Month: November 2020

In the midst of another wave of DMCA takedown notices, Twitch recently advised streamers to delete their entire archives of clips or VOD if they couldn’t be sure it didn’t contain copyrighted material. Now, one streamer has shown how difficult that task can be, with increasingly unrealistic copyright claims.

Twitch has had ongoing issues with DMCA this year, with its most recent wave of takedowns seeing the streaming platform sending a one-size-fits-all warning to streamers who had hosted infringing content. Twitch has since returned to sending out regular copyright notices, though they still aren’t helpful for streamers who want a long-term solution.

The issue has been illustrated by streamer Jake’n’Bake, who received a copyright notice over a snippet of a Kanye song appearing in a video from an IRL stream from 2018. As he points out, he never played the song himself, but likely walked past a business or person playing it.

The fact that this song snippet had been picked up illustrates streamers’ problems with the current DMCA situation–even when they go to lengths to avoid copyrighted content, it often still crops up when its least expected.

To make things even more difficult, streamers have almost no option to legally play music if they want to. The process of licensing music isn’t accessible to the average streamer, and as Jake’n’Bake points outs, copyright holders aren’t interested in replying to or communicating with streamers who have, or want to, use their music.

Last week, Twitch Partner Herman Li was banned from the platform, with some alleging that it was due to copyright issues over him playing music from his own band, DragonForce. Neither Li nor Twitch ever officially confirmed why the ban occurred, however, and Li’s account has now been reinstated.

While Facebook has struck a deal with a number of major music companies to license their music for its streamers, so far Twitch hasn’t announced anything similar beyond Twitch Soundtrack, which provides music streamers can play in the background of live streams (but not saved videos). It’s also been facing criticism from the music industry, which is putting increased pressure on the streaming giant.

Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Quarantine aren’t the only Ubisoft games that have been delayed. The French publisher confirmed in its latest report that its new Avatar game based on the James Cameron film franchise has been pushed to a new date further in the future.

This new Avatar game, which is in development at The Division studio Massive Entertainment, will now release during Ubisoft’s financial year that begins in April 2022. The first Avatar movie sequel, Avatar 2, is scheduled for release in December 2022 after its own delay. It would make sense that the game will release around that time to capitalize on the hype, but no firm date has been announced yet.

The new delay for the Avatar game was made in response to the delay of the movie, Ubisoft management said on an earnings call.

Ubisoft’s first Avatar game came out in December 2009 alongside Cameron’s blockbuster that would go on to become the highest-grossing movie of all time until it was dethroned by Avengers: Endgame in 2019.

Almost nothing is known about Ubisoft’s new Avatar game, apart from the fact that it is set on Pandora and will come to PC and consoles. No date has been set and no gameplay has been shown. Given the timeline, it’s expected the game will release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

In addition to Massive Entertainment, the new Ubisoft studio Ubisoft Stockholm is contributing to this game. Ubisoft announced that it hired Battlefield veteran Patrick Bach to lead the team, which is on a hiring spree.

As for Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Siege, they are now scheduled to release in Ubisoft’s fiscal year 2021-2022, which means they will arrive between April 2021 and March 2022. During an earnings call, CFO Frédérick Duguet narrowed that timeline slightly, saying the company expects both to hit in the first half of the fiscal year.

One of Microsoft’s secret weapons for next-gen is Xbox Game Pass, the company’s subscription service that already has 15 million members. It could be a big deal in the future, as the subscription model shakes things up in terms of the business of how people consume games.

Todd Howard, a veteran Bethesda executive who recently joined Xbox with ZeniMax’s sale to Microsoft, has offered some thoughts on Game Pass–and he is optimistic about its ability to positively impact gaming.

He told GI.biz that Game Pass has the potential to help games succeed where they might not have otherwise.

“Game Pass and things like it allow titles to be successful where the economics of the business, and having to sell things at retail to sell X amount of copies… That works against some games. Just like in other avenues–let’s take television or movies. Certain types of comedies or big budget dramas went away,” Howard said. “TV went to the cheapest thing they could make for a long time, reality television, which I could equate to a free-to-play match-three game. What brings eyeballs? What’s cheap? Right, let’s get it out.”

When subscription services in the film/TV industries came onto the scene, there was a renewed investment from the companies in quality content, and Howard said the same could happen in gaming.

“Subscriptions came along and now you see the quality and investment in dramas or historical fiction series,” he said. “That’s where creators are able to go and create these things people want and it makes sense for everybody: the people paying the bills, the people creating it and the people consuming it. That’s what we see happening with games with things like Game Pass.”

As an example, Howard said the classic adventure game genre could see a resurgence in popularity through platforms like Game Pass. “Those are games that really don’t make a lot of economic sense at $60, or maybe even at $30 if someone’s going to play it for five or six hours, but in a system like that it makes complete sense,” Howard said. “It drives a lot of people saying ‘Hey, I got to experience that and I wouldn’t have any other way,’ and the creators got to make it without the burden of ‘Will this be successful? Will we get to make another one?'”

Overall, Howard said he feels “extremely optimistic” about the potential for Game Pass. “Not just to people playing it but to creators being unbridled in terms of what they can create,” he said.

Howard had more to say about Game Pass and other subjects, so be sure to read the full interview at GI.biz.

Microsoft acquired ZeniMax as part of a $7.5 billion buyout. Many questions remain, like if The Elder Scrolls 6 will be exclusive to Xbox, and we may not get answers until the deal actually closes. Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently said he can’t say much about the future because that would be breaking the law.

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Halloween fell on a weekend in 2020, and in a normal year that would probably lead to a huge box office take for whichever horror film released. However, with Halloween Kills delayed and the COVID-19 pandemic meaning that cinemas are still not entirely safe, just one new horror film went wide over the weekend, and while it topped the US box office, it didn’t earn much.

Come Play, aka The Babadook But With An iPad, was the weekend’s top movie. Deadline reports that the movie has earned an estimated $3.15 million over the weekend from 2183 screens, overtaking last week’s #1, Honest Thief. That movie, which stars Liam Neeson, dropped 43% for a $1.35 million weekend.

Come Play stars Gillian Jacobs (Community), John Gallagher Jr. (Westworld), and Azhy Robertson (Marriage Story). Reviews have been mixed, but leaning positive, with a 59 rating on Metacritic.

While $3.15 million isn’t a huge take, the film’s budget was just $9 million, so no one is losing too much money here. There’s no real precedent to compare this to; the closest comparison is the most recent horror film to open wide in the US, The New Mutants, which opened to $7 million in August (and had X-Men brand recognition).

This is also, notably, the first weekend since release that Tenet has dropped below $1 million across a weekend at the domestic box office. It earned $885k from October 30-November 1. This is Tenet’s 9th week in cinemas, and it has earned $53.8 million in the US and $293.3 million in the rest of the world, for a total of $347.1 million.

Also opening in limited release over the weekend was horror movie Spell, which earned $210k from 369 screens.

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A new Vampire: The Masquerade title has been announced, and it’s something a bit different from the others titles. The game, a battle royale set within the universe of the RPG series, has been unveiled by developer Sharkmob on the company’s project page.

The currently unnamed game has a teaser trailer and a brief description on Sharkmob’s website. It promises a gameplay scenario “where vampire sects are at war across the streets and rooftops of Prague,” and that players will be able to either go solo or team up with others. There will also be a hostile “Entity”, which is going after all vampires on the map.

You’ll have access to supernatural powers and weapons, and can tap into blood reserves to make yourself stronger as you hunt down your foes from other factions.

You can watch the teaser trailer below. It does not contain gameplay footage, however.

As some comments on the video point out, open street warfare goes somewhat against the concept of the “Masquerade” of the game’s title, which is meant to keep vampire affairs secret–but perhaps the game will deal with this in some way.

The game is currently tracking for a late 2021 release. Platforms have not been confirmed.

There are two Vampire: The Masquerade RPGs, Bloodlines 2 and Swansong, due out in 2021. Two visual novels, Coteries of New York and Shadows of New York, were released in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Bloodlines 2 was meant to release in 2020, but along with a delay, it has lost many key creative figures involved with the project.

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