Gaming - Page 415

Activision-Blizzard's board of directors defend company CEO Bobby Kotick despite reports that he lied to the board about sexual misconduct allegations.

Today the Wall Street Journal released a new scathing report that alleges CEO Bobby Kotick not only knew of sexual misconduct at the company, but was also an offender, and uncovered multiple instances of abuse with named company employees from court documents, internal emails, and anonymous sources. The expose triggered a cultural shift from Blizzard employees who are staging a walk-out strike until Kotick is fired. Workers are banding together and posting their stories with the #actiblizzwalkout hashtag.

It appears the demands will not be met. Despite apparently withholding information from the board, the directors are standing behind Kotick. A recent press release confirms Activision-Blizzard's board of directors is supporting Kotick, saying that it "remains confident in Bobby Kotick's leadership, commitment and ability."

A new scathing report from the Wall Street Journal claims that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick lied about about his knowledge of sexual misconduct and rape allegations to the company's board of directors.

Explosive investigations from the WSJ have uncovered more controversial details around Activision's current legal issues. According to documents attained by WSJ and internal sources, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick not only knew about specific sexual abuse allegations at the company, but lied about it to the board of directors. Internal reports say Kotick settled one allegation made by a former female Sledgehammer Games developer out of court.

The report illuminates problems with Activision-Blizzard's workplace culture, which range from excessive drinking to serious allegations of sexual abuse, rape, and coercion. It's a laundry list of systemic issues, claims of criminal activity made by employees, and what appears to be cover ups by a CEO worth tens of millions of dollars. The report states that over 500 people have stepped forward with their own claims of abuse in some form or another.

Hate the challenge-based progression system in Halo Infinite? It looks like 343 Industries will change it up.

The Halo Infinite multiplayer beta stealth launched yesterday and practically everyone loves the game. That is, except for the battle pass and level up system. Infinite's progression scheme is hotly contentious because it doesn't reward you for playing and instead only gives EXP when you complete specific challenges--getting headshots, winning games, etc. Gamers have been very vocal on their feelings on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube and 343i is taking notes.

343i community director Ske7ch, who's been with Halo from the get-go, recently said that the studio is collecting and investigating progression data so they can make the next move (which should be an EXP overhaul):

Halo Infinite is now the most-played Microsoft first-party game on Steam after just one day on the market.

Halo Infinite surprise dropped yesterday to celebrate 20 years of Xbox. The free-to-play shooter is rocketing to the top with huge engagement numbers, especially on Steam where it has amassed over 272,000 players in just 24 hours. This makes Halo Infinite one of the most-played games on Steam and the most popular Xbox game ever released on the platform.

So far the Steam servers haven't buckled under the weight of hundreds of thousands of players, with peak players hitting 272,586. At the time of writing the game has over 146,000 players on Steam, and currently sits at the fourth spot in Steam's top 5 most-played games of all time list. That's quite an achievement for Microsoft and we might start seeing new updates on combined platform player counts and monetization in the coming weeks.

Battlefield 2042 is in the wild for PC and console owners if you pre-ordered the Gold Edition or Ultimate Edition of the game, or you're an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or EA Play subscriber then you've got Early Access. Now that the game is out in the wild, comparisons between the next-gen consoles and PC are here for Battlefield 2042:

In a new video, ElAnalistaDeBits compares Battlefield 2042 on the next-gen Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X/S consoles, as well as a PC with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. The video notes that the Xbox Series S has a "practically perfect framerate" in Battlefield 2042, with temporal reconstruction rendering driving 1260p resolution and 60FPS on XSS.

The video notes that the PlayStation 5 and beefier Xbox Series X versions of Battlefield 2042 actually "suffer some occasional drops, being more common on PS5". On top of that, the textures on the PS5 and XSX versions of BF2042 are nearly the same, while it's noted that the "PS5 version is closer to the PC version" while there's lower quality textures on the XSS version of the game.

NVIDIA's cloud gaming service GeForce NOW has multiple tiers, with the free tier offering a "Basic Rig" while the "Priority" tier comes with 1-month and 6-month access to "Premium Rigs" with "RTX ON". NVIDIA explains that you receive "Priority Access to Gaming Servers" with "up to 1080p to 60FPS".

Well, that "up to 60FPS" is at the center of this nes with some gamers noticing that GeForce NOW under the Priority tier is pitting out games capped at 50FPS and even something like Cyberpunk 2077 down to 45FPS.

A post on Reddit had a Redditor asking NVIDIA customer support for his GeForce NOW membership, about Guardians of the Galaxy is capped at 50FPS, locked in the menu. NVIDIA said this is intentional, with NVIDIA explaining "its capped at 50fps so its not a bug". Cyberpunk 2077, as explained by NVIDIA support are "capped at certain FPS" noting Cyberpunk 2077 is capped at 45FPS.

Rockstar updated GTA 3's infamous Francis International Airport billboard with a new image. Too bad it's probably not for GTA 6.

Rockstar Games is known for adding in teases and Easter eggs hinting at the next GTA game. The most famous one is when Rockstar confirmed Vice City's location in GTA 3 with a sign that said "See you in Miami". That sign has been updated for the new GTA 3 remaster...but it probably is not advertising the next big sequel.

The new Shoreside Vale sign does show a beach but it's not Miami. It's Chumash Beach from Grand Theft Auto V. It's very likely that Grove Street Games (or even Rockstar) are teasing the upcoming GTA V Expanded & Enhanced re-release instead of the next mainline game.

Every version of San Andreas contains files, animations, and content from the infamous Hot Coffee mini-game, one modder has said.

Rockstar Games recently pulled the GTA Definitive Edition trilogy remaster from the Rockstar Games PC launcher. The move was made after dataminers discovered lots of files in the source code including cut music tracks, developer notes, and files for San Andreas' Hot Coffee content.

San Andreas' Hot Coffee stirred up massive controversy in the 2000s (Hot Coffee was a mini-game where you had explicit sexual intercourse with a woman, complete with nudity, position changes, and view changes, which earned San Andreas an Adults Only rating before it was censored). Rockstar was sued for allegedly hiding the sex game inside of San Andreas.

The new GTA trilogy Definitive Edition remaster collection has been lampooned for its portrayal of popular in-game characters, and today we take a closer look at some of Vice City's icons.

Vice City is one of the better looking games in the new Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition remasters. The NPC models though? Not so much. Some characters look okay, including mob boss Sonny Forelli, but others are downright freakish (Candy Suxxx, Love Fist guy, etc). And other icons like Lance Vahn look much different than their debonair PS2 days. This is almost like a Ricky and Morty alternate universe or maybe Vice City Boomer Stories--everyone looks older, weirder, and just...off.

We used the Vice City appearance change cheats to get in the skins of NPCs like Candy Suxxx, Lance Vahn, Hilary King, Ken Rosenberg, Phil Cassaday, Sonny Forelli, and Ricardo Diaz. The results are interesting to say the least.

Valve's new handheld Steam Deck has been detailed in a new teardown by the team at Valve during their recent Steam Deck Development Live Stream. Check it out:

In the new detailed Valve Steam Deck unveiling, we find out that AMD's custom "Aerith" SoC is used with a 4-core, 8-thread CPU based on the older-gen Zen 2 architecture with CPU clocks betrween 2.4GHz and 3.5GHz. Next to that we have an RDNA 2-based GPU with 8 Compute Units and GPU clocks of between 1.0GHz and 1.6GHz.

AMD's custom Aerith SoC has a TDP of between 4W and 15W, with Valve asking for developers to enable a frame rate limiter of some sort for the Steam Deck -- while confirming that the company has not pushed any artificial power limit on what the Aerith SoC can use. But if you are outside, Valve has said that the Steam Deck will thermal throttle with the TDP reduced in order to keep the GPU clocks high.

Strass Zelnick, the CEO of Rockstar's parent company, gives perspective on why GTA 6 is taking so long.

GTA 6 is reportedly in development hell right now and may not release until 2025. The game has apparently been rebooted multiple times, and the departure of key Rockstar talent like Leslie Benzies in 2016 and more recent GTA co-writer Dan Houser in 2020 has disrupted GTA 6's progress.

Despite these hurdles, there's another reason GTA 6 is taking so long to develop: Rockstar has an obligation to deliver on fan expectations. GTA V and GTA Online have raised the bar and fans are eager for the next big hit. That's according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick who is in favor of letting a franchise "rest" in between big mainline releases while also giving the dev teams enough time to make something fantastic.

Take-Two Interactive, the publisher behind Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, and BioShock, is betting big on new IPs.

Right now Take-Two's new games pipeline is bigger than its ever been before. The company's myriad of developers plans to release 62 new games in the next 3 years, many of which are mobile games, mid-line titles, and big heavy-hitting AAA releases. There's everything from sequels like BioShock 4, Borderlands 4, and new NBA 2K games to brand new franchises and IPs that haven't been established before (one of these new IPs, Volt, has already been cancelled).

In a recent virtual conference, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick confirms that 56% of the slate--or 35 games--are based on new IPs.

The PlayStation 5 is officially one year old...but most next-gen console owners aren't playing Sony's first-party games.

Today Sony celebrated the PS5's first anniversary with a look back over the last 12 months. The PlayStation Blog post was mostly a fluff piece touting various milestones like the release of games, announcements of products that won't be here for a while, and Jim Ryan saying that "we're just getting started" while somehow also saying the next-gen PSVR headset has been revealed (it hasn't).

The most interesting part of the article was a top 10 of the most-played PS5 games. It turns out Fortnite is leagues more popular than any first-party Sony game, which makes sense considering its free-to-play...but more premium games like Cold War, FIFA, NBA 2K, and even Assassin's Creed Valhalla beat out Sony's first-party games like Miles Morales and Demon's Souls.

The new Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition has been taken offline with the Rockstar Launcher on PC being in "maintenance" for the last 12 hours...right after dataminers discover interesting things in the source code.

Dataminers have uncovered a goldmine of content nestled in the new GTA trilogy remaster's source code. Apparently the original music were actually included in the PC install of San Andreas in OGG-VORBIS audio format, but were switched off in the consumer build. The music is there but gamers simply can't play the songs in-game. Music licenses are costly and if misused can land companies in court so it's likely this is the main reason the PC version of the trilogy remains offline.

There's also snippets of developer communication in the code. It's not uncommon for game developers to leave notes peppered through the source code to help unravel the rat's nest of garbled language that can ensue while making a game. Some of these notes are pretty hilarious and could have been made by the remastered trilogy's new developer, Grove Street Games (formerly War Drum Studios who had helped Rockstar make mobile ports and re-releases of GTA titles).

Activision-Blizzard is no longer the most valuable video games publisher in the United States--someone else has taken the top spot.

Following a huge spike in shares, Roblox is now worth more than Activision-Blizzard. Both heavy-hitting gaming titans have market capitalizations in excess of $50 billion, but Roblox has leaped ahead of Activision by quite a bit.

Strong earnings caused Roblox shares have jumped by nearly 20% over the past five days, pushing shares to $98.12. Roblox currently has 521.57 million shares outstanding (or total shares on the market) and a market cap of $57.32 billion.

Halo Infinite's campaign will make Halo 5 players very happy...especially everyone who hated the Forerunners and Prometheans. Plus there's a ton of new changes to literally make the game into a never-ending Halo.

343i is taking fan feedback pretty seriously. That's why Halo Infinite will have absolutely no Promethean enemies (except for maybe those flying imp guys). Another big change is how Halo Infinite is basically an RPG, complete with level ups, weapon upgrades, and new armor.

New Game Informer content confirms how some of these systems will work. Halo Infinite is actually a lot like Far Cry with new Forward Operating Bases that can be captured by UNSC forces.

Bethesda's current focus goes like this: Starfield -> The Elder Scrolls VI -> Fallout 5

It's going to be a long, long time before another mainline Fallout releases from Bethesda Game Studios. In fact, the studio has about one page of plans for the sequel. Right now Bethesda is all-in on Starfield, their first major new IP in the last 25 years that will not only flex a brand new next-gen games engine, but establish data, content, and features that will power all future games from the studio.

Then after Starfield the team is going right into The Elder Scrolls VI. But what about Fallout? There's not much to say about a Fallout 5.

Microsoft is testing a new Xbox app update that allows custom folder installs and access to local files--two things that will make it easier to mod games.

With its custom folder installs and intuitive UI, Steam is traditionally the best storefront to buy games from if you want to mod them. Microsoft wants to even the odds a bit with a new Xbox PC app update.

Gamers will soon be able to choose where specific Windows Store and Game Pass games are installed on their drives, and even navigate and open local files of any game installed through Game pass on PC. The idea is giving users more access to the data that's required to mod and change up gameplay features--including heavily-modded games like Fallout 4 or Skyrim Special Edition.

SEGA could be the next major publisher to get into the NFT craze and join Ubisoft, EA, and Square Enix.

In the next five years, SEGA is prepared to spend a whopping 100 billion yen (roughly $880 million) on games development, acquisitions, and possibly new emerging tech like NFTs and blockchain.

The news was outlined in a recent Q&A session with investors: "In addition, we are considering M&A and investment in new fields such as NFT."

The Blue Blur has hit a new sales milestone since originally appearing on the scene in 1991.

After 30 years, the Sonic franchise has amassed over 1.38 billion combined game sales and downloads across premium and free-to-play games. SEGA confirmed the huge number in its latest FY2021 annual report, which catalogs sales across all of its major franchises, IPs, and game series. Sonic actually managed to grow by 240 million combined sales and downloads since last year.

The Sonic franchise remains alive and well for SEGA. The company just registered Sonic Frontiers, and more recent titles like Sonic Mania have sold tremendously on all platforms. The report also details other series like Yakuza, Virtua Fighter, Football Manager, and Total War. SEGA's biggest franchises (Sonic, Yakuza, PSO, Persona, Total War) account for roughly 40% of its yearly earnings.