The democratization of game development has long been touted as a fresh, original idea, each and every time a developer does it. From releasing daily public builds to frequently updated Early Access editions, it’s been done many times for many years. The difference with Dr “Herschel Beahm IV” Disrespect’s upcoming FPS project, a battle royale-cum-extraction shooter from his Midnight Society studio? You have to buy a fucking NFT to play it.
Midnight Society’s goal—currently titled “Project Moon”—is to create “the next AAA competitive PvPvE first-person shooter,” which they say they will do “openly and transparently,” via releasing what they’re calling “Snapshots.”
These are effectively vertical slice builds of a game, which would more usually be created by a developer in pre-alpha to try to secure a publishing deal, or to show off during events like E3. Such samples of what a game will offer give an idea of the developer’s ambitions, but in this case will apparently be used so backers—sorry, “Founders Action Pass holders”—can give feedback, and vote for features they’d like to see removed or included. Which is otherwise called “playtesting,” a position developers or publishers pay people to perform, often poorly.
Image: Midnight Society
Midnight Society describes itself as a team made up of “ambitious game industry veterans,” with its leadership team built from Robert Bowling, original member of Infinity Ward and executive producer of Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche, money-man Sumit Gupta, and Beahm himself, a former community manager at Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games. It also boasts Quinn Delhoyo, sandbox design lead on Halo: Infinite, who has also worked on multiplayer for previous Halo games and Gears Of War III, and previously had the honor of being a level designer for Duke Nukem Forever.
They’ve already put together a further team of 10 experienced developers, plus a further 12 non-development crew, amongst whom a few have the word “crypto” written through their CVs.
It’s a pretty small team to try to put together what appears to be a battle royale-meets-extraction shooter (think Hunt: Showdown meets Plunkbat), the genres via which Beahm first gained streaming fame. Yet, it’ll be very simple to see how they’re doing, given that every six weeks they intend to release a playable build to those who’ve invested in the project.
“Our high-level gameplay goals are to capture the essence of arena shooter level design,” says Midnight Society’s latest blog, “with the scale and scope of battle royale player counts, and the session-to-session gameplay mechanics of extraction-based shooters.”
The development studio previously attempted to garner attention a couple of weeks back by paying for a pricey Times Square billboard. On it was teased the name of the studio, and little else, beyond a suggestion that some sort of announcement is due July 29. This, it seems, is to be the first “Founders Event,” where those who bought in before the game existed will get to meet up in Los Angeles to, er, “discuss the first Snapshot of the game.” What a time.
Back in March, Beahm and company sold off 10,000 NFTs that represent these Founders Active Passes, for the not-inconsiderable sum of $50 each. Midnight Society claims it received 400,000 applications, and clearly further rounds of selling off such passes will be an intended revenue stream. Half a million bucks for that first round won’t cover the salaries of the current team.
It’s interesting to note that in all the vague descriptions of what Project Moon will actually be, there’s no mention of further cryptoshit. Whether that’s canny marketing, to try to avoid the vast amount of negativity the topic rightly generates, is unclear. But given the hiring of crypto types, it’d not be a surprise to start to see some “Web3″ BS getting mentioned eventually.
Of course, given the promises of transparency, and that backers are allowed to make public video content from the six-weekly builds, we’ll get a fascinating perspective on the project as it goes along. Thanks to those making the odd choice to pay to perform a usually paid development role.
In 2015 mega-publisher Electronic Soft released the blockbuster game BloodDeath: DeathBlood, a sequel to 2009’s wildly successful BloodDeath. It would mark the end of both the series and its development studio, but it is not the end of their story.
* Note: If you never caught the original, this is a sequel to a fictional story called “How A Video Game Is Released In 2015″.
Some things in this industry are too big to fail, and so while the key figures responsible for the BloodDeath games would soon leave Electronic Soft, it wouldn’t be long until they were back in the headlines for all the right (and wrong) reasons. What follows is their story.
2016
APRIL: A number of senior developers responsible for the BloodDeath series announce that they have formed a new studio, The Establishment. They claim to have learned a number of valuable lessons from their time with Electronic Soft, with an expensive launch documentary proclaiming “we’re not here to make the same mistakes”. The team say their studio will be focused on quality, pride themselves on a lack of interference from an outside publisher, and most importantly will have a strong focus on positive working conditions, with a promise of “no crunch”.
The “About” page on The Establishment’s website shows the studio is initially comprised of 13 white men, all in their 40s.
“We’re not here to make the same mistakes”, says The Establishment’s Director in a screenshot from the developer’s announcement documentary (that has since been deleted).Photo: Morsa Images (Getty Images)
AUGUST: The Establishment’s first game, KillBood, is announced on Kickstarter, with an initial goal of raising $2 million. Billed by the team as a spiritual successor to BloodDeath, within 23 minutes it has raised over $14 million. Promising an outrageously ambitious set of features, and an “evolving experience we alone are free to tell”, it looks to its millions of backers like the perfect video game.
NOVEMBER: Despite going on to raise over $30 million from fans, The Establishment announce they have signed a major publishing deal with AAAA Games, Electronic Soft’s main rival. It is not made clear what will happen to the crowd-funded money now that they have a partnership with a major global publisher, or what this means for a project that had been sold initially as an experiment free from publisher interference.
2017
MARCH: KillBlood’s Kickstarter page has been updated only once since the campaign’s launch almost a year ago, mentioning that “things are progressing well”, that the team is “actively hiring” for extra positions and that while it’s too early to show anything from the game, fans should rest assured that the project is “looking incredible”.
2018
FEBRUARY: KillBlood is cancelled, with all backers refunded their money. The Establishment simultaneously announce that they have begun work on a major new project with AAAA Games.
2019
JANUARY: Despite promising they had learned their lessons from Electronic Soft’s large and cumbersome studio model, The Establishment—initially based in Montreal—announce the opening of a second studio in Austin to assist in the development of their mystery, unannounced game. They also open a third, in Singapore, mostly for outsourcing work made under horrendous working conditions for rock-bottom prices, but don’t publicise that one as much.
DECEMBER: At The Game Awards, The Establishment steal the show with the announcement of Iron Steel, an action RPG billed as a “true spiritual successor” to BloodDeath, which will be published by AAAA Games. “We want to give fans of BloodDeath what they want”, a representative says on-stage, “and what they want is more BloodDeath”. After an explosive trailer, the crowd erupts. It instantly becomes the most-anticipated release of 2020.
Conceived and developed as a next-gen release (though also coming to PC), AAAA Games executives have insisted on a last-gen console release as well.
2020
March: With Iron Steel still early in development, a global pandemic hits. The Establishment’s offices in Montreal, Austin and Singapore are all closed, with developers sent home to spend the next 18 months working remotely. Having already failed to meet every internal milestone set by AAAA Games, it is estimated these fresh challenges will almost double the time required to finish the game, and result in years of disjointed development, culminating in repeated cycles of brutal crunch. The Establishment’s studio launch video, which proudly claimed “we’re not going to make the same mistakes”, is quietly removed from the company’s site.
May: AAAA Games executives, worried that the game doesn’t have a long-term plan to generate revenue beyond “selling copies”, meet with The Establishment’s management to ensure Iron Steel includes both a multiplayer battle royale mode (for which they can sell skins) and a loot box system (for legal and unregulated gambling).
June: With new, next-gen consoles only a few months away, Iron Steel is the star of a PlayStation 5 pre-release media event, and is surprisingly announced as a launch title by the AAAA Games marketing team. The game’s actual developers, meanwhile, know it is at least another 2-3 years away from being even remotely ready.
A screenshot from Iron Steel’s ill-fated 2021 release date trailer
OCTOBER: Just weeks before the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X’s planned releases, it is unsurprisingly announced that Iron Steel has been delayed into 2021. After posting about the delay, The Establishment’s social media team is flooded with death threats, forcing them to temporarily lock their accounts.
2021
JANUARY: Two separate investigations by video game news websites accuse several senior employees of The Establishment of misconduct during their time at Electronic Soft. One resigns and a second is fired, the latter almost immediately launching a YouTube channel called “Tread On Me”, which covers everything from men’s rights to anti-vaccine tirades to 37-minute long critiques of women in superhero films.
MAY: An online showcase designed to give fans and media their first look at Iron Steel’s gameplay is impressive, but also raises a few questions, with concerns that new additions to the game—like only being able to get new helmets from “Loote Chests” and a bizarrely ill-fitting battle royale multiplayer mode—are diluting the DeathBlood experience. In a staged interview with an overly-enthusiastic content creator, a representative from The Establishment says Iron Steel will be out in time for the holiday season.
JULY: A short presentation of Iron Steel’s character creation suite is shown as part of a larger Xbox presentation, and immediately hits the headlines. It shows that of the 17 skin tones available to players 15 are white, with the other two being “black” and “green”. The single black character skin is locked to a poorly- modelled afro haircut.
NOVEMBER: Four weeks before the game’s planned launch, AAAA Games drop a press release at 11:59pm on a Friday night saying that the game has been delayed into “Early 2022″. No reason is publicly given for the delay. Privately, The Establishment know that despite working around the clock, the game is still years away from being ready. To placate fans, a multiplayer beta is announced for January 2022.
DECEMBER: A surprise cinematic trailer for the game reveals a carefully guarded secret: unlike previous Blood games, which only featured a lone male protagonist (in this case Sir Henry Goreston), Iron Steel features a second playable character with her own unique storyline: Lady Rose. After posting some concept art of the new character to the company’s social media accounts, and mentioning how proud the team are to be able to expand the series like this, The Establishment’s community manager is subsequently harassed on Twitter by gamers, right-wing talk show hosts and two Republican congressmen who have never played a Blood game, but have nevertheless been briefed that this move is “woke”.
A week later, both Iron Steel characters are released as downloadable skins for Fortnite. Fans are starting to get excited.
2022
JANUARY: The battle royale multiplayer beta is a disaster. The game’s performance borders on unplayable. Maps are empty, weapons are unbalanced and new characters introduced for the mode prove wildly unpopular. Fans are vocal with their displeasure through official beta feedback channels, but also in wider online communities. The Establishment thank all players for their input, and promise to make necessary changes, knowing full well there isn’t any time or money left to change a thing.
MARCH: The first specific details of the game’s Loote Chest economy are released. AAAA Games has partnered with a blockchain marketplace to sell weapons and armour as NFTs, which the publisher says they’re doing after “listening to our fans”. They are met with an immediate firestorm of protest before backing out of the deal 24 hours later, saying their reversal was a result of “listening to our fans”.
APRIL: Iron Steel’s social media accounts joke that the game is “destined” for a final release date. It will be out in September. No more delays.
Investigating the game’s numerous delays, a report from a major news website accuses The Establishment’s management of cultivating a “culture of neglect”, with rampant crunch and staff turnover. Senior leadership deny these allegations strenuously, even when dozens more employees come forward throughout the month to support the claims in subsequent stories.
AUGUST: By every internal metric Iron Steel is nowhere near being ready, but it doesn’t matter. AAAA Games leadership, desperate for a boost to their annual profits, have by now decided that the game is finally “finished”. The world’s largest video game website receives a copy of the game four weeks ahead of release, for which they run a preview, a second preview and then an early review. Other websites and popular streamers receive code two weeks before release. The websites investigating The Establishment’s staffing and misconduct allegations do not receive copies.
SEPTEMBER: The game is released, and on the strength of its trailers and marketing has already sold millions of copies from preorders alone. It quickly sells millions more. Iron Steel receives mixed reviews from major outlets, however, with some sites praising its ambition and drive to expand on the now-tired BloodDeath formula with Lady Rose’s new mechanics and alternate storyline. Most are highly critical of its practically unfinished state, however, citing hollow sound effects, disjointed cutscenes and half-implemented features. Performance is also an issue for many, with the PC version crippled by bugs and the last-gen console editions hovering between 9-18fps.
The one thing everyone agrees on, though, is that the multiplayer mode is a waste of time.
SEPTEMBER: In some good news for over-worked developers at The Establishment, despite its overall mixed reception Iron Steel easily hits the Metacritic bonus threshold outlined in their contracts. With most major websites critical of the game having dropped review scores entirely, it’s left to outlets like “GamerSnatch” (97/100) and “SEO Bandits” (99/100) to pad the average and bring in bonus cheques for the creators of the game.
A mobile spin-off is released. It contains all of the main game’s Loote Chests, and almost none of its gameplay.
OCTOBER: A series of urgent patches fail to fix the game’s performance issues on console. They do, however, manage to introduce a stricter and more expensive economy for the game’s reworked Loote Chests.
Despite growing discontent among fans—with the game’s Steam reviews in particular having been bombed to hell and back thanks to its various performance woes— Iron Steel has now sold so many copies that it has become the most successful launch in AAAA Games history.
NOVEMBER: An internal, post-release review conducted by The Establishment finds that the global pandemic had a monumental effect on Iron Steel’s development. The disruptions it caused to workflow, planning, communication and testing were unprecedented, and were identified as being the main culprits for most if not all of the game’s major shortcomings. Allegations of a “culture of neglect” are not mentioned. None of this, or the pressures placed on the team by AAAA Games management, is ever communicated to the public, who continue to attack the “lazy” developers for their “stupid mistakes”.
Reviews on Glassdoor from a rapidly-growing number of former employees begin to reveal the scale of the game’s troubled development, making public the endless cycles of crunch brought on by publisher insistence and poor studio management.
DECEMBER: Continued strong sales mean Iron Steel is now the most successful game in AAAA Games history, bringing in millions for the publisher’s shareholders and executives. It has, however, failed to meet internal sales targets. Tentative plans for a sequel—AAAA Games own the Iron Steel IP, of course—are thus cancelled, leaving The Establishment free to pursue a new publishing deal.
They are courted by Tencent, Amazon, Google and former publishers Electronic Soft. Faced with this uncertain and internally unpopular future, many senior developers quit to form a new company, promising in a launch blog that “we’re not here to make the same mistakes”…
Big thanks to Dimitrije Miljus, Vladimir Manyukhin and Lou LL for allowing us to use their artwork for this piece!
Today during the latest Summer Game Fest event, Naughty Dog announced a multiplayer-focused take on The Last of Us and promised more info will be revealed next year.
According to Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann, who spoke on stage during the event, the team isn’t quite ready yet to completely reveal the game but wanted to show some early concept art on the online project, calling it as large as any of their previous singleplayer games.
A later tweet called it the studio’s “biggest online experience” yet.
Last year, data miners found files buried in The Last of Us Part IIthat pointed toward an online mode that might have been inspired by popular battle royale games like Fortnite and PUBG. Back in 2020, footage of what appears to be Last of Us Part II multiplayer also leaked.
We’ve known for some time that Naughty Dog has been working on a The Last of Us-inspired multiplayer project. The developer had originally planned to include a multiplayer mode in The Last of Us Part II, released in June 2020. However, these plans changed in the summer of 2019, when the studio announced it was shelving the online portion of its The Last of Us sequel in order to focus all of its resources on the single-player campaign.
Then in 2021, more evidence of Naughty Dog having a new standalone multiplayer action game in development emerged when the company began hiring more devs for a project it described as a “new standalone multiplayer action game” that would feature a “cinematic experience” between online players.
So, not too surprising that the studio has now officially confirmed that, yes, it is in fact working on a The Last of Us online game.
The series first, 2013 game included what became a beloved multiplayer mode, Factions, and according to Naughty Dog, the 2020 sequel’s shelved multiplayer was going to be inspired by that fan-favorite experience. But that grew into something bigger, and eventually, the team decided to cut it free from The Last of Us Part II. At the time, the studio promised that players would get to play the expanded mode in some form in the future, and with today’s announcement, it appears to be following through.
Yesterday, Epic launched the next season of Fortnite, and announced that for the following two weeks all the money it makes from in-game purchases in the popular battle royale will be donated to charities supporting humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. Now, just 24 hours later, and with 13 days remaining, Epic has revealed that it has already raised an eye-popping $36 million.
In a blog posted yesterday on Epic’s official news page, the company announced its plans to donate proceeds from all “real-money” purchases made in Fortnite between March 20 through April 3. According to Epic, this includes the purchasing of V-Buck packs and cosmetic packs sold for real money. Epic says proceeds from retail in-store purchases of V-Buck cards will also be included, but only for those redeemed in-game during the two-week window. Xbox is also donating all proceeds made in the Xbox version of Fortnite for the next two weeks too.
What’s wild is that Epic also explained that it will be donating the funds it earns as quickly as it can and won’t be waiting for the “actual funds to come in from our platform and payment partners” as this process can take a long time. Instead, Epic will send the funds to the charities only days after the “transactions are reported.”
According to Epic, all the money earned will be donated to a selection of organizations, which includes Direct Relief, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the World Food Program. Epic says it will add more charities in the weeks to come.
Read More:Russia May Legalize Software Piracy As Tech Companies Continue To Pull Out
This money is much-needed by folks living in Ukraine who are dealing with the ongoing and horrific invasion by Russia. The war has already led to thousands dead and injured. It has also forced over 3 million people to flee the country, creating a large and growing refugee crisis. Since the start of the invasion in February, many companies around the world—like Sony / PlayStation, Twitch, Netflix, EA Games, and Witcher devs CDPR—have pulled support from the country. Meanwhile, a growing list of nations has enacted and continued to impose strict economic sanctions against Russia.
Over the weekend, two different video game charity bundles raised over $12 million to help support the people in Ukraine suffering from the war.
The latest season of Fornite Chapter 3 went live yesterday, bringing in some big changes and new characters to the free-to-play online shooter. One of the biggest tweaks was the removal of building, one of the game’s now-defining features, from some modes of online play. There are also some new parkour features and Dr. Strange from Marvel is hanging out here alongside Jonesy, that weird cat man, and God’s ultimate sin: Peely.
Wordle (I was so damn close to getting this in 3)Screenshot: Wordle
The annoying thing about anything going viral online these days—in this case, the Twitter-friendly word game Wordle—is that all the fun metaphors have gotten a little grim. You can’t talk about Josh Wardle’s hyper-shareable web game “sweeping the nation,” or people “catching the Wordle bug,” anymore, because… well.
Even so: A lot of people have been playing and sharing Wordle lately, in a way that in no way invokes any other things people have been indiscriminately sharing with each other of late. And it is, in fact, the rapid transmissibility of Wardle’s game that’s made it novel.
That’s not a knock on the game’s actual mechanics—which see you play a daily bout of Mastermind with a five-letter mystery word, using hints about your previous guesses to narrow down the search. Unlike many things associated with Chuck Woolery, the core gameplay of Wordle (derived from games that date back to nearly a century of code-breaking quizzing) has aged surprisingly well.
But it’s also not why Wardle’s game has taken off, and suddenly begun clogging your Twitter feed with all those little green and yellow boxes. Instead, Wordle has parasitically latched onto people’s brains—that one’s not depressingly reflective of reality just yet, right?—by lifting an element from another classic word game: the daily crossword.
Outside the genuine thrills of a well-crafted puzzle, the appeal of the crossword is obvious: Everybody gets the same one, and they only get one a day. The end result is a communal experience with a healthy underpinning of smug competition, one that Wordle ably replicates. It’s not for nothing that the game only took off for real in December, when Wardle implemented an easy way to allow players to show their daily attempt on Twitter.
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Adaptive EQ automatically tunes music to your ears. Active Noise Cancellation blocks outside noise, so you can immerse yourself in music.
Those little graphs of green and yellow boxes are about more than bragging, too—although that’s definitely in there. They’re also an invocation of shared struggles, as you look at someone else’s grid and see that they also got fucked over by a surprise double-letter lurking in a recent puzzle.
What’s especially interesting about this is that it helps highlight what Wordle isn’t about, which is words. Yes, your vocabulary constrains the possibility space of the letters you input, and you have to at least have some grasp of English to find the proper solutions. But successful Wordle play is much more about figuring out how to game the solution algorithm. (Personally, I always start with “orate,” since it gives me data on three of the five vowels; I’m sure there are infinitely better strategies out there waiting in the weeds.) It’s similar to the way that Scrabble tests, not for vocabulary or literacy per se, but for memorization of a vast and specific set of letter sequences. (See also: Babble Royale, the other big recent revolution in online word games, which marries battle royale elimination mechanics to Scrabble to make a game that’s the tense, frenetic opposite of Wordle’s quiet simplicity.)
The real question, of course, is: Can Wordle last, or is this just another easily shared, easily disposed online fad? That core simplicity is a double-edged sword; on the one hand, every game is a low investment of time and energy, making it an easy inclusion in daily routine and habit. On the other hand, nobody loves playing a solved game, and the longer people have to learn the system’s quirks, the more likely it’s going to get reduced to a game of Tic-Tac-Toe with 24 extra letters to use.
For now, though, it’s shockingly nice to have a communal experience that doesn’t involve screaming at people on Twitter or, uh, dying. Here’s hoping it can hold out at least a few more weeks. (Or until my streak breaks, in which case, I’m out!)
Fortnite’s next big chapter is nearly here, but before the official launch of Chapter 3 Season 1, a trailer for the next era Epic’s mega-popular free-to-play shooter has leaked online revealing new skins, game mechanics, and characters coming soon.
The trailer leaked via Fornite’s official Polish YouTube channel. It was yanked from the channel quickly after it went live earlier today, but the internet never forgets and many players saved copies of the trailer and have since uploaded it to Twitter and elsewhere, giving us a good look at what to expect in Chapter 3. Do you like Spider-Man? If so, good news! Spider-Man is coming to Fortnite.
It also appears that the Daily Bugle from Spider-Man’s version of NYC is also going to be a part of the new map in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 1. Also shown off in the video is a web-swinging mechanic that looks a lot like the web-swinging in modern Spidey games.
The leaked trailer, which features a Polish narrator, also briefly reveals that Marcus Fenix and Kait Diaz from Gears of War will be coming to Fortnite in Chapter 3, too.
Via Gamespotand pequleaks, here is a full translation of the Polish narration found in the trailer:
“The island you’ve known, has flipped!
Welcome to Chapter 3, where you’ll find brand new places to discover and previously unknown ways of experiencing Fortnite. Start to earn Battle Pass XP beyond Battle Royale. Play and level up as you like, to unlock the battle pass outfits, including Spider-Man!
New features are also waiting to be discovered. Move around the map faster and avoid enemies with the new sliding mechanics. And even set up camps where you and your squad will heal yourself and store items between matches. In addition, new weapons and items have been added to Fortnite to help you win the Victory Royale and the prestigious Victory Crown. Keep winning and keep it.
Besides these features, the island is completely new. Explore the Sanctuary, the hidden house of The Seven and the Spider-Man Neighborhood – The Daily Bugle, as well as other locations. Remember, due to the new weather conditions, anything can happen. Also check out the Season 1 Chapter 3 Battle Pass, where you’ll find Spider-Man, The Foundation, and other visitors.
What are you waiting for? Jump into chapter 3 and explore a brand new island. It is unknown what you will find there.”
Fortnite’s Chapter 2 finale and the switch to Chapter 3 happens today during a big event that starts at 4 p.m. EST.
Earlier this week, Chapter 3 content began leaking ahead of today’s big event. Some of those leaks seemed to confirm the fan theory that Dwanye “The Rock” Johnson is the voice behind the mysterious The Foundation.
It’s not surprising that Fortnite is continuing to build its own “metaverse” but it also continues to be disappointing and sad watching every piece of pop culture slowly get consumed by Epic’s free-to-play monster. And with rumors swirling that Matrix characters may appear in Fortnite soon, it seems like the Fortnite machine is still hungry for more content.
Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, the man whose modding and design efforts helped create the Battle Royale genre as we know it, has left PUBG’s parent company Krafton to form his own development studio.
Greene, whose work on stuff like DayZ’s Battle Royale mode and H1Z1 led to the creation of PUBG Battlegrounds—along the wayinspiring everything from Fortnite’s own Battle Royale mode on down that came in their wake—had been working with Korean gaming company Krafton since 2016.
By 2019 however Greene had stopped direct involvement on PUBG, and had instead moved to Amsterdam to head up Krafton’s PUBG Special Projects, where he began development of a new game tentatively called Prologue, which would be “an exploration of new technologies and gameplay.”
Greene is staying in Amsterdam to head up this new company, called Playerunknown Productions, which will be independent but in which Krafton will “hold a minority stake”. In a statement released earlier today, Greene says of the move:
I’m so very grateful to everyone at PUBG and KRAFTON for taking a chance on me and for the opportunities they afforded me over the past four years. Today, I’m excited to take the next step on my journey to create the kind of experience I’ve envisaged for years. Again, I’m thankful for everyone at KRAFTON for supporting my plans, and I’ll have more to reveal more about our project at a later date.
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There’s obviously no word on what exactly his studio is working on, though a press release accompanying the news does mention “the team are exploring the systems needed to enable massive scale within open-world games.”
While this won’t have any effect whatsover on PUBG, which has been doing just fine without him for the last two years—even now it’s the 7th most popular game on Steam, and that’s just the PC version—it’ll be interesting to see what this new studio can come up with now that they’ve got the time and space to try something else.
Photo: Agence France Presse / Contributor (Getty Images)
When you think of the online video game Fortnite, what’s the first thing that pops into your head? If you answered “the late Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.,” then there’s good news for you: a new virtual in-game exhibit will pay tribute to the slain leader by exposing players to his speeches and crusade for justice, Fortnite’s parent company, Epic Studios, announced on Thursday.
Fortnite—a game best known for its battle royale-style violence—has previously featuredpromotional appearances by artists like Travis Scott and Ariana Grande, making Martin Luther King Jr., a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and famous advocate of nonviolent protest, an obvious next choice for an in-game feature. According to Epic, the new exhibit, which was created as part of a partnership with TIME Studios, “teleports players to D.C. 63, a reimagined Washington, DC.,” where they will be able to visit the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall to hear to King deliver his infamous 17-minute speech calling for civil rights.
“The experience extends with museum-inspired points of interest, and collaborative mini-game quests you complete with others,” Epic said. “These activities progress players through the experience and bring to life important themes of Dr. King’s speech: we move forward when we work together.”
Lest you assume that a violent battle game senselessly appropriated the message and likeness of a man who was literally assassinated during his attempts to broker peace, know that the King Estate played an active role in green-lighting the homage. Eric D. Tidwell, Esq., the managing director and general counsel of the King Estate said the organization was “excited” to work with TIME on the Fortnite project.
“With the advent of emerging technology, we seek to use all resources available to continue to spread his wonderful legacy of hope, peace, love, and equality,” Tidwell told The Wrap in a statement. “Presenting his most famous speech in such an interactive format helps us achieve that goal.”
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Indeed, perhaps this is the push America’s gamer youth needs in order to move us into a brighter, more egalitarian future, one free from senseless violence and ugly prejudice. Or maybe this will just lead to more idiots using their Fortnite avatars to floss on the National Mall while King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech blares in the background—one or the other.
Fortnite’s latest event, Rainbow Royale, is supposed to be a celebration of the LGBTQ+ community. But elsewhere, developer Epic Games chose not to suspend a popular creator for more than a few hours after discovering a history of homophobia. While the influencer has been reinstated, the situation underlines what some see as a disparity between what the major corporation claims to care about and the actual actions it’ll take to uphold those beliefs.
Rainbow Royale introduces a bunch of free, rainbow-themed items to both the Battle Royale and Creative modes. Several tracks by LGBTQ+ musicians, including Lil Nas X and Big Freedia, have also been added to the in-game radio.
The well-known Fortnite player involved in this situation (who Kotaku will not name due to their young age) is known for creating one of the game’s most popular user maps. They first landed in hot water with a since-deleted comment lamenting the Rainbow Royale event on Twitter. When pushed on the matter, they doubled down, saying, “I’m not a fanatic, but this is against nature,” seemingly in reference to the event’s LGBTQ+ theme.
The influencer did not respond to a request for comment.
Image: Epic Games
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Ben Walker, lead writer for YouTube channel Top5Gaming, pointed out the Fortnite creator also liked an image posted in response to the event by another Twitter user that reads “Fuck faggots, all my homies hate LGBT.”
Although Epic made no public statement on the situation, Twitter chatter indicated that the creator’s map—a popular battleground highlighted by Epic just last month during its Cosmic Summer event—was eventually disabled. The creator also had their Support-A-Creator membership suspended, meaning they could no longer earn a percentage of a given sale when fans used a unique referral code in the item shop
This prompted two apologies from the creator, one contained to a single tweet and a slightly meatier mea culpa uploaded to Twitlonger. It seems that the Twitlonger is a response to criticism of the first, the latter of which we’ve included in full below:
“I am sorry for everyone I have said about the Rainbow Royale event and the Lgbtq community. I was not trying to hurt anyone but express my opinion about the event. I understand it is hurtful to the community and deeply sorry to everyone I have hurted. The reason behind it was because it is against my religion and I was grown up that way. I will try better in the future and try to continue to strive as a creator. I have much to learn and correct. I hope you guys give me a second chance as everyone should have.”
A little over an hour later, the creator claimed that Epic had reinstated both their map and Support-A-Creator code (which Kotaku has confirmed), eliciting a harsh outcry from those who considered his apology unsatisfactory and the punishment too lax.
“Simply disappointed that a company during its own ‘LGBTQ celebration event’ let off a featured and highly-affiliated Fortnite creator—who tweeted anti-gay rhetoric and liked slur-filled tweets—with a slap on the wrist for a few hours,” Ben Walker wrote on Twitter. “Just disappointed.”
“Disappointed in Epic Games right now,” Tiny, another featured Fortnite creator, added. “It has touched my heart to see the Rainbow Royale event live. But now I feel laughed at. Do better.”
“[I]t seems Epic cares too much about the plays his map receives than doing what is right,” wrote Echo, a third creator. “Disappointing stuff.”
A rep for Epic declined to comment.
Clarification 5:14 p.m: The headline has been changed to better reflect the subject of the story.
Modder InfernoPlus, the same guy who turned Mario into a battle royale game, has done wonders with Dark Souls, releasing an ambitious mod that transforms the game’s multiplayer and turns the map into something decidedly less horrific.
Dark Souls: Remastest is “a multiplayer focused mod for Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition that adds a variety of new PvP related content to the game, and removes most of the coop restrictions from the game.”
Though really that’s selling it very short. It adds a new matchmaking system, hugely increases the player count, introduces tons of balance changes and even brings a capture the flag mode to Dark Souls.
Oh, and it also includes a version of Halo’s famous Blood Gulch map.
That is just…so much stuff. So much, in fact, that InfernoPlus’ video explaining everything goes for 35 minutes.
If you want to download the mod, you can get it here.