Category: News

Bungie Removes “Alt-Right Symbol” in Destiny 2


Bungie has announced that a piece of equipment after it came to their attention that said armor bears the mark of a “hate symbol.” The company announced the alteration via Twitter, noting that the armor bears a striking resemblance to the Kekistani flag, a meme that has become synonymous with the alt-right, a collection of Trump supporters, along with the frog Pepe and other such memes.

“It’s come to our attention that a gauntlet in Destiny 2 shares elements with a hate symbol. It is not intentional. We are removing it. Our deepest apologies. This does NOT represent our values, and we are working quickly to correct this. We renounce hate in all forms.”

Bungie CEO Pete Parsons posted the following on Twitter in response to the announcement:

“At Bungie, our company values place the highest emphasis on inclusion of all people and respect for all who work with us or play our games.”

The announcement has been met with both positive and negative reactions across the net. The term “kek” was popularized in part due to World of Warcraft, where cross-faction language changes “lol” to “kek,” with the latter slowly replacing the former in online chatter. While the Kekistani flag has been labeled a hate symbol by some outfits due to its resemblance to the swastika, supporters claim that the flag is a mockery of ethnic nationalism, not a symbol of support for it.

Regardless, it appears that Bungie is having nothing of it.

Fossil Island Comes To Old School RuneScape


Old School RuneScape this week saw the launch of Fossil Island, a new batch of content for the retro RuneScape. Fossil Island opens up a ton of new content, including the much awaited launch of skeletal wyverns. You can collect fossils, take part in one of several new skilling locations, and uncover new artifacts to fill the expanded Varrok museum.

“Fossil Island has been something of a myth in RuneScape and the community for a long time,” said Mathew Kemp, senior product manager, Old School RuneScape. “The first design documents were drafted more than a decade ago, so we were really pleased the Old School RuneScape community voted so overwhelmingly and backed its development and release into the game.”

More on the update can be found at the link below.

(Source: RuneScape)

Malaysian Government Blocks Steam Store Over God Fighting Game


Malaysian gamers looking to spend their hard earned ringgits on fresh picked video games are being met with a disappointing notice that the service has been blocked by the government due to allegedly offensive content. Users attempting to access the store are being notified that access has been blocked by the government.

The game in question, Fight of Gods, is a side scrolling fighter that allows players to take control of various real deities including, but not limited to, Jesus and Buddha. The Malaysian government had apparently issued a 24 hour warning on Thursday to Valve to remove the game or face restrictions. The blockage of Steam appears to be part of that warning.

“This is a very sensitive issue, and it is totally not acceptable. We can never agree to such games. The government must take immediate action to ban the game’s sale here,”

Fight of Gods publisher, Taiwanese developer Digital Crafter, has issued a statement that they are contacting Valve to rectify the matter.

"We are disappointed that such freedom of choice is not given to everyone and in particular that the game has been forcibly removed from sale in Malaysia, although no direct communication has been received by us as to the reasons for this. Nevertheless we respect any rules and censorship imposed in any given territory."

Users in Malaysia can still access Steam, just not its store.

(Source: NDTV)

Duke Nukem Licensed Out To MMOARPG Wild Buster


MMOARPG Wild Buster dubs itself a “gritty science fiction hack’n’slash MMORPG” with PvP, PvE, and now apparently Duke Nukem. In an announcement posted today, developer Insel Games announced that the Duke would be joining the roster of heroes. No piracy here, the inclusion of the babe-rescuing, cigar smoking, Ash parody is fully licensed with the blessing of Gearbox. Insel Games also hints in its Indiegogo campaign that more than one character may be from another property.

What Hack’n’Slash MMORPG would be complete without a badass cast? That’s why we are thrilled to announce the addition of the legendary Duke Nukem to Wild Buster: Heroes of Titan’s already deadly dozen!

See the story on Steam, view more details about the game on its website, or check out the trailer below. Insel Games is aiming for an October launch, with early backers gaining access to alpha.

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Master x Master Players SOL With Less SOL


One sentence no player wants to hear is that when a developer announces that their game is just too generous, but for Master X Master players, that fear is becoming a reality. In an announcement on the official website, NCSoft has revealed its perspective that players are getting away with a little too much, and as such don’t have much of a reason to invest real money in the game to shortcut their way through progression.

Our goal with MXM is to provide different activities and ways to progress and unlock Masters at a reasonable rate through the use of SOL, or through quicker unlocks with X-Coin. SOL is currently quite generous, which means players progress through the game and content much faster than intended, and our X-Coin prices just aren’t comparable for those that choose to buy X-Coin as a shortcut.

In response, NCSoft is cutting the accumulation rate of SOL, an in-game currency, across the board. You can find the details at the link below, but the gist is that you’ll be getting less SOL and certain things will become more expensive.

(Source: MXM)

Warner Bros. Says It Won’t Profit Off Shadow of War DLC


Warner Bros. has spent the last week on the receiving end of some flack after the announcement that upcoming title Shadow of War would include a memorial to a deceased Monolith employee in the form of paid DLC. Some have accused the company of profiting off of the death of one of its employees.

Forthog Orc-Slayer appears in Shadow of War as part of a $4.99 paid DLC pack, he was created as a memorial to executive producer Michael Forgey who had passed away from a brain tumor last year. An NPC in the game, Forthog can show up when the player needs him most to lend a helping hand. The announcement also came with the statement that $3.50 from each sale would go directly to Forgey’s family through December 31, 2019.

Players quickly took umbrage with a caveat noted at the bottom of the video, that not only would the donation only include purchases made within the United States, and thus exclude other countries, but certain states would be excluded. While one can surmise that the exclusion of countries and states is due to various laws/regulations and not some malicious act, the response from Warner Bros. hasn’t done much to clear up the confusion.

"Neither Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment nor Monolith Productions will profit from any sales of the Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC regardless of the territory in which that DLC is sold."

Reading between the lines on this statement suggests that Warner Bros. has a card up its sleeve to ensure that the money goes where it needs to, and in the likely event that this is related to local laws and regulations, it would not behoove WB to state publicly that they plan to circumvent said laws.

(Editor’s Thoughts: In all likelihood, we will never be told exactly how Warner Bros is going to make not donating and not profiting work, but if MMO Fallout had to throw in its two cents, I recommend looking at how Pachinko parlors in Japan. You can bypass just about any payout law by adding more steps and calling it something different.)

Donations directly to the family can be made through Youcaring.com.

Perpetuum Online Ends Development, Eyes Private Servers


Perpetuum Online is a name that we haven’t heard around MMO Fallout in quite a while, so long that many of you might have assumed that the game had quietly shut down. It hasn’t, although we have learned that development has come to an end. In a post on the official website, detailed plans have been laid out for the future of Perpetuum Online, a rather niche sci-fi MMO. In the post, Avatar Creations announced that while Perpetuum had two major population spikes, the number of players never really remained sustainable to maintain proper development.

While development on the game is ending, that doesn’t mean that Perpetuum will be gone for good. The official server will remain online for an unknown amount of time, and a standalone server client is being created so that players will be able to continue on their own servers. The client is apparently small enough and requires little resources, meaning you could boot it up alongside the game and play on your own server if you want.

As expected, premium currency and DLC are going away, and the game will only be available on Steam:

A bigger change that some of you probably won’t like is that soon Steam will be the only place where Perpetuum will be distributed, including the standalone server. The reason for this is to ensure the availability of the game on a stable platform, as opposed to our own website that we cannot guarantee to be around forever. Another reason is that it’s uneconomical for us to keep our own payment platform, as purchases made via Steam outweigh our own store by far.

You can find the entire announcement at the link below.

(Source: Perpetuum Online)

Blizzard Again Promises Tough Punishment For Overwatch Trolls


If you could formulate a plan to effectively punish, and get rid of, toxic players in your community, you might just become the richest person in the gaming industry. Until then, we’ll need to sit back and watch as developers continue to commit to punishing toxic community members and hope that everything works out for the best.

For Blizzard, the ongoing discussion of toxicity has come back up after director Jeff Kaplan posted on the official forums regarding an account that had miraculously accrued more than two thousand complaints, been silenced for more than a year’s worth of time, and has been suspended three times.

"That account has a total of 2247 complaints filed against it — making it one of the worst offending accounts we’ve seen. The account has also been silenced for a total of 9216 hours. There are 3 gameplay suspensions on the account as well as 7 silences against this account (these are for abusive chat and/or spam). There is also a manual GM account suspension for "massive griefing" levied."

Blizzard’s plans to alleviate grief include removing silencing altogether and utilizing suspensions/bans more. For competitive, Kaplan stated that the company is in the process of handing out bans/suspensions for players who boosted in Season 5 of competitive mode, also adding that players will be permanently banned from competitive if they are found to be abusing it repeatedly.

"We will do this as it is our responsibility but we’d like to spend more time rewarding good players rather than having to focus on poor sportsmanship and unacceptable bad behavior so much. Like it or not, this is an "us, the OW community problem" and not just an "OW team problem". For better or for worse, we’re in this together."

Long term plans involve promoting positive behavior. Toxic behavior is a problem that MMO Fallout has reported endlessly on, with various developers flexing their muscles and threatening harsher punishments and longer bans. For developers, especially those with large competitive communities, the fight against toxicity is a constant uphill battle.

[PSA] You Can Now Activate Steam Keys on the Steam Website


As an update that will no doubt leave some of our viewers thinking “boy it looks like MMO Fallout got hacked and is being used to phish Steam accounts,” Valve has updated their systems so that players can now redeem keys through the Steam website. I’m not entirely sure how to get to this page from the main Steam website, but you can click on the completely legitimate link down below listed as the source and redeem any key you want. Totally legitimate.

There is no way to report on this and make it look good.

(Source: Steam)