Riot’s new team-based shooter Valorant is nearing the end of its beta, with only a few days of downtime before its full release. A new blog post from Riot has discussed this transition, and what differences beta players will find upon release–most notably with its Vanguard anti-cheat system.
When developing its new online FPS, Riot chose to take a hard stance on cheaters and griefers, with the cornerstone of this decision being the launch of its own proprietary anti-cheat software. When the closed beta of Valorant released with this software, Vanguard, it immediately caused concern among players for being far too aggressive in blocking drivers–even when the game wasn’t active.
Thanks to the closed beta, Vanguard’s powers have been scaled back, but one big change is in the works when it moves to full release. For the duration of the beta, while Vanguard was used to identify cheaters, those reports were still manually reviewed and ban decisions made by a human team (with this process still resulting in thousands of bans).
With the full release, and the much larger player base it will bring, Vanguard will now be handed the ability to ban without human oversight. “Come launch, we will be more aggressive, widespread, and automated in our ability to detect and ban cheaters,” the blog post reads.
News of foul play has hit the Formula E esports racing scene. Daniel Abt, racing under ABT Schaeffler Audi, was disqualified after cheating allegations against him were substantiated over the weekend.
Suspicions were raised about whether or not Abt was actually the driver behind the wheel for Saturday’s Formula E Race at Home Challenge, with his competition being the first to raise the red flags. Fox Sports reported that two other racers, Jean-Eric Vergne and Stoffel Vandoorn, echoed each other’s concerns about Abt when his performance in the Challenge appeared markedly different from previous results.
The organizers of the Formula E Race at Home Challenge investigated the allegations from Abt’s competitors and after cross-referencing IP addresses, were able to confirm that the esports racing driver had not been driving at the time in question.
Formula E’s official ruling on the matter has resulted in the withdrawal of Abt’s sixth-place position in the Formula E Challenge Grid competition. As Round 5 of the Race At Home Challenge was being held in support of UNICEF as per the tweet below, Abt has also been hit with a compulsory €10,000 donation.
The esports racing driver owned up to the cheating and responded by releasing a statement reported by The Race as follows:
“I would like to apologize to Formula E, all of the fans, my team and my fellow drivers for having called in outside help during the race on Saturday.
“I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have. I’m especially sorry about this because I know how much work has gone into this project on the part of the Formula E organization. I am aware that my offence has a bitter aftertaste, but it was never meant with any bad intention.”
The driver assisting Abt during this debacle was Lorenz Hoerzing, another professional racing sim driver, and Hoerzing has since been banned from competing in future Formula E Challenge rounds as a consequence of what happened this past weekend. ABT Schaeffler Audi has not commented independently on Abt being disqualified after cheating.
Formula E fans who want to contribute to UNICEF’s appeal to raise money for children affected by the coronavirus can do so using this Tiltify link here. With £50,610 raised so far and counting, hopefully the next round of the Race at Home challenge will be just as fruitful when it goes ahead this week without Abt’s participation.
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Cloudpunk, the neon-heavy cyberpunk taxi game from Ion Lands, is getting a first-person mode. The game, which is available now for PC and will come to Switch, PS4, and Xbox One in the future, will allow players to explore and collect fares from a new perspective soon.
This new camera option was announced and previewed on Twitter by Marko Dieckmann, studio head at Ion Lands. You can see the new first-person camera in action below.
In a follow-up tweet, Dieckmann stated that players will be able to switch between first-and-third perspective as they play, depending on their preferences. You’ll also be able to unlock the camera after this update.
The first-person camera is currently in beta, but will be added to the main game soon.
Cloudpunk scored a 7/10 in GameSpot’s review. “Cloudpunk is a game with a single core strength so powerful it alone is sufficient to make it an easy game to recommend,” reviewer David Wildgoose wrote. “Thanks to the rare beauty and rich atmosphere of its voxel-driven cityscape, Cloudpunk is a constant joy to explore.”
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Call of Duty: Mobile has a battle royale mode, but it’s not quite the same as Call of Duty: Warzone. In particular, Call of Duty: Mobile doesn’t feature Warzone’s most unique and exciting features, the Gulag. It seems that’s going to change very soon. Or it could be something else entirely.
The official Call of Duty: Mobile Twitter account posted a teaser video for what is very clearly the Gulag. The tweet says it’s “coming soon.”
This alert was posted not long after the Call of Duty: Mobile test servers were updated with references to the Gulag. Additionally, entire gameplay videos have been posted on YouTube that appear to show that Gulag will be a new map in Call of Duty: Mobile.
In Warzone, players who die are sent to the Gulag where they face off in 1v1 matches for a chance to re-deploy. It remains to be seen, however, if this feature will also come to Call of Duty: Mobile or if the Gulag is only being added as a new multiplayer map.
Suda51’s games have long been synonymous with Nintendo consoles, with each game in the No More Heroes franchise debuting first on Nintendo (including the upcoming No More Heroes III), and cult classic Killer7 originally debuting on the GameCube. As of right now, not many of games developed by his company, Grasshopper Manufacture, are available on Switch, and the eccentric designer says he would like to see that change–although it’s not all up to him.
In a Q&A session during Momocon–as reported by VG247–Suda51 (whose legal name is Goichi Suda) talked about the possibility of bringing his older games to Switch, saying that it is largely up to the publishers. Capcom is in charge of Killer7, which received an updated PC port in 2018. Killer is Dead has split rights between Capcom and Kadokawa Games, which makes things more complicated.
Suda51 singled out another game as a more likely candidate–The Silver Case, which came to PS4 and PC in 2016 (and its sequel, The 25th Ward: The Silver Case, followed in 2018). According to Suda51, there has “been discussions” about bringing this game to Switch.
He also alludes to a potential remake of the 2001 PS2 game Rain, Flower, Sun, and Rain, although specific platforms were not discussed.
The new podcast series featuring former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has announced its next guest, and it’s none other than current Xbox boss Phil Spencer.
Spencer will joins Fils-Aime and journalist Harold Goldberg on the “Talking Games with Reggie & Harold” podcast. In a news release, the podcast’s producers said Spencer will chat with Fils-Aime and Goldberg about leadership, the pandemic, the Xbox Series X launch, and Spencer’s “early days” at Microsoft.
Spencer started as an intern at Microsoft all the way back in 1988, and he’s been with the company ever since. He’s held various positions at the company, most recently getting promoted to head of Xbox where he oversees the entire Xbox division and reports to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Spencer is also known for being outspoken and frank, so he certainly seems like a great podcast guest.
The new Talking Games podcast will premiere on May 26 at 12 PM ET. According to Goldberg, Spencer will be sharing some kind of “surprise” for fans during the episode. On the subject of the pandemic, Spencer has said the COVID-19 crisis could lead to game delays. However, the Xbox Series X and its flagship launch title Halo Infinite remain on schedule.
The Talking Games series is a seven-part podcast show featuring Fils-Aime and Goldberg, in addition to special guests.
The podcast was launched to help raise money for the New York Video Game Critics Circle, a non-profit charity that provides scholarships and other help to students in New York. Fils-Aime and Goldberg will call on their audience to donate to a GoFundMe campaign that will give games and consoles to young people in homeless shelters.
People who donate will receive bonuses, including access to an auction where they can bid on rare items such as a copy of Nintendo Power signed by Shigeru Miyamoto.
“Our vision is to create a fun, entertaining, informative podcast with its goal to benefit the nonprofit,” Fils-Aime told The Washington Post. “I was born in the Bronx … where I have spent time mentoring students literally within miles of where I spent the first eight years of my life. I know how challenging it is, but with the right opportunities and the right experiences, we’re looking to create some future leaders.”
Starting June 1, GameSpot will be hosting Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts with the help of our friends from around the gaming world.
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Derek Kolstad, best known as the writer of the John Wick film series and the creator of the character and world he occupies, is preparing to pitch TV adaptations of two video games. In an interview with Comicbook.com, Kolstad has revealed that he’s working on pitches for shows based on My Friend Pedro and Bendy and the Ink Machine.
Kolstad says that he named these two projects because, “literally, I have these Post-It notes on my computer of, ‘This is what I’m working on today.'” He’s also attached to numerous other film projects, including two remakes with David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, the co-directors of the original John Wick–A Company Man with Leitch, and A Map From Nowhere with Stahelski.
My Friend Pedro is a 2019 side-scrolling action game celebrated for its stunt-heavy gameplay; it received a 7/10 in GameSpot’s review. Bendy and the Ink Machine is a 2017 first-person horror puzzle game that sports a vintage cartoon aesthetic. Both are smaller titles with a lot of style, and both are pretty strange–which makes them interesting choices for adaptation.
If these projects go ahead, they will not be Kolstad’s first video game adaptation projects. The writer has been attached to a Hitman adaptation for Hulu since 2017; while we have not heard anything about it in some time, the adaptation has not been cancelled. In May 2019, he was also announced as the screenwriter for a Just Cause film.
John Wick will also return to cinemas for a fourth chapter, although the film’s writer and director have not been announced. The film will release on May 27, 2022.
Starting June 1, GameSpot will be hosting Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts with the help of our friends from around the gaming world.
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Popular streamer Vikkstar set the record with three teammates from the FaZe Atlanta professional Call of Duty team: Cellium, aBeZy-, and priestahh. At the start of the video, Vikkstar acknowledges that the world record is actually higher, but he claims the other squad did so by creating new accounts that allowed them to matchmake with lower-skill enemies.
Vikkstar also confirmed that, for this new record, there were 136 players in the Warzone lobby–out of a possible 150. His team was able to get 138 kills because nearly half of players who are killed once are able to respawn through the Gulag system, while teammates can also buy players back. In total, there were 285 kills during the match, so his team got nearly half.
You can check out the full world record match in the video above. As you’ll see, the team spread out more than you might expect, and that’s because they were intentionally trying to set the record for most kills. You will also notice that they are extremely skilled, so you might be able to borrow some tips and strategies.
Starting June 1, GameSpot will be hosting Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts with the help of our friends from around the gaming world.
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Overwatch’s new Workshop mode is giving fans plenty of wiggle room to mod the game. Typically, that just means altering game or physics rules, like making the ground cause damage – a “the floor is lava” mode, if you will. One fan by the username of Therister has taken things a little far, though, giving the French assassin Widowmaker actual functioning robot spider legs that can vault her into the air and stick to walls.
Check out this monstrous creation in the video below.
Therister’s creation basically replaces Widow’s normal bipedal legs with four elongated limbs, each with a sort of purple foot that can stick onto surfaces. Normally, Widow can only shoot a grappling hook to sort of leap into the air, which helps her reach high areas, but she’s still effectively rooted onto flat horizontal surfaces like most other characters.
Source: Therister.
Not so with these new robot spider legs. The video shows off Widow reaching previously unreachable locations on the map’s architecture, climbing onto the roofs of the buildings outside the attacking team’s spawn point and others, which even flight-based characters like Pharah or Echo would have difficulty reaching. Not only that, Widowmaker can use the spider legs to make some pretty distant leaps from wall to wall and stick to the surface, allowing her a sniping position that any Overwatch League pro would probably envy. It doesn’t seem to stop her from entering the King’s Row subway station either. Nowhere is safe.
