Mortal Kombat 1 has only been out for a few days. Diablo IV is barely a few months old. And Pikmin 4 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are Nintendo games, so they rarely go on sale. But right now on QVC—yes, that old shopping network—you can get any of these games for $40 thanks to a deal for new customers.

I won’t bore you with my stories of watching QVC—a home shopping channel launched in 1986—whenever I need something in the background while playing mobile games or building Lego sets. But I don’t need to explain that most people reading this site likely don’t think of QVC when they think of “Places to buy video games.” Yet QVC does sell video games! And right now you can get a bunch of new and old games for either $20 or $30 off, depending on the price of the game.

Before we begin, you’ll need to create a QVC account. (And you’ll need to be a new member and this will need to be your first order for this deal to work.) Then pick out a video game and toss it in your cart. Then apply one of these two discount codes:

NEWQVC30: $30 off your first order of $60 or more.

NEWQVC20: $20 off your first order of $40 or more.

You can’t combine these deals, but with the $30 off coupon, you can grab any $60 or $70 game and knock a large chunk off its price. And while QVC doesn’t have a huge selection of games compared to Amazon or Gamestop, the shopping network does offer some new, AAA hits, like Diablo IV, Mortal Kombat 1, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Ride 5, Pikmin 4, Madden NFL 24, Immortals of Aveum, Street Fighter 6, God of War Ragnarok, and Watch Dogs Legion.

Any of these games (or other games) will work with either discount code. In fact, any item on QVC can be purchased with either discount. The key is that your cart needs to have $60 or more in it so you can save $30. Or $40 or more in it to use the $20 promo code. QVC says these codes will only last for a limited time, so don’t wait around if you want to grab any of these games for less than their full price.

Now, before I leave you, let’s check out that time an air mattress failed after the hosts stood on it with heels. Or what about that time a caller got very angry on air when someone interrupted their phone call? Or when a guest got too excited about consumerism and fell off the stage, hurting his “booty” in the process. What a network!

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South African-Canadian immigrant Elon Musk promised on September 27 that he’d test livestreaming on X (you know it as Twitter) “with some silly stuff,” he said, like a Diablo IV speedrun with no powerful Malignant Heart add-ons. On September 28, he decided to livestream the Texas-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, a five-hour drive from the border town he supposedly lives in, instead.

With an awkward black cowboy hat sitting on his head and a black Dead Space shirt clinging to his red skin, Musk had the look of what he thinks is a real Texan (“My hat is ten years old,” he insisted. “I’ve hip-fired a 50 cal while walking”) concerned about “the border crisis.” He’s hoping his stuttering, freezing “citizen journalism” livestream will change the world, he wrote on Twitter.

But, unlike the powerful pieces of citizen journalism that provide primary-source insight into some of the world’s biggest crises, Musk did not organically capture the Texas border; he interviewed a local congressman and sheriff about “the illegals” and all the cars they’re stealing.

“All over the country,” Sheriff Randy Brown said.

“New York City is buckling under the load [of immigration] already,” Musk wrote on Twitter. This year, NYC reached its peak of homes-per-person since 1940, though many residents can’t afford to live in any of them.

Can Elon Musk solve the border crisis?

“As an immigrant to the United States,” Musk said during his stream, “I am extremely pro-immigrant. I believe that we need a greatly expanded legal immigration system.”

“But, then, by the same token, we should also not be allowing people in the country if they’re breaking the law,” continued Musk, who is currently facing criminal investigation by the Department of Justice. “That doesn’t make sense. The law is there for a reason.”

I have a personal relationship with immigration, too—both of my parents are immigrants, and throughout my life, I’ve seen the challenges that status guarantees you if you, unlike Musk, do not have a father to allegedly fund your move through emeralds. Immigrants whose lives are not studded with emeralds face a number of dehumanizing challenges once over the border, including a higher poverty rate than citizens, family separation, and a justice system built to crush them.

Immigration is a gargantuan, global and historical issue—the first “real Americans,” as we now understand that term, were law-breaking immigrants—and its many scar marks aren’t going to be massaged away by one billionaire…at least not one who keeps all his money.

“Pronouns in bio means the woke mind virus ate your brain,” Musk said on Twitter 16 minutes after writing that “Illegal immigration needs to stop.” Ugh, all his inflammatory opinions are giving me a headache. Next time, stick to Diablo IV.

Overwatch 2 announced its creepy season seven, Rise of Darkness, in a teaser trailer on October 2. The full trailer will go live on October 4, but, for now, fans should prepare for a Diablo IV crossover.

The brief teaser keeps the extent of the crossover close to its chest, but it at least confirms that Rise of Darkness will involve the Tristram Cathedral final point in Blizzard World, a map introduced in 2018 that features different sections dedicated to developer Blizzard’s myriad franchises. Humanoid Omnic bots hover among the desolate brick, along which one of Diablo’s red portals has stretched open.

Hero Wrecking Ball’s typically chrome-colored shell rolls through, decorated in black, red, and gold, which is more suited to Diablo’s fire and brimstone. But the real showstopper is support character Moira, whose Lilith skin is a stylized version of the Diablo IV demoness’s instantly recognizable regalia. Moira ditches her typical cybergoth bodysuit to, like the original Lilth, get crowned with twisted goat horns, ridged, reptilian eyebrows, and black lipstick. Her usual black-and-purple color palette is retained, though, in a V-neck outfit topped with gnarled shoulder pads. In other words, as one Reddit commenter put it, she is “mothering hard.”

Rise of Darkness leaks from Bulgarian streamer bogur also point to a battle pass stocked with a super rare Mythic skin (this kind of skin has some customization options including color palettes and detail variations, and unlocks in stages as you progress through the battle pass) for the archer Hanzo, and then, some more Halloween-appropriate looks: a gothic Ghost Bride dress for Widowmaker and a Victorian Doll outfit for flying robot Echo, topped with a blonde wig that people on Reddit have decided is not be mothering hard, but you can judge for yourself. Each Overwatch 2 battle pass costs $10, or 1,000 Overwatch Coins.

The upcoming season marks yet another seemingly unlikely collaboration for Diablo, which recently added Lilith and fallen angel Inarius to Call of Duty’s operator roster, and, in the summer, joined forces with popstars Halsey and Suga (from BTS) to create a perfectly fine “Diablo IV anthem.” At this rate, I’m readying myself for the inevitability of a limited edition, Diablo IV, microbrewed IPA line. Overwatch, too, has had a recent collaboration with One Punch Man as well as a Star Wars-inspired event.

Overwatch 2 Season 7 drops on October 10.

Elon Musk followed up on a September proclamation that he’d test out video game livestreaming on X (Twitter), with a run through Diablo IV’s most difficult Tier 100 Nightmare dungeon. The October 2 stream was an unprecedented success, in the sense that it happened with—as far as I can tell—zero race-baiting. However, pervasive technical difficulties make it unlikely that X will soon be a serious streaming platform.

Musk made a burner account—@cyb3rgam3r420—to troubleshoot Twitter’s streaming capabilities for an hour, and to debut his lighting setup: a few candles in an otherwise unlit room. “For atmosphere,” Musk said about the candles.

His character, named IWillNvrDie (though Musk died three times in a later Diablo stream on his main account, once because he got annihilated by a bursting blood blister), is a werewolf Druid. He uses mostly Earth skills like Claw and the Earthern Bulwark shield, and he wields gear that complements his Storm Wolf build well, like the Greatstaff of the Crone.

“Sensible picks,” Kotaku video lead Eric Schulkin told me over Slack. “Where is he streaming from, a crypt?”

Aside from Musk’s questionable room lighting, his practice stream looked and sounded all right. On his official stream, though, Musk fretted over whether he sounded like a chipmunk—he did. The stream “upped sound frequency by 4 kHz,” he said on Twitter. The screen flickered lazily, like Musk’s tall, two-wick candle, making Musk’s silent gameplay nearly unwatchable.

Unlike Twitch or YouTube, Twitter doesn’t show live comments (which only subscribers can leave) on screen, so Musk would also sometimes drop the game entirely to giggle at his phone.

Read More: Citizen Journalist Elon Musk Livestreams Mexican Border In Dead Space T-shirt

“Chat room too full, ha ha ha ha,” he said.

At the end of his play session, Musk noted that Twitter has “a lot of things to improve” in its streaming. You might wonder how Musk finds spare time to grind to level 100 in Diablo, manage his plethora of businesses, and find time to be a good father to his 11 or so children. I don’t think he does. Court records from September 29 indicate that Musk’s ex-girlfriend and mother of at least three of his kids, Grimes (Claire Boucher), sued him for parental rights. And, well, Twitter’s as ruined as a Diablo dungeon.

Today, during Blizzard’s Diablo IV Developer Update livestream, members of the game’s dev team dove right into the myriad changes expected to arrive with the game’s next big update: Season of Blood. But tweaks to loot drops and XP rewards won’t be the only new experience for PC players, as the game is now confirmed to arrive on Steam on October 17, 2023.

Originally released on June 5, 2023, for consoles and PC, Diablo IV initially required use of Blizzard’s well-known Battle.net launcher. But like Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 before, the latest entry in the classic ARPG will also coexist on Steam. During the developer stream, Associate Director of Community Adam Fletcher said that Diablo IV will go live on Valve’s marketplace alongside season two’s launch and will feature full cross-play and cross-progression right out of the gate. The Steam page for the game is now live.

Diablo IV on Steam means better Steam Deck integration

As Fletcher stated during the developer stream, one benefit of all this is that those of us who’ve wrangled with the back-end process of getting Diablo IV on Steam Deck won’t have to struggle as much anymore.

Diablo IV runs surprisingly well on Steam Deck (provided most of the graphics settings are scaled down to the lower side of things), but since Valve’s mini PC doesn’t run Windows natively, Blizzard’s ARPG isn’t as easy to jump into as other games are on the platform. That said, since Diablo IV is an always-online game, you’ll still be restricted to wherever you can snag a wi-fi connection should you want to take the fight to Lilith on the go.

A Steam version of Diablo IV opens the door to user reviews

While Battle.net pages for games can link you directly to a game’s forum page, there isn’t a way to leave or read user comments on the service. Steam, on the other hand, is often desired for its detailed user reviews, which sometimes possess a refreshing level of honesty and sometimes see players unite over common gripes, justified or not. Overwatch 2, another Blizzard live service title, exemplified this, as it’s taken a beating from gamers on Valve’s marketplace. The game currently has a status of “Overwhelmingly Negative,” based on some 193,000 reviews.

Read More: Overwatch 2 Steam Reviews Are Predictably Brutal, Say Porn Is The Best Part

Diablo’s transition to a live-service game hasn’t been without significant road bumps. Over the summer, Blizzard took to apologizing for some devastating changes to the core gameplay after angering fans.

Now that the game will be on Steam, potential criticism might feel a bit louder.

Diablo IV’s second season, the “Season of Blood,” is set to go live next week, bringing with it some big changes that Blizzard hopes will improve the action-RPG and bring back players. And while we’ll have to wait to see if Patch 1.2.0 can pull that off, I can at least tell you that, yes, update 1.2 is massive, with the patch notes for it stretching across seven different sections totaling 10,000+ words.

Diablo IV, released in June across PC and consoles, is the latest entry in Blizzard’s popular and long-running demon-killin’ franchise. The game offers more or less the same classic looting and dungeon-crawling action the series is famous for. And like Diablo III, Blizzard’s latest ARPG features seasons that bring new enemies, items, and weapons into the game. However, the game’s first season didn’t go over well with fans due to how long it took to level up and other annoyances, some of which had existed in the game since launch. Blizzard has since corrected some of those problems, but this massive upcoming update seems focused on addressing many of the other lingering issues players have with the ARPG.

Buy Diablo IV: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

Diablo IV’s season two and 1.2 update land on October 17 across all platforms, and ahead of that, Blizzard published a very long changelog detailing every tweak, change, balance adjustment, addition and fix coming next week. It’s far too long to post entirely here, and covering every change would take a long time.

But here are some highlights that I think all players, even those who’ve barely played the game since launch, will appreciate.

• Items can now be marked as Favorite. Items marked this way cannot be sold or salvaged. Items in the Stash can now be marked as Junk or Favorite, too.
• The Stash can now be searched and filtered to more quickly find items.
• Using the Sell all Junk option will now only sell Junk in the active Inventory tab.
• Streamer mode has been implemented. Players who wish to hide identifying information—such as their character name or Battle.net username—can find these new settings in the Connect Options menu.
• Additional stashes have been added to Capital cities near important Vendors.
• Auto-run has been added. When pressing the bound key/button, the player will continuously move in the direction they or their mouse cursor are facing until another movement action or Skill is initiated.

• Blizzard added an in-game announcement for upcoming World Boss spawns and these big enemies now spawn every three and half hours instead of every six hours.
• The Minimap has been zoomed out to display a wider area.
• Two additional character slots have been added, totaling 12.
• Gems will no longer drop from regular sources, and can instead be crafted at a Jeweler using newly added gem fragments, which will now drop instead of gems. These fragments are stored in your materials tab, so they won’t fill up your inventory anymore.
• And crafted gems can be salvaged back into gem fragments at a jeweler.
• The overall responsiveness of Mounts has been improved and Blizzard says they are now less likely to get stuck on things or slow down unexpectedly. Mounts will also auto-jump over obstacles more consistently.
• The mouse cursor no longer needs to be at the edge of the screen for keyboard and mouse players to achieve full Mount speed.
• Base Mount Movement Speed has been increased by 14%. Your Mount’s top speed remains unchanged.
• The speed boost from Spur has had its duration increased by 50% and when using Spur you can now break through barricades.
• Manual Mount Cooldown has been reduced from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.
• The cooldown appearing after you’ve been forced to dismount from taking damage has been reduced from 30 seconds to 15 seconds.
• The cooldown for the Mount Combat skill has been reduced from 10 to 3 seconds.

According to Blizzard, the following loot adjustments have been implemented per World Tier.

• World Tiers I and II: Unchanged.
• World Tier III: Only Legendary, Unique, Uber Unique, and Sacred Rare items will drop. Players will instead receive additional crafting resources.
• World Tier IV: Only Legendary, Unique, Uber Unique, and Ancestral Rares will drop. Players will instead receive additional crafting resources.
• Gold drop rates have also been increased in World Tiers III and IV to balance out these changes.

Blizzard has also made changes to dungeon visuals and layouts, in an attempt to cut back on backtracking and add more visual diversity to each area. However, the company acknowledges these changes might not be enough and will listen to player feedback.

Some Diablo IV endgame changes include:

• The time between Legion Events has been reduced from 30 minutes to 25 minutes.
• The experience reward for completing a Legion Event has been increased by 75%.
• World Boss health and damage has been increased. Also, the quality of rewards received for defeating a World Boss has been significantly increased.
• The warning that indicates when a World Boss will spawn now broadcasts an hour in advance versus 30 minutes previously. Players are also notified 15 minutes before a World Boss spawns.

The patch notes also explained that the experience bonuses for being in a party and for playing in Higher World Tiers have been made multiplicative to increase effectiveness later in the game. Also, XP gained from killing higher-level creatures has been boosted “significantly.” Side quests will also offer better rewards in season 2, after the patch, and all renown rewards will persist between seasons and new characters. No more grinding a bunch of the same shit every time you start a new game or season.

Blizzard also confirmed that 700 Platinum can now be earned from the Battle Pass. Previously players could only early 666 Platinum.

And that’s…not even half of all the changes and tweaks coming in the next big patch. You can read the full 10,000+ words over on Blizzard’s official website. But the short story is that Diablo IV is hopefully going to become a less annoying, time-consuming, and grindy ARPG after patch 1.2.0.

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Action role-playing game Diablo IV wants fans to bleed for it. Really. The demon dungeon-crawler announced on October 20 that, for the next month, players can donate their actual blood in exchange for in-game items and, ultimately, for the chance to win a liquid-cooled PC infused with more human blood.

Check Out Diablo IV on PS5 and Xbox Series X on Amazon

It’s the Blood Harvest, developer Blizzard said in its reveal post, and it coincides with Diablo IV’s Season of Blood update. Until November 20, U.S. residents over 18 are able to log any blood center donations they make on the official Blood Harvest website.

“Our goal is to harvest a total of 666 quarts of blood,” Blizzard writes, and donors receive in-game items based on collective effort, as the puddle of blood tints the nation. “Crimson-coated cosmetics will be unlocked upon hitting 33 percent, 66 percent, and 100 percent of our goal,” including several weapon cosmetics at 33 and a red-eyed, dappled horse mount at 100 percent. Those who are not eligible for blood donation, or those who live overseas, can otherwise reap in-game benefits “as we progress toward our donation goal,” Diablo shares on Twitter. Currently, Diablo is 39 percent to its goal, meaning all Diablo players have access to new, red weapon skins.

Read More: Diablo IV’s Season 2 Patch Notes Are Over 10,000 Words Long

Additionally, any adult in the U.S., regardless of donation status, will be able to enter in Blood Harvest’s grand prize sweepstakes: a liquid-cooled PC infused with “real human blood.” More practically, it will also consist of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 and an Intel Core i9 CPU. You’ll be able to enter to win the custom-built PC once Blizzard collects its 666 quarts.

Blood Harvest has a ghoulish quality to it, mainly because it’s being orchestrated by Blizzard. But there’s an ongoing and serious blood shortage in the U.S., the Red Cross said in September, and I’m at peace with Blizzard’s call-to-gamers in a crisis. I wonder where blood in the PC—which reminds me of when Romans would drink gladiator blood to get virile, or when rapper Lil Nas X’s sold $1,000 bloody Nikes so people could look virile on Instagram—is sourced from; Kotaku reached out to Blizzard for comment. I’m hoping a blood-cooled PC will improve my KD.