Gearbox – MMO Fallout

Stadia’s holiday launch is an embarrassment of riches. Well it’s an embarrassment anyway. At least you’d be laughing if you’re not among the astroturf social media accounts who coincidentally just registered and only post to lie about Stadia and its competition.

Borderlands 3 is out on Stadia today, and nothing says embarrassing quite like your console-free game being woefully out of date. One positive of the Stadia experience is that you don’t have to download or update your games, and Gearbox has sweetened the deal even more by simply not updating the game. As posted on the official website, the Stadia edition of Borderlands 3 has launched with the most recent version of Borderlands 3 up to October 24. Gearbox hopes to achieve version parity around early 2020.

“We aim to achieve feature parity for all versions of Borderlands 3 early in 2020, but for the moment the version of the game that you play on Stadia has benefitted from the updates and fixes that were released through October 24. Noteworthy features coming soon to the Stadia version of Borderlands 3 include endgame content like the Takedown at the Maliwan Blacksite and Mayhem 4 difficulty, dedicated loot pools for bosses, and additional bank space.”

Borderlands 3’s first expansion content titled Moxxi’s Heist For the Handsome Jackpot launches on December 19, whereas Stadia players will need to wait until early 2020.

Battleborn Rendered Unplayable In January 2021

2K Games announced this week that the Battleborn servers will shut down as of January 2021, leading everyone to ask the same question; “Battleborn’s servers were still online?”

Battleborn famously launched in May 2016 and became known as the game killed in the crib by Overwatch which released just three weeks after. Following a steep decline in users once Overwatch actually launched, Battleborn languished for a year and a half until Gearbox finally pulled the plug and announced that the title would no longer be seeing any content updates. After that it was only a matter of time until the servers were taken down for good.

For what it’s worth, Battleborn was actually a decent game. Not great, but decent. It was less of the Overwatch that it was compared to and more of a first person shooter variant of a Dota-style game. GQ’s Joshua Rivera made an analogy in 2017 that still fits:

“Imagine you opened up a new, pretty good pizza shop in your neighborhood, a place where people like pizza but can’t really get any nearby. It’s a good idea; the demand is there, and you’ve got a pretty good supply. Not the best slice you’ve ever had, but you can reliably make a solid pie that should make your spot a hit. Now imagine that two weeks later, let’s say… Paul Rudd opens a pizza shop a block away. And not only is that pizza shop a place where you can go and hang out with Paul Rudd and all his famous friends, but it turns out that Paul Rudd is like, a pizza savant? Just freaking impossibly good at slingin’ pies, that Paul Rudd.”

As of right now, Battleborn has been removed from digital store shelves (although you can probably still find piles of unopened copies at Goodwill). Digital currency is being removed from sale in February 2020 and the game will no longer be playable once the servers go down in January 2021.

Source: Twitter

IPE: Former Gearbox Counsel Accuses Randy Pitchford of Possessing Underage Pornography (Updates)

(Editor’s Note: It should be noted that any accusations made in this lawsuit are alleged and no presumption of guilt for accusations against either party should be presumed, either implied or otherwise. MMO Fallout makes no conclusion of guilt or innocence on either party.)

(Update Jan 11 6:40p.m.) Gearbox has released a statement to Kotaku that they will be filing a grievance with the STate Bar of Texas against Wade Callender for knowingly filing documents containing false accusations.

(Update Jan 11 6:25p.m.) Randy Pitchford has responded to the allegations in a series of messages on his Twitter account. Pitchford denies the allegations, classifying them as a “shake down” and part of a “greedy pursuit for money.” Randy is confident that he will prevail in the ongoing litigation between both parties.

As a father, I find crimes against children to be especially repugnant. It is very painful that a former friend and colleague would lie to try to associate me with such vile behavior in his own greedy pursuit of money.

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) January 11, 2019

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The attacks made by my former friend and colleague have no basis in reality or law. He is simply trying to shake me down for money. We will win, but because lawsuits are pending I can’t comment as much as I’d like. I am shocked by his lies. Thanks for your love and support.

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) January 11, 2019

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Ars Technica has found a podcast in which Randy Pitchford describes that the material left on the USB stick was not “underage” as claimed in the lawsuit. Viewers are only recommended to follow the above link if you really want to know what Randy Pitchford is into.

(Original Story) A former general counsel for Gearbox and Randy Pitchford are currently embroiled in a rather nasty string of lawsuits against one another for a multitude of charges, however a recent court filing has accused the Gearbox CEO of possessing underage pornography.

Both lawsuits detail a myriad of claims regarding breach of duty towards Gearbox as a developer, with Pitchford himself being accused of siphoning a $12 million bonus payment from the company into his personal account, as well as various claims of breach of contract revolving around the developer as well as a separate real estate company. Pitchford is suing, and being sued by, a man named Wade Callender. Callender is a former Navy Lieutenant Commander who worked as General Counsel to Gearbox from 2010 to 2018.

Callender is himself the target of a lawsuit by Gearbox, who accuse him in turn of owing money loaned for a home loan and tuition as well as abusing a company credit card for personal purchases.

But a part of this lawsuit comes in the form of a claim against Pitchford that the CEO in 2014 lost a USB drive at a Medieval Times restaurant containing sensitive Gearbox corporate material, which was found by a good samaritan who contacted Gearbox via email to return the device. Pitchford intervened before the data on the drive could be copied, however Callender is claiming that the device contained Pitchford’s personal collection of underage pornography.

“On information and belief, Randy Pitchford’s USB drive contained much more than the sensitive corporate documents of Gearbox and business partners like Take-Two Interactive, 2K Games, Sega, Microsoft, Sony, etc. Upon information and belief, Randy Pitchford’s USB drive also contained Randy Pitchford’s personal collection of “underage” pornography.”

Callender goes on to claim that Pitchford syphoned Gearbox profits to fund parties thrown by himself and his wife. The parties, termed “peacock parties,” in which adult men allegedly exposed themseves to minors, to the amusement of Pitchford himself. Links to both lawsuit filings are below.

Source: Scribd, Scribd

One Month Later: Battleborn’s Free Trial Doesn’t Retain Numbers

It’s been one month since Battleborn started its free trial, and while the game received an early boost it looks like most of those customers aren’t sticking around. While the game peaked out on Steam at 1,561 concurrent users, the last week has seen those numbers fall to an average of 417.9. The number is still much higher than May’s average player count of 82.2, but complaints of long wait times for queues on the forums and the fact that this is just one month out of launch spells bad times ahead for Battleborn.

Overall, the free trial launch failed to bring the concurrency numbers to even 10% of Battleborn’s launch peak of 12,070 so while the number did increase over pre-trial numbers, it wasn’t by much and those numbers are falling quite steadily. Effects on population for the console versions is more difficult to determine.

(Source: Steam Charts)

Gearbox Follows Through: Cancels Deal With G2A

Following yesterday’s delcaration of demands against G2A, Gearbox Software have announced that they are cancelling their partnership with the key reseller. The two parties were partnered for the launch of Bulletstorm: Full Clip edition on Steam, going as far as having a G2A exclusive collector’s edition. After being presented with evidence that G2A was profiting off of resold games purchased with stolen credit cards, Gearbox unveiled a list of demands for G2A to prove that they were committed to combating the use of its service for fraudulent purposes, and since then it appears that the company has not responded.

Gearbox’s own Steve Gibson, head of publishing, gave the following statement:

“As there has been no public movement from G2A by the time Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition launched now on PC, Gearbox Publishing will be doing their part to not directly support a marketplace that did not make the new public commitment to protecting customers and developers requested by Gearbox Publishing.”

The last couple of days have seen people asking the same question, how did Gearbox get into a deal with a company that they clearly knew little about? According to Randy Pitchford, the deal with G2A had begun with People Can Fly. Pitchford himself had only become aware of the deal yesterday (April 6).

(Source: Vice)

Gearbox Issues List of Demands To G2A

Gearbox Software has issued an ultimatum to G2A.com, an online key reseller and distributor with whom the game developer had partnered with for the upcoming launch of Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition. G2A, where people can sell keys, has come under fire in recent years for its inability to police its market for users selling game codes purchased with stolen credit cards and then offloaded onto the store at cheap prices. The store sells buyer protection for an additional fee, which has in turn been criticized as profiting off of said fraud.

Popular online personality John Bain, known more so as Totalbiscuit, threatened to boycott all coverage of Gearbox’s games as a result of the partnership. After a long discussion between the two parties, Gearbox has put forward an ultimatum to G2A, threatening to end their partnership if the demands are not met. For the sake of clarity, we’ve included the entire list of demands, which involve making protection free and creating a web API where developers can report and flag fraudulent keys, at no cost to the developer, as well as throttling for non-developer accounts.

· Before Bulletstorm Steam launch, G2A makes a public commitment to this: Within 30 days, G2A Shield (aka, customer fraud protection) is made free instead of a separate paid subscription service within terms offered by other major marketplaces. All customers who spend money deserve fraud protection from a storefront. To that end, all existing G2A Shield customers are notified by April 14^th that fraud protection services are now free and they will no longer be charged for this.

· Before Bulletstorm Steam launch, G2A makes a public commitment to this: Within 90 days, G2A will open up a web service or API to certified developers and publishers to search for and flag for immediate removal, keys that are fraudulent. This access will be free of charge and will not require payment by the content holders.

· Before Bulletstorm Steam launch, G2A makes a public commitment to this: Within 60 days implement throttling for non-certified developers and publishers at the title, userid, and account payable levels for a fraud flagging process. This is to protect content providers from having large quantities of stolen goods flipped on G2A before they can be flagged.

· Before Bulletstorm Steam launch, G2A makes a public commitment to this: Within 30 days, G2A restructures its payment system so that customers who wish to buy and sell legitimate keys are given a clear, simple fee-structure that is easy to understand and contains no hidden or obfuscated charges. Join the ranks of other major marketplaces.

Whether or not G2A will capitulate will have to be seen. Gearbox’s statement has been met with mixed response, with some applauding the announcement and others brushing it off as empty threats with long timelines for a partnership that won’t even be relevant two to three months down the line when the deadlines come due.

“Gearbox Publishing won’t support a marketplace that is unwilling to make these commitments and execute on them.”

(Source: Kotaku)

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