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Armored Core 6 is not a small side project for FromSoftware. That may have seemed obvious from the game’s bombastic trailers, but without famed studio head Hidetaka Miyazaki serving as director and with that big Elden Ring DLC also in the works, it’s less obvious exactly how FromSoftware splits its time and resources. During a recent interview with Armored Core 6’s director and producer, I asked how big the studio is now and how the teams are broken down.

“We don’t expect players to read through the whole staff list at the end of every game and compare who’s who,” joked producer Yasunori Ogura. “To give a broad image, we have just about 400 employees at FromSoftware, and about 300 of those are development staff. That pool of development staff is shifted around, moved between projects as needed, depending on the current situation with a project and the current period of development.”

Ogura is a FromSoftware lifer—his earliest game credit on Mobygames is as a member of the publicity staff on Shadow Tower: Abyss in 2003, and he’s since worked in PR and marketing on more than two dozen From games, all the way up through Elden Ring. Armored Core 6 is Ogura’s first p…

Update: Intel has told us that it’s discovered the root cause of the stability issues, this being a “microcode algorithm” that causes elevated voltages, and that it’s “currently targeting mid-August for patch release to partners following full validation.”

Original story: It’s been an unfortunately rocky road so far for at least some Intel 13th and 14th Gen gamers, and game developers are experiencing stability issues seemingly caused by the processors, too. There have been numerous attempted diagnoses and fixes, but all have fallen flat, as tech YouTuber Level1Tech (via Videocardz) has investigated and found Intel CPUs are still facing massively disproportionate stability issues. 

We also seemingly have further confirmation of the severity of the problem from game studio Alderon Games—developer of dino survival game, Path of Titans—which states in no uncertain terms that “Intel is selling defective 13-14th Gen CPUs” and the failure rate for affected processors is “nearly 100%.”

It’s referencing reports from across the board, too, counting players, server providers, and its own development …

Intel will be cutting 15,000 jobs, or 15% of its workforce, by the end of the year. The chip company has announced it aims to save $10 billion in 2025 as it reports no profits whatsoever from the previous three months.

“We plan to deliver $10 billion in cost savings in 2025, and this includes reducing our head count by roughly 15,000 roles, or 15% of our workforce,” says Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in a note to employees.

“This is painful news for me to share. I know it will be even more difficult for you to read. This is an incredibly hard day for Intel as we are making some of the most consequential changes in our company’s history.”

Gelsinger says the decision is due to the introduction of a new operating model, which “made it clear our cost structure is not competitive”.

“For example, our annual revenue in 2020 was about $24 billion higher than it was last year, yet our current workforce is actually 10% larger now than it was then. There are a lot of reasons for this, but it’s not a sustainable path forward,” Gelsinger says.

Intel has been trying to get itself back on a road to recovery for many years; CEO Gelsinger even was a part of said pro…

The developers of Indie RPG Inkbound will remove all the in-game monetization from it at the end of this month. Starting October 27, 2023, there will no longer be any battle pass or cosmetic shop inside Inkbound. They were already quite unobtrusive, but now they’re going away entirely.

“We tried to make these as generous and straightforward as possible while simultaneously being 100% optional, cosmetic-only, with no impact on gameplay, and with no FOMO,” said developer Shiny Shoe in an update on Steam. “However, it’s clear that industry and player sentiment is trending against the presence of these features. For that reason we are removing in-game monetization completely.”

There’s a bit more to it, but suffice to say that those who already bought the equivalent of a battle pass or any cosmetics are getting compensated, or getting all that material automatically unlocked, and the equivalent material will be moved to a new, freely accessible, “Cosmetic Vault.” The previous free unlock tracks of the Leveling Passes will move into that vault.

Inkbound’s especially notable to us at PC Gamer because it’s developed by Shiny Shoe, the people behind Monster Train.…

Red Dead Redemption 2 flows like amber: thick and slow-paced. In fact, its brief moments of madness—those enormous shootouts with cops and bandits—only really get in the way of your real business of ambling slowly around on horseback in the midday sun. Well, no longer. A mod from creators Bolmin and Shtivi (via Rock Paper Shotgun) will finally let Arthur Morgan hang up his six-shooters and fulfil his true destiny: Becoming a Taskrabbit guy in 1899.

Jobs – Expanded and Enhanced is the mod in question, and it’s actually a remake of an earlier project made by Bolmin themself. It adds job boards to “every major town” in RDR2, giving you the opportunity to take on any of six new avenues of legal work. Those are:

• Chauffeur: “Take some passengers from A to B, and protect them if needed”.
• Ranch Hand: “Doing chores around ranches to earn money”.
• Pest Control: “Ranches need your help dealing with animals that are causing damage to their properties and livestock”.
• Wagon Protection: “Make sure it gets to its destination safely”.
• Postman: “Th…
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