News of the Week – 22 March 2021

Activision-Blizzard Esports faces layoffs:

Activision-Blizzard, not all that long ago, laid off hundreds of people, but now it has decided that seeing as the pandemic forced them out of real world spaces and into online spaces that the people working at Activision-Blizzard Esports should probably not be there anymore, and so a new round of layoffs commenced. At first, the number of employees that lost their jobs was numbered at about 50 people, but newer reports indicate that it may be closer to 190. Not the best thing to happen lately.

The pandemic was mostly to blame, according to Activision-Blizzard, but there are also claims of cost-saving measures and corporate restructuring as major factors for why these layoffs occurred. All of the esports from 2020 switched to an entirely online presence, and so there is no longer a need for big stadiums and such and so therefore some employees were rendered obsolete. However, we have no idea whether or not Activision-Blizzard plans on returning to in-person events once mass vaccination is complete. We’ll just have to see.

 

Alienware drops Riot Games:

Turns out that if you’re a bit of a creep then eventually things might stop going your way, and one of the latest such instances of consequences is that Alienware, which has sponsored Riot Games’ tournaments for years, has decided to cancel its deal with Riot Games seeing as the CEO of Riot has all that sexual harassment stuff he got sued over, plus all those gender discrimination lawsuits and such were just kind of… not a good look for Alienware.

So, consequences. They happen. It isn’t cancel culture, if someone wants to try and claim it is, Alienware simply doesn’t want to associate itself with sexual harassment and gender discrimination. It’s actually the free market, not censorship. Which is probably a good thing to do, from a business perspective, because you usually don’t want something like that hanging over your company.

Riot Games has not been seen in the best light over the last few years despite its statements that it will do its best to change things and curb the whole toxic and sexist work culture that it has allowed to fester for years. Yeah… not the best time to be a Riot Games executive or a sponsor of them. Not the best look.

A Stadia exclusive now comes to not dead platforms:

Stadia half-heartedly tried to take the world by storm, and then that didn’t end up working out because it was like… way too much work, man. So, the whole service stopped producing first-party exclusives and that kind of indicated the death knell of this service, but some publishers put a bit of cash into this thing and didn’t want to just watch their hard work die off. Enter Super Bomberman R Online.

This game was released on 1 September 2020 as a Stadia exclusive and it’s a 64-player battle royale in the style of classic Bomberman, and that kind of makes it a perfect thing for the battle royale formula! But now Konami has decided to announce that its game is coming to consoles and the PC with crossplay functionality. Seems the gospel of the Stadia didn’t manage to grab enough players for a 64-player game. A bit disappointing to at least some people, but at least other people now get to play a game that kinda needs a larger playerbase to work properly. So, this is probably for the best.

 

A fan fix for GTA V became official:

A GTA V modder/player who goes by the name t0st, discovered a way to reduce the game’s load times by 70% and Rockstar, the devs, were so impressed with the fix that it has decided to just go ahead and make it an official fix. Which must be a rather nice ego boost for t0st, but also great for Rockstar because it gets to have a nice bit of PR out of this too. They did validate a fan’s work, after all.

And t0st got a bunch of player rep for this, which is probably quite nice, but monetary compensation is a bit more tangible than player rep, and thankfully he did get paid through Rockstar’s Bug Bounty system. So, that’s nice. And it is rather awesome to see a massive developer like Rockstar genuinely take this onboard and realise that this can improve the overall experience for its players.

There should be a lot more respect thrown towards modders in general because other than a few high profile cases, such as the creation of Dota and Counter-Strike, modders are hardly ever given official credit for the work that they do, and more devs should come forward to give these talented people a shot at fixing things that official devs apparently can’t do.

Undertale is heading to Game Pass:

Undertale is just another of the new slew of games that arrived on Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service. With the recent confirmation of the acquisition of Bethesda, Microsoft has seemingly ramped up its output with bringing as many things as possible to the service. So, if you want to get access to loads of games, including Toby Fox’s fantastic 2015 RPG, then grab Game Pass.

The subscription itself appears to be growing as a stronger and stronger piece of material for Microsoft to use in its pursuit of increased console dominance. The service also, of course, exists on the PC, but the PC has long been a non-enemy of consoles; PC players simply don’t often convert to console. However, the big ole rivalry between Microsoft and Sony continues ever on, and with increasingly cheaper services like Game Pass, Microsoft has a shot of undermining Sony’s output. Maybe it would be a good idea for Sony to explore a similar path.

News of the Week – 15 February 2021

EA has acquired Glu Mobile:

A company you’ve likely never heard of has been bought up by the gaming behemoth that is EA, and that company you’ve never heard of is Glu Mobile. And they went ahead and bought this thing for $2.1b. Now, judging from the name, you’d immediately assume this is a mobile game developer and you would be very correct there. Glu Mobile made such brilliant titles as that Kim Kardashian game that gets advertised on social media and other games like Covet Fashion and Diner Dash.

The mobile market is bigger and striving better than ever before and so EA probably made a great decision in grabbing this company up. Mobile gaming fetches a huge part of the market share, and while this may not seem like a big deal to so-called “hardcore gamers”, it’s acquisitions like this that have larger impacts on the wider gaming industry and culture. So, watch out for things like this because events like this can have long reaching consequences.

 

Tencent now owns part of Bohemia Interactive:

And in other corporate acquisition news, the other gaming behemoth that is Tencent decided to buy up a minority share in Bohemia Interactive. This is the company most known for bringing the world the Arma games and the full game version of the DayZ mod. So, they’re not exactly on the same scale as some of the other things that Tencent owns, but they do employ over 300 people and so this isn’t an insignificant company.

Tencent has become rather infamous in recent years for snatching up stakes in companies like Epic Games, Riot Games and Supercell, and there have always been fears over whether or not the companies they invest in will end up caving in to Chinese pressure. We have already seen what the fear of China can do with companies like Blizzard and the whole Blitzchung thing.

However, Bohemia Interactive has jumped in to claim that it will still maintain full independence and be led by the current managers. So, provided that’s all true, things should remain as they are. But it’s important to keep watching Tencent, because its influence is growing at a consistent rate and its whims can easily sway the direction of game development.  

E3 will be all-digital in 2021:

The great year that was 2020 may have seen many people confined to their homes, unable to leave, but at least there was the consolation that it was also happening to big multibillion-dollar companies and lobbying organisations. So one of the biggest things that happens every year in the gaming world is the annual E3 event, which was then cancelled because of the pandemic, and so the question on at least a few people’s minds was what would be happening in 2021 seeing as the pandemic is still kind of… happening.

Well it turns out, according to some documents over at the Electronic Software Association (ESA), the people who organise E3, that the company is planning on making E3 2021 a wholly online event. So there will essentially be a bunch of online press conferences and such for the entire duration of the event, which is scheduled for 15-17 June.

Now, the event has become more consumer-focused over the last few years, and as such has become less of a gaming professional event, and so that is likely to continue. On top of that, companies like Sony, Nintendo and Devolver Digital have gone digital for some time now and so maybe they just won’t return to E3. It has kind of outlived its purpose as a marketing tool seeing as companies can just put something up on YouTube any time of the year when they want to announce things. So, we’ll have to see where things go from here. Is the age of E3 nearly at its end? Very possibly.

 

Forza Horizon 4 is coming to Steam:

Forza Horizon has always been an Xbox exclusive series. It’s one of those more realistic simulation racers, for those unfamiliar, and it’s been held up at practically every Microsoft event so surely someone is buying these games, but the interesting thing is that Forza Horizon 4 is coming to Steam, and it will be the first time a Forza game has come to the platform.

It has been announced that there will be cross play, and that’s great, but the noteworthy thing here is that Microsoft has become willing to lessen is exclusive hold where the PC is concerned. There finally appears to be a collective understanding of sorts among Sony and Microsoft that the PC market will never buy their consoles, and so you might as well sell the games on PCs too!

Let’s hope that even more games that were considered exclusives start to make their way onto the PC, because the PC market holds far more permanence than the console market. PS2 exclusive games kind of just vanished into thin air, but PC games remain long after the zeitgeist has ended. So… just please bring them all to PC. It will save them from vanishing forever!

GTA V continues to make too much money:

Well Rockstar must be a very happy company because it has made its parent company Take-Two Interactive a whole load of money with GTA V. Because that game simply refuses to die and just keeps selling! It has now sold a whopping 140 million copies, and it’s still set to release once again on new consoles. The PS5 and Xbox Series S/X is gonna, of course, get its own version… and this thing released in 2013.

Red Dead Redemption simply never managed to accrue the same following that GTA V has managed to cultivate over years of pushing GTA Online to the detriment of all other development But hey, the company is clearly doing something right if the game is able to be this successful going on ten years old. Now if we could just get another story-focused sequel then the few people who like the GTA games for their narratives can have something nice rather than just the online stuff. It would be kinda nice.

News of the Week – 30 November 2020

Red Dead Online is going standalone:

Rockstar Games has been making far too much money off its cash cows Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2. Both of these games have successful online modes that exist as live service models, with persistent updates and a whole load of microtransactions all over the place. They are immensely successful and are both crossing over into the next-gen space for people to continue sinking money into, but an interesting development has occurred on the Red Dead Redemption 2 side of things: its online mode is going standalone.

The online portions of these games have always been considered autonomous. Many people just play the online versions without bothering too much with the single player stuff. And this has led Rockstar to decide that Red Dead Online would be getting a standalone release in the upcoming console generation, and it will be rather cheap for those who pick it up early, at only $4.99. The price will eventually rise to $19.99, but that is still rather cheap if you consider what you’re getting, although the company will easily make up any lost revenue from the cheap initial sale with all those wonderful microtransaction sales it’ll be making.

The game itself will launch on 1 December 2020 and will likely make Rockstar even more money, and so maybe the next GTA it releases will just be an online thing. Who knows!? Either way, well done to them for figuring out that you can just bring something to every single platform and make bank. Well done, Rockstar.

 

Veteran devs form Yellow Brick Games:

Nothing better than going out and doing your own thing. You know, provided you have the cash to do it, and a new studio formed by a few industry vets shouldn’t have any trouble with that! So this new studio is called Yellow Brick Games, clearly going for an Alice in Wonderland vibe there, and it has been formed by a four people who worked at Ubisoft, EA and Bioware. So some big name groups right there.

The studio itself includes Mike Laidlaw, who was the Dragon Age creative director (and so there’s some good chops right there), and at present they have fifteen devs working remotely around Montreal and other countries. So that’s nice! The actual studio itself is based in Quebec City. So it appears they’re doing a blend of in-office and remote stuff.

Hopefully the studio can pop out some good games but it’ll likely be a while before they do actually create anything, although it is nice to see that they plan to go “back to the basics”, whatever that actually means. Hopefully it means less corporate oversight!

The Last of Us series got greenlit:

Do we need more post-apocalyptic media out there? Probably. And that’s why HBO has decided to officially greenlight The Last of Us series that it’s been suggesting for some time that it’s gonna make.  It took a while but the road to its creation is finally at hand, and it will be handled by Craig Mazin, of Chernobyl fame, and Neil Druckmann, who directed the actual games. The production is a joint effort by HBO, Sony Pictures TV, PlayStation Productions, Word Games and Naughty Dog. So quite a few groups have thrown their hats in the ring. So, let’s just hope that too many cooks don’t spoil the broth on this one.

 

Square Enix has instituted a permanent work-from-home option:

During the whole coronavirus thing that’s been bothering us all for some time now, Square Enix allowed its employees to work from home because it’s, you know, safer and stuff. Well! The company has now decided that this working from home thing is actually pretty sweet and so it has decided to institute a new work-from-home policy for all those people who would like to be able to work from home rather than going in to a horrible office.

In a press release, Square Enix discussed how it turned out that 80% of employees kinda liked the stay-at-home thing, and so it has decided that seeing as employees’ work-life balances and productivity were improved by allowing people the option to work from home well… not much more had to be said about all that. It’s just a good, pro-worker move to allow people the option of working from home.

Now, you could argue that this could increase the number of offshore workers who get paid less than workers in the same city as the actual office, and that is true, but allowing the option to work from home can bolster productivity and increase overall happiness in people. Who doesn’t want to be able to stay home, after all? No commutes, no annoying colleagues to pester you, perfect.

The PlayStation 5 was Sony’s biggest console launch:

The PlayStation 5 has been doing rather well so far, and it appears to be the console people are more interested in at present, especially considering its launch line up. And of course the market speaks loudly with its wallet and so Sony has been happy to announce, via tweet, that the PlayStation 5 has been Sony’s biggest console launch yet.

Now, this kind of language tends to confuse people sometimes. This does not mean that it has outsold consoles like the PS4 or the currently unbeatable PS2, but it does mean that for the first few days, it has sold better than any other console. So the PS5, in first day sales, surpassed the PS4 and every other Sony console, and that makes sense. The market has gotten bigger, but competition has also become stiffer, in many ways.

It should be interesting to see whether the PS5 manages to maintain its lead once Microsoft’s many acquired devs start pumping out Xbox games. It should be something fascinating to watch, but remember, you could always just get yourself a PC and dodge much of the trouble. Watching it from the sidelines is far more entertaining than being in it yourself.

News of the Week – 19 October 2020

Epic vs. Apple case could affect others:

The legal battle between Epic Games and Apple rages ever on over whether or not Epic was justified in circumventing Apple’s rules with Fortnite, and a big decision has just come down to stop Fortnite from reappearing on the App Store until things get sorted out. So that likely didn’t wind up in Epic’s favour, but the company really should have thought of that before starting in on its shenanigans. Not that there isn’t a certain amount of justification.

But regardless of anything that the Epic says, it’s ultimately up to the courts. And the court ruled against them for now. But, despite Epic stating that the whole iOS issue was completely different to the console market, U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers, who is overseeing the case, has stated that this could cause “serious ramifications for Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft and their game platforms.”

These companies have similar “walled garden” approaches to the way they do business by intentionally keeping the opposition out of their marketplaces, and while the current swing is in Apple’s favour, it could turn, and if it does this could cause some issues for console manufacturers who also want to be at least a bit like Apple. The judge also shot down Epic’s attempts to claim that this was completely different to how consoles work! Because they kinda do work to keep certain people and games off their platforms. Don’t they?

 

Activision-Blizzard’s Versailles workers are planning to strike:

Last week we looked at how Activision-Blizzard decided that it was time to shut down its Versailles office, and this would result in quite a number of layoffs over the next while, but things appear to have taken something of a turn. Despite France having pretty good labour laws that would see to that all the workers are at least compensated, this hasn’t stopped calls to strike.

The unions have looked at the situation and decided that Activision-Blizzard’s claims, that the company just has to shut things down, has been made with ulterior motives in mind. Those ulterior motives being a desire to break away from France and to instead move European operations into the UK.

The union argues that forcing 285 people into the job market in the current climate, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic that is very much still going, is an inherently terrible, cold-blooded decision and that it wants Activision-Blizzard to cancel the whole closure and to instead build a more positive workplace. And this should be an interesting place to watch over the next few weeks.

FIFA 2020 physical sales down:

Gamers tend to underestimate things like the FIFA games because they’re not “real games,” and are instead games often played by casual players. However, they are ignored despite being some of the best-selling games every single year. Sports games draw in more money than the big-name games from big studios you’d think are sitting at number one, and this little news story just further solidifies that.

So FIFA 2020 released, and over in the UK, the game has seen a 42% decline in physical sales. The reason is unknown but appears to be linked to people waiting for the next-gen consoles to release before picking up the game. So people haven’t been buying it physically, although digital sales could also be low, but are likely just fine, but this news story really doesn’t bother EA, the publisher, because despite losing 42% of physical sales, the game is still the number one best-selling game of 2020 in the UK.

It lost nearly 50% of its physical game sales and still came out on top of games like The Last of Us Part 2. It beat that thing out, and many so-called ”real gamers” likely refuse to acknowledge that a sports game franchise consistently beats out their favourite “real games” in terms of sales. But perhaps making less is also considered a badge of honour. You can’t be a hipster who hates the popular things without more popular things making more money after all.

 

Axiom Verge 2 gets delayed:

Back in 2015, Thomas Happ finished development on a game called Axiom Verge and he released it to critical and commercial success, and ever since then he’s been working on the sequel, which is boldly named… Axiom Verge 2. So that’s nice and easy to remember! But despite the game having been in development for about five years already and having released a trailer in 2019 to announce it, the game has been delayed.

Happ, in a blog post, has stated that the game was optimistically slated for release in Fall 2020, but sadly a variety of things happened to make things just that much harder. The AI was more complex, there was a new central mechanic and the art style was more involved too, and not to mention the fact that the pandemic woes kicked in and made things just that much harder to deal with all over the world.

The game is still on its way and it still looks great, but people will just have to wait that little bit longer to get their hands on the sequel to one of the better indie metroidvanias out there. And that’s fine!

Ruffian Games has been acquired by Rockstar:

Ruffian Games, the studio behind Crackdown 2, has been making some games for Rockstar for the last few years and things were going all nice and dandy. But then the company ended up getting acquired by Rockstar entirely and then its name got changed to Rockstar Dundee. So while they may not have the independence they once had, at least they now the security of being a Rockstar studio, which is a rather stable position to be in.

The changes were spotted in Companies House listings by TheGamer, and it would appear that now that the company is entirely under Rockstar’s control, it will be working on a multiplayer game of some kind for the GTA and Red Dead Redemption dev/publisher. So hopefully that all works out and, furthermore, hopefully Rockstar doesn’t try to force any hardcore crunch onto the devs as they have been noted to do in the past.

News of the Week – 20 April 2020

Rockstar’s crunch culture is changing (hopefully):

A new report out of Kotaku is, for once, a bit more on the pleasant side of things. According to sources talking to Kotaku, conditions inside Rockstar are improving. After several reports about the company from various sources over the years, things may finally be looking up. The company is, apparently, attempting to combat crunch as much as possible and is making changes that will change the workplace culture it’s had going for far too long.

In addition, the tiny and rather obvious announcement that Grand Theft Auto VI is in development was dropped by the article. This was stated as something rather small coming from the report, and in all fairness it should be something small. Of course Rockstar was going to make another GTA. That franchise prints money and it always has! It’s also still in the very early phases of development but it’s getting along as it obviously would, and so in a few years we’ll have a new GTA to check out, and hopefully a better company will have produced it than the one that made Red Dead Redemption 2.

Sources:

• IGN – New GTA in development, Rockstar reportedly making changes to fix crunch culture
• Kotaku – 18 months after Red Dead Redemption 2 Rockstar has made big cultural changes
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Rockstar’s crunch culture is changing, developers say

The ESRB now has a loot box classification:

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), the company in charge of rating games before they’re released, has announced, via a blog post (linked below) that it is altering the way it handles the contentious “in-game purchases” label it created some time ago. This label is generally for things like microtransactions and such, but because of loot boxes it’s changing a bit.

If a game has loot boxes, which entails randomised “prizes” that you pay for (where you often can’t get what you want but rather have to play a bit of a gambling game and hope you get the thing you want), the game will now have a new addition under that “in-game purchases” label. It will now say “includes random items”. No more hiding these little loot boxes in there, you must, as a publisher or developer, have them upfront.

So this is a pretty good thing to do, and PEGI (the European equivalent) has followed suit. Hopefully this means that people can be a bit more informed about what’s in a game before purchase. However, a rating is the least anyone can do. So maybe it isn’t worthy of immense amounts of praise. It should kinda just be expected, shouldn’t it?

Sources:

• ESRB Blog – Introducing a new interactive element: in-game purchases (includes random items)
• Gamasutra – ESRB ratings will now note if in-game purchases involve random items
• IGN – ESRB announces new ratings label for loot boxes
• Kotaku – ESRB ratings will now tell you if a game has loot boxes
• Polygon – Game ratings will now include loot box warnings, ESRB says
• VG247 – ESRB ratings will begin warning players of loot boxes in games
• VG247 – PEGI ratings will also say if games have loot boxes

Fortnite Chapter 2, Season 3 delayed:

Thanks to our good friend the coronavirus, things are still managing to get delayed (which has been going on for weeks and weeks already and is showing no signs of slowing down), and this time it’s the mega-popular hit Fortnite that’s getting a delay. The delay comes in the form of its current season being extended until 3 June rather than 30 April as was originally planned. So no big updates for a good long while for those who love the battle royale hit. You’ll just have to wait a bit longer to get some more content.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Fortnite chapter 2, season 3 delayed until June
• IGN – Fortnite chapter 2: season 2 extended until June
• Polygon – Fortnite’s new season has been delayed
• VG247 – Fortnite Chapter 2 – season 2 will be extended into June

Sam Raimi will be directing Doctor Strange 2:

The director of the best Spider-Man movies outside of Into the Spider-Verse, Sam Raimi, has dropped a surprise announcement that he’ll be directing the new Doctor Strange film. This should be one fun ride then because this man knows how to create a weird horror experience, and a weird horror experience is what a Doctor Strange horror should be. Don’t want too much normal in your dose of Strange after all.

So, this was dropped somewhat at random and wasn’t made into a particularly big deal by him, but he’s clearly excited about the role. What makes it particularly interesting to someone like me is the knowledge that while yes, he’s probably best known for making the Toby McGuire Spider-Man films, he’s also the guy that brought the world Evil Dead, and Evil Dead is a fantastic piece of schlocky nonsense. So let’s hope Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is similar!

Sources:

• IGN – Sam Raimi confirms he’s directing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Journey is finally coming to Steam:

The time has finally come! The classic PS3 game Journey, which arrived on current-gen consoles some time ago and even hit PC last year on 11 June (but only on the Epic Games Store, because that’s the way PC releases are currently happening), is finally coming to Steam! It’s arriving one year after it’s PC debut on the Epic Game Store, and so on 11 June 2020 everyone can feast their eyes and paw their hands over Thatgamecompany’s 2012 masterpiece, because at last it’s made its way into the unrestricted PC gaming space and will hopefully never end up delisted as so many other great games eventually do…

Sources:

• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Take another Journey when it comes to Steam in June
• VG247 – Journey is coming to Steam this June

News of the Week – 24 February 2020

Kickstarter employees have unionised:

After several months of negotiations its finally happened: Kickstarter has unionised. The crowd-funding website, that allowed developers like Obsidian Entertainment to create Pillars of Eternity and Double Fine to create Broken Age, has been locked in this negotiation process for some time already, but the votes are now in and the decision is final.

At first, Kickstarter was unwilling to voluntarily allow the union, Kickstarter United, to operate, but there has now been a formal vote. The company did not win, and in response the CEO, Aziz Hasan, came out in support of the union that he’d previously tried to stop. His support at least shows that he’s unwilling to be antagonistic with the union.

This if fantastic news seeing as tech companies very often lack unions, and other unionisation efforts may look towards Kickstarter in the future when planning their own attempts at forming viable unions. The push towards unionising the video game industry really broke through into the public consciousness last year, and that push is becoming all the more prominent as time keeps ticking ever on.

Sources:

• Polygon – Kickstarter employees vote to unionise, relieving tension among game developers
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Kickstarter makes history becoming one of the first tech companies to unionise

GTA IV is coming back to Steam:

A while back, GTA IV was mysteriously delisted from Steam, and it turned out the culprit was the now defunct Games for Windows Live service that’s always came packaged with the game. Well the Rockstar classic is back in action once again, and all because the devs stripped everything related to Games for Windows Live from the game.

The newly announced Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition comes with the base game and the Episodes from Liberty City DLCs, but there’s no longer a multiplayer component that you can take advantage of, no leaderboards, et cetera. Essentially, it’s the game everyone remembers minus the online mode that never really took off for Rockstar until GTA V came along and led to its utter domination in the world of online gaming.

This new version is coming 19 March 2020 and, for those who care, you can transfer your files from the old versions of the game to this one. So that’s nice for the people who’ve sunk hundreds of hours into the thing. At least the game’s coming back, and while some features may have been stripped out, Rockstar is, thankfully, concerned with its legacy enough that it’ll make sure a decade plus old game is still available online.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Rockstar sacrifices Grand Theft Auto 4 multiplayer to solve Steam woes
• Gamasutra – GTA IV to return to Steam after cutting Games for Windows Live support
• IGN – Grand Theft Auto 4 returning to Steam, but without multiplayer
• Kotaku – Grand Theft Auto IV returns to Steam next month without online multiplayer
• Polygon – Grand Theft Auto 4 will return to Steam in March without multiplayer support
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Grand Theft Auto IV will return to Steam with Games for Windows Live or multiplayer
• VG247 – GTA 4 will return to Steam without multiplayer, leaderboards or GFWL

StarCraft: Ghost is back in the news:

StarCraft: Ghost is pretty much a Blizzard legend by now. The game was supposed to be a third-person shooter set in the StarCraft universe and it was announced all the way back in 2002. Then it became vapourware and everyone assumed it had been cancelled, but Blizzard never officially announced its cancellation till 2014. So the company took its time. But now, all these years later, a build of the game has been discovered.

There were some rumblings at first, but then some pictures and footage started to show up (including the footage linked below, provided it hasn’t been pulled down by the time you read this) and it appears that this is legitimate. It’s a copy for the original Xbox version of the game and it looks pretty dull and basic for the most part. Nothing much special, and that’s probably why they focused on World of Warcraft and later StarCraft 2 instead of on this thing.

The build can be found, apparently, but it’ll be a difficult thing to play and was only meant to be played on the Gamecube, Xbox and PS2 when it was set to be released. The build is also from some dev kit and causes the console to crash. So maybe just look at some of the footage instead, and wait for more footage to come out from people who’ve gotten it to work.

If nothing else, it serves as a good distraction from the fact that Blizzard still hasn’t apologised for the Hong Kong Blitzchung thing. Yeah… it’s fun to constantly bring things back to regular old depressing news rather than keeping it all light and sweet.

Sources:

• Footage
• Eurogamer – Blizzard’s long-lost StarCraft: Ghost turns up again in fresh footage
• IGN – A playable build of StarCraft Ghost has appeared online
• Kotaku – It seems a playable Xbox build of StarCraft Ghost has leaked (update)
• Polygon – See Blizzard’s cancelled StarCraft: Ghost in HD video
• VG247 – New gameplay from Blizzard’s cancelled StarCraft: Ghost emerges from a leaked build

EVE Online successor to Dust 514 has been cancelled:

EVE Online continues its march ever on as a bastion of complicated gameplay that takes years to properly get into, a game that is mostly unplayable to a vast majority of people because of how complex it is, but that hasn’t stopped the devs, CCP, from trying its hand at creating a more accessible experience set in the same world that uses guns and shooting instead of slow space movement and combat.

Back in the PS3 era, the company released the shooter Dust 514, which tied in with the main game, but that ended years ago and CCP has been wanting a spiritual successor to it for a very long time. The follow-up was called Project Nova, and its development was in a state of perpetual development hell because of a lack of direction about what exactly to do with it. Well that project has now been scrapped entirely and the company’s returning to the drawing board.

This drawing board will be at the developer’s London studio, and the new shooter will be entirely developed there. There’s no news on what this shooter is actually going to be because the company itself doesn’t really know what it’ll be yet, but CCP has made sure to say that it’s not planning on announcing games early again. It creates expectation and those can be dangerous things when you’re not prepared for them.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Long-in-the-works EVE Online FPS Project Nova is officially cancelled
• Gamasutra – Following Project Nova’s ‘end’, CCP won’t be as public with its early projects
• Kotaku – EVE Online shooter cancelled, EVE Online shooter announced
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – CCP cancel Project Nova, but haven’t given up on an EVE Online shooter
• VG247 – Project Nova officially cancelled, CCP will no longer publicly announce internal projects

Eli Roth will be directing the Borderlands movie:

For some reason, Lionsgate is going to make a Borderlands movie, and all the power to them I suppose. Video game movies have had a resurgence as of late, and now that they’re being given actual budgets maybe they won’t turn out incredibly atrocious. And when it comes to the highly stylised antics of the Borderlands franchise we have Eli Roth, the man behind bloody horror films like Hostel, directing it.

There’s also a further barrage of names attached to this thing. Avi Arad and Ari Arad are producing, Randy Pitchford, the Gearbox CEO, and Strauss Zelnick, the 2K Games CEO, are executive producing, Erik Feig is overseeing development and Craig Mazin is drafting the screenplay. So that’s a list of names of people who are working on this thing.

All the media attention is going towards Roth though, and judging by the statement he’s made about the movie, he appears to be really excited about it (but you expect that of a director, don’t you?). The movie will also be R rated, and that’s definitely to be expected. Borderlands kinda shouldn’t be anything other than R rated, after all.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Hostel director Eli Roth is helming the Borderlands movie
• IGN – Borderlands movie in production directed by Eli Roth
• Kotaku – Eli Roth will try and direct a Borderlands movie
• Polygon – Eli Roth is making a Borderlands movie
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – It looks like Hostel director Eli Roth will be making the Borderlands film
• VG247 – Eli Roth will direct the Borderlands movie

News of the Week – 10 February 2020

Warcraft 3 Reforged is not having a good time with users:

Warcraft 3: Reforged has arrived! Yay! Or not yay. The game itself has been reviewed well enough, but the real issues started once regular ole people, and mega-fans, got their hands on the thing and discovered that all those things they’d been promised, like new features and upgraded cinematics, were absent from the game. People were not very happy to say the least.

This game was pegged as a complete overhaul of the classic 2002 game, with both the Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne features and campaigns, and instead it’s been described as more of a remaster rather than a remake of the classic game. Now, full disclosure I’m one of those old-school Warcraft 3 mega-fans, but the original game still works just fine on my PC and so I saw no need to get this game (and still don’t), but a lot of other people definitely did want this game. They wanted it and they wanted what they were promised, and because of that the game got the worst Metacritic score of any game ever. It has a score of 0.5, at time of writing, out of a possible 10. So not so great.

Blizzard has come out to apologise, but also to make some excuses about why certain features aren’t in the game, and so it’s pretty much a non-apology in many ways. The company does seem to be offering instant refunds though, because Blizzard needs to get at least some positive press out of this whole debacle. The company has been riding high since the fantastic success of World of Warcraft Classic, and so probably thought this remaster of a classic game would net similar praise. They thought wrong.

Also, because it’s constantly worth noting, the company still hasn’t apologised for banning Blitzchung, the Hearthstone pro, for standing in solidarity with Hong Kong protesters. Blizzard still hasn’t apologised and still hasn’t taken a proper stance there either. So that’s something worth reminding everyone about whenever Blizzard does something good or bad.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Warcraft 3 Reforged is the lowest user-scored game on Metacritic
• Eurogamer – Blizzard addresses fan complaints following controversial Warcraft 3: Reforged launched
• Eurogamer – Blizzard changes refund policy for Warcraft 3: Reforged to allow refunds upon request
• IGN – Blizzard responds to Warcraft 3: Reforged fan feedback
• IGN – Blizzard changes refund policy for Warcraft 3: Reforged
• Kotaku – WarCraft 3’s remaster is so unpopular Blizzard is offering instant refunds [update: Blizzard responds]
• Polygon – Blizzard is offering automatic refunds for Warcraft 3: Reforged
• Polygon – Blizzard apologises for the condition of Warcraft 3: Reforged, promises action
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Blizzard are fixingsome Warcraft 3: Reforged problems, but don’t expect dramatic changes
• VG247 – Warcraft 3 Reforged is not the disaster you think it is
• VG247 – Blizzard on Warcraft 3: Reforged’s cutscenes: “We did not want [them] to steer too far from the original”

Dan Houser is leaving Rockstar:

Dan Houser, one of the people who co-founded Rockstar and then went on to be the head writer on almost every Rockstar game, such as the GTA games, Red Dead Redemption, Bully, et cetera, is going to be leaving Rockstar on 11 March 2020. This news first came through an SEC filing by Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive, but has now been officially confirmed and commented on by Rockstar itself.

The man has been at Rockstar since the beginning, and that was more than twenty years ago, and since then he’s done remarkably well for himself. His games have garnered critical and commercial success, but he’s finally moving on. There’s no real news on where he’s heading off to, but he’s been on break from the company since spring 2019 and plans on extending that break until… forever.

The company was quick to come out and say that his brother, Sam Houser, who’s another co-founder and has also been there since the beginning, is still sticking around at the company. So there’s still gonna be a Houser around but it’s not the writer one, and that should make things interesting going forward because Dan Houser has been a major creative force at the company throughout its successful run. So let’s see how their future projects turn out.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser is leaving the company in March
• Gamasutra – Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser is leaving the studio
• IGN – Rockstar co-founder and GTA writer Dan Houser leaves company [update]
• Kotaku – Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser is leaving the company
• Polygon – Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser leaving the company
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Rockstar co-founder and head writer Dan Houser is leaving
• VG247 – Rockstar writer and co-founder Dan Houser won’t be around for GTA 6 – he’s leaving

More male domination announced in UK game industry:

The video game lobbying group UKIE, the UK’s version of the ESA, backed a report by the University of Sheffield to see whether diversity had taken root at all in the UK’s game industry. Some of the results are a bit more on the side of surprising, but many of them are to be expected, especially the continued dominance of male workers in the industry.

Men continue to dominate by making up 70% of the total workforce, and that’s, sadly, not a surprise at all. What’s also to be expected, but was lower than I was personally expecting (which makes it even more depressing), is that only 10% were black, Asian or of other minority ethnicities. Not so great, but there are more LGBTQIA+ people than you might expect with them making up 21%.

Then it came to the hours. Hours, hours, hours. The sticking point of the industry. In an industry obsessed with crunch it’s nice to see that two thirds reported average work weeks of 33-40 hours, and only 3.5% reported 51 or more hours a week. A number that should be at zero, but we shouldn’t hope for miracles. Hopefully, the increased public pressure from the last few years has scared a few companies into laying off the crunch a bit. Hopefully.

Sources:

• The report
• Eurogamer – Report details how male-dominated the UK games industry still is
• Gamasutra – First ever UK Games Industry Census highlights need for more diversity
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – UKIE report shows the UK games industry has an overwhelming lack of diversity
• VG247 – UK games industry is still dominated by white males, census reveals

Ubisoft plans to release five new AAA games in 2020-21:

Ubisoft, in its third quarter financials report, declared that its doings really well. Pretty much all the usual things you’d expect. Rainbox Six Siege is doing well, it reached record highs in December and it has 55 million registered users, Uplay and Uplay+ are getting even more support and engagement and of course, the thing that interests gamers the most, is that it’s releasing five AAA games over the next few years.

Three said games, Gods and Monsters, Rainbow Six Quarantine and Watch Dogs: Legion, are all coming in 2020 and there’s no real news on the others. Although it is nearly time for that reboot thing of Beyond and Evil, but we have no real info on that. So the whole report was essentially about how well the company’s doing. So that’s nice. At least the gigantic corporate entity is doing well.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Ubisoft promises five triple-A games before April 2021
• IGN – Ubisoft confirms five AAA games planned for release in late 2020, early 2021
• VG247 – Ubisoft still plans to release “five new triple-A games” in 2020-21 – Q3 financials

Steam set a new concurrent player record:

Valve is probably pretty happy at the moment seeing as 2 February 2020 has been its best day yet in terms of concurrent players. The company’s last record-breaking concurrent player count was from January 2018, and so despite the Epic Games Store and everything else, Steam is still going along and raking in some record numbers.

This record is also particularly interesting because the high surge doesn’t seem to have been in response to anything. The platform just naturally had a peak player count, and that’s good news for Valve, because ever since the Epic Games Store came along the company has had some real competition for the first time ever. We’ll have to see if this trend continues or if Steam will eventually start going the way of the dodo.

Sources:

• SteamDB
• Eurogamer – Steam just hit a record-breaking 18.8 concurrent users
• VG247 – Steam has set a record after hitting its highest player-count ever

News of the Week – 27 January 2020

Doom Eternal’s delay just brought more crunch:

So just last week we received the lovely news that CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 will be delayed and that crunch will resume regardless; the delay hasn’t stopped the crunch at all. Which is just wonderful, isn’t it? Well this week we learned something even more wonderful! You see, Doom Eternal, which is currently in development over at id Software, has been doing exactly the same thing!

The company was supposed to release the game back in November 2019, and when the company announced its delay many people came out to be all angry about it while other people, who are a bit less whiny and realise that they can wait for their games, were completely fine with it. However, it now seems that the company was “crunching pretty hard most of last year”, according to the game’s director Marty Stratton.

The company, rather than letting people calm down a bit and work reasonable hours now that a delay had come around, were instead pushed into going hard on development time. The employees were forced into a lengthier period of crunch and this executive doesn’t really seem to care all that much about that either.

It’s now gotten to the point where we should no longer praise devs for announcing that its games will be delayed because that quite possibly means that the employees, who are afraid of being let go in an incredibly volatile industry if they don’t conform to what they’re “encouraged” to conform to, don’t obey.

Whenever a game is delayed this question needs to be re-examined. Is it being done so that the workers can be forced into further hard work that immensely damages their mental wellbeing, or is the delay being made in good faith and it’s to stop anything like this from happening. However, we can no longer take these devs at face value and should be willing to question them and to hold them accountable. And it should be noted that when the word “devs” is used in this instance, it means the executives and managers at these companies. Those people are the ones responsible for this. Poor management is what gets games pushed into crunch, it isn’t a “natural” part of the development process.

So remember to always question what these companies are trying to pull and always remember that age-old mantra that brands are not your friends, because they aren’t. They do not care about you as an individual, and they will be more than willing to lie if it gets them the PR they want. However, the increased visibility of crunch has forced them to acknowledge it, and maybe the lies behind the delay will now also force them to address these issues.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – id Software crunched “most of last year” to hit delayed Doom Eternal date
• Gamasutra – Doom Eternal dev team were ‘crunching pretty hard’ during 2019
• VG247 – “We were crunch pretty hard most of last year” – Marty Stratton unapologetic over Doom Eternity’s delay

A tax watchdog went after Rockstar:

Rockstar has been called out by a tax watchdog group in the UK called Taxwatch UK, and this watchdog group decided to just check out some of Rockstar’s publicly published financials and revealed something rather fun. You see, Rockstar, despite being a multi-billion dollar company, likes to make use of tax relief incentives in the UK that are actually kinda intended for… small businesses so they can get their break in the industry.

However, not to pass up on free money, Rockstar has gotten about £80 million in tax relief from this programme. The company claimed a nice percentage of the overall fund for 2018/2019 by claiming an amount that was 37% of the total! Rockstar took 37% of the entire UK’s Video Game Tax Relief (VGTR) fund. Which is a rather insane figure for a company that makes more money than many others combined.

In addition, to qualify for this tax relief fund you have to produce something that is “culturally British”, but that’s intentionally vague and so a game of theirs like Grand Theft Auto V, which is set in a recreation of Los Angeles that features many aspects of American life, is clearly culturally British because it has a more British sense of humour and some of it was developed by British people, I guess?

Rockstar was quick to respond, and it did the usual PR thing you’re meant to do. You know, the company spoke about how that money went to hire over a thousand people throughout the British Isles in places like London, Lincoln, Yorkshire and Scotland and so that makes it perfectly fine. The company was using this tax relief fund to get itself some additional funding, and that is completely legal. But you do need to maybe think of the morality behind it. It’s kinda iffy, ain’t it?

The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE), which is essentially the UK’s version of the ESA (a lobbying group meant to stick up for the game devs and publishers against whatever backlash they get from… anyone), also came out to criticise Taxwatch UK for the report because it’s pretty hostile towards Rockstar and Rockstar just like can’t handle that kind of bullying. Bullying coming from a small tax watchdog group with no actual power. Terrifying.

It’s worth remembering that tax relief schemes like these are meant to be for smaller companies, and when they’re used like this they’re pretty much being abused. Tax relief can be a godsend to smaller companies that are just starting out, but when the money is being thrown at a billionaire company it kind of starts weakening what that tax relief was intended for in the first place.

Sources:

• Taxwatch UK – Rockstar takes the pot – 2019 accounts show huge increase in Grand Theft Auto tax claim
• Eurogamer – Rockstar responds to report it claimed £6m in UK tax relief
• Gamasutra – GTA developer Rockstar pushes back against UK tax abuse allegations
• VG247 – Rockstar and UKIE respond to Taxwatch UK’s £6 million tax relief report

Original Half-Life ­games are free on Steam for a while:

In a rather surprising, yet also unsurprising, development, Valve has decided to release its entire Half-Life collection for free on Steam for a few months in the lead-up to the release of its upcoming VR-exclusive Half-Life: Alyx (which the team has stated, in a recent AMA, is pretty much done). The game is effectively free to download and install until the new game releases in March.

Valve announced the news in a Steam blog post and stated that the whole story is available for people to check out. This is, obviously, a marketing thing intended to get you excited about a prequel to a game that people have wanted a sequel to since 2007. The company wants you excited about jumping into the boots of one of the best characters in gaming history, but this time as the protagonist and in a VR environment that can effectively stop a whole load of people from playing it because of the cost.

But let’s not get cynical here. Or at least not too cynical. So if you’ve never played the Half-Life games before then grab them. The first game is quite different from the rest but worth a play, but I would say that most of your enjoyment may come from the sequel and the episodes. Just keep in mind that there is no conclusion to the Episodes. They just end on a cliffhanger and that cliffhanger was never addressed. Never.

So go grab them if you haven’t played them, and if you have played them but haven’t on Steam somehow then go grab them. If you’re interested in picking up Half-Life: Alyx and haven’t played any of the games then definitely grab em. Otherwise just… do what you want. They’re good games! Okay, this post is deteriorating. On to the next one!

Sources:

• Steam – Pay now for free – Half-Life series
• Eurogamer – All previous Half-Life games are now free on Steam in the run-up to Alyx’s release
• Eurogamer – Valve says Half-Life: Alyx is “done” so you probably don’t need to worry about delays
• IGN – Every Half-Life game is free to play until April 21^st
• IGN – Half-Life: Alyx devs confirm ‘game is done’
• Kotaku – Valve is ‘confident’ Half-Life: Alyx won’t be delayed
• Polygon – The Half-Life games are free to play on Steam through March
• Polygon – The 7 big things we just learned about Half-Life: Alyx
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – The whole Half-Life story is free to play on Steam right now
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Valve are confident Half-Life: Alyx won’t be delayed
• VG247 – Half-Life series is free-to-play until Half-Life: Alyx releases
• VG247 – Half-Life: Alyx will be around the same size as Half-Life 2, delay not expected

Ninja Theory has a new game in the works:

Ninja Theory, the devs that put out the superb and well-received exploration of mental health Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, have put out a statement to announce its new game. The company has been working on a sequel to Hellblade since at least last year (when the company announced it), but this is a completely new thing.

The new game has been called Project: Mara and will be a more grounded experimental horror game about “mental terror”. This sounds a lot like the company is exploring similar themes to Hellblade, and I think a whole load of people will be quite happy if that’s the case. However, other than knowing the game exists and that it’ll be an exploration into new ideas for storytelling and such, we know nothing. We don’t know when it’s coming, we don’t know what the gameplay is going to be like. We pretty much know nothing at all.

The only reason this can really be called news at all is because Ninja Theory has prestige now. The company did a good job with the first Hellblade and so the company is worth a shot. If this new games shakes things up like Hellblade did then lightning may have struck twice. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that that’s exactly what happens.

Sources:

• Blogpost – Ninja Theory Announces Project: Mara
• Eurogamer – Hellblade developer Ninja Theory announces Project: Mara
• IGN – Hellblade developer Ninja Theory announces Project: Mara
• Polygon – Ninja Theory teases new ‘experimental’ horror game Project: Mara
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Hellblade developers Ninja Theory announce Project: Mara
• VG247 – Ninja Theory’s Project: Mara is a “real-world and grounded representation of mental terror”

TikTok’s owners are getting into gaming:

ByteDance, the Chinese conglomerate behind TikTok, the video sharing app that I don’t really understand but that all my students use on a daily basis, has decided that it’s time for its business fingers to spread out a bit and start getting into the mobile gaming market. Because, you know, mobile gaming makes a hell of a lot of money and with the name “TikTok” behind you you’ll likely make something young people will want.

The decision appears to be aimed at a more “hardcore” subdivision of the mobile market. A decision that appears a bit strange at first glance seeing as the casual mobile market makes such a killing, but the company is planning on going after the high-spenders, and so it needs to bring in some “whales” (for those who don’t know, this is the dehumanising way in which customers who spend a lot of cash in games are labelled).

This new division has been quietly building for a while, but the company has now gone public with its plans. These plans are going to put it in direct competition with another, and more well-known (in gaming circles) Chinese conglomerate, Tencent. So a battle between these two rich companies as each tries to outdo the other in the hardcore mobile market is soon to ensue. Should be fun to watch.

Sources:

• Gamasutra – Report: TikTok owner ByteDance planning big push into mobile games
• VG247 – TikTok maker is getting into “hardcore” mobile games

News of the Week – 20 January 2020

Cyberpunk 2077 delayed till September:

Many people with disposable income will likely be getting quite angry about a game that’s been delayed, because that game is CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 and people couldn’t possibly wait just a few months longer for their cyberpunk Witcher 3 follow-up.

CD Projekt announced that the game would be delayed from April, which then frees up that time slot and allows some much needed breathing room for the multitude of other games that are releasing around that time, to September, specifically 17 September. This date is, coincidentally, the same date that GTA V was released back in 2013. A fact I know off-hand because it’s two days after my birthday and I took that week off from work back in 2013 so I could finish a damn GTA game in three days. Anyway… that was probably unnecessary information.

The game is, according to CD Projekt, done and playable, but the developers will be spending the last few months making sure that it’s the best it can be. Hopefully, this means that CD Projekt won’t get caught into more crunch time like it’s known to do. You see, it’s kinda nice when developers allow its staff to like… not be overworked and immensely stressed for months on end. Oh but uh, despite all that extra time to work on development of the game, the devs are still planning on forcing crunch on their employees. So that’s just awesome.

It would seem that regardless of an additional five months of development time, CD Projekt is still planning on overworking its employees to get them to the finish line in time. In a better world, like the kind we don’t get to have, the game would be delayed for an extra year to negate all that crunch time. Hell, why not two years? There are endless games coming out every day and people can wait for a while to get this one. It’s unnecessary to treat staff terribly just so that a game can be pushed through the door. It’s an indication of poor management and terrible allotment of human resources. This should never be seen as developers just being so passionate about the game they’re making. This should be seen as exploitation of workers who are too afraid to say no because then they’ll be out of a job. It’s a disgusting environment to work in and one that does not produce better work, and even if it did would it be worth it? Would it be worth the human cost to create something that abused those who created it? Do we really need a new CD Projekt game this soon if this is what it means? Do we?

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Cyberpunk 2077 delayed to September
• Eurogamer – Cyberpunk 2077 dev will continue crunch “to some degree” through five month delay
• Gamasutra – CD Projekt Red delays Cyberpunk 2077 from April to September
• Gamasutra – Following Cyberpunk delay, CD Projek Red expects dev team crunch
• IGN – Cyberpunk 2077 release date delayed to September, needs more time for polish
• IGN – Cyberpunk 2077 developers will crunch “to some degree” despite delay
• Kotaku – Cyberpunk 2077 delayed to September
• Kotaku – Video game delays cause more crunch
• Polygon – Cyberpunk 2077 delayed to September
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Cyberpunk 2077 delayed into September
• VG247 – Cyberpunk 2077 release delayed to September 17
• VG247 – CD Projekt admits that devs will crunch to get Cyberpunk 2077 to the finish line

Horizon: Zero Dawn may be coming to PC:

Kotaku has rounded up their sources as per usual, but this time it’s not about how terrible the games industry is to its people (and yes, I’m talking about CD Projekt Red and every other company that treats its people like trash), and is instead about how a previously PS4-exclusive game may be heading to the PC. The game in question is the critically acclaimed Guerrilla Games production Horizon: Zero Dawn.

The robo-dino hunting game has been beloved ever since it released, but it’s only ever been available to PS4 users, and that kinda sucks for PC gamers (like myself). Now this is not an official announcement, but it does come from sources who are familiar with Sony’s plans going forward, and so hopefully this is the case.

Exclusivity is a tricky thing to overcome because it sells consoles, but it’s long been known that those in the PC sphere are not the type to choose a console at all, and so PC manufacturers are not direct competition. This is probably why Microsoft has often put their games on both Xbox and PC. The PC people ain’t gonna get that Xbox, so you might as well sell to them on their own turf. And it’s possible that this is Sony’s plan too: making some extra cash from the people who will adamantly refuse to buy its consoles.

If this does turn out to be true it’ll be great news because then maybe we can start getting PS4 exclusives on PC. I for one want my God of War, Bloodbourne and Spider-Man. So come on, Sony! You can do this!

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Horizon Zero Dawn is reportedly coming to PC later this year
• Gamasutra – Report: PS4 exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn could come to PC
• IGN – Horizon Zero Dawn is coming to PC, reports say
• Kotaku – Sources: Horizon: Zero Dawn is coming to PC
• Polygon – Report: PS4 exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn coming to PC
• VG247 – PS4 exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn coming to PC – report

Sony’s still staying out of E3 and Microsoft’s still in:

E3 isn’t what it used to be. The show, which was once integral to video game marketing, has really gone down considering all the people who will no longer be there, such as Nintendo’s years-long trend of just sending a video for its presentation, and it seems that another publisher’s lack of involvement is set to continue. Sony, much like last year, is skipping E3.

Sony has been doing its own Nintendo Direct-style thing with State of Play and so has removed the need for the heavy marketing push behind E3. It’s just unnecessary for Sony these days, even when it has a new console on the way. In response to Sony stating that it isn’t coming, the Electronic Entertainment Association (ESA) put out a statement to say that E3 is like so still fine, man, because it’ll be like an even better consumer trade show with new experiences and partners and stuff. We like so don’t need Sony!

So that’s the ESA’s response; it’ll just make the show more of a consumer show rather than one tailored for journalists and retailers. However, another publisher has come out to reaffirm that it’ll definitely be in attendance: Microsoft. Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, stated that Microsoft will be focusing on E3 this year so some people can look forward to the barrage of advertising that Microsoft will spew upon the world when E3 comes around. Fun!

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Sony to skip E3 for second year running, despite PlayStation 5’s imminent arrival
• Eurogamer – Xbox “hard at work on E3” following PlayStation pull-out
• Gamasutra – Sony’s skipping E3 again in 2020
• IGN – PlayStation will not be at E3 2020, Sony says
• IGN – Phil Spencer confirms Xbox will be at E3 2020
• Kotaku – With PS5 on the way, Sony will skip E3 again
• Polygon – PlayStation is skipping E3 2020
• VG247 – Sony confirms it is skipping E3 for a second year in a row
• VG247 – Microsoft will return to E3 in “milestone year” for Xbox

Rockstar works towards getting GTA IV back on Steam:

Rockstar’s 2008 Grand Theft Auto IV mysteriously vanished from Steam and left a few people rather confused, but then Rockstar leaped in to settle things for us. Their answer: blame Microsoft. So I guess we should all jump on board the Microsoft hate train. Well maybe not, but it kinda is their fault that this mega-successful title was delisted.

So back in the late 2000s, Rockstar teamed up with Microsoft to release GTA IV with the Games for Windows Live service. If you’ve played GTA IV on PC in recent years you’d know that whenever you try to play the game you’d be prompted for a login to that incredibly annoying Microsoft service. You could, thankfully, just get around it but it was still irritating and quite pervasive. However, Games for Windows Live shut down in 2014, and a few years later that caused GTA IV to face a difficult situation that led to the delisting.

This was all explained by a Rockstar spokesman speaking to USGamer, and they stated that Rockstar is currently working on a workaround fix for the issue so that it can bring the game back to digital store shelves. There’s no news on when that’ll happen though. So for now you’ll just have to wait around if you want to buy that decade plus old game. Many apologies.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Rockstar explains Grand Theft Auto 4’s sudden delisting from Steam
• Gamasutra – Rockstar says defunct Games for Windows Live to blame for GTA IV delisting
• IGN – GTA 4 disappeared from Steam, and here’s why
• Polygon – Grand Theft Auto 4 no longer being sold on Steam
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Grand Theft Auto IV is missing from Steam, for now, anyways
• USGamer – Rockstar explains why Grand Theft Auto 4 was suddenly delisted from Steam
• VG247 – Rockstar explains why Grand Theft Auto 4 is no longer available on Steam

The Epic Games Store did well in 2019:

The Epic Games Store had a strategy throughout 2019, and that strategy involved grabbing as many exclusives as it could, giving away free games to incentivise people to stick around and using their more generous revenue split with developers to entice a few more onto the platform. It was, overall, a strategy that served Epic rather well.

The company’s aim is to become a main contender against Steam, because Steam has held the title of PC sales kingpin for far too long, and now that it’s 2020, Epic has released its numbers. The company’s storefront generated over $670m, and $215m of that went to third-party developers (such as the exclusives). The store also increased in size with at least 108 million people using the store (either to purchase a game or download a free game).

Speaking of free games, those freebies that Epic put out constantly were enough of a success for Epic that it’ll be continuing the practice in 2020. The company provided 73 games over the course of the year and they were downloaded 200 million times. So the policy of giving people free stuff was clearly utilised, and for poorer gamers this is a great thing to take advantage of. So I know I’m personally quite happy that the free games pipeline is still flowing. Free games! Yay.

All of this should still come with the knowledge that there are problems with just using your near infinite supply of cash to force your way into a competitive sphere. For those who believe in capitalism’s rule and the right of pure competition and the free market and all that jazz should maybe be worried about the way Epic is doing this. This isn’t genuine competition; it’s using your money to undermine the competition unfairly, but we all get free games, I suppose, so it probably isn’t that important…

Sources:

• Epic Games – Epic Games Store Weekly Free Games in 2020
• Eurogamer – Epic Games Store tops 100m customer milestone
• Gamasutra – Exclusives helped the Epic Games Store earn $680 million during 2019
• IGN – Epic Games Store exclusives “critical” to $680m earned so far
• Polygon – Epic Games Store to continue giving away games weekly in 2020
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Epic Games Store will continue free game giveaways all 2020

News of the Week – 10 June 2019

Google Stadia details revealed:

Google decided this past week that it was finally time for them to make a few announcements about their big, new Stadia technology. The service, which was pegged as a Netflix-like subscription service for games, has now been properly discussed. The idea was that you would be subscribed to the service, and then instead of having to download games you can just play them straight away. Well it seems that it pretty much is exactly that.

Stadia will allow people to play games on their TVs (and later they’ll be adding support for PCs and phones) without the need for a hard drive. Everything will be connected to the cloud. So you can theoretically play whatever you want so long as you have a subscription, although they have also announced that you can buy games and then, theoretically, keep them even if you ditch the subscription? That part is a bit hazy.

But the subscription itself will cost about $10 a month, and there will also be a planned free version next year. But if you are a big spender you can get early access to the technology in November for $130. Either that or you can wait till next year and just get it then. Regardless, the service will offer up to 4K at 60fps, but it is dependent on the internet speed you happen to have.

The new service will launch in a number of countries (none of which happen to be mine), but Google has managed to rack up quite a number of launch games for the service, so that’s good. But we will have to wait till November to see whether the service plays nicely with the world’s internet infrastructure.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Google’s Stadia arrives this November, but it’ll cost £119 if you want to get involved at launch
• Gamasutra – Stadia ‘Founders Edition’ launches in November, base version in 2020
• IGN – Google Stadia price, launch window, launch games lineup revealed
• Kotaku – Everything We Learned Today About Google Stadia [UPDATED]
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Google confirms games and price for Stadia
• VG247 – Google Stadia will launch in November for $9.99 a month, includes Destiny 2 and 30 other games

 

More allegations against Rockstar:

This story surprises me a bit because no one else seemed to report on it. There was an investigative piece published by Jim Sterling last week Monday, and in his video he highlighted some of the issues at Rockstar Games. And only a week before that there was a Kotaku report (which was also hardly reported on by my usual sources) which levelled claims against Rockstar executive Jeronimo Barrera for sexual misconduct, and Jim Sterling’s video continued the narrative.

According to his video, which worked off information from several anonymous sources at the company, Rockstar has a bit of a problem. The famed Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption developer apparently has a clique, frat-boy like culture that revolves around parties, strip clubs and the usual kind of sexual misconduct. Bosses like Barrera, who was fired because of the #MeToo movement (allegedly, although that obviously wasn’t the official story), was known as a hard boss who was prone to screaming at people and flying off the handle for no apparent reason.

The guys in charge engage in tons of damage control, but according to the sources there is exploitation of workers who are unwilling to work overtime, abuse and straight up creepy nonsense, such as the aforementioned Barrera trying to get employees to tell stories about how they lost their virginity. So the company is interested in maintaining a good public perception, but aren’t as interested in actually improving conditions for their workers.

However, the flood gates are opening all across the industry as various news outlets take to investigating various companies, and while the time of unchecked greed and exploitation may not be coming to an end, it can’t be hidden away like it used to be. The stubbornness to change by companies like Riot Games doesn’t paint the most optimistic picture of positive change in the industry, but by uncovering what these companies are doing, at least public pressure can increase and increase.

Source:

• YouTube – Fear & Fury: How The Rockstar Sausage Is Made (The Jimquisition)

Minecraft: Story Mode is getting delisted:

Yay, more archival screw ups in this industry. So, instead of figuring out a way to keep the games that have been created on the market, such as by establishing the kinds of trusts that can be found in areas such as the film and music industry, the gaming industry instead prefers to just destroy the games that have been made by hardworking people.

Telltale went backrupt last year and ever since they have been in a steady decline, and the latest news is that their game, Minecraft: Story Mode, is soon going to vanish from digital gaming storefronts. On top of that, if you own the game already, you will no longer be able to download it. The game is just going to be gone. Simple as that.

The scheduled date of the vanishing is 25 June 2019, and hopefully something is done before that. But we have no clue. Both seasons of the game are set to disappear, but there’s no word on whether or not the Netflix version of the game will survive the vanishing. We can only hope so, but that doesn’t give much hope for the rest of the games, which will also inevitably vanish unless someone buys up the licenses and saves them.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Download Minecraft: Story Mode now before it’s delisted later this month
• IGN – Telltale’s Minecraft: Story Mode will be discontinued in a few weeks
• Kotaku – In A Few Weeks, Minecraft: Story Mode Will Be impossible To Download
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Minecraft: Story Mode downloads might vanish on June 25th
• VG247 – Minecraft: Story Mode 1 & 2 are being delisted – download them now before they’re gone forever

Starbreeze is going to lay off 60 employees:

Starbreeze, the Payday 2 developer that is endlessly surrounded by conflict, has just announced that they will be laying-off about a quarter of their staff. A quarter, in this case, is about 60 people. So that means there’ll be another 60 jobless game devs out there. This year has been wonderful when it comes to lay-offs. But unlike some of the other companies that have been getting rid of people, Starbreeze is facing genuine closure. They’ve been in a period of “reconstruction” since December of last year, and all because their Overkill’s The Walking Dead game was a commercial flop.

The company has been granted an extended reconstruction period till September by the Swiss court, and until then they’re selling off their assets, such as their System Shock 3 license and their Dhruva art studio. Their lay-offs will also reportedly reduce their monthly costs by $317.000. So the lay-offs are understandable but still disheartening to hear about. Here’s hoping those employees manage to land on their feet and get a more stable job next time around.

Sources:

• Eurogamer – Big layoffs at embattled Payday studio Starbreeze
• Gamasutra – Starbreeze is laying off a quarter of its entire workforce
• Gamasutra – Struggling Starbreeze granted extended reconstruction period until September

PS3 Naughty Dog servers are going down soon:

An age that many probably didn’t even realise was still going is coming to an end. The PS3 multiplayer sections of some Naughty Dog games are being taken offline, and I doubt many people will notice. So it would seem that the multiplayer function for Uncharted 2, Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us (all of which are games that are better known for their singleplayer narratives than their multiplayer experiences) are officially coming to an end.

In the lead up to the actual dropping of the servers on 3 and 4 September, for USA and Europe respectively, Naughty Dog have decided to give people a bit of a treat. All multiplayer DLC is being made free. So anyone who desperately wants to go out and play some Naughty Dog multiplayer, go and do so.

Sources:

• Gamasutra – Naughty Dog is shutting down PS3 servers for Uncharted 2, 3, and The Last of Us
• IGN – The Last of Us, Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 PS3 multiplayer servers going offline this year
• Kotaku – Naughty Dog Is Taking Uncharted And The Last of Us’s PS3 Multiplayer Servers Offline
• VG247 – PS3 multiplayer servers for The Last of Us, Uncharted 2, Uncharted 3 being taken offline

Next week will be a recap of what all happened during E3.