Wild West Online Denies Involvment By Sergey Titov


If there is one name in gaming the should be avoided at all costs, it is Sergey Titov. A name associated with some of the worst games of all time, including Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, Titov inspires little confidence in any product that his name is associated with, and it appears that the next title may be Wild West Online.

For more context, Sergey Titov was Executive Producer on the critically panned game The War Z, a Day-Z type game with zombies that was not only pulled from Steam over false advertising, was forced to change its name due to trademark disputes, but caught Titov in controversy after he referred to members of the community as “faggots,” the title has been renamed and relaunched as new titles each with mixed to negative reception, including one utilizing the Romero name. Many of the titles are either shut down or virtually abandoned outside of Infestation: The New Z.

Rumors began flying around that Sergey Titov was involved with Wild West Online in a now-deleted Reddit post. In a statement released on the official forums, 612 Games has denied that Titov is involved in the game, however the company is using the Nightshade engine.

“We’d like to address some concern that has been voiced regarding use of the Nightshade engine. Yes, we are using the Nightshade game engine from Free Reign Entertainment. However, 612 Games is neither a subsidiary of Free Reign, nor financed by Free Reign or Sergey Titov. “

Given his questionable past in releasing titles, it is understandable that gamers would be worried about any involvement from Titov.

Black Desert Online Hits Steam: 40% Off This Month


Black Desert Online is available to purchase on Steam, right now! To celebrate the launch of the action MMO on Steam’s platform, players can snag a copy for 40% off for the rest of the month. That means getting in on the action will cost as little as $6. There will also be several in-game sales as well as a few drop events going on until the end of the month. In anticipation of a flood of players, Kakao Games has set up extra servers to share the load.

To better support the additional influx of players, Kakao Games will employ extra Olvia speed servers, some of which will be exclusively reserved to cater for new players that are coming through Steam. Users can choose to play on the exclusive servers or to jump into the greater community straight away. Special “Olvia” servers will help players to level-up quickly and catch up with the existing Black Desert Online community.

For more information, check out the link below. While you’re here, take a gander at Black Desert Online’s latest trailer.

(Source: Steam)

PSA: Xbox Game Pass Is Available Now


The Xbox Game Pass doesn’t begin officially until June 1st, but Gold members can get their hands on the free 14 day trial right now. Boasting a Netflix-style subscription service, Xbox Game Pass costs $10 per month and grants access to a list of over 100 Xbox One and Xbox 360 (backwards compatible) titles. The service will operate similar to Netflix or Hulu, with games being added or taken away over time. While games are available on the service, you’ll be able to buy them at a discounted price and keep them once they are no longer part of the subscription.

When Xbox Game Pass launches, you can download and play a broad range of games in full fidelity on your Xbox One or Xbox One S console, including blockbusters like Halo 5: Guardians, NBA 2K16 and Payday 2; fun for the whole family in LEGO Batman, Banjo-Kazooie and Viva Pinata; retro and classic games like Mega Man Legacy Collection, Streets of Rage and Pac-Man Championship Edition; and of course, Xbox Game Pass has a number of great first-person and third-person shooter games, including all three titles in the amazing Bioshock franchise, Gears of War 1-3, Gears Ultimate, Perfect Dark Zero, Borderlands and more.

The list of games can be found here and includes big budget titles like Halo 5, Fable III, and everyone’s favorite: Farming Simulator ’15. Gold members should head on over to the store and choose the 14-day free trial option (it is a separate option from the 1-month subscription at the store page).

(Source: Major Nelson)

Play Wild Terra Free This Weekend


If you haven’t had a chance to check out the open world MMO Wild Terra, your chance to do so has arrived. From today until May 21, you can play the game for free. Check it out on Steam, and if you like what you see you can pick up the full game for just $12.74. Wild Terra is an open world MMORPG currently in early access on Steam. For a sneak peek at gameplay, take a gander at the trailer below.

(Source: Wild Terra)

Marvel Heroes Omega Aims For 5/19 Head Start


Marvel Heroes launches into head start on Friday March 20 on Playstation 4, with Gazillion aiming for an 8am Pacific launch time. The launch time estimate was confirmed on the forums today by Gazillion staff and comes alongside the announcement that Marvel Heroes will be launching on Xbox One this June. The full open beta will be available to the public on May 23, but if you want to get in early you’ll need a founder’s pack.

For more information on head start, check out the link below.

(Source: Marvel Heroes)

Neverwinter: Celebrate Gond By Making A Doohickey This Weekend


Neverwinter’s next event starts up today, in fact by the time you read this it will already be live and running. Wonders of Gond tasks players with collecting Wondrous Grommets, mechanical components that are then combined into higher tiered items. As you continue to refine the Grommets into higher tiered goods, you’ll eventually create the Doohickey, a name that I did not make up for this news piece. The doohickey can be used in battle or traded in for a Creations of Wonder Pack which in turn can be opened for rewards.

Lucky players can obtain an Apparatus of Gond mount as well as a number of other goodies from the Creations of Wonder Pack. The event run this weekend until May 22, and also happens to coincide with a double experience weekend beginning and ending at the same time.

(Source: Neverwinter)

Jagex Teams Up With Improbable For SpatialOS Technology


Jagex today announced that it has entered into a partnership with Improbable. Founded in 2012 by Herman Narula (photograph above), Improbable brings forward its SpatialOS technology which claims to allow developers to create more permanent online worlds with smaller teams. As an example, SpatialOS can manage the state of the world down to the individual item, allowing players to drop items on the floor and (theoretically) have them sit there for years without the need for the server to clean itself up.

Acting CEO Phil Mansell had the following to say about SpatialOS:

“As a studio, we have online gaming at heart and we’ve always looked for technology that can help to deliver the best possible experience for our players. We’re looking forward to working with Improbable and discovering the advancements the SpatialOS platform can bring to multiplayer gaming.”

The extent of SpatialOS’s implementation will have to be seen.

(Source: Jagex press release)

Funcom Reports Most Profitable First Quarter In History


We’d like to picture that Funcom is having a huge money fight in their offices, with the announcement that the company has posted the highest profit in their history. Thanks to the runaway success of Conan Exiles, Funcom this quarter boasted a profit of $6.1 million USD, with total revenue nearing $11 million.

For upcoming Funcom games, players will have to wait until June 26 to get their hands on Secret World Legends, the free to play reboot of The Secret World, and July 31 in order to get said game on Steam. In their investor report, Funcom blames this on a competitive market in May/June with expansions for Final Fantasy XIV and The Elder Scrolls Online hitting Steam, as well as the Steam launch of Black Desert Online. Meanwhile, Dreamfall Chapters was released on May 5. Both Funcom Oslo and Funcom North Carolina are working on upcoming titles, one of which is based on the Conan IP.

(Source: Funcom)

[Video] Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood’s Opening Theme


Even if you’re not a fan of Final Fantasy, it’s hard to deny that the series has always had a beautiful soundtrack. With Stormblood coming very soon, Square Enix has released Revolutions, the theme song of the expansion. Check it out embedded above.

Valve’s Trading Card Update Shoots Shovelware Games In The Heart


Those of you who use or follow Steam in any capacity are no doubt aware of the high volume of low effort shovelware being heaped onto the service, increasingly from developers out of Russia, that have popped up on Steam for one purpose: Farming trading cards. These games use unscrupulous methods, through bot voting or through key bribery, to get their games greenlit, after which the game is immediately besieged by thousands of bots who idle the game and then sell the trading cards for money or break the cards down into gems which are then sold for money. The bots make money, the developer gets a cut of the sales, and others have more incentive to throw their shovelware onto Steam for an easy, if ill-gotten, profit.

The practice has become so popular that there are entire Steam groups dedicated to buying up these low quality games for the purpose of farming cards in large quantities.

Today’s Steam update takes those bad actors out back and buries them next to the rose bushes. In order to be eligible for trading cards, a game must obtain a certain confidence level showing that people are actually playing. In the update notice, Valve attributes changing the trading card system as being to cut down on faux data.

As we mentioned in our last post, the algorithm’s primary job is to chew on a lot of data about games and players, and ultimately decide which games it should show you. These Trading Card farming games produce a lot of faux data, because there’s a lot of apparent player activity around them. As a result, the algorithm runs the risk of thinking that one of these games is actually a popular game that real players should see.

Thankfully this system is retroactive, meaning you’ll receive any cards you should have once they are made available.

Instead of starting to drop Trading Cards the moment they arrive on Steam, we’re going to move to a system where games don’t start to drop cards until the game has reached a confidence metric that makes it clear it’s actually being bought and played by genuine users. Once a game reaches that metric, cards will drop to all users, including all the users who’ve played the game prior to that point. So going forward, even if you play a game before it has Trading Cards, you’ll receive cards for your playtime when the developer adds cards and reaches the confidence metric.

Valve has confidence that this system will function better than Steam Greenlight, whose failure to curate allowed the games onto the marketplace to begin with, due to the extra variables and larger base compared to the relative few who use Greenlight. Most recently, Valve made major changes to gifting Steam games in order to combat bad hombres.

(Source: Steam)