General Gaming News II: Steam Helpdesk Site Leak

[6souls]

Stellaris: Galaxy Command taken Offline for Containing Halo 4 Assets
https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/15/2...e-halo-artwork | https://twitter.com/StellarisMobile/...01774661537797

Saber Interactive Acquires Bigmoon Entertainment

Saber Interactive (World War Z, the NBA Playgrounds series) today announced the acquisition of Bigmoon Entertainment (Dakar 18), a veteran video game developer based in Porto, Portugal. With 18 games completed in the last decade, the 40-person team — now called Saber Porto — will focus on two new unannounced projects for consoles and PC.

“We’re absolutely thrilled to join the Saber family. Having worked closely together in the past, we hold a deep personal respect and appreciation for the company’s forward-thinking leadership and well-rounded vision,” said Paulo Gomes, Game Director at Saber Porto. “We expect to triple our size by the end of 2020, ramping up in a big way to meet the needs of Saber’s ever-growing gaming roadmap.”

Saber’s latest acquisition builds on a long list of recent achievements for the worldwide publisher and developer, including World War Z, Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered, and the NBA Playgrounds and MudRunner franchises. The company, rapidly expanding with almost 600 employees around the globe, now has fully resourced studios in five countries and a publishing office in the U.S.

“Saber is always on the lookout for teams with creativity, passion and expertise, and the crew at Bigmoon is a perfect fit for our culture and ambitions,” said Matthew Karch, CEO of Saber Interactive. “Paulo and the new Saber Porto will help us access talent in yet another thriving region, expanding our capabilities as a developer for both third-party IPs and our own original franchises.”

[6souls]

Ubisoft Delays Watch_Dogs Legion, Gods & Monsters, and Rainbow Six Quarantine into the next Fiscal Year for Quality Control

We have decided to postpone the releases of Gods & Monsters, Rainbow Six Quarantine and Watch_Dogs Legion until 2020-21. While each of these games already has a strong identity and high potential, we want our teams to have more development time to ensure that their respective innovations are perfectly implemented so as to deliver optimal experiences for players. This decision will have a very significant impact on our financial results for this fiscal year and goes against our recent successes in building a more stable development model. However, it is in line with our strategy to maximize the future value of our brands for the long-term benefit of our employees, players and shareholders. We expect it to have a positive impact on our financial performance as from 2020-21.

https://ubistatic19-a.akamaihd.net/c...-196733-32.pdf

[6souls]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-back-to-steam

New evidence shows EA is preparing to release titles on Steam again.

[synistar]

Confirmed. Also EA Access coming - https://www.ea.com/news/ea-and-valve-partnership

[6souls]

Titanfall 3 in the Planning Stages, but Apex will be the Main Focus for the next Year+
Next Battlefield won't Release until Mid-2021 at the Earliest
https://twitter.com/pshanley88/statu...94873976942594 | https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-for-next-year

[6souls]

EA is Developing a new Star Wars Title set to Release during the same Release Window as the next Battlefield
EA will also be joining the Remaster Bandwagon
https://www.pcgamesn.com/star-wars-j...star-wars-game | https://s22.q4cdn.com/894350492/file...ed-Remarks.pdf

[Zeb]

Did Steam change the layout for the game library or did I hit a button I shouldn't have?

[6souls]

Yesterday's update

[6souls]

Human Head Studios (Prey/Rune) Closes and Gets Reformed as a Bethesda Studio Called Roundhouse Studios

Bethesda Softworks has opened a new development studio, Roundhouse Studios, in Madison, Wis. Roundhouse Studios is staffed by the team from the recently closed Human Head Studios. Therefore, the studio will immediately begin work on unannounced projects at Bethesda.

“Sadly, we had to wind down the business of Human Head Studios and close its doors. This was particularly devastating due to the passion and creativity of the team we’d assembled,” said Chris Rhinehart, Creative Director, Roundhouse Studios. “We reached out to our friends at Bethesda for help, and they saw that same creativity and passion in our team. With the formation of Roundhouse Studios, Bethesda offered every employee of Human Head a position at the new company. We are excited our team will remain together, pursuing the work we love, as part of a company we already know and admire”

The developers at Roundhouse Studios represents more than two decades working together on a variety of games and genres, including RPGs, shooters, action-adventure games, and more. The originals developers of Prey, the team is well known for developing titles like Dead Man's Hands, Rune and Rune II and Lost Within, and contributing to blockbusters releases like Batman: Arkham Origins and Bioshock Infinite.

“While sorry to hear of their challenges as Human Head Studios, we were excited by the opportunity to bring under the Bethesda umbrella this talented, established development team,” said Todd Vaughn, Senior Vice President of Development at Bethesda. “We are delighted that the entire staff will remain together and is now part of the Bethesda family.”

Roundhouse Studios is the second development team to join Bethesda in the last month, following, the recent acquisition of Alpha Dog Games, a mobile-games studio based in Nova Scotia, Canada.

[KuroTsuki]

Not sure if anyone here subscribes to Humble Monthly, but they're changing it up soon to Humble Choice.

https://www.humblebundle.com/monthly/classic

Basically, right now with Humble Monthly you get around 7-11 games per month, with 1-3 shown right away, and the remaining games are hidden until the end of the month for $12.

With Humble Choice you'll be shown 10 games at the beginning of the month, and depending on the plan you have, you get to choose 3 ($15/month) or 9 ($20/month) games from the 10. But, if you're already subscribed to their Humble Monthly plan before they switch to Humble Choice, you get grandfathered in with a "Classic" plan where you get all 10 games for the same $12 price. If you cancel your Classic plan at any time, you lose it it forever, though. One way around this is to "Pause" your plan, which doesn't cancel and simply pauses your sub for the month. Only thing is you have to pause every month manually.

Anyway, some people on Reddit are freaking out about it because they're basically forcing you to stay subbed to the Classic plan, but with the pause feature, it's really not that bad. And the fact that we can see all 10 games now, instead of having to pay to get/see the hidden games, is awesome to me.

Just got an email that this starts the 6th, so if anyone wants the "Classic" plan, make sure to sign up before then. And again, you can just pause months that you don't want and still keep the classic plan.

[Kaisha]

Valve announces Half-Life: Alyx, a flagship VR title.
https://twitter.com/valvesoftware/st...66870360387584

More info to come Thursday. Valve was probably trying to keep things hush until then but leaked rumors were happening earlier today and I guess they wanted to get ahead of things.

[Corrderio]

Supposedly it's a prequel to Half-Life 2 from what some people on a Discord I'm in are saying.

Either way Valve really is being a goddamn cocktease with HL3...

[6souls]

https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...=1#post6784777

It's been in development since at least 2015 with Vive tech (at the time).

[6souls]

https://www.underconsideration.com/b...d_in_house.php

A tear-down of BioWare's visual identity that was quietly unveiled in 2018.

[6souls]

Former Arkane Studios (Dishonored/Prey Reboot) Devs form a New Company; WolfEye Studios

Twenty years after the creation of Arkane Studios, former President and Creative Director, Raphael Colantonio and former Executive Producer, Julien Roby, announce WolfEye Studios.

As a fully distributed team, WolfEye Studios aims to create games in which players live their own adventures in rich simulated worlds that respond to actions and decisions in ways that are unique to each playthrough. Today, the studio released a teaser image for its first title, which will be announced at The Game Awards in December.

Colantonio's nearly 20-year long career as the founder and creative director at Arkane Studios paved the way for some of the game industry's most revered and groundbreaking titles. Roby has a deep bench of experience in the industry as well, having produced some legendary titles like Dishonored and Arx Fatalis and having worked alongside Colantonio for more than 12 years. After departing from Arkane, the duo spent time away from any one particular project before coming back together to form WolfEye.

“After taking some time off, and consulting for a variety of video games companies, I’m ready for a new adventure” added Colantonio, President and Creative Director at WolfEye. “The AAA market is risk-averse and innovation suffers from it. As a Game Designer, I’ve been wanting to try new ideas and approaches, and I believe independent games are in the best space to do so.”

“This is an incredible opportunity to work together again with Raf, being able to build the kind of unique and deep games we love to play," said Roby, CEO and Executive Producer at WolfEye. “The decision to work as a distributed team around the world has meant we’re able to find some of the best talents in the industry to help craft our vision.”

About WolfEye Studios

WolfEye Studios is a veteran distributed development team with a proven passion for immersive games that feature original worlds and strong audio. With WolfEye, the team is pushing its passion further and go deeper with the simulation and gameplay possibilities by focusing on interactions more than they ever did in their past games. WolfEye values bold art direction and stylized graphics. Simplified visual production pipeline allows them to be more agile and focus on what really matters: player experience as a whole.

https://wolfeye-studios.com/

[6souls]

https://kotaku.com/rocket-league-rep...hop-1840244280

Rocket League removes loot boxes and replaces it with an expensive cash shop with single items costing up to $20.

Rocket League’s Blueprint update went live, kicking off season 12 and adding a new item shop where players can just buy whatever items they want outright. Players’ existing crates were converted into blueprints, which they can craft by spending credits, an in-game currency bought with real cash. Existing keys, meanwhile, were liquidated into additional credits.

The catch is that the items are extremely pricey to buy outright, and you have to buy bundles of credits that are usually more than what you need. If you want to buy Infium Exotic Wheels for 1,400 credits, you need to buy a pack of 1,600 credits for $15, then have 200 credits left over.

Crafting new items with blueprints can also be a hefty investment. The Intrudium Blueprint, for instance, costs 2,000 credits to make. While black market decals, of which Intrudium is one, tend to be on the more expensive end, sites which track prices for Rocket League items put the price of one at around five keys, or the equivalent of $5, for much of the year.

[Kirin]

https://kotaku.com/rocket-league-rep...hop-1840244280

Rocket League removes loot boxes and replaces it with an expensive cash shop with single items costing up to $20.

Not sure if thats what their internals were telling them what the market could carry, but I have not heard of a company doing this yet. Killing loot boxes and then jacking up the prices of items to stupid high levels to say "Okay, how do you like it now?".

[Tyrath]

LoL had items costing up to 25 last I played but they were like legendary skins. Some of the items in RL that are that expensive are definitely not worth that.

[6souls]

LoL had items costing up to 25 last I played but they were like legendary skins. Some of the items in RL that are that expensive are definitely not worth that.

But League never had loot boxes where you could get a batch of items for $1.50.

[Tyrath]

I'm aware. Just saying the 20 dollar for items is not unheard of.

And while the $1 lootboxes were cheaper than most other games, lootboxes are still garbage.

If the best items were priced around $10, I'd be okay with it. None of the items offer enough to justify any more than that.