Summer Stars turn up the heat, closing out the Festival of Football with upgraded Player Items for the summer tournament's top performers. Plus, look out for a special release once the new world champions are crowned.

Following final system preparations, Subway Builder is now available on Steam.

Launching today for $39.99 USD, Subway Builder is available at a 25% introductory discount for the first two weeks, bringing the launch price to $29.99 USD.

Cities included for launch are:

United States: Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington. (new additions special for launch: Los Angeles, New Orleans, Nashville, Raleigh, Kansas City)

United Kingdom: Birmingham, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Newcastle.

Transit planners, optimization enthusiasts, simulation fans, and foamers are advised to begin reviewing corridor plans accordingly. Service is expected to commence on schedule.

We thank you for your continued interest and will continue striving toward peak network performance.

-SBAT

On top of that, our cellular roguelike shooter has reached 3,000+ peak concurrent player count. These are incredible numbers for a game made by a humble dev team of two. The pathogen truly is spreading everywhere! From the bottom of our plague-ridden hearts, a big thank you to each and every one of you for making Pathogenic such a viral (medically) success.

If you haven’t started infecting the human body, Pathogenic is now on a 20% launch discount. Be sure to pick up our game while it lasts! And check out some awesome bundles we’ve set up with other excellent indie titles, including Brotato, Voidling Bound and Everything is Crab!

 

We’ve also seen quite a few players discussing strategies and tips on the discussion board. Just want to mention that we have an official Discord where players talk about lore, share gameplay tips and show off crazy pathogens.

 

Finally, we really appreciate the glowing reviews and kind feedback so far. We can’t ask for a more active community to support our launch and help us keep improving the game. If you like Pathogenic, don’t forget to leave a review too as it really helps us push the game on the Steam (and spread the infection even further)!

Always remember, mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

Matt has been grinding out updates since launch to catch any new issues, and you might noticed several patches have been implemented throughout the last 24 hours. Here's a compilation of the changes to Pathogenic all the way up to the time of this post:

• ~20 new Stomach & Liver rooms; retinted Lungs backgrounds.

• New Text Size setting (Normal / Large / Extra Large) under a new UI tab - defaults to largest on Steam Deck

• Added 30 and 45 FPS cap options.

• Graphics & physics settings are now saved per-machine and not synchronized with Steam Cloud

• Apoptosome damage 600 -> 800

• Continuous Laser now scales damage with charge

• Heart boss arcs are more forgiving to dodge

• Draft mutation picks (for amoeba and nanobot) that need placement can now be cancelled to refund the pick

• Ballistic Flagellum no longer fires over the level-up and pause screens

• Fixed full-game owners getting stuck in "demo mode" and walled after the Liver.

• Fixed a blood-particle crash/hitch and a dense-Liver-room crash

• Added a deeper save backup

• Fixed localization errors

If you haven’t heard of Meccha Chameleon yet, you probably have been living under a rock recently. The game has taken the

Steam users currently have another free game to claim, courtesy of the platform's Free to Keep promotion. The latest game to go 100% free on Steam is The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, a 2021 RPG from Sever and Schisma Games. However, the promotion is only available for a limited time, so gamers will need to act fast to add it to their libraries.

Open source firm Collabora who work with Valve (Steam), just announced a preview of Holo Core - the aarch64 port of Arch Linux for Steam Frame.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/07/collabora-announce-a-preview-of-holo-core-an-aarch64-port-of-arch-linux-for-steam-frame/

As if there was ever any doubt, Bethesda director Todd Howard has once again confirmed Fallout 5 is coming… eventually.

Following widespread layoffs at Xbox earlier this month, Bethesda Game Studios has published a studio roadmap featuring its plans for the near and far-off future. Part of its letter included confirmation that a fifth mainline entry in its massively popular post-apocalyptic RPG series has officially entered pre-production, but what that means for Vault Dwellers everywhere remains to be seen.

What is Fallout 5 about? Where does it take place? How will it connect to other games in the franchise? How much will it cost? Will it come to PlayStation? And when is its release date? These questions (and many more) have filled fans' minds since Fallout 4 launched in 2015. Do we really know the answer to any of them? No, but Howard has still spent the last decade promising that Bethesda has big plans in store for what's next.

Howard first spoke about Fallout 5 back in 2021, meaning one of the first official mentions of the game arrived six years after Fallout 4 and three years after multiplayer spinoff Fallout 76. At the time, he told IGN that there was a very surface-level plan for the series' future.

"I don't see... Look, Fallout's really part of our DNA here," he said at the time. "We've worked with other people from time to time – I can't say what's gonna happen. You know, we have a one-pager on Fallout 5, what we want to do."

He added, "Again, if I could wave my hand and have [Fallout 5] out – you know, I'd like to find a way to accelerate what we do, but I can't really say today or commit to anything, what's going to happen when."

Players had long believed a fifth Fallout game would eventually arrive, but a statement from Howard in June 2022 made it clear the wait would be longer than what was expected by some of Bethesda's most skeptical fans. He told IGN the plan was to see Fallout 5 arrive after The Elder Scrolls 6, which, at the time of this story's publication in July 2026, still seems to be years from launch.

"Yes, Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production and, you know, we’re going to be doing Fallout 5 after that, so our slate’s pretty full going forward for a while," he said at the time, still one year out from the launch of Starfield. "We have some other projects that we look at from time to time as well."

One thing keeping Fallout fans happy in-between installments is the Fallout show on Prime Video. Ahead of the premiere of Season 1 in 2024, executive producer Jonathan Nolan went as far as to tell Den of Geek that the crew "know all about Fallout 5" and that they're "not telling anyone."

It's hard to say just how much of Fallout 5 had come together by this point, but Howard said he made sure the crew steered clear of any unwanted crossovers.

"Well, there were some things where I said, ‘Don’t do this because we are going to do that in Fallout 5,'" Howard said. "But I think the intent when you see that, it's how we approached it. I think it's one of the things that's unique about this sort of genre translation of something – whether it's a game or a comic or some other book – is that it wasn't a translation of an existing story; it was, 'What would the next thing be?' It just happens to be a TV show, and that was the approach to it."

Fallout 3 brought Vault Dwellers to the Capital Wasteland of Washington, D.C., Fallout 4 traveled to Boston's Commonwealth, and Fallout 5 will (probably) take players somewhere else in the United States. That's according to Howard, who told Kinda Funny in April 2024 that Bethesda plans to "predominantly" keep the series from leaving too far outside of its comfort zone.

"My view is part of the Fallout schtick is on the Americana naivete and part of that," Howard said. "And so, for us right now, it’s OK to acknowledge some of those other areas. But our plan is to predominantly keep it in the U.S."

He continued: "I also like in any sort of world, I don’t feel the need to answer. It’s OK to leave mystery or questions: what is happening here? What is happening here? I think those are good things. In Elder Scrolls everybody wants to go to these other, mysterious lands. The worst thing you could do to mysterious lands is remove the mysteriousness. Keep mysterious lands mysterious!"

So, the Fallout show was a success – but now what? In June 2024, Howard told content creator MrMattyPlays that Bethesda isn't interested in "rushing" its games just because millions of fans showed up to watch the first season of the TV series.

"For other Fallout games in the future, you know, obviously I can’t talk about those right now, but I would say, sort of rushing through them, or we kind of need to get stuff out that is different than the work we’re doing in 76… we don’t feel like we need to rush any of that," he said. "The Fallout TV show fills a certain niche in terms of the franchise and storytelling."

He continued, saying that he totally gets "the desire for a new kind of mainline single-player game" in the franchise. The reality, according to him, however, is that "those things take time."

"I don’t think it’s bad for people to miss things," Howard added. "We just want to get it right and make sure that everything we’re doing in a franchise, whether it’s Elder Scrolls, Fallout, or now Starfield, that those become meaningful moments for everybody who loved these franchises as much as we do."

Fallout Day 2025 came and went without any Fallout 5 news last October, but Howard told disappointed fans that there is still plenty to look forward to. While what that means for Fallout 5 is hard to say, fans can at least rest easy knowing the Bethesda lead is reading all of your comments. Yes, those ones, too.

"Even though I am recording this — it’s not live — and I’m probably watching myself right now from my desk and I’m reading your chat and these… that thing you want and this other thing you want… Hey, we read it all," Howard said. "Just know we are working on even more. We are looking forward to the day when we can share that with everybody."

As Fallout Season 2 scavenged its way onto Prime Video late last year, Howard took the opportunity to remind fans that the show still very much exists within franchise canon. Speaking to BBC, he said that Bethesda is taking the events of the live-action project "into account" as it chips away on its next big entry.

"In short, yes," Howard said when asked if the Fallout show will impact the game. "Fallout 5 will be existing in a world where the stories and events of the show happened or are happening. We are taking that into account."

Today's Fallout 5 news might have delivered the most substantial update we've seen so far. In Bethesda's letter, the team revealed that the next game is "currently in preproduction." When it actually entered this early stage is unclear, but the good news is that means development is moving steadily ahead, even if players will be waiting for a very, very long time to actually get their hands on it.

The message also reminded fans that The Elder Scrolls 6 remains Bethesda's "primary development focus," with the "majority" of the studio still focused on its wildly popular fantasy series. It also said Fallout 5 remains its "long-range destination," suggesting that, even five years after publicly teasing that "one-pager," Howard doesn't intend to share a release date – or even a window – any time soon.

The letter also confirmed Fallout 5 is being developed on its in-house Creation Engine 3. The note said it "allows our teams to support multiple projects simultaneously with new tools, rendering, and systems that define our games."

Things are still clearly in the early stages, however, with Howard recently telling Windows Central that it was too soon to comment on whether Fallout 5 would be Xbox exclusive or not. The same interview saw him dismiss the "fan chatter" regarding the rivalry between Bethesda and Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment.

It feels like we know both a lot about Fallout 5 and nothing at all. Hopefully that changes sooner rather than later. Just before Xbox slammed its teams with layoffs a few weeks back, a report stated that CEO Asha Sharma had called on its studios to speed up development on key franchises, such as The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. Post-layoff messaging from Bethesda boss Jill Braff promised the studio would focus on its "strongest franchises," too.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Monster tamer and open-world survival crafting game Palworld became a phenomenon when it released in early access in 2024. It introduced us to a world populated by creatures called Pals and has amassed more than 35 million players around the world. Now it’s releasing a new card game from Bushiroad on July 30, and its first Booster Pack, Dawn of Palpagos, has sold more than 3.5 million packs worldwide. Palworld seems primed to take the world by storm again, so we thought we’d get you up to speed on the card game as we build up to release.

It’s for two players, and you need to use a combination of Pals, gear, events, and structures to take down your opponent. To get started, you just need a main deck of 50 cards and a soul deck of 10 cards. There really isn’t much setup, you just shuffle your two decks, place them on the table, and begin. So it’s very easy to pick up and play at any time.

You rest soul cards in order to play your other cards, with Pals being your main characters. Pal cards feature new artwork that faithfully re-creates fan-favorite creatures, and they display numerical values that determine their soul card cost, their power when attacking Pals or structures, and their strike damage if they directly attack the opposing player. Gear cards power up your Pals or deal damage to opposing Pals, event cards have powerful effects that can only be used once, and structure cards allow you to assign Pals to them to activate unique abilities.

You draw two soul cards each round, meaning your options in early rounds might be fairly limited depending on what opening hand you drew. With each round, you’ll draw a new card from your deck and add two new soul cards. During your main phase, you can play however many cards you have the soul cards to support, and you can play them in whatever order you want. As you get to later rounds, you’ll have a full deck of soul cards to work with, allowing you to chain several moves together or play super powerful cards to take advantage of the groundwork you laid in earlier rounds.

Both players start each game with 10 Life Points, and your ultimate goal is to reduce that to zero. However, when you attack them, they can choose to have one of their standing Pals take the attack in their place. If the player does take direct damage, they flip over cards from their deck equal to the strike value of the card that attacked them. If one of the cards flipped this way has the Lucky icon, then the player completely nullifies the attack.

Each round requires careful strategy. Will you directly attack the other player, knowing they can use a Pal to block you? Or will you target a specific Pal to get them off the board? Or take out a structure to nullify its bonuses? When your opponent attacks you, will you sacrifice a Pal to block the attack? Or take the gamble that you’ll flip a Lucky card? You constantly need to weigh your options and assess the risk vs. the reward.

The recommended way to jump into playing is with a Trial Deck. There will be two available at launch: Red/Blue and Green/Purple variants of Dawn of Palpagos. These Trial Decks include a play guide, paper playmat, life counter, and all 60 cards you need to start a new game right out of the box.

They also include Trial Deck Super Parallel cards that are only available in Trial Decks, as well as a Booster Pack to upgrade your deck from the get go. Palworld cards come in different rarity tiers, from Common all the way up to Super Parallel. There are also Super Special Parallels, which are ultra-rare variants of Super Parallels with special alternate art.

While the basics of the Palworld card game are easy to understand, there are also additional layers of complexity for more hardcore or competitive players. You can get Booster Packs on their own to diversify your deck and be more strategic about your build. The Dawn of Palpagos Booster Pack will be available at launch, while the Legends Awaken Booster Pack will go on sale October 30.

Building your deck means taking into account how certain cards can affect each other. For example, some Gear is particularly effective when paired with specific Pals. Some Pals directly synergize with each other. Others can change the board from day to night or vice versa, which activates the abilities of other Pals.

Those additional layers of strategy only figure to expand as time goes on, with Bushiroad already announcing a future roadmap of new pack releases. Sleeve and Card Set Vol. 1 releases on October 2, two new Trial Decks are coming on December 18, and Booster Pack Vol. 3 will arrive on January 29.

There are also in-person events and tournaments on the horizon. A demo caravan will have live tutorial events in local card shops throughout July and August, while the Grand Release Tournament will take place in August and the Shop Tournament will run from August until October. If you attend any of these events, you can get exclusive items like promo packs, deck cases, and other rewards.

For the latest news and updates about events and releases, you can check out the card game’s official website or follow it on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. The YouTube channel also includes video tutorials with sample rounds to help you visualize game flow and different strategies.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced devs at Ubisoft are, technically, currently running a community treasure hunt throughout July with three secret pirate troves ready to be torn open. But it's not the challenge Ubisoft anticipated – fans are way too good at playing pirate, having already dug up all the loot in a matter of days.

Ubisoft introduced the community hunt only last week on July 11, writing in a Twitter post, "We've heard word that 3 chests lie hidden across the Caribbean, each containing a unique bounty. We'll drop a new clue every Friday of July! Remember... No pirate sails alone. Work together, crack the clues, and claim the treasure." But there really wasn't any need for patronizing – pirate-tronizing? – advice. Black Flag Resynced players have already dug up all the gold they could. (Spoilers ahead for pirates who want to work out Black Flag's community event on their own! Argh!)

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/23P9_3swQy4 The first buried chest is located at coordinates (421,939), and rewards players with 4,000 Reales – this is the classic treasure hunt reward, a fat mound of money. The second chest located at (501,168) is a little more dramatic: it includes the legendary Uncrowned Prince rapier and legendary Guardian Beast Figurehead. One player on Reddit seems to have discovered it on a lark, writing in a post, "I think I stumbled onto some more items." They did, indeed.

Then, there's the third and final community chest, which contains the biggest prize of all. Found at coordinates (28,293), this bounty includes the legendary Aveline Figurehead and rare Explorer Outfit originally found in the Assassin's Creed Black Flag from 2013. Resynced players initially fretted that the exceedingly rare outfit in red and white – traditional Assassin's Creed colors – hadn't been brought over from the original game. But, as content creator Synth Potato puts it on Twitter, the Reddit user -Holliday was blessed with "genuinely insane luck" and discovered the Explorer Outfit waterlogged at the bottom of the ocean.

"I glanced at my map after taking a naval contract and just how the area looked on the map peaked my interest enough to go check it out," -Holliday explains in a Reddit thread. "Dropped anchor and jumped off, I immediately seen air bubbles and could not believe my eyes once I spotted what was inside. I was honestly briefly shaken with excitement since I knew it was highly sought after and didn't believe anyone had found it yet."

"You just ruined it for Ubisoft," replies another Reddit user. "I love it."

Ubisoft confirms on Twitter that, "We were going to reveal a clue for this community chest on Friday but your treasure hunting skills are too great." That's too bad for Ubisoft, but a pleasant indication that fortune favors the Black Flag fans.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced New Game Plus is coming, director promises: "We're working on that right now."

Bethesda Game Studios confirms work on The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, along with a new project from Obsidian, but no Skyrim Remastered.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Bethesda make huge promises for The Elder Scrolls and Fallout - now it has to deliver