Over in Xbox territory, Black Desert is expanding with the release of a new character class. The Valkyrie is a melee character that boasts offensive and defensive skills and wields a sword and shield to bring their enemies down. In addition, Black Desert on Xbox now features equippable alchemy stones that can be purchased at market or created with the alchemy skill. Alchemy stones provide buffs to players at regular intervals.
For more information on the Valkyrie, check out the trailer below.
Black Desert Mobile is officially here, as the game goes live globally. Black Desert Mobile generated successful response with 4.5 million pre-registrations and has enjoyed a successful launch in multiple countries including Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.
To celebrate the successful launch, Pearl Abyss is rewarding mobile gamers with a series of in-game items and gifts from the Bunny Bunny Ornament, a Tier 1 Horse Emblem, a Verdon Outfit Chest, and Krenvatz Barding. Additionally, those with Amazon Prime will be able to redeem monthly goodies starting immediately. Black Desert Mobile is available in English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Thai, and Indonesian, with Portuguese to be added in 2020.
Redbox is killing its game rentals, by which I mean Redbox has already killed off game rentals.
The sad news came this week as customers began to notice that Redbox kiosks were no longer allowing people to rent video games from the service. Users began asking questions to Redbox customer support, who acknowledged that due to “changes in the industry,” the company would no longer be renting out video games. The move has already gone into effect.
Redbox’s plan is to sell off its remaining stock, which means you can get some relatively new games at a discount. Titles like Death Stranding are being sold for $40 with Fallen Order and Modern Warfare running roughly $45.
After considering various factors like changes in the industry, we’ve decided to shift more focus into physical media with movies, streaming On Demand & new exclusive content moving forward.
For those who still wish to rent physical games, your only options are to go with a subscription service ala Gamefly or a local video rental store/library that has video games available.
This week PUBG Mobile partnered with Global Green to help save the Amazon. On December 9 a star studded roster including actress Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green, hosted the #fight4theamazon event at Avalon Hollywood. The event kicked off with Fox and Green facing off in a 4v4 PUBG Mobile match joined by influencers Nikki Bella, Stephen Boss, Pickles, Allison Holker Boss, Artem Chigvintsev, and McCoffee. Megan Fox’s team was ultimately victorious.
The event also played host to a 90210 reunion, a trivia contest, and an aerialist duo. Megan Fox presented Global Green with a check for $100,000 on behalf of Tencent and PUBG Mobile.
But those of you who didn’t attend the event are not out of luck, as a separate contest is ongoing offering a chance to win a Tesla Model S and $20,000. Contest details can be found here.
I have no proof that Corepunk was originally designed to be a MOBA title before transitioning into an MMORPG, but the trailer makes it look like one. Perhaps it is the slower combat combined with the fog of war, interface, art style, and the health/mana bars above the heads of the characters that give me that feeling. Perhaps. Maybe they’re just future proofing it for a console launch.
Regardless, you should check out Corepunk, an MMORPG coming out between tomorrow and the end of time. Learn a bit from the trailer above, then check out the official website.
Monetization in Elder Scrolls Blades is getting a little less ridiculous this week as Bethesda released patch 1.5. The latest patch completely removes chest timers, allowing players to immediately open them. In addition, players who spent gems on increasing chest limits will have those gems refunded. Even better, ESB has promised that the update will add more chests to each level, each with a guaranteed gem, along with more loot dropped from enemies, and bosses in each job that may drop legendary equipment. You’ll also have 20 more inventory spaces to store that extra loot.
The full list of changes can be found on the patch notes page here.
Strike Mole labeled itself a Massive Multiplayer game, so I can technically talk about it without attracting those “why does this belong on MMO Fallout” comments.
Strike Mole caught my eye because it is listed in the MMO section of Steam releases, contains a $200 price tag, and doesn’t appear to actually be called Strike Mole. If you click on the store page, it offers you the opportunity to buy “Physical Ball” for $199 USD. The screenshots look like a whack-a-mole game, which makes sense if the game is titled Strike Mole.
“This is a 3D casual hamster game with 12 levels. The first four levels are training levels, which are relatively simple, and the subsequent levels will require you to complete more in a shorter period of time as the level increases. Mole strikes, you need to destroy them in a short time to unlock more levels.”
Strike Mole is developed and published by Lize. It is literally an asset flip of Whack a Mole from the Unity Asset store, so you can save $175 and buy the pack, compile it, and just play it if you REALLY want to play this game. There is currently one review in Chinese which simply asks “why is this game 500?”
MMO Fallout will update when Mole Strike is inevitably banned off of the Steam platform.
Infamous for their reluctance to engage in courtroom shenanigans, Epic Games has filed a lawsuit. The company is pursuing Sick Picnic Media and Matthew Geiler in a move that can only be described as “you’re not taking us to court, we’re taking you to court.”
The lawsuit is over something old, something new, something licensed, and something…orange. Matthew Geiler may be best known to the internet memesters union as the guy behind that dancing pumpkin video that went viral many many years ago. The lawsuit stems from the use of the pumpkin man dance in an emote available in Epic Games’ lesser known title; Fortnite.
“This case concerns one of those emotes: a Halloween-themed emote called “Pump It Up” that Epic Games made available for a single day shortly before Halloween in the fall of 2019 as part of its annual Fortnitemares event (the “Pump It Up Emote”). In the Pump It Up Emote, the avatar performs a brief dance to a Halloween-themed song developed by Epic Games while the head of whatever avatar the player has selected is transformed into a jack-o’-lantern face designed by Epic Games.”
This isn’t the first time Epic has been sued over the use of dances in Fortnite, although every single one of those suits were voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiffs. What makes this one different is that Epic is suing the dance creator for a preliminary declaration of non-infringement. Similar to their lawsuit against Acceleration Bay, Epic has taken the preventative step of asking the court to decide on a potential lawsuit before the would-be plaintiff ever files it.
Oh and unlike the previous lawsuits, Epic Games actually licensed the dance. The lawsuit goes on to state that Epic Games and Geiler actually licensed the use of the dance, which Geiler happily admits to on Facebook (making for great evidence that Epic handed to the court). Geiler actually says “Luckily they did a licensing deal with me
ahead of time!” Despite admitting to having a licensing deal in place, Geiler has apparently been submitting cease & desist notices to Epic demanding that they remove the emote. Epic now pleads the court for a ruling of non-infringement.
Black Desert Mobile is now available for pre-load and character creation.
The mobile port of Black Desert goes live on December 11 at 00:00 UTC, but you can go through the painstaking, multi-hour process of creating your character right now. Eager gamers can download the client from the Android or iOS store and get the client ready, as well as create up to three characters from the get-go to start their grinding career once the servers go live in a couple of days.
There are five characters available at launch for Black Desert Mobile: The warrior, ranger, witch, giant, and valkyrie.
(Update: Old School RuneScape underwent maintenance this morning that appears to have fixed the issue)
If you have tried to play Old School RuneScape this weekend, especially over mobile, odds are your experience has been less than desirable. Absolutely horrible more like.
Long story short, Old School RuneScape has been suffering issues causing the game to be completely unplayable for many people on mobile and the official client and Jagex has yet to figure out what is causing the problem or the million dollar question of how to fix it. The last update to an alert posted on December 7 notes that the issue is still being looked into, but as of midnight on December 9 the problem has yet to be fixed.
The issues are still actively being investigated and resolved. We’ve also edited the article to reflect the issues that some players are experiencing with the desktop client. We’re also aware of issues affecting some Old School RuneScape players when attempting to connect to the official Old School RuneScape game client. These players are experiencing long loading times, with ‘Loading configuration’, ‘Loading application resources’ and ‘Loading application’ all taking a long time. Our SysAdmin and our Game Engine teams are investigating and are working on resolving the issues as a matter of priority.
In addition to the connection problems, players who have been able to log in have reported major server lag with some servers suffering more than others.
MMO Fallout 