Everything’s coming up Glouphrie in RuneScape for 2019.
As RuneScape enters its twentieth year of existence, Jagex is celebrating a successful 2019. RuneScape as a franchise enjoyed the highest membership count of all time with well over a million subscribers while Old School RuneScape achieved its highest daily active players thanks in part to a launch on mobile that has drawn in over 8 million installs, and was also awarded a BAFTA for mobile game of the year and best mobile game at the Develop Star Awards.
In 2019 Jagex hired over 100 new employees as part of a big hiring drive including former EA Development Director Melissa Bachman-Wood joining as VP of Studios, Product Director at Blizzard Entertainment Ryan Ward joining as Executive Producer of RuneScape, and Rob Hendry, previously Head of Studio London at Natural Motion, joining as Executive Producer of Old School RuneScape.
CEO Phil Mansell, aka Mod Pips, stated:
“This level of success only comes with the passion of huge player communities, who engage with our games because of the amazing craft and care from our talented teams. It is thanks to these efforts that we’ve been able to greatly increase our investment in our existing games, new product development and the broader business with more than 100 new hires coming onboard in the last 12 months. This includes senior leaders joining from EA, Blizzard, Activision, Ubisoft, Riot and more, adding more than 250 years of cumulative games industry experience to the Jagex team.”
RuneScape raised over £250 grand in charity with Jagex being voted the Best Places To Work award by Gamesindustry.biz.
More details on RuneScape’s future will be released in the coming months.
Hunter’s Arena promises all the content of an MMORPG in the span of a 30 minute match. From studio Mantisco, Hunter’s Arena might be the most confusing game pitch that I have seen in the past few years. It combines battle royale, MOBA, and action RPG in a game that sees 60 players and ten thousand monsters thrown into a battlefield and fighting for survival.
“Survive among 60 players and 10,000 monsters! Farming, Upgrading, Raiding, Dungeons and PvP action – try this MMORPG-like experience within just a 30 minutes game session! It’s not just a Battle Royale with an RPG combat system, it’s a full-scale RPG available in a Battle Royale mode. Utilize teamwork in party play and backstab your enemies!”
You can check out the trailer above and read up on Hunter’s Arena at the Steam link below.
Netmarble today officially announced the nomination of Seungwon Lee, currently Chief Global Officer, as new co-CEO of the company. His official appointment is scheduled for next month, February 2020. Lee will share his position with Young-sig Kwon with Kwon taking care of game business while Lee focuses on overall management and global operations.
Lee, a graduate of Seoul National University and a Master of Business Administration at INSEAD, previously served as Head of Korea Marketing for Yahoo from 2005 to 2006. Since 2007, he served as Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Netmarble Games (formerly CJ Internet) and as Senior Vice President of Global Strategy at Netmarble Games (formerly CJ ENM Game Division). As Chief Global Officer, Lee has been leading Netmarble’s overall global business since 2014, contributing to Netmarble’s successful expansion to global market.
Valiance Online is still in active development, and this week the folks at Silverhelm Studios released a new video showing off the Skyeline City walkthrough. The video is just a walkthrough of the city and doesn’t feature much else.
For more details on Valiance Online, check out the official website.
Ubisoft today announced the next title in the Might & Magic franchise will take on not one but two gaming trends. Might & Magic: Chess Royale is an auto chess title with battle royale leanings. The core gameplay is tied into the auto chess genre, a round-based strategy game where players select from a pool of characters that automatically battle it out in waves against mobs or other players, with the ultimate goal being to level up your units and outlast the other players.
Might & Magic’s spin on the genre is to merge the auto chess with battle royale and run matches with up to 100 players as opposed to the standard 8 person matches in other similar titles. Might & Magic: Chess Royale will be available on PC and mobile devices on January 30. Pre-registration is now available. We are assuming that the game will be free to play with microtransactions.
Red Dead Online has a whole bunch of stuff going on this week for players to take part in including xp bonuses, the latest free aim series, and free roam events for Rank 4 bounty hunters. Bounty Hunters, Traders, and Collectors of at least rank 4 will receive a 25% boost to experience gained while taking part in any rank-specific free roam event in Red Dead Online this week while players of all stripes will be able to redeem a 2,000 experience bonus for each of the specialist roles while completing role activities.
This week’s showcased competitive mode is Last Stand. Just as it sounds, Last Stand pits players against one another in a free-for-all with only one left standing, available for play in the featured showcase. In addition all rifles available via local gunsmiths or the Wheeler catalogue are 30% off. Playstation Plus members can receive a free colorway of the Leavitt Jacket while Twitch Prime members can redeem the polished copper still upgrade, collector’s bag, an extra 10% discount game-wide, and extra gold bars on purchase. Cost for the butcher table, bounty hunter license, and collector’s bag have been discounted five gold bars this week as well.
With the motion for final approval of settlement details scheduled for April 17, it will have been four and a half years since the lawsuit over ArcheAge’s launch and boy has a lot happened in that time frame including the death of Trion Worlds as a corporate entity. Back in August we talked about how the lawsuit was finally coming to a close, owing mostly to the fact that the defense was being funded by the liability pool of Trion’s insurance company which would also be handling the payout, meaning the longer the lawsuit went without agreement on a settlement the less money would actually be available for the aggrieved parties.
Trion’s insurer has set aside an amount that while high isn’t exactly great. $420 grand for parties to make claims. You have until March 13, 2020 to make a claim, do nothing, opt out of the settlement, or object to the terms. Thankfully you don’t even have to do any receipt checking, as the website will let you submit your username or email associated with the Trion Worlds account and will calculate your eligible credits directly.
Payout of course is tied to the number of people submitting claims, so the more people who claim the lesser the individual payout will be. We’ll check in when the settlement is approved and payouts start going out to see what kind of compensation people are receiving.
If you haven’t been paying attention to his Twitter account over the past while, Tommy Tallarico of the Amico Tallarico clan has been in a back and forth kerfuffle with Roblox over allegations that Tommy owns the rights to the “oof” sound effect that has become iconic to Roblox over the past decade or so, and that Roblox is continuing to use the sound effect without his permission and without compensation. Tommy has been attempting to negotiate a settlement to avoid a potential legal battle but has yet to have any luck.
Roblox has officially responded to the allegations, claiming that the oof sound was obtained from a stock sound CD-ROM that was legally purchased consisting of copyright free sounds. They further claim that Tommy has furnished no proof of ownership, although admit that they have been working to reach a fair resolution (which would be needless if Tommy didn’t own the sound).
Roblox’s founders, Erik and David, got the oof sound (along with all the original Roblox sounds) from a stock sound CD-ROM they purchased of licensed, copyright free sounds (not from an illegal website as Tommy has suggested on social media).
We deeply respect the rights of IP creators, and we have built our platform over the past 12+ years based on respecting and honoring creators.
Despite the fact that Tommy has no copyright to the “oof” sound (and in response to our requests he has presented us no proof of ownership to it) we’ve nevertheless been working in good faith to reach a fair resolution with him. As part of that, we have asked Tommy to become part of our creative community and we look forward to exploring that opportunity with him further.
The full statement can be found at the following link. Tommy alleges that he created the sound effect for the game Messiah which readers can listen to at the embedded video below. Tommy has also stated that he has possession of the original recordings of the sound.
Um… I have the original DAT tape recording, a video, a contract and my metadata on the sound. As well as a ton of sounds just like the one they took. Yes… lets go to court and see who wins. @Roblox ignorance on display. How about showing your proof of this so called https://t.co/iMezQbJWPk
It wouldn’t be a day ending in Y if incompetent “journalists” and opportunistic politicians weren’t using the death of children to forward an agenda of nonsensical fear. Cue in this week where an 11 year old in Mexico entered a school and shot a teacher and six others before killing himself. The culprit? Video games of course. Just check out the opening sentence on Reuters.
“An 11-year-old boy armed with two guns entered a school in northern Mexico, shot dead a teacher and wounded at least six others before killing himself, possibly under the influence of a violent video game, local officials said on Friday.”
Under the influence of a violent video game, like the kid drank a 40oz of violent games and drunkenly stumbled into school with a gun in his hand and rage in his heart. Notice the use of the term “possibly,” an easy out for when rational minds come in to call out the underhanded fear mongering. Meanwhile Governor Miguel Riquelme, who might otherwise have to take responsibility for violence occurring in his state, pushed the blame to video games as well.
“He was well behaved, but he told some of his classmates that ‘Today was the day,'” he said. “And what we can observe is that the boy was influenced by a video game.”
How was the kid influenced by a video game? Governor Riquelme doesn’t have the time, the resources, or the actual facts to explain. Just take his word for it and remember to vote Riquelme in the next election.
The game getting blamed is Natural Selection because the kid was wearing a shirt with “natural selection” written on it and we can only assume that Governor Riquelme had one of his assistants Google “Natural Selection video game” and came up with the first result. Of course nobody from Reuters took the time to investigate what Natural Selection is because they would have found a game almost as old as the shooter and could not conceivably have inspired the incident.
Or they did research it and realized that nobody would buy their narrative, so they hid the finer details. Natural Selection is a first person shooter/real time strategy hybrid that pits marines against aliens in various sci-fi locations that are not a Mexican school. It came out in 2012 and has a population of a few hundred people still playing it. Given the game’s age and small player base, it’s probably safe to assume that the kid had never played the game or heard of it.
“Experts have long debated whether there is a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior.”
Experts have also pretty unanimously sided with the conclusion that there are no links between violent video games and aggressive behavior, but that doesn’t make for a good story. Experts have also agreed that mass shooters like to copycat other mass shooters, and do you know who else was obsessed with the idea of natural selection? The Columbine shooters. And numerous other violent wackadoodles who believe that they are just culling the weak so that the strong can survive. I wouldn’t expect Dave Graham over at Reuters to be familiar with the Columbine shooting, since discovering that information would require outside research that wasn’t hand-fed to him for the article in question.
What’s incredible is that it took five credited names to shove out this low quality work only to get outmatched by one blogger in probably half the time it took them to go to print.
Update: A Rockstar Games spokesperson responded to our request for a comment, providing the following statement;
Grand Theft Auto IV was originally created for the Games For Windows Live platform. With Microsoft no longer supporting Games For Windows Live, it is no longer possible to generate the additional keys needed to continue selling the current version of the game. We are looking at other options for distributing GTAIV for PC and will share more information as soon as we can.
Rockstar Games has pulled Grand Theft Auto IV from sale on Steam and the Rockstar Launcher for…reasons that are not entirely clear as nobody involved has made a statement. It is Friday afternoon after all. The game was delisted for sale mid-afternoon on Friday January 10 (today for those reading this as it comes out) although the two expansion collection is still available for sale as is Grand Theft Auto IV via the Playstation store and Xbox.
On Steam the page for Grand Theft Auto IV still exists but the ability to add it to your cart has been disabled. It is not accompanied by any notice from Valve that the publisher requested removal. The Rockstar website still lists Grand Theft Auto IV but any links to buy the game digitally on PC are broken and simply redirect to the front page.
MMO Fallout has reached out to Rockstar’s PR folks and will update if they haven’t gone home for the weekend.
MMO Fallout 