Quake 4's canceled expansion, The Awakening, is playable in openQ4 0.14.1. Raven Software and Ritual Entertainment worked on the campaign before it was shelved. Justin Marshall recovered and published the alpha, and the openQ4 team got all 13 maps running on its own game code, rebuilding the expansion's monsters, weapons and vehicles. The port repairs several broken encounters, including the Valkaryne finale and the death-ray turret on the beach.

The expansion sits alongside the original campaign under Single Player > Campaign and keeps its own saves and settings. You'll need a copy of Quake 4 and the separate expansion files. The setup guide explains where to put them. The team is still testing full playthroughs.

The release also adds Vulkan support on Windows, softer and steadier shadows, redesigned menus and HUD, and bots that can follow team orders. There are Windows and Linux builds, a preview for Apple Silicon Macs, and an experimental Android build.

Sources: openQ4 0.14.1 | The Awakening setup guide | ModDB

MachineGames confirmed that Wolfenstein 3 is in production. Brian Bloom and Debra Wilson return as B.J. Blazkowicz and Grace Walker. Bethesda shared a photo of the two actors in motion-capture suits and a glimpse of the script, with release timing and platforms still to come.

id Software also confirmed that its teams in Texas and Frankfurt are working on their next game, with Hugo Martin returning as game director. The project is still unnamed.

The immediate release is Slaughter Mode for DOOM: The Dark Ages on November 16. It strings together randomized arenas, enemies and bosses in rounds that get tougher as you go. The mode comes at no extra cost with Revelations, the Premium Edition or the Premium Upgrade.

Sources: Bethesda announcement | Slaughter Mode details

HaZardModding released the first version of its co-op mod for SiN Reloaded on November 12. It lets up to four players tackle parts of Ritual's 1998 shooter together, with the bank, construction site and subway among the areas covered so far.

Chrissstrahl and the HaZardModding team built it around level scripts. It leaves the game's executables and DLLs alone. The team is focusing on the main campaign, and this first download covers the early levels listed in the release notes.

Sources: Mod release and download | SiN Reloaded

Early Quake Champions builds had a match browser for replays, according to former id Software developer Adam "SyncError" Pyle. Servers recorded demos and sent them to backend storage, where players could find and watch recorded matches. Pyle said the system needed a major rework after the team moved movement processing from clients to the server.

Pyle also said the team had planned mod support if the game did well enough to sustain its early level of development. By the time CTF arrived, he said, the team had shrunk. He pointed to the work of building a pool of good symmetrical maps as one of the reasons proper CTF support took more than adding flag mechanics.

Plus Forward collected these details from a stream discussion, along with Pyle's recollections of experimental modes and why he considered champion movement and passive abilities central to how players approached Quake.

Sources: Plus Forward's stream recap

MOUZ and Team Falcons won Friday's quarterfinals at BLAST Rivals Hong Kong. MOUZ swept Vitality 2-0 and will face Team Spirit on Saturday. Falcons beat G2 to set up a semifinal against defending champions FURIA, a rematch of last year's Hong Kong grand final.

Spirit and FURIA went straight to the semifinals after winning their groups. Spirit came back from a map down against G2, while FURIA beat Vitality 2-1, handing them a 13-0 loss along the way.

Both semifinals are best-of-three on Saturday, November 14. The best-of-five final follows on Sunday, November 15 at AsiaWorld-Arena. The eight-team event has a $1 million prize pool.

Sources: BLAST event | HLTV bracket and results | AsiaWorld-Expo

AGENT still leads 250 FPS League Season 6 Division 1 at 5-0 after the third round of Quake Live duels. k1llsen swept Nitrino to join Fog at 3-0. Fog came back from a 9-0 loss on Blood Run against pavel and took the Sinister decider 6-5. ash opened his season with wins over ARSENY and Nitrino, while cYpheR beat fire_bot 2-0. The group stage resumes Sunday, November 15.

In Saturday's EGB Cup #73, AGENT beat k1llsen 2-0 in the winners' final. k1llsen then beat Nitrino in the lower bracket and took the rematch 3-2 to win his second straight regular EGB Quake Live duel cup. Nitrino placed third.

The next EGB Cup switches to 2v2 Team Deathmatch. The $100 cup is listed for Saturday, November 14 at 11:00 UTC. The five-map pool includes Almost Lost, Blood Run, Campgrounds, Devilish and Hidden Fortress.

Sources: Round 3 results | 250 FPS League | EGB Cup #73 | EGB Cup #74

maxter and rapha won the second Quad-barrelled League, beating defending champions Keltz and serious 3-1 in the Quake Champions 2v2 final on Saturday. Keltz and serious had swept the pair in the winners' final. maxter and rapha earned a rematch by beating cYpheR and danches 2-0, then took the title and $400. Keltz and serious earned $200, with $100 going to cYpheR and danches in third.

Weekend duel cups

• Estoty #225: Strongsage beat maxter 2-0 in the lower-bracket final after losing their first meeting, then beat Keltz 3-1 for his 15th Estoty title.
• NAQCL #80: maxter beat Keltz in both of their meetings. The grand final finished 3-2 overall, including maxter's one-map advantage from the upper bracket. Yup finished third.
• EGB QC Cup #14: k1llsen beat dramiS 3-1 for his second consecutive title in the series. dramiS won six straight lower-bracket matches to reach the final after an opening loss to Artemka.

Sources: Quad-barrelled League II | Playoff recap | Estoty #225 | NAQCL #80 | EGB QC Cup #14

GOG marked its 18th anniversary on November 5 with its first showcase. The headline restoration was Wing Commander: Prophecy, which GOG got working on modern PCs with help from the Wing Commander community. It was one of seven anniversary editions released that day, alongside four other Wing Commander games, Privateer 2: The Darkening and Road Rash.

The anniversary packs include the updated and legacy builds. Existing owners of the corresponding Wing Commander titles on GOG get the packs free. GOG also added Westwood's Nox to its Preservation Program after a community vote.

The company announced a publishing partnership with Retrovibe for DRM-free indie games, plus a closed beta for GOG Social and updates to its optional Galaxy client.

Sources: GOG Showcase | Wing Commander: Prophecy

Valve plans to use Steam's pre-caching system to deliver translated game code to Arm devices before the first launch. Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais described the plan in an interview with PCWorld. It would build on the work that lets Steam Frame run Windows games made for x86 PCs.

FEX translates the game's x86 CPU instructions to Arm. Translating a new block of code during play can cause a hitch even if the game runs well otherwise. FEX can already save translations to disk and reuse them on later runs. Valve's plan would make some of that code available in advance, similar to how Steam distributes shader caches.

Valve gave no release date or performance figures for Steam integration.

Sources: Valve interview | FEX release notes | Steam Frame

EVE Vanguard opens its paid 24/7 alpha on November 10. The extraction shooter moves from limited playtests to continuous access through the EVE Launcher. Founder Packs start at $15, and Steam Early Access is planned for Q3 2027.

The alpha launches alongside EVE Online's Fractured Skies expansion. Jobs completed on the ground in Vanguard generate additional campaign sites for EVE Online pilots, who can run them for rewards or use the loot to advance their empire's campaign.

Three new maps span different levels of risk. High Castle is PvE, Vorago adds rival players to an extraction run, and The Vault pits three squads of three against each other in a layout that changes between deployments.

Sources: Founder packs and roadmap | Alpha announcement

The GeForce 8800 GTX turned 20 on November 8. The 768 MB card helped usher in DirectX 10, introduced the architecture that made CUDA possible, and was the sort of upgrade people bought to take a crack at Crysis.

To mark the anniversary, Unreal Engine artist Dylan Browne released a free Steam demo with NVIDIA's support. You can walk around a 2006-era gaming room, unbox the card and install it in a tower. The room uses path tracing and DLSS 4.5, so the hardware needed to run the tribute is considerably newer than the hardware in the box.

Sources: NVIDIA retrospective | Steam demo

Two platform updates are out for Linux gaming: Bazzite 45 and a new SteamOS beta for Steam Frame.

Bazzite 45

Bazzite now uses Fedora 45, with GNOME 51.1 or KDE 6.8.2 and Mesa 26.2.6. The release updates InputPlumber and adds optional networking tuning through bpftune and bpfrag.

Handheld changes include initial Acer Predator Atlas 8 support and stable support for the Ally X20. Additional Logitech TrueForce wheels work out of the box. The release also updates the library used for Steam Input under Wayland to support the 64-bit Steam Client beta.

Steam Frame: SteamOS 0.5.7 beta

Valve's headset update adds WebXR support in Chromium 157 and newer, updates SteamVR to 2.19.1 and improves vibration filtering used in pose prediction. Foveated sharpening can now operate independently of eye tracking.

Audio fixes address USB or Bluetooth speakers stopping when an application accesses the microphone. New controls allow echo cancellation and noise suppression to be disabled separately, with the current Steam Client beta required for those controls.

Steam Frame users can opt into the beta through the system update-channel settings.

Sources: Bazzite release | Valve release notes | Steam Frame details | Bazzite

Microsoft has previewed new DirectX Raytracing features designed to reduce the cost of updating detailed scenes. The announcement covers clustered geometry, partitioned top-level acceleration structures and GPU-driven builds.

Clustered geometry divides objects into small, reusable groups of triangles, reducing how much must be rebuilt when geometry changes. Partitioned scene structures concentrate work on regions that changed while retaining data elsewhere.

In one demanding RX 9070 test, acceleration-structure memory fell from 7,519 MiB to 774 MiB, an 89.7% reduction. The sample also ran much faster, but Microsoft explicitly warns that the test is not representative of the gains games should expect. Temporary build-memory requirements increased too.

These remain developer-preview features requiring the appropriate SDK, runtime and supporting drivers. They do not inherently demand new ray-tracing hardware, though support depends on each GPU vendor's implementation and validation. This is promising engine work rather than an immediate performance upgrade for existing games.

Sources: Microsoft DirectX preview | Microsoft

The UK government plans to extend its online-safety approach to communication with strangers in games, Online Safety Minister Ian Murray told Parliament on 2 November.

During the debate on the proposed under-16s social-media ban, Murray said further regulations would address features and functions such as stranger communication. He described an approach that would retain matchmaking with unfamiliar players while restricting the ability to talk to them in a gaming context.

Murray said the social-media ban was intended to pass before the new year and take effect in spring 2027, with the additional features-and-functions regulations to follow. The statement sets out the government's intended direction; it does not supply the final gaming rules, their exceptions or implementation requirements.

The parliamentary transcript is linked below, along with GamingOnLinux's discussion of the implications for multiplayer games and age checks.

Sources: Hansard | GamingOnLinux | GamingOnLinux