Month: March 2019

Following the Overwatch League that launched in 2017, Activision is creating another city-based professional gaming league focused around Call of Duty. ESPN has more information about the league, including how much it may cost to set up a new franchise. According to sources speaking to ESPN, Activision is charging a franchise fee of $25 million per team. That’s higher than the reported $20 million fee that Activision charged for Overwatch League teams.

The report says existing Overwatch League team owners get first dibs on negotiations for Call of Duty teams in their existing home markets.

ESPN’s sources said Activision Blizzard executives have recently sat down with potential buyers; none were named outright, but some are said to be established Call of Duty pro teams and those who are already invested in Overwatch League.

The new Call of Duty pro league is rumoured to begin in 2020, though Activision has yet to make any official announcements. The company has not commented on ESPN’s report about the franchise fee and other details.

Activision already operates the Call of Duty World League, but this new league would be more significant, and, as mentioned feature a city-based structure like the Overwatch League and traditional sports leagues around the world.

After a debut season that Activision deemed successful, the Overwatch League’s 2019 season began in February. The league added eight new teams and almost 100 new players for the new season. It has teams in cities around the world, in places like London, New York, Boston, Seoul, Shanghai, and Atlanta. The players earn a minimum salary of $50,000 USD per year, and they stand to make much more from competitive earnings, along with endorsement deals.

The Overwatch League attracted big-name investors, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and New York Mets owner Jeff Wilpon.

The Call of Duty franchise is set to return in 2019 with a new game that, unlike 2018’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, will feature a single-player campaign.

A new update for Epic’s popular battle royale game Fortnite will introduce a button that allows players to undo a purchase. This is above and beyond Epic’s earlier plan to introduce a refund token system. With the “undo” button, players will be able to do just that–undo a purchase. However, there is a small catch.

After making a purchase, you can undo it within a five-minute time window. Another thing to be aware of is that you won’t be able to use the undo functionality if you start a match after the purchase.

Explaining the new feature on Reddit, an Epic engineering developer said, “We neither want to add friction for players nor do we want to benefit from accidental purchases or players regretting a purchase.”

“As an ongoing iteration, we are going to introduce an ‘undo’ button to the store page that allows you to easily refund without using up a token within a 5-minute time window, assuming you haven’t started a match since purchase,” it added.

There is no word on when the “undo” button will be added to Fortnite.

As a free-to-play game, Fortnite relies in part on microtransactions for its sustained growth and to fund new features and content over time. The game reportedly makes lots and lots of money from microtransactions, and it’s nice to see the developer now taking steps to help those who accidentally buy something.

In other Fortnite news, the game’s new 8.10 update is out now–you can see the full patch notes here to find out everything that’s new.

Overwatch‘s newest hero, Baptiste, will arrive for everyone next week. Blizzard announced today that Baptiste will launch on the game’s live servers on March 19.

Here’s a new sizzle reel that Blizzard released to hype the announcement:

Baptiste has been available on Overwatch’s PTR for a while already on PC, but this will be the first time that he’s available for everyone on all platforms.

Overwatch’s 30th hero, Baptiste is a combat medic who serves as a support class in Blizzard’s hero shooter. His primary weapon is the Biotic Launcher, which is a burst-fire rifle that fires three rounds at a time. His secondary fire heals allies. He also jump extra high thanks to his powerful Exo Boots.

Check out the video in the embed above to see Baptiste in action.

Now that The Division 2 is rolling out, we’ve quickly discovered some Easter Eggs, and of them relates to other Ubisoft games.

At a certain point early in the game, you’ll unlock an upgrade to the Theatre Settlement that helps bring joy to the apocalypse through the art of video games. To boost morale, a video game section of the Settlement becomes unlocked. And wouldn’t you guess it, but the children have decided to play none other than Ubisoft’s sword-fighting game For Honor.

Not only that, but in another nod to a Ubisoft game, there is a Grow Home board game clearly visible on the table. You can see images of the Easter Eggs embedded in this post.

Funnily enough, the original The Division also contained Easter Eggs for For Honor and Grow Home, which at the time were new IPs just like The Division was.

The Division 2 is a very big game, and it surely contains other Easter Eggs that have not yet been discovered. For reference, the first game had an Easter Egg related to Chris Farley’s beloved “Van Down By The River” sketch from Saturday Night Live.

The Division 2’s Gold and Ultimate Editions are available now, while the standard version launches on March 15. GameSpot is currently playing through the game, and while our full review is coming later, you can read our early impressions here.

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As Gotham prepares to reveal its final three episodes, one legendary Batman villain is finally making his debut. Shane West appeared earlier in Season 5 as Eduardo Durance, an old friend of Jim Gordon’s (Ben McKenzie) that supposedly died while trying to kill Gordon–but this is Gotham, after all, and he will be resurrected as Bane.

Yes, that Bane. The one who traditionally wore a lucha libre wrestling mask in the comics. Don’t expect to see that version of the character, though. On the show, West’s take on Bane looks at least partially inspired by Tom Hardy’s version in The Dark Knight Rises, while also adding some flourishes that fit right in with the weird world of Gotham.

As with all things on the show, though, this Bane is something of a remix of the character. “He straddles that line with us where he still is boots on the ground. You still understand where his abilities actually come from,” executive producer John Stephens told GameSpot at the TCA press tour. “The man is a master strategist. And also [this is] where his strength comes from. We were also able to reinvent him in a way that gives him a different spin than you see in the comics.”

A big piece of that reinvention is giving the character a personal connection to Gordon, which is not something that’s been featured in the comics. However, it is a piece of the puzzle that McKenzie was excited to play with.

“It’s fun to be able to take an iconic character like that and explore him a little more fully and also put him in a new context and start him off as a friend and partner of Jim, former colleague of his and yet quickly show their differences and allow their relationship to take its natural course,” the actor said. “It was nice to work with Shane, I’ve known him forever but I’ve never worked with him.”

Still, while everyone is seemingly thrilled with how Bane comes off on the series, the character’s introduction almost never happened. In fact, producers were denied when asking to use him in the past. “There are certain characters you ask for a lot. Sometimes you don’t get every character,” Stephens said. “And [Bane] was a character we were not allowed earlier on in the run of the show. And then [when] we got far enough away from The Dark Knight Rises, they’re like, ‘Okay. We think now you can actually use that character.’ When we finally got to the fifth season, which was when I remember [DC Entertainment’s vice president of creative affairs] Dan Evans made the call to us.”

Now fans just have to wait to see what kind of story Gotham plans to unroll with him in its final three episodes. Gotham airs Thursdays on Fox.

There are a lot of speed bumps on the road to Wrestlemania, and as we’ve seen with the most recent episode of Raw and the WWE Fastlane PPV, the sports entertainment juggernaut has been working overtime to build on the stories for its biggest event of the year.

The March 12 episode of Smackdown offered new insight to the biggest stories, and we’re here to break down the most important ones from the evening. Sadly, when it comes to the Smackdown Women’s Championship, the focus has been heavily on Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville, leaving champion Asuka to just exist. However, there are some pretty solid things to pay attention to in the weeks to come. Here’s what you need to know.

Shane Turned On Miz… Because

Smackdown opened up with Shane McMahon explaining why he’s a heel now. He’s mad people keep asking him how to get ahead in life, and he was born great (awesome). Shane has decided to turn a new leaf and do things his way because beating up the Miz and smooshing Miz’s dad’s face felt great. Now, Shane wants to take on Miz at Wrestlemania. The problem with all of this is that Shane doesn’t feel like a credible threat as a WWE superstar. He worked better as a cowardly heel when he had people by his side, like the Mean Street Posse. As of right now, it feels like Miz would have no problem defeating him.

Randy Orton’s Segment

Randy Orton came out to discourage AJ Styles, and during his promo, he said many things about his career with the WWE while AJ Styles was off doing other things, as Smackdown is the House that Randy Orton built. I’m being a total mark, but let’s clarify what was happening during the years Orton mentioned.

• He said in 2002, Styles was wrestling in a high school gymnasium. There is a likelihood that this is true. That year is when AJ Styles debuted with Ring of Honor, and prior to that, Styles had competed in the indie circuit, had a dark match on Raw, and a brief stint in WCW.
• In 2004, Orton claims Styles was shaking hands with his opponents in the bingo halls. Styles was actually in both TNA and ROH during this time. Styles had some phenomenal–no pun intended–matches against CM Punk, Samoa Joe, and Daniel Bryan at these ROH shows. And of course, with ROH, you shake your opponent’s hand to show respect. That’s actually a nice tip of the hat Orton did there.
• Orton claims in 2005, Styles was getting a tan with Dixie Carter in Florida. I cannot find records of AJ Styles’s tanning schedule, so I’m going to take Orton’s word for it.
• In 2006-2015, Orton was a champion–on and off–and he made no mention of where Styles was. Styles was with TNA most of this time. He went back to ROH for a couple of years, and during this ROH stint, he was in New Japan for two years, as the leader of Bullet Club–that ridiculously popular Japanese stable started by Finn Balor and Bad Luck Fale–later adding Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson, and others.

Anyway, Styles came out and the two had a pissing contest about each other’s careers. This all ends with Styles pointing at the Wrestlemania sign. Look, I was trying to keep opinion out of this–which I’ve ruined twice already–but Styles and Orton are much better than this story.

Kofi Gets Screwed Again

Earlier in the evening, during an 8-man tag team match Kofi Kingston came out with the New Day and attacked everyone. At the end of Smackdown, Vince McMahon came out to discuss what’s going on with Kingston. He explained he was giving Kingston a teachable moment, and the New Day came out to interrupt him. After some back and forth, Vince explained that if he was going to be a championship contender, it would have been years ago.

It’s now turned into a weird agism story mixed with the classic “you’re a B+ player” story we saw with Daniel Bryan. Literally, Vince mentions Bryan calling Kingston a “B+ player.” The heel’s storyline as the same a Bryan’s, but luckily, Kingston brings something extra to this on the face side of things.

Vince announced that if Kingston can win a gauntlet match against Cesaro, Sheamus, Samoa Joe, Randy Orton, and Rowan on next week’s episode of Smackdown, he’ll go to Wrestlemania.

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