Gaming News - Page 1778

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.