I can't get enough of the Winter Olympics, so I've been looking for video games that recreate the feeling of watching people risk their lives in the cold. I recently picked up Steep for its Road to the Olympics DLC. Steep nails the rush of speeding down a hill, but it's better at capturing how it feels to hop up one.

Earlier this week the International Olympic Committee announced Russia was banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Despite that news, Russia is going to remain in the winter sports sim Steep Road to the Olympics, at least for now.

If you're not really tempted by anything that's come out lately, or you missed out on the chances to pick up some good games from 2016, here's an opportunity.

On December 9, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person and I walked into the recording booth at Kotaku's New York headquarters to stream Steep, Ubisoft's extreme winter sports game. Aside from the faulty controller, horrible accents and Cronenbergian horrors, it went pretty well.

Last week Ubisoft's Steep opened the slopes of its majestic mountains to extreme winter sports fans around the world. We've spent a bit of time with the game, and we have much to discuss.

Now that the servers are finally live in Australia, people have been able to let loose on the slopes of Ubisoft's latest open world: the extreme sports racer Steep. And so far, people are pretty chill about it.

Amidst all the hype and drama of The Game Awards, you might have forgotten that Ubisoft's open-world extreme sports adventure Steep launched today.

If you tried to load it up earlier today - the day of launch - or right now, you won't be able to play. And there's a reason for that.

At any given point in Ubisoft's upcoming extreme winter sports extravaganza you can stop what you're doing, teleport to a hot air balloon and launch yourself from it wearing a nought more than a half-arsed flying squirrel costume.

Pro skier Matilda Rapaport has been killed in Chile while shooting footage for Ubisoft's upcoming sports game Steep.