear that this invention could violate their privacy. Here’s the patented image that started it all:

What happened on Thursday, February 27

1. Baldur’s Gate 3 happened. First, a few high-res screenshots surfaced some time before the official presentation at PAX East. Then an official gameplay presentation came around. On one hand, it gave us 20-some minutes of juicy gameplay footage to enjoy. On the other, nothing worked like it should have, and the entire presentation was nothing short of a beautiful disaster – which we couldn’t help but notice & write about.
2. Wolcen got fixed. Well, a little bit. On their quest to make the rushed MMO RPG experience as perfect as possible, the devs kicked off with resolving some game-breaking bugs and balancing the game.
3. Ori and the Will of the Wisps got a 20-minute gameplay ahead of its release on March 11. It was as beautiful as the game itself, and you can watch it below. Don’t get distracted by the visuals, though. The game is still a pretty (no pun intended) hardcore metroidvania experience, which we wrote about in our preview.

What happened on Friday, February 28

1. Hideo Kojima began working on something. And will share something this week. Spoiler: It might be Silent Hills.
2. Rockstar posted 2 new background images on their website. The internet went crazy. “Could this be Bully 2 teaser?” everybody asked. Spoiler: It’s not. Probably.
3. SOMA developers teased their new game. It’s dark, it’s dusty, and it’s supposed to drive you mad. Classic Frictional. Watch the trailer below (if you dare), and repeat after us: “I am Tasi.”

As for the weekend

1. Bethesda was surprised with how much Fallout 76 players loved PvE over PvP. Read more about this, and also about human NPCs making their way into the game on April 7.
2. CS: GO broke another popularity record on Steam. Its active player count is almost 1 million now. The point: it’s pretty far from dead.
3. Beautiful Desolation devs asked pirates for money. No, really. But they did so in a civilized manner. Here’s how you do it.

Thank you for sticking around till the end. See you next Monday. Now, off you go to get some fresh news.

• PC ports
• Fallout (franchise)
• Resident Evil (franchise)