Game News

The AAA game industry keeps on staggering about like a drunken sailor on shore leave.

The hottest furor surrounding Blizzard has died down a bit, but Blizzcon is this upcoming weekend, and we'll have to wait and see how that goes. It has already been confirmed that all questions for Q&A must be submitted in advance. Not to brag (but I'm doing it anyway), but I called it on that score. After last years fiasco with Diablo mobile and “Don't you guys have phones”, I suspect they were always going to do pre approved questions this year. Now with the whole China scandal it was a given, and I look forward to seeing what protests they are going to have to deal with.

Blizzard has already “leaked” Diablo 4 and a remaster of Diablo 2 to create hype, but no one seems to be excited. Time will tell.

The co-founder and CEO of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, has admitted that they have messed up and he has delayed all their upcoming major titles until next year, causing their stock to plummet 20% or so. I'd be more impressed by a CEO admitting fault if he didn't do it all the time, and then change nothing.

Bethesda has continued to dig themselves a nice big hole with Fallout 76. First they announced that the upcoming Wastelanders update that would finally add human NPC's to the game was delayed until next year, and then they announced Fallout 1^st, a subscription that costs $13 a month or $100 a year. This is considerably higher in several countries.

Fallout 1^st gives subscribers private servers for you and seven friends, a junk box with unlimited capacity, a tent that functions as a quick travel point and some new cosmetics. This is in direct violation of their own promise that all updates would be free and people are furious. To make matters so much worse, it turns out that many players have reported that the junk box deletes everything you put in it. The tent has a tendency to crash you to desktop, deleting the server instance and kicking your friends out of the game, erasing all your hard work.

The private servers don't work either. Players are reporting that others can join in without permission and that they log in to find containers already looted and NPC's killed.

Having a subscription break immediately is already embarrassing but Bethesda's response has been ludicrous. First they claimed that the junk box was only a UI glitch and that all was fine. Then they admitted that the stuff was indeed deleted and that they were “investigating”the issue. The tent crash is also being “investigated”. They vehemently deny that the private servers are just normal instances that are semi-separate and that they would patch in better control on who can join your game at some point in the future. Their general attitude is less like a responsible company and more like a sullen teenager taking out the trash when their moms yell at them for the third time.

To make matter slightly worse still, they did the whole Fallout 1^st two days before The Outer Worlds went live. TOW has been highly anticipated as it's made by Obsidian who made Kotor 2 and Fallout New Vegas, both highly acclaimed. Many also pointed out all the other subscriptions that one could get for the same or less, like Netflix, Xbox for PC, EA Origins, HBO etc.

Fallout 1^st is a complete joke as a subscription, and if Bethesda is going to continue to do business like this, then one has to fear for their upcoming Starfall and Elder Scrolls 6. I can't trust them anymore and will adopt a wait and see. I'm not buying into this kind of nonsense.

Finally, a new report by the UK Children's Commission on micro-transactions and lootboxes paints a very grim picture. They have talked to kids of all ages and found that the issue is sort of worse than we thought.

It's bad enough when an adult can't control his spending but when kids are bullied by their peers for not having cool in-game skins, being taunted as “Default”, then that needs looking at. Many others feel pressured to spend money to keep up, whether in games like Fortnite or the annual Fifa franchise, they even straight up call it gambling. Since they go to school full time, they don't have the time to grind for good players and since the game resets every year, they feel the pressure to pay with real money. This is what EA called “Ethical” and “Fun surprise mechanics”. Please...

Well, I've rambled long enough. Until next time, have a fun week!