Month: May 2020

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – The Game, Ubisoft’s scrolling 2010 beat-em-up based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s hit comic (and Edgar Wright’s movie adaptation), hasn’t been available for some time. The game was delisted at the end of 2014, likely due to the expiration of one of Ubisoft’s licenses, and it has remained impossible to buy since.

Now, during a watch party for Wright’s film that O’Malley joined Twitter to take part in, the book’s author tweeted out a request to “bring back the Scott Pilgrim game”. The official Ubisoft account–which was not tagged in the tweet–issued a simple, cryptic response of an emoji scratching its chin.

Of course, this is not a confirmation that the game is coming back. But at the same time, the game has a bit of a cult following, and to raise people’s hopes like this would be cruel.

This might not be much to go on, but it’s enough to give us some hope that the game could return for modern systems–especially since it would be a perfect fit for Switch.

Ubisoft is planning a digital showcase for Summer 2020. We also know that they have an unannounced AAA title due before March 2021, alongside Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs: Legion, and the rest of their line-up.

The Last of Us: Part II is finally nearly upon us, and as new details emerge we’re getting a better idea of how the long-awaited sequel will play. One new thing we’ve learned, thanks to the new Inside the Gameplay video below, is that you won’t be able to fully upgrade Ellie in a single playthrough.

Kurt Margenau, the game’s co-director, explains in the video (at around the 7:30 mark onwards) that The Last of Us: Part II will feature seperate weapon and player upgrade systems, but that you won’t be able to acquire the necessary resources to fully upgrade Ellie in a single playthrough. This is because the game is focused on the consequences of your choices, and that includes which skills you decide to focus on.

Naughty Dog wants players to make choices and then be forced to live with them, and to that end even the upgrade system choiced needed to have “a really noticable and tangible impact” on how you play. So if you decide to bulk up one of Ellie’s abilities, it might mean you can never fully develop another, for instance.

This means that players will experience different “builds” of Ellie, and it sounds like the intention is for this to have an impact on how you experience the game’s story. While you could not fully upgrade Joel in the original game until you hit New Game Plus, it did not fundamentally alter the game’s narrative, or your sense of the character, in any way. Speaking of which, the video also warns that you’ll likely miss entire story moments in your first playthrough.

The Last of Us: Part II releases for PlayStation 4 on June 19. If you don’t have a system to play it on, check out the limited edition The Last of Us: Part II PlayStation 4 Pro model.

In July 2019, online games retailer G2A extended an offer to devs to open up its records to an independent auditor, and to reimburse the developers 10 times the value of any game keys that were found to have been illegally sold. So far only one developer, Wube Games, has taken them up on the offer, and G2A has finalized a figure of $39,600 as compensation for stolen Factorio keys.

While G2A initially promised to involve an independent auditor in the process, their most recent blog post on the subject says they found that “none that would meet our agreed requirements.” Wube then agreed to G2A carrying out its own internal investigation.

The developers provided G2A with a list of 321 keys it believed had been illegally sold, and G2A concluded that 198 of those had been sold on its platforms. G2A has agreed to pay Wube Software a total of $39,600 for the keys, 10 times their full retail price. The company confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that they have received the payment in full from G2A.

While G2A called the original offer to developers a limited-time one, they’ve pledged in their blog post to work with any other developers to reimburse chargebacks from stolen keys, if the developers can prove to G2A that the keys were illegitimate.

Despite the amnesty payment, G2A’s blog doesn’t take responsibility for allowing these fraudulent transactions to take place on their platform, instead framing it a lesson to a few bad actors. “We wanted to send a clear message to the gaming community that fraud hurts all parties,” the post reads. “As we spell out in this blog, fraud directly hurts individuals who buy illegitimate keys, it hurts gaming developers and it ultimately hurts G2A because we are forced–as the transaction facilitator–to cover costs related to the sale. We wanted to amplify that message and capture people’s attention, so pledged to compensate developers ten times the value of any chargeback fees they incurred, despite the fact that we had nothing to with the illegal acquisition of these keys.”

However in a separate statement sent to Polygon, G2A took some responsibility for illegal transactions on its site. “We would be the first to admit that, in our formative years as a company, we took too long to recognize that a small number of individuals were abusing our Marketplace,” a spokesperson said. “However, the criticism we received was the wake-up call we needed, and over the last years we have been totally committed to tackling any incidents of fraud on our site.”

A racing game cockpit manufacturer with ties to PlayStation might have accidentally revealed the logo for a new Gran Turismo game. Furthermore, the social media post showing the logo suggests a 2020 release date.

The post in question, which was made across Twitter (below), Facebook, and Instagram, asks followers: “What racing game are you most looking forward to in 2020?” Many comments have jumped upon the GT 7 logo, as Gran Turismo 7 has not been officially announced or unveiled yet. The other games in the tweet–Dirt 5, Automobilista 2, and F1 2020–are all confirmed.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, this is not confirmation of Gran Turismo 7, per se. However, the manufacturer has a working relationship with Sony–the GT Track PlayStation Edition is an officially licensed PlayStation product. Searching across numerous fan mock-ups, we could not find a logo matching this one–although it’s possible that the social media team at Next Level Racing is being speculative, and has created this logo internally.

Polyphony Digital has previously confirmed that a new Gran Turismo is in the works, so Gran Turismo 7 seems likely. Whether it’s a PlayStation 5 launch game, or a late-era PS4 release (much as Gran Turismo 6 was a late PlayStation 3 game), the idea of a new Gran Turismo releasing in 2020 is not far-fetched.

It’s also possible that this was not an accident at all, of course, but any further analysis of what this could mean would only be speculation. At the time of writing, the posts–made seven hours ago–are still up.

Sony is expected to reveal the PlayStation 5 launch line-up soon.

DICE is giving away free currency in Battlefield V to make up for recent issues. The studio announced on Twitter that everyone is getting an allotment of 200 Battlefield Currency (BFC) as a thank you to fans for their patience for recent issues regarding the game’s weekly mission.

The BFC is automatically applied to your account, so you don’t need to do anything at all to claim it. The problem was related to not being able to unlock the latest weekly reward, and the following week’s challenge should go forward without issue.

Battlefield V’s latest big update was version 6.6, which rebalanced many of the game’s vehicles and made further changes to weaponry. The update also tweaks the layout of several of the game’s maps, particularly Wake Island, and adds body dressings for vehicles, as well as fixing many small bugs and issues. You can read the full 6.6 patch notes here.

The next major update for Battlefield V is coming in June, and it’s expected to be the game’s final significant patch. The studio is now transitioning to work on a new Battlefield game set for release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in 2021.

Embracer Group, the parent company that owns the rights to franchises such as Dead Island, Saints Row, Darksiders, and Timesplitters, has announced their financial records for the 2019-2020 financial year, alongside a few tidbits of information about what to expect in the future. The studios working under the company have 118 titles in development, 69 of which have not been announced yet–and some of the most anticipated titles will not release until after March 2021.

“Looking into the next financial year ending March 31 2022, we expect continued organic growth driven by further increase in the value of completed games including the first AAA games releases since Metro Exodus,” the report reads. “From this year on we expect to have AAA releases every year.”

This likely means that the new Saints Row in development will not launch until after this date. Dead Island 2 is also unlikely, despite having been in development (across multiple studios) since at least 2014–as a new open-world title, it’s likely to be considered AAA. The zombie sequel is currently in the works at Dambuster Studios (Homefront: The Revolution).

This also suggests that several of the titles the company plans on releasing this year are not internally considered AAA, including Biomutant, WWE 2K Battlegrounds (which is one of 93 games currently in development under Take-Two), and the Destroy All Humans remake. Embracer Group also owns Koch Media and THQ Nordic–each of which has its own subsidiaries–as well as Saber Interactive as of February 2020.

Saints Row: The Third Remastered, meanwhile, will arrive on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on May 22.

System Shock 3, which was announced back in 2015, but has faced a rocky road since then, and for a while the game’s future was unclear. While Otherside Entertainment has been working on the game for some time, and brought on System Shock lead designer Warren Spector to help craft the sequel, reports of layoffs within the studio painted a worrying picture. Now, however, it’s clear that System Shock 3 will be moving forward, but with a new studio involved.

On Twitter, OtherSide Entertainment has announced that Tencent–the Chinese holding company with several major investments in multiple game developers and publishers–is coming on board to assist. Tencent will “be taking the System Shock franchise forward”, according to the developer–although what this means, exactly, is unclear. A follow-up tweet suggests that the company will be assisting the development team, which has struggled with the game’s scale.

Furthermore, Nightdive Studios CEO Stephen Kick has taken to Twitter to affirm that Nightdive still owns the System Shock IP–meaning that any reports that Tencent is its new owner are false. Nightdive was previously working on a remaster of the original System Shock, but the status of that game is currently unclear. An enhanced edition of System Shock 2 is also in the works at the studio.

Ultimately, the main takeaway here is that forces are in motion to assure that System Shock 3 still happens. In 2017, it was announced that the game might also come to PS4 and Xbox One; it’s not clear which systems it is in development for now.

Hopefully more concrete news on the state of System Shock 3 will emerge soon.

The Last of Us: Part II will feature level designs that are even more open than in the first game, and due to this, there could be “entire story moments” and scripted sequences you might miss. Co-game director Anthony Newman revealed this in the newest Inside the Gameplay video for The Last of Us: Part II.

“In this game we’ve gone so far in making the level design open that there are actually entire story moments, entire combat encounters, full scripted sequences that you may completely miss,” Newman said. “And there are things that we feel like, even though a portion of our player base may never see these things, the fact that when you do encounter them, you feel like you discovered them, it lends them this charm and this magic, ‘I think is unique to games that this happened to me, because of what I did and the place I explored to.'”

Elsewhere in the video, writer/director Neil Druckmann said The Last of Us: Part II aims to heighten the feeling of being a survivor. You play as Ellie in the sequel, and she is smaller and more nimble than Joel, the protagonist of the first game. Ellie may not always be the strongest person in the room, but she is capable of fighting bigger, stronger enemies thanks to her unique skills and quickness.

The Last of Us: Part II introduces a series of new gameplay systems, including jumping and the ability to go prone. You can see these in the video, and hear directly from the game’s designers about them.

It’s also revealed in the video that there are not enough resources in the game to allow you to fully upgrade your character in a single playthrough. The developer is intentionally denying players resources to help increase the tension you feel related to the survival theme.

With just a month left before release, Sony also recently introduced an official Last of Us 2-branded console and controller, along with accessories like a headset and hard drive. It’s up for pre-order now. Some of the promotion is a little less dire than these trailers, like official Twitter emoji.

[Update: It appears online access is starting to resume. GameSpot was able to connect to Call of Duty’s servers again after a short wait.]

Original story follows:

Reports of a new Call of Duty: Black Ops game for 2020 are flying, but it appears speculating on social media is the only way you’ll get to enjoy Call of Duty online at the moment. Both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone are having server issues that are preventing people from playing.

Activision acknowledged issues on its official support Twitter on May 20, saying it’s investigating an issue but not providing an explanation or timetable for servers’ return. GameSpot attempted to connect to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s online servers as well as the Warzone mode within Modern Warfare and were given an error message. The campaign mode and local multiplayer aren’t affected by the outage.

The outage comes just as Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare received major content updates. This included a new “classic” battle royale mode for Warzone, as well as the map Hardhat’s addition in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The map was previously in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 back in 2011, and was a fan-favorite choice.

Call of Duty: Warzone appears to be changing in recent days, with previously-closed bunkers suddenly opening. It’s possible this could be part of a tease for the next Black Ops game, and it bears some resemblance to the mysterious changes Epic Games routinely throws into Fortnite to keep players on their toes.