Take heed, Counter-Strike 2 players: Valve has issued a warning that not only will cheaters be dealt with harshly through permanent bans, those who merely “associate” with them will be punished for their bad behaviour too. What does that mean, exactly? We’re still waiting to find out from Valve, who may be keeping details about this aspect of its anti-cheat program deliberately unclear to avoid circumvention.

The caution came as a single line in the Counter-Strike 2 release notes that were posted on Steam yesterday. The very first line in the “Matchmaking” section states, “When one or more party members get convicted of cheating and permanently banned, all their associates will be penalized with loss of Profile Rank and CS Rating.”

Cheating in Counter-Strike has been an issue for almost as long as Counter-Strike has been around, among both casual players and on the pro scene. Valve has done almost everything imaginable to punish and deter cheaters over the years, and it …

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The latest Vampire Survivors update has dropped a decent stack of new stuff to do, focusing on five new Arcana cards to activate that’ll give you strange new ways to play the game. Most of the update focuses around a new challenge stage and the aforementioned new arcanas—the Darkanas.

The Darkasso update includes nine new achievements, a  new challenge stage, a new relic, two new character skins, and five new arcanas. Poncle notes that the five new arcanas are “considered experimental and subject to change.”

The new character skins are a new kind of “special skins” that in addition to changing appearances also alter their base character’s stats and weapons. They’re rewards for completing the two base game Adventure modes once—if you’ve already done that just open the menu.

The Darkanas sound kind of hysterical: One makes you spit out exploding projectiles every time you take damage, and the amount of health you’ve recovered over the run in…

The world of Minecraft custom content is so large that it supports countless different ways of playing the game, from all-out anarchy to prescribed roleplay. And then there’s things like Mineplex. First appearing in 2013 and subsequently becoming one of the most popular custom servers around, Mineplex’s schtick is custom minigames and multiplayer maps and it was so big it used to set records for player numbers. That popularity had dwindled in recent years, however, until on May 16 an announcement was made out of the blue: Mineplex would be closing its doors.

Reaction was uniform sadness. “Rest in peace,” wrote nepnep20 on the Minecraft subreddit, “I was online the day they hit 34k players and set a world record”. Limpdicklawyer, for it is they, said “Born to Mineplex, forced to Hypixel” (Hypixel is a hugely popular server on similar lines). “I know Mineplex has had issues but man,” said SomeRandomBear, “Watching a part of my childhood die here”.

The issues referred to ar…