In a brief teaser on YouTube, Nightdive Studios acknowledged the new Thief campaign that was leaked in the recent Steam achievements fiasco. The studio confirmed its name, The Tarnished Mirror, and promised that we would learn more on November 2.

The video is a bit of good natured "aw, shucks," showing a pileup of posts about the leaked campaign (including one of PC Gamer's). It ends with the remaster's new key art of Garrett by artist Alexandru "Dominus" Negoita and a logo for Thief: The Dark Project Remastered - The Tarnished Mirror paired with audio of Garrett saying "Huh, not so secret anymore." I'm 99.9% sure that this is a pre-existing line from the games, and not a new recording by legendary voice actor Stephen Russell.

When achievement-tracking site Exophase somehow got its hands on a trove of 'cheevos for unreleased (even unannounced) games, most attention fell on the likes of Persona 6. But I lost my shit at the reveal of a number of Thief Remastered achievements referring to the yet-to-be-revealed Tarnished Mirror expansion. Exophase has since cleaned up the most spoilery stuff, but you can still see the original list in all its glory on The Wayback Machine.

I was already excited for this remaster of one of my all-time favorite games, but the fact that it's coming with a new, official expansion after 28 years is next level. Granted, there are already more great fanmade levels for Thief than time to play them in this life or the next, and the best of the best, like The Black Parade campaign, stand proudly alongside the original games.

But Nightdive's got the right stuff: A new, original campaign made by the mostly remaster-focused studio is an event in my book. Nightdive's bottom-up remake of System Shock 1 is one of the best immersive sims of the 2020s, and I've been eagerly awaiting more original, non-remaster work from the developer ever since. The fact that it's a new Thief campaign is more than I could have hoped for.

2026 has shaped up to be a quiet boom year for surprise expansion packs for old games: The Tarnished Mirror joins The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past and Quake: Dawn of the Machine. Thief Remastered has a Winter launch window, and I continue to hope the release will fall on the earlier side of it.

The new military shooter hotness is here in the form of Wardogs, from developer Bulkhead. Playing similarly to a popular Arma 3 mod, it puts an intense spin on King of the Hill, and after several successful betas, it has just entered early access. I wouldn't advise jumping in right now, though, because there's a substantial queue.

Joe Brammer, the CEO of Bulkhead, posted on Twitter yesterday that over 135,000 players had been let into the FPS thus far. "This is how many people are through the queue," he writes, with a screenshot. "We are letting people through in waves."

He admits he's "gotta take the 'L' on this one guys, we've got it but it's on me." The actual concurrent peak player count is 340,171, per SteamCharts. This is a popular game, and sadly, the backlog of people trying to get in has led to a surge in review-bombing on Steam.

Wardogs now sits at "Mostly Positive" on Valve's store, but was as low as "Mixed" due to an onslaught of fans deriding the online infrastructure and apparent "preferential treatment" given to streamers.

"It is absolutely ridiculous that streamers and other influencers are given preferential treatment by being allowed to skip the login queue," reads one negative review with over 13 hours on record.

"If you are a regular paying customer, do not buy this game," reads another frustrated review. "I paid full price on launch day expecting to actually play the game. Instead, I bought a full-priced login queue simulator. I have been stuck waiting in queue positions for hours, watching the numbers barely crawl, only to get an authentication error and be booted to the back of the line."

That's an annoying experience, to be sure. It should be noted Bulkhead has denied giving video makers any kind of fastpass for access. "These issues are affecting players across the board," Greg Medlin, senior community manager at publisher Team 17, says in a Steam comment. "Streamers aren't receiving preferential access; it's simply more visible when they're able to get into a serve because they're broadcasting it."

To be frank, this just seems par for the course for a smaller developer launching a big live-service game. There will be structural issues for some time until the servers stabilize. Give the devs a little space here, because maintaining games like this is always harder than it looks.

If you're wondering when Wardogs on PS5 and Xbox is happening, we've got bad news for you. Otherwise, here are more of the best FPS games you can play right now, if you're looking for something to do while waiting in a queue.