These incredible LAN party photos remind us how much work it used to be to play games together

For a subset of PC gamers, happiness was a basement crammed with off-white tower PCs, interlaced extension cables, two-liter bottles of full-sugar Coca-Cola, and enough players to fill out both the Terrorist and Counter-Terrorist sides on de_dust. LAN parties represent a blip in time.

Recent rumours are stating the number one reason that AMD's new Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT cards aren't appearing in China is because the red team has stuck 'Made in Taiwan' on the boxes.

Rockstar Games held a "Heists Challenge" event in Grand Theft Auto Online in 2020 that included rewards for the entire community if players could collectively steal at least $100 million—in GTA dollars, of course—in a single week. The community responded by stealing 10 times as much—$1 trillion—before the event was over. So for 2022, Rockstar upped the ante to $2 trillion—and once again, players proved more than up to the task.

The very fact that I get to play as some tattooed hive ganger or a loveable ogryn instead of a Space Marine brings me so much joy, especially since the human perspective of 40K is so rarely aired beyond Black Library novels. Does it need a lot more work? Yes, but Darktide is a solid foundation.