Tag: Rockstar

DnD OGL Update Aftermath
In the aftermath of the Open Game Licence 2.0 leak, Wizards of the Coast have struggled to claw back their fanbase as DnD Beyond servers suffer under the load of mass subscription cancelations. Additionally, several big third-party publishers who would be affected by the new royalty system have tabled their intention to either jump ship or create their own licensing system. Kobold Press teased “Project Black Flag”, Matt Colville’s MCDM Productions is working on both a new OGL as well as a new TTRPG, and Paizo/Pathfinder looking to collaborate on an open RPG license.
In response, a statement was released insisting “It was never our intent to impact the vast majority of the community.” They also tried to clarify stating that any future revisions “…will not include the license back provision that some people were afraid was a means for us to steal work. That thought never crossed our minds.”

Activision Blizzard… when will it end?
As the saga continues, here’s the current headlines coming out of the company that can’t stop making waves.

• Activision Blizzard has refused to acknowledge the union that formed late December. Management at Proletariat issued the statement that leadership “…has always been pro-worker“ and that employees “…deserve some time to process (sic) and to better understand its potential impacts.”
• The Microsoft Activision Blizzard merger that was announced in January 2022 has had new challenges with the European Union filing an antitrust challenge and Google parent Alphabet Inc, and Nvidia are filing for unfair advantages in the gaming market. These join other objections placed with the US Federal Trade Commission to be investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority, and finalised in April.
• In some hearsay arguments Activision Blizzard claims that it was Netease that rejected the six-month extension of their partnership. Various sources cite irreconcilable differences including Netease president referring to an Activision Blizzard executive as a “jerk”. Because of these, after January 23^rd several titles will no longer be accessible in China, most notably World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Starcraft, and Overwatch 2.

Doors Close on Stadia
As the curtains close on the experiment that was Google Stadia, refunds have been processed for everything but Pro subscriptions… but payments were also paused the day shutdown was announced. But what about all that hardware you don’t have? Well, if you did manage to get the controller, Google has pushed a self-serve tool to enable Bluetooth connections with the gamepads. Meaning, your Stadia Gamepad may be obsolete, but at least you can still use it on the hardware you didn’t get because you used Stadia.
Oh! Remember that guy who had 6000 hours in Red Dead Online on the Stadia who was pleading for a character transfer? Well, not only did Rockstar organise a transfer, he also got a gift box from the company. Unfortunately, Rockstar has announced they will no longer be releasing any major content for Red Dead Online, instead focusing on the upcoming GTA6.

And finally, a moment for the death of Google Stadia…

And now, for some upcoming games.
On Friday January 20^th, the next instalment in the series Fire Emblem Engages and its Wave 1 DLC are coming to Switch. World War 1 horror survival Trenches emerges from Steam early access onto PlayStation, Xbox, & the Switch.
Tuesday January 24^th, the RAM-hungry, RPG, fantasy shooter Forspoken is coming to PC & PS5, and deckbuilding & strategy boardgame mashup Mahokenshi comes to PC.
And on Thursday January 26^th, for that nostalgia hit Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection is coming to PlayStation and Switch. The strange Hitman: World of Assassination hodgepodge that collects Hitman 1 to 3 as well as Hitman 3: Freelancer Mode are all coming to PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch. Fight the nightmares of a girl in the twin stick shooter NeverAwake, coming to PlayStation and Switch.

Goat’s stepping on toes, or going for the viral takedown?
Developers of Goat Simulator 3, Coffee Stain Studios, have been slapped with a takedown notice from Rockstar Games for using footage from the September GTA 6 leaks. The now-removed video featured an interview with Shaun, a professional NPC, where he talked about his many experiences as an NPC in games, including in the leaked GTA 6 footage. After being removed from Twitter, it was replaced with a tweet from the company with the following gif…

Act of stupidity or marketing genius? You decide.

Why all the Updates Nintendo?
You may have noticed the recent slew of updates hitting some old and new favourites from Nintendo, coming with the patch notes;

“Several issues have been addressed to improve the gameplay experience.”

These patches have been pushed for many games such as Mario Kart 7 for 3DS, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Splatoon 2&3, ARMS, Super Mario Maker 2, Nintendo Switch Sports and are probably needed for many more. This patch is actually to prevent an exploit called “ENLBufferPwn” which allowed full takeover of the system without detection through security holes in online play, allowing access to saved payment information, as well as in-built peripherals such as cameras and microphones. The worst part? While the issue is relatively easy to patch on the Switch, the Wii U and 3DS eShops’ ability to roll out patches for this and future exploits will close in Feb 2023, leaving any vulnerability open for future exploitation.

Aurora taking Sky: Children of Light into the Stratosphere.
In a recent interview Jenova Chen, founder and CEO of Thatgamecompany, creators of Sky: Children of Light, revealed that more than 1.6 million players have attended the Aurora Concert that first occurred on December 8. This has been achieved through the intense work of the programmers and servers to maintain instances of around 4000 players, each with emote interactivity to the entire instance and a text based proximal chat with players in their row. Contrasted to other games’ concerts, such as Fortnite with only 40 people per room, highlights the near year of work of the team at Thatgamecompany to make it happen. The show officially called “The Musical Voyage” contains several performances from Aurora where players are collectively involved in the visual space. The performance has been playing every 4 hours since, with the last show to play January 1^st.

Now, normally I’d do games coming out… but since there are none, I thought I’d list some of the games that Shutdown this year.

Long standing tactical shooter America’s Army
Released 4^th July 2002,
Shutdown 5^th May 2022.

MOBA that couldn’t break League of Legends’ hold Heroes of Newerth
Released 12^th May 2010,
Shutdown 20^th June 2022.

Fantasy MMO Tera, who’s developers just wanted to move on,
Released 25^th January 2011,
Shutdown 30^th June 2022.

Car sim Project Cars 1 & 2 succumbed to car and track licence expiry date blues,
With one released 6^th May 2015,
Shutdown 3^rd October 2022

And two released 21^st September 2017,
Shutdown 21^st September 2022

Overwatch
Released 3^rd May 2016,
Shutdown 3^rd October 2022

Just a year and a bit of life, the MMO Crowfall fell,
Released 6^th July 2021,
Shutdown 22^nd November 2022

Free-2-Play Super Bomberman R Online bombed out
Released 1^st September 2020,
Shutdown 1^st December 2022

Fuser, the Harmonix successor to Guitar Hero and Rock Band and reviewed by our own Paul, just didn’t hit the bigtime
Released 10^th November 2020,
Shutdown 19^th December 2022

Square Enix’s Final Fantasy kart game, Chocobo GP… not quite gone, but the store and purchased mithril will be worthless past the shutdown date
Released 12^th January 2022,
Last Update 21^st December 2022,
Shutdown 1^st June 2023

Literally every game that was released for Google Stadia
Released 19^th November 2019,
Slated to be shutdown 18^th January 2023.

That’s all this week in gaming news.

Nintendo News
This week Nintendo had several announcements with president Shuntaro Furukawa saying the Switch was in the middle of its lifecycle. With the Switch selling more units than all previous generations of Nintendo’s home consoles, with over 100 million units sold so far, the Switch, Switch Lite, and the new OLED version that released last year, it seems the Switch is closing in on Game Boy’s near 120 million console total. Despite this, year-to-year sales in 2021 dropped by 6% and profits were down 9.3% compared to 2020, after Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ exceptional release. Shuntaro Furukawa also announced they would not be participating in the consolidation wars of Microsoft and Sony, and are instead focussing on strengthening their own company. In better news for Nintendo, Pokémon Legends: Arceus has sold 6.5 million copies in its first week, outselling Sword and Shield which sold 6 million collectively in its release week.
The announcements of today’s Nintendo Direct was packed with sports and ports. In Sports, Mario Strikers Battle League, a Mario soccer game utilising items, skills, and strategy is coming June 10. Nintendo Switch Sport, a new Wii-like sports game including Bowling (with survival mode), Tennis, Chambara, Badminton, Volleyball, and Soccer complete with leg strap, as well as a future Golf game to come. This comes to Switch April 29 with a playtest for Switch Online members February 18 through 20. Baseball game The Show 22 announced cross play to take your game on the go. Disney Speedstorm, a free-to-play cross platform Disney and Pixar action racer to come midyear.
Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival, a rhythm drum game with 76 songs and a future in-game subscription that will give access to over 500 songs is coming this year.

In DLC announcements, Mario Kart 8 is getting a paid DLC with 48 remastered courses to be released over time named Booster Course Pack. This will be included in the Online Expansion Pack or may be purchased separately. And Cuphead – The Delicious Last Course DLC will be available June 30.

In Ports, Star Wars: Force Unleashed is available from today in the online store, also EarthBound and Earthbound Beginnings have been added to Nintendo Switch Online. Assassin’s Creed Enzio Collection is coming Feb 17, Triangle Strategy March 4, Chrono Cross: The Radican Dreamers Addition, a remake with enhanced soundtrack, is coming April 7, Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp April 8, Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series July 8, and Live A Live July 22. No Man’s Sky and Front Mission 1st: Remake are coming to the Switch midyear, and SD Gundam Battle Alliance, and Portal: Companion Collection have been announced for 2022.

Surprising Grand Theft Auto News
On February 4^th Rockstar surprised fans by announcing in a blog post that they are “actively developing[sic] the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series [and] is well underway.” This same post also confirmed the release date for GTA V and GTA Online coming to PS5 and Xbox series S & X on March 15.
In other surprising news, CEO Strauss Zelnick claimed GTA Trilogy, with a user score of 0.6 on metacritic, “significantly exceeded” expectations. In an investor presentation Take Two-claimed they have sold up to an estimated 10 million copies of the game.

Now in some Gaming Bytes:

Mobile Warcraft
In 2021’s financial report Activision Blizzard shared that they are planning the release of a Warcraft franchised mobile “content” to be released this year. There is no indication as to what form this may take.

Wordle Madness
With the popularity of Wordle and its sale to the New York Times last week, several spinoffs have started to pop-up online. There are both word based options for the Wordle connoisseur with Semantle – a word meaning match, Dordle – a double word match puzzle, Lewdle a humorous addition where only lewd words are allowed, and Gameboy Rom and Wordle Archive for those wanting to take it on the go or check it out historically. For those sick of the word based wordles, Globle has you guessing countries, Squirdle is all Pokémon, and Nerdle is for those math fans.
But for those OG Wordle fans… it seems everything is right there on the webpage. So, before the New York Times takes over, don’t forget to right click and save your way to years of offline Wordle.
If you have another Wordle spinoff we need to know about, leave a comment on our Facebook news post.

Now for some upcoming games:
Friday the 11^th free-to-play MMORPG Lost Ark is coming to PC
Pixelated action RPG where your choices matter Infernax is coming to PC, Xbox, PS4 and Switch just in time for Valentine’s Day. On Thursday 17^th, King of Fighters 15 comes to PC, Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 4 & 5, and Total War: Warhammer 3 comes to PC and Game Pass.

And that’s all this week in gaming news.