Tim Sweeney tweets that Epic is working with IO Interactive to find a way for those who own HITMAN 2 on Steam to be able to play the game's missions in HITMAN 3 without an additional purchase. When HITMAN 3 was announced IO promised that players would be able to import the levels from the previous two HITMAN games. But a HITMAN 3 Pre-Launch Guide released the other day said that since HITMAN 3 will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store, which does not carry HITMAN 2, content from the second game would require an additional purchase. Now the Epic CEO says their working to avoid this being the case:

Sorry, the team is looking into this with IO. It’s never Epic’s intent to create a situation where someone who owns a game on Steam would have to buy it again on Epic Games Store.

In a tweet, Adam Badowski addresses the Bloomberg article from yesterday that delves into what led to the problematic launch of Cyberpunk 2077. Adam discusses a few specific points: whether the E3 2017 demo for the sci-fi RPG was "faked," whether there was a consensus among staff that the game was not ready for release, and whether non-Polish staff were ostracized by Polish co-workers:

Fans and journalists were wowed by cyberpunk 2077 to ambition and scale. What they didn't know was that the demo was almost entirely fake.

It's hard for a trade show game demo two years before the game ships, but that doesn't mean it's fake. Compare the demo with the game. Look it that Dumdum scene or the car chase, or the many other things. What the people reading your article may not know is that games are not made in a linear fashion and start looking like the final product only a few months before launch. If you look at that demo now, it's different yes, but that's what the "work in progress" watermark is for. Our final game looks and plays way better than what that demo ever was.

As for missing features, that's part of the creation process. Features, and go as we see if they will work or not. Also, Karin bush's exist in the final game almost verbatim to what we showed in the demo.

Continue here to read the full story.

The following in Valve's latest countdown of the 10 bestselling titles on Steam for last week. Until next time, keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.

1. Rust.
2. Valve Index VR Kit.
3. Cyberpunk 2077.
4. Heroes of the Three Kingdoms 8.
5. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Operation Broken Fang.
6. Phasmophobia.
7. Raft.
8. Red Dead Redemption 2.
9. Grand Theft Auto V.
10. Sea of Thieves.

• This 1GB Mod for The Witcher 3 overhauls all of its animals.

• Forbes - ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Reveals Mirror Anthem’s Failures With One Change: It’s Still A Hit. Thanks Acleacius.
  "And yet through it all, even if you can correctly call the launch of Cyberpunk 'disastrous' from a technical and uh, moral perspective, given the amount of deception involved, technically, we cannot overlook the fact that the game has achieved an entirely different end result than Anthem and others. It’s a hit. It’s a big hit, and unfortunately, I fear that that the takeaway for some, including the higher-ups at CDPR, may be that the ends justify the means."

• Gigabyte unrolls GeForce 30-series with both Core and Ryzen CPUs. Thanks Neutronbeam.

• Reverse Engineering Prodigy, Part 1. Thanks Ant.

Thanks Neutronbeam.

• PC sales are the healthiest they've been in a decade.
• Gigabyte Unveils Aorus Gen4 7000s SSDs with 7GB/s Speed, Preps Extreme Version.
• Intel Kills Off All Optane-Only SSDs for Consumers, No Replacements Planned.
• High-tech face masks to watch in 2021.
• How to Fix "There Was a Problem Resetting Your PC" Error in Windows 10.

• Kids hacked Cinnamon - Unix and Linux. Thanks Ant.

• Facebook finds four Chrome extensions scraping user data – Sues two developers. Thanks Neutronbeam.

• Graphics Card: MSI Radeon RX 6800 XT GAMING X TRIO Review - TweakTown.
• SSD: ADATA XPG Gammix S70 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD Review - TweakTown.
• SSD: Patriot PXD 1TB Portable USB 3.2 External SSD Review - Mad Shrimps.

• Are Videogames the Future of Remote Work? (may require registration or subscription). Thanks Neutronbeam…
• Director confirmed for the TV adaptation of The Last of Us…
• This Website Lets You Make GLaDOS Say Whatever You Want. A triumph…

Happy birthday Betty White, as the beloved comic actor turns 99 today. She tells the AP that she'll celebrate with a hot dog and French fries, feeding ducks, and staying up as late as she wants. A woman after my own heart.

Obituary: Phil Spector, famed music producer and convicted murderer, dies at 81.

Golden Girl Round-up
Thanks Ant and Neutronbeam.

Brunch Link

• How To Estimate 6 Feet Of Pandemic Physical Distance Without A Ruler.

Science

• NASA studying cause of early end to NASA moon rocket test-firing.
• Shocking discovery: Electric eels hunt in packs in Amazon rivers.
• Craft brewers now have a new tool for sniffing out trace flavor compounds.

Media

• Cleaning snow off a roof in Japan.
• Death Metal Dog.

The Funnies

• Rainbow Six Ranked Experience – Arcade Rage.