Tag: ubisoft

Delays, Strikes and Vampire Survivors

 

This week in gaming news…

 

 

Studio infamous for delays; delays game.

 

Cloud Imperium Games, the developers behind the perpetually delayed Star Citizen have announced that its spin-off single player game Squadron 42 (which was announced to be apparently feature complete last year) has been delayed until 2026.  The game was originally announced as a part of Star Citizen but has since been turned into a standalone project.

 

The game’s prologue was demoed at CitizenCon in Manchester, England (which apparently suffered from an assortment of bugs, glitches and crashes).

 

Cloud Imperium Games has in the over 12 years since its initial crowdfunding campaign made over 729 million dollars with still no release in sight for Star Citizen.

 

 

Ubisoft France Staff Strike

 

The STJV (Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo), an independent union that defends the moral and economical interests of workers in the video games industry (as described by their website) called for a three day strike from October 15 to the 17th over Ubisoft’s home working policy and pay.  The STJV’s site says as follows:

 

“Management just announced its decision to impose a return to offices for 3 days per week for all employees. This announcement was made without any tangible justification or any consultation with the workers’ representatives.

 

…

 

This decision is announced immediately after the failure of the profit-sharing negotiations. Exactly like previous salary negociations: management’s proposals were innaceptable, the negociations’ timetable was appalling, and management was deaf to the proposals of the various Employee representatives.”

 

News Nibbles!

 

Telltale has come out to confirm that the Wolf Among Us 2 is not canceled after rumors that the game was on the chopping block circulated.

 

Netflix has shut down one of their AAA games studios, known as team Blue, which had some pretty big names attached to it such as former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonn, head of creative on Halo Infinite Joseph Staten and God of War’s art director Rafael Grassetti.

 

Vampire Survivors is getting some spooky Castlevania DLC for Halloween! Ode to Castlevania will add over 20 characters and weapons and at least 10 hours of gameplay to the already stuffed to the brim game.

 

Valve has said they won’t be releasing a new Steam Deck console every year just for a small improvement.  Instead, to be fair to their customers, they want to “wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before [they] ship the real second generation of Steam Deck.”

 

Game releases!

 

October 25

Sonic X Shadow Generations (Playstation, Xbox, PC & Switch

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Playstation, Xbox, PC)

 

October 29

 

Life is Strange: Double Exposure (PS5, Xbox, PC)

Red Dead Redemption (PC)

Monster High: Skulltimate Secrets (Playstation, Xbox, PC, Switch

 

And that’s it for the news this week!

Disappearing Games, Fallout Resurgence, Gaming Biz News, and some Bytes for good measure.

Games Getting the Thanos Snap
This week saw a couple of games added to the growing list of paid games ripped from digital libraries and slipped from support and server maintenance. PlayStation has chosen to decommission the servers of LittleBigPlanet 3 following the technological issues which resulted in the servers being shut down in January. The multimedia giant seems to have given up trying to fix the problems and instead has decided to just shut up shop, removing support for core gameplay loop of creating and sharing levels. In worse news, Ubisoft has created a new category in your digital library called “Inactive Games”. This is specifically for owners of the purchased game The Crew. When opening the game through the launcher you are now greeted with the message “You no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventures?”. Attempts at bypassing said launcher are met with either game key requests or a limited access demo version of the game launching. Ubisoft claims this was necessary “… due to server infrastructure and licencing constraints.”
This trend has been tipped to continue with a report published that claims 70% of game developers are concerned with the sustainability of live service titles. This is also compounded with the overwhelming majority of those surveyed working in teams dedicated to said live service games.
So, what can we do as gamers? The movement to get political is now in full swing with people calling for the preservation of video games. Personally, you can head to stopkillinggames.com and click the “Take Action Here” and follow the links, perhaps even signing the parliamentary petition EN6080 calling for the government to enforce our ownership of games like I have.

Fallout Resurgence
In more positive news, in the wake of the well-received adaptation of the Amazon Prime Fallout series – which if you didn’t know is all canon to the Fallout lore according to Todd “it just works” Howard – the series has incited gamers to return to the base games with sales of Fallout 4, earlier titles, and even the critically panned Fallout 76 jumping up the charts with player counts hitting new peaks or even breaking old records. And for all those living out their postapocalyptic dream for the first time or returning to the series, the games have either received or scheduled to receive next gen updates as this broadcast goes live (April 25th), and probably with all the trademark issues/glitches/problems we have come to expect from Bethesda.
And for the series fans, you’ll be happy to know that Amazon has confirmed a second season is on the way.

Game Industry Biz News
This week videogame company Embracer Group announced they would be dissolving the company and splitting their assets into three separate companies; the first Asmodee Group to focus on the companies table top assets, the temporarily named “Coffee Stain & Friends” to take over the indi to AA game operations, and the – again temporarily named – “Middle-Earth Enterprises and Friends” to take over the high end AAA assets like Tomb Raider and The Lord of the Rings franchises. The CEO of Embracer Group, Lars Wingefors, is bucking the trend of blaming the volatility of the industry, and is taking responsibility, saying;

“As a leader and an owner, sometimes you need to take the blame and you need to be humble about if you’ve made mistakes and if you could have done something differently.
“I’m sure I deserve a lot of criticism, but I don’t think my team or companies deserve all the criticism.”

Atari is also bucking the trend with the relaunch of Infogrames as a publishing label, with purpose of publishing and acquiring IP outside of the Atari brand, and has already purchased the game Totally Reliable Delivery Services from tinyBuild.
And PlayDate – that niche console you’ve heard about from some of our announcers – the maker Panic has shared that of the 70 thousand shipped, over half of the owners have made purchases on the storefront. Because of this support, Panic has revealed that developers of the 181 games have received a sizable payout of over $500 thousand US dollars.

Now Have We Got Some Time for Some Quick Bytes?
Team Fortress 2 has finally gotten 64-bit support, now boasting up to 20% more frames per second! No updates on the bot issues though, but the game has only been out for a meagre 17 years so…
And there’s a new operating system on the horizon. With Meta announcing its new Meta Horizon OS for the VR ecosystem in partnership with ASUS, Lenovo, and Xbox.

And now for some upcoming games.
On April the 25th the “sah gaa” continues with Square Enix’s SaGa: Emerald Beyond coming to PC, PlayStation and Switch, while Bandai Namco brings the manga SAND LAND to life in … wait for it … SAND LAND (all caps) coming to PC, PlayStation and the Xbox series S & X.
Friday April 26 brings us Manor Lords, a medieval strategy where you can sit on your high horse, coming to PC. Or if you feel like turning into a spandex clad Beyblade with a sword and flashing lights, join the masses with Stellar Blade coming to the PlayStation 5. Or go for a different kind of spin in the tennis sim with some big names in Top Spin 2K25 coming to PC and next gen consoles.
And to round out the month, after hitting 40 million players, Sea of Thieves is finally coming to the PS5 Tuesday April 30.

And that’s all this week, in gaming news.

Stare Into The Sun: Some things you can’t explain, but you can feel


SURPRISE EARLY PODCAST!
In celebration of our collaboration with Netherworld for the Indie Dev Night we’re releasing this weeks podcast EARLY! So listen in as Maylee, Hazel, & Paul talk gaming news, this years not E3 announcements and Hazel does a special In Memoriam for the online phenomenon Blazeball.
So gather your salutes, gird your tear ducts, and open your ear holes.

Time to Vote, and Acquisitions Galore

 

It’s Time To Vote For GDCA

Online voting is now open for the 2022 Game Developers Choice Awards and the Independent Games Festival Awards. You have until Friday, February 11th at 5.59pm AEST to submit your vote.

All finalists are eligible for the awards, and casting your vote can determine the winning games, with the winners being announced at the Game Developers Conference in March.

Local game Unpacking by Witch Beam is on the finalist list for GDCA and Unpacking and another local game, Webbed by Sbug Games are both on the list for IGF. These games join the ranks with Sable by Shedworks, Halo Infinite by 343 Industries, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart by Insomniac Games, and so much more.

You can check out our Facebook page @ZedGamesAu for links to vote!

Sony Buys Bungie With More Acquisitions On The Way

Sony has announced a deal to acquire Bungie for $3.6 billion, making it yet another large consolidation deal in the games industry. Bungie will be ‘an independent subsidiary’ of Sony Interactive Entertainment, and will remain a multiplatform studio. They promise that Bungie will have the option to self-publish and reach players wherever they choose to play, which may come as a relief to current players who have already had to migrate their accounts in the past.

But Sony isn’t stopping there! Jim Ryan has said that we should expect more studio acquisitions in the future, with Sony aiming to expand beyond the PlayStation console, although the timing of the Bungie acquisition has many suggesting it is in response to Microsoft’s recent acquisitions of Activision, although the Bungie deal has been in the works for over 5 months.

New York Times Now Has Wordle

The popular word game that has taken the internet by storm has been acquired by the New York Times for an undisclosed price in ‘the low seven figures’. Wordle’s creator, Josh Wardle, says the game will continue to be free to play, however the New York Times statement seems to imply otherwise, stating that Wordle will “initially remain free to new and existing players”.

The New York Times does promise that Wordle will have an interesting future ahead, with a team of designers and engineers to further the user experience.

It’s unclear exactly what this means at this point, but many are cautious for the future of this little world game.

Ubisoft Complains That Players Don’t Get NFTs

After Ubisoft announced Quartz in December 2021, an NFT platform that would allow players to buy and sell virtual goods for real-world cash, they had been met with a wave of concern as to the potential environmental impact such a platform could cause, and what NFTs in video games actually mean for players.

The publisher answers critics by explaining that Quartz would use the Tezos blockchain to circumvent the energy-hungry algorithms, so that a single transaction would use roughly the same amount of energy as a video stream. However, this hasn’t stopped criticism, with many asking ‘what’s the point?’.

“I think gamers don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them. For now, because of the current situation and context of NFTs, gamers really believe it’s first destroying the planet, and second just a tool for speculation”, said Nicolar Pouard, VP at Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovations Lab.

“But what we [at Ubisoft] are seeing first is the end game. The end game is about giving players the opportunity to resell their items once they’re finished with them or they’re finished playing the game itself. So, it’s really for them. It’s really beneficial. But they don’t get it for now.”

And now for some upcoming game releases!

February 4

  • Cheftastic!: Buffet Blast (PC)
  • Dying Light 2 Stay Human (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO)

February 8

  • Apex Legends: Defiance (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)
  • Model Builder (PC)
  • OlliOlli World (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)
  • Rumbleverse (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO)
  • Sifu (PC, PS5, PS4)

February 9

  • Unbound: Worlds Apart (PS5, PS4)

Downs and Ups

Discontinued PlayStation services rise again

A sad fact of many online games is that at some point the servers are going to be shutdown and the game will be left unplayable.  Thankfully projects like PS Online Network Emulated exist which aim to restore the online functionality for such titles. They recently announced that Motorstorm for PS3 now had its online functionality restored following on from support for Socom Confrontation, Killzone 2, Warhawk and Twisted Metal Black. The team is also currently working on Ratchet: Deadlocked, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Resistance as well as the trying to bring back PlayStation Home.  To use the service, you don’t need a modified console. Simply point your Playstation’s DNS at the projects server and you’re good to go. You can find the projects homepage here:  https://www.psone.online

 

Halo Infinite can’t please everyone

Halo Infinite’s Multiplayer launch has gone as smoothly as most could have hoped for with one major exception. Many players have found the game’s leveling system to be less than satisfactory. Gaining levels on the battle pass is tied to completing specific challenges which has been  leading to slow progression and high rates of players quitting matches. To the point that the title’s design lead tweeted that he “feels everyone’s pain on progression”. One day later the community manager detailed changes they had already made to help alleviated the community’s displeasure and said larger changes were still to come.

DICE’s Design Lead on Battlefield steps down, then up

Fawzi Mesmar who acted as the head of design on Battlefield V, Star Wars Battlefront II and the recently released Battlefield 2042 has stepped down from his role at the company. An internal email to staff at DICE revealed Mr Mesmar had been planning to leave once the latest title had shipped.

“It was an absolute pleasure to serve on the best design teams in the galaxy. The incredible design work that you do continues to inspire me every day. Thank you for putting some faith in me, I hope I didn’t disappoint.”

It didn’t take long for Mesmar’s future to be revealed though as later in the week Ubisoft announced he would be taking the role as the new VP of editorial putting him in a high position of influence for the company’s future titles.

The Zed games Release Calendar

Fights In Tight Spaces (Xbox Platforms, PC), Solar Ash (PlayStation Platforms, PC) – December 3

Chorus (PlayStation 5 Xbox Platforms, PC), Danganronpa Decadence (Switch) – December 4

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (PlayStation Platforms, PC, Mac), Heavenly Bodies (PlayStation Platforms, PC) – December 7

Life is Strange: True Colors (Switch), SpellForce III Reforced (PlayStation Platforms, Xbox Platforms, PC), White Shadows (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC) – December 8

Halo Infinite (Xbox Platforms, PC) – December 9

The Hottest News From E3 2021

This week in gaming news

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, commonly known as E3 has come and gone for another year and in its, and other non-official event’s wake we have a mountain of game news and announcements.

Summer Game Fest, Geoff Keighly’s alternative E3 program kicked off the major events of the week starting with an announcement of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Gearbox’s High Fantasy Borderlands’ spinoff staring Tiny Tina. A splattering of other announcements followed including Jeff Goldblum introducing us to Jurassic World Evolution 2, Hideo Kojima announcing Death Stranding Director’s Cut for PS5 and finally the major reveal of footage from Elden Ring, the long-awaited new game by From Software in collaboration with the writer George R.R. Martin which will launch January 19 2022.

Ubisoft hit the ground running showing off gameplay for the latest Far Cry game starring Giancarlo Esposito as well as the upcoming DLC’s which will allow players to play as the antagonists from several of the other games in the series and includes a remastered copy of Blood Dragon. More details for the extreme sports game Rider  s Republic were shown along with the PvE spin off of Rainbow Six Siege, Extraction which will pit the operators against an alien force. A new version of Rocksmith was announced called Rocksmith+, a guitar playing and teaching service that will allow player to use their real instruments and their phone or microphones to connect. The game supports electric, acoustic and bass guitar and you can currently sign up to a beta for the service online. A sequel to the 2017 hit Mario + Rabbids was announced subtitled Sparks of Hope with Mario and his strange collection of Rabbid dopplegangers going on a new cosmic scale adventure. The final announcement for Ubisoft was a reveal of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora a game set in James Cameron’s Avatar universe made by Massive Entertainment who are most well-known for The Division.

Microsoft started their event with the first footage of Bethesda’s long-awaited RPG Starfield. While we are still yet to see gameplay from the title, we were given a glimpse at the universe we will be exploring and details that it is currently slated for release in late 2022 as an Xbox and PC exclusive. The Outer Worlds 2 was announced as early in development, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was shown off with a release of next year along with sequels to Slime Rancher and A Plague Tale. Halo Infinite was confirmed to be release later this year with the multiplayer being made free to play for everyone to enjoy. Forza Horizon 5 was shown with its new Mexican location. Sea of Thieves has a story based cross over in the Pirates of the Caribbean universe coming very soon called A Pirates Life featuring Jack Sparrow and other characters from the film franchise. And the show finished on a reveal of Arcane’s new game Redfall an open world co-op shooter featuring magic, vampires and a lot of style.

Square Enix announced Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy a single player 3rd person adventure where the player controls Star-Lord leading his band of misfits across the universe. It is being developed by Eidos Montreal best known for the modern Deus Ex games and is set for release on October 26. There was also a look at Platinumgames’ new live-service game Babylon’s Fall, the new Life is Strange True Colors and a reveal of the Final Fantasy action spin off Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin.

Nintendo apologised that they had no details to share on Metroid Prime 4 but quickly followed up with a reveal of Metroid 5, which is also known as Metroid Dread a title originally in development for the DS 15 years ago which was cancelled due to technical limitations. Mario Party Superstars a collection of boards and minigames from the N64 era was announced along with a remake of Advance Wars 1 and 2 titled Re-Boot Camp. Wario is back with WarioWare: Get it Together a new take on the microgames format with a focus on 2 player games. We got a closer look at Shin Megami Tensei V’s hellish version of demonic otherworld Tokyo which will see release in November. The Nintendo show closed with a look at some Zelda announcements. DLC for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the remaster of Skyward Sword which releases in July and a new Game & Watch device that includes the original versions of The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventures of Link and Link’s Awakening along with an altered version of Vermin that includes Link. We finally got a glimpse at Breath of the Wild 2 which will see Link adventuring into the sky above    Hyrule and utilise a multitude of new powers and tools.

Now that the show is over you can check out many of the games on both Steam and Xbox live. The Steam Next fest will run until June 22nd and included hundreds of demos of unreleased games while Microsoft has released 40 game demos from its ID@Xbox lineup.

The Week in game releases

June 22 – Dark Alliance (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights (Switch, PC), Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 – The Official Video Game (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Stadia, PC)

June 24 – Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC), Legend of Mana (PlayStation 4, Switch, PC), The Eternal Castle Remastered (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4)

 

Next Xbox Release Details, Ubi-Games and PAX Online

Australian release date and price for Microsoft’s next generation consoles revealed

Microsoft will release their next generation hardware, the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S on

November 10th at a price of $749 and $499 respectively. They will also be continuing their Xbox All Access program through Telstra which provides a console plus Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for a monthly fee of $46 or $33 over a duration of 24 months. Additionally, Microsoft has announced that Game Pass will now include EA’s subscription service, EA Play at no additional cost.

Those looking for Playstation launch details may not have long to wait as Sony has a Playstation 5 Showcase scheduled for Thursday (September 16) morning at 6am AEST.

Ubisoft announces new projects in the latest Ubisoft Forward

In the latest presentation from the scandal plagued publisher several new titles were debuted and detailed.

Riders Republic is a massive multiplayer focused extreme sports game that follows in the footsteps of Steep. The game allows up to 50 players at once to compete in open world sports including biking, wingsuiting, skiing, snowboarding and others.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is receiving the remake treatment from Ubisoft India. The remake is the studios largest title to date and features all new graphics and gameplay updates.

Gods & Monsters the Breath of the Wild inspired open world action RPG based in a colourful world of Greek mythology has had a name change. Now known as Immortals Fenyx Rising you can expect the game to drop this year on December 3rd.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is being re-released with a Complete Edition. The stylish beat em up based on the comic series featured art direction from Australia’s own Paul Robertson and disappeared from sale back in 2014. The new edition contains the base game and all DLC.

Before the presentation Ubisoft released a video message from CEO Yves Guilemot addressing some of the recent scandals that have surrounded the company primarily the incidents of harassment and the appropriation of Black Lives Matter imagery in Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad. Yves apologised for the incidents and pledged to improve in order to prevent such incidents in future, provide opportunities for underrepresented voices in the company and pledge their support for Black Lives Matter as well donating a million dollars to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Pax Online is Live

In lieu of PAX Australia and PAX West this year event organiser Reedpop has launched the online event PAX Online running from September 12 to 20. During the free event you can check out panels and events streaming around the clock on the PAX Online channels, tour a virtual show floor and even play demos of unreleased games on Steam. Included in the line up are some of Australia’s very own including Unpacking, TopplePOP: Bungee Blockbusters, Ring of Pain and Justice Sucks: Recharged among others.