Fortnite creator Epic Games will pay a record $520 million to settle allegations that it illegally collected children’s personal information and used “dark patterns” to encourage accidental in-game purchases. What do you think?
“I hope they have a creepy way of making that money back.”
Cliff Zarley • Unemployed
“I blame parents for letting their kids have personal information.”
Mandy Lee • Chief Enunciator
“We let these companies babysit our kids for free, and they betray us like this?”
As Web3 Is Going Just Great’sMolly White reports, the deal was supposed to run for seven years, and involve FTX making “substantial payments” to Riot, starting with $12.5 million for the 2022 calendar year (and escalating to $12.875 for 2023, and so on). So far only $6.25 million of that 2022 sum has been paid, and there is almost zero chance Riot will ever see another cent, so the company has filed a case with a Bankruptcy Court in Delaware seeking to have the rest of the sponsorship deal nullified.
In strictly business terms, that’s perfectly understandable. As Riot points out in their filing, FTX have declared bankruptcy, which should send the whole deal straight into the bin, no questions asked. Just in case anyone does ask questions, though, Riot have added, “There is simply no way for FTX to cure the reputational harm already caused to Riot as a result of the highly public disrepute wrought by the debacle preceding FTX’s bankruptcy filing. FTX cannot turn back the clock and undo the damage inflicted on Riot in the wake of its collapse.”
Prior to, and throughout this media firestorm, Riot’s image and reputation to its customer base, remained inextricably linked to FTX through its former CEO, Mr. Bankman-Fried. Media outlets and Twitter commentators splashed images of Mr. Bankman-Fried playing League of Legends—Riot Games’ game— at the same time that FTX was crashing. Mr. BankmanFried is famous for his affinity for the game. He is well-known among investors to play League of Legends during meetings. He acknowledged on Twitter that he played “a lot more [League of Legends] than you’d expect from someone who routinely trades off sleep vs work.” Even Mr. Bankman-Fried’s ranking in League of Legends has been the subject of online commentary with public figures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elon Musk weighing in.
Even back when this deal was first signed, in August 2021, it was agonisingly clear what the endgame for this whole scam was going to be, whether it was video game developers or NBA teams or overly-eager celebrities.
You would think Riot would know this, especially now in the middle of all this, but another part of the filing argues that the FTX deal needs to be terminated because it is preventing the company from further “commercializing the crypto-exchange sponsorship category…currently owned by FTX.” Fool me once, shame on you, etc, etc.
Blizzard is now taking pre-orders on a large, nearly $100 special Diablo IV collector’s box which includes many things. But it doesn’t include the game. And while Blizzard isn’t trying to trick people into accidentally buying this game-free box, it still seems very odd that there’s not even an option to get the game with this pricey package of demonic goodies.
Expensive collector’s editions of video games and movies have become more and more popular over the last decade. Personally, I never felt the need for all the random gubbins and statues usually included in these pricey bundles, but I get it. Some folks just really love to collect everything involving their favorite franchise or series. Whatever floats your boat! Just don’t get confused and think this $100 Diablo IV Collector’s Box actually includes the game it’s named after!
This week, Blizzard started taking pre-orders on something it’s calling the Diablo IV Limited Collector’s Box over on its merch store. This large, spiffy-looking box will cost you a cool $96.66 (I see what you did there…) and includes all of these items:
Occult Mousepad
Cloth Map of Sanctuary
Pin of the Horadrim
Diablo IV Collector’s Edition Art Book
Matted Fine Art Prints (x2) – 18.54″ x 10.79″
That’s very nice and all, but you’ll notice that the game isn’t part of this pricey bundle. Now, Blizzard isn’t trying to deceive anyone. It’s clear in the store description that this box doesn’t contain the game. It also isn’t selling the box on Battle.net but instead on its merch site, further separating it from its video game store. So I’m not trying to imply that Blizzard is trying to pull a fast one and trick diehard Diablo players into forking over $100 for something that doesn’t include the upcoming ARPG. I’m just saying it’s a bit odd, is all!
I guess for folks who prefer buying a digital copy of the game via a third-party site or who might want to provide a physical gift to someone who might already have the game pre-ordered, this is a nice idea. But why not have a different version that is $60-70 more and includes a code for the game? Or even a discount on it! Though that kind of stuff might make things more confusing.
A group of seven lawmakers are sending a letter to the world’s biggest video game companies tomorrow, asking each of them what steps they’re taking to combat “harassment and extremism” in online video games.
As Axios reports, the seven Democratic representatives—including Lori Trahan (Massachusetts), Katie Porter (California) and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon—have all co-signed a letter, which is looking to “better understand the processes you have in place to handle player reports of harassment and extremism encounters in your online games, and ask for consideration of safety measures pertaining to anti-harassment and anti-extremism”.
Unsurprisingly, the list includes companies like Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty, Overwatch), Microsoft (Xbox), Sony (PlayStation), Roblox, Take-Two Interactive (Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K), Riot Games (League of Legends, Valorant), Epic (Fortnite) and Electronic Arts (Battlefield, FIFA & Madden).
Those are all massive international companies, most of them with thousands of employees spread out all over the world, and responsible for some of the planet’s most popular and enduring online games. To want to grill them, when so many of them are based in the US—or at least most popular in the US—is a pretty obvious move!
Hilariously, though, whoever put the list together of which companies to target has clearly just gone down a list of “most popular games”, not “biggest companies”, because among those titans of industry are Innersloth, the developers of Among Us.
Among Us may be a huge hit, but Innersloth are also a tiny team. How tiny? This tiny:
Among Us Wins Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards 2020
Innsersloth’s webiste says the studio currently has 20 employees. I don’t know how much they’re going to be able to explain when their game has you playing as a cute little astronaut, doesn’t have voice chat and only lets players communicate via a menu of pre-written lines.
But then nobody has to legally reply to the letter at all, it’s just a letter, so maybe they can just reply “sorry, think this is meant for Xbox!” and get on with their day.
Popular free-to-play mobile game Brawl Stars is doing something a bit different. In an era where it seems every game is trying to nickel and dime you with more and more stuff to buy, instead it’s removing loot boxes and all random rewards entirely from the game. It’s yet another sign that loot boxes are likely to become a relic of the past as lawmakers and players push back on the random rewards. But that doesn’t mean Brawl Stars players are universally happy about their removal.
Released in 2019 for phones and tablets, Brawl Stars mixed cute characters with MOBA-like gameplay and some battle royale elements. The end result was a fun top-down competitive action game that I played for weeks and weeks. But since I stopped playing, millions have continued to enjoy it: Brawl Stars has made over a billion dollars in profit for Supercell and still has an active player base and community. Now, Supercell has removed all loot boxes from the game, and reaction to the change is oddly mixed.
Announced in a Brawl Talk video posted last week, Supercell’s latest update to Brawl Stars has removed all random rewards from the game. These boxes were mainly used to unlock new characters in the game. Since its release three years ago, Brawl Stars has heavily featured loot boxes as part of its rewards. But with yesterday’s update, that’s no longer the case.
Supercell / Brawl Stars
“No more probabilities, no more random rewards, and no more playing the guessing game when you unlock Brawlers,” said the game’s lead designer Frank Keienburg in Supercell’s Brawl Talk video.
Yesterday, as part of this update, all unclaimed boxes were automatically opened and all the rewards were given to players accordingly. Moving forward, Keienburg and Supercell say that all rewards—including its battle passes—will be replaced with “different, deterministic rewards, some of which are new to the game.” Now, players have a new battle pass-like feature, The Starr Road, which lets them unlock all characters for free via grinding. Players can now just buy any brawler they want with gems, instead of randomly buying dozens of loot boxes to maybe get a specific hero.
“We’re making this change for a few reasons,” continued Keienburg. “Mainly, moving away from probabilities and chance, which will make things more fair and predictable for you. It also gives you clear and exciting goals every time you play the game.”
While I think removing loot boxes is a good thing and something worth celebrating—especially as mobile games continue to be some of the worst offenders with even good games like Marvel Snap including predatory purchases of over $100 or more—the community reaction is far less positive. While some players seem happy about the removal of random reward crates, others expressed disappointment. The comments on the Brawl Talk video has players rallying against the devs and demanding boxes return to Brawl Stars.
Why? For some it seems that the excitement of a loot box outweighed the frustration that often accompanies them. Others suggested they now have little interest in playing the game since random rewards are being removed. (I think some of these people need to stop and think if they really like Brawl Stars or just like pulling a virtual lever on a slot machine…) We saw something similar to this happen with Overwatch 2’s release, where some players were angry at the removal of loot boxes and demanded they be returned to the game. And while I agree that progression in Overwatch 2 sucks at the moment, I’d rather Blizzard figure out a way to fix that doesn’t involve bringing back loot boxes, even if it did give you a lot of free ones before.
The reality is that as games continue to become more and more popular, more countries will begin investigating the industry and how it makes money. And loot boxes are likely never to return in vogue as long as so many governments are leading crusades to regulate or outlaw them.
Valve’s classic Portal was recently re-released on Steam with some very fancy new visuals, including ray-tracing and DLSS support. That was great news for Portal fans, but it’s also great news for fans of all kinds of old PC games.
Before we go any further, I’ll explain the tech we’re talking about. RTX is the name given to a set of technologies used by graphics card company Nvidia that uses “ray tracing and AI technologies” to, very simply, make PC games look incredible. Here’s a trailer for Portal With RTX, the re-release of the game made with this tech, showing the improvements made to a game that most of us remember looking very 2007:
Portal with RTX | World Premiere
Now, the thing with RTX is that while in this case (and with Quake and Minecraft) it had to be put into the game by developers, Nvidia are also releasing a version of the tech with modders in mind. It’s called RTX Remix:
With RTX Remix, the game runs in the background and we replace the old rendering APIs and systems with RTX Remix’s 64-bit Vulkan renderer. This enables the addition of ray-tracing to classic games and it all updates in real-time as lights and objects move. Light can be cast from behind the player, or from another room, and in Portal with RTX, light even travels through portals. Glass refracts light, surfaces reflect detail based on their glossiness, reflections can be cast into the scene from behind the player, objects can self-reflect, and indirect light from off-screen illuminates and affects what you see.
Compared to Quake II RTX and Minecraft with RTX, the path-traced ray tracing introduced by RTX Remix is even more advanced, bouncing light four times instead of once, improving quality, immersion, and the simulation of real-world light. Additionally, we’ve also introduced several new ray tracing techniques that further improve quality while also being more performant.
Nvidia says that RTX Remix is “a modding platform” that will allow “modders of all ability levels to bring ray tracing and NVIDIA technologies to classic games”. Given it’s not out until 2023 I was expecting we were still months away from seeing what benefits it could bring to older games, but nope!
Modders like LordVulcan have found you can add RTX to some classic titles, right now, just by…dropping some files from Portal with RTX into another game’s folder on your hard drive and enabling some developer stuff in the console. That’s it. And it’s working on games like SWAT 4 and the original Max Payne.
Here’s some footage of SWAT 4taken by EiermannTelevision, which was released in 2005 and most definitely did not look like this at the time:
SWAT 4 RTX Remix
And here’s Half-Life 1, along with a little explainer on how it was done:
How To Get RTX in Half-Life: Source ~ RTX 4090 [RTX Remix] [4K]
None of those examples are perfect, but it’s incredible they work this well given how quick their implementation was. This is going to be so good when the actual RTX Remix is released in 2023, but until then it’s going to be cool seeing what other classic titles this slapdash workaround is compatible with!
Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 players are about to get what they wanted…sort of. The red-hot online shooter is getting Combat Records with its Season 01 Reloaded midseason update, which will go live December 14. Sounds good. But the catch is, it’s starting fresh: no information from the games you completed before that date will be counted toward your stats.
Traditionally, all the Combat Record does is log your and other players’ performance, including total time played, kill/death ratios, killstreaks, and other competitive stats, and players have beenwanting it to come to Warzone 2.0 since the game came out in November. However, a new blog Activision dropped today about the forthcoming patch revealed that the eagerly awaited feature comes with a significant caveat.
“Record will only be from the activation date forward, and will not include statistics from Season 01 launch through Season 01 Reloaded (November 16 to December 14),” read the update blog.
Kotaku reached out to Activision for comment.
For competitive players, this news comes down like a heavy slap in the face—nothing you do until December 14 will be officially documented. If you pop out your most impressive killstreak and no Combat Record is around to write it down, did you even have a killstreak?
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Personally, I’m not sure if this one is as bad as some fans aremaking it outto be. But I can understand their frustration, especially when considering the fact that Combat Record is a typical CoD feature that was missing from launch. It also doesn’t help that Warzone 2.0’s launch was one of this year’s most clunky and bugged. As pleasurable as the free game is to actually play, fans’ goodwill clearly has its limits.
But in the dark age between now and December 14, when stats will finally start being recorded, you can focus your attention to anticipating other midseason updates Warzone 2.0 is getting, like a Rocket League-inspired Warzone Cup with ATVs. Or you could, you know, try to just enjoy playing the game.
It was only three weeks ago that we reported the astonishing news that Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic The Hedgehog, had been arrested over allegations of insider training in relation to Dragon Quest. Now, it’s being reported that he’s been arrested again for similar charges, this time allegedly regarding shares bought before the 2021 announcement of mobile battle royale Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier.
Yuji Naka, a name behind some of the most iconic Japanese game franchises of the last 30 years, could be in a whole heap of trouble. The man who took Sonic from a high school notebook doodle to one of the most famous gaming characters in existence was arrested in November, along with others, allegedly accused of buying shares in developer Aiming, shortly before it was announced in 2020 that the studio would be making Dragon Quest Tact.
Less than a month later, it’s being reported by Asahi that it’s happening all over again, but this time in regards to his allegedly purchasing shares in ATeam Entertainment, just before it was made public in 2021 that they’d be creating Square Enix’s ill-fated mobile game, Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier. According to Asahi, he’s alleged to have paid 144.7 million yen ($1,051,000) for 120,000 shares in ATeam. It’s claimed he was arrested alongside another former Square Enix employee, Taisuke Sasaki, who was also said to have been arrested over Aiming shares last month.
Were this to be a thing someone had done, it would of course be an attempt to profit from the increased share value such an announcement would cause, but given it would be based on non-public confidential information, that counts as insider trading.
Most recently, Naka had been working on Square Enix’s dreadfulBalan Wonderworld, before being let go by the studio six months before its release. He says he later sued Square Enix over this, but has never disclosed the resolution.
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In February last year, Squenix announced Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier would be jointly developed with ATeam, before releasing it for mobile in November last year. Then, less than a year later, announced they were killing it dead. ATeam shares are now worth about half their value in 2021, and a fraction of their peak in 2013.
England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford has made a few handy saves so far at this World Cup, but between waiting around for large parts of a game and then having days between matches, there’s a lot of spare time to fill. Which he has duly done by getting an enormous gaming setup shipped over from home.
Pickford, who plays his club football for Everton, revealed the power move as part of this promotional interview below, which runs for over 20 minutes but which I’ve set to autoplay at the relevant moment:
Pickford Chats GK Union, Gaming Setups and Golf Dream Teams 🎮⛳️ | Ep.20 | Lions’ Den With M&S Food
Seems the guy really likes playing Fortnite, and had previously taken gaming laptops with him while on national duty so he could play on his off days. But switching between those cramped confines and his regular setup had proved too much for the Euro 2021 Golden Glove winner, so for Qatar he just figured, fuck it, and got something more heavy duty shipped over.
Screenshot: YouTube
The monogrammed container it arrived in is, indeed, a “proper bit of kit”. Inside it’s still a laptop, but with a custom-built, full-size TV/monitor/screen included so that the visual experience on the road matched what he was used to at home.
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As for Fortnite, it’s not just Pickford playing; as he says above it’s something he plays with the lads, and four years ago at the last World Cup the England squad were famously, absolutely hooked on it:
Aside from their inspired celebrations, England players have been very forthcoming about their own Fortnite escapades in the camp. It’s no surprise that team youngsters Marcus Rashford and Alli play religiously, or that young-at-heart Raheem Sterling and Lingard log on to Epic Games’ best-seller, but the true revelation has been star striker Kane.
Kane, or should we say “hkane23”, has racked up an astonishing 110 matches while in Russia, closely followed by Tottenham (and evidently Fortnite) teammate Alli, also known as “Delstroyer14”, who has played 82 times, according to reports. The pair have previously livestreamed their matches, including one against defender and teammate Harry Maguire.
This being 2022, and with the World Cup running (for some countries at least) for almost a month, he’s far from the only person there playing Fortnite in his downtime. But he is, surely, the only one “just tryin to get the best frames, trying to get the upper hand” with a monogrammed, armoured computer case.
It’s also lovely to see that, since switching to a PC laptop, he’s having more luck with his power supply.
I’ve played a lot of games in my lifetimes. I say ‘lifetimes’ because I have lived many different lives, all of which have been incredibly uneventful and have mostly revolved around playing different games.
Features are what make a game. Many people are saying this. If you talk to any game developer and ask them, “What makes up a video game?”, they will tell you, “Features.” Go on, ask any of them. If they don’t have this answer, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m just spitballing here. Sometimes, I just say stuff. It’s whatever.
Anyway, I’ve played a lot of games and enjoyed a lot of features in games. On that note, I’d like to tell you the features that I think every game should strive to have included in their experience, based on the games that I have played in my many, many lifetimes.
I don’t ask for much from you, I simply just ask for the love of God that you take a look.
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An ugly little guy that is annoying and everybody hates
You see this in video games all the time. A little guy that is just terrible to look at, usually with a grating voice, and always with a lot to say. I believe that while it already exists in many games, a horrible little asshole should exist in every video game.
I propose this guy. His name is Beremy, and he would be the most common character in the game. He is incredibly rude, always around, will give you advice that doesn’t actually help in any way, and there is literally no part of the game that he is not in. Also, he is in love with you.
Pressing a button to scream
Do you know how in Dog’s Life, there’s a button that lets you shit/fart? I think that’s great. However, I think it’s definitely gotten a bit old, and every game having a shit/fart button would probably be a little isolating for anybody that doesn’t shit/fart.
That being said, I think that every game should have a Scream button. Why not? There isn’t a single game that wouldn’t benefit from having the option to just start screaming. Not only would it be a relief in games that are stressful, but it could also be used to scare things away in a desperate time of need.
Realistic auto-play
Idle games are all over the Auto-Play feature, and I think it’s really overdone and unrealistic. These Auto-Play modes seem to always benefit the player, and most of the time do not reflect how a player would actually play the game.
Due to this, I believe that games with and without an Auto-Play feature should have Realistic Auto-Play, which automatically plays the game really badly. I also think that there should be a warning beforehand that says, “WARNING: This is how we believe you would play the game. If you are hurt by this, maybe you should give playing the game a try.”
Unavoidable calls to your personal mobile from the worst character in the game
Remember how Overwatch 2 wanted people to be required to add their mobile numbers to their accounts? I think this is a great idea, purely for the purpose of this feature. I think all games should include 3-hour unavoidable phone calls on your real-life phone with the worst character in the game (refer to Feature 1).
In this phone call, you have to respond audibly to the character with things like, “Wow!” and “That’s really insightful!”, and you have to mean it. The 3-hour phone call will consist of the character talking about a putrid growth that has appeared on their inner thigh, and they will go into great detail about all the ‘natural remedies’ they have been using on it that have not been working. You cannot hang up.
For the past week or so, some folks playing Spider-Man: Miles Morales on the PC have been encountering a bug that, at the end of the game’s dialogue sequences, would just go ahead and play a honking loud air horn.
It wasn’t for everyone, and asPC GamesN report some players—presumably those who have spent any time in New York City—didn’t even realise it was a bug in the first place. But for others it was there, it was recognisable as a bug and it was wonderful.
An emotional revelation from a family member? HONK. A heartfelt thanks for risking your life? HONK. A sombre reflection on the nature of heroism, and the sacrifices inherent? HOOOOOOOOONK.
Here’s one example, set to autoplay at the relevant moment:
Spider-Man: Miles Morales Airhorn Bug (Mild spoilers?)
And here’s a second that is much funnier if you sit through the whole thing first:
Spider-Man: Miles Morales Airhorn 2 (Mild spoilers)
Sadly, the bug has now been removed. The game’s latest patch notes, released late last week, lead with:
Hey everyone,
A new patch for Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is now live. This update holds dozens of fixes and improvements. We addressed a bug that resulted in unintended air horn sounds being audible for some players and fixed a bug that caused some audio effects to be absent from specific cutscenes.
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Audio missing from cutscenes would indeed suck. I’m glad they fixed that one. But extra audio, like, say, an air horn sounding at inopportune times, does not suck. It is very good, and funny. Since one of the other things addressed in the update was the creation of an option to “skip Fast Travel animations”, could we please also get “leave the very funny air horn” as a box to tick as well? Thank you!
There’s a corruption controversy rocking The Game Awards, and it’s about…Genshin Impact? Apparently, there are a lot of Sonic Frontiers fans and TGA fans who think the gacha game’s ascent in the Players’ Voice award category has been suspicious, and they’re loud about their displeasure. Things got so heated that TGA host Geoff Keighley addressed bribery and botting accusations in today’s Reddit AMA.
Genshin Impact has a premium currency called primogems, which is used to roll for limited time gacha characters. Primogems are distributed sparingly compared to other gacha games, so the community likes to joke that Genshin players will do anything for them.
You probably see where I’m going with this. Rather than organic popularity and interest, there’s been speculation that Genshin players are instead motivated by primogems. Last year, Genshin Impact won the “Best Mobile Game” award at TGA. After the show, HoYoverse gave 10 gacha rolls to all of its players. Kotaku reached out to HoYoverse to ask whether or not it plans to distribute free primogems after TGA this year but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
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One redditor went on Keighley’s Reddit AMA to ask what he was going to do about “bribery” and “botting” in the player’s choice awards.
“I think it’s fan bases activating to support a game, or a game promoting its nomination to its fan base,” Keighley wrote. “This is part of the reason we don’t have 100 percent fan voting in the main categories.” However, he promised that TGA would be “looking into this now.”
It’s been interesting to see which games players believe should win over Genshin. Some were upset that it might win over God of War Ragnarök or Sonic Frontiers. God of War, I understand. The blockbuster action-adventure game was beloved by critics across the board. On the other hand, critics panned Sonic for being tedious. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that both Sonic and Genshin are benefitting from having a high profile IP. Except one series is considered more institutionally legitimate than the other.
To those who are genuinely upset about the possibility of HoYoverse utilizing its fanbase to push Genshin to the top: You know that The Game Awards is a marketing engine, right? I promise you that this is not a corruption scandal on par with the Panama Papers or Watergate. Personally, I prefer to rely on friends or certain video game bloggers to tell me what games are good.
As of writing, Sonic Frontiers is at the top of the Players’ Voice category with 17 percent of the vote.
Mystery Flesh Pit National Park is a fictional project by Trevor Roberts, who having started on Reddit has for the past few years has been posting stories and artwork to his website, fleshing (sorry) out the tale of a huge creature that is discovered underground in Texas and…turned into a tourist attraction.
It’s a very cool pitch, like some kind of Lovecraftian Jurassic Park, full of absurdity but also abject horror, and it has slowly been picking up enough fans that it has been covered on sites like USA Today. Given the success of the project, and the fact that Roberts has built more of a detailed diorama of a world than a linear story, a video game adaptation must have seemed to a lot of people like a really good idea.
So last week Roberts announced that, courtesy of Village Fox Media, a Mystery Flesh Pit video game would be going into development, and would be seeking its funding on Kickstarter. Billed as a “survival horror video game for PC”, it would centre around the efforts of a crew tasked with helping the Park recover from a disaster—remember, it’s inside a giant beast—that kills 750 people.
A week later the Kickstarter—which was very light on demonstrations or detailed information on development—has been binned, with Roberts saying the decision was made after a combination of “fan feedback, a fumbled marketing push, internal disputes, and some deep introspection”. Specifically, it seems the process of handing off work on the game to other people…did not go well, with Roberts since writing (emphasis mine):
To those who were looking forward to a videogame, I apologize. Most people do not fully appreciate what a substantial undertaking it is to produce even a modest videogame. I have personally and carefully created each and every piece of the Mystery Flesh Pit project, but something as large as a videogame is wholly beyond my scope as an individual artist. When I am not the one directly responsible for overseeing its creation, I cannot ensure its quality. After this experience I can firmly state that there will be no endorsed videogame adaptions of the Mystery Flesh Pit as long as I am alive.
I sincerely hope that by cancelling this overly-ambitious Kickstarter campaign I have avoided what could have been a rushed and inferior gaming experience at best, and an unmitigated disaster at worst. It is also my hope that my decision to endorse this particular Kickstarter does not harm or hinder the superior work of other credible, talented creators that are and have been working hard behind-the-scenes to bring you a Mystery Flesh Pit Tabletop Gaming Experience late in 2023.
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“I have no hard feelings towards the developers”, Roberts tells me. “It was a mutual decision in the end to cancel it. I think they were a little bit too ambitious, and I had a moment of clarity where I saw the disaster this was going to become for all involved. I think I did the right thing. And, for the record, I have always been and continue to be wholly supportive of fan games. My statement about there not being a Mystery Flesh Pit videogame ever was, admittedly, a little overzealous. Fan games are awesome. I just think there are already too many games/movies/series that are poorly planned cash grabs by burnt-out creators, and I’m not about that.”
It’s refreshing to see Roberts see the writing on the wall and pull the plug like this now, and not months/years down the line—having already taken the money—like so many other doomed campaigns have done on the platform.
The tabletop adaptation, which as Roberts says is still coming, should be out early next year.
Federal politician Andrew Wilkie, an independent, introduced the bill into parliament yesterday. He proposes that loot box mechanics—where players use actual money to buy random in-game items—prey upon the same impulses that gambling does, and that they can serve as a pathway to get kids hooked. He suggests that any game with loot boxes (or similar systems) should not only be restricted to those over the age of 18 (the legal gambling age in Australia), but should also carry warning labels specifying the reason for the rating as well.
While Australia has a reputation for being incredibly heavy-handed with its classification of video games—mostly down to a broken old system from decades past that has since been overhauled (but which still has some drug-related kinks in the pipe)—I think this is a no-brainer?
Here’s the full outline of the bill, which in some cases wouldn’t just restrict the sale of these games, but in some situations just straight up ban them (“RC” means Refused Classification, and games without classification can’t legally be sold here):
Loot boxes are features of interactive games containing undisclosed items that can be purchased with real currency. They can take the form of a virtual box, crate, prize wheel or similar mechanism and contain a prize or item which may or may not benefit the player. For example, a loot box might contain a particular character, additional play time or access to levels and game maps. As the rewards contained within these loot boxes can offer competitive advantages within the game, they carry significant value for players and may hold resale value.
By tempting players with the potential to win game-changing items, encouraging risk-taking for possible reward, delivering random prizes on an intermittent basis, and encouraging players to keep spending money, loot boxes give rise to many of the same emotions and experiences associated with poker machines and traditional gambling activities. This is especially concerning as many games which contain these features are popular with adolescents and young adults. Despite this, loot boxes are not currently required to be considered in classification decisions nor are games required to advertise when they contain this feature.
This bill remedies this by requiring the Classification Board to consider loot boxes when classifying a game. Further, the Board must set a minimum classification of R18+ or RC for games containing this feature, which will restrict children from purchasing and playing these games.
The amendments also require a warning to be displayed when games contain loot boxes or similar features, so that they can be easily identified by parents and guardians.
It’s Black Friday, the day on which the entirety of planet Earth entirely takes leaves of its senses and spends all its money on stuff it doesn’t need for 5 percent less than it would have cost yesterday. Planet Earth this year has bought itself an entirely new moon, even though the old one’s fine, just because this one has Bluetooth. So let’s distract ourselves from all that by discovering 12 amazing new games.
As is ever the case with Indiegeddon, I am not vouching for these games, as I’ve not played any of them. Instead, I just think they look interesting, exciting, frightening, or so damned weird I couldn’t not write about them. Most of them aren’t out yet, but the most useful thing you can do for the developers is give them a wishlist on Steam: it makes a big difference.
There’s bound to be at least one game here that has you checking its release date and wishing it were sooner, unless you’re that one person in the greys who feels the need to tell the whole universe that he actually thinks they all look terrible. We feel sorry for you, that one person. Just pity, really. For everyone else, woo-hoo, let’s get going!
Stuffer Fox
Falling Frontier
Every time I see a space-based RTS that looks as cool as Falling Frontier, I think, “This will be the one! This will be the game where I conquer my fear of menus!” And then I fail. But maybe it will be this one, because damn, it looks brilliant. Four years in the making already, by only one human, this looks like it came from a team of 100 at Paradox. Just watch those spaceships asplode! It’s all about taking over a procedurally generated star system, with intel and logic as its primary factors. But then you can also design your ships, raid enemies, and do all that amazing space-strat stuff I wish I’d grown a brain for.
You, a squirrel called Bill who’s great at crafting, stumble upon an alien baby in your garden who needs your help! It’s a tale as old as time itself. The result, Bill, is a simulation game in which you must craft, farm and organize everything the baby alien needs to survive. And it’s all to explore the concepts of recycling. Which is the weirdest elevator pitch, and yet looks like it could be adorable.
Get your head around this one: A 1 to 4-player couch co-op game about attempting to maintain a spaceship in calamitous circumstances, but also in splitscreen where you see both the inside and outside of your ship at the same time. Yikes. People will be able to take on different roles on the ship, from captain to janitor, as everything goes wrong on board while trying to defend yourself from enemies. It’s all about chaos and multitasking, or as I prefer to describe it, failing as a team.
Quartet looks like an incredibly faithful classic-style JRPG, but with a new twist on its turn-based battle system. Indeed, there are eight characters in that thumbnail above, but you battle with four at a time, able to tag characters in and out as appropriate. It’s also a quartet of stories, four to choose from, played in any order you wish, and of course in an Octotraveller way, they intertwine as you play through them all. It’s an ambitious project for a five-person indie team, but it sure looks like they’re doing it.
That man has a very tiny head. That said, this is Dreambound, a visual novel that’s just had a successful Kickstarter (raising over $30,000), affording everyone the opportunity to watch handsome young men stare wistfully at one another. It’s booooy looooove. As well as that, there are also mysterious deaths, dreams that invade reality, and demons from the past to deal with, for main character Noah, in what’s already looking like a very pleasingly drawn and written adventure.
Coo, look at this! It looks like that all-too-rarely explored sweet spot between point-and-click adventure and RPG. Sky Of Tides is a sci-fi story in a civilization on the brink of war, telling the personal tale of Rin, searching for her missing father, and, you know, saving the planet Numen. (NUMEN!) It promises that your decisions will determine your character, as you explore the isometric world, and honestly, I want to be playing it already.
Elsewhere in space… Terra Invicta is another super-deep space sim, this one immediately reminding me of Stellaris, but with a far more specific focus: Earth. This is from a group of modders, best known for XCOM: Long War. The success of that mod sent them pro, and Terra Invicta is their first commercial game, a geopolitical space exploration sim, where you’re preventing (or even aiding) an alien invasion of our home planet. The game’s been out in early access for a couple of months, and is proving very popular with Steam reviewers, thanks to its complexity and scale.
An Arkanoid-like, but the blocks you hit shoot back at you! How is this not already a thing. (I think you’ll find, actually, that there was an example of this on the Amiga Rupture 3400 in Germany, in the parallel dimension of Raaaaaaa – That Guy.) The Blocks Shoot At You looks like such an obvious idea, but I’ve never seen it before: Bullet Hell Breakout. This looks like it could be my new obsession, at which I am endlessly terrible.
I love it when I can’t quite tell if it’s a video-nasty trailer or a retro FPS trailer. That’s a whole scene right now. Phobolis fits right in, its scratchy trailer at first looking like a ruined VHS video that will curse your grandchildren, then cutting to a grimy, old-school shooter. You can pick up the alpha test build of the game via Itch for a buck, or wait until the year after next when they plan to release.
Call me a sucker, but I can’t resist a game about a space cat detective who investigates a crime on an interstellar cruise ship populated by sentient carpets. As Domino, said detective cat, you explore the ship in third-person, attempting to catch a jewel thief. It’s presented so superbly down-to-earth, given the ridiculous premise, as you’ll see in that full half hour of the game in the video above.
I can’t write one of these without including a card game—there are laws. Zero Division is a cyberpunk approach, that promises to mix Magic: The Gathering with Slay The Spire. You pick three characters from a selection of nine, each of which has their own deck of 40 cards. And set deck sizes mean no deck thinning! Woo! What grabs me is the combination of cards and epic 3D monsters and robots flinging their arms and weapons around on the other side of the board. There’s a demo due in spring ‘23, and I’m definitely going to be playing it.
Always finish on an existential non-linear psychedelic platformer, that’s what my grandmother taught me. Not one to refuse sage advice, here’s Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity by Sam Atlas, creator of the 2022 IGF Nuovo nomination, Space Hole 2020. Extreme Evolution looks just so spectacularly fucked up, like if David Lynch had made The Lawnmower Man, and I think I’m going to be dreaming this brief trailer for the rest of my life. Oh god that spider virus thing.
Ever since mankind figured out various pigments could be smeared on cave walls, humans have drawn cocks on stuff. From the Cerne Abbas Giant to your mom’s bathroom wall, winky and winky-shaped creations appear anywhere anything can be crafted. So it is that the Sims 4 Gallery has been as replete with dicks as the underside of any bridge. Until now.
“We are aware of and have seen some select instances of wholly unacceptable content that has been uploaded to The Sims 4 Gallery,” begins the post, like a disappointed principal speaking to the whole school. “Our team has reviewed, and made critical updates to, the profanity filter to help prevent this from happening again in the future.” They’re not asking for pupils to put up hands, but if anyone would like to come forward and confess before they’re caught, it’ll make life easier for all involved.
The Sims 4 Gallery is a place where players of the recently made free-to-play game can share their creations, allowing others to download them and add them to their own game. This might be beautiful pieces of hand-crafted architecture, a specific room to add to a house, or a Sims lady with big boobs and a nice suit. And where creativity is allowed to flourish, rude stuff will appear.
My favorite example of this was when another Will Wright game, Spore, released its free character creator, and immediately “Sporn” was born. Sims creator, Wright, even praised such endeavors, calling them “amazingly explicit.” However, that’s not something The Sims, with its family-friendly image, could ever lean into. No matter how depraved you might be when you play it in the comfort of your own hovel.
Cyber Monday Deals Start Now Of the three major consoles on the market today, the Nintendo Switch remains the most approachable and appealing to a wide range of gamers. From casual to more serious players, there is something for everyone.
So it is that Sims 4‘s profanity filters have been given an overhaul, in an attempt to make its Gallery a safe place for kids to browse. EA continues to call on the community for help in policing this, flagging naughty uploads, while the promise “to do our part by quickly taking down objectionable content that surfaces.” They also say they’ll “remove” repeat offenders, and keep “regularly reviewing the profanity filter in case any updates need to be made.”
Note that I don’t make that statement as a criticism. Battlefield 2042 was released in the middle of the pandemic, with almost two whole years of its development affected, and as a long-time series fan—but also a video game journalist familiar with how this stuff works—I’ve made peace with the fact the game was clearly rushed out the door by executives to meet a short-term financial goal, regardless of the damage it has done to the brand’s long-term standing.
Well, we’re now at that “months of updates” point, which in previous Battlefields would have been the stage where the game had been added to substantially, but in 2042’s case is just where it’s within touching distance of par.
This week saw the release of Season 3, which adds a huge new map (set in Sweden around two boxy robot arms factories), a new anti-tank vehicle, a railgun and a new specialist, whose unique weapon is a miniature air-bursting explosive rifle.
Battlefield 2042 | Season 3: Escalation Gameplay Trailer
It’s all good! The map, Spearhead, is a big one, and like Stranded before it is cleanly differentiated by having two big indoor playgrounds for close-quarters combat, surrounded by wide-open spaces for snipers and vehicles. I’ve been having a great time with it, as its long design and rocky terrain between the two buildings means games often turn into meatgrinders over the central control points, leading to huge, explosive battles.
The new Specialist, Rasheed Zain, is also something the game has needed; his air-bursting rifle is able to kill enemy forces bunkered down in cover or around corners, giving infantry the kind of space-clearing ability that was previously only available to vehicles or the rare few who can actually use grenades properly.
I’m not quite as sold on the other two main additions, the railgun and anti-armour tank. The latter, the EMKV90-TOR, plays like StarCraft’s Siege Tank; you can drive it around for a bit with limited firepower but when you really want to mess stuff up, you can lower its suspension and snipe enemy tanks from across the map.
The railgun, meanwhile, is all about timing; it’s useful as both a medium and long-range weapon, but only if you can master the way it charges itself then discharges automatically when ready. Nearly all of the game’s current roster of weapons and vehicles feel somewhat contemporary, with gentle concessions made to the fact this game is set 20 years in the future; these two additions look, sound and feel more like Halo weapons.
Image: EA
When you look back at all the work and updates the game has received since launch—not just new stuff but revisions of old maps and tweaks to things like Specialist appearance and their soundbytes, giving the game a more cohesive tone—it’s clearly a much-improved experience!
I think when the unpopular Specialist system is reworked next month to revert to traditional Battlefield classes, that year-long effort to make this the game it should have been will be done. Which, given how disastrous the game’s launch was, will be one hell of an achievement.
And yet, it also can’t have us help but wonder: what could this game have been if the last 12 months had been free to add to the game, rather than just perform emergency repairs? I really like the setting of 2042, one of the few blockbusters to ever take the threat of climate change seriously, and its near-future arsenal has been so much more fun to use than the historical gear available in the last few games.
We’ll never know! A pandemic and the investor class conspired to curse this game, and so if all we can look forward to is one last Season 4 update before the whole thing gets binned and everyone moves onto the next Battlefield, then that’s what I’ll be looking forward to. Me and the other people who have been enjoying the game since launch. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Callisto Protocol, out next month on consoles and PC, is a horror game that looks and plays a lot like the beloved Dead Space franchise. And like Dead Space, Callisto Protocol will feature some gnarly-looking deaths, both for you when you screw up and bite it, and for your alien foes when you slaughter them. But some of these gruesome and chilling death animations will be locked behind the game’s season pass according to new details spotted on the game’s Steam store page. And that’s kinda dumb and weird.
In the year of our lord two-thousand and twenty plus two, nearly every big and small game released includes some mix of DLC, paid expansions, and season passes. This is just how things work these days. It’s been like this for so long that most of us barely even recognize just how much shit publishers are trying to sell us all beyond the actual game. But then a company sticks death animations behind a paywall and it’s a good reminder of just how silly and greedy the game industry can be some days. Case in point, yeah, apparently some death animations in the upcoming horror game Callisto Protocol are only available to players who buy the season pass.
As spotted by VGC, over on the horror game’s Steam page, you can find updated details about what you get when you buy the various versions of the game and its season pass. And according to the details listed on Steam, 25 different death animations are being sold via two different DLC packs. 13 of these animations are for the main character of Issac Clarke Jacob while the other 12 are additional enemy death animations. The season pass is included with the digital deluxe edition, which costs $80 on PC. (The base game is $60.)
Here’s what the text currently says on the game’s Steam page:
The Season Pass includes:
Outer Way Skin Collection: Bear the armor of the Outer Way, an underground insurgency pitted against the UJC, as you fight to survive the horrors of Callisto.
Contagion Bundle: Discover the ultimate survival horror experience with a new mode, Contagion. With reduced ammo and health drops, a customized difficulty and permadeath – there are no second chances to escape Black Iron Prison or the horrors lurking beneath the surface of Callisto. The Contagion Bundle also includes thirteen new Jacob death animations and the Watchtower Skin Collection.
Riot Bundle: Venture into a previously undiscovered area of Black Iron Prison and battle through waves of brutal enemies. Gather credits to upgrade your weapons, or forge new ones, and survive the onslaught as long as you can in Riot, an all-new mode. The Riot Bundle also includes twelve new enemy death animations and the Engineer Skin Collection.
Story DLC: Dig deeper into the horrifying secrets of The Callisto Protocol.
Now to be clear: The season pass DLC comes with more than just death animations and the game is shipping with its own unknown amount of grisly kills. So it’s not like folks who buy just the base game and skip the DLC will be missing out completely. But it does seem very silly to lock death animations of all things behind a paywall, especially in a horror game that has spent much of its marketing showing off how violent and gory its kills will be in the full game.
Some may not care, or may suggest that it’s just a minor bit of content locked away from folks who only buy the vanilla game. But I can’t help but wonder what happens if this, like DLC and season passes more broadly, becomes the norm moving forward. This isn’t even the first time a publisher has charged players for extra animations. Sega did it earlier this year as part of the release of Sonic Origins.
What happens if this becomes yet one more thing we all put up with? What other “small” parts of the game can be cut from the main release and sold separately? Extra reload animations? Extra idle dialogue? Bonus pieces of scenery to help levels look less boring? Seems silly, but we are literally watching publishers lock animations behind DLC and paywalls. What’s next? I’m scared to find out.
Callisto Protocol is out December 2 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.
A group of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II players have been breaking the game’s movement system and their latest creation is something they’re calling the “G Walk.” The trick looks very frustrating to play against, leading to some controversy among the game’s community over the new exploit.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II was released last month across nearly all platforms and quickly became one of the biggest games of the year. And just this month, the game’s highly anticipated Warzone 2.0 spin-off mode launched to similar praise and player hype. Sure, the campaign seems bad and filled with some terrible moments—like a section where players point their rifle at an unarmed person to “deescalate” the situation—but the online portion of this year’s edition of the annual Activision shooter seems to be a hit with fans. And one group of players is using Modern Warfare II’s movement controls to create impressive, scary, and very fast techniques to up the competitive ante.
As spotted by Jake Lucky on Twitter, Modern Warfare II clan “Euphoria” are breaking the game right now. Their latest creation, which they’re calling “G Walking,” turns the normally human soldiers in Call of Duty into wild, speedy goblins that hop and crawl around maps like kids who have had way too much sugar on Halloween night. As you might expect, moving around this fast at such a weird posture makes it challenging for other players to land a shot on these out-of-control monsters. (As of now, the group has yet to share publicly how to pull off this new move.)
And just as quickly as the goblins themselves, players have begun responding to the videos of Euphoria members G Walking. Some find it funny, others find it scary. But many are annoyed by what Euphoria is doing, claiming that it ruins matches and makes it harder for casual players to just hop on for a few hours and play. Members of Euphoria have mostly laughed at the complaints–and in their defense, they are just using controls and mechanics that exist in the game to do this wild shit. If anything, developers Infinity Ward need to patch these exploits out of the game if the studio doesn’t want this to become the new meta.
I personally remember playing the original MW2 back in 2009 and running around doing the annoying Javelin suicide glitch that would kill everyone around you when you died. It was very annoying and was quickly patched out of the game. And before all that nonsense, I remember getting into weird spots on Crash in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 using janky-level geometry and tricky jumps. If anything, stuff like G Walking and the groups’ other movement exploit— Superman Hopping— is just tradition at this point.
Have you ever played Broforce? Or even heard of it? You’d be forgiven for answering “no” to both those questions because, as I flip tragically backwards through my desktop calendar, I can see that the game came out eight years ago.
I absolutely loved it back then, not just for its “you can’t sue us these are technically different” roster of characters (all drawn from popular action movies and TV shows, mostly from the 80s, ranging from Die Hard to Rambo to The Terminator to Aliens) but for its gleefully explosive platforming, which played like Metal Slug if the level designers had chugged five beers before going to work and thought blowing up half the levels was the best idea ever (it is).
When evil threatens the world, the world calls on Broforce – an under-funded, over-powered paramilitary organization dealing exclusively in excessive force. Brace your loins with up to four players to run ‘n gun as dozens of different bros and eliminate the opposing terrorist forces that threaten our way of life. Unleash scores of unique weapons and set off incredible chain reactions of fire, napalm, and limbs in the name of freedom.
When I say blowing up levels, I mean it. Look at this 2014 trailer, in which I think even the blood explodes:
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But no! Now, when we need them the most, the Bros are back. Publishers Devolver Digital dropped this trailer over the weekend, teasing Broforce Forever, an update for the game that’s coming in “Early 2023″.
Broforce Forever | Teaser Trailer | Coming Early 2023
Actual details are sadly thin on the ground, with Devovler simply saying Broforce Forever will be “the Biggest Update to Broforce Yet”, and will feature “new Bros, new missions” and, most importantly of all, “new freedoms”.
