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Archived News:
Wizards of the Coast reveal plans for Sword Coast Legends, a new role-playing
game using their Dungeons & Dragons setting coming to PCs this year.
A
teaser trailer offers
a first look, and the game's website describes how this will mimic the tabletop
RPG experience with dungeon master support and more: Set in the lush and
vibrant world of the Forgotten Realms, Sword Coast Legends offers an all-new way
to enjoy the time-tested magic of playing Dungeons & Dragons as a shared
storytelling experience. With a deep narrative developed by a team of long-time
industry veterans and a partnership with Wizards of the Coast, the single player
campaign of Sword Coast Legends brings the world of Faerûn home like never
before.
Sword Coast Legends also brings the roleplaying dynamic between players and
Dungeon Masters to life with DM Mode, a first-of-its-kind real-time experience
in which Dungeon Masters guide players through unique customizable adventures.
In DM Mode, the Dungeon Master engages players and empowers them to have fun in
a way that suits the party best while creating a tailored, non-adversarial 4
with 1 experience that any RPG or pen-and-paper fan will enjoy.
- Single player campaign created by members of the
leadership team that brought you Dragon Age™: Origins
- Choose from five playable races and six unique
character classes to build your own stalwart adventurer
- A return to form, Sword Coast Legends is the
compelling and complex RPG you've been waiting for and features pause time,
party-based tactical combat and involving storylines
- Dungeon Master Mode: Create your own epic
adventure to share with your friends, or enhance their experience in real
time as they traverse your dungeon
- Set in the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms
universe based on the fifth edition ruleset and populated with Dungeons &
Dragons lore and legend
Continue here to read the full story.
Ubisoft announces ( Adobe Acrobat format) third quarter 2014-15 sales, saying they
achieved record sales of €809.7 million. This exceeds their projections, and
they've increased their forecast for the year accordingly. Here are the
highlights: The third-quarter sales figure was higher than the target of
approximately €730 million
announced when Ubisoft released its first-half 2014-15 results. This performance
reflects:
- A sharp increase in market share to 12.8% for 2014
(from 9.6% in 2013).
- A very good performance delivered by the two
Assassin’s Creed® opuses, Far Cry® 4 and The Crew®, with respective sales of
10 million, 7 million and 2 million units (sellin):
- Far Cry 4 was voted “Best Shooter” at "The
Games Awards 2014".
- Assassin’s Creed Unity won the prize for best
“Character Animation in a Video Game” at the Annie Awards.
- To date, The Crew has recorded the best sales
for the racing games released in late 2014.
- A solid showing from Just Dance® with 4 million
units sold (sell-in).
- The continued success of Watch Dogs®, with 10
million units sold (sell-in) since its release. Watch Dogs is the biggest
launch ever of a new IP in the EMEA region and the second largest launch in
the United States.
- A 157.0% surge in digital segment revenues to
€138.0 million in the third quarter. For the first nine months of 2014-15,
revenues generated by the digital segment came to €274.1 million, up 120.3%
year on year, and representing 21.2% of Ubisoft’s total sales compared with
15.3% in the same period of 2013-14.
- A robust 25.9% increase in back-catalog sales to
€67.1 million in the third quarter. For the first nine months of the fiscal
year, back-catalog sales rose 6.1% to €181.9 million.
GOG.com announces the addition of a bunch of games from Warner Bros.
Interactive Entertainment, including
Mortal Kombat 1+2+3: Warner
Bros. Interactive Entertainment comes to GOG.com.
We're on a roll! We're happy to announce that Warner Bros. Interactive
Entertainment joins the GOG.com catalog to make the world of DRM-free gaming
that much better today. We're starting off with six widely requested titles:
Let's start big:
Mortal Kombat 1+2+3 just
got the GOG.com treatment. If you were having a hard time getting these
notorious bits of gaming history to run on your computer, boy do we have a
surprise for you!
We're also launching these five heavily requested titles with big, weeklong
discounts:
LEGO Batman: The
Videogame -50%
LEGO Harry Potter:
Years 1 - 4 -60%
LEGO Harry Potter:
Years 5 - 7 -60%
F.E.A.R. Platinum -50%
Bastion -60%
It's yet another great start to yet another great publisher debut on GOG.com,
let's get our fill!
Steam News announces
early access is now underway for
Offworld Trading Company,
the real-time strategy game from Mohawk Games, the developer formed by
Civilization IV designer Soren Johnson. Here's
a trailer from a
couple of weeks ago and here's the deal: The Early Access version of
Offworld Trading Company allows players to compete head to head or in
free-for-all matches over the Internet, explore the dynamic single-player
campaign that responds to your choices and the outcomes of the scenarios, and
skirmish against the advanced AI that is already more than capable of wiping the
floor with unsuspecting players.
Offworld Trading Company is a new direction for real-time strategy, where money
is both your deadliest weapon and toughest defense. After the Earth is tapped
out and the asteroids claimed by faceless megacorporations, the stark Martian
surface is the final frontier on which dreamers and entrepreneurs can make
something of themselves by staking their claim to the red planet’s abundant
resources and building an economic engine capable of out-producing the
competition.
The real-time, player-driven market is the foundation of the game, allowing
players to buy and sell resources, materials, and even the food and water their
colonists need to survive. Only by buying low and selling high – and perhaps
engaging in a little more overt market manipulation with hacker arrays,
black-market pirate raids, and more – can players build up enough capital to
gain access to the incredibly lucrative offworld markets that bring in the cash
they need to buy out their rivals and claim the Martian economy for
themselves.
Continue here to read the full story.
Kalypso Media announces the release of the Gone Green DLC for Tropico 5, which
adds renewable energy to the game's resources. Here's the deal: It’s an endless struggle trying to please the people of Tropico – and this
time El Presidente needs to go green in order to get out of trouble. Of course,
this is all to protect the funds of his Swiss bank account; which are obtained
through the simple method of exporting ludicrously large amounts of crude oil to
competing superpowers. In ‘Gone Green’, the new DLC for Tropico 5, help El Prez
promote a better image of the island by building 100% eco-friendly windfarms as
a cheap and renewable source of energy and turn Tropico into a positive showcase
of modern sustainability. ‘Gone Green’ is out today to download for PC, Mac &
SteamOS via Steam and adds a brand new green-themed scenario as well as a new
building, avatar accessory, sandbox map and music track. So don your hippie
haircut and help El Presidente do his bit to appease the eco-crowd by utilizing
the new windfarm building. Create a clean energy powered haven on the new
sandbox island of Isabella and protect that all important retirement fund with
the ‘Gone Green’ DLC.
The ‘Gone Green’ DLC for Tropico 5 is out today for PC, Mac & SteamOS via
Steam for £2.49/€2.99/$3.99. For non-Steam users, the PC version of the DLC is
available via http://launcher.kalypsomedia.com/.
Steam now offers
Harold, an arcade racing game from Moon Spider Studio for Windows PCs.
Here's the pitch: "Harold is about a not-quite-infallible runner competing in a
celestial marathon of absurdly complex obstacle courses. As the guardian angel
unfortunately assigned to watch over Harold, players must use their heavenly
powers to manipulate the world’s many hazardous obstacles, delay the other
racers and catapult this underdog (sometimes literally) to victory. The game
features three special game modes and 12 unique stages, each cleverly designed
to offer multiple paths to high-score glory."
- Humble Weekly Bundle: For Lovers (of games) on
Humble Bundle.
- Lichdom: Battlemage on
Steam. Save 66%.
- The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Trilogy Bundle on
Bundle Stars.
Link of the Day:
Survey says! Thanks Chris.
SEGA announces a second annual Make War
Not Love promotion is now underway as an unconventional way to celebrate
Valentine's Day. This will pit fans of Company of Heroes 2 against fans
of Total War: ROME II, with the winning game to receive a free content
update. In support of this, both games are playable for free
on Steam for the
duration of the event, and the strategy sequels are each on sale for 75% off as
well. Company of Heroes 2 won last
year's competition, and here's word on the rematch: SEGA® of America,
Inc. and SEGA® Europe, Ltd present the rematch of the heavyweight strategy
gaming contest they said could never happen, with Total War™: ROME II and
Company of Heroes 2™ communities going head to head in the second annual ‘Make
War Not Love’ competition. This Valentine’s Day weekend, the two communities
will compete in consecutive three hour rounds. Every in-game victory will count
towards that side’s tally for the round and the community that wins the most
rounds will earn some free DLC for players of the respective game.
Battle commences at 18:00GMT/10:00PST today and blows will be traded until
18:00GMT/10:00PST on February 15. During this time, both games will be available
to play for free via Steam! Get involved in the pre-match trash talking on
Twitter by following @totalwar and @companyheroes using the hashtag - “#mwnl”.
If Company of Heroes 2 wins, an assortment of premium skins and commanders worth
around $20 will become available to download for free from 18:00GMT/10:00PST on
February 16 until 18:00GMT/10:00PST on February 18.
If Total War: ROME II lands the knockout blow, the Black Sea Colonies Culture
Pack will be made available for free from 18:00GMT/10:00PST on February 15 until
18:00GMT/10:00PST on February 17. The previously unannounced Longbeards Culture
Pack for Total War: ATTILA will also be free for a day when it launches in late
February.
To add some extra spice to proceedings, the winning team in each round will see
their community manager take a shot on the ‘Make War Not Love’ Shooting Range,
choosing from a selection of random historical weaponry and taking aim at
offensive Valentine’s trinkets. Make sure you catch all the carnage in merciless
slo-mo! There will even be exclusive Steam achievements to pick up throughout
the promotion! Look out for “Company of Zeroes, more like…” and “Snore, snore,
Total Bore!” along with several more.
The
Electronic Frontier Foundation announces they are proposing
an exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to allow circumventing
game Digital Rights Management to allow continued access to "abandoned" games
(thanks
Slashdot via Ant). Here's part of the discussion of this: Section
1201 also has chilling effects on people who want to preserve or archive games,
both those who are affiliated with formal institutions and those who are just
enthusiasts. As digital archiving expert Henry Lowood explains, “Repositories
and researchers [are forced] into the uncomfortable situation of considering
unauthorized circumvention of copyright law in order to preserve or provide
access to game and virtual world environments, data, and software.” Archiving
and preserving playable copies is essential to future researchers, especially
ones who wish to study the multiplayer components and the design of modern
games. In the words of game community sociologist T.L. Taylor, “playing together
is not a trivial side aspect to digital gaming and this means that scholars need
to be able to emulate conditions of original use as much as possible.”
The exemption that we proposed covers games where single-player or multiplayer
play is no longer possible, either because the game’s developers have shut down
servers or abandoned them. (It does not cover massively multiplayer online games
with persistent worlds.) Experts from the Internet Archive, Stanford University,
MIT, and the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment filed statements in support
of the exemption.
We think Section 1201 is an unsound, overbroad statute that chills huge amounts
of legal reverse-engineering. And it allows companies to maintain a chokehold on
their works even after they give up on the communities that love them. It
shouldn’t exist. But since it does, we ask the Library of Congress to grant an
exemption to help enthusiasts of all types continue to play and preserve the
games they lawfully own.
A
Kickstarter update from Obsidian Entertainment has word for backers of
Project Eternity about the physical rewards they will receive upon the release
of Pillars of Eternity (thanks nin). In contrast to the
recent admission from 22Cans that they have neglected their stretch goals,
Obsidian's been preparing to make good on these commitments, but they have
identified a conflict between their desire to deliver a timely DRM-free edition of the
role-playing game and their fear of this leaking before the game's official release. They therefore offer physical backers the chance to vote and choose between
receiving the a delayed game disc separately from the other
physical rewards (which will come on time), or to just ship everything about a
week later. Here's word: There are two things we feel we could do that
would help mitigate these concerns:
- We ship everything out except the game disc, which
we then ship to you after finalizing the 1.0 version. Wait a minute, Darren.
That sounds crazy. You’re going to ship me a game with NO DISC inside at
first?!
Here’s why we think that’s good: Anyone who pledged to a physical reward
tier will get a digital copy. You’ll be able to get a Steam or GOG.com key
on our site and play the game at the same time as everyone else. You’d be
able to take out your Collector’s Guidebook, your cloth map, your mousepad
and enjoy all of it at the same you’re playing Pillars of Eternity.
- Alternatively, we delay shipping everything out to
you once we have the final 1.0 version ready. For some parts of the world,
this could mean a delay of some real significance. Not just a week or two,
but multiple weeks after it’s released.
While it’s rather unorthodox, we really prefer option #1, even though it is
going to cost us more in shipping costs. We just think it will be more fun for
everyone to be able to enjoy all of the game and its add-ons at the same time.
However, you’ve backed this game, so we want to hear what you think.
Please share your thoughts on our official poll thread
here.
Developer Dreadbit Games and publisher Ripstone Publishing announce plans to
release Ironcast later this month, promising a launch discount for this
steampunk mech combat game for Windows, OS X, and Linux. A new
coming soon trailer
shows off gameplay, and here's an explanation: Ironcast is set in a war-torn alternative history; a time when refined men and
women in formal attire commanded gigantic mechanical war machines, laying waste
to enemies of the British Empire!
As Commanders of the Consortium of Merit, players take control of their own 7
metre tall Ironcast – each towering construct bursting with advanced Victorian
era weapon systems and electrical shields. Players must face off against an
invading enemy force in order to defend 1880's Victorian England.
Battles are fought by generating resource nodes which in turn drive the
Ironcast's various weapons and systems. Players must choose how to spend these
nodes wisely, either offensively in order to cripple and destroy their
opponents, or defensively, if they suspect a barrage of incoming weapons fire is
due.
Since the announcement of Dreadbit’s partnership with Ripstone last October
which guaranteed Ironcast’s Kickstarter stretch goals, the development team have
been hard at work implementing new features in Ironcast. Not only have the team
worked to incorporate their stretch goals, but several additional improvements
have been made thanks to feedback from Kickstarter backers who took part in the
Ironcast closed Beta. Some of the bonus features players can expect to see in
the game include the likes of; an added Commander, an extra Ironcast design,
more locations and missions and new buffs and abilities, as well as a few more
surprises.
Continue here to read the full story.
Happy birthday Abraham Lincoln. The 16th president and famed vampire hunter
turns 206 today. Totally warrants a party... go nuts Abe.
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