Author: easyfilo

Enlarge / Bethesda will finally dispose of its publisher-exclusive PC-game launcher starting in April. (credit: Getty Images / Sam Machkovech)

In a welcome change of pace, a video game maker has announced the retirement of a “launcher” app for PCs, as opposed to announcing and releasing yet another one to a crowded market.

Bethesda Launcher, as maintained by the game maker and publisher of the same name, will fully shut down at some point in “May,” the company announced on Tuesday. Thankfully, affected users will get to carry every BL purchase and license over to Valve’s Steam storefront starting in “early April.”

This week’s announcement FAQ does not clarify exactly how license transfers will be handled, leaving us to assume that users will log in with their affected credentials to a website and receive a list of Steam redemption codes. In promising news, Bethesda insists that all games’ paid DLC and microtransaction currencies will transfer to the Steam versions seamlessly, so long as players log into a Bethesda.net account while in-game. The same goes for Fallout 76‘s “Fallout 1st” membership, though any recurring subscriptions handled via BL will not auto-renew in April and beyond. Those users will have to set up a new subscription plan via the game’s Steam version.

Enlarge / Windle is a clone of Wordle meant to fit in with old Windows games like Minesweeper and Chip’s Challenge. (credit: Dialup.net)

If you thought that Wordle was old news, here’s something even older: Dialup.net has created and released Windle, a Wordle clone designed to run on Windows 3.1 and the early ’90s PC hardware that would have been running Windows 3.1. 

You could run Windows 3.1 and its apps on modern hardware within a virtual machine or DOSBox, but to maximize its authenticity, Windle was built and run on period-appropriate hardware with period-appropriate tools. The PC used was a Gateway 2000 4DX2-66V with a 66 MHz Intel 80486 DX2 CPU, Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, and the very first version of the Borland Delphi development environment. Running on the original hardware helped expose issues that may not have been evident in a virtualized copy of Windows 3.1—like a system hang that would occur as the entire dictionary was loaded into memory by a 66 MHz processor, for example. 

Playing Windle works great in a virtual Windows 98 SE environment, just like the other Microsoft Entertainment Pack games. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Windle was designed to fit in with Microsoft Entertainment Pack games like Chip’s Challenge, JezzBall, Minesweeper, and Rodent’s Revenge, making its aesthetic instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up surrounded by the bulky beige PCs of the early ’90s. Like those games, it also runs well in early 32-bit versions of Windows like Windows 95 and 98—I tested it using a Windows 98 Second Edition installation I set up in DosBox-X to run old games and other software. 

Enlarge / The Galaxy S22 Ultra. It has a pen. (credit: Samsung)

Just like the Pixel 6 before it, the Galaxy S22 seems to be claiming some misleading battery-charging specs. The Samsung Galaxy S22 is not yet released worldwide, but a few early reviews are trickling out, and GSMArena put Samsung’s new “45 W” charging to the test. The site was not impressed with the results, calling the spec “misleading” thanks to not being any faster than the old 25 W charging.

Last year’s Galaxy S21 Ultra maxed out at 25 W charging. This year, Samsung upgraded the S22+ and S22 Ultra to 45 W charging, and it sells a new charger (sold separately, of course). Charging should presumably be significantly faster, but it’s not.

Last year, reports showed the 25 W S21 Ultra taking about 62 minutes to charge its 5000 mAh battery. This year, the Galaxy S22 Ultra has a “45 W” charger, and GSMArena clocked the phone at 59 minutes to charge its 5000 mAh battery. If we’re trusting the marketing numbers, that’s an 80 percent wattage increase for 5 percent faster charging—probably still in the margin of error for such a measurement.