Following months of rumors, Valve finally announced the new Steam Machine earlier this week. And while I might question the company's decision to ship a system with only 8GB of VRAM in 2026, I believe the "Gabecube" will do more for PC gaming than anything Microsoft has done in the last decade. 

With SteamOS and Linux, Valve has polished away many of the things that make PC gaming unapproachable to some people. Want to set a frame limit to extend your Steam Deck's battery life? It's an easy-to-find option in the Performance overlay, not something you need to dig through multiple menus to find. Want to suspend a game? That's possible on SteamOS.

And now with the Steam Machine, Valve is poised to bring the fun of PC gaming to an entirely new audience: home console gamers. Even though I don't plan to buy one, selfishly I hope it's a runaway success. Like a lot of PC gamers I imagine, I'm ready to leave Windows behind. Over the last few years, Microsoft has proven to be a poor steward of the platform. The company seems more interested in pushing AI features few care for, rather than solving the issues that have plagued Windows for years. After all, it was only recently that Microsoft said it would tackle shader stutter, a problem that has plagued many recent AAA games. Worse yet, that solution may take years to fully implement. 

I want the Steam Machine to be the revolution that brings SteamOS to desktop PCs, but before that can happen, Valve must solve Linux's cheating problem. Right now, the Steam Deck covers two of the three pillars of PC gaming: indies and singleplayer AAA games. For some people, that's enough, but it leaves out a huge section of the PC market. Nearly four years after its release, you can't play some of the most popular competitive games, and it's all because of how easy it is to make cheating software for Linux-based operating systems.

In a 2024 interview with The Verge, Riot's Phillip Koskinas summarized the issue concisely. "You can freely manipulate the kernel, and there’s no user mode calls to attest that it’s even genuine," he told the outlet. "You could make a Linux distribution that’s purpose-built for cheating and we’d be smoked."

When Valve released the Steam Deck at the start of 2022, there was some hope games like Fortnite and Rainbow Six Siege would eventually be playable on the handheld, and for a while things looked positive. Toward the end of 2021, Valve announced Proton compatibility with BattlEye. A few months later, the company did the same for Epic's Easy Anti-Cheat. There's also Valve's in-house solution, VAC, which is fully supported and means the company's own games, including Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2, are playable on Steam Deck.   

However, despite Valve's support for some of the most popular anti-cheat solutions on the market, many studios chose not to bring their competitive games to SteamOS, citing cheating concerns. Some notable examples include Fortnite, Valorant and PUBG. Those games have never been playable on Steam Deck. In fact, last fall EA withdrew Linux and Steam Deck support for Apex Legends, one of the few competitive shooters you could play on Valve's handheld. 

"In our efforts to combat cheating in Apex, we’ve identified Linux OS as being a path for a variety of impactful exploits and cheats. As a result, we’ve decided to block Linux OS access to the game," the company said at the time. "We believe the decision will meaningfully reduce instances of cheating in our game." 

For EA, Riot, Epic and developers of other popular competitive games, the issue is two-fold: Cheating software is harder to detect when it's used on Linux. More importantly, for many of them there aren't enough Linux players to justify the resources needed to secure their games for every Linux distribution. For example, when Riot made its Vanguard software a requirement to play League of Legends in 2024, the studio said there were just over 800 daily users playing the game on Linux. For context, millions of people League every day. Put another way, it's a chicken and egg problem. 

The Steam Machine represents an opportunity for Valve. According to Are We Anti-Cheat Yet, a crowd-sourced database listing games that require anti-cheat software and whether they work through Linux or Valve's Proton compatibility layer, 682 games don't work for one reason or another. That means more than half of the 1,136 games that require anti-cheat software can't be played on SteamOS. 

With the nature of Linux being what it is, it's unlikely Valve could make even the most popular kernel-level anti-cheat apps work across every Linux distribution, and based on the company's approach, it doesn't have an interest in doing that. However, if Valve made a better sandbox for developers to secure their games, we could absolutely see a SteamOS version of Valorant, for instance.     

Studios will go where their players are. The Steam Deck has proven that. And if the Steam Machine becomes popular enough to warrant companies like EA to bring their games to SteamOS and Linux, the PC gaming landscape will suddenly be very different. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/for-the-steam-machine-to-change-pc-gaming-valve-must-solve-linuxs-anti-cheat-problem-130000088.html?src=rss

Folks who are looking forward to a fresh flavor of life simulation in the form of Paralives will have to wait a while longer before they can jump into the Sims-like game. The game was supposed to hit early access on Steam on December 8, but lead developer Alex Massé and the team at Paralives Studio have pushed back the release date to May 25.

Massé explained that the team expanded its playtests in the lead up to the early access period, "and the latest feedback we received made us realize the game isn’t up to the standard we wanted it to meet for release." While the character creator and in-depth home builder modes seem to be in a solid place, playtesters encountered "impactful bugs" in the live mode and it appears that there isn't yet quite enough to do in the town. "We feel it is necessary to work on these before delivering the product to the community," Massé wrote. The team plans to improve the game's onboarding experience too.

Paralives has been in development for six years, and the team has grown from two or three people in the first couple of years to an average of 10. Having such a small team meant that the developers "had to alternate long stretches of development” between the three parts of the game, Massé wrote. "We are so proud of what we have built, but now, we just need a bit more time to polish the simulation part of the game. This would ensure Paralives offers a great first experience when it launches, making players come back for every exciting free update and expansion that we will put out afterwards."

Paralives Studio will stream 45 minutes of gameplay on its YouTube channel at noon ET on November 25. Massé said you'll get to see what the game looks like now, including some of the current features. The team will provide more details on aspects it plans to improve before the early access release. You can expect more streams and videos in the coming months. It's expected that Paralives will remain in early access for two years while the team adds the features and content it plans to.

Paralives is an indie alternative to the likes of The Sims and InZOI. There are other life sim games on the way before Paralives debuts, such as Pokémon Pokopia. Animal Crossing New Horizons is getting a major update and a Switch 2 version in January. However, EA will shut down The Sims Mobile that same month.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/the-sims-like-paralives-is-delayed-until-may-2026-174922059.html?src=rss

Earlier this year, I played Metroid Prime for the first time in at least a decade. Back in 2023, Nintendo released a remastered version of the 2002 classic for the Switch, and I felt like dusting it off once we finally knew Metroid Prime 4: Beyond would arrive this year after about a decade in development. The original Metroid Prime holds up surprisingly well for a 23-year-old game, but there were plenty of times where it showed its age. The platforming often felt overly clunky, as precise control over Samus Aran is not the game’s strong suit. Similarly, dealing with larger hordes of energy-sucking Metroids could get pretty frustrating, again due to a lack of precision. 

But the main feeling I came away from the game with was excitement over a fully modernized Metroid Prime experience. I’ve been interested in seeing how the lush alien worlds, monstrous enemies and first-person combat would feel on a current console, built with today’s technology and the many improvements that have come to game design since 2002. I finally got a chance to play about 90 minutes of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond last week and nothing I saw diminished my excitement for the series being brought into the current decade — even if the game felt almost too familiar at times.

I played two segments of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. The first is an opening sequence that Nintendo made available for people to try at the Switch 2 demo experiences earlier this year before the console launched, while the second is a longer slice that takes place on a gorgeous alien planet where it seems the bulk of the game will likely take place. That first segment is the classic “get the player acquainted with the controls” level where Samus flies in to help defend a base under attack. Since I had played the Switch version of Metroid Prime recently, I felt right at home with the controls even though a few buttons were remapped. All of the classic Metroid moves, including charge blasts, the morph ball, the missile cannon, the scanning visor and more are intact here, and I quickly slipped back into the routine of scanning enemies for weak points and blasting away. 

Right from the jump, the game looks fantastic. There’s an extensive cutscene (at least for a Metroid game) that shows Samus flying in to save the day through a battle-torn base, and everything from the flash of fireball explosions to small details on Samus’s ship give off a level of detail that we simply haven’t seen in a Metroid game before. 

I was playing the game on the Switch 2, in both handheld mode and hooked up to a TV and it looked great either way. The aforementioned explosions popped nicely in HDR and the frame rate never stuttered in a way that I picked up on. As usual, Nintendo’s art direction is top-notch, but this is the first Metroid Prime game made on a console with some power behind it (remember, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption came out on the original Wii). The game isn’t quite aiming for photorealistic graphics, but it’s closer than almost any other Nintendo game I can think of. The combo of impeccable style and a modern resolution that finally lets the Metroid world shine is thrilling, and I can’t wait to see more variety in the worlds that Samus explores.

There’s also a lot more voice chatter than in the original Metroid Prime. As you get dropped into defending the base under attack, plenty of other soldiers recognize Samus, ask for help, tell her where to go and generally praise her for being a badass. It’s a lot more voice work than I’m used to in a Metroid game, and it goes a long way towards making the journey feel less isolated. 

Nintendo

The second area I got to explore looks even better than the somewhat generic base where the game kicks off. It’s a classic Metroid world that mixes natural beauty with a mysterious, alien culture. And, of course, a lot of the nature wants to kill you for invading its territory (or possibly because it is being controlled by outside forces). The big boss of the demo was cut from this cloth: a giant tentacled plant flinging its giant spiked arms at you and firing off poisonous flowers. A classic Metroid battle if ever there was one, albeit one that felt not wildly different from some of the boss battles from Metroid Prime. That said, the scope of the battle felt bigger, due to the size of the arena and how the plant’s tentacles made maneuvering and getting off clear shots a challenge. While the boss clearly had a central body right in the middle of the room, the tentacles made it feel like it was all around me, at all times

This boss felt like an upscaled but familiar version of ones from past games, and it was far from the only thing that felt familiar. For example, the game still uses save stations scattered throughout the map to save your progress rather than just autosaving at significant points. That’s a throwback I didn’t exactly miss and didn’t expect to see in 2025. Plenty of the music cues and sound effects felt like they could have been lifted straight from other Metroid Prime games, and the basic move set and weapons Samus has early in the game is nearly identical to how you start Metroid Prime. Naturally, something happens where she loses most of those abilities and has to regain them to progress — in the demo, I had to find the Morph Ball power up to move on, just as you do in nearly every Metroid game before. 

Nintendo

At times, it felt like the game was leaning a bit too heavily on the already-established framework rather than trying something new. But given that I was early in the game, I’m allowing for there to be a lot of unexpected changes to come. And I did get a chance to try out the biggest gameplay change Nintendo has teased thus far (no, not the motorcycle): new psychic abilities. 

These powers, at least in the demo, are primarily used for solving environmental puzzles, as they provide a new way to interact with various objects and structures. But there’s also a combat component that I needed to use to beat the aforementioned boss. You can charge and fire off a sort of psychic beam — once it leaves your blaster, time slows to nearly a crawl and you can take control of its direction with the analog stick. While fighting the boss, I had to guide the beam around a host of obstacles to hit each of the three tentacles; once I did that, the monster was vulnerable and I could then charge in and blast it with my conventional weapons. You can see some examples of this power in action in the video below.

I wish I got a chance to see how these powers would evolve throughout the game, and I’m definitely intrigued to see how they manage to separate the gameplay in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond from the aspects of it that feel merely like an updated version of what came before. And to be honest, I’m not sad the game feels familiar. Plenty of people haven’t experienced the Metroid Prime series before or haven’t played it in more than a decade, and many of the familiar aspects felt like a perfect example of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” And it won’t be long before we can all find out if Metroid Prime 4: Beyond finds a way to really stand out from its predecessors after all this time. The game arrives on December 5 for Switch and Switch 2.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/metroid-prime-4-beyond-thrillingly-brings-the-series-into-the-modern-era-140000932.html?src=rss

Yesterday, Valve announced three (3) hardware products: a Steam Machine console, an accompanying Steam Controller and the long-rumored Steam Frame VR headset. This hardware, along with the excellent Steam Deck, gives Valve a pretty comprehensive way to get people playing games wherever they want, on any sort of screen. And, of course, the games are what this is all about. Steam’s catalog is impossibly vast, encompassing every genre you can imagine — but there’s still one crucial title missing from the thousands of games available.

I am, of course, talking about Half-Life 3.

I swore back in 2017 that I’d stop beating this dead horse, but Valve sucked me back in with the utterly unexpected, excellent, VR-only Half-Life: Alyx prequel. At the very least, it was a sign that the Half-Life universe wasn’t dead and buried in Valve’s mind, despite the fact that it had lain dormant with an unresolved cliffhanger for more than a dozen years.

At the time, Valve indicated it was interested in moving forward with more games in the series, though I wouldn’t have been surprised if the company just dropped things again. But, a big push into hardware that is significantly more powerful than the Steam Deck feels like another perfect opportunity to make Half-Life 3 happen.

And there have actually been a few more concrete bread crumbs to follow over the last year or so indicating Valve might finally be returning to the Half-Life story. It started with the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, when Valve dropped a major update for the game. “Every map in Half-Life 2 has been looked over by Valve level designers to fix longstanding bugs, restore content and features lost to time, and improve the quality of a few things like lightmap resolution and fog,” the developer wrote. Along with some developer commentary, a documentary and the inclusion of the two episodic follow-up games, this was a pretty substantial update for such an old game.

At the end of last year, YouTuber Gabe Follower dropped some details on a potential Half-Life 3 coming soon. Follower had previously called the release of Counter-Strike 2, lending some credibility to his findings. To make a long story short, Follower claimed a Valve project internally titled “HLX” had reached the play-testing stage. That didn’t necessarily mean a launch was imminent, but at the very least the game was advancing in development.

Another less consequential but fun tidbit dropped around the same time: actor Michael Shapiro (who voiced the infamous G-Man in the Half-Life series) posted a New Years’ message where he spoke in the G-Man’s strange accent and said he’d see viewers in the year to come. Not coincidentally, he also did this in 2020 prior to the Half-Life: Alyx launch. The game had already been announced when he posted that message, but it’s still an intriguing tease. 

The timing couldn’t be better, either. The Game Awards are less than a month away, and that extravaganza is about the biggest platform you could ask for if you’re announcing a big new title. Not that Valve really needs the stage — they could just drop a trailer on YouTube and the gaming world would take care of the rest.

But as a companion piece to the company’s renewed hardware ambitions? The synergy would be too good to pass up. After all, the Valve Index VR headset launched just a short time before Half-Life: Alyx was announced, and anyone who had purchased it got the game for free. A theoretical Half-Life 3 isn’t quite the same, as there’s no chance the game will require the official Steam Machine. But it would still make a heck of a launch title to help drive interest in the company’s new devices. 

As for me, I’m not letting myself get too excited here. I remember in 2013, when Valve introduced the first Steam Machines initiative and its first attempt at a controller, I assumed it would be a perfect time to announce Half-Life 3. That clearly did not happen. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit hopeful this time around. There’s enough smoke to make me think that the fire is real; it’s hopefully time to wake up and smell the ashes. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/valves-trio-of-hardware-announcements-revived-my-half-life-3-fever-dream-170000561.html?src=rss