Category: Games

A new lawsuit filed by five gamers in California federal court accuses Valve of abusing its power to keep PC game prices high.

As reported by THR, this lawsuit claims that Valve does not maintain its dominance over the PC market by offering better prices on Steam than other platforms, but does so by abusing its power to require developers to enter what is known as a ‘Most Favored Nations’ clause.

“Valve Corporation’s Steam platform is the dominant platform for game developers to distribute and sell PC games in the United States,” states the complaint being handled by attorneys at Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease. “But the Steam platform does not maintain its dominance through better pricing than by rival platforms. Instead, Valve abuses the Steam platform’s market power by requiring game developers to enter into a ‘Most Favored Nations’ provision contained in the Steam Distribution Agreement whereby the game developers agree that the price of a PC game on the Steam platform will be the same price the game developers sell their PC games on other platforms.”

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The lawsuit also alleges that, because Valve requires developers to enter this ‘Most Favored Nations’ clause, it “hinders innovation by creating an artificial barrier to entry for platforms” and keeps prices high on other digital storefronts like the Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store.

“The Steam MFN also hinders innovation by creating an artificial barrier to entry for platforms,” adds the complaint. “When a market, such as this one, is highly concentrated, a new entrant can benefit consumers by undercutting the incumbent’s prices. The ability to provide PC games to consumers at lower prices is one way a firm or new entrant could gain market share. If this market functioned properly—that is, if the Steam MFN did not exist and platforms were able to compete on price—platforms competing with Steam would be able to provide the same (or higher) margins to game developers while simultaneously providing lower prices to consumers.”

CD Projekt S.A., CD Projekt, Inc., Ubisoft Entertainment S.A., Ubisoft, Inc., Ubisoft L.A., Inc., kChamp Games, Inc., Rust, LLC, and Devolver Digital, Inc. are also included as defendants on the lawsuit, with the plaintiffs accusing these companies of agreeing with the Steam platform to the Steam MFN.

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This new class action lawsuit follows Valve, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Focus Home, Koch Media, and ZeniMax being fined $9.4 million by the European Commission over the practice of “geo-blocking.”

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

A full playthrough and thirty minutes of multiplayer have surfaced for the cancelled Xbox Live Arcade remaster of the N64 classic GoldenEye 007.

YouTuber Graslu00 shared the GoldenEye 007 XBLA (2007) – Longplay, which is running at 4K/60 FPS on the Xenia emulator, and it gives fans a glimpse of what Rare’s remaster would have looked like had rights issues not gotten in the way.

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This isn’t the first time we’ve seen footage of this cancelled project that appeared to be mostly finished, as a smaller look of gameplay surfaced in 2016 that showed upgraded visuals, the ability to switch back and forth between older and remastered graphics, and more.

A modern re-imagining/remake of GoldenEye 007 was released for the Wii in 2010 by Activision and, in our review, we said “What could have ended up a game that cruised on autopilot and simply relied on a name to sell it has turned out to be one of the best first-person shooters on Wii. GoldenEye has a fantastic single-player campaign that feels both fresh and familiar, and the multiplayer attention – something most GoldenEye Nintendo 64 fans hold near and dear to their hearts – is incredible and something rarely seen on the Nintendo console.”

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On the YouTube video, Graslu00 notes that they were told that this version will possibly be released in some form to the public in 2021.

While we may not be getting a proper GoldenEye remaster anytime soon, Hitman developer IO Interactive is working on a new James Bond game that will “let players step in to the shoes of the world’s favorite Secret Agent to earn their 00 status in the very first Bond origin story.”

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

The Medium, a game that only released a few days ago and also launched on Xbox Game Pass, has already managed to cover its production and marketing costs. Future sales will be profit for Polish developer Bloober Team, which is no stranger to bizarre and terrifying horror experiences.

Shared in the Polish publication Money.pl, Bloober Team said the game’s sales have already eclipsed what it cost the studio to develop and promote the game, which is available on Xbox Series X|S and PC.

It’s also available on Xbox Game Pass for the platforms, but unlike many other Game Pass titles, it isn’t on Xbox One. This makes its profitability even more impressive, as the Xbox Series X|S has only a fraction of the install base as the older console. It’s unclear how Game Pass factored into the sales figures or if it managed to turn a profit even before factoring this in.

The Medium uses a unique gameplay hook, with a split-screen view that allows you to see into more than one realm at once, which is useful for solving puzzles and likely for having your pants scared off. Bloober has honed its craft over the last several years with horror games like Blair Witch and Layers of Fear 2, but this is arguably its highest-profile game to date.

Our own Jordan Ramée was very impressed by The Medium, awarding the game a 9/10 in GameSpot’s The Medium review. In the review, he praised how its narrative comes together as well as the challenging puzzles and excellent sound design.

Among Us was one of the biggest gaming surprises of 2020 (despite releasing two years earlier) and developer Innersloth even scrapped plans for a sequel to continue working in the original game. This includes updating it with new content, and a brand-new map is in the works. But just when will the new Among Us map release?

The main map that players know in Among Us is The Skeld, a spaceship filled with tasks to complete and plenty of ways to kill your crewmates. There are two other paid maps for the game, but the free Skeld map is what most players have experienced. They’ll soon be able to play the game’s fourth map–The Airship–which features more than a dozen rooms, new tasks, ladders, and the chance to choose the room you start in.

When is The Airship map releasing?

Innersloth has not given a firm date or even a month for The Airship to release. However, the studio did say it will arrive in early 2021, which means it could potentially be here very soon. It was confirmed during The Game Awards in December 2020.

Tasks include disposing of trash and cleaning gems, but you’ll still have to watch out for the imposter as they sneak around the map and try to kill you when you’re alone.

The Airship will be a free addition to Among Us, with the game supporting cross-play across PC and mobile, and you also get cross-play on the Nintendo Switch version released just last year. This makes it a perfect game to play with your friends while you continue socially distancing, and it’s one that’s made even better if you use a voice program like Discord to taunt each other.

GoldenEye 007 is one of the best first-person shooters and licensed video games of all time, but because of a complex licensing situation that required several partners–including Nintendo–to come together, we never saw a remaster of the original game. Instead, we got a remake for the Wii several years later, but footage of a canceled Xbox 360 remaster of the 1997 version has appeared online.

Posted by the YouTube channel Graslu00 and spotted by VGC, the GoldenEye 007 remaster footage shows off the entire campaign as well as some multiplayer content. It looks like the game was essentially complete before the plug was pulled, and Xbox chief Phil Spencer said Xbox has “always given up” on trying to get the rights-holders working together to publish the remaster. Rare developed the game, and the studio is now a subsidiary of Microsoft. But Nintendo published the game, and the remake was later published by Activision.

What we see in the video is likely what fans wanted more than Activision’s remake. The remake still had some of the same themes and characters from the first version, but it changed enough to feel like a different game.

The levels in the remaster, by contrast, are exactly as you remember them, but with an added coat of paint to cover up some of the ugliness that is common on so many Nintendo 64 games. The tremendously cheesy sound effects remain the same, adding to the nostalgia. In the introduction of the video, you can also see just how big the upgrades were, with characters switching from their blocky original versions to the more-detailed models.

Very few James Bond games have come close to matching the quality of GoldenEye. We’ll see if the franchise’s newest developer IO Interactive can do so with its upcoming origin story game. The studio just released Hitman 3 to rave reviews, and the new partnership seems like a match made in heaven.