AMD have announced that their Q3 2015 period saw a $197 million net loss, and an operating loss of $158 million. The comparison of revenue loss between this time last year and now doesn’t look so good on paper either, it was $1.43 million at this point in 2014 while right now it’s $1.06 billion.

While this is the fourth straight quarterly loss for AMD, they do point out that the quarterly revenue has increased 13% between Q2 and Q3. There’s also a good reason for the figures being so low as well.

Recently the company lowered the prices of their older model GPUs to make room for all the new R5, R7 and R9 cards, which resulted in a write-down of around $65 million inventory. Thankfully the new cards are selling well enough that the graphics segment of the pie to be up 12% quarter-on-quarter.

Talking on the latest figures, Dr. Lisa Su (AMD president and chief executive) had this to say:

“AMD delivered double-digit percentage sequential revenue growth in both of our segments in the third quarter. We continue to take targeted actions to improve long-term financial performance, build great products and simplify our business model. The formation of a joint venture of our back-end manufacturing assets is a significant step towards achieving these goals and strengthening our balance sheet.”

Battleborn is soon going to enter a period of closed beta at the end of the month. Because of that registrations are now open so you can sign up to take part, if you get chosen.

Of course, being a closed beta you can expect it not to be fully bug-free quite yet. That is the purpose of alphas and betas after all, testing while giving a few a taste of the game in its almost-finished state so they can hopefully whip up some excitement and interest among their friends when they’re allowed to speak freely of their time in-game.

To register you first need a SHiFT account, and obviously you must also agree to the game’s NDA. This prevents players from capturing gameplay footage, livestreaming, posting images, or publicly discussing the tests online so you’ll need to keep certain things close to your chest until it expires. You also need to meet the minimum spec requirements:

OS: Windows 7 x64-Bit or Later

Processor: Intel Core2 Extreme CPU Q6850/ AMD A8-3870k (Quad Core CPU’s)

Memory: 6 GB

Hard Disk Space: 10 GB free

Video Memory: 2 GB

Video Card: AMD HD 7700/ NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or better, PhysX support

Sound: DirectX 11 Compliant

If you’re up for it, head here to sign up for the Battleborn closed beta and keep your fingers crossed you get access.

Valve has removed the SteamOS icon from a batch of games compatible with Linux on Steam, meaning that Linux owners now cannot download those titles anymore.

Reportedly the reason behind the removal of the SteamOS icon from these games is because Valve had determined those games do not work properly with their new OS, and so ahead of the big launch of their new Steam Machine line have trimmed those games to avoid problems later on with games not working which could cause more work around a time they will be busy with the hardware launch.

Unfortunately because the Linux Tux was replaced earlier this year with the SteamOS icon, it does mean that regardless of whether or not a user is using SteamOS they cannot purchase and play these games any longer. However, games purchased before this removal can still apparently be downloaded and played as normal.

Steam Machines, Steam Link and Steam Controller all launch next month.

Steam might be one of the big name in PC digital distribution, but as many have found out their customer service has found to be at times… lacking. Most recently there has even been a post on the /r/steam Reddit about someone willing to seek legal action for the lack of response to their support ticket about a compromised account that had been left untouched for half a YEAR. Ouch.

Fortunately, it seems that Valve have recognised that work needs to be done.

“We started by realising we had a lot of software to write to build a new support system,” says Valve’s Erik Johnson in an interview. “The first feature that came of that was the ability to get refunds of purchases made on Steam. If a customer buys something they don’t like, they can get their money back in a pretty transparent way. We think that’s a good feature, but we don’t think it was the fix for support. It had a lot more work behind it that was long-term thinking than just refunds.”

Next step has been working on account security and theft, with updates coming to the mobile app and two-step authentication being put in place to try and help. They’ve also tried bringing in third-party companies to help, but found that because they were more focused on their numbers Valve have opted to instead provide better in-house training and solutions.

“It’s a function of training up more and more people answer customer issues,” explains Johnson. “We’re not there yet. It’s getting better internally; it’s just that it hasn’t yet translated to great support for users. We’re gonna get there, though.”

Owners of Macs found out when they bought some of Valve’s new hardware that their computers couldn’t make either the Steam Link or the Steam Controller work. Despite them having been advertised to work.

Valve are sending out apology emails now to all affected, hoping to make up for the oversights. They have cited the cause as “temporary software issues” and say they will probably last a few weeks before they can be fixed.

“We want to apologise for the delays in providing full functionality for the Mac platform. We’re doing everything we can to resolve the issues. For the latest fixes and functionality, we recommend that you opt in to the Steam client beta.”

An upcoming update will add support for Macs so that you can use the Link to stream from them, as well as adding support for video,audio and controller input. Gamepad emulation will also be supported on Macs for the Steam Controller.

Until then, Valve are adding the Valve Complete Pack to the Steam accounts of affected customers, giving access to them for all Valve games; past, present and future. It’s free and can be kept even if the customer opts to get a refund on their hardware. The returns policy has also been extended to 60 days and Steam will also cover postage for those wanting a refund.