Game News

So Minecraft is ten years old. A game that is all about blocks, about mining and building with said blocks and so much more.

I played a bit of Minecraft back in the day, and although I liked it, it didn't really keep me interested for long. I think it's incredible success comes from the same place LEGO does. It give you the tools to do “whatever” you want to do. To this day, it's still played by millions, streamed by hundreds of live streamers on Twitch, and still immensely popular.

A small indie game, developed by Markus 'Notch' Persson, until he set up the company Mojang to help finalize the game, up until he sold the game to Microsoft for 2.5 billion dollars. Yes, billion with a B.

I think it's safe to say the game is a success.

Speaking of old games, fans of World of Warcraft should mark August 27^th in the calendar as that is when WoW Classic launches.

If you're not in the know, WoW Classic is a fully playable version of how the game was before any and all expansions, i.e. vanilla.

If you want a sneak peak, go to Twich and watch a beta tester or two run around in a limited version, to remind yourself what it used to be. Highlights of that experience include:

No mount until level 40, and it costs 100 gold.

The need to keep buying arrows, poisons and other reagents.

No Paladin on Horde & no Shaman on Alliance.

Etc.

I'm fascinated about how it used to be and I will likely try it out, but for how long it can retain my interest, who can say? Probably a week or two.

From gaming history to modern news. The Epic Game Store keeps reeling around making people angry.

I've talked about my feelings toward this so called store, but now they've gone beyond bribing publishers to get timed exclusives. Even beyond snapping up kickstarted games, which is also questionable behavior. Now they have held a mega sale without informing publishers in advance.

You see, when Steam has a sale you get to choose which of the games you publish to include and at what percentage they get discounted. Epic just went ahead and had a sale, and they included amongst other things a game that is not out yet.

Beyond lowered prices, they had a flat $10 cash back on games costing more than $14.99. ( I believe these numbers are correct, I may be off a bit.) So a great deal for the customer, but really bad for some publishers. Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 is set to come out next March, and it was included in the sale. A sale that heavy on an unpublished game is a disaster for the perceived value of a game. Besides, it normally takes months after release before even a small discount is to be found, not a year in advance.

To make matters worse, Epic does not take into account the different values of currencies around the world, which meant that Vampire 2 could be had for the equivalent of $5 in Turkey and $10 in Russia.

Paradox was furious and pulled the game. A couple of other games by other publishers were also withdrawn.

Epics response was to admit they failed to communicate but they also called the publishers 'greedy'. Wow... Words fail me.

A couple of months ago, Epic couldn't stop yelling about how good their store were for developers and publishers, and now they are greedy... Not good.

Beyond that, the Epic store still does not have a shopping basket, so many gamers have had their credit cards locked by their banks as the automated safety systems detects multiple, small purchases in a row. Thanks Epic...

Well that's enough ranting from me. Until next time, have a great and calm week!