It’s been nearly a decade since Ubisoft first launched Rainbow Six Siege. In the time since, the multiplayer FPS has improved enormously, attracting a devoted audience and cementing itself as one of the best options in a genre that also includes PUBG, Valorant, and Marvel Rivals. To keep that momentum going into its tenth year and beyond, Ubisoft has put out a sweeping overhaul of Siege with today’s launch of Rainbow Six Siege X. Even though it’s only been out for a few hours, this decision seems to have been a good one, as the game’s already attracted a massive player base and strong reviews on Steam.
Rainbow Six Siege X takes the long-running FPS game‘s foundation and revitalizes it with a number of changes. Most immediately noticeable is a rework of its visuals, applied to five maps at the time of launch, and tweaks to the core design of the game, including the ability to shoot and destroy objects like pipes and fire extinguishers. The relaunch also offers a new 6v6 mode called Dual Front and allows previous Siege players to carry over their progress, receive rewards based on how long they’ve been playing, and keep their ability to get into modes from before X launched.
So far, Siege X is going over well with players. Not only have its user reviews shot upward in the hours since launch, but it’s also hit its highest player count in more than a year. At the time of writing, the game has 134,366 active players, down from a 24-hour peak of 142,025 earlier today. That 24-hour peak represents the most active players since April, 2024, which reached 156,080.
Rainbow Six Siege X is out now. You can download it for free on Steam right here.
You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We’ve also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.
Welcome to Ludology, an analytical discussion of the hows and whys of the world of board games. Rather than news and reviews, Ludology explores a variety of topics about games from a wider lens, as well as discuss game history, game design and game players.
We post a new Ludology episode every other week. In these episodes, hosts Erica Bouyouris and Sen-Foong Lim deep-dive into a single topic within game design, often with a well-regarded guest from the game industry. We generally focus on tabletop game design (mainly board games and RPGs), but we often pull in experts from all forms of games, from video games to escape rooms to slot machines.
On weeks where there is no flagship Ludology episode, we will alternate between two smaller mini-sodes. Erica and Sen are happy to announce that Sarah Shipp of Shippboard Games and Stephanie Campbell of TTRPGKids will be joining us for the next year, providing additional content between our longer episodes.
Sarah’s segment, Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, is a monthly feature that dives deeper into the other aspects of games beyond the dice and cards we’re all familiar with.
Stephanie’s segment, TTRPGKids, explores how parents and teachers can use role playing games with children in the home and in the classroom.
We hope you enjoy the additional content!
Our History
We aim for most Ludology episodes to be timeless, so you are welcome to explore our entire catalog. Most of it should age quite well. The podcast was started in 2011 by Geoff Engelstein and Ryan Sturm, with Mike Fitzgerald taking over for Ryan in 2015. Gil and Scott joined the show in 2017 when Mike stepped aside, and Emma joined in 2019 when Geoff ended his tenure as host. Emma left in 2021, and Erica and Sen joined us. Since then, Scott stepped down in 2022 and Gil will be hanging up his mic in 2023, leaving Erica and Sen to carry on this amazing legacy.
Erica and Sen are working to bring new voices to Ludology and have some great things to announce as gaming expands to include even more people!
Contact Us
Have your own thoughts about our topics? We encourage you to visit us at our guild on Boardgamegeek to get involved in a continuing discussion.
If you have questions that you’d like answered on Ludology, let us know by filling out this Google Form; you can also leave an audio question that we can use on the show, if you wish!
You can also make a one-time or monthly donation here. The link will take you to Erica’s account. People who donate in this way will not have access to the Patreon page – sorry!
Welcome to Ludology, an analytical discussion of the hows and whys of the world of board games. Rather than news and reviews, Ludology explores a variety of topics about games from a wider lens, as well as discuss game history, game design and game players.
We post a new Ludology episode every other week. In these episodes, hosts Erica Bouyouris and Sen-Foong Lim deep-dive into a single topic within game design, often with a well-regarded guest from the game industry. We generally focus on tabletop game design (mainly board games and RPGs), but we often pull in experts from all forms of games, from video games to escape rooms to slot machines.
On weeks where there is no flagship Ludology episode, we will alternate between two smaller mini-sodes. Erica and Sen are happy to announce that Sarah Shipp of Shippboard Games and Stephanie Campbell of TTRPGKids will be joining us for the next year, providing additional content between our longer episodes.
Sarah’s segment, Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, is a monthly feature that dives deeper into the other aspects of games beyond the dice and cards we’re all familiar with.
Stephanie’s segment, TTRPGKids, explores how parents and teachers can use role playing games with children in the home and in the classroom.
We hope you enjoy the additional content!
Our History
We aim for most Ludology episodes to be timeless, so you are welcome to explore our entire catalog. Most of it should age quite well. The podcast was started in 2011 by Geoff Engelstein and Ryan Sturm, with Mike Fitzgerald taking over for Ryan in 2015. Gil and Scott joined the show in 2017 when Mike stepped aside, and Emma joined in 2019 when Geoff ended his tenure as host. Emma left in 2021, and Erica and Sen joined us. Since then, Scott stepped down in 2022 and Gil will be hanging up his mic in 2023, leaving Erica and Sen to carry on this amazing legacy.
Erica and Sen are working to bring new voices to Ludology and have some great things to announce as gaming expands to include even more people!
Contact Us
Have your own thoughts about our topics? We encourage you to visit us at our guild on Boardgamegeek to get involved in a continuing discussion.
If you have questions that you’d like answered on Ludology, let us know by filling out this Google Form; you can also leave an audio question that we can use on the show, if you wish!
You can also make a one-time or monthly donation here. The link will take you to Erica’s account. People who donate in this way will not have access to the Patreon page – sorry!
While GPU prices are a bit of a lottery in the US right now, PC gamers in the UK are often enjoying plentiful stock and falling prices. The latest new GPU to get a price drop is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, which is currently going for just £379.99 at Overclockers, saving you £20 on the MSRP, and enabling you to pick up a decent graphics card with plenty of VRAM.
I recently tested this GPU for my Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti review, and found that in some ways it was an even better buy than the more expensive RTX 5070, thanks to its extra 4GB of VRAM. This Nvidia GPU already offers reasonable value at MSRP, but it’s a really good deal for £379.99, especially for the 16GB version. There’s now competition from the cheaper AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT, of course, but the Nvidia GPU is quicker, and worth the extra money at this price.
One of the main benefits of this GPU, of course, is its support for the Nvidia DLSS 4 ecosystem, with the latest upscaling tech now featuring in many of the latest games, much more so than AMD’s competing FSR 4 tech, and enables you to vastly improve the frame rates in your games with minimal impact on image quality. In particular, new games such as Doom The Dark Ages and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle run great on the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, and you can even get them running at 2,560 x 1,440 as well as 1,920 x 1,080.
You can also happily max out demanding games such as Cyberpunk 2077 on this GPU, including the full Overdrive ray tracing mode. In my tests, I found you could enable this setting at 1080p, then enable DLSS on the Quality setting (which still looks great with DLSS 4), and it would average 56fps. That’s a solid enough starting point to then enable Nvidia’s new multi frame gen tech, which uses AI to insert extra frames between the ones rendered by your GPU, pushing the average frame rate all the way up to 179fps.
Best of all, though, is the price of £379.99, which is great value for this GPU with 16GB of memory, buying you a Gainward RTX 5060 Ti Python III card. You just need to click on this link here to take you to the deal.
If you can’t quite run to that price, you can still buy an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB for £314.99 from the same retailer. It’s not as fast as the RTX 5060 Ti, but it’s still a big upgrade over the RTX 5060, and a decent GPU for the money. Check out my AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT review to see how the competition copes with our game benchmark suite.
For more GPU buying advice, check out our guide to the best graphics card, where we run you through all our favorite options right now, as well as our GPU install guide, which takes you through the graphics card upgrade process.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. In addition, we have a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.
When we first got confirmation of this week’s State of Play, Sony’s official description provided little to go on. PlayStation’s first-party output is quite slim this year, but some of us expected the company’s biggest game in 2025 – Ghost of Yotei – to make some sort of appearance.
After all, for a game coming out this October, we’ve seen very little gameplay to get us excited about its big release this fall.
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The good news is that Ghost of Yotei, did, indeed show up during the State of Play showcase. It was so brief, however, you may have missed it. Developer Sucker Punch treated us to a small teaser that left everyone wanting more.
And more certainly is on the way, because the point of that teaser was to announce a special State of Play presentation dedicated entirely to the Ghost of Tsushima sequel. Sadly, we’ll have to wait until sometime in July for that.
The July showcase will offer an extended look at Yotei’s “evolved” gameplay mechanics, exploration, combat and more, according to the PlayStation Blog. Hopefully that episode is scheduled for early July, rather than later in the month.
The most recent update to Grow A Garden introduces a seasonal feature called Bizzy Bees. As the name implies, the patch revolves around bee-inspired content, including new varieties of seeds, additional pets, unique mutations, and a limited-time event centered on bees. For those who are unfamiliar with the game or uncertain about how the event works, thisGrow A Garden Bizzy Bees Swarm Event guide will clarify everything.
All New Pets in the Bizzy Bees Update in Grow A Garden
Such cuties!
The Bizzy Bees Update introduces five additional pets to Grow A Garden. Each of them offers benefits associated with the newly introduced Pollinated and Honey-glazed mutations.
Pet
Rarity
Passives
Bee
Uncommon (65%)
Every 24 minutes and 37 seconds, it travels to a nearby fruit and triggers the Pollinated mutation by pollinating it.
Honey Bee
Rare (25%)
A slightly better Bee.
Bear Bee
Mythical (5%)
Once every 25 minutes, it approaches a nearby plant and grants its fruit the Honey Glaze mutation.
Petal Bee
Legendary (4%)
Every 24 minutes and 37 seconds, it gently pollinates a nearby fruit, giving it the Pollinated mutation. There’s also a small 1.29% chance that flower-type fruits will stick around even after you harvest them.
Queen Bee
Divine (1%)
Every 24 minutes and 26 seconds, it works its magic by pollinating a nearby fruit, giving it the Pollinated mutation. On top of that, it also helps out your pets by refreshing one of their cooldowns every 29 minutes and 26 seconds.
To add these pets to your collection, you’ll need to pick up a Bee Egg from the Honey Shop, which you can find right in the middle of the playing area.
All New Seeds in the Bizzy Bees Update in Grow A Garden
The new Pets are cool, but the new Seeds and Plants might be even cooler. Hive Fruit and Nectarine can be bought in the Honey Shop with the Honey you called, but there is also a new Seed Pack:
Some real bangers, time to make money!
Similar to the Hive Fruit and Nectarine, the Seed Pack can be purchased for honey in the Honey Shop. It will cost you 10 Honey, and it usually comes in stock of 1 or 2. The most profitable flower is obviously the Sunflower, but it is quite hard to get. If you are looking to make a profit, settling for a Pink Lily or the Purple Dahlia is the most economical option.
Flower
Rarity
Rose
Uncommon (40%)
Foxglove
Rare (25%)
Lilac
Rare (20%)
Pink Lily
Mythical (10%)
Purple Dahlia
Legendary (4.5%)
Sunflower
Divine (0.5%)
All Cosmetic Items in the Bizzy Bees Update
The Bizzy Bees Event brings a bunch of new cosmetic items to help you spruce up your garden with some extra charm. To get your hands on them, just check out the Honey Crate area inside the Honey Shop.
Time to make your friends jealous!
In addition to those goodies, there are three more decorative items you can pick up from the Honey Shop: the Bee Chair, Honey Torch, and Honey Walkway. They’re perfect for adding a sweet touch to your garden setup, and they have a fixed cost, so you don’t need to take a chance on getting them.
Item
How to Get
Rarity/Price
Honey Comb
Honey Store
3 Honey
Bee Chair
Honey Store
5 Honey
Honey Torch
Honey Store
5 Honey
Honey Walkway
Honey Store
10 Honey
Honey Pot
Bee Crate
Rare (26%)
BeeHive
Bee Crate
Rare (21%)
Honey Barrel
Bee Crate
Rare (21%)
Honey Pillar
Bee Crate
Mythical (16%)
Bee Podium
Bee Crate
Mythical (11%)
Honey Fountain
Bee Crate
Legendary (5%)
How to get the Pollinated Mutation in Grow A Garden
You can unlock the Pollinated mutation for your plants during the Swarm Event, which takes place every hour in-game. It works a lot like the earlier Moonlit and Bloodlit events. Once the event starts, bees will leave their nest and spend the whole time pollinating nearby plants on their own. The Pollinated Plant will have a Golden glow around it, and you will be able to see it through other plants.
How to get Honey in Grow A Garden
Look at him in there.
In Grow A Garden, you can collect Honey by gathering pollinated crops and placing them into the Honey Combpressor machine located in the center of the map. The machine will turn your fruits into Honey, which you can then use to buy different pets and seeds at the Honey Shop, run by the Queen Bee in the same central area. You need to bring 10 KG of Pollinated Plants in order to get 10 Honey. Once you put 10 KG of Pollinated Plants into the Honey Combpressor, they will be processed for 3 minutes, and then you can receive your well-earned Honey.
All Honey Shop Items in the Bizzy Bees Update
The Honey Shop is a charming market where you can purchase honey, bee-themed decorations, Plants, and more. Not all items are available at the same time. Please check regularly to see what is currently in stock. Sometimes it’s the Cosmetics, sometimes it’s the Crates and Eggs, you never know.
I need them all!!
Below is a list of all Items in the Honey Store, along with their price:
Item
Price
Flower Seed Pack
10 Honey
Nectarine Seed
40 Honey
Hive Fruit Seed
40 Honey
Honey Sprinkler
TBD
Bee Egg
18 Honey
Bee Crate
10 Honey
Honey Comb
3 Honey
Honey Chair
5 Honey
Honey Torch
5 Honey
Honey Walkway
10 Honey
All of the items are fairly priced, as getting Honey is fairly easy with a good garden. The Honey Sprinkler is not available in the game yet, and does not have a price at this time.
That is all for my Grow A Garden Bizzy Bees Swarm Event Guide. Check out our Grow A Garden Trading Value List to see which plants you can sell for the biggest profit.
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Boy, that escalated quickly. Elden Ring Nightreign, as I write this, has been out less than a day. So, of course someone’s already put out a video demonstrating a duos mod for it.
To be fair, I guess Nightreign’s devs had arguably thrown down the gauntlet to the FromSoft modding community when the game’s director admitted that duos play hadn’t been a big focus in development and would only potentially get some TLC further down the line.
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Anyway, modder Yui – that’s the same person responsible for Elden Ring‘s Seamless Co-op mod and its various siblings for other FromSoft games – is unsurprisingly the person who’s managed to whip this out in uber-quick fashion.
In the video below spotted by IGN, they demonstrate a mod that’d allow you to hop into a Nightreign session with just two players instead of the usual three or one plucky solo Soulser that’ll have a much easier time once the next patch drops.
“As the modification runs without connecting to the matchmaking server, it is possible to use additional mods during gameplay,” Yui explained in the vid’s description, adding that they “Made it for fun.”
As of right now, they’ve not released this mod to the public meaning you can’t play it. I’d imagine if they do intend to put it out that it’s currently a work-in-progress that’ll need a lot of extra graft to fine-tune the likes of balancing – that being the main thing FromSoft’s had to work on in order to make sure the game works just as well for solo players as it does trios.
After all, more stabby blokes, more stabs inflicted on bosses, therefore bosses need to be able to take more stabs to not die too easily, and vice versa.
If you’re going HAM on Nightreign this weekend, make sure to check out our bunch of handy guides to help you get to grips with it, and our ranking of every Nightlord, The latter’s based on key factors like difficulty, spectacle, and how often they brush their teeth.
The Borderlands Online archival saga continues, with the small group of people hoping to get the game playable putting out a call-to-action for those with coding experience (specifically with software like DNSpy and Unity Ripper) in order to break through the game’s character selection screen.
Previously, we covered YouTuber, game designer, and dataminer EpicNNG managing to get to the game’s class selection screen, but it seems he and his small team working on the archival project have hit a brick wall. Not in terms of skill, but in terms of time. They have a version of the game at their finger tips, they just need more hands to get the build working. He states: “Number 1: We know that we have the full game, we have confirmed we have the full game. Number 2: We know that we can get in eventually, it is just a matter of when.”
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In this call-to-action, a lengthy video detailing the journey so far, EpicNNG showed the perilous task as his small team went through old Chinese Borderlands Online websites in the search for a way to actually play the game. Doing so, they found ghost links and viruses, so it’s worth emphasising here that you should only really help out with this effort if you know what you’re doing.
The video is covered in statements making it clear that this is purely for archival purposes, and that he nor his team are looking to infringe on 2K’s intelectual property as to avoid the possibility of a cease and desist. However, it’s made equally clear that this project may be nearing a dead end thanks to the release of Borderlands 4 and the potential actions of 2K’s legal team, unless it gets more people on board to help. It’s worth noting that this article was only written following an exchange of DMs with EpicNNG, in which he stated that he understood the potential risks of this call-to-action being further publicised and was happy with it being covered nonetheless.
In the video, EpicNNG acknowledges that time is of the essence here, pointing to Activision’s take down of the H2M Call of Duty mod in fears it would suck attention away from the next Call of Duty. The worry is that, unless the team gets the game working soon, 2K would fear a similar thing with Borderlands 4 and send out a Cease and Desist.
This archival project, if successful, would be somewhat of a white whale for the video game archival scene. Not only is archiving any game difficult, Borderlands Online is a Chinese-only MMORPG that has been dead for years. Getting it working is an admirable goal. Here’s hoping that folks that can help see it and lend a hand before it’s too late. Though, if you’re a greenthumb when it comes to Unity or video game software in general, maybe it’s best to leave it with the experts and wish them luck.
I wanted to re-share it here along with some linked resources in the model.
The basic idea is that you can input your development costs (to market costs), along with unit economics (manufacture cost per game, freight, shipping, etc), and see how many games you need to sell to break even, along with your P&L for any given number of games sold.
This tool is inspired by Crowdfunding Nerd’s e-mail list tool “Kickstarter Success Calculator”, but it has some material differences. It also goes farther with a section to calculate your return on ad spend (ROAS) not just for a paid advertising campaign, but also for a review & preview campaign.
They will be able to provide shipping rates by geography – like this shipping estimate for Sigil from Fulfillrite. Most will break down their picking fees, the cost of packaging, and postage costs.
Key Considerations
Price isn’t the most important consideration when finding your fulfillment partner.
Reputation: Reputation and surety that they will get the job done smoothly, and without undue product damage, is far more important than a dollar or two savings on picking and packing. I recommend asking around in game design and publishing forums for peoples’ experiences with your with your most competitive.
Ease of Communication: You’ll need a good relationship with your sales rep to smooth the freight delivery process, and address any hiccups that come up during fulfillment. Make sure your sales rep is responsive and can help you workshop your fulfillment options.
Technology: My favorite thing about Fulfillrite is their tech platform. They have a dashboard where I can manage inventory, upload shipping details, and best of all, it automatically ties into our Shopify storefront.
![[🐝] Bizzy Bees Swarm Event Guide for Grow A Garden – How to Get Honey, Pets, and New Seeds](https://histream.ir/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/grow-a-garden-bizzy-bees-swarm-event-guide.png)
