Like many PC gamers around the world, I was appalled when I heard about the shutdown of Arkane Austin by Microsoft. Despite the studio's recent misery at Redfall, a game described by several commentators as "executives ruined everything," I speculated that its previous stellar track record and new ownership by the financial Juggernaut would insulate it from the tsunami of job losses in the gaming industry it witnessed last year.

But no, Arkane Austin, the studio that made the immersive sim masterpiece that is prey, and perhaps the studio that contributed to my favorite game series of the past 15 years, Dishonored, has left only traces of "anger and heartbreak" across the gaming community. Personally, I feel a lot of that frustration comes from the inability to do anything to fix this.

The only thing I wanted to do when I heard the news was play Arkane Austin's biggest hit and what splendor it brought to the release of Redfall As a huge Arkane fan, I already own most of its back catalogue, including its biggest piece, Prey, but this is not the case. With some sort of cosmic irony, if you're not playing the game, there's currently an 80% discount on GOG. Game masterpiece for the price of sandwiches. You can check the details below.

[Update - after 24 hours] Prey's existing discount has ended and the game has returned to GOG's regular price. However, I found that the CD key now has a digital deluxe version of Prey available at the same level of discount (81% to be exact). You can check out the discount details below:

Why Prey is So great is hard to explain briefly, and I certainly won't get into the exhaustive details here, but one of its best qualities is how it evokes the feeling of playing the spiritual sequel to Half-Life2. The key to that is not the quiet protagonist and the experiment is the wrong atmosphere, but the introduction of the Gelifoam Lattice Organism Obstacle Cannon (GLOO Cannon for short), a unique weapon/tool that not only hardens the foam, but also allows its foam to be used to build useful structures.

Need to reach the inaccessible floor? Why not build a staircase with a GLOO cannon and simply walk up it to reach the floor. Need to hold off dozens of prey villains that are descending into your place? Why not block the door with foam? Why not whip the enemy and bang it to death with your melee weapon from a safe position"You don't have much ammo left for your weapon.

GLOO Cannon is also just 1 way to unlock creative immersive play in Prey. There are even more ways to play with throwing the game Neuromods, a version of Bioshock's plasmid Prey that unlocks different abilities and powers. And it allows you to recycle items to create and upgrade other Weapons, items and ammunition in the game

Another reason to recommend playing Prey today is that the recommended system specifications are incredibly low by modern standards (this is not the case).1 (Remember that the game was released in 2017). This way, if you have any sort of modern gaming PC, Prey will run like absolute butter on your system. My machine with RTX3090Ti, 32GB RAM (DDR4), and AMD Ryzen7 5700X CPU absolutely crushes it. But the biggest reason we recommend playing Prey may be to experience the fear of the joy of its iconic imitating enemies. I won't say more to avoid spoilers, but when you come across them, you'll never see a coffee cup or chair in the same way again.