Tag: Battle Royale

The Culling 2 Is Dead On Arrival, Can’t Fill Single Match On Launch Night


What’s worse than not being able to fill a single 100 player match of Battle Royale? Not being able to fill a 50 player match. We’ve talked briefly about Xavient, a developer whose previous title launched into early access and over the course of two years managed to run its population down into the low double digits thanks to a series of missteps, only to abandon said game shortly after launch and begin work on the sequel. We wondered how players would react to the sudden announcement of The Culling 2 and whether or not the community would come back around for a second try.

Well the verdict is in and the answer is a resounding no, the community did not come around for a second time. While The Culling peaked out at over 12 thousand players, The Culling 2 hit launch day with a maximum concurrency of just 249 with less than 25 playing as of this writing. Reviews currently stand at a 13% “Very Negative” rating with nearly a fifth of all of the positive reviews being outwardly sarcastic in their praise.

And we’re not the only ones to notice. PC Gamers’ Christopher Livingston penned a piece reliving his experience winning a match before he even hit the ground, owing to his competition being one singular player who disconnected at the start of the round. Nadia Oxford over at Us Gamer noted the negative reaction from fans of the original title to the unveiling of The Culling 2. Even the official Culling Twitter account is aware of today’s launch performance.

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The Culling 2 is available on PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.

After Abandoning The Culling, Xavient To Launch The Culling II


Following two years of early access, developer Xavient launched and then almost immediately abandoned its Battle Royale game The Culling in October of 2017. By the time the game launched, and thanks to numerous unpopular changes with the community, the average player base had sunk from its peak of 12,000 to not enough to fill a whole server. Current reviews sit at a 32% mostly negative rating.

But in case you’re still looking to toss your simoleons at a new Battle Royale game, Xavient is back to do it all over again. The Culling II has been revealed and it will launch, presumably not in Early Access, on July 10 for the sum of $20. The trailer, now available on Youtube, has been met with overwhelmingly negative response; a 9:1 negative to positive rating with players criticizing Xavient for abandoning the melee focus of The Culling and creating what is perceived to be a cheap PUBG clone.

The Culling II will also launch for Xbox One and Playstation 4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1IkXm3r5jA

Early Access: Battle Royale Survivors Is Lazy Dreck


I had to give Battle Royale: Survivors a look, it just had to be done.

Battle Royale: Survivors is the latest in the long line of developers jumping on the PUBG bandwagon and if you’re thinking that this game looks like a twinstick shovelware title built off of the Unity engine, well you’re right on two of the three points. Survivors isn’t a twinstick game, although it would be a much higher quality product if it were. What it is is a shovelware title built on Unity that hopes to piggyback on an existing trend.

Survivors launched into early access on June 18, by which I of course mean that the game launched riddled with bugs and unfinished features, but a functioning cash shop where you can purchase money packs up to the best offer at $24.99. Cash can be swapped for TK, the in-game currency, at a base rate of 2,000TK per $1 USD, meaning the loot boxes run for between $2.50-$3.50 apiece, plus an extra dollar for keys for the higher two options. Additional characters will run you nearly 10k TK, or $5 give or take. Alternately you can grind TK through the games at such a snail’s pace that the game will become unbearable long before you even get close to unlocking your first crate.

Unfortunately the cash shop won’t be able to save a game that is currently sitting at barely enough players to fill up a quarter of a standard battle royale match, and I sit here waiting for my latest match to hit the bare minimum ten players needed to get started.

I’ve already noted that Survivors is not a twin stick shooter, but this is important because the isometric camera might have suggested otherwise. In this game you move with the WASD keys and your character attacks where your are pointed. This leads to shooting mechanics that are so poorly handled and controlled that I found myself constantly coming in the top 3 simply running around in the open with some sort of melee weapon and zerging out my enemies.

Shooting mechanics in Survivors are worthless, to the point where holding a weapon is a detriment in many situations. You can hold the right mouse button to aim, but you move so slow and the aiming itself is so wonky that anyone can run up behind you and start whacking away with a baseball bat, the janky controls and laggy nature of the game allowing them to just jolt left and right while you fumble and try to hit them. In addition, weapons are stupidly underpowered to the point of being useless in their own right.

Which isn’t to say that this title has zero good ideas. The idea to implement fog of war makes it possible to sneak up on people, and the wonky controls actually make it a viable strategy because you can’t really easily keep a 360 degree view on your surroundings. Unfortunately, that’s it. It’s the spicy dijon mustard in the dog food sandwich.

View post on imgur.com

But I call this game lazy because that is exactly what it is. Hastily cobbled together on Unity to throw into early access and hope that people pay far more than the game is worth for the simple act of changing your default character. Nowhere else is this idea of laziness more blatant than the massive buildings that will block your view and make huge swaths of the map impossible to interact with.

If Survivors became a twin-stick shooter, where your character faced the mouse and you had a reticle, the game would be 25% better. Otherwise, right now this game feels like yet another cheap, lazy, unity-based shovelware title. One where the game conveniently tells you to shove off after you complete a match and doesn’t let you continue playing. Really, it’s for your own good.

PUBG Corp Drops Lawsuit Against Epic Games


PUBG Corp believes that Epic Games illegally plagiarized the Battle Royale mode, and has even gone as far as to comment its concerns that Epic Games might steal internal modifications to the Unreal engine and use it in their own game Fortnite. In any case, PUBG Corp found the concept actionable enough that just a couple of months ago they took Epic Games to court, filing an injunction in South Korean court against Fortnite and alleging that Epic Games stole their idea.

Except the lawsuit is over before it truly began, with PUBG Corp pulling out and sending a notice of withdrawal to Epic Games attorneys, according to GI Biz. As of now, neither company is willing to comment on the matter.

(Source: Games Industry)

[Not Massive] Radical Heights’ Unique Concept: Persistent Money


Following the commercial failure of its take on the Overwatch-style hero shooter, Boss Key Productions is coming back swinging by taking on the Battle Royale genre with Radical Heights. In production for the past five months, Radical Heights is set to go live on Steam Early Access very soon. Tomorrow even, as in April 10. And why not take a look at the game when it does release? It’s free, after all. Radical deadlines.

Radical Heights is aping on 80’s aesthetic and radical, tubular dialogue to cosmetically set itself apart from the competition, but one aspect that is rather new to the genre is the idea that player-held cash is persistent between matches, allowing players to hoard cash to hopefully make the next match easier.

Can Boss Key pull out a hit? We’ll find out when the game goes live tomorrow.

(Source: Steam)

H1Z1 Goes Free To Play Following Population Drop


In the past four years, H1Z1 has been announced, launched into early access, promised as a free to play title, converted into a pay to play game, split into two products, rebranded, and now Daybreak Game Company is going back on its original decision to go back on its decision to launch the game as part of their “Free to Play Your Way” library, and will be making the game free to play. H1Z1 officially launched earlier this month as it also deals with a major drop in concurrent player count.

Excited gamers can get their hands on the  Battle Royale mode for H1Z1 while current owners can look forward to a bundle of free goodies. Daybreak Game Company has also directed players to Steam’s refund policy which allows them to refund purchases within two weeks or two hours of game time, whichever comes first.

It is also worth noting that this does not affect the survival mode of H1Z1, dubbed “Just Survive,” which has not announced a free to play transition.

(Source: H1Z1)

Epic Games Ends Another Lawsuit With Permanent Injunction


Back in January, MMO Fallout reported on the latest lawsuit filed by Epic Games in the district of Northern California court. The lawsuit followed the similar pattern set forth by its predecessors, seeking permanent injunctions and utilizing the natural legal progression of a DMCA takedown notice against the defendant’s Youtube videos. This lawsuit, however, charged defendant Yash Gosai, a New Zealand resident, with creating/finding an exploit that would allow him to obtain V-Bucks, Fortnite’s real money currency, without paying for them. Gosai posted the exploit on his Youtube channel and, when the video was taken down on Epic’s DMCA notice, filed a counter-claim.

Epic alleges that Gosai created, developed and/or found an exploit for Fortnite’s Battle Royale game mode; Gosai then created and publicly displayed a video on YouTube to advertise, demonstrate, and distribute the exploit; Gosai’s video contained gameplay from Epic’s Fortnite Battle Royale game; and that using the exploit, Gosai obtained Fortnite V-bucks without paying for them.

Less than a month later, the lawsuit is over with Epic Games claiming the victory. The court found in favor of Epic Games on the charges of copyright infringement, breach of contract, and conversion. The court’s decision, which cannot be appealed by either party, permanently restrains Gosai from finding, creating, promoting, sharing, or otherwise interacting with any program/cheat that interacts with any of Epic Games’ titles. As with its other lawsuits, Epic Games is not seeking monetary damages and as per the court’s ruling both sides will be responsible for their own attorney’s fees.

Since October 10, 2017, Epic Games has filed seven lawsuits against people creating/promoting cheats for Fortnite, of which four have been successfully settled. For two of the three remaining lawsuits, Epic appears to be having trouble serving the summons. In the third, filed against a Russian citizen, is allegedly being ignored.

(Source: PACER Court Documents)

Paragon Might Be Unsustainable and Fortnite Killed It


There is no doubt that Epic Games has been drawing in the players and the money with the release of their PUBG-esque Fortnite Battle Royale. While Epic refuses to separate the two modes, it did recently announce that Fortnite had drawn in a combined forty million downloads. While Fortnite has been a runaway success, it looks like the game may have sealed the doom of another Epic product.

In an open letter to the Paragon community, Epic admitted that updates have been slow and the title’s inability to draw in players with each new updated has raised cause for concern. The update notes that over the coming weeks it will be looking at Paragon and determining how to move forward with updates.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be figuring out if and how we can evolve Paragon to achieve growth and success, and trying some things internally. In the meantime, Paragon’s release cadence will be slower.

Epic Games admits that a fair number of members of the Paragon team have jumped ship and moved over to Battle Royale and that the title may not reach what Epic considers to be a sustainable game.

Here inside Epic, we’re talking about the future of Paragon in pretty much the same terms as you’re talking about it. The core challenge is that, of new players who try Paragon, only a small number continue to play regularly after a month. Though Paragon has evolved, no iteration has yet achieved that magical combination of ingredients that make for a sustainable game. (As an aside, the problem isn’t marketing or how to make money with Paragon. We have good ideas that would solve those problems if we can find a way to make Paragon grow.)

The entire post can be read at the link below.

(Source: Reddit)