PC Gaming News Today: Outer Worlds 2 (Oct 30, 2026)

Outer Worlds 2 lands with a ray-tracing performance problem

The biggest PC story this week is Obsidian's The Outer Worlds 2, which launched October 29 on PC alongside PS5 and Xbox. The sci-fi RPG sequel is drawing mostly positive Steam reviews, but testers found that flipping on ray tracing causes a severe framerate drop even on top-tier hardware. Tom's Hardware reported the game running below 60fps at just 540p resolution on an RTX 5090 paired with a 9800X3D, a combination that should handle almost anything at full settings with ease. The outlet compared the stumble directly to Borderlands 4's rocky RT debut earlier this year, suggesting a pattern of big PC releases shipping with ray-tracing modes that need more optimization work. For now, players chasing the best visuals may want to stick to non-RT presets until a patch arrives.

Why it matters: ray tracing is marketed as a premium feature for high-end GPUs, so seeing it crater performance on the best consumer card available undercuts the point of enabling it at all. It also raises questions about how much testing big-budget PC ports get before launch day.

The Wolf Among Us Remastered brings back Bigby Wolf

Telltale's noir adventure The Wolf Among Us Remastered released October 29 on Steam and Epic, alongside consoles. The package includes all five original chapters from the Fables-based story, a new black-and-white Noir Mode for fans who want the classic detective-comic look, and more than an hour of bonus behind-the-scenes content. It's a straightforward re-release rather than a remake, but for anyone who missed the original 13 years ago, this is the easiest way to catch up before any potential sequel talk resumes.

Valheim's biggest update in a while reworks Deep North

Iron Gate shipped Valheim patch 1.0.21 on October 28, one of the survival game's larger post-launch updates. Several Deep North crafting recipes have been moved to the Food Preparation Table, which should streamline cooking for players deep into that biome. The patch also nerfs the fire-nova damage-over-time effect from Fimbulbringer, the final boss, making that fight less punishing. On the bug-fix side, Iron Gate patched an issue where loot could disappear by falling through the arena floor during that encounter. Long-time Valheim players have been asking for Deep North balance tweaks for a while, so this update should land well with the community.

Steam's Scream Fest V horror sale runs through November 2

Valve's annual Halloween-themed storefront event, Steam Scream Fest V, is discounting horror and dark-atmosphere games through 10am Pacific on November 2. The sale overlaps with the tail end of October's Steam Next Fest demo period, meaning shoppers can grab discounted horror titles while also trying free demos for upcoming games. If you've been eyeing a scary game for your October gaming lineup, this is the window to act before prices reset.

The bottom line

This week's PC news splits between a high-profile launch wobble (Outer Worlds 2's RT issues), a welcome nostalgia re-release (Wolf Among Us), a meaningful live-service patch (Valheim), and a seasonal storefront sale. Expect more commentary on Outer Worlds 2's performance as patches roll out in the coming weeks.