2018 was the year that Telltale fell from grace. 2019 might be the year Starbreeze, another once-beloved studio, follows after. Below, you’ll find excerpts from Eurogamer’s lengthy expose on the subject, which includes details on how Overkill not-so-secretly took over Starbreeze, how two brothers stopped talking to each other, and how former CEO Bo Andersson “disappeared from the face of the earth.”

That, plus Quantic Dream finally broadens its sights to PC games once again, Overwatch players learn piano, another bizarre Fallout 76 patch mishap, Subnautica’s icy adventures, and more.

This is gaming news for January 28 to February 1.

Beyond: PlayStation

Once upon a time Quantic Dream made PC games. You can still find Indigo Prophecy on Steam, and while I won’t say it’s worth playing it at least starts strong. That opening diner scene is still excellent, even if everything that comes after is daft. For years Quantic Dream’s been Sony-exclusive though, releasing Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human on various flavors of PlayStation. And that’s fine, because those games are bad.

Quantic Dream recently received investment money from NetEase though, and now it’s hinting it might make games for the PC again. Of course, in classic Quantic Dream fashion this news was delivered by a, uh…a CGI android lady? Thanks, I hate it.

Raccoon City stories

Resident Evil 2 released last week and is already a strong contender for end-of-year lists. It’s fantastic, and I love when we get more of a fantastic game. Thus I’m excited Capcom’s working on three pieces of DLC, “The Ghost Survivors,” mini-campaigns starring three random characters from around Raccoon City—the gunshop owner, the mayor’s daughter, and a random soldier. Hopefully they’re up to par with the main game, because I’m ready to go back. Even better: The first one’s out on February 15, just a few weeks from now.

Resident Evil 2

Train roll on

Of course, February 15 is also the busiest day of 2019. Along with the Resident Evil 2 DLC, it’s also the release date for Crackdown 3, Far Cry: New Dawn, and Metro Exodus. That latter continued its trailer blitz this week with a six-minute look at life aboard a train. Check it out below, assuming you’re not still mad about its Epic Games Store exclusivity.

Anthem fixes

February 15 is also technically the release date for Anthem as well. Kind of. It’s a bit confusing, enough so that EA literally made a chart explaining the multiple release dates, but the long and short of it is that Origin Access Premier customers can play starting February 15, regular Origin Access customers can play 10 hours on February 15, and the full release is on February 22. Got all that?

Of course, there’s also a second demo period this weekend—this time, a public one. And BioWare’s made some fixes since last weekend, including fixes to the servers that just would not stay up last week. They’re also adding back the ability to sprint in the first-person hub area, which is a relief. I’m still not sure how I feel about Anthem, but at least now it won’t take me five minutes just to walk to each bland mission-dispensing NPC.

According to Bethesda, “a merge of internal development builds failed to execute properly prior to releasing Patch 5.” A hotfix was rushed to release, the problems are remedied, and everything’s fine. I get it—version control is hard. But wow, another odd chapter in the increasingly odd saga of Fallout 76, yeah?

Logitech’s K800 Wireless Illuminated keyboard is indispensable if you often type late into the evening or otherwise work in dark environments. This backlit keyboard not only provides the necessary light but also offers one of the most comfortable and pleasant typing experiences we’ve encountered, all at an affordable price.

This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best wireless keyboards. Go there for reviews of competing products and buying advice, including how we tested. 

Design

The most striking thing about the K800 is its size. In an age where keyboards seem to cram everything into smaller and smaller profiles, the K800 takes up a luxurious amount of real estate. It measures nearly 18 inches across and about 8 inches top to bottom. That size doesn’t necessarily translate into durability, though. I found I could bend and twist the plastic chassis—which measures only an inch at its thickest point—with my bare hands. That’s probably a negligible complaint, as the K800 is clearly designed to be desk-bound, not tossed into your gear bag like portable wireless keyboards.

The ample size allows for a full set of alphanumeric keys, a number pad, and dozen function keys that do double duty as hot keys for music playback, email, and other secondary tasks. There’s plenty of room left over to provide a palm/wrist rest at the bottom. And its sleek wedge shape and matte-black finish with transparent trim will add a little elegance to dreary office desktop setups.

Logitech

Illumination

The K800’s signature feature, though, is its illumination. When activated via an on/off switch at the top right, the characters on the laser-etched keys are backlit. You can reduce or increase the brightness by pressing the secondary function key—located to the right of the spacebar between the ALT and CTRL keys—and F5 or F6, respectively. Logitech also included hand proximity detection, so that the backlighting will dim when you pull your hands away from the keyboard and brighten when you return them.

Connectivity

The K800 uses Logitech’s unifying receiver, a 2.4GHz USB dongle that provides better connectivity and allows you to connect multiple mice and keyboards to one computer. All I had to do was plug it into a USB port and the keyboard was up and running.

Performance

Thanks to the full-size keyboard, touch-typing was seamless moving from my regular keyboard to the K800. The keys were neither sticky nor too clicky, and were noticeably more comfortable to type on. No doubt this is the benefit of the PerfectStroke key design, which enables a key travel of 3.2mm. Research shows that the deeper travel requires less keystroke force than the 2mm to 2.5mm of travel allowed by typical laptop keyboards. Keystrokes felt more uniform and I felt more fleet-fingered as a result.

Bottom line

With our increasingly 24/7 workdays, backlit keyboards are more of requirement than ever. The Logitech K800 Wireless Illuminated Keyboard will provide all the light you need to work into the night and a quieter, more comfortable typing experience to boot.

We’re about three weeks away from the first Samsung Unpacked event of 2019, and the excitement is palatable. Not only are we expected to get three models of Galaxy S10 with hole-punch screens and triple-camera arrays and a new low-cost model, we also will likely get our first glimpse at the folding phone that Samsung has been working on for the better part of five years. And with the latest rumors, we even know how much they’re gonna cost.

But so far, the Galaxy F or Galaxy Fold or whatever Samsung calls it will actually be something of a surprise. While the Galaxy S10 has leaked for months from just about every angle, the folding phone has been kept tightly under wraps, with the only information about it coming from Samsung itself during its developers conference in November.

But after an official Samsung video leaked early Friday, the Internet is abuzz with what is purportedly the world’s first look at Samsung’s new folding phone. At the 24-second mark of the promo vid—which has since been pulled by Samsung—a woman is seen holding a folding Galaxy phone with what looks to be a near-bezel-less screen, incredibly thin design, and insanely bright display.

Samsung

And let me tell you, it looks amazing. Almost as amazing as the rest of the products in the video. Throughout the one-minute spot we see several eye-popping concepts as “Que Sera Sera” plays in the background:

• Giant windows with heads-up displays in them showing images tailored to the person passing
• AR-enabled mirrors with precise gesture navigation
• A bezel-less tablet with a glowing Samsung logo embedded within the screen
• An Iron Man-style AI-powered robot arm that draws tattoos
• A USB-C-powered abdominal ultrasound device for the home
• A multi-player AR game with dozens of participants working together seemingly without Wi-Fi

But we’re supposed to believe that the folding phone is real? Nonsense.

A folding fantasy

Even if you want to ignore the rest of the video and focus solely on the folding phone, there’s enough evidence to suggest that it’s a fantasy. For one, it’s way too thin. From what we can surmise, the phone in the video is roughly the thickness of a Galaxy S9 when closed with an extremely thin front display. That would be quite an engineering feat. The power Samsung would need to keep a device with a tablet-sized screen running all day is going to need to be larger than a normal phone, so how are all of the internal parts supposed to fit on one side with a giant battery?

Next we have the bezels, which look to be about the size of the iPhone XS, with no notch or hole for the camera. Even if you want to argue the the selfie cam could be on the inside, what about the rest of the sensors? From what we’ve seen of the Galaxy S10, Samsung still needs a forehead above the screen for the iris scanner and other sensors, so it’s hard to believe that it magically figured out how to incorporate them into the display for this phone.

Samsung

Then there’s the issue of size. During its developers conference, Samsung shared a few specs of the Galaxy F, most notably that the front screen would be 4.58 inches with a resolution of 1960 x 840 while the inside measures 7.3 inches with a 2152 x 1536 resolution. Based on the way the model is holding the phone in the video, the phone is significantly bigger than than, seemingly as big as a Galaxy S9 Plus. That would make it nearly 10 inches when opened, which raises all sorts of questions about usability.

And finally, the phone in the video isn’t really acting like a folding phone should. The front display stays on after it’s opened. The inside display is seemingly showing a different image than what’s on the front. And there’s no status bar on the top of the front screen.

But the biggest clue that this video is meant to take place years in the future—other than the song choice that literally says, “The future’s not ours to see” over and over—is the Galaxy S9 Plus precariously placed in the pocket of a pre-schooler’s backpack. No parent in 2019 would let a 4-year-old take an $800 smartphone to school.

Samsung

Whether this is a controlled leak or an actual one, the end result is the same: When the Galaxy F lands in a few weeks and looks nothing like this, try not to be disappointed. Much like the last concept video Samsung made with a folding phone in it, these products are years away from release, if they ever arrive. But hey, at least we have something to look forward to in 2025.

The less busywork you have in your life, the better your life is, and robotic Roombas can cross vacuuming off your list for you. Today, you can grab one of your own at its lowest price ever. The iRobot Roomba 690 is $248 today on Amazon, a steep discount from its list price of $375.

This awesome robot vacuum combines the cleaning power of Roomba with modern smarts. Once connected to Wi-Fi, the Roomba 690 becomes compatible with Amazon’s Alexa for voice control. You can also use the iRobot Home app to set schedules, start cleaning, and view reports, as well as set a virtual barrier to control where your Roomba goes. Beyond the smart capabilities, this robot vacuum is pretty great at keeping your floors clean, with brushes designed to work on all kinds of surfaces, a three-stage cleaning system, and Roomba’s Dirt Detect sensors to pick up on extra-dirty areas.

We haven’t tried this exact robot vacuum ourselves, but we’ve loved other Roomba models in the past and have ranked a few among the best robot vacuum cleaners of 2019. This one in particular is a popular pick on Amazon, with 4.1 stars out of 5 across more than 2,800 user reviews.

[Today’s deal: iRobot Roomba 690 for $248 on Amazon.]

If you sit in front of a computer all day, one of the best upgrades you can get for yourself is a mechanical keyboard. And Amazon’s currently offering a great deal on a stupendous mechanical keyboard that will up your typing game without driving everyone around you crazy with an obnoxious clickety-clack sound. The Corsair K70 RGB MK.2 with Cherry MX Brown switches is just $100 right now.

This keyboard has been sitting at $100 all week down from $160, though this keyboard also dips into $120 territory with relative frequency. 

The main feature of any mechanical keyboard is its switches, and the Cherry MX Browns inside Corsair’s K70 Mk. 2 are a very tactile switch. That means you’ll feel be able to feel when the switch is activated, thereby reducing the unconscious effort you put into typing. What’s great about Brown switches, however, is that they don’t have that loud clickety-clack sound that Cherry MX Blue switches have. That makes Browns a great option for working or playing in close proximity to others.

One thing you can’t hide from your co-workers or your family, however, is the gamer aesthetic of this keyboard’s RGB lighting. Luckily, you can turn that off if vibrant LEDs aren’t your thing.

For gamers. this keyboard also comes with 8MB of profile storage, USB passthrough for connecting peripherals like a headset or mouse, anti-ghosting and full-key rollover for proper key registers when you’re moving fast, and Corsair’s iCue software for syncing your lighting set-up across Corsair devices.

[Today’s deal: Corsair KM70 MK.2 RGB with Cherry MX Brown switches for $100 at Amazon.]

Sharing recordings of your gameplay is all the rage these days, but believe it or not, watching someone play a video game is about as old as the pastime itself.

When Q-bert and Ms. Pac-Man roamed the earth, it wasn’t unusual to see a group of kids clustered around an arcade machine watching the neighborhood’s best go all the way on a single quarter. In the 90s, the game in my neighborhood was Street Fighter II, and the aughts had young gamers clustered around living room televisions with the Grand Thefts Auto.

Fast forward to today, where sharing or streaming video of your gameplay online is common, and almost any major game you can think of has a viewer base and star players. Unlike games of yesteryear, where Donkey Kong or Sonic the Hedgehog followed a pre-determined path and variation between game runs is relatively minor, video games today offer a variety of different endings, outcomes, and middle games that can be as entertaining to watch as to play. Sports games like the FIFA series and Rocket League offering something closer to traditional sports highlights.

The World Economic Forum reported in June 2018 that esports, where professional video game players test their mettle against each other, was on track to be a billion dollar business with 300 million fans worldwide. That says nothing of Twitch, the Amazon-owned dynamo where competitive and non-competitive pros play their favorite games, live streaming their antics to adoring online crowds.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Then there are the video game clips people post to YouTube and other sites showing an innovative move, game stage tutorials, hilarious game bugs, or a major missteps.

Whether it’s to show off to the world or just a few friends, video game recording is a huge trend that many gamers want to be a part of. If you want to get in on the fun, how do you get started and which recording software should you use? There’s no shortage of free video recording tools out there vying for your attention, many with unique hooks or features.

We regularly take a look at the various top gameplay capture tools–most of which are free–to make specific recommendations based on various needs, such as recording and sharing highlight clips, broadcasting your gameplay online, or creating a complete archive of your favorite game.

This guide will point you to the best recording software for your needs. (If you’re looking to start live streaming specifically, be sure to also check out Haveaheartsavealife’s guide to game streaming with Twitch.)

Best overall game capture software

Ian Paul/IDG

Open Broadcast Software (OBS) Studio tops the list for best game capture software.This suite is ridiculously flexible, allowing you to capture not only your game but also a shot of your webcam or a watermark, and even more complex elements. The performance impact of OBS is also surprisingly small considering how much it can do.

OBS resides in the domain of professional and power users, but the beauty is that with just a few minutes of training it’s easy enough to start using. Anyone who wants to take their game recording and production to the next level should really take a look at OBS. 

Best game capture software for beginners

IDG

There’s no doubt that the easiest capture tool to use is Plays from Plays.tv. You just install it, sign-in, and it starts doing its job with no prompting necessary. More experienced users can tweak the capture settings, but it’s not a requirement to get a quality experience right from the outset.

Best game capture tool for sharing

IDG

Plays ties with Windows 10’s Game Bar here. While the Game Bar isn’t technically a sharing tool, it’s integrated with the Windows 10 Xbox app where you can upload clips in a single click to Microsoft’s Xbox Live. The Xbox app also has simple editing tools to cut down your recording into a shorter clip.

Plays is just as easy to use as the Game Bar for editing. After you’ve recorded your gameplay, Plays appears with equally simple editing tools to cut down your clip or upload the whole thing to Plays.tv. 

The downside of both is that they don’t tie into platforms like YouTube and Twitch. In both cases, however, it’s easy to get access to your videos locally to upload them elsewhere.

How we tested game capture software

We reviewed each capture tool by running a game benchmarking tool without capture software enabled to get a baseline, and then running it again with the capture software actively recording. The difference, measured in frames per second (fps), gives us an idea of the performance impact you can expect from these tools.

We also consider how easy or difficult it is to install and configure the software, what it’s like to activate it in the moment, and how easy the software’s interface is to use and understand. 

We don’t use a top-of-the-line rig for our tests, but a laptop with an external GPU setup. The point wasn’t to see what a tremendously powerful system can do, because tremendously powerful systems won’t have much of a problem running anything. Using this setup shows how a budget systems fare while gaming and recording at the same time.