Archived News:
Insolvent developer Realtime Worlds has sold in-development MMOG Project: MyWorld to an "anonymous American company," reports Develop. The studio suffered some layoffs related to its crash, but staff was later rehired for Project: MyWorld when it became clear there was interested in buying the IP. Thanks Big Download.
Confirming a rumor on Shacknews, a post on the Elemental Forums by Stardock's Brad Wardell says that the launch failure of Elemental: War of Magic has resulted in layoffs at Stardock, shedding some light on his comment that "the issue here is far far worse than many of you think it is." Word is: It is true.
Elemental's revenue was anticipated to provide the revenue both for our main games team's next project as well as a second team. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen so we've had to start laying people off.
No one is being fired. None of these people did anything wrong. Stardock is a small company and each person here is truly amongst the best and brightest. So you can imagine how much it sucks for all of us to lay off anyone. We haven't had to lay anyone off since our migration from the OS/2 market in 1998. It would be great if we can bring as many of these people back over time if the studio can afford it.
No one involved on the core components of Elemental is affected.
Elemental's rocky launch can be summed up (IMO) as follows: Our QA process was insufficient to handle a brand new platform (Elemental = Kumquat 1.0 versus say Galactic Civilizations II was using Pear which was the same engine, modified, from 1997's Entrepreneur) + my own catastrophic poor judgment in not objectively evaluating the core game play components.
Dins Curse patches page now offers new beta patches for Din's Curse to update Soldak Entertainment's action/RPG to version 1.007. There's a patch for the PC edition and a patch for the Mac edition, and as usual, the beta carries the following warning: "A beta patch means it has been tested, but not enough to be an official patch. So use at your own risk." This page outlines all the changes.
DreamCatcher Games and JoWooD Entertainment say we can expect both PC and Xbox 360 playable demos for ArcaniA: Gothic 4 on September 24. Word is: "The demo comprises the first two hours of the game and shows the beginning tutorial level on Feshyr Island featuring selected quests. Fight off demons, hone your skills and prepare for a bloody battle fueled by vengeance. Get your first taste of ArcaniA: Gothic 4." The game is also now available for preorder, with JoWooD eShop, GamersGate, and Impulse offering 15% discounts, and on Steam where it is bundled with a free copy of Gothic 3.
A new article on the Star Wars: The Old Republic Website offers the space combat trailer released at Gamescom. LucasArts and BioWare now offering some details on how space combat will work in the upcoming MMORPG, discussing mission objectives and exploration.
Chris Taylor's Kings and Castles Video Blog Episode # 30 discusses plans to release the mod tools for Gas Powered Games' upcoming real-time strategy game and other tidbits about the project. Chris also visits an over-caffeinated employee, as well as one with excellent taste in Scotch, spies on some folks, shows off his art skill, and more. No cracked-out mailbag or teleporting this week. Also, happy 44th birthday Chris!
A new TERA trailer is called an extended gameplay trailer, though it looks like the footage is mostly, if not entirely, cinematics. The clip concludes with the depiction of one of the larger boss monsters we've ever seen. Here's the embedded version. Continue here to read the full story.
We have some low-key grilling plans for today, since the threatened fallout from Hurricane Earl fizzled out and it's quite pleasant out there. We're just doing some wings and veggies with hamburgers, as my recent burger efforts have been very successful, and my last batch of wings was the best yet, so I am trying to lock-in my technique on each.
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