Fortnite Halloween skins leak ahead of Fortnitemares 2020

Yes, Fortnitemares is coming. While the 14.30 patch didn't see the start of the Fortnite Halloween event, Epic has confirmed that it is coming, and dataminers have dug up a host of new Halloween skins in the 14.30 patch files well ahead of that launch. If you're in the mood for Halloween games, Fortnite is going to have you covered. "Get ready because Fortnitemares is just around the corner," Epic says in an email message to content creators alongside the latest Fortnite patch. Fortnitemares has typically begun very close the end of the month. Over the past three years, the event has hit on October 26, 25, and 29, so don't expect it to be very far before Halloween. The new skins include the Crypt Crasher Pack, with Midnight Dusk, Arachne Couture, and Nightsurf Bomber skins, the Ultimate Reckoning Pack, with Gnash, Violent, and La Parca, and the Daredevil Bundle, which Epic already revealed as a prize in an upcoming Fortnite tournament. All those packs will be purchasable with Fortnite V-Bucks.
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Coronavirus lockdowns have made every day the weekend on Steam

If you look at peak concurrent player numbers on Steam over a year's time, you can usually see clearly where the weekends fall: they're the peaks in a regular sawtooth pattern that shows higher traffic on Saturday and Sunday and lower traffic throughout the work week. Thanks to pandemic-related lockdowns and work-from-home measures, that pattern has largely disappeared for Valve's platform. Pavel Djundik, the creator of SteamDB, pointed out this smoothing of Steam concurrent player peaks in an October 6 tweet. He clipped an image of the graph showing lifetime concurrent players on Steam over a year, which begins with that predictable sawtooth pattern of weekdays and weekends. In mid-March, the pattern changes: there's a major surge to more than 20 million active users, which stays fairly stable day-to-day, gradually tapering off through August and then ticking up again as it moves through September and into October. Steam has been seeing a significant increase in daily active users, which is a trend we took notice of near the beginning of the year. In early February the platform hit an all-time high of 18 million active users - a record it went on to break almost every weekend that followed until passing 20 million by March 15.
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Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons stuff goes cheap in a Prime Day Lightning Deal

It's October 13, which means a whole bunch of Amazon Prime Day deals are up for grabs for a very limited window of time (two days, in fact). Among this year's offerings are some goodies perfect for tabletop RPG games and card games fans, with some hefty discounts on Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering items on offer to UK-based Amazon Prime members over the course of October 13 and 14. First up, there are two deals up for Amazon Prime Day right now on two D&D books. The Dungeons & Dragons Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus adventure book "takes players from levels 1 to 13 as they journey through Baldur's Gate and into Avernus, the battleground of the Blood War", as its description details. It also brings Infernal War machines to the D&D tabletop game's fifth edition, and Dungeon Masters will get to "entice their heroes with devils' deals, designed to lure with the ultimate temptations of power and treasure", all as part of the adventure to save Baldur's Gate. Gulp.
Syndicated from here: Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons stuff goes cheap in a Prime Day Lightning Deal

CS:GO, Valorant, and LoL get new collegiate esports tournaments this year

FACEIT, the company behind a whole bunch of competitive esports tournaments, has announced a collegiate program to develop players in CS:GO, Valorant, and League of Legends. This comes after the tournament organiser partnered with Ubisoft for a collegiate-level Rainbow Six Siege league. The CS:GO Premier League will feature the majority of the available prize monies, boasting an impressive $30,000 prize pool. The tournament will consist of a ten-week long ‘Swiss format’ season with playoffs in spring next year. The Valorant Premiere League will take the same format, but the prize pool is a third of the size, at $10,000. FACEIT’s collegiate League of Legends tournament will take a different format, however, aiming to “encourage regional and local rivalries”, which only serves to prove that it’s never seen the chaos of an Old Firm derby in Glasgow. Rivalries aside, the League of Legends Invitational Series will involve state and regional tournaments to decide which teams make it to the finals for a chance at the $15,000 prize pool.
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Mortal Kombat 11 dev “hit pause on Mileena just to create an appreciation”

Mortal Kombat fans have been waiting for Mileena for, er, quite some time. When developer NetherRealm revealed that the classic Kombatant would be making her way to the fight, even Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon tweeted a cheeky nod to the situation. During New York Comic-Con, though, Boon dug deeper into why we haven't seen her in ages, explaining that the team wanted to create an "appreciation" of the character. Even then, though, the developer didn't quite expect the response it got. "You know, Mileena was one of the first characters from Mortal Kombat 1 and 2," Boon explains. "There were Sub-Zero and Scorpion and on the other side was Katana and Mileena, and they were the kind of classic adversaries over the years of Mortal Kombat, and so we've represented, continued their story, and we hit pause on Mileena just to create an appreciation. But we had no idea it would be this intense. For years we were getting pounded - 'I want to see Mileena again'. We just stretched that out as we knew she was on her way.
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Total War: Troy mods are coming this month

The Total War series is known for its vibrant modding community - whether that’s creating crossovers with The Witcher, Lord of the Rings, and Runescape, or adding more playable races to the Old World in Total War: Warhammer 2. However, Total War Saga: Troy has started its life completely modless, partially due to the fact that it’s a limited-time Epic Games Store exclusive. While a few unofficial mods have surfaced - such as the camera mod that lets you look up the minotaur’s nose - official mod support was announced to have been delayed by “at least a month” back in September. Now that said month is nearly complete, the developers have delivered on this timeframe and announced that modding is finally coming to the game on October 22. While the Epic Games Store beta tested its modding tools with MechWarrior 5 back in August, this will be the first full release of the feature. The system looks very simple to use - you can just click the appropriately-named ‘mods’ tab on the Total War Saga: Troy store page to access the mod browser.
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Apex Legends’ Pathfinder no longer blinds himself when he grapples

October 13, 2020 Respawn has issued a fix to solve the issue.

Respawn Entertainment revealed a bevvy of changes for Apex Legends' cast of combatants last week. There was some cause for joy for Pathfinder mains as the rambunctious robot received a buff. As soon as players started swinging into games, though, they came across an annoying bug that left them partially unsighted. The bug could occur if you used Pathfinder's grappling hook as it left a chunk of his character model on screen. Players noted online that you could get rid of it by vaulting over any object, so you weren't entirely stuffed if it happened. If you were lunging into a fight, though, you might have, eh, got stuffed by the other team. Respawn has fixed it, though, so you have your newly-tweaked Pathfinder back. Respawn changed his grapple cooldown to be reflective of the distance you travelled. So, you won't have to wait the full 35 seconds if you merely hopped onto a nearby ledge. It's also handy as you won't feel as punished for messing up your grapple.
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