When Google shut down underperforming game-streaming service Stadia, the company announced a plan to keep the tech underlying it alive in the form of “Immersive Stream for Games”, which it licenced out so other companies could let their customers play games online. One high-profile result was Resident Evil Village’s demo you could play in a browser, but the same tech was behind AT&T letting subscribers play Batman: Arkham Knight and fitness-bike maker Peloton launching a game called Lanebreak (turns out, virtual cycling games are big business).

In the midst of promoting a bundle of tools Google Cloud offers game publishers to support their live service games, reporter Stephen Totilo mentioned that the Stadia tech is no longer available to license.

“We are not offering th…

The Steam Deck is on sale over at Valve for the next two weeks. It’s not a paltry amount off, either. There’s 10% off the cheapest model, 15% off the middle-tier model, and 20% off the top tier model. 

The top model, the one with a full 512GB NVMe SSD, is down to less than the regular price of the 256GB model with that 20% discount. So, that’s already a pretty convincing discount if you’ve been waiting to make a decision on whether to buy the handheld or not. 

Though more alluring is the budget model, even with a slimmer 10% discount. One reason why is that, no matter what, the ROG Ally can’t compete with the price tag on the 64GB Steam Deck—it’s just a much cheaper device. 

But, importantly, you don’t have to put up with that small storag…

Is there a point at which a gaming monitor gets too big, too unweildy? Maybe, but who cares, just look at this thing, corner-to-corner made of Samsung’s snazzy QD-OLD panel tech, all 49 inches of it. We first clapped our eyes on it in July. Then it was $1,599, now it’s already plummeted to just $999 on Amazon in the run up to Black Friday.

Yep, that’s still a whole lotta money. But it’s remarkable to see a premium mega sized OLED gaming monitor hit this price level so soon after launch. Lest you have forgotten, the Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 G93SC is a 49-inch 32:9 aspect monster sporting QD-OLED tech and a native resolution of 5,120 by 1,440.

It’s an interesting alternative to another massive Samsung beast, the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 G95NC Dual UHD is even bigger at 57 inches …

So farewell then, Google Stadia: We barely knew ye. Around ten hours ago Google’s streaming service finally closed after three years. There were props for the way the company handled the shutdown (with all customers receiving refunds and the controller getting a firmware update to enable bluetooth functionality), some unseemly celebrations, but mostly sadness about what developers and players alike would miss.

You never know what you got till it’s gone, I suppose. Stadia’s last week brought one small gaming surprise in the form of the service’s very final released game being its first: a multiplayer version of Snake called Worm Game. That dude who put 6,000 hours into Red Dead Online on Stadia streamed his final journey into the wild west on the service, with Rockstar’s save trans…

Earlier this week, Wudijo, who found Diablo 4 fame during the beta by soloing the world boss, became the first player to reach level 100 in the game’s Hardcore mode entirely on his own. But glory is short-lived, and so too was Wudijo, who has been killed in a throwdown with the game’s toughest boss.

Wudijo wasn’t the first person to reach Hardcore 100—that honor went to cArn_, who claimed the crown on June 5. But cArn_ did so with a supporting team—Zizaran, Steelmage, and Nugiyen—who helped him push past Wudijo and other players in the final stretch of the race. Wudijo, on the other hand, did the whole thing on his own, so even though he’s not first to reach the top, it is by some measures an even more impressive accomplishment.

Alas, the epic tale has come…

You might think that Hewlett-Packard’s most important profit generator might be AI servers or cheap laptops, but you’d be wrong. Over half of HP’s annual profits last year were entirely down to its print division, with no small thanks to its Dynamic Security printer firmware upgrade that completely blocked all third-party ink cartridges. Cue yet another round of litigation, in the form of a lawsuit aiming for class action status, claiming HP has created a monopoly on printer ink.

As reported by Ars Technica, the filing is requesting that HP is given an injunction that ultimately requires it to disable Dynamic Security, thus allowing owners to use non-HP replacement ink cartridges. Oh, and the small matter of more than $5 million in damages, and a trial by jury to boot.

This …