“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1789 letter. Fallout 76 players have long been acquainted with the first, but following the addition of a new vending machine mechanic, they are being forced to come to terms with the second.

The average American video gamer is 33 years old, prefers to play on their smartphone and is spending big on content — 20 percent more than a year ago and 85 percent more than in 2015, a report showed on Thursday. The annual research from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) comes as more American households rethink how to set limits for kids who love gaming and how to allocate their entertainment budgets in the streaming era.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) today announced a bill that would ban loot boxes and pay-to-win microtransactions in “games played by minors,” a broad label that the senator says will include both games designed for kids under 18 and games “whose developers knowingly allow minor players to engage in microtransactions.”

“The record labels still make CDs and the movie studios still make DVDs, so yes, I’d say it’s too soon to abandon discs for consoles,” writes Michael Pachter, managing director at Wedbush Securities when asked about Microsoft’s plans to drop a physical disc drive from their latest Xbox One model. The all-digital Xbox One is the first major console not to include an option for physical media.

The battle royale genre was taken by storm when Respawn Entertainment launched Apex Legends on February 4, and its success has sent a message to EA to get it into more players’ hands. Apex Legends hit the ground running as soon as it launched as it garnered a massive player base of 50 million players in record time. But that number is soon to grow even further with plans to bring it to more consoles.

David Eddings, the original voice actor for Claptrap from the Borderlands series who isn't returning for Borderlands 3, has shared some new insight into the situation--and it is dramatic. After Randy Pitchford, the CEO of Borderlands developer Gearbox Software, called him "bitter and disgruntled," Eddings spoke up again today. He shared his side of the story, which includes a claim that Pitchford physically assaulted him in a hotel lobby at the Game Developers Conference in 2017.

Monster Hunter World is Capcom's best-selling game of all time, the publisher has revealed. As part of the company's financial year 18/19 results, it was confirmed the PS4, Xbox One, and PC RPG has shipped over 12 million units. "Monster Hunter World ... continued to report strong sales," Capcom said, "with total shipments breaking 12 million units, marking a record high for any single title in the company's history."

Bethesda's next big game, Rage 2, is almost here. The game releases on May 14, and ahead of that, Bethesda has announced that the PS4, Xbox One, and PC game has "gone gold," while the publisher also confirmed the game's minimum and recommended settings for PC. "Going gold" means development on the base game is finished. Rage 2 was developed by id Software (maker of the first Rage) and Just Cause studio Avalanche Studios.

It joins Doom, Tetris, Pokémon, and The Legend of Zelda

Just a few minutes of playing a certain video game could help identify the earliest stages of Alzheimer's in ways existing medical tests can't, researchers have found. A new study used a smartphone app called Sea Hero Quest to monitor how gamers with and without a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's navigate the virtual world, using their thumbs to move a little boat through a series of maritime mazes.

The fraught, eight-years-and-counting development of Star Citizen from Cloud Imperium Games seems to have no end in sight, and it seems one of the many reasons for that may be a mix of "chaotic" leadership practices and money mismanagement. A detailed Forbes report from earlier this week tells the story of the multiplayer space trading, combat, and exploration game that has been in development since 2011. The game has had a messy history already, having raised a total of $288 million so far, $242 million of which having been crowdfunded by fans.

Apple's 2017 shift from 32-bit to a 64-bit code base for iOS has shut the door on countless games and apps designed during the platform's early days. Now, a startup called GameClub has attracted $2.5 million dollars in investment to help fix that problem, working with the original developers to update well-remembered premium mobile games for newer devices.

Sea of Thieves’ Anniversary Update is live. The pirate game’s ambitious expansion brings activities from competitive player-vs.-player battles to fishing and cooking. Largest of all are the “Tall Tales,” a lengthy chain of cutscene and exploration driven story missions that are designed to be completed in a group or by your lonesome. The first—hunting down the treasure-studded Shores of Gold—finally gives Sea of Thieves the structure and direction some players have been craving from the start.

There's going to be plenty of Borderlands 3 to sink your teeth into. At a preview event on Tuesday, our writer James played about three hours of the new looter shooter, which is a mere fraction of the full game, as it turns out. According to creative director Paul Sage, the main quest for Borderlands 3 will last for 10 times that. "If you beeline it through, and I mean beelining it through, it might take you 30 hours to complete the main story," Sage said.

It isn’t the tumbling, 360-degree views of San Andreas that command our undivided attention from the top of Mount Chiliad. Nor is it the whir of the cable cars. And it’s not the blanket of mist that engulfs the valley below, nor the implacable sunrise that invades every inch of the towering cliffside’s crevices and chasms. At 2,619 feet above sea level, our group of five is hanging on every word of Craig (not his real name), an unassuming Grand Theft Auto V role-player...

SEGA didn't do too well in its FY2018 earnings. The company's yearly profits plummeted over 70% to $23.82 million, and its Road to 2020 roadmap of games earnings has fallen apart due to market miscalcuations, too many games in development, lack of sales performance, and game delays. As SEGA says, the plan "fell significantly below the initial plan due to deterioration of business environment and lack of hit titles."

Modders are taking advantage of AI tools to update old graphics.

Predicting what Valve is and isn't going to do is a losing game, even with reliable information, so I'm giving myself a 1 percent chance of getting this completely right. Valve is going to reveal the specs of its VR headset, the Valve Index, very soon, and we have good reason to believe it'll reveal some VR games along with it—one of which is rumored to be a Half-Life game.

Anno 1800 has become the city-building series' fastest-selling game, Ubisoft has announced. In its first week, it's sold more than four times the number of copies than its predecessor, Anno 2205. It's also quite a bit better. Ubisoft hasn't shared player numbers, but we do know that they've brought almost seven billion citizens to their islands. In 1800, the world's actual population has been estimated to be fewer than a billion, rising past it by 1900. It's certainly a lot fewer settlers than are living on Anno's islands. We're changing history, people.

PlayStation 4-exclusive Days Gone has secured the biggest physical sales launch of the year so far in the UK. Impressively for a new intellectual property, Days Gone beat the sales of Capcom's Resident Evil 2 and Ubisoft's Far Cry: New Dawn and The Division 2. However, Days Gone's launch sales come in under those of fellow PS4-exclusives God of War and Spider-Man.