You may not realize it, but we've been here doing our thing at HotHardware since 1999; we remember the good (and bad) old days of the PC enthusiast scene. There was a time when graphics cards were a wild market. You could find Quantum3D Obsidian Voodoo cards with double the RAM and an extra TMU compared to the competition. As late as the GeForce256,
Security researchers at Rapid7 Labs have unmasked a new piece of malware dubbed SantaStealer, which got its name due to the proximity of Christmas. If this app makes its way down the chimney, though it’s looking for more than just milk and cookies.
Attackers can utilize SantaStealer to steal a variety of data from unsuspecting Windows users.The Meta Horizon Store's 2025 Holiday Sale discounts blockbuster Quest games for the next three weeks.
You can currently get the Quest versions of titles like Alien: Rogue Incursion, both Arizona Sunshine games, Asgard's Wrath 2, Skydance's Behemoth, Metro Awakening, Reach, and Resident Evil 4, for between 20% and 65% off.
You'll also find discounts on a range of indie titles, such as Arken Age, Bonelab, Dungeons of Eternity, Eleven Table Tennis, Figmin XR, GOLF+, Into Black, Myst, Pistol Whip, Titan Isles, Walkabout Mini Golf, and VRider SBK.
The sale ends at 11:59pm PT on January 4, just under three weeks from now, giving plenty of time for people receiving a Quest headset as a gift this Christmas to get some of the top titles at a discounted price.
UploadVRDavid HeaneyHere's a list of just some of the games you can grab on sale:
Separately, Meta is also offering 15 sale bundles, letting you get multiple games and/or DLC together for a lower price than buying them individually:
If you already own one of the games in a bundle, the price is lowered to reflect that.
Puzzling Places adds Journey Mode, remastered puzzles, improved hand tracking and more in a free update.
The Realities.io developed VR jigsaw game, known for turning real-world locations into tactile 3D puzzles, is rolling out a large update for the holiday season. Its headline feature is Journey Mode, a new way to play designed to offer a calmer, low-effort experience.
Rather than the game's normal loop, where the player gets all the pieces of a disassembled puzzle at once, Journey Mode begins with a single central piece and offers only a small set of pieces to add at a time. Players then attach pieces to grow the center, allowing the scene to gradually assemble in an almost guided progression.
Today's update also overhauls hand tracking, which Realities.io says has been optimized for sharper responsiveness and more intuitive reactions. Updated tutorials have been added, as well as “natural gestures” like poking puzzle pieces to inspect them, dragging them to switch tabs, and a “throw-back” motion to return pieces to their staging area.
Quality of life updates are also promised. These include the addition of a new in-game menu, an updated start screen with quick-start options, personalized stats, and tailored puzzle pack recommendations. Puzzling Places' library features more legible thumbnails for easier browsing, and puzzle and pack ratings are now visible directly from the storefront.
Lastly, the base game's lineup of puzzles has been refreshed, swapping out older puzzles for community favorites. Four puzzles have been remastered with new animations and effects as well.
Puzzling Places' Holiday Update is available now as a free download on Quest, PS VR2, and Pico. The game is also available on Apple Vision Pro, and coming to Steam at a later date.
On Dec. 21, 2025, Ebenezer Scrooge will be haunted for the last time by disembodied spirits wearing Quest 2 or newer headsets.
Thereafter, the first fully embodied telling of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in consumer VR will play on loop around the holiday each year, replaying the spatially captured performance by Agile Lens.
"One of our white whales we finally achieved this holiday was a method for perfectly recording EVERYTHING that happens during a live show," wrote architect and producer Alex Coulombe over direct message. "Mocap, show cues, audio, even everything the audience does. And we can play it back completely on demand."
Since 2021, Agile Lens has put together the experimental VR telling of A Christmas Carol using the latest cutting edge capture and streaming technologies, including Unreal's MetaHuman avatars. The production, along with other Agile Lens projects like a gigantic holodeck selling real estate in Texas, led the group to develop a tool called "Stage Presence" for the creation of future theatre-based productions in VR.
"We have no plans to shut down the app at this time— after the all-day VR replays on Christmas Eve, likely we’ll leave it as a bit of a museum where you can visit Charles Dickens’s study and see our old “Next Show in…” counter," Coulombe wrote. "Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll find a good reason to bring it out of retirement."
Tickets are free in Quest 2 or newer VR headsets to the final live showings held from Friday to Sunday. The performance stars Ari Tarr as Dickens and Scrooge with Debbie Deer as the ghosts, both of them wearing Quest Pro headsets for face and body capture. You’ll become a ghost yourself during the tellings this weekend, and visible to Scrooge as a disembodied spirit helping him come to terms with his behavior.
"I'm really proud of it. I'm going to miss it a lot. It's been such a joy and such a useful resource to come back to," said Kevin Laibson, who worked as a producer on the production. "You really can't mess up a Christmas Carol – everyone knows it and loves it."
"Likely next year we’ll pick a few dates to trigger some shared VR replays," Coulombe wrote. "The 'live' audience will be there as ghosts of the “present” right alongside the audience ghosts of the “past”— it will all get very meta."
We're extremely curious to see what Agile Lens and their creators do next with theatre in VR and with their Stage Presence tool. There have been some impressive theatrical experiences like The Under Presents and The Tempest and much more made in VR by others, but nothing that's been able to keep a troupe of actors employed continuously.
"VR live theatre is wonderful in terms of accessibility, but it’s still far from the ideal of actual breathing people in the same venue gasping and laughing together," Coulombe wrote. "And so we’d love the chance to combine our mixed reality theatre toolset with our virtual reality theatre toolset for a production that caters to an on-site audience while also inviting participants from around the world to join in. That’s the goal of Stage Presence— a modular toolkit to service a wide range of live XR productions."
Nearly 15,000 data breaches and leaks were reported worldwide in 2025, according to Cyble’s Global Cybersecurity Report. Corporations and government agencies were frequent targets, with experts warning that 2026 will bring even more attacks as hackers adopt AI-driven tools.
Qantas was among the hardest hit, with data from 5 million customers exposed and later sold on the dark web. Other companies, including Oracle, Volvo, and SK Telecom, faced leaks or disruptions. Researchers also uncovered the largest breach in history: 16 billion passwords linked to Apple, Facebook, Google, and Telegram. Government institutions were not spared, with the US Congressional Budget Office hacked.
Individuals were targeted as well. In South Korea, more than 120,000 cameras were compromised to capture footage of unsuspecting users, which could then be used in blackmail efforts. Konstantin Levinzon, CEO of Planet VPN, said AI amplified many of these incidents. “Even though AI improves our daily lives and strengthens cybersecurity, it is also widely used by hackers,” he noted.
Levinzon outlined three potential threats to watch out for in 2026:
“Potential wearable hacks, deepfakes, and autonomous AI systems mean that next year, users will need to take extra steps,” Levinzon said. He recommended two-factor authentication, regular software updates, and VPN use as basic defences.
KitGuru Says: Most major AI-focused corporations have a lot of safety nets in place to avoid their AI systems from ‘going rogue'. It is highly unlikely that criminals seeking to cause harm would have the same level of checks and balances in place.
The post Cyble says data breaches grew to record heights in 2025, AI could make it much worse first appeared on KitGuru.It's not just high-speed SSDs and memory that AI companies are seeking to buy up. It appears that HDDs may also be impacted, as according to new reports, prices for standard hard disk drives have risen by around 4 percent over the past quarter, the sharpest price increase in the past two years, signalling that demand is rising and supply is reducing.
While SSDs have largely conquered the consumer drive market, HDDs are finding a resurgence in specific enterprise sectors and regions. According to Digitimes (via Tom's Hardware), a significant driver of this growth is the Chinese market, where a push towards locally manufactured PCs has led to increased adoption of 3.5-inch desktop drives. Additionally, concerns regarding long-term data retention on SSDs have prompted some entities to favour magnetic storage for archiving. Moreover, major US cloud service providers are acquiring exabyte-class storage to support the massive datasets required for AI model training, utilising HDDs for scenarios where capacity is prioritised over raw IOPS.
In retail pricing, things still look relatively unchanged. Still, given that this is already the third consecutive quarter of price hikes and that analysts warn the trend is likely to continue, consumers will eventually see more price increases. And with NAND flash facing its own supply constraints, the pressure on the HDD market may increase further, potentially leading to shortages as manufacturers prioritise high-margin enterprise customers over the consumer segment.
To address the demand, manufacturers like Seagate are heavily investing in Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology, with a 55 TB prototype already under development. However, until these next-generation drives hit mass production and stabilise the supply chain, HDD prices will likely continue to climb slowly but consistently, at least as long as demand increases at the same pace.
KitGuru says: It seems that all consumer hardware is at risk of being too expensive. After RAM and SSDs (and GPUs to a lesser degree), now even HDDs are apparently being gobbled by the enterprise segment.
The post HDD prices climb as AI surge revitalises mechanical storage market first appeared on KitGuru.
Following weeks of speculation centered around a mysterious statue discovered in the desert, Larian Studios finally clarified at The Game Awards what that was all about. As suspected, the teaser campaign was a prelude to the official reveal of Divinity, the studio's first major project following Baldur's Gate 3. While the reveal was limited to a cinematic trailer, it confirms that the developer is returning to its proprietary IP.
To capitalise on the renewed interest in the Divinity franchise, the studio announced Divinity: Original Sin II – Definitive Edition for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2. This brings the critically acclaimed RPG to modern hardware with official support, rather than relying on backward compatibility.
These new versions offer a modest suite of enhancements over their last-gen counterparts, though the core experience remains essentially unchanged. For existing fans, Larian has confirmed that this is a free upgrade. Owners of the game on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or the original Nintendo Switch can access the native current-gen version at no additional cost.
For those who haven't yet played the title often cited as one of the genre's best, the timing couldn't be better. The game has been discounted across digital storefronts for the pre-Christmas sales period, making it more accessible for players looking to understand the studio's roots before the next chapter begins.
KitGuru says: Have you already played Divinity: Original Sin 2? Are you planning to buy its Definitive Edition for one of the new platforms that just received it?
The post Larian launches Divnity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition for Switch 2 and current-gen consoles first appeared on KitGuru.Earlier this year, Amazon decided to massively scale back its gaming business after failing to produce a hit. Now just a couple of months later, Amazon has actually sold off one of its studios to Ubisoft, along with the rights to its MOBA game, March of Giants.
Ubisoft announced that it had acquired Amazon Games Montreal this week. The studio will now join Ubisoft's roster of studios, and mark Ubisoft's second studio in the city of Montreal.
As pointed out by Eurogamer, this move also reunites Ubisoft with former Rainbow Six Siege director, Xavier Marquis, who had left Ubisoft in 2019.
The studio that Ubisoft has acquired was most known for its MOBA game, March of Giants, which Ubisoft now also owns. Ubisoft seems to be excited about this, as its executives believe that the MOBA market will double in revenue by 2030. That trend might be true, but it is likely to be primarily driven by the growing mobile MOBA market. March of Giants is currently only confirmed for PC and has yet to receive a console or mobile announcement.
KitGuru Says: Did you try March of Giants during its closed playtest earlier this year? Are you looking forward to the official release in 2026?
The post Ubisoft acquires Amazon Games Montreal and March of Giants MOBA first appeared on KitGuru.Christmas tech deals are starting to hit the market. MSI is slashing prices across a wide range of monitors once again, promising high refresh rate gaming from as little as £139.
Here is a list of some of our top picks, each focused on offering a high refresh rate for smooth gaming, tiered with the most expensive models first:
You can find all of MSI's Christmas season UK deals HERE.
KitGuru Says: Are you planning on picking up a new upgrade before the end of the year?
The post MSI rolls out new Christmas discounts across gaming monitors first appeared on KitGuru.If you're looking to build your own racing simulator set-up then there is good news for UK-based enthusiasts. Thermaltake's full line-up of racing sim gear is now readily available and in stock at one of the UK's biggest tech-specialist etailers.
Overclockers UK has full stock of the Thermaltake Sim Racing lineup, with all products currently available for pre-Christmas delivery. This includes popular options like the GR500 and GR300 cockpits, as well as wheel and pedal sets, along with other accessories.
You can find the full line-up HERE.
KitGuru Says: Are you thinking of putting together your own at-home racing sim?
The post Thermaltake’s racing sim gear fully in stock at OCUK first appeared on KitGuru.Stealth shooter Espire: MR Missions gets a standalone release in early access, and existing Espire 2 owners get it for free.
Revealed last month, Espire: MR Missions expands upon the mixed reality mode previously seen in Espire 2: Stealth Operatives. This comes with 29 different missions that dynamically adapt to your home, taking out guards and navigating traps between 21 small-scale single-room missions and eight large-scale multi-room missions. That's out now for the wider Quest platform.
Detailing its reasons for making this a standalone launch, developer Digital Lode advised that it's “proven very difficult to maintain the MR mode within the larger Espire 2 VR game” as mixed reality technology evolves. The developer also believes that roomscale mixed reality offers a different appeal compared to Espire 2's fully immersive VR missions.
As such, Espire 2: Stealth Operatives will return to being 100% focused on VR and its existing MR support will eventually be removed. Because of this, anyone who bought Espire 2 on Quest before today's launch will receive MR Missions for free, while all future Espire 2 owners will get a discounted rate.
As for its latest additions, the early access release of MR Missions comes with five new missions and a new target shooting game mode. Digital Lode advised that its core 'Espire Spatial Adaptation System' for adapting levels to your space has seen “tonnes of improvements,” while some mechanics have been simplified. There's also a new user interface that's been designed for mixed reality.
Espire: MR Missions is out now in early access on Quest for $8.99. A full release date is unconfirmed, though the studio advised that it's preparing a roadmap of “new missions, modes, features, and content.”
Zero Caliber is now available on PlayStation VR2.
Originally released in early access in 2018, Zero Caliber by XREAL Games is one of VR's older FPS hits that have since appeared on most major VR platforms. This comes with a campaign that supports single player and up to four-player co-op, PvP game modes, and a Zombies mode. Having originally targeted a December 12 launch, it's now arrived on PlayStation VR2 following a brief delay.
We've yet to go hands-on with this new edition, so we're unsure whether this features any PlayStation VR2-specific enhancements at launch. In a social media reply, the studio confirmed that adaptive triggers support would arrive “either in a day-1 or week-1 patch.” We've contacted the studio asking for further details, and we'll update this article if we learn more.
It's the first time we've seen the Zero Caliber series reach PlayStation, and you may recall a port was planned for the original PlayStation VR. The studio later confirmed this was based on the Quest edition, Reloaded, citing “hardware limitations” as to why it couldn't port the PC VR version. This ultimately never materialized, and today's release is based on the PC VR edition.
As for what's next, XREAL Games previously advised it's planning to bring the sequel, Zero Caliber 2, to Sony's headset following October's PC VR remastered launch. However, a specific release window is currently unknown. Elsewhere, the studio released a new Zero Caliber 2 quality of life update on Quest with new weapons, and a Steam update for Remastered is also arriving soon.
Zero Caliber is out now on PlayStation VR2 and PC VR, while Zero Caliber: Reloaded is on Quest and Pico.
Bah, humbug! Another Google tool has just been sunsetted, as Scrooge McGoogle has announced the immediate wind-down of its 'dark web report' feature, a free tool designed to alert users when their personal information is compromised and found circulating in illicit corners of the internet. While it wasn't a particularly proactive/reactive
There's going to be a new space telescope in town: the Nancy Grace Roman (the famous NASA astronomer, not to be mistaken for the crime show host), which is slated to launch by May 2027. At least initially, its main mission will be to chart the nature of dark energy and the hidden structure of our own Milky Way galaxy.
As many of us already
Sometimes we can all use a little reassurance that everything will be okay. If you're PC enthusiast, now is definitely one of those times, as the booming AI market is gobbling up NAND flash memory chips and other hardware at a breakneck pace (and sending consumer brands packing for the data center hills). Well, enter Kioxia, which is rolling
OnePlus has officially confirmed the launch of a brand-new Turbo smartphone series, marking the company’s official entry into the high-end mobile gaming market with a focus on performance and endurance, among others.
The existence of the new line dropped in a Weibo post by OnePlus China President Louis Li Jie, who said that the Turbo series
It's been a minute since Google last rolled out an update for its first-generation Pixel Buds Pro, which released back in 2022. Now more than three years after launch, Google is offering another firmware update (version 5.11) to its original Pixel Buds Pro, and it could very well be the last one. Before the 5.11 release, the last firmware
Are we about to lose another NAND flash brand in the consumer storage space? Following Micron's decision to pull its 29-year-old Crucial brand from the consumer market to focus on higher margin data center clients, rumors began to swirl that Samsung was getting ready to stop selling SATA-based solid state drive (SSDs) to consumers. AccordingOut of all the various PC storefronts, GOG has always been the most different, with the team at CDProjekt offering a unique experience thanks to DRM-free titles, consumer-friendly practices and most recently their dedication to game preservation. In an effort to expand the latter, GOG has now announced their new ‘GOG Patrons’ initiative.
Taking to their blog to make the announcement, the GOG team officially unveiled the latest expansion to their preservation program, introducing GOG Patrons – “a completely optional way for anyone who wants to support our preservation efforts on a monthly basis.”
Functioning more like a Twitch sub or a YouTube membership as opposed to a typical subscription service, GOG Patrons is focused on expanding its community-feel, with the $5 a month cost getting you:
Though certainly not for everyone, this new initiative is intended to allow GOG to dedicate a greater amount of resources to game preservation while offering Patrons an added sense of community and knowledge that your money is going directly towards the initiative.
It will be interesting to see how the initiative is received and how GOG’s preservation program will improve with time. Full details (and an FAQ) on the initiative can be found HERE.
KitGuru says: What do you think of this new initiative? Is it too niche? How important is game preservation to you? Let us know down below.
The post GOG expands its game preservation program with new ‘Patrons’ initiative first appeared on KitGuru.Most Alien fans at this point are looking forward to the long-awaited Alien Isolation 2. However, that isn't the only new Alien game in development. According to reports this week, there is a second mystery survival horror game in the works.
Insider Gaming has learned that a new Alien game is in development. The title was revived recently after initially being planned back in 2020 and will offer a mix of combat, platforming and puzzles. The main character is said to be an engineer named Aubrey, who gets around the ship with a pair of magnetic boots and a grappling hook, essentially making this ‘Shadow of the Tomb Raider' but with Aliens.
The game is also apparently being made by Eidos Montreal, the studio behind Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided. Unfortunately, this likely means we won't be seeing Adam Jensen again anytime soon.
The new Alien game is said to be targeting a 2028 release window, with a budget of over $70 million. The studio will have to hope that the game doesn't end up clashing with Alien isolation 2, which began development in 2024, as that is a more established Alien sub-franchise with a large following.
KitGuru Says: With Alien Isolation 2 already on the way, I'm not sure what to think of this. It sounds like it will be similar in some ways, taking place on a large space station, with a character working their way through different parts of the ship, all the while dodging Xenomorphs.
The post Deux Ex studio Eidos Montreal is reportedly developing an Alien game first appeared on KitGuru.
While STALKER 2 launched in a less-than-polished state due to a multitude of factors, the team at GSC Game World have been diligently updating and improving the game with thousands of bug fixes, an overhaul to its A-Life system and more. Focusing more on the story side of STALKER 2, a new free update has now been announced – arriving later today.
Making the announcement via the PlayStation Blog, GSC Game World unveiled their latest free update. Arriving today, this narrative-focused update introduces a brand new storyline which offers plenty to do and find, including:
Details on the new storyline can be found HERE, but in terms of gameplay content the ‘unique weapon’ is said to be the GP37V2 – a modified version of the GP37 rifle which includes an integrated suppressor and scope alongside alterations to its firing pattern.
In addition, some of the pre-existing locations have been refreshed somewhat, “now re-inhabited by stalkers”. Perhaps the biggest inclusion with this update is the new Hub “appearing in a not-so-populated area of Burnt Forest.”
STALKER 2 certainly came a bit too hot out of the oven. Fortunately, the team at GSC Game World appear committed to ensuring that this title serves as a worthy follow-up to the classic STALKER trilogy. The full blogpost can be found HERE.
KitGuru says: What are your thoughts on STALKER 2? Did you pick the game up at launch? Has it improved enough to be worth a purchase in your mind? Let us know down below.
The post New STALKER 2 free story update arrives today first appeared on KitGuru.
Connexion