Category: News

Mobility: Maplestory M Drops New Class Luminous


Maplestory M is once again back with a new class. The Luminous is the latest class to drop on the hit mobile title, a mage class that utilizes a shining rod and orb to battle the forces of evil. Naturally this would not be a new class release without Nexon also running a burning event. Start up your new Luminous character and you’ll receive an additional two levels for every level up until January 13. In addition to the fast level track, you’ll also be able to obtain special rewards for leveling up the Luminous class character.

“An expert Magician, Luminous defeated the Black Mage using a shining rod as his primary weapon and an orb as his secondary weapon. In addition to these tools, the new hero also has a powerful Flash Shower skill, which shoots a concentrated burst of light that can penetrate multiple enemies. However, Luminous’s dark side also emerged as a result of his brush with the Black Mage. Becoming tainted with the antagonists dark power, Luminous now struggles to keep a hold of his light and dark side.”

Not to just cut and run, Maplestory M players can take part in the Happy Holiday event. Earn rewards, obtain winter treasure box keys from enemies, obtain log-in rewards, and more.

Source: Press Release

In 2018, Activision Blizzard Got $228 Million From Taxpayers For Existing


If you live in the United States and thought you could get away with not giving Activision money simply by not buying their products, you’re in for a nasty surprise.

ITEP, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, posted a list of 60 companies avoiding all federal income taxes in 2018.

“For decades, profitable Fortune 500 companies have manipulated the tax system to avoid paying even a dime in tax on billions of dollars in U.S. profits. This ITEP report provides the first comprehensive look at how corporate tax changes under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act affect the scale of corporate tax avoidance. The report finds that in 2018, 60 of America’s biggest corporations zeroed out their federal income taxes on $79 billion in U.S. pretax income. Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes at the 21 percent statutory corporate tax rate, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion.”

Activision Blizzard notably started out 2019 with the best results in company history, which they celebrated by firing nearly a thousand workers. While celebrating their major financial success and putting hundreds of people out of work, Activision also wound up claiming a -51% effective tax rate. Yes, Activision got $228 million from US taxpayers simply for existing.

We should all get a ride on Bobby Kotick’s private plane. We helped pay for it after all.

Source: ITEP

RuneScape Reduces DailyScape Grind


DailyScape is the not-exactly-positive name given to RuneScape by players who are somewhat fed up with the game’s daily grind. Not so much over the game itself, which is a massive grind no matter where you look in it, but over Jagex’s insistence on daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that start to feel more like busy work than something worth accomplishing.

This month Jagex took aim at daily challenges, a feature that is often long and tedious, requires the player to hand over their creations, and go out of their way to complete the task. Imagine being told to make hundreds of bows only to hand them over for a reward kinda worth the value of the goods that went into it. With this week’s update, RuneScape daily challenges will be more manageable and consistently rewarding;

“So, to solve this issue we’ve simply increased player agency. Instead of having several Challenges per skill, most of the time there will now be only one. This single Challenge will require you to interact with the skill in a manner of your choosing. You might be asked to run five laps of an Agility Course, but you’re free to pick which one. Or maybe you’ll need to cut 28 logs – if so, you’ll be able to choose from whichever trees you like.”

The daily challenge rework blog post can be found here.

We All Missed It: Ankama Pulled DOFUS From Steam


If you’re one of those folks suddenly getting a wild hair up your bum to go play DOFUS again, you’re going to be in for a big surprise if you’re expecting to download it on Steam. It is no longer available on that platform. Ankama made the decision to pull Steam support back at the end of October, and none of us in the games media noticed it because it pretty much flew under the radar without anything in the way of an announcement.

For those coming back to DOFUS, you’re not going to be able to play through Steam. Instead, you’ll need to follow the instructions on the link below to tie your Steam account to an Ankama account, and then play through the official launcher. Good news, you haven’t lost your characters.

Source: DOFUS

Day of Dragons Dev Accused Of Hardcoding Ban Of Critics


There’s malfeasance (allegedly) afoot in Steam early access. Today’s piece comes to us about the game Day of Dragons, currently in early access on Steam. Day of Dragons bills itself as “an online creature survival game set in a large, beautiful, sandbox open world with multiple biomes and distinct creatures. Rule the world as one of several dragon species, or play as an elemental.”

We here at MMO Fallout have dealt with plenty of dirty Steam devs, but the accusations being levied this week really take the cake. The developer of Day of Dragons, Jao, has been accused of hardcoding bans of two Youtuber critics into the game’s files that apparently cause the game to crash on startup if either try to play. The two Youtube creators are IGP_TV and IcyCaress, both of whom have been very vocal in criticizing Day of Dragons for being a cheaply made prototype using store bought assets. So another day in the indie neighborhood.

The video posted by IGP_TV creates a dump of the game’s memory and then checks the files in a hex editor. Among the code they find six Steam ID’s that have been hardcoded to prevent the game from running.

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Youtuber SidAlpha confirmed through his own investigation that the dump contains the six hard coded Steam ID’s.

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Several parties including MMO Fallout have reached out to Valve for comment. Current Steam Terms of Service for developers state that game bans cannot prevent a user from launching the game. It will have to be seen how Valve respond to these allegations, if they do.

Astellia Blames Korean Shutdown On Nexon Restructuring


Astellia is shutting down in Korea (the Southern one) under publisher Nexon, and the news understandably has western player spooked and concerned for the game’s future in other territories. Getting ahead of the curve, the Astellia team posted an announcement last Thursday confirming that the shutdown is not so much due to the game’s failure in Korea, but due to the publisher undergoing restructuring in the region. That publisher being Nexon.

“The publisher for this region is undergoing a process of restructuring. As a result of this, the Korean service will no longer be operated by them and will be coming to a close early next year. We’d like to take a moment to reassure our community, that the publisher for Korean region and the North American / European regions are independent, and will continue to service Astellia without interruption.”

Astellia is published in the west by Barunson Entertainment & Arts. The announcement goes on to note that Korean players may be brought into the western version of the game, filling out the server population sheets.

“Currently, we are considering inviting displaced players from the Korean service to find a new home alongside us in the West. Bringing them aboard would provide players with access to a wealth of Astellia knowledge, increase overall player activity on servers, reduce dungeon queue times, and strengthen the level of competition within Avalon. We understand the significance of this decision, and in lieu of this, we encourage you to share your opinions and ideas with us below.”

The statement can be found at the link below.

Source: Astellia

Surprise! Planetside Arena Has Been Cancelled


In a business decision that even Michael Pachter could have correctly predicted, Daybreak Game Company has announced that Planetside Arena will go to the big recycling bin in the sky. It’s the same recycling bin that Everquest Next resides in.

Planetside Arena is a battle royale spinoff of the similarly titled Planetside 2, and launched this year to what can be described as more-than-unanimously negative reception. In addition to rather low review scores, Planetside Arena almost immediately suffered from a radical drop in player count; down into the single digits just a few months after coming out. For a game that relies on 12-man squads, it was literally unplayable.

The Planetside Arena servers will be playable until January 10, 2020 for the three people who still log in to check their cosmetics. Those who invested any real money in the game will see their purchases refunded by Steam after the game shuts down.

The full announcement has been posted below for your pleasure. Post and FAQ available on the official website.

Hello Everyone,

After careful consideration, we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down PlanetSide Arena servers.

While our team set out with an ambitious vision for a game that combined the massive-scale combat and camaraderie of PlanetSide through a diverse collection of new game modes, it has become clear after several months in Early Access that our population levels make it impossible to sustain the gameplay experience we envisioned.

As a result, PlanetSide Arena will formally shut down servers on January 10th, 2020 at 5:00 PM (PST). We are actively working with Steam to ensure that all players who made purchases during Early Access will automatically receive a full refund to their Steam Wallet after servers shut down in January.

Thank you again for your loyalty and support during Beta and Early Access. Your feedback was invaluable, and your enduring passion for PlanetSide remains the bedrock our community is built upon. As painful as it is to close this chapter so quickly, we remain deeply committed to this franchise, and look forward to continuing this journey through the PlanetSide Universe with all of you.

Andy Sites
Executive Producer, PlanetSide Franchise

Surprise! THQ Nordic Drops Gothic Remake Playable Teaser On Steam


If you thought the season of surprises was over, you’d better toss those dreams into a well and wish for more realistic dreams.

THQ Nordic is doing what few companies in the AAA gaming scene do nowadays; they are asking for player opinion before doing something potentially stupid. Today the company surprised us all and dropped a playable teaser for Gothic on the Steam store, it is free for anyone who owns a game from Piranha Bytes, the folks that made the original Gothic games.

Is Gothic a remake of the 2001 Gothic game? Not really, but it can be. THQ Nordic wants to go back nearly 20 years and pull Gothic into the present. Make it look pretty, shine up what needs to be shined up, and perhaps take another go at aspects of the game that weren’t that good (the combat system). Download the demo, play the game, and leave your thoughts in a survey.

Only you can prevent a bad Gothic remake.

Source: Steam

Snapshots: Pearl Abyss Reveals Crimson Dawn Shots


Pearl Abyss has released some screenshots from the upcoming title Crimson Dawn, as well as some development notes players might find interesting.

Crimson Dawn began as a project to tell the backstory to Black Desert Online’s world, but grew and added more unique elements to produce new lands, elements, and characters. The character we see featured in key art is Macduff, son of Martinus. Macduff is the leader of a band of mercenaries and struggles with the responsibilities of his position. Throughout the game’s single player campaign, we will see the exploits of many mercenaries available for hire. As for the online portion, players can expect a number of features that MMORPG players have come to expect.

Crimson Dawn is expected to hit beta in 2020.

The Game Awards: Epic Store Sale & Free Games


The Game Awards is here, or at least will be here in roughly eight hours from this article’s publishing.

Ahead of Geoff Keighley’s award show, the Epic Game Store has launched a Game Awards sale. The sale runs from today (Dec. 12) through December 16 and includes discounts on titles up for awards including Control, Borderlands 3, and The Outer Worlds. Check it out at the link above. Nintendo has similarly launched a sale for its favorite titles, including current and previously nominated games. Over at the Square Enix store, you can get a good deal on Final Fantasy XIV.

Meanwhile The Escapists is available for free on the Epic Game Store. You can grab a copy between now and December 19.

Over at Steam, Crytek is hosting a free play period for Hunt: Showdown. Hunt launched back in August and is a competitive PVP bounty hunting game with heavy PvE elements. The free weekend runs until Sunday. Team-based tactical FPS Insurgency: Sandstorm is also holding a free play period on Steam along with a 50% sale if you decide you want to pick the game up after giving it a trial run.

Tune in to the Game Awards tonight.