Jagex late last week responded via Reddit to recent allegations against a member of the staff. According to posts on the Old School RuneScape Reddit forum, players have accused one of Jagex’s employees of leaking insider information and giving unfair assistance to members of a clan that they just happened to be a part of. The clan itself has also been accused of using underhanded tactics in Old School’s Deadman Mode tournaments.
The announcement states that Jagex going forward will evaluate whether or not employees will be allowed to have direct involvement in competitive clans.
What is clear is that there’s more we can do to convince you of the integrity of the team, and to ease any fears of dishonesty. Firstly, we will be assessing whether or not direct involvement in any competitive clan is the right thing for an employee of Jagex. You all want a development team who play and enjoy Old School as much as you do, and whilst clans are integral to RuneScape, our participation within them is something we’ll have to review. We are committed to ensuring that no one player (or clan) is given any treatment that could be seen as preferential in any way.
MMO Fallout can confirm via Sony that purchases from Marvel Heroes Omega will be automatically refunded going back to August 17. Users affected by this should be receiving an automatic message similar to the one above soon if they haven’t already, confirming that their accounts will be credited. As stated in the above message, purchases between August and October 17 will be refunded to the wallet while purchases after October 17 will be refunded to the original payment source, except in cases where said source is unavailable.
Marvel Heroes Omega launched earlier this year on Playstation and Xbox, barely lasting six months into its life before the sudden announcement that Gazillion would be closing up shop and shutting down the servers. While Microsoft was quick to hand out refunds, Sony has up until now been reluctant to offer players compensation for their purchases.
When it comes to video games, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is certainly something that was released for money. Currently for sale at $20 on Steam, for a limited time only you can pick up a copy of the 2013 XCOM third person shooter from Humble Bundle at the link below and redeem it on Steam. While the game may be considered a disappointment by hardcore fans of the turn-based strategy series, The Bureau currently holds a 66% overall positive rating on Steam with a more generous 82% recent positive rating, albeit many of those reviews noting its free availability.
The promotion ends on December 2, so pick your key up now.
The latest Living World season has begun in Guild Wars 2. Taking place after the event of the Path of Fire expansion, Guild Wars 2 continues the world story as the player faces a new present threat, the elder dragon Kralkatorrick.
New Legendary Focus: A relic shrouded in mystery.
New Fractal – Twilight Oasis: Journey to the past and witness events that shaped Elona.
New Raid – Hall of Chains: An influx of murderous undead relentlessly hunt innocent worshipers of Grenth. Infiltrate the Underworld and join the struggle for control over the fates of the living and the dead.
A notable and much-asked-for quality of life improvement: A new “keys” category has been added to the account wallet, which contains a currency version of several existing items which are used to unlock caches of treasure. These items can be consumed to convert them into the new currencies. Players can find a full list of the new currencies in the patch notes.
It’s not just Disney and consumers who have a reason to be angry at Electronic Arts. Following a consumer revolt over its aggressive microtransaction strategies in Star Wars Battlefront 2, and despite Electronic Arts showing major growth over the past year up 52% year over year, its shares took a tumble after news that the December quarterly sales forecast would be lower than expected due to the performance of Star Wars. Shares of Electronic Arts were down 8.5% through Tuesday, knocking out $3.1 billion in shareholder value.
Physical sales of Battlefront II in the UK dropped at least 50% in the first week, while none of the versions of the title have hit the Amazon top 100 for 2017, which happens to be populated by titles including Mass Effect Andromeda, Splatoon 2, and Horizon Zero Dawn. Analysts are not happy, both with physical sales of Battlefront II as well as
“We were underwhelmed by sell-through for Star Wars: Battlefront II (EA) over the Black Friday weekend, which follows a controversial launch for the game,” Stifel analyst Drew Crum wrote in a note to clients Sunday.
Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen stated in a speech at the Credit Suisse 21st Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference that EA avoided cosmetic microtransactions due to limitations on the franchise canon.
“The one thing we’re very focused on and they’re extremely focused on is not violating the canon of Star Wars,” Jorgensen said. “It’s an amazing brand that’s been built over many, many years. So if you did a bunch of cosmetic things, you might start to violate the canon. Darth Vader in white probably doesn’t make sense, versus in black. Not to mention you probably don’t want Darth Vader in pink. No offense to pink, but I don’t think that’s right in the canon.”
EA’s microtransaction strategy has been incredibly successful in its sports titles from Madden to NBA and Fifa, however the recent expansion of said practice to titles like Battlefront and Need for Speed resulted in a large push back from consumers that executives may not have expected.
Webzen today has announced the upcoming addition of PvP content for its ARPG MU Legend.
Set for launch on December 5, this content update allows players to engage in 3v3, cross server battles with other players in the same region.
“We will continue to add PVP content to MU Legend’s global version according to our production roadmaps and milestones while also maintaining our efforts into expanding PVE functionality. Even though hack-&-slash games are usually more PVE oriented, we at WEBZEN believe that MU Legend also allows players to explore the PVP aspects of the genre to the fullest degree.”
MU Legend is the follow up to MU Online and is currently in open beta and available in six languages. For more information, check out the main website.
(Update 9/10: Out of respect for the courts, MMO Fallout has redacted the name of the defendant)
Epic Games has made some news this month over the announcement that they are filing lawsuits against people cheating in Fortnite. How many lawsuits? This many, so far:
One particular lawsuit has caught greater attention because it turns out that the defendant is 14 years old. Epic Games filed a complaint against C.R., or Sky Orbit as he is known on Youtube, one month ago for copyright infringement and breach of contract under North Carolina law. The lawsuit here stems from multiple DMCA stikes against the defendant’s channel by Epic Games, taking down videos showcasing and promoting cheating in the video game Fortnite. The defendant appealed said strikes, and under copyright law the only avenue going further for Epic Games is to file a lawsuit.
Further, Defendant is streaming videos of himself playing and cheating at Fortnite by using cheat software (“cheats” or “hacks”) to unlawfully modify Fortnite’s software. In the videos Defendant posts on YouTube, Defendant promotes and demonstrates a Fortnite cheat, and provides viewers with a link to a site from which they can acquire the cheat for themselves.
Epic Games also notes in the lawsuit that defendant has been banned from the game at least 14 times, and continued creating accounts and posting videos on Youtube attempting to promote the cheat program, going so far as to create a second Youtube account to circumvent the takedown notice.
Defendant has been banned from playing Fortnite for this conduct at least 14 times. He nevertheless continues to play using other accounts he created using false names. He has also continued to cheat and to publicly perform and display video of himself cheating on YouTube in an effort to induce others to buy the cheat he sells so that they too can cheat at Fortnite.
A response video by the defendant on the lawsuit can be found here where he disputes the number of bans and claims that the 14 count is exaggerated and is “more like 10 or 5.”
Epic has included the Copyright appeal sent to Youtube.
On October 17, 2017, Defendant submitted a counter-notification responding to Epic’s DMCA takedown notice for the First Video in which he stated “i did noting rong this strike is all wrong I was modding in a video game that isn’t against youtubes TOS Why was i striked ?!”
To say that Epic Games is suing a 14 year old because of cheating would be boiling down the story into its base parts and picking out the wrong piece to focus on. It’d be like me covering a burglary and the headline being “Man Arrested For Putting Some Money In His Pocket,” (Note: I’m not equating the two). There is also a misconception going around that Epic cannot sue defendant as he is 14 and therefore not an adult. This is also not true, as in the United States a child can be sued for willful or malicious damages, in which case his parents would be liable for paying said damages. Most states cap this amount, however North Carolina actually doesn’t have such a cap on damages.
In their lawsuit, Epic Games is seeking injunctive relief, barring the defendant from cheating or sharing further videos of cheating in Fortnite, as well as statutory damages due to the defendant distributing said cheats and advertising them on his Youtube channel. One spot where Epic Games may have lost the mark is in their belief that C.R. had a financial investment in the cheat itself. Unless Epic has access to some information that we don’t, the defendant has expressly denied that he is involved in any way with the creation of said cheat program.
On information and belief, Defendant engages in such conduct to promote the cheat via his Sky Orbit and Sky Orbit V2 YouTube channels because Defendant obtains some financial benefit or value in consideration for his video postings and/or the sale of the cheat he promotes and demonstrates in the First and Third Videos.
The defendant’s mother submitted a letter to the court which may or may not have been a bad idea, as it shows a glaring lack of understanding of both the situation as well as what exactly her son is being sued over, and likely divulges more than any lawyer would advise her to say.
Regardless, it is likely that Epic Games did not know the age of the defendant prior to filing said lawsuit, so whether or not they will pursue the case further will have to be seen. This is just one of at least six lawsuits currently pending from Epic toward cheat makers and promoters.
This may not be particularly surprising, but poking fun at Battlefront II is what all the cool kids are doing this week.
The news this week is picking up on a story regarding Battlefront II and its AFK (AFC if you’re on Xbox/Playstation) problem, notably surrounding the cause of this shall-we-call-it player behavior anomaly. Polygon has a piece by Ben Kuchera (or Ben Kuchechera) titled “Star Wars Battlefront 2 players are ruining the game with rubber bands,” a headline that is not incorrect but goes into detail about how players have figured out that you can rubber band your controls to keep your character moving and thus farm credits while not actually being at the computer (or television). You can learn how to cook delicious meals with fresh ingredients provided by Blue Apron, or whatever grocery company is sponsoring your favorite podcasts, and come back ready to unlock Darth Vader by the time your delicious Thai Curry Beef is ready to eat.
Right now you can get a minimum amount of credits just for showing up, which is what these farms are after. You can increase the amount you earn by doing well and taking part of each objective — and credits are given for playing the campaign and arcade mode as well — so this is merely the easiest way to get credits without putting any actual work into the process.
Polygon’s piece is half right, focusing on part of the picture being that Battlefront II’s progression system is a slow and arduous grind and any game with such system will encourage AFK grinding. The other part of the issue, of course, is that the game rewards players handsomely enough just for being present and doesn’t reward them all that well for putting effort into your gameplay. You can see this in the Angry Joe review, where the difference between first place and last place was a mere 20 credits, 350 vs 330.
AFK grinding is an issue in numerous games for a variety of reasons, from games where items hold real value to games where progression is slow, and games where players simply aren’t rewarded enough for participating or are rewarded too much for just being present. Regardless, it’s hard to ignore the impact that such negative behavior has on the overall community, especially in game modes like Hero v Hero where one player grinding currency can effectively ruin the game for his team.
For today’s Chaturday, I want to talk about Destiny 2 and Bungie, more specifically a recent announcement regarding experience gains and how the game has been effectively lying to players since launch.
For those of you not in the know, we learned this week that Destiny 2 has been effectively lying about experience gains and limiting them for players who farm experience. Once a player hits level 20, which does not take long, every level thereafter rewards a Bright Engram, an item sold in the Eververse store (cash shop), for free. As such, Bungie has a monetary interest in encouraging players to drop real cash on said Engrams.
One player, through heavily researching his gameplay and how the game doles out experience, discovered that the game would limit experience during more intense activities. Furthermore, while the game would display experience gains, the actual experience given would be limited by up to half if the player was participating in public events.
Bungie responded to the growing complaints by confirming not just that the experience throttling was present and intentional, but that it was not working as intended and would be shut off.
“We’ve seen community discussion around XP gain in Destiny. After reviewing our data, we agree that the system is not performing the way we’d like it to. Today, we’d like to describe what’s going on under the hood, and talk about what you can expect going forward when it comes to earning XP in Destiny 2.
Currently, XP will scale up when playing longer or fixed duration activities like Crucible competitive multiplayer matches and the Leviathan Raid, and XP will scale down when playing activities that can be quickly, repeatedly chained, like grinding Public Events. We are not happy with the results, and we’ve heard the same from the community.
Effective immediately, we are deactivating this system.
As a result, players will see XP earn rates change for all activities across the board, but with all values being displayed consistently in the user interface. Over the course of the next week, we will be watching and reviewing XP game data to ensure that these changes meet our expectations, as well as yours. Any additional updates to this system will be communicated to you via our official channels.”
In all likelihood, the answer probably lies within a poorly tuned algorithm intended to prevent some of the easy farming zones that cropped up in Destiny 1. That said, it’s hard to ignore the convenient coincidence that the game is giving misleading numbers on the exact system that Bungie ties its microtransactions to.
For a time in which consumers are already becoming jaded enough thanks to the predatory launches of titles like Battlefront II and Need for Speed: Payback, it makes sense that people are reading this news and immediately assuming the worst: that Bungie deliberately capped experience gains to promote their cash shop.
It’s also hard to view their response as anything other than a company that got caught red handed. It’s great to see that Bungie actually responded and is indeed making changes (although players are still reporting nerfed experience rates), the announcement will probably do little to calm a community that has been airing its grievances for various reasons since the title launched a few months ago.
In case you didn’t think Gazillion could disappoint more, it has been confirmed through multiple sources that Gazillion has not only laid off their staff the day before Thanksgiving, but will not be paying them owed severance or accrued paid time off. In addition, the servers for Marvel Heroes on PC and Console will be taken offline today, November 24, instead of the original planned date at the end of December.
An internal email shared to PCGamesN indicates that this sudden scheduling change is at the behest of Marvel and the company’s bank.
“We also intend to shut down Marvel Heroes Omega per the bank and Marvel’s wishes on Friday, November 24, 2017. At Marvel’s request we have prepped succinct messaging and are preparing to shut everything down.”
As it stands, Gazillion will no longer be an operating entity following the sunsetting of Marvel Heroes.
