Starbreeze Studios removed the prevalent Denuvo DRM right before the full launch of Payday 3. According to the official developer X/Twitter post, the title will launch without the problematic DRM system on September 21, 2023. This is an infrequent case for developers to remove a DRM system from their game right before the launch.

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Payday 3 has been one of the most anticipated titles of 2023 since its announcement in June. The two beta sessions for the game have been perfect for veteran Payday fans, with players experiencing unique gameplay in the heisting universe.

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Also read: Payday 3 To Get An Open Beta This Week On PC And Xbox: How To Sign Up And Get Access And More Details

Payday 3 Developers Remove Denuvo DRM Right Before Release

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The Denuvo DRM has always been one of the least liked and controversial software for gamers. The DRM is known for its tampering, and kernel-level scans that often hamper a game's performance. In the past, major AAA titles such as Ghostwire: Tokyo, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and Doom Eternal have received significant backlash from fans regarding performance and Denuvo's incorporation. While some of the developers for these titles removed the DRM shortly after their launch, fans still complained about poor performance on release.

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Before the Open Beta session for Payday 3, Starbreeze Studios posted an official FAQ mentioning the existence of Denuvo in the title back on August 4, 2023. The developers said incorporating the anti-tampering DRM was strictly due to fighting piracy and cheating, offering players a fair experience. However, Starbreeze Studios has taken the extra step to provide fans with a more genuine experience in terms of performance.

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The previous Payday games have been a popular tag in the gaming community with a unique take on the FPS genre. Heisting banks and essential locations in video games is a special feeling that few titles have offered. Both beta sessions for Payday 3 were optimized according to fans when playing the title. With Denuvo's removal before its complete launch, the title could get a performance boost.

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With Fortnitemares ongoing, we are coming towards the end of Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 4. As with last year, players are expecting a little something extra before we go towards Chapter 6, though--a new iteration of Fortnite OG will run for a month between the end of Chapter 5 and the beginning of Chapter 6.

This is yet to be officially announced, but it’s been heavily rumored, and, if users believe the leaked 2024 roadmap-- and users should since it’s been right so far--another round of Fortnite OG is coming.

While Fortnite battle royale, Rocket Racing, Festival, and Lego all have plenty in store for this October’s spooky party, it’s already time to look forward to. Here’s everything that is known about Fortnite OG 2 so far, including rumors and leaks.

Also Read: Fortnite x Metallica Leaks Hint At Possible Collaboration

When Does Fortnite OG 2 Kickoff?

Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 4 is currently slated to be completed late in the evening on November 1 in the US. If things go as planned, the game will go down for maintenance for several hours, and the new OG season will start on the morning of November 2.

This new version is said to cover the first several seasons of Chapter 2, which gradually built up to the big Marvel inclusion in Season 4 back in 2020. Notably, Season 2 was the one that introduced Midas, and Season 3 was when the island flooded. Thankfully, this period was also when they added boats, and since boats have been missing for the entirety of Chapter 5.

The state of the island will quickly change over the course of the month, showcasing the aspects of the island’s evolution over that year. At the end of November, OG 2 will wrap up with a live event that will usher in Chapter 6. Maybe this time it won’t completely reset the plot.

Also Read: Annapurna Interactive Team Resigns Following Owner Dispute

Fortnite OG 2 Battle Pass Details

In 2023, the OG pass was half the length of a normal battle pass, with four skins that were each hybrid of multiple existing skins from the time, and one set of super styles. Players can expect something similar this time, and a new Midas-related skin seems very possible since he’s a fan-favorite character.

Other known characters that popped up during this era include Skye, Meowscles, TNTina, Jellie, Guff, the customizable Gear Specialist Maya, Penny, Jules, Kit, Axo, and that hot dog man. While Guff is probably not a factor since he’s getting a new skin for Fortnitemares, any of those others are a good candidate for a new remix in the OG 2 Pass.

During the recent Xbox Partner Preview, 505 Games revealed the first extended look at Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, a Soulslike game that is already drawing comparisons to Black Myth: Wukong.

The story is set in China near the end of the Ming dynasty, but the visuals of the newly released trailer suggest that myth and magic will play a more crucial role in the game than actual history. The video also offers a glimpse of the powers that the players will have at their commands.

Also Read: Black Myth: Wukong Becomes An Instant Global Hit

When Will Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Hit Gaming Consoles

Wuchang is the game’s protagonist who appears to favor using a sword. However, the video also demonstrates that she can use her staff to fire projectile weapons and apparently some magic-based attacks. It’s difficult to get a read on Wuchang’s personality since the only spoken lines in the trailer belong to her unmanned enemy.

Against the backdrop of the battles between Wuchang and the god-like beings whom she takes on, the land of Shu has been stricken by a plague, which can cause mutations. But in Wuchang’s hands, these mutations can unlock powers or change her form into something more than human.

Wuchang comes across as formidable even without those abilities, but she will require them for boss fights that await her. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers will come to Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC. Microsoft and 505 Games have also announced that Wuchang: Fallen Feathers will be on Game Pass on day one of its launch.

Also Read: How Many Bosses in Black Myth: Wukong?

Black Myth: Wukong DLC To Reportedly Come Out In Early 2025

The instant global hit Black Myth: Wukong could be getting DLC or expansions in early 2025. According to analyst Daniel Camilo, DLC for Black Myth: Wukong is said to launch sometime around Chinese New Year. That would put it at, or around, the end of January. Announcements of the plans could be made anytime around December.

As far as what any DLC for the game would entail, that’s currently unknown. Camilo did say, however, that despite the game selling over 20 million copies, he expects the DLC to only be bought by 20% of the total player base. He says that’s due to a number of factors such as the game’s difficulty and having 70% of its sales in China where the “novelty and national pride” of the game has worn off by then.

Insider Gaming has yet to independently verify any information regarding the rumors. Until that happens or something official is announced, we recommend our readers take this information with a pinch of salt. 

After a US court ruling earlier this week that Google must open its Play Store to enable third-party app stores and alternative payment options, Microsoft is moving swiftly to slide into this slightly open door.

Sarah Bond, president of Xbox, posted on X that the ruling will give more choices and flexibility to users. "Our mission is to allow more players to play on more devices so we are thrilled to share that starting in November, players will be able to play and purchase Xbox games directly from the Xbox App on Android," Bond wrote.

Also Read: Discord On Xbox To Let Users Watch Their Friends’ Stream

Microsoft Aims To Offer Xbox Games Through Its App

Due to the court order requiring Google to stop forcing apps to use its own billing system and enable third-party app stores inside Google Play itself, Microsoft now aims to offer Xbox games directly through its app. Most games will likely not run directly on Android, but a revamped Xbox Android app could also directly stream bought or subscribed games to Android devices.

Until now, purchasing Xbox games on a mobile device has typically involved either navigating to a web-based store in a browser, or avoiding attempts by the phone to open a store’s official app.

The company has been quick to expand its Xbox brand’s availability outside its hardware. It made similar moves to capitalize on EU regulators’ attempts to disentangle Google’s and Apple’s app stores through its own planned app store in 2023.

Also Read: Xbox Could Soon Introduce Google Play Store Rival

Call Of Duty Coming To Xbox Cloud Gaming On Game Pass Ultimate

Players won’t need a gaming console to play Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 when it comes out later this month. Recently, Microsoft announced that it will bring the latest Call of Duty game, as well as Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone, to Xbox Cloud Gaming on October 25.

On the same day, Black Ops 6 will launch and land on Game Pass Ultimate.  "This opens up even more ways to play Ops 6 starting on day one at launch," said Ashley McKissick, corporate vice president of gaming experiences and platforms for Xbox.

Xbox Cloud Gaming is a feature included in a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, which will set back users by $20 a month. The feature is still in development, but it enables subscribers to access and play certain games from the Game Pass library on other devices without an Xbox console.

"Game Pass Ultimate members will be able to enjoy Call of Duty in more places than ever before, including on their consoles, PCs, mobile devices, select Samsung TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Meta Quest devices," McKissick said.

Activision claims to have “disabled a workaround to a detection system” in Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone which has led to legit players getting banned by Ricochet's anti-cheat system. The company says the problem “impacted a small number of legitimate player accounts,” and all accounts affected were restored.

However, zebleer, who runs the Phantom Overlay store selling cheats, claims the problem is much bigger than Activision’s post makes it seem. In a detailed post on X, they wrote when Ricochet scanned the memory of a player’s system to find known cheat software, one of the signatures it scanned for was a plaintext string reading: 54 72 69 67 67 65 72 20 42 6f 74 (Trigger Bot).

Also Read: Activision Wins $14.5 Million In Call Of Duty Cheating Lawsuit

How Many Players Were Affected By This Hack

Zebleer claims that “for quite some time,” it has been possible to get someone banned permanently just by sending them a friend request with a phrase or posting a message like “Nice Trigger Bot dude!” in the game’s chat since it would then show up in their memory and get recognized by Ricochet.

Despite Activision claiming that a “small number” of legit accounts were affected, zebleer claims that “several thousand random COD players were banned by this exploit” before anyone started targeting big streamers.

Zebleer points to BobbyPoff, a CoD streamer, as one of the players who got banned due to the person using the exploit since October 3 before his account was suddenly unbanned. Similar to other players and streamers caught up in the bans, there had been intense speculation and discussion over whether or not BobbyPoff was a cheater.

The Call of Duty Updates account suggested that the Ricochet team will share a blog post, though the account hasn’t specified if the post will discuss this exploit.

Also Read: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Live Action Trailer Revealed

Activision Finally Trimming Call Of Duty’s Huge Downloads

Call of Duty is infamous for its huge file sizes, but ahead of the October 25th launch of Black Ops 6, Activision will finally be making some changes so that Call of Duty games don’t eat up a lot of space on users’ hard drives — including separating Warzone from the default download for the annual games.

The default separation of Warzone is going to happen soon: on August 21, along with the launch of Season 5 Reloaded. As part of that, when users download an annual Call of Duty game, users will be able to choose Warzone if they want. And if users just wish to download Warzone, that will still be an option.

Horizon: Zero Dawn, created by Guerrilla Games, will soon be getting a remaster. Recently, the remaster’s co-developer Nixxes stepped into the spotlight on the PlayStation blog to highlight a number of improvements players will see in the remaster, including the addition of lots of new NPCs.

The post talks about a number of updates coming to the game, perhaps the most notable of which is that Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered will "significantly boost the number of non-player characters." This doesn’t mean more quests or stories, but it does mean that villages and camps will be populated with more NPCs.

Also Read: Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered Is Coming to PS5 and PC

Remaster To Have More People Moving Around

Brian van Nunen, senior technical game designer at Nixxes, offered more details: “Building the game for PS5 allowed us to leverage the increased amount of memory available, enabling us to significantly boost the number of non-player characters," he said.

"We added many more places for NPCs to stand, sit, work, and fulfill their needs. We gave them more varied schedules to increase movement and liveliness in different areas. We also tried to make creative use of existing animations. For example, there is now a woman feeding geese at the well in Meridian, reusing an existing sowing animation. Additionally, on the bridge to Meridian, we’ve made significant strides in improving the atmosphere and sense of activity.”

This is not the only change coming to the game. The blog also talks about how the foliage is being overhauled to be more dense, realistic, and closer to the original concept art. Besides, the terrain is also being updated, including snow and sand that actually moves as it’s disturbed.

Also Read: Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition is Coming to PC; Release Date Confirmed by Sony

Horizon: Zero Dawn Remaster Gets Better Lighting

Apart from these improvements, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered benefits from 10 additional hours of motion capture data for various characters, which Nixxes says will make conversations seem livelier.

Mark Bazelmans, senior technical artist, said: “Horizon Zero Dawn has almost 300 conversations and well over 3100 dialog options, so we needed to find a way to easily integrate this huge number of updated animations into the conversations," he said. 

"We created a tool with Python to process the almost 2500 mocap files that Guerrilla provided to replace the original animation in the conversations, removing deprecated events and replacing those with the mocap and setup.”

The blog post also talks about how the lighting of the game has been improved, both world and cinematic, and how character models were updated to have more detail to hair, skin, and outfits.