Nightdive Studios' Stephen Kick has 8,544 hours in Dota 2, and just clocked his 5,000th win: 'I think it's made me a better leader'

Nightdive Studios’ Stephen Kick has 8,544 hours in Dota 2, and just clocked his 5,000th win: ‘I think it’s made me a better leader’ | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Gaming Industry Doom co-creator John Romero adores Ghost Recon and has over 3,000 hours in World of Warcraft: ‘God, I lived in that game every day for five years’ RPG The dev behind my top upcoming RPG is a Hungarian chef who thought ‘if not now, then when?’ and learned coding from scratch to make his dream ‘eurojank’ masterpiece FPS Hellscreen, the FPS with a rear-view mirror, has left Steam early access two episodes short of its original plan: ‘This is a bittersweet experience for me’ Games The best PC games to play right now Horror ‘Art and science and procreation, that’s about all life is good for:’ Two former freeware developers are still trying to keep it weird in an era when companies ‘sell games to people in 5-second clips’ MOBA I’m sad Deadlock is ‘just’ a MOBA—not because I don’t like them, but because I’m in love with Valve’s lore and characters enough to want any other game instead Third Person Shooter Helldivers 2’s siege of Cyberstan is the greatest galactic campaign the game has seen so far Games The best free games on Steam Roguelike To celebrate 2 years of Balatro, creator LocalThunk reflected on dropping out of an engineering program to make games: ‘Even if I could warn myself I’m not sure what I could have said to prepare for the insanity’ Games The best free PC games Games The 20 best cozy games on PC that aren’t farm sims Games Think you know gaming? 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Come back every weekend to read a new interview, digging into the important questions, like “how tidy is your desktop?” and “what game will you never uninstall?”As with many first-generation PC gamers, Stephen Kick was exposed to the hobby through id Software’s gateway drug Wolfenstein 3D. “I went over to a friend’s house and they had their home computer, the big bulky white CRT,” says the cofounder of remaster specialists Nightdive Studios. “I just remember being blown away by those ‘realistic’ sound effects and amazing 3D ultra-realistic graphics … it was an awakening of sorts.”Today, Kick has become one of the most diligent curators of PC gaming’s early years, with Nightdive refreshing and reviving countless PC classics like Doom, Quake and System Shock 2. In 2023, the studio also produced a remake of the original System Shock, which received near-universal critical acclaim after a long and difficult development.Nightdive’s most recent project was Blood: Refreshed Supply, a second overhaul of Monolith Productions’ debut shooter that came bundled with two of its best mods: “That was an extremely fun collaboration that we want to continue on with our future releases,” Kick explains. “If you’ve got a mod that you’ve put a lot of your work into, and a lot of your heart for a classic game that hasn’t been remastered yet, come talk to us.” Related articles 219 hours of XCOM 2 and 20 minutes of Fallout: Size Five Games’ director Dan Marshall takes us through the games on his PC Doom co-creator John Romero adores Ghost Recon and has over 3,000 hours in World of Warcraft: ‘God, I lived in that game every day for five years’ What games did you play over the holidays? Kick put down his virtual dust cloth to chat with me about what he’s been playing on his PC lately, which took us from the fortified gardens of Popcap to the deepest, darkest jungles of Valve.What gam