[Video] RuneScape: Meet Darren


This week Jagex released the latest trailer for RuneScape, introducing players to Darren, an adventurer who learns that you can’t just start off fighting three headed dragons.

“Anybody who has played RuneScape over the years will know that seizing adventure with both hands will take them on a journey across the game world, whether that’s battling three-headed dragons, sailing the seas of The Eastern Lands, or even interacting with the gods themselves. The new trailer introduces players to Darren as he begins his own adventure to smite King Black Dragon and make great friends along the way.”

The new trailer coincides with a promotional partnership with Twitch Prime. Prime members can redeem a RuneScape package this month containing one free month of membership, Umbral armor, a flame blade weapon, a companion pet, two umbral chests (loot boxes), and 15 treasure keys and 200 runecoins (cash shop currency). You’ll need to link your Twitch Prime account to your RuneScape account, this promotion runs until September 19.

All weapons/armor given as part of the promotion are cosmetic overrides.

(Source: RuneScape)

Valve Implements New Policies In Response To Developer Scams


Steam has played host to some malicious developers in the past, from Ata Berdyev to James Romine of Digital Homicide, but this week saw Valve’s lacking moderation pushed to a new level as several developers started uploading fake items to their in-game inventories with the intent of either directly defrauding or assisting in defrauding players. One game, Climber, changed its logo to Dota 2’s to further the scam while a third game actually changed its name to Team Fortress 2, logo and all. All of these games have since been removed and their developers permanently barred from releasing future titles, but the fact that the incidences occurred at all has shined a big light into how poorly Valve moderated its systems.

As reported by PC Gamer, Valve has begun requiring approval for game name changes, and has added in extra protections to make sure you don’t accidentally trade items for a fake indie game version. The trade screen will now flash a warning requiring the user to accept twice before trading items to a game that they do not own or have never played.

“We also started requiring approval for app name changes, and have more planned to address this sort of problem that we couldn’t get done in one day,”
-Tony Paloma

(Source: PC Gamer)

Steam: Rend Enters Early Access To Mostly Positive Reviews


Team-based survival game Rend has entered early access on Steam this week, and the reviews are so far looking mostly positive. Developed by Frostkeep Studios and published by the same, Rend is a game inspired by Norse mythology that tasks players with building their faction’s stronghold and then of course battling it out with both other players and creatures that populate the landscape.

Initial response has been positive, with the game gathering a 75% mostly positive rating on Steam.

“Since we first announced Rend, we have been developing it side by side with our players through Pre-Alpha and Alpha testing and by gathering feedback through Discord and our official channels,” said Jeremy Wood, co-founder and CEO, Frostkeep Studios. “Our goal has always been to transform the way players interact and participate in survival games while delivering on the fantasy that they have come to expect from this genre.”

Frostkeep Studios is an independent developer whose list of talent includes names from vanilla World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and League of Legends.

[Steam Direct] Valve Isn’t Doing Basic Checks On Marketplace Items For Scams


Actions speak louder than words, and for Valve and Steam nothing furthers the allegations that the company doesn’t put much stock in the quality of its services than the repeated instances of outright fraud that have occurred on the Steam platform over the past few years. We’ve seen meme games, troll games, asset flips, abusive developers, Greenlight vote fraud, a developer taking critics to court, and of course the repeated return of Ata Berdiyev who Valve repeatedly ignore until whatever latest game he is involved with starts bringing embarrassing attention to the Steam store.

Our latest controversy comes to us in the form of scam artist indie developers and Steam items. Valve has opened up the floodgates allowing developers to give their games inventories with tradeable items on the Steam market and, as usual, they have put absolutely zero effort into quality control and as a result, some shady developers have come out of the woodwork to start exploiting the unchecked system. Reports are popping up from numerous communities of developers uploading items that are visually identical to items in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2, in order to con unsuspecting players into making trades.

This type of scam is different than what we’ve seen in the past, although it has been spotted before, because it directly implicates that game developers themselves are knowingly taking part and likely even perpetuating the scams. In addition, it shows that Valve is doing next to nothing in regards to checking against its sellers shenanigans. Are they vetting logos? No. Are they vetting tradeable items? No.

In the case of Abstractism, that includes tradeable items like the Team Fortress 2 rocket launcher knockoff shown above, the game has shown that Valve isn’t even properly vetting their games for viruses or other malicious programming. Abstractism has numerous negative reviews noting that the game is being flagged by several anti-virus programs as containing a trojan horse virus, uses a shady looking steam services executable that may or may not be authentic, and thanks to the work of several sleuths on the net, has more or less been shown to be a cryptocurrency mining operation.

Both games we’ve shown in this article, Abstractism and Climber, have been removed from Steam and their developers presumably banned from selling further titles. It does show, however, that Valve’s commitment to dealing with troll or illegal games is hollow, if not mostly fabricated.

En Masse Entertainment Will Close 22 TERA Console Servers



TERA publisher En Masse Entertainment this week announced a major culling to the game’s servers on Xbox One and Playstation 4. On August 21 of this year, both versions will see their server list massively reduced from 22 servers to seven. The remaining servers break down to four for PS4 (2 NA/2 EU), and 3 for Xbox One (2 NA/ 1 EU).

The official date is August 21, 2018, but because the merge could take up to 12 hours, we’re going to start the merge on August 20, 2018 at 9 p.m. PDT. During this time, the servers will not be accessible.

PC mergers are coming later this year.

(Source; TERA)

Jagex Wants To Publish Your Indie Games


Gamesindustry.biz is holding its Investment Summit in September, and RuneScape developer Jagex will be there to seek out new publishing opportunities. After announcing last year that the company is seeking to publish more independent titles, Jagex will join a list of publishers and investors including Nintendo, Sega, Fig, Humble Bundle, and others to give speeches, have lunch, and hopefully close some deals between big name publishers and indie developers.

 “Our participation is an important part of the third age of Jagex as we look to support studios and development talent by opening our live game publishing services to studios seeking success in the living games market.”
-James Burns, Jagex

For more information on the event, check out the link below.

(Source: GI.biz)

[Video] Destiny 2: Forsaken New Weapons


Bungie this week is showing off new weapons coming in Destiny’s Forsaken expansion, including a projectile sword, a rocket launcher that shoots two rockets, and a bow that lets you see through walls. Check it out at the embedding above.

H1Z1 To Launch On PS4 August 7


Daybreak Game Company announced this week that H1Z1, the formerly zombie-based survival shooter turned Battle Royale title, will be launching on Playstation 4 officially on August 7. Upon launch, the game will officially become free to play and introduce a bevvy of new content including two new weapons, a new vehicle, season one of the game’s battle pass, two launch bundles, and optimizations to be sure.

H1Z1 has been trucking away on Playstation 4 in open beta, attracting more than 10 million players (that’s about 1 in every 7 PS4 owners). For more information on the update, check out the link below.

(Source: H1Z1)

No Man’s Sky: Steam Concurrency Explodes With New Update


Somewhere the folks at Hello Games must be breaking out the champagne. Following the launch of its latest update, dubbed NEXT, No Man’s Sky has seen a population explosion on PC. Steam figures currently show a concurrent user count of just under 50 thousand, up from a peak of two thousand in June. Reviews have similarly seen a dramatic increase, up to an 83% “very positive” rating. In addition, No Man’s Sky is currently available for a 50% discount, down to $29.99.

Coinciding the the launch of the Xbox One version, No Man’s Sky’s latest update NEXT introduces a number of improvements to the game, including the multiplayer mode, an extensive visual overhaul, unlimited base building, and commanding freighters. For more information on the NEXT update, check out the trailer below, and the patch notes here.

Diaries From RuneScape: Let’s Talk About Rune Pass


Now for the record before we begin: I bought the Runepass with my own money, this is not a sponsored post nor was the thought ever proposed by Jagex.

My game time credentials in RuneScape are such; I have played RuneScape since 2004 pretty much nonstop, my account has more than 187 days of pure game time invested and I’m willing to be that I’ve easily put over a grand in real life dollarydoos through a combined cash shop purchases and the fact that my membership has literally not lapsed since March 2005 and still has me grandfathered in at the $5/month rate. Knowing this, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that I dropped the $10 on the Runepass almost immediately.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that RuneScape’s Runepass didn’t disappoint me in the slightest. There have been a lot of comparisons of this pass to ones sold in Fortnite, in PUBG more recently, and in games like Counter Strike: GO and Dota 2. If you compare Runepass to other games, it’s a terrible value proposition. Fortnite’s battle pass costs $10 and each season runs for about two months where as RuneScape’s first pass costs $10 and gives you approximately 15 days to complete 30 tiers. In Fortnite from my understanding you can generally accumulate enough v-bucks to essentially buy the next season pass, in RuneScape you get jack all in terms of existing content. In Counter Strike: GO, the items you obtain from passes can actually be sold on the market and used to buy more games on Steam. Here? Don’t even think about it.

On the subject of Dailyscape: Dailyscape is the lovingly applicable name given to RuneScape by players concerned that the game has become heavily reliant on daily tasks and while Runepass does contribute to Dailyscape, I’m willing to argue that it does so at a much lesser degree than previous events. This is RuneScape we’re talking about, so ultimately most stuff is going to come down to a grind. As someone who quit the previous three treasure hunter events because the gain of currency was stupidly slow.

This time around the point gain isn’t excruciating. The daily repeatable task has been gaining experience, starting at 10,000 then 100,000 and increasing from there. Daily pass tasks are simple things like cut 50 logs, mine 50 ore, etc. It’s the kind of stuff that you can complete in the matter of a few minutes by going for the low level and thus easy to mass-produce resources.

To put it into perspective, if you completed both weekly tasks: Complete 5 slayer tasks and harvest 50 times from farming patches which take no time at all, you’re five levels deep. There were 28 daily tasks that stacked (meaning you didn’t have to log in every day to complete them) and individually might take at most ten minutes to complete. That’s 140 points, or another 14 levels, and you’re up to 19 levels. This leaves 11 levels to be gained via experience which can likely be done by playing an average of an hour or so a day.

On the subject of MTX: On the subject of real money economy, Jagex has stated that the aim for this is that if Runepass is successful on the non-public level that they are aiming for, that it will lead to less Treasure Hunter promotions.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Jagex has the same relationship with promises and timelines as, well as I do. Jagex makes a lot of promises, a lot of those go unfulfilled. When it comes to money, especially, Jagex has not followed up on a lot of promises in the past. Let’s not forget that most of RuneScape’s microtransactions go directly against some promise that Jagex has made in the past in one form or another regarding what players can and cannot buy.

On the subject of rewards: On the subject of rewards, for $10 the Runepass rewards are rather…crap. A small handful of untradeable cosmetics and a bunch of untradeable experience items. And if you’re a maxed player who doesn’t much care for the ocean theme? There’s nothing for you here. I’d like to see Jagex put better rewards in future Runepasses considering this is something they expect players to throw $10 in for on a semi regular basis.

Give something good as a reward, to at least give the impression that people are getting their dollar’s worth. Throw in some rare tokens, some runecoins, something.

In Conclusion: Again, it’s hard to pass final judgement since this is effectively a pilot program and a lot of it depends on how Jagex treats its other microtransaction promotions going forward. If Runepass proves successful and they ease up on the other promotions as a result, all the better. If they double down on both, then we have a problem. But Jagex does need to have some sort of perspective on price and quality. If they’re going to charge the same amount that other games do, they can’t offer a fraction of the duration and rewards.