Category: News

PUBG Is Dominating PC, But Fortnite Is Gaining Speed


The effects of Fortnite Battle Royale on Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds appears to be nil, at least in the sense that the former has seen a great deal of success and yet the latter continues to rise in popularity. Launched as a free addition to Fortnite, Epic’s Battle Royale clocked in an impressive 525,000 peak concurrent user count with 3.7 million daily active users. If Battle Royale was a Steam title, that would put it somewhere in fourth place below PUBG, Dota 2, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Meanwhile, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds continues to shatter records on Steam, setting a new peak of 1.98 million players on Saturday October 9.

Both titles are currently dealing with a swarm of cheaters, an inevitable outcome given the overall active user base. Fortnite announced that it has banned thousands of cheaters and will continue working on features that reward legitimate players while punishing people who cycle through throwaway accounts. In spite of these efforts, Epic also announced that Fortnite is experiencing an issue with false positive bans.

Bluehole meanwhile continues to work against cheating with some success. Despite their efforts, blatant cheaters are dominating the PUBG leaderboards. According to multiple sources, you can identify what are effectively advertising accounts for cheat creators situated in China, as the number strings are QQ (think Chinese Skype) contact details to buy said cheats. How Bluehole plans on taking down cheaters effectively using their platform to advertise their business has not been detailed.

Regardless, it looks like there is plenty of room on the internet for both games to thrive, and continue growing.

Ghost Recon Wildlands: Ubisoft Adds PvP, Free Weekend Coming


Player vs player combat is coming to Ghost Recon Wildlands, so what better time than the present to play host to a free week?

Gamers on PC, PS4, and Xbox One will be able to jump in to Ghost Recon from October 12 to the 15, with PC players able to preload starting today, October 9. The PvP update hits servers tomorrow, October 10, as a free update to all who already own the game.

Ghost War is a 4-versus-4 team deathmatch experience that builds on the tactical squad play from the main game, where strategy is equally as important as skill. Using one of the 12 distinct classes, each with their own varied characteristics, weapons, perks and customisation options, players will engage with enemies across eight unique maps. Ghost War also integrates new PvP mechanics, including suppressing fire and sound markers, to create a strategic and intense team-based multiplayer mode.

Further along the road, Ubisoft will expand player vs player by adding in new maps, new modes, and new classes, all of which will be free for all players (new classes will be unlocked with prestige points). Wildlands season pass owners will have one week early access to new classes.

(Source: Ubisoft press release)

Black Bolt Silently Lands On Marvel Heroes Omega


Marvel Heroes Omega has a new hero on Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Starting today, you’ll be able to get your hands on Black Bolt. Right now you can only get hold of Black Bolt via a store purchase. The pack costs $20 and includes a bonus costume, 2 loot boxes, and 2 experience boosts. Those not willing to plonk down hard cash can wait until November 2 when Black Bolt will be available for eternity splinters.

Strike from the shadows with Elektra! The master combatant launches on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 today! The king of Attilan may not have as much to say as the other 42 playable Marvel Heroes Omega characters but, thanks to his ability to channel and manipulate electrons and particles, a mere whisper from the King of the Inhumans can destroy an entire civilization His actions don’t speak louder than his words— his words are his actions.

Black Bolt was released on PC in February this year.

(Source: Marvel Heroes)

The Exiled Experiments With Not Letting People Play, It Doesn’t Work


The Exiled is a game that MMO Fallout has covered to some extent over the past year, it’s a quirky little MMO that seems to suffer mostly from poor marketing and low population, the latter likely influenced by the former. Oh and the developer Fairytale Distillery has made some arguably boneheaded experimental moves over the past few months.

One of The Exiled’s draws is that the game runs on seasons, allowing the team to experiment with new modes and ideas, see what works and what doesn’t. Back in August, with the launch of season 6, the team decided to take the living world and make it not so living by reducing the availability of servers to just three hours per day. Odds are if you attempted to give the game a look during the last two months, you logged in during one of the 21 daily hours where the servers were off.

It was a well-meaning idea, limit the server availability so players would be logging in during the same hours, but in practice it just meant that nobody was playing. Literally. With the next season set to start on October 6, servers will once again be available 24 hours each day. Fairytale Distillery will also be refraining from making any big content changes until they have more of a concrete plan for the game’s future.

 We will go back to the drawing board with our plans to re-set the game. Expect smaller bug fixes from us in the coming seasons but no major changes. We are still supporting the game, keeping the servers running and answering your support tickets but as long as we have no convincing plan for the future of the game we will not make any further major changes to it.

(Source: Steam)

[Video] Medal of Honor Retrospective Part 1: Medal of Honor


I present to my audience the first part in the Medal of Honor retrospective. With Call of Duty finally returning to World War 2, I figured now was as good of a time as any to take a look at the series that started it all and is partially responsible for how we game today.

[NM] Shovelware Developer Quits Industry After Steam Ban


Shovelware developer Silicon Echo is apparently pulling out of game development after action by Valve led to more than 170 of their games getting yanked from Steam. Silicon Echo is the renowned game developer known for hit titles including Shapes, Shapes 2, Shapes 3, Shapes 4, Shapes 5, Shapes 6, Shapes 7, and Shapes 8. Their library of games consists primarily of minimal effort asset flips pushed onto the Steam storefront in an effort to turn a quick profit using quantity over quality.

All of that came to an end when Valve, without warning, yanked the entire Silicon Echo library, including titles hidden away via separate Steam accounts. In a statement to Polygon, Silicon Echo expressed that it is giving up game development as its reputation is in tatters and its primary source of income now gone.

“This situation has completely destroyed everything we have been working for in the past 3 years and we are forced to give up game development at this point for more that [sic] one reason,” Silicon Echo said. “Mainly because our reputation is destroyed beyond repair, but also for financial reasons. We wish we have been warned about this before, in that case we would focus on a different business plan of development.”

Valve has increased its commitment to removing shovelware titles from Steam this year after mounting criticism that the barrier of entry is too low, and after a large series of low quality asset flips and outright fake games have flooded the market. The situation of Steam being flooded with titles has gotten so bad that 2016 accounted for 40% of all games on the store.

Guild Wars 2: Unlock Waypoints With Real Money


Waypoints serve as fast travel markers in Guild Wars 2, allowing players to teleport for a small fee to the main areas that they have already been to. In terms of game progression, this is also another set of things to collect. With today’s update, Arenanet has introduced the ability to buy waypoint unlocks. Waypoints are unlocked per region for 600 gems, or for the entire region of Tyria (pre-expansions) for 2000 gems (about $25 USD).

East Nowhere to stop a rampaging whatever from eating Fill-in-the-Blank Village, but you’re new in town. Good news*—we’ll instantly register you at all the waypoints in a region of your choice. Buy the Waypoint Unlock Box to unlock one of the regions on our list, or buy the Central Tyria Waypoint Unlock Package for all of them.

How do you feel about Arenanet selling waypoint unlocks? Let us know in the comments below.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

And Then There Were 5: The Old Republic Merges Servers


Star Wars: The Old Republic has come a long way since its 2011 launch, and Bioware has plenty in store for the game going forward. Details regarding the upcoming United Forces update hit the official website today, and a big part of the update involves merging the seventeen remaining servers down to five. There will be two North American and three European servers, one for English, French, and German in the latter category.

The United Forces update expands your connection to a galactic-sized community of players. We will be integrating our existing seventeen servers to five new servers, one for each existing region and language. Our goal is to make this experience as simple and rewarding as possible.

The FAQ goes into detail in regards to legacy ranks, achievements, and more. Premium subscribers who have more than 52 characters per server following the merge will be accommodated for but will be unable to create new characters as long as they are above the limit. Free players will have all characters above the 2 per server limit deactivated.

Currently, a Premium (Subscriber) account is allowed a maximum of 52 characters per server. Following the United Forces update, accounts with more than 52 characters on a server will be accommodated. You will still be able to access and play each of those characters. However, if you wish to make any new characters after that point, you will need to delete characters until you are back at or below the cap of 52. For Free-to-Play accounts, this process will work a little differently. Following the United Forces update, if your account has characters beyond the Free-to-Play limit of 2, then all your characters will be set to ‘deactivated’. This allows you to log in and choose which characters you would like to activate and play.

Bioware’s announcement of the mergers has received some criticism from players on Role Playing servers being merged into standard servers.

(Source: The Old Republic)

Call of Duty Gets Slammed In Steam Ratings In Open Beta


The Call of Duty World War 2 beta is officially live on PC, and Steam players are not happy. Just hours into the beta being available, the game is already sinking in reviews with 30% (of more than five thousand reviews) as of this writing having a positive outlook on the title. While there are plenty of reviews that are simply trolling or missing context, the general contention among the crowd of haters relates to performance issues, matchmaking problems, and the game just generally being “another Call of Duty.”

A thread has popped up on the forums asking players for bug reports regarding performance issues. It appears that the developers are paying attention, and are not happy with the early review scores, noting:

NOTE: Please don’t review the game without actually giving it a try, it’s unfair to the developers when you rate a game beacuse of an issue that could very well be your own.

The latest Call of Duty title is going to have to work hard to bring PC users back after Infinite Warfare virtually bombed on the system in 2016. Steam charts show that Infinite Warfare peaked at 15,312 on launch, barely three thousand more than Battleborn. Its accompanying title, Modern Warfare Remastered, peaked at just under 1,400 on launch. Both titles carry a “mostly negative” rating with less than 40% positive reviews, and Modern Warfare Remastered has dropped below a full Battlefield server in terms of peak concurrent users. Raven Software, who worked on the PC version of Infinite Warfare, is also working on the PC version of WW2. Steam Spy suggests that less than half a million people own Infinite Warfare on Steam.

Minions of Mirth Goes Offline, But Single Player Still Functions


Cult indie MMORPG Minions of Mirth: Undead Wars is dead, long live the single player Minions of Mirth! Minions of Mirth is a rather quaint fantasy MMO that many of you may not have heard of until right this very moment. Following a hard drive failure on September 18, the official MoM Twitter account announced late last week that the servers will be down indefinitely. Minions of Mirth launched in 2005 and can take the credit of being free to play before the genre was cool.

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Thankfully those of you looking to give this undiscovered gem a go, the single player still functions. Check it out at the official website.