Category: News

Video: Netmarble Announces Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross With Trailer


Netmarble has officially announced its next title: Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross, coming to mobile in 2020 with pre-registration now available.

Seven Deadly Sins emphasizes combining cards and characters for special moves, as well as extensive interaction with the main Seven Deadly Sins crew. Netmarble also boasts the return of original Japanese voice actors to once again play their characters.

“It is an honor to be a part of brand’s history of The Seven Deadly Sins franchise that made global success with the upcoming launch of The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross. The game made the initial success with taking the #1 spot in the App Store and Google Play charts in Japan, and we are eager to see how fans across the globe take to traveling with Meliodas and his team when we launch the game this year,” said Young Jae Park, Executive Producer of Netmarble Corp.

Players who pre-register will receive:

  • 1x Meliodas in-game character, the main hero of The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross
  • 1x in-game costume and weapon for Meliodas
  • 30 Diamonds (The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross’ premium currency, 10 Draws value)
  • 100,000 Gold (The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross’s in-game currency)
  • An exclusive box that offers in-game items, including a special costume for Elizabeth, a the main heroine of The Seven Deadly Sins

Check out Seven Deadly Sins on Android and iOS.

In A Christmas Miracle: Z1 Battle Royale Population Spikes


In a post-Christmas miracle, Z1 Battle Royale has received the breath of life from…someone somewhere. At least it’s a lot more lively than it has been.

Z1BR’s death has been slow cooking in the crockpot of Steam’s lavatory for the last seven months or so, so it’s all the more surprising that the last few days have seen the population spike. Insanely spike. I’m talking hitting peaks of nearly six thousand concurrent players if you bothered to read the header image in this article. All this from a game that wasn’t . What gives?

A tournament. With Twitch streamers.

This Friday (1/17), a tournament is going to take part in H1Z1 with a lot of the big streamers from back in H1Z1’s heyday…except Ninja. The attention of streamers has brought people back into the game to take part in the scrimmages that have been going on this week, and it has breathed a bit of life back into the mostly dead title.

Will Z1 hold its traffic up after the tournament is over? Only time will tell.

Source: Steam Charts,

Video: Guild Wars 2 Shadow in the Ice Trailer


Arenanet today released the latest trailer for the Icebrood Saga. Shadow in the Ice introduces a new expanded map, new tier 3 upgrades, raven attunement, raven armor set, and world boss Drakkar.

Shadow in the Ice launches January 28 and is free for current expansion pass owners.

Rise of Agon Focuses On PvE Experience In New Update


Rise of Agon is focusing on player vs environment in its latest patch. The latest update tweaks daily quests to provide significantly more appealing rewards, chests have been made more rewarding, and the gold cost to combine treasure map fragments has been removed completely. In addition to the content tweaks, players should be happy to hear that Big Picture Games has taken steps to fix uncompletable quests, removed obsolete crafting tools and spells from various loot tables and crafting, and optimized the texture loading.

The entire list of patch notes can be seen at the link below.

Source: Rise of Agon

MapleStory M Casts Shade As New Hero


It’s that time of the year again, and MapleStory M is releasing a new character.

Shade is one of the six heroes to bring an end to the reign of the Black Mage, and is a pirate that utilizes knuckles and fox marbles to combat their enemies. Shade has been reborn and is using this newfound life to investigate claims that the Black Mage may be back from the dead as well.

Of course a new character can only mean three things: First, a growth support event offering additional rewards as players attain higher levels with their new Shade characters. Second, a burning event offering an additional two levels for every level earned between 3 and 100. Third, a log-in reward event.

  • Growth Support: Runs through February 24
  • Burning Event: Runs through February 10
  • Log-in Event: Runs through January 22

Furthermore a series of events honoring the six heroes will run through February 11 and provide rewards for players with those six heroes. A Lunar New Year event also begins on January 20 and provides a bevy of rewards for those who log in and participate.

For more details, check out the official website.

Mobility: More Heroes Enter Spiritwish


Mobile game Spiritwish deployed a new update this week introducing new heroes and new activities. The update deploys two new heroes as well as expands on the backstory of two other heroes. Adventure mode is permanent content available for higher tier players while those who take part right now can get in on the firework festival offering great loot.

More details on Spiritwish can be found at the official website. Spiritwish is a Nexon title.

  • Adventure Mode – In this all-new mode, players with achievement scores above 900 can earn rewards by tactfully commanding idle heroes to embark on quests to earn Spirit Cards
  • New Heroes – Two powerful Rare heroes join the fray, with Mononofu, a melee-wielder who uses a Tachi to take down ghostly enemies, and Vanguard, a protector who utilizes superior defense skills to stun and taunt
  • Recruitment Quests – The Fire Mage and Soothsayer now offer two new quests for players to unlock their respective character cards and learn who they are and where they came from
  • Firework Festival Event – Players can celebrate today’s content update by collecting randomly-dropped fireworks and exchanging them for items at the Premium Shop. Red Envelopes can unlock Legendary++ Weapon Boxes, Character Cards, costumes, Blue Diamonds and Gold.

PSA: Update Windows 10 Right Now, NSA Posts Critical Vulnerability


You know a security issue is going to be a big problem when the National Security Agency is posting an APB for people to update their computers as soon as possible.

The United States Department of Defense has issued a critical security warning advising users of Windows 10 to ensure that their operating systems are up to date. The NSA identified a vulnerability that will allow malicious software to be installed on a machine by fooling Windows into thinking that it is an official update. The most up to date versions of Windows have allegedly patched this bug, and the department warns that it expects exploits to start cropping up in the very near future.

NSA has discovered a critical vulnerability (CVE-2020-0601) affecting Microsoft Windows®1 cryptographic functionality. The certificate validation vulnerability allows an attacker to undermine how Windows verifies cryptographic trust and can enable remote code execution. The vulnerability affects Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016/2019 as well as applications that rely on Windows for trust functionality. Exploitation of the vulnerability allows attackers to defeat trusted network connections and deliver executable code while appearing as legitimately trusted entities. Examples where validation of trust may be impacted include:

  • HTTPS connections
  • Signed files and emails
  • Signed executable code launched as user-mode processes

The vulnerability places Windows endpoints at risk to a broad range of exploitation vectors. NSA assesses the vulnerability to be severe and that sophisticated cyber actors will understand the underlying flaw very quickly and, if exploited, would render the previously mentioned platforms as fundamentally vulnerable. The consequences of not patching the vulnerability are severe and widespread. Remote exploitation tools will likely be made quickly and widely available. Rapid adoption of the patch is the only known mitigation at this time and should be the primary focus for all network owners.

Source: NSA

Jagex Hiring For Unreal Engine Title


Jagex is hiring for a new IP, one that appears to be built on the Unreal Engine.

A job listing on Jagex’s corporate website lists New IP hiring a number of positions including game director, product director, senior roles, as well as a lead environment artist. The job listings don’t give a whole lot of hints on what this game might be, however the job listings do make several mentions to knowledge of the Unreal engine including a position for a gameplay programmer that requires Unreal Engine experience as well as experience in networked and MMO games.

Jagex’s next game is up in the air as the company has started and halted development on new titles numerous times in the past (see MechScape, Stellar Dawn, and other vaguely referenced games), but it appears that they are at least in the planning stages of an MMO built on Unreal Engine 4. We’ll see if this one happens to get close enough to release that Jagex gives it a name.

RuneScape Celebrates All-Time High Membership In 2019


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.

Video: Hunter’s Arena: Legend Drops New Trailer


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.

Source: Steam, Press Release