Gaming - Page 1136

We recently published an article stating that former-Epsilon CS:GO team member Robin "GMX" Stahmer dug up some dirt on his ex-team mates - claiming that they threw a match on purpose in order to win in-game items in a bet against themselves on CSGOLounge.

Stahmer has taken to Facebook, explaining how he believes that his former teammate Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom wasn't involved in the scandal - stating "I did this under anger, and in this act, I forgot to say that my former team mate ScreaM, didn't know about this throw. I've talked a bit with Adil [ScreaM], and in my anger, I forgot he didn't know about it. I don't know yet if they told him about it or not, but I didn't."

Stahmer went on to express his sympathy and regret, stating "I want to apologize toward the community, and toward ScreaM who doesn't deserve all this hate."

Recently there was a massive match-fixing and betting ring scandal that rocked the whole North American and Canadian Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) scene, seeing numerous players and a manager be banned for life from all Valve major events, ESEA tournaments and more.

In recent news, French-based eSports organization Epsilon has suspended their whole CS:GO division pending a current match-fixing investigation.

Their world-class CS:GO squad has been unearthed by former teammate Robin "GMX" Stahmer, with him stating that his old team purposefully lost a match on the ESEA platform against rivals OverGaming in order to profit from weapon skins. These skins were achieved through bets made against themselves on the popular website, CSGOLounge.

Microsoft has been slowly unveiling some exciting stuff lately, where we have Windows 10 and HoloLens to look forward to, the company is now hiring new staff, including a Senior Software Engineer position for something even more 'magical'.

A job listing has popped up on the Microsoft Careers spage for a Senior Software Engineer who will help the development team built "magical, delightful and disruptive consumer experiences for the next generation of technology (from the creators of the Kinect: Alex Kipman & Kudo Tsunoda)" and the company is "looking to make significant contributions to the early stages of a project with huge growth potential".

This could mean we'll see it reach the Xbox One, or something new is coming. I would peg it on HoloLens, but we could see it reach the Xbox One or even Windows 10. The Xbox One for me, is kinda dead ass you can't add some magical peripheral to it like VR as the system isn't fast enough to deliver the experience Microsoft will need to beat Oculus VR and the Rift. But something for HoloLens and Windows 10? Now you're talking.

The former iBUYPOWER CS:GO professional player and current banned member of the match-fixing and betting ring scandal Joshua 'steel' Nissan has issued a public statement and apology on his public Facebook page.

In this statement he highlighted his disappointment in his actions, the good times while competing in various CS:GO tournaments and some of his plans for the future. He's currently planning to stream his public matchmaking game-play through Twitch.TV, alongside commenting that "I am still a host of knowledge about Counter-Strike. I will try to make all of this information available to everyone for free. It's the least I can do."

Many enraged members of the public have decided to boycott all of Nissan's content, further naming him as "Steal".

Despite the recent match-fixing and betting ring scandals surrounding the former and friends-of iBUYPOWER (IBP) CS:GO squad teammates - the large North American computer company has announced they are looking toward another CS:GO pick-up.

IBP and their CS:GO team split on January the 5th before the accusations were confirmed. As as we're now rolling into February 2015, they've stated that another team is on their mind - commenting that their previous players actions "are not in keeping with the philosophy of the iBUYPOWER brand."

They further stated that "IBP is committed to supporting gaming at the highest levels, and expects each member of our staff and teams to perform to the best of their ability and conduct themselves with integrity at all times," adding "recently, IBP learned that certain members of the IBP CS:GO team failed to meet that expectation. The actions of these individuals come as a shock to us."

Ahead of its scheduled release date of March 17, an open beta of Battlefield Hardline will take place from Tuesday, February 3 to Sunday, February 8. The game is powered by the Frostbite 3 game engine and includes both single player and multiplayer modes.

There will be three separate modes for gamers to enjoy: A conquest mode that is similar to traditional team-based death match, supporting up to 64 gamers on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One - and 24 players for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. The Hotwire mode focuses on chase scenes, and the Heist mode features bank robbers trying to complete a heist before the police capture them.

Interestingly, a "Hacker" mode is available so one person on each team can hack to operate cameras and better spot enemies, with information relayed back to teammates.

With the gaming organization known as Team Solo Mid (TSM) picking up a North American CS:GO squad, they have publicly claimed to now be supporting the highest paid CS:GO players on the planet - later being bested by Team Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP), with their CEO Per Lilliefelth claiming an even better salary for his squad.

I'm sure you're wondering exactly what the figure is here - it's $3,000 US per month, per player. Nothing celebrity status that's sure - but pretty amazing given they are playing video games for employment. But wait, there's more. This $3,000 doesn't cover any of the in-game sticker sales alongside any prize money that the players may win at international tournaments, which can include total prize pools of up to $250,000.

Different from other gaming organizations, TSM have promised to take no cut of prize money or sticker sales, meaning that if these players see themselves added into a 'legends sticker pack' they could see up to $400,000 spread between the five-man squad.

It's been a rough few months for the CS:GO community, seeing six top figures from the North American and Canadian scene get pinned with match-fixing, a betting ring scandal and then a plethora of bans from almost-all major tournaments across the globe.

In unusual fashion, even Valve spoke up - damning the betting ring and match-fixing, personally banning the players involved from all future Valve major events.

One of the players involved in this scandal was 17-year-old Braxton Pierce - gamer name 'swag'. Name aside, he first hit it big in the North American Counter Strike 1.6 scene where he competed in many top level tournaments at the ripe old age of 15, often surpassing many players 10 years his senior and proving himself as a major player to watch in the future.

When Valve launched Steam Workshop, I don't think most people could have imagined it would grow this large. Well, it has continued to grow and there's no signs of it stopping, with the company announcing it has given out over $57 million to content creators since 2011.

Creators of in-game content for titles like Team Fortress 2, DOTA 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have made quite a lot of money over the years, with over 1500 creators in 75 different countries. Valve has also announced that it has curated Workshops opening for two non-Valve games which will allow gamers to purchase in-game items for Dungeon Defenders: Eternity and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare.

Valve has also added that "We expect more curated Workshops to become available for creators and players in various games over the coming weeks and months". The company also teased that it would soon be releasing new tools for these content creators, something that will allow them to keep track of their sales, for both individual items and overall, both in real-time.

Dying Light launched yesterday, but it looks like the PC version is filled with various performance-related issues, as most games are these days that are multi-platform.

Techland has been seeing Dying Light gamers experience random crashes and stuttering issues, low FPS or FPS drops, sound stuttering or noise and sound lag issues, DLL crashes on startup of "DyingLight.exe has stopped working", SLI problems, and even a total failure of starting the game itself. There are various things you can do to get around these issues, but I think there's a bigger issue at hand here: why are these problems here in the first place?

Dying Light isn't a small game on Early Access (which if it was, it would probably not have 75% of these issues). But, if you need to get it working and you're experiencing these issues, you're going to have to do some work to get it working.

Nintendo has posted its latest financial report, where we can see just how successful its consoles and handhelds are. Starting with the New 3DS, it has helped Nintendo push the "3DS family" over the 50 million mark.

This is all while the New 3DS hasn't even launched in the United States or Europe, with these sales scooting along in Japan and Australia for now. When it comes to the Wii U console, Nintendo pushed 1.91 million units during the holiday quarter, while Wii U sales are sitting at a total of 9.2 million systems. Wii U software sales are sitting at 52.87 million.

Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. were big sellers for Nintendo across 2014, with Mario Kart 8 selling 4.77 million units while Super Smash Bros. sold a nice 3.39 million units. In total, New Super Smash Bros. had sold 4.16 million units.

Ubisoft isn't going to win many customer appreciation awards with their recent move to ban game key licenses purchased through third-party key resellers. Sites such as G2A and Kinguin (among others) buy license keys in countries where prices are lower, then offer them for sale globally. Ubisoft isn't appreciative of the practice, so they took the step of wantonly deploying the Ubisoft Banhammer and revoking the keys. The problem with this approach is that it punishes the customer, instead of pursuing litigation or other methods against the resellers. In many cases, the user who purchased the key is unaware there is an issue with the practice.

G2A has taken to Facebook to respond, and first denied involvement in any wrongdoing, and then offered refunds on all keys purchased with G2A Shield. It is important to note that only G2A Shield customers are protected, and that other situations will be decided individually.

"As some of you may already know, steps have been taken to remove games purchased indirectly from a publisher, via main marketplaces in the web. G2A.COM is not in any case responsible for any of these procedures. However, we are well aware of this process and will do everything possible to compensate for that. For users who have made transactions without G2A Shield, we will check if the corresponding merchant was responsible for the withdrawal of the code. If so, these users will get a compensation. Any user who used G2A Shield affected by the current process will get either a new code for the game or the money back. G2A.COM will make every possible exertion to prevent this kind of procedures in the future and exclude merchants responsible for such incidents from the marketplace."

Yesterday we told you about how ESEA and the all-mighty Valve had spoken up, banning numerous American and Canadian professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) players from their future events due to match fixing and a betting scandal.

In recent news, two other large-scale CS:GO entities have followed suit - seeing FACEIT and CEVO both taking action against these players.

FACEIT have removed the ex-iBUYPOWER team from their 2015 league, further stating that Joshua "steel" Nissan and Derek "dboorN" Boorn from Torqued will be barred from competing in their league closed qualifier. Not only the players were affected, with Casey Foster (pictured above), a member in this scandal and a head admin of FACEIT North America, being dismissed from his position.

While CD Projekt Red may have delayed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to May 19, we're finding out more information on the game thanks to various members of the press playing with the latest build of the open-world title.

The developer has revealed that the most recent build of The Witcher 3 is running at 1080p on the PS4 while the Xbox One version is knocked down to 900p on the Xbox One, which is the least impressive version of the game against the PS4 and PC. The Witcher 3 on the PS4 is running at 1080p at 30FPS with higher fidelity graphics than the Xbox One version, even though it's been knocked down to 900p.

What's more interesting is that gaming industry insider 'shinobi602' reporting that the PCs that CD Projekt Red had setup with The Witcher 3 were "specced to consoles" or whatever that means.

With $1.428 billion net revenue posted for the reported period, EA blew their $1.275 billion expectation out of the water - claimed by CEO Andrew Wilson as due to "great execution with our leading IP, new mobile hits and continued strength in our catalogue of top games and services."

Proud of their results, Wilson went on to state that "Electronic Arts delivered amazing experiences to our players in Q3, from the award-winning Dragon Age: Inquisition to SimCity BuildIt to our live services for FIFA, Madden NFL and more," as seen in their recent press release. The results achieved this quarter mark a record for Electronic Arts, seeing it ranked as the best "cash flow for a calendar year period."

Further results include EA being listed as the #1 publisher on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One - due to their releases of Dragon Age: Inquisition, FIFA 15, NHL 15, Madden NFL 15, UFC, Titanfall, Battlefield 4 and FIFA 14. They also pushed through 22 million downloads on SimCity Buildit and saw their titles hit the top 5 iOS downloads in more than 100 countries.

Between PC gaming and console gaming, there is a lot that gamers have to be thankful for - but it could be a rather dull year, according to an industry analyst.

"My general thesis is that nothing is going to happen in 2015, it's going to be really, really dull," said Nicholas Lovell, founder of Gamesbrief and industry analyst, in a statement to the Guardian.

Don't worry, gamers, Lovell is speaking more towards an industry shakeup, not that new game titles won't be entertaining to play. There will be plenty of new game titles for PC, console, and mobile gamers, with studios excited to push the limits of recent hardware improvements.

Not only has the popular North American-based Counter-Strike league ESEA thrown the ban-hammer at some professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players caught in a betting ring, but Valve themselves have spoken - barring these players from all future 'Valve majors'.

The betting ring saw players gather upwards of $10,000 worth of in-game items thanks to one singular match in which members created numerous betting accounts and purposefully altered the final score to suit their own benefit.

In an official release, ESEA stated that these bans were originally listed as one-year only on their platform, however "ESEA reserves the right to extend the bans indefinitely."

Elite: Dangerous launched in December last year, but it'll be many more years before the entire galaxy has been mapped. The game takes place in a one-to-one recreation of our Milky Way galaxy, something that will take lifetimes to explore.

There are over 400 billion star systems to explore, but with part of the leveling mechanic in the game incentivising exploration of unknown star systems, Elite: Dangerous is being mapped quickly. At the current rate of exploration, Elite: Dangerous' playerbase is visiting 17,585 new star systems each day. This breaks down into 732 per hour, or 12 per minute.

If this rate continues and there isn't an influx of players in the short term, it would take a gigantic 150,895 years to map the entire galaxy. The developer behind the game is running a content for the first player to reach Elite status in exploration, giving away a $1500 prize. The first player to reach Elite in all three statuses will receive $15,000.

Let's start the week off with some big news for Electronic Arts, which is charging real money for in-game gas in Need for Speed: No Limits. Yes, you will need to buy gas through in-app purchases, or you could wait for your tank to fill back up. This isn't something you want to wait for when you feel the need, the need for speed.

Need for Speed: No Limits is currently an iPhone exclusive, but will be reaching Android in the near future. In the game, each race requires a certain amount of gas, so some gamers will choose to front up real money to pay for gas, so that they can play at their own pace. There are varying levels of currency in the game, with the real-world currency applying to 'gold'.

What do you think of EA charging for gas in a game? What will we be paying for next? Oxygen?

Microsoft reportedly shipped 6.6 million Xbox game consoles to retailers, including both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, during its most recent quarter that ended on December 31, 2014, it confirmed today. Even though it saw a "strong holiday season performance" for its Xbox 360 and Xbox One, Microsoft didn't provide a shipment breakdown for each individual console.

The shipment figures were a noticeable drop from 7.4 million Xbox One and Xbox 360 units shipped to retailers during the same time frame in 2013 - as the aging Xbox 360 is shown the door in favor of its next-generation counterpart.

Despite the Xbox One outselling the PlayStation 4 last November and December, Microsoft will have a lot of work cut out for itself in 2015.