![<h2>The Best Modern PC Games</h2>
<h3>(August 2020 Update)</h3>
<p>With 2020 more than halfway over, and plenty of great PC releases over the past couple of years, we thought it was high time to revisit our picks for the best PC games you can play right now.</p>
<p>To be clear, this list does not attempt to pick out the “best” or “most influential” PC games of all time, since comparing the gameplay of the original DOOM to its 2016 reboot isn’t exactly fair. Nor is it a list of the most popular games out there, or the top games in every genre. No, this is a list of games from the last decade that we at IGN – after plenty of internal debate – collectively recommend the most, based on our own tastes. Think of it as our staff’s personal recommendations to you for games we think you should play if you haven’t. To that end, these are our picks for the best modern PC games.</p>
<p>Let us know <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/best-pc-games#comments-section">in the comments</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/IGN">on Twitter</a> what made your list that didn’t make ours!” src=”https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2020/08/20/topmodernpcgames-slideshow-1597948371613.jpg?width=888&crop=16%3A9&quality=20&dpr=0.05″ class=”jsx-2920405963 progressive-image image jsx-294430442 rounded expand loading”></div>
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<p>According to Romero, id Software came to Sierra’s attention after Romero sent Ken and Roberta Williams a copy of one of the studio’s Commander Keen games. Ken Williams was impressed and invited the id Software to California to “talk business.”</p>
<p>At the time Sierra On-line was a PC development powerhouse, having found great success with the King’s Quest series and a host of other releases in the mid-to-late 1980s. Romero recalls being impressed by Sierra’s picturesque studio, which had more than 200 developers and was nestled in a town not far from Yosemite National Park. By contrast, id Software had just four employees.</p>
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The id Software showed Ken Williams an early version of Wolfenstein 3D, and Romero recalls being “dumbfounded” by his response.
“After about 30 seconds of watching, he wanted to show me the new game they were working on, Red Baron Online,” Romero said. “I was dumbfounded. Like, here’s the future, the start of a new genre: the first-person shooter. And Ken could not pay it any notice.”
Williams, for his part, was reportedly shocked to hear that id Software was making $50,000 per month from its shareware model, which was exploding in popularity in the early 90s. He offered to acquire id Software for $2.5 million in company stock.
Romero says id Software was thrilled by the offer, but decided to ask for an extra $100,000 in cash up front.
“Ken thought about it for a second, then he was like, ‘No thanks, but good luck with everything.’ So the 100k was a little too rich for him,” Romero says.
Wildly diverging destinies
The destinies of Sierra On-Line and id Software diverged wildly after that encounter. Just a few years later, Sierra On-Line was acquired by CUC International, which put it on the path toward collapse and closure. In the meantime, id Software made DOOM, which propelled it into the ranks of the most famous studios ever, later to be acquired by Bethesda and eventually, Xbox.
Had id Software decided to go forward with the deal, it may have met the fate of Red Baron developer Dynamix, which was shuttered amid a restructuring effort in 2001. Either that, or the success of DOOM might have pushed Sierra On-Line away from its fateful acquisition. Either way, gaming history might have been very different.
As it happens, Ken and Roberta Williams recently returned to the games industry after a lengthy hiatus. They are currently working on Colossal Cave 3D — a massive update of the classic 1970s text adventure. As for Romero, he recently made a new level for DOOM 2 with all proceeds aiding refugees from the Ukraine conflict.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
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