The US Doom and Quake Community will host a one-day QuakeWorld 2v2 tournament on Saturday, 24 October.

The format is double elimination, with best-of-one matches and a best-of-three grand final to keep the cup within one evening. Maps are assigned by round. The pool is Ultrav, ZTNDM3, Aerowalk, Bravado and DM2.

Signups are through the community's Discord; see the organiser's announcement for the signup link.

Source: US Doom and Quake Community announcement.

Church of Quake will run an online Quake Champions 4v4 Sacrifice Tournament Edition cup on Saturday, 24 October. Players sign up individually, then captains select teams through a snake draft. The advertised prize pool is $150.

The first 32 signups are guaranteed places, making eight teams. Further signups go on reserve unless the field reaches 64, allowing sixteen teams.

The bracket is double elimination. Upper-bracket matches and the lower final are best of three, other lower-bracket matches best of one, and the grand final best of five.

Players must join the Church of Quake Discord. Coverage is planned on the community's Twitch channel, and other casters are welcome to contact the organisers.

Links: Sign up, Twitch.

Source: Church of Quake, including Discord and current signup links.

k1llsen won EGB QC Cup #11 on 11 October, beating dramiS 3-2 in the grand final. Sixteen players took part in the online Quake Champions tournament. The $75 pool paid $60 to k1llsen and $15 to dramiS.

k1llsen did not lose a series. He beat creeep_06487 2-0, NRAV 2-0 and St0n3 2-1 before taking the winners final against dramiS 2-0. dramiS returned through the lower final with a 2-1 win over cYpheR, then lost the rematch. cYpheR finished third and Yup fourth.

It is k1llsen's fifth title in the EGB Quake Champions duel series. Keltz and Strongsage have three each.

Source: Plus Forward results, report.

Frontier One Map Cup #1 will take place in Quake Live on 24 October. The tournament uses one new map throughout, with its name and practice servers due to be released on 19 October so everyone has the same preparation time.

Registration is open on the Frontier website. The prize pool has not yet been announced. Cyber, Input and Steemorol are organising the event, with coverage planned on cyb3rway's Twitch channel.

Links: Registration, Twitch, Frontier Telegram.

Source: 250FPS.

Valve released a Steam client update on 13 October with improved startup performance and new options for Big Picture mode. The update downloads automatically.

Big Art Mode adds a larger artwork presentation to the home screen and can be enabled under Settings > Home. The Recommended tab also gains the Personal Calendar.

Big Picture now supports screensavers under Settings > Customization. The default slideshow can display artwork from recently played games and recent screenshots. A bouncing Steam logo is the other built-in option, and custom screensavers are supported too.

The update also changes startup behaviour so the Steam main window avoids taking focus if another window was activated during startup or login, and fixes the onscreen keyboard failing to work on its first desktop invocation.

Sources: Valve - Steam Client Update, October 13, PC Gamer.

The Thunderpick World Championship 2026 began in Malta on 14 October, with eight CS2 teams competing for a $1 million combined player and club prize pool. The event runs through 18 October.

All four opening series ended 2-0: 9z beat Aurora, Falcons beat Ninjas in Pyjamas, Legacy beat PARIVISION and FURIA beat BETBOOM.

On 15 October, Falcons beat 9z 2-1 to secure a playoff place. Aurora stayed alive by beating NIP 2-0, eliminating the Swedish organisation's team from the event.

The group stage uses two four-team double-elimination groups, with two teams from each advancing. Group matches and playoff semifinals are best of three; the grand final is best of five. The winners receive $500,000, split equally between player prize money and the club share.

Sources: HLTV event guide, opening-day results, Falcons qualify, NIP eliminated, Liquipedia, PR Newswire.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches on 23 October as a separate purchase and will not be included with Game Pass at launch. Activision confirmed on 15 October that Game Pass availability is planned for Holiday 2027.

Digital pre-orders include campaign early access from 16 October and DMZ early access from 20 October. Existing Call of Duty titles, including Black Ops 7, Black Ops 6 and Modern Warfare III, remain available to Game Pass Ultimate subscribers.

Sources: Activision, GamesRadar.

Epic released a preview of its rebuilt Epic Games Launcher on 14 October for Windows, macOS and, for the first time, Linux. It includes a redesigned library, connections to other PC game libraries and more detailed download management.

Epic describes the client as "vibe coded" and claims a cold start to the store is 46% faster than Steam. That is Epic's comparison, not an independent benchmark here. The client is still a preview with a limited feature set.

Fortnite is not available on Linux yet. Epic is rebuilding its anti-cheat implementation as EAC Linux v2 and working with distribution maintainers before bringing the game over. Fortnite will be the first pilot, with support for other developers to follow after validation.

The requirements include TPM 2.0, Secure Boot and signed kernels and modules. EAC Linux v2 uses existing kernel security features, eBPF and a service active during protected games, rather than installing its own kernel module. Steam Deck does not currently meet the requirements; Epic says it is talking with Valve about future support.

Sources: Epic Games Store, Epic Online Services, PC Gamer.

Richard "Levelord" Gray, the level designer known for Duke Nukem 3D, Quake: Scourge of Armagon and SiN, has died. Apogee Entertainment announced his death on 13 October.

Gray joined the Duke Nukem 3D team after making Doom maps. After Duke shipped in 1996, he co-founded Hipnotic Interactive, later renamed Ritual Entertainment. His subsequent credits included Star Trek: Elite Force II and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.

Apogee founder Scott Miller recalled hiring Gray after seeing his Doom levels, and paid tribute to his talent, dedication and willingness to help other designers. John Romero was among the developers who also paid tribute.

Sources: Apogee Entertainment, PC Gamer.

AMD says FSR 4 will reach APUs, gaming laptops, and handhelds by the end of 2026. Jack Huynh, who runs the company's computing and graphics group, told Korean press, including The Elec, that the machine-learning upscaler is moving off discrete cards and onto the rest of the lineup.

The plan is two tracks. Existing APUs get a lighter model built for integrated graphics. New APUs, still not named, are meant to run FSR 4 natively. Huynh said the light model is aimed at image quality and low latency on chips that cannot carry the desktop version.

FSR 4 launched on RDNA 4 desktop cards. RDNA 3 desktop cards picked it up later. Official support for RDNA 2 desktop cards, the same generation as the Steam Deck, was already set for 2027, and this briefing did not say that date moved. Valve has talked about FSR 4 on the Steam Machine. It has not committed the Steam Deck.

Source: The Verge

Cloud Imperium Games put Squadron 42 on Steam on 10 October. Wishlists are open. The page lists a planned release of Q2 2027, and no price. Chris Roberts moved the target out of late 2026 so the single-player game would not land in the same window as Grand Theft Auto VI.

It is a standalone story in the Star Citizen setting, year 2945, on StarEngine. You enlist as a rookie in the UEE Navy, live on a capital ship, and the brief is space combat, fighting on foot, stealth, and time with the crew. The cast, on performance capture, includes Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, Henry Cavill, Ben Mendelsohn, and Andy Serkis. The game has been in development for more than a decade.

The Steam minimum is Windows 11, a quad-core back to an Intel Sandy Bridge i7 or an AMD Bulldozer, 16 GB of RAM, a DirectX 11.1 card with 8 GB of VRAM, and 150 GB of disk. The recommended column only says a 64-bit processor and operating system.

Source: Steam and Eurogamer

Richard Garriott says the Ultima copyrights return to him in 2027. He sold Origin Systems, and the series with it, to Electronic Arts in 1992. The last mainline game was Ultima IX in 1999.

US copyright law lets an author terminate a transfer 35 years later. No money changes hands. The author has to give a year's notice. Garriott says he wrote to EA in April and told them he was taking the copyrights back. They wrote back that they know the law and will act accordingly. He says the two sides are now in active talks about whether there is anything to do together before the date.

What he says he could do, once the copyrights are his, is re-release the earlier Ultimas or make a sequel. Neither is a project yet. He has most of a year to decide what the return actually means.

Source: VGC

Photo: Richard Garriott at the 2018 Game Developers Conference, by Game Developers Conference, CC BY 2.5, resized. Wikimedia Commons.

A full playable build of Grand Theft Auto VI is not public. The person or group posting as Cyberleek says that can change.

On 10 October they posted an offer. If a memecoin tied to the name hits a $30 million market cap, "the build goes out - full story mode, played to the end, credits and all." Take-Two can stop it, the post says, with physical discs and a public apology. No outlet has the file, and Rockstar and Take-Two have not answered this one.

Footage under the same name has been out since 18 August. Rockstar called those clips heartbreaking on 26 August and kept the 19 November release. This week the account was credited with about 25 minutes more, including first-person driving and mission scenes. Rockstar has not said that newer cut is theirs.

The disc demand is aimed at a decision Rockstar already made. Boxed copies ship with a download code, not a disc. Strauss Zelnick has compared discs for a game this size to vinyl. Standard is $80, Ultimate is $100, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Preload starts 12 November.

Take-Two subpoenaed Microsoft, Discord, Google, and X in August while it looked for who had the footage.

Source: Forbes and GamesIndustry.biz

k1llsen won Estoty Duel Tournament #221 on 9 October, beating baSe 3-2 in the grand final. 18 players, online. The $100 pool paid $40 to k1llsen, $25 to baSe, $15 to Keltz, $10 to maxter, and $5 each to St0n3 and Thri11er.

Double elimination: best of three up top, best of one in the lower bracket, best of five in the final. The map pool was Awoken, Blood Covenant, Blood Run, Corrupted Keep, Ruins of Sarnath, The Molten Falls and Vale of Pnath.

k1llsen beat 1eroy 2-0. His winners-bracket match against baSe is scored -1:0. From the lower bracket he beat PepCo 1-0, Artemka 1-0, St0n3 1-0 and maxter 1-0, then beat Keltz 2-1 in the lower final.

baSe reached the final without a series loss, including a 2-1 over maxter and a 2-0 over Keltz, and started the grand final a map ahead. k1llsen won three of the four maps played and took the series 3-2. It is his fifth Estoty title. baSe still leads that list with 70. Keltz finished third, maxter fourth.

Strongsage came in as the top seed, rated 2441, and finished 13th. His matches against Coffee by Tomo and PepCo are both scored -1.

Source: Toornament