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(Image credit: Havok) Say the name "Havok," and I instantly picture the yellow sawblade in the company's logo. For PC gamers of the 2000s, that logo was a promise: Wonderful things await. But do younger PC gamers know what the name signifies? And do the rest know that the Irish middleware company, made famous through its use in games like Max Payne 2 and Half-Life 2, is still working its physics magic in big, recent games like Elden Ring and Helldivers 2? Perhaps not, and if not, Havok GM David Coghlan suggests a funny reason for the diminished name recognition: SSDs. You may like Havok, whose software is famed for its use in Half-Life 2 and Elder Scrolls, just showed off its updated physics engine in first YouTube trailer in over ten years Unreal Engine often gets flak for games running poorly or stuttering, but as Avowed demonstrates, it's really about how devs use it and the pressures of time "The logo appears a little less in splash screens these days, as splash screens are sort of being done away with," Coghlan said on a recent call with PC Gamer. "The speed of hard disks meant that you needed something to occupy the player while the game was loading, and as we've moved to faster SSDs, now the emphasis is on trying to get the player in the experience as early as possible." Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I saw the Bink Video tornado. What have we done in the name of progress!? "I suppose we just want to make sure that people don't forget that Havok is out there powering many of the franchises that they play and love," Coghlan said. Balloons Demo - Havok Physics Particles - YouTube And people did forget. When Havok started posting new tech demo videos this year—one of them is embedded above—commenters were excited to see that the company was back. But it never went away. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Havok has been owned by Microsoft since 2015, and its tech is still used in lots of games, including Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Destiny 2, Doom Eternal, and Rainbow Six Siege. It was used in Astro Bot, which won a gazillion GOTY awards last year. Havok's software helps game developers with physics and cloth simulation, as well as NPC behavior. And although I do buy the idea that splash screens going out of style reduced its notoriety, Coghlan agrees that it's also just harder to impress gamers with a tech demo these days. Even the most basic and janky real-time 3D physics simulations were mind-blowing back in the 2000s. Max Payne 2 was worth playing just for the ragdolls, and after Half-Life 2 came out, with its Gravity Gun and sawblade-flinging, Havok became firmly associated with the cutting edge—we looked for the name on game boxes. Today, however, you're not going to blow anyone's mind with a box stacking puzzle, and even the destruction in the new tech demo below—cool as it is—doesn't quite stir up the same excitement it would've back when videos of bouncing balls and floating rubber duckies were shown to rapt E3 audiences. Dynamic Destruction with Havok Physics - YouTube David Coghlan, Havok GM (Image credit: Havok) But that doesn't mean Havok has run out of math to do; we might just have to look deeper to be impressed by it. The company continues to make its simulations of objects, fluids, particles, and cloth more efficient, allowing game devs to pursue more complex scenes and systems. And, Coghlan noted, Havok's work to make physics simulations harder to break allows developers to give players a longer leash. "If I think about the early days of physics, strange things could happen, like the key that opened the door could slip through a crack in the polygons, and then the developers have to get conservative, because they don't want to allow players to get themselves into trouble," he said. "And a lot of what we've been focusing on is to give developers the ability to actually put an awful lot of choice in the hands of the player, let players tackle things in a pretty open ended way." Coghlan also highlighted a lesser-known aspect of Havok's offering, which is related to NPC pathfinding. "We're seeing a significantly greater range of NPCs in terms of scale, in terms of movement types, in terms of movement capabilities," said Coghlan. "And a lot of our focus is on enabling developers to do a lot of the behind-the-scenes computation that a creative developer then will use to put together a really interesting, challenging set of NPCs and enemies for the player to interact with." Havok recently introduced a new pricing structure. At $50,000 per product at the low end, the software still isn't intended for no-budget garage studios, but Coghlan hopes the price will open it up to ambitious mid-sized teams. "I think what we're seeing overall is a little bit of an evolution in the games industry, where more mid-sized teams—teams that might have, say, 10s of employees—actually have quite a lot of ambition," he said. "You know, it's possible for teams to pick up one of the commercial engines, like Unreal or Unity, and actually be pretty ambitious in terms of what they want to achieve." I can back that idea up anecdotally, as I happened to speak to such a team very recently: Neon Giant, a Swedish studio of a little over 20 people that's making a first-person game it calls "ludicrously ambitious." (I don't know whether that particular studio and game are using Havok.) Wherever the physics middleware is used next, I wouldn't mind seeing the logo pop up again. Maybe now that every game seems to need 10 minutes to compile shaders at first launch, developers will find a new place for that little yellow sawblade. Tyler Wilde Social Links Navigation Editor-in-Chief, US Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Havok, whose software is famed for its use in Half-Life 2 and Elder Scrolls, just showed off its updated physics engine in first YouTube trailer in over ten years Unreal Engine often gets flak for games running poorly or stuttering, but as Avowed demonstrates, it's really about how devs use it and the pressures of time Epic talks shop about stuttering in games that use its Unreal Engine and offers solutions to the problem Fallout and Skyrim show us that talented developers make great games when you leave them alone While everyone's getting all excited or angry about all these new GPUs, I'd just like to remind everyone that graphics settings exist Former Valve exec says the company struggled to sell Half-Life until coming up with the ultimate 'one simple trick' of marketing manoeuvres: slapping a 'Game of the Year' sticker on the box Latest in Gaming Industry You don't see the Havok logo much anymore, but the legendary physics middleware used in Half-Life 2 never went away—just the splash screens I don't know why early 2000s internet is suddenly back, but both Ask a Ninja and Homestar Runner have just uploaded new videos Eugh: Discord is scanning some users' faces and IDs to 'experiment' with age verification features Ultrakill publisher co-founder throws up hands, jokes 'Tarkov has done irreparable f*cking damage to the game industry' because even FromSoftware games are extraction shooters now Seth Rogen goes rogue at science awards show to slam tech billionaires for backing Trump: 'It's amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr' When a game's identity becomes wrapped up in its rarity, what happens when it's re-released on Steam for 20 bucks? 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