A popular streamer turned down a 6-figure deal to play Arc Raiders be…

Everyone has a price. Maybe it's $100, maybe it's $1,000, maybe it's for someone to see your innate value as a human being, or maybe it's $1,000,000. Popular streamer TimTheTatman recently revealed what it would take to get him to go back to Arc Raiders, and spoilers, it's not the third option.

There was apparently an ad deal floating around for the Arc Raiders and Subway collab, which TimTheTatman was approached for, but did not entertain. "I did say no to six-figures with Arc Raiders, I did," he revealed in a stream earlier this week. "I said 'No thank you'. And it was the Subway Arc Raiders ad. I said I just can't do it, I'm sorry."

This was met with the exact response you'd expect with people being baffled that he'd ever think of turning down such a lucrative offer. "That's kind of the funny part of being in a streamer position," TimTheTatman continued. "People say 'you're a fucking sellout' but then in the same breath I said I passed on six-figures from Arc Raiders and people are like 'you're fucking stupid'."

He revealed that he does actually have a price to play Arc Raiders again: they'd just have had to add another zero onto the offer. "If that Arc Raiders deal was seven-figures—hey boys welcome back to Arc Raiders and Subway, right, you see what I'm saying? 100% we're going back. But it's just for me, the game frustrated me so much—I got frustrated so much with that game, I just don't want to play it ever again. Even to a point where six-figures isn't going to get me back on it."

I can't say I'm surprised. Arc Raiders is in a bit of a rough spot right now, especially for streamers, what with all the cheating and stream sniping. Embark Studios' executive producer Aleksander Grøndal recently admitted the shortcomings of Arc Raiders and promised that its upcoming major update Frozen Trails will reset the game and provide enough incentive to get players to come back, though—even if they don't get a six-figure deal to do it.

PC gaming has always been an expensive hobby, but prices have become downright ridiculous as of late. It's bad enough that Nvidia's RTX 50-series cards cost slightly less than an international flight, but the memory supply crisis is also driving up the price of RAM and SSDs. Now it looks like motherboards might be next to see a significant price spike.

Board Channels is a forum for hardware manufacturers and partners to communicate. One poster recently wrote, "The price of upstream raw materials for motherboards has indeed risen significantly." They go on to say that the price of motherboard PCBs alone has increased by between 15% and 50%. Wi-Fi modules are said to have gone up between 10% and 20%, while capacitor prices have also gone up approximately 50% (via Videocardz).

As we've reported before, these price increases are likely caused by material shortages resulting from the Strait of Hormuz crisis and the ongoing Iran war. For instance, PPE resin can be thought of as the glue that binds the many layers of a PCB together, and a huge chunk of the world's high-quality PPE comes from petrochemical company Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) in Saudi Arabia. Not only does this company rely on the Strait of Hormuz to ship exports out, but Reuters reports SABIC's Jubail plant was attacked back in April.

The Board Channels source writes, "The rise in raw material prices for components has at least a 10% impact on the cost of motherboards." Therefore, the prices consumers see will likely have to increase to keep pace—though we've yet to see the peak.

"Looking at the price increases from major motherboard manufacturers in August, the overall increases were relatively small, only around 3%, and affecting a limited number of models," the source continues, "Among Taiwanese brands, MSI raised prices across the board, while Asus and Gigabyte only increased prices for their main models, with small increases ranging from 5-50 yuan. Domestic brands [in China] like Colorful and Maxsun only increased prices by 10-20 yuan, resulting in a relatively small overall increase."

For context, five yuan is about $0.74. 10 yuan is $1.49, and 50 yuan is still only about $7.44 at time of writing. But the source goes on to say, "There is still room for motherboard costs to rise, and it is possible that motherboard manufacturers will continue to raise prices for certain models in the coming months."

In other words, as with so much of hardware pricing right now, it's likely going to get worse before it gets better. Same old story, eh?

No consumer technology market is pleasant right now, but somehow, even during a RAMpocalypse, Sony and Microsoft are managing to make console gaming look like the worse of two evils. Both brands have filed motions to dismiss class action lawsuits that charge them with not passing on tariff refunds to their consumers, even while a few gaming PC brands are managing to make the consumer-friendly decision in the opposite direction.

In case you're not up to speed, last year, US tariffs were brought into play by President Trump that had massive knock-on effects for consumers. As import and tax rates changed on products produced outside of the US, some brands were forced to increase their prices. This impacted plenty of technology companies, but led to price hikes on the PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X.

Now, the US Supreme Court has deemed these tariffs illegal, resulting in refund payments being made to impacted businesses. That means that Sony and Microsoft are being paid back damages for the extra money they had to pay the US government for operation in its markets at the time - in fact, back in July, Sony told its investors that it expected to receive $508 million in refunds. In theory, this is money that should be passed on to the consumers who stomached the extra costs, not pocketed by the businesses who changed their prices to still ensure profits came in.

Lawsuits were filed against Sony and Microsoft that accuse them of hiking prices solely due to US-imposed tariffs and argue that consumers are now entitled to refunds, but both companies' legal teams have countered by requesting that a judge dismiss the suits, shunning any legal responsibility.

"There is nothing unjust about Plaintiff purchasing an Xbox at an advertised price and getting exactly what he paid for—regardless of whatever theory he devised months later about Microsoft’s cost structure," said Microsoft's legal team in their request for dismissal, according to Game File.

Similarly, Sony's legal team reportedly said: "Paying fair market price for voluntarily purchased consumer goods is not a legally cognizable injury in fact."

Pleading Sony's innocence and pointing blame at inflation, component costs, and demand, the letter also read, "If tariffs were the cause of the price increases, one would expect SIE to lower prices once the tariffs were eliminated – not raise them again.

"Instead, the timeline confirms that PlayStation console pricing includes a diverse and dynamic set of input costs," the letter reads in GamesIndustry.Biz.

Meanwhile, a little less than a month ago, PC building brand Arctic announced it would be passing on its US Tariff refunds onto its consumers through a US promotional sale of its goods:

"As a consumer myself, I feel your pain," said Arctic's CEO, Magnus Huber. "We're passing it on to you by offering a dedicated sales promotion across the US... it will remain active until every single dollar ARCTIC received from the tariff refund has been paid back to our customers."

This was a surprising move, particularly in a gaming PC economy that's absolutely rancid thanks to AI-induced inflation that's still impacting tech manufacturing, arguably more than US tariffs were.

Similarly, Panic, the maker of the Playdate handhelds, is also directly refunding customers who paid extra during the US-tariff period. Granted, this pro-consumer response is rare and not echoed by many other tech brands, but as industry leaders, it reflects badly on Sony and Microsoft to make less effort than smaller brands working to help their customers.

I'm not going to sit here and say that PC gaming is more affordable, but I think any ruse that Sony and Microsoft have managed to get across through the years that console gaming is somehow more consumer-friendly is dead and gone. In the last few months alone, Sony has announced the end of its support for physical media, has insinuated that anyone who doesn't understand digital licensing is an "unreasonable consumer", and has reiterated its terms and conditions through an email to PlayStation account holders that reminds them of their lack of digital ownership.

Yes, Sony, "for the players" indeed.

PC gamers should also take a look at the best graphics cards, the best RAM for gaming, and the best computer speakers.

No Man's Sky and Hello Games lead Sean Murray is back on social media with more vague emoji-posting – this time in the form of a cocktail emote that sure looks a whole lot like it might be referencing the upcoming Cosmos update for the survival game.

You know, because of the drink, the cosmopolitan? Also known as a "cosmo" – and that's what folks think Murray is teasing here.

It all started with a post on X that included a single cocktail emoji. Then, the official Hello Games account responded with a few more cocktail emojis.

Understandably, fans immediately went wild with theories, ranging from martinis (which, just, why?) to, of course, cosmos.

Over on Reddit, the theorizing is running wild as well… much to nobody's surprise, ever. As one response to a screenshot of Murray's emojis reads, "There's a cocktail called a Cosmo. So multiple are 'Cosmos'… right?" Right, indeed, anon. Right, indeed.

Another jokes, "Cosmos update is actually just adding alcoholic drinks to the game." Honestly, at this point, it could be, seeing as we know next to nothing about the huge patch.

It exists, and it's coming – that's about all that Hello Games has confirmed thus far, aside from its name, and the developers have said absolutely zilch about it since they first unveiled it in August.

This isn't the first time Murray and the team have posted mysterious emojis, either. It's how they teased the Remnant update in February, which launched with a Garry's Mod-style gravity gun and more just days later.

It's also the way that The Swarm update, which brought a bit of Helldivers 2 flair to the survival game's mix, was hinted at in May… also shortly before it launched.

Then there were the stadium emojis, which were teasing the big Xeno Arena update that dropped earlier this year, introducing a fun Pokemon and Palworld-esque creature battling system that fans had been requesting for nearly two years – so, yeah.

Does this mean that the Cosmos update is coming sometime soon, perhaps within the next few days or weeks? Maybe – I know that I'd certainly recommend keeping an eye on the Hello Games social media accounts, personally.

No Man's Sky fan adds Nvidia's DLSS 5 to the game, Hello Games programmer worries the AI filter could ruin its "unique look and feel"