Category: News

Jagex Appoints New COO:


Jagex has announced that Phil Mansell will be taking over as Chief Operating Officer as well as acting Chief Executive Officer, following the departure of Rod Cousens. Rod Cousens took over the position of CEO in April 2015, taking over for Mark Gerhard.

Mansell’s reign comes just in time for RuneScape to begin its expansion releases, starting in June with the release of Menaphos.

“Driven by a passion for creativity, our teams are focussed on what really matters for the core business – supporting our live titles and their huge communities and leading the creation of new games for multiple devices,” said Phil Mansell, COO, Jagex. “Off the back of record financial performance, Jagex is in an incredibly fortunate and positive position. We have become stronger with every year that passes and now that we are united with our parent company, ZhongJi Holding, it is both an honour and a privilege to be take Jagex to its next stage.”

(Source: Jagex Press Release)

Pre-Order FFXIV: Stormblood Today


Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion is nearly among us, so long as you don’t count June 20th as too far in the future, but you can make that time go by faster by pre-ordering your copy on PC or Playstation 4. In fact, pre-ordering will make it come faster, since Square Enix is offering a few days of early access as an incentive. Also coming with your pre-order is a pair of earrings and a wind-up red mage minion.

For $200, the collector’s edition will grace you with a rather hefty Zenos yae Galvus Figure, a cloth map of Eorzea, Stormblood art book, and three in-game items. It’s worth mentioning that all of the items in the collector’s edition are real, physical goods (except for the in-game items). You can check out the figurine at the Square Enix store. The store does note that for the PC version, Steam users must purchase the expansion through Steam, otherwise it will not work on their account. There is no Playstation 3 version as that version is sunsetting.

Leslie Benzies Announces New Game Studio


Leslie Benzies, former Rockstar North President, has announced development on a next generation game utilizing Amazon’s Lumberyard, based on the CryEngine and integrated with Amazon’s web services, including Gamelift and Twitch. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland and Los Angeles, the group is in the process of building new game design and development studios.

“I am proud to have been part of past advancements in gaming,” says Benzies, “but I am even more excited about what we have in store for the future. The working title of this new game is EVERYWHERE” and the vision is long term, with the capacity to develop and grow forever. Our goal is to create a platform where players can be entertained, and also entertain others while blurring the lines between reality, and a simulated world.”

Everywhere has an official website up at the following link. More information sure to follow about upcoming projects.

Conan Exiles Readies For Early Access PC Launch


Conan Exiles hits early access in just a week, January 31st for those of you keeping track on your calendars or late night on the 30th for those of you west coast gamers, and Funcom has pushed out a press release today detailing the when, the where, and the how. The time is 6 in the morning GMT, which means those of you in California will be able to get your hands on it at 9 the previous night before you go to bed. You’ll be able to pick up early access via the Conan Exiles early access by heading over to the game’s Steam store page.

“One of the really great things about working with Conan the Barbarian is that there is this huge pop cultural universe surrounding him,” says Funcom CEO Rui Casais. “Being able to team up with Dark Horse Comics, Modiphius, and other Conan creators has allowed us to build a special edition that speaks to both fans and those discovering Conan for the first time.”

Now for the goodies: The Barbarian edition of the game costs $60 (standard full release title) and includes digital Conan comic books, an exclusive digital Conan Exiles comic book, the “Coming of Conan” digital ebook, two digital soundtracks, a distinctly non-digital t-shirt, items in Age of Conan, and much more. The standard edition hits for $29.99.

Alternately, window shoppers and prospective buyers can check out the cinematic trailer below. Conan Exiles is coming to Xbox One early access this Spring.

(Source: Steam)

Star Trek Online: Agents of Yesterday Hits Consoles February 14


Star Trek Online’s third expansion hits Xbox One and Playstation 4 next month, letting young couples show their love…for the original Star Trek series. Agents of Yesterday takes console gamers and tasks them with saving the future, by saving the past. The update includes new story missions as well as content from the Artifacts update.

Agents of Yesterday recruits Star Trek Online captains to become temporal agents and save the future by protecting the past. Players will create a captain from Star Trek: The Original Series and fly one of several 23rd Century ships, including the classic Enterprise, Constitution-class starship. As they play through each new episode, they will interact with iconic characters voiced by beloved Star Trek actors, including Chekov (Walter Koenig), Scotty (Chris Doohan, son of James Doohan), Temporal Agent Daniels (Matt Winston), Admiral Leeta (Chase Masterson) and cyborg crewman 0718 (Joseph Gatt).

Also on its way is a new specialization tree, new task force missions, and more.

(Source: Perfect World Press Release)

[NM] SWAT 4 Breaks Long Silence, Shows Up On GOG.COM


SWAT 4 is one of the greatest tactical first person shooters surrounding swat team action, as well as being one of the only tactical first person shooters where you play on a SWAT team, but that’s not important. What is important is that fans of the game have been unable to legitimately get their hands on the title for years, ever since Direct2Drive initially shut down, the game hasn’t been available digitally and the cost of buying said game on disk has skyrocketed.

But all that has changed, as you can now get your hands on the Gold Edition for $10, or $12.49 if you buy it with SWAT 3. Take on the role as the head of a SWAT team as you negotiate hostage crisis, deal with armed/unarmed bad guys with as few shots fired as possible, and more than anything prevent civilian casualties.

DC Universe: Buy Your Legendary Set, Get The Rest 50% Off


So you’ve finally hit the maximum level and grinded your read end off to get that fancy legendary gear you need so your character can best even the most deadly of adversaries. Now what? You could start up another character but do you really want to go through that arduous process of grinding gear again? And then what, do it a third time?

Luckily, DC Universe has the right idea. The folks at Daybreak Game Company are taking notice of player’s frustrations with the recent launch of Amazon Fury Part III, noting that while the costs of end game gear are pretty high, and appropriately so given their power, the system isn’t all that nice to those in the community that really want more than one set, or have a bunch of alt characters.

We have created the capability to reduce the cost of vendor gear based on feats you have completed, and we are planning to implement this in our next Game Update with gear from Amazon Fury Part III. Using this system, this essentially means that gear vendor costs will be reduced after the first set of gear has been completed.

Upon completing the set, your character will receive a feat and prices for the vendor will drop by half.

(Source: DC Universe)

Marvel Heroes Biggest Update Ever Hits Servers Today


The Marvel Heroes “Biggest Update Ever” is finally ready to go live today, as the official forums have posted an announcement for players to expect the servers to go down at noon Pacific with downtime of four hours.

The Marvel Heroes 2016 servers will be going offline at 12 PM PST for the Biggest Update Ever. Downtime is expected to last up to 4 hours.

Marvel’s biggest update ever was announced earlier this year as a part of the game’s yearly major updates. Gazillion is massively changing the way you play the game, from the removal of power points to the replacement of specialization with talents, and the removal of the omega system which is being replaced by a more streamlined infinity system (an alternate advancement system similar to Paragon in Diablo).

The update is sure to be divisive, and MMO Fallout will be covering some of the more major changes with an MMOments coming sometime this week. For details on the update, check out the link below.

(Source: Marvel Heroes)

Path of Exile Announced For Xbox One


Xbox One owners hopeful that a console port of Path of Exile need wait no longer, as the folks at Grinding Gear Games have fulfilled your wishes. Set for launch later this year, the Xbox One version of Path of Exile will naturally contain some small changes, mostly to the way certain abilities are targeted as well as to the number of flasks that can be held. As a result, the two platforms will be segregated.

More information will be released in the coming weeks. GGG has not confirmed the possibility of Path of Exile coming to the Playstation 4.

(Source: Path of Exile)

[NM] Valve Cuts Off Another Shady Developer Over Fake Reviews


In a world where curation on Steam Greenlight is virtually nonexistent, shady developers seem to be getting more and more prevalent. Introduce Matan Cohen’s Studio, an indie developer consisting of two people (one of whom is probably named Matan Cohen) who released the game Art of Stealth. It wasn’t well received by a lot of people, with the only positive reviews suspiciously coming from accounts that are private and only seem to own one game (Art of Stealth). Before long, accusations of the developer deleting posts, flagging negative Youtube reviews, and flagging negative Steam reviews as “abusive” naturally came to light.

So what is wrong with Art of Stealth? It may be in the reviews of players claiming that there aren’t any actual stealth elements present within the gameplay, or the off-the-shelf Unity store graphics, the developer’s fragile ego, or the suspicious looking positive reviews. It didn’t take long for Valve to step in and swiftly remove the game from Steam outright, posting this announcement via a certified Valve Employee account:

We (Valve) have identified unacceptable behavior involving multiple Steam accounts controlled by the developer of this game, Matan Cohen. The developer appears to have created multiple Steam accounts to post a positive review for their own game. This is a clear violation of our review policy and something we take very seriously.
For these reasons, we are ending our business relationship with Matan Cohen and removing this game from sale. If you have previously purchased this game, it will remain accessible in your Steam library.

Luckily Valve’s forensics team didn’t need to do much work, the developer admitted the reviews were posted by friends.

A few friends of mine who study computer science with me in the university have decided to join Steam in order to support this game by posting positive reviews. My friends love Art of Stealth and they told me that some members from this forum post annoying comments on their reviews, only because they are positive.

The rise of shovelware games on Steam coupled with the lack of curation by Valve has only spurred the growth in watchdog groups constantly searching the shadows for games like the Art of Stealth trying to sneak in unnoticed among the virtual waterfall of games entering the marketplace on a daily basis. If anything, placing bad games on Steam has only become more dangerous as unscrupulous behavior is now more likely to be widely reported and ultimately do more long lasting damage to said developer’s reputation.

(Source: Steam)