Archived News:
A
Steam Community Group Announcement has word that Bot Colony is
closing down on March 15th, about nine months after the adventure game went
into early access following a
failed Kickstarter (thanks
GameInformer). Developer North Side explains that poor sales are not even
sufficient to cover the modest $524.00/month cost of the game's backend servers,
much less fund its development, saying it has only earned a total of around
$10,000 after costing millions to develop. Word is: "I realize that some of you
paid money to buy a game that will soon be impossible to play - because it
requires online servers that cost money to keep running, while no money comes
in," and this is costing about 40 developers from North Side their jobs, and the
company's owner his home. Here's how they are winding things down: I have
advised Steam of the situation, and Bot Colony is no longer available to buy -
in order to minimize the fallout when it will stop. We will keep the servers
running until March 15, to give you enough time to enjoy the game that you
bought. I hope you'll consider this fair. I'm offering to publish another video
that tells the entire Bot Colony story - all the 12 episodes of Bot Colony, if
you really care to see it (let's say if at least 10 people ask for it ). If
anybody wants to buy Bot Colony knowing it will die March 15 - talk to Steam,
and maybe they will sell it to you. For those who want to know the story that
inspired Bot Colony and understand what robots could do in the near future, the
Bot Colony novel is available here
http://www.amazon.ca/Bot-Colony-Novel-Present-Future-ebook/dp/B00K7O6BSE
Anthony Burch took
to
Twitter to announce his departure from Gearbox Software, where he was the
lead writer on Borderlands 2 and also wrote for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel,
each noteworthy for their
clever scripts. He explains he's writing for a
new original series from RocketJump for Hulu: "Uh so I'm moving to LA to be
head writer on this show
http://www.rocketjump.com/?video=hulu-announces-new-original-series-rocketjump …
I'll miss Gearbox a LOT but uh yeah this could be really fun" He also
leaves
open the possibility he'll return, saying: "Also there's a not insignificant
chance I'll fall on my face and be back at Gearbox in six months sooo don't be
surprised if that happens,"
also
saying he's "still gonna do videogames stuff on the side." Thanks
GameInformer.com.
Making History: The Great War is now in full release
on Steam following a run
off-Broadway as an early access game. Here's word from
Steam News: Making
History - The Great War: Take control as leader of one of the Great Powers
during the era of the First World War and make the tough calls on how to manage
your nation’s financial, technological, political and military decisions.
Will you spread your influence over the world, bolster your nation’s resources,
or attempt to build a coalition of nations? See how your actions influence the
rise and fall of empires in one of the most detailed WWI grand strategy games
ever made.
This video shows off
gameplay in Evolve, Turtle Rock's upcoming shooter (thanks
CVG). Though most of what we've
heard so far focuses on the game's multiplayer play, this clip focuses on
single-player play. Word is: "You can experience everything Evolve has to offer
offline, playing single player. The first match in this video features a single
player as the monster against challenging AI hunters. The second features a
single player controlling the full team of hunters by hot swapping between
classes in battle." Continue here to read the full story.
This trailer offers
a first look at gameplay from STRAFE, showing a pre-alpha version of this
throwback first-person shooter to support the project's
Kickstarter.
Here's what the developers say about the clip: "Stephen and I finished our
commentary late last night... and you can hear it in our voices. We're really
excited to share this with you and hope that you see the potential of STRAFE®
regardless of how sedated we sound! We're psyched to show you this where we are
with STRAFE® even this early in development!" Thanks
Eurogamer. Continue here to read the full story.
- Devolver Digital Bundle on
GOG.com. Save up to 90%.
- Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) on
Steam. Save 40%.
QUAKE LIVE News
announces that QUAKE LIVE is experiencing outages due to a denial of
service attack against id Software's multiplayer first-person shooter that's
been ongoing since yesterday. This has been severe enough to knock the website
itself offline at times, but for now it is up, and explains: "Quake Live is
experiencing issues due to a DDoS attack, and may be down intermittently while
we seek to address the problem. We apologize for the inconvenience." Thanks
Mike.
SEGA of America is relocating from northern California to southern California,
reports CNBC (thanks
VG247), saying the company is in the process of downsizing that will result
in job cuts for about 300 employees, according to a
PDF
document. The CNBC story states that relocation packages are being offered
to a number of employees, and that "SEGA’s game release schedule will not be
affected by the move."
Eurogamer notes that SEGA is saying they will increase focus on PC and
mobile games going forward, and they also have a follow-up statement from the
company saying there will be "limited" redundancies at Sega of Europe.
A post on The Firstadopter has a
reworked version of a speculative article about what's going on at Blizzard
which was first posted to Yahoo Finance, according to
reddit (thanks Wallshadows),
offering rumors covering a range of topics attributed to an "Activision Blizzard insider." Word is that
Hearthstone numbers are "off the charts," and that a
more PvE expansion is due soon. They say the business model for Overwatch is
still in flux, and that this is more likely to arrive early next year than late
this year. The purported insider also says the company has "low expectations"
for Heroes of the Storm (apologies for calling this Heart of the Storm at first), and that the Diablo III team has been moved to an unannounced MOBA set in the
StarCraft universe. While it does not mean that all
the other speculation in the article is confirmed, it is interesting that the
last bit about the Diablo team is the only item addressed by Blizzard, who responded with a denial of that particular point, saying the
Diablo III team "is on continuing to support the game with patch content. We
generally don’t comment on rumors or speculation, but I do want to make sure
it’s clear that they’re not working on a secret project in the StarCraft
universe."
Steam News announces
that Life Is Strange is
now available, offering the first installment in DONTNOD's five-part
action/adventure. They explain: "Life Is Strange is a five part episodic game
that sets out to revolutionise story based choice and consequence games by
allowing the player to rewind time and affect the past, present and future."
Here's a launch trailer
with the setup for the game. Continue here to read the full story.
This video recaps
the presentation of Sid Meier's Starships at PAX South, where a Firaxis Games "Megapanel"
discussed the upcoming sci-fi strategy game (thanks
PCGamesN). About halfway into the almost 50
minute clip they offer some gameplay footage along with a mix of concept art and
cinematics. Word is: "Firaxis Games discusses the ties between Civilization:
Beyond Earth and Sid Meier's Starships. Near the end of the panel, creator Sid
Meier provides a live gameplay demo!" Continue here to read the full story.
The
SCS Software blog has a new feature taking us behind-the-scenes at the
developer that includes
this video and three others recapping a fan's visit to their studio. They
also offer another video
which includes footage from American Truck Simulator, taken from an alpha
version of the upcoming transport sim. This comes with the following warning:
"Don't forget that American Truck Simulator is still very much under development
and features and environments may change prior to the official release." Thanks
Rock, Paper, Shotgun via Cutter. Continue here to read the full story.
Accounting Today details the outcome of an investigation into a stock scheme
involving Left Behind Games showing a deliberate effort to artificially inflate
the value of the developer that specialized in games promoting Christian values,
leaving us to judge what degree of irony this represents. The district court for
the District of Hawaii entered a final judgment against Ronald Zaucha, holding
him liable for over $2.6 million in disgorgement, interest and penalties after
similarly finding the company's founder, Troy Lyndon, liable for over $3.6
million last August. Here's word on what happened: On Sept. 24, 2013, the
SEC had charged Lyndon and his friend Zaucha with scheming to falsely inflate
the company's revenue by nearly 1,300 percent in the one-year period ended March
31, 2011 through sham circular transactions.
The SEC alleged that Lyndon, who served as the company's CEO and CFO, caused LBG
to issue almost two billion shares of stock to Zaucha as purported compensation
for consulting services to the California-based company. In fact, Zaucha
provided few, if any, consulting services. The true purpose of the arrangement,
according to the SEC, was to enable Zaucha to sell millions of unregistered LBG
shares of stock into the market and then kick back a portion of his stock
proceeds to the company in order to prop up its revenue at a time when it was in
dire need of additional funds. The company's stock was suspended by the SEC when
the SEC filed its complaint against Lyndon and Zaucha, and the registration of
LBG's stock was revoked by the SEC on February 24, 2014.
- Moonman
by Ben Porter — Kickstarter. "A magic mollusk summons a moonman to
illuminate a dark world. A procedurally-generated adventure game for PC, Mac
and Linux." About halfway funded about halfway through the campaign.
We got another light dusting of snow today, but things are under control
already. The forecast for Sunday in this area is for 11°F with a 60% chance of
snow. Man do I wish the Super Bowl was here this year instead of last year. Does
that make me a bad person?
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