If there's one thing fans like to do besides yelling on Twitter, it's creating petitions. Petitions can be a good way to know what people are dissatisfied with, but nothing tends to come of them. After a recent online petition for the 2012 strategy game, Plague Inc., though, things turned out differently.

Much has been written about video games, and quite a lot of it is negative. We have feared that video games are making our children less social and more violent, and making us all more stressed. There's been significant research on the topic, and some good news has come out of it: Video games can actually be good for our stress levels!

The clearest indication yet that this console generation is winding down came last year when Sony revealed it would not be in attendance at E3 2019. This will mark the first time Sony has ever missed the show, and while that might put a damper on the excitement level for many gamers, it also creates an opening for Microsoft and Nintendo to steal the spotlight. And based on a new report, Microsoft will be taking full advantage of that opportunity.

It's a good time to be a Dune fan. Not only is the classic sci-fi novel getting a movie remake in 2020 courtesy of Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve, but it looks like there's a series of new games on the way, too. TechRadar reports that Legendary Studios -- which owns the film rights to the Dune franchise -- has signed a six-year deal with Funcom, the company responsible for Conan Exiles (and its questionable anatomy-based physics engine).

Obisdian’s Fallout: New Vegas might be the best of the Bethesda-era Fallout games, but it still got dragged through the ugly hedge backwards a dozen times over. There’s no higher resolution, sharpened texture pack or post-process filter in the world that can save this pudding-faced monstrosity from its blobby brown fate.

Fortnite is still king of the world, reporting record concurrent player counts as recently as this month, but there’s at least one recent statistic that is moving in the other direction. Superdata reports that Fortnite, after experiencing record revenue in December, saw a sharp drop of 48% in revenue in January. And before you ask, no, that’s not when Apex Legends came out, as that wasn’t until early February, so that new rival has nothing to do with it.

Anthem topped the UK boxed game sales chart during its first week of release, but with half the physical sales of BioWare's previous game Mass Effect Andromeda. Without digital sales through EA's Origin service on PC, or download sales on PlayStation or Xbox, it's difficult to draw exact comparisons. But from the comparisons we can make, Anthem's sales do not paint a hugely positive picture.

"What bothers me about it most is that when people attribute the 'F#ck Konami' hashtag, they're thinking of me. I know that some people are typing it like, yeah, Tomm Hulett sucks!" I didn't expect Hulett to be this brutally honest. I can't decide if it's due to the years of being dogged by the same old shit or simply the realisation that that shit is going to stick no matter what, but he's reflective and honest without any semblance of polish or sugar-coating.

A new expansion has added environmental challenges to Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, the latest in a popular series of strategy video games that has been running since the 1990s. The expansion – called Gathering Storm – adds new features to the game, most notably anthropogenic climate change and natural disasters. The game involves developing a civilisation from its humble beginnings in the Stone Age to nowadays and beyond, while choosing from a vast array of technologies and cultural policies. As the game and the ages progress, your energy choices become increasingly important.

Just weeks prior to the release of Metro Exodus, publisher Deep Silver made a very controversial decision; to make the game exclusive to the Epic Games Store on PC. The game had already been available to pre-order on Steam, and so the decision prompted widespread anger from PC gamers. The Metro series was review-bombed on Steam, and although Deep Silver did honour existing Steam pre-orders, it is no longer possible to purchase the game on the platform; only those who pre-ordered are able to play Metro Exodus on Steam.

The chief executive officers of two major video game companies have found their way onto a report that uses pay data to call out pay disparities in publicly traded American companies.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's design director, David Vonderhaar, has defended an interview where he said Blackout characters would be only be locked behind missions. The interview resurfaced after the latest update, Operation Grand Heist, snuck loot boxes into the game and trapped the new characters inside them. It's become increasingly hard to escape Black Ops 4's microtransactions. It's a premium game with a cosmetic shop, a season pass, a battle pass and now these loot crates, called 'reserve crates' in-game.

Epic Games, maker of the ultra popular Battle Royale game Fortnite, is putting up another $100 million in prize cash for competitive tournaments in 2019. The company made waves in the esports world last year, announcing a $100 million prize pool for the 2018 competitive year, dwarfing every other competitive title in one fell swoop.

The Nintendo Switch is the most versatile home console ever created. To call it a home console even is to do it an injustice, as its battery-powered handheld mode allows it to act as a supercharged portable games machine too. But its detachable controllers and central tablet-like core processing-and-display unit might make it even more versatile still – the Nintendo Switch could be getting VR support.

Google did not instantly reply to an ask for remark. Google will certainly introduce brand-new pc gaming equipment in a keynote speech at a significant computer game seminar following month, 9to5Google reported, handling conventional gamers in the video gaming area like Microsoft’s Xbox as well as Sony’s PlayStation. The solution is claimed to allow individuals stream console-quality video games on less expensive equipment, with the utmost objective of using a “Netflix for video games” registration solution.

The latest patch for Bethesda's online RPG is now available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and it increases stash size and makes other gameplay tweaks and fixes.

The Red Dead Redemption 2 Online Beta rolled out at the end of November. Since then, the team at Rockstar has been relasing updates for the mode with new content alongside fixes and other improvements. Next week, the team will be introducing another update that adds more game modes, weapons, clothing, emotes, and more.

In a console industry first, Paradox Interactive and Microsoft are allowing Xbox One players to get direct access to game modifications created on the PC without any pre-approval from the console maker or publisher. This isn't the first time players have been able to add their own modified content to a console game. Bethesda enabled Fallout 4 mods on Xbox One back in May 2016 and on PlayStation 4 months later.

In September 2013, Valve founder Gabe Newell gave a rare, 20-minute presentation at LinuxCon. He called Linux "the future of gaming," predicting that as the industry became more user-driven and connected across both distances and devices, an open-source foundation would be the only way to keep pace with coming innovations. With the standard, proprietary operating systems powering Windows, Mac and consoles, Newell argued, all control over content, pricing and change rested in the hands of billion-dollar corporations. Linux offered a chance for all players and developers to shape the marketplace.

Oninaki was one of the new titles announced during last week's Nintendo Direct, and has been the beneficiary of some significant coverage in this week's issue of Japanese magazine Famitsu. Published by Square Enix and developed by Tokyo RPG Factory, Oninaki is being described as an "intensely shocking title" and is currently around 65% complete; a release is expected this summer.