The Pokémon Company will print its first new Kadabra card in over 20 years. According to a report by PokéBeach, the Pokemon Card 151 set due out in June will feature the psychic spoon-bender alongside the series other original Pokémon, something that would have previously been blocked by illusionist Uri Geller’s lawsuit accusing Kadabra of being based on his own likeness.
PokéBeach (via IGN) said it was able to confirm Kadabra’s return after viewing a leaked sell sheet for the upcoming set. While on its face it seems obvious that number 64 would be included along with the 151 other original Pokémon, Kadabra has been excluded from the card game since the early 2000s. That’s when Geller, best known for performing conjuring tricks ostensibly revolving around physic abilities, such as bending spoons, first discovered Kadabra and tried to take Nintendo to court over the Pokémon’s similarities to his act.
While the most obvious example was Kadabra’s signature bent spoon, its name in Japanese, Yungerer, also bore clear similarities. Geller reportedly took special issue with the Team Rocket Kadabra card which featured “Evil Yungerer.”
Read More: Getting Into The Pokémon Trading Card Game Is Way Easier Than You Think
“I’m very angry about this,” he told the BBC back in 2000. “I wouldn’t have given permission for an aggressive, and in one case evil character to be based on me. This is not even anything to do with the old question of if I’m a magician or a real psychic. It’s straight theft of my persona.”
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Geller didn’t stay angry though. Following years of failed lawsuits, pleas from fans, and even his own granddaughters, he eventually relented. In 2020 he sent a letter to Nintendo giving permission for Kadabra to continue being used. Pokémon company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara wrote back at the time to thank him. Geller even started teasing Kadabra’s possible return to the card game last year.
“Look, I want to thank the Pokémon fans who reached out to me over the last [few] years,” he told PokéBeach in a voicemail yesterday. “Including the ones from PokéBeach, who kept contacting me nonstop. So basically, it was you and my granddaughters that got me to change my mind.”
The illusionist went on:
Now we can all see Kadabra reunited with the original Pokémon in the card game this summer. I love you all. And I admit, totally open and honest. I was a fool. It was a devastating mistake for me to sue Pokémon. [Kadabra] was basically a tribute to Uri Geller. But it’s back now. Forgive me. I love you all. Much love and energy.
When Steam best seller Vampire Survivors made the surprise jump to mobile last month, it wasn’t just as compulsively playable as its PC and console counterparts, it was also free. And unobtrusively so. In a sea of aggressively monetized and sometimes downright exploitative smartphone games, it stood out all the more. Developer Poncle now explains that the crappy app marketplace is the reason Vampire Survivors’ free port exists in the first place.
Vampire Survivors was itself inspired by a 2021 Android game called Magical Survival, but its explosion in popularity on Steam early last year led to its own clones on the App and Google Play stores as players searched for a game that didn’t yet exist on the platforms. “Months passed by and a large number of actual clones—not ‘games like Vampire Survivors,’ but actual 1:1 copies with stolen code, assets, data, progression—started to appear everywhere,” Poncle recently wrote in an end of 2022 update on the game’s Steam page (viaPC Gamer). “This forced our hand to release the mobile game ASAP, and put a lot of stress on the dev team that wasn’t even supposed to worry about mobile in the first place.”
The developer said they tried to look for a business partner to work with them on a mobile version of the game, but nobody they spoke to was on board with “non-predatory” monetization. The biggest App and Google Play store games are all free, but most still collect their pound of flesh one way or another. Many gate progression unless you wait a certain period of time or pay, while others monetize gameplay benefits aimed at milking repeat customers lovingly referred to as “whales.” A few operate like thinly veiled slot machines. Vampire Survivors doesn’t use any of that. Instead it relies on completely optional ads.
Read More:5 Beginner Vampire Survivors Tips To Easily Slay The Gothic Roguelite
The hit bullet hell roguelike has you fighting ever growing hordes of monsters while you collect upgrades. Every game ends at 30 minutes no matter what, but the better the playthrough, the more gold players earn to unlock permanent upgrades and features you get. The free mobile version of Vampire Survivors capitalizes on this in two ways. On a particularly long run, you can “cheat” and get a second life if you watch an ad. And once you die, you can watch a second ad if you want to retain more of your gold. The completely optional tradeoff makes the excellent mobile version even better.
“If you’re like me [and] wanted VS on mobile, you’d have been happy to just pay a couple of bucks for it and call it a day; but the mobile market doesn’t work like that and by making VS a paid app I’d have cut out completely a lot of new players from even trying the game,” Poncle wrote. “This is why we ended up with a free-for-real approach, where monetization is minimal and is designed to never interrupt your game, always be optional and in your control trough a couple of ‘watch ads’ buttons, and doesn’t have any of that real money sinks that mobile cashgrabs are usually designed around.”
The developer says the experiment so far has been a success, with high user reviews and lots of new players coming in through word of mouth. The only thing now is to figure out how to introduce the Legacy of Moonspell DLC which costs $2 on PC.
“The problems we’re facing are the same mentioned above: how do we make it fair, but also accessible to players who are only into free games,” Poncle wrote. “We’ll figure something out and publish the DLC asap!”
Today, Activision Blizzard announced three programs coming to Overwatch 2’s competitive and casual scene. These aim to foster a healthy environment, with a focus on its new and returning LGBTQ+ player base.
In a blog post titled “Calling All Heroes,” the Overwatch team and its competitive E-Sports program, Overwatch League (OWL), announced it would co-develop an in-game Defense Matrix, Challenger’s Cup, and Caster Camp. Blizzard said the goal of these programs is to “focus on equity, visibility, and community support for underrepresented genders.”
To ensure that its mission statement is upheld, the Overwatch team announced that it will be rolling out a gameplay system called Defense Matrix. Named after D.VA’s projectile blocking ability, Blizzard said the program will act as a system to “protect gameplay integrity and promote positive behavior in Overwatch 2.” How it’ll do so might be slightly invasive given it will involve the use of your phone under its new program, SMS Protect.
“Defense Matrix fortifies Overwatch’s security and game experience through aspects like SMS Protect, audio transcriptions, and the all-new first-time user experience, to name a few,” Blizzard said in the blog post.
If you were wanting to opt out of SMS Protect, it’s looking like you won’t be able to play Overwatch 2 at all. Because come October 4, players across all platforms will be required to have their phone numbers attached to their Battle Net accounts in order to play Overwatch 2.
Read More: Overwatch 2 Pre-reviews Say It’s Worth A Sequel, But The Grind Is A Major Bummer
Coupled with the announcement of Defense Matrix, Blizzard also revealed two new LGBTQ+ programs called Challenger’s Cup and Caster Camp. Alongside its partnership with Radiant, a production company that highlights “underrepresented genders,” Overwatch is developing a Challenger’s Cup, a competitive tournament that will run alongside Path to Pro, its developmental competitive Overwatch program under Overwatch Contenders.
“This tournament is not a replacement for the Path to Pro; rather, we hope it will serve as an entry point for underrepresented genders to jump into the broader Overwatch esports ecosystem, and we encourage all who are eligible to participate in both Challengers Cup and Path to Pro,” Blizzard said in the blog post.
The applications for the first qualifier rounds for Challenge Cup begin on October 21.
Additionally, Caster Camp will feature broadcasters like OWL’sSoe Gschwind and Matt “Mr. X” Morello. The plan is for them to share the skills they’ve learned as professional Overwatch commentators to folks within the LGBTQ+ community hoping to build upon their skillsets and make connections within the industry. Its registration will run from September 30 through October 28.
Read More: The Internet’s Biggest Overwatch 2 Questions, Answered
Although Overwatch 2’s imminent launch on October 4 as a free-to-play game is riddled with all the things that make for F2P nightmares, it is commendable that the game maker is going beyond the platitude of saying it’s pro-LGBTQ by pointing at its gay characters and leaving it at that, especially considering the high probability of its LGBTQ+ player base getting swept up in a wave of bigotry come the sequel hero shooter’s release.
Seeing as how two of its flagship characters, Tracer and Soldier 76 serve as the game’s confirmed LGBTQ+ representation, it’s nice that Blizzard at least recognizes that its player base might be in dire need of obfuscation in case any returning bigots of the game return with its sequel. Though the jury is still out on whether SMS Protect is on the up and up or not.
Photo: Rafael Henrique / SOPA Images / LightRocket (Getty Images)
The mobile game company behind Pokémon Go, Niantic, is struggling to find its next big hit. And now, a new report claims the studio canceled multiple projects and laid off staff members in an effort to “streamline” operations.
The San Francisco-based publisher cut 85 to 90 jobs and canceled four in-development games, including a Transformers spin-off announced last year called Heavy Metal,according to a Bloomberg report published today, Bloomberg further reported that an email was sent from CEO John Hanke to staff that said the company was “facing a time of economic turmoil” and that after previous efforts to cut costs, Niantic still needed to “further streamline our operations in order to best position the company to weather any economic storms that may lie ahead.”
Other reportedly canceled games include Hamlet, a planned collaboration between Niantic and theatre company Punchdrunk, and Blue Sky and Snowball, but it’s unclear if those were planned titles or internal codenames.
Niantic found big success with 2016’s AR-powered Pokémon Go, but it still hasn’t been able to replicate that success. In 2019, the studio released Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, but it never found a large audience and was eventually shut down earlier this year. Other games based on Pikminand Catan have also failed to set the world on fire.
Read More: NianticMapped The World. Now They’re Mapping You
In a statement sent to Kotaku, a Niantic spokesperson confirmed the news of the layoffs and explained it planned to continue to support Pokémon Go and its other games and projects.
“We recently decided to stop production on some projects and reduce our workforce by about eight percent to focus on our key priorities,” said Niantic. “We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Niantic, and we are supporting them through this difficult transition.
The company also told Kotaku that this move will allow the company to focus more on “new experiences” and that it will “continue investing in the future of AR.”
While it’s true Niantic will keep investing in new games—the company did just announce a new project with the NBA after all—it’s unlikely that those laid off will find comfort in that fact. I can’t imagine watching your company continue to make billions of dollars on a single game while laying off staff is a good way to boost morale.
Maja Moldenhauer, the director at the studio behind Cupheadand its DLC, recently talked about how the company’s number one priority is making sure its employees are healthy and treated well. In fact, Moldenhauer explained that she didn’t even care about delays.
In an interview with IGN posted yesterday, Moldenhauer talked openly about how little she cares about delays or how long it takes to finish a game or a piece of DLC. For example, Cuphead’s upcoming DLC, The Delicious Last Course, was first announced in 2018 with a 2019 release date. But that would be delayed a few times to avoid crunch and later because of covid.
However, Moldenhauer explained to IGN that she doesn’t mind the long delay as “mental health needed to be at the forefront” of the studio’s priorities.
“The number one thing, especially through COVID was keeping everybody happy,” Moldenhauer told IGN. “This is video games. Take your time. Mental health needed to be at the forefront, taking the space and time that you needed, especially over the last two years.”
“We’re like, ‘If it takes longer for the game to come out, it takes longer. Who cares?’”
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You might think that a company treating people with respect and caring about their mental health should be expected and not celebrated, but in the current world we live in, these stories are embarrassingly rare.
If you read Kotaku or other gaming sites, you’re likely aware of the stories and reports of terrible labor practices, months of crunch, and tons of burnout in the video game industry. It’s so common that when a studio head talks openly about being mindful of employee mental health and well-being, even if it means delaying a game or DLC to treat folks better, it can seem like a bizarre (but nice) anomaly. One which deserves some attention, I think.
Cuphead DLC Announcement Trailer | Xbox One | Windows 10 | Steam | GOG
According to Moldenhauer, this attitude at the Cuphead studio is a result of the small team’s history and past jobs, experiences, and a desire to do better.
“If we’re going to risk it all, it’s going to be a company that we’re proud of,” said Moldenhauer.
“It’s going to be a company that is all the things, an amalgamation of all the things we’ve always […] wanted. Respect for each other, love, and support. Things that we didn’t receive in our past jobs. Well, we did, but at the end of the day there was a bottom line.”
In addition to an employee-first-mentality and desire to create better working conditions, Cuphead’s director isn’t worried about how well the new, upcoming and long-awaited DLC sells or if it makes any money. Instead, just getting to make this cool piece of art and share it with the world, and doing so in a way that didn’t lead to burnout or crunch, is all the reward they need.
Cuphead’s long-awaited and delayed DLC, The Delicious Last Course, will be released on June 30.
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!
Do you hear that? Out in the distance, you can hear thousands of angry fanboys continuing to fight online in the endlessly sad console war. The latest battle involves Metal Gearand Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima and his independent studio deciding to do business with Microsoft and work on an Xbox-exclusive game. This, to some, is high treason. And seemingly in response to those angry fans (as well as to genuinely curious onlookers), Kojima Productions has issued a statement reassuring people that it will continue to work with Sony and PlayStation in the future.
Over the weekend, Microsoft held a big Xbox and Bethesda video game showcase. During the event—which featured a lot of trailers, new gameplay of Starfield, announcements, and more— Kojima appeared for a very brief segment. Basically, the famous video game designer showed up to say “Hey, I’m making a game with Xbox using cloud tech…uh…I’ll have more to say later!”
Pretty harmless stuff. And sure, it’s a bit silly that Kojima simply making a game has become a monumentally important bit of news, but hey, Death Strandingand MGS3 were really good. So, like, I get it, I guess. But know who doesn’t, in fact, “get it” and is angry about all this? Insane PlayStation fanboys. I’m not talking about the people who prefer playing PS5 over Xbox Series X or who like God of War more than Halo. I’m talking about the deranged console fans who have more in common with right-wing nutjobs or crazed cultists than with most gamers.
And these particular folks are mad.
Screenshot: Change.org / Kotaku
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Some of them have already started at least one petition begging Kojima to cancel his Xbox game, lamenting that some people can’t afford an Xbox or don’t like cloud gaming. (This ignores that the game will likely appear on PC and could even be a streaming-only thing playable on phones and laptops…) You can quickly also find numerous angry posts and tweets below any news about Kojima’s Xbox deal if you start digging around online.
So, seemingly in response to all this and to people questioning what this might imply about Kojima relationship with PlayStation, the company issued a statement on Twitter confirming what you probably already guessed: As an independent studio, it’s able to work with multiple partners and companies at the same time.
After the announcement of our partnership with Microsoft using the cloud technology, many people have asked us about our collaboration with SIE [Sony Interactive Entertainment]. Please be assured that we continue to have a very good partnership with PlayStation as well.
Kotaku has also reached out to Kojima Productions about the statement, but this type of setup, where a company works with other companies at the same time on multiple projects, is very common, and it’s weird so many angry fans are acting as if Kojima has personally betrayed them.
But when you base your entire personality and life around specific plastic boxes and brands, you tend to suffer from some brain worms.
Review aggregation sites are hardly the arbiter of a game’s quality, particularly when it comes to user reviews, and particularly in the era of review-bombing. Still, some data points are unignorable: As noted by VGC, Blizzard’s recent Diablo Immortal now holds claim to the lowest user score on Metacritic.
First released this month for PC and mobile devices, Diablo Immortal is a free-to-play iteration on Blizzard’s genre-defining series of fantasy loot games. Though I haven’t played, my colleagues say it’s actually pretty good, if you’re able to ignore all of the bullshit that tends to come with the earning model. The core gameplay loop is a blast, they say, and the production values are through the roof.
It seems that many players, however, are unable to look past that stuff. As of this writing, Diablo Immortal’s PC version is the 4,887th highest rated game, per user reviews, on Metacritic—putting it squarely at the bottom of the list. It’s directly behind Warcraft III: Reforged (0.6) and the infamously maligned Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition (0.6). Of the roughly 2,500 user reviews for Diablo Immortal on PC, around 2,475 are negative. (The iOS version sports a 0.5 rating. Metacritic does not appear to list any user reviews for the Android version.)
Screenshot: Metacritic / Kotaku
Most of the criticism is leveraged directly at Immortal’s microtransactions. “The microtransactions are so bad and make the game so trash I actually created an account to give it a zero,” one person wrote. “This game is just masked gambling machine for kids,” wrote another. Another likened it to “psychological warfare.”
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User reviews are often a scourge, with manygamesweatheringunfaircampaigns over bad-faith “issues,” but plenty of reports indicate Diablo Immortal’s microtransactions are indeed exploitative, even in comparison to other games guilty of similarly underhanded practices. One streamer spent $6,000 on microtransactions, ultimately failing to turn up any high-tiered gear. There’s also the well-publicized claim that it takes more than $100,000 to fully level up a character in the game (though that math seems…dubious). The game’s internal purchases are in part why it’s not available in countries with strict anti-loot-box laws, like Belgium and the Netherlands.
The point seems clear: Diablo fans want microtransactions far, far away from their Diablo. Good thing Blizzard recently clarified that next year’s Diablo IV will be a premium-priced game, therefore absent all the (extremely penny-pinching) bells and whistles that punted Diablo Immortal to the very bottom of Metacritic’s list.
Today, during Microsoft’s large Xbox and Bethesda video game showcase event, well-known game director and cinema lover Hideo Kojima appeared to announce he’s working with Xbox on his next game, and uh…hmmm…
Microsoft spent nearly an hour today showcasing countless trailers and teasers for a laundry list of video games, most of which are coming to Game Pass. Everything from Diablo IV to a new historical mystery game from Obsidian to vampires, cars, and even some Starfield gameplay! It was a solid show. But stuck in the middle of it was a moment featuring Hideo Kojima.
Rumors had persisted that Kojima was going to be working with Xbox on a new game and today those rumors were confirmed. But uh, just barely.
“There is a game I have always wanted to make,” Kojima said via translated captions. “It’s a completely new game that no one has ever seen or experienced before. I’ve waited very long for the day when I could finally start to create it. With Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud technology and the change in the industry’s trend, it has now become possible to challenge myself to make this never-before-seen concept.
“It may take some time, but I’m looking forward to teaming up with Xbox Game Studios and hope to bring you some exciting news in the future!”
And…that’s it! No information about what kind of game it will be, what platforms, a name or even a codename… nothing!
It’s almost impressive how little Kojima needed to share to be able to make an appearance during today’s show. Looking online, it worked. Already folks are speculating about why Kojima had to wait so long and what he might be using cloud technology for in his new game. And of course, online console fanboys, stuck in a never-ending console war, are already using the appearance to fuel the next round of forum wars and Twitter spats as they prove just how much they love their plastic consoles and brands.
Microsoft also made a big deal about how all of the games shown today during the event would be released within the next 12 months. It seems unlikely, though, that whatever project Kojima and his team are working on now will be down before June 12, 2023. Xbox likely doesn’t count this project as no game was actually shown, but that sort of feels like cheating.
Kotaku has contacted Xbox about Kojima’s game and if it will be out in the next 12 months.
One day, I also hope to be so famous and well-liked that I can just show up to Kotaku and promise a big blog or review with a few quick words and a smile. But that day has yet to arrive, hence why you just read 464 words.
If there’s one thing Mass Effect’s Commander Shepard has earned, it’s some goddamned rest.
Over the past 24 hours, flavor text for a promotional product, as spotted by a YouTuber, sent fans into a tizzy of speculation that the galactic hero would be returning in some sort of new adventure. But the fan-favorite role-playing series’ project director quickly put the rumors to rest, to which I can only say: Good. Bringing Shepard back is an abjectly terrible idea.
Though the main Mass Effect trilogy culminated in 2012—and its follow-up, Mass Effect: Andromeda, came out to middling reception five years later—BioWare’s seminal series of bang-an-extraterrestrial RPGs is in the midst of a resurgence. The developer teased the “next Mass Effect” at the 2020 Game Awards. Though details are slim, it purports to connect the threads between Andromeda and the core trilogy. That announcement was followed by last year’s Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a 4K-resprayed compilation of the original trilogy, plus like 99.99% of its DLC, which resurfaced its operatic narrative in cultural consciousness.
And if there’s one thing our collective replays drove home—Ah, sorry, one sec…
Spoilers follow for Mass Effect 3, 10 years old as of this year.
Ahem. As I was saying, if there’s one thing our collective replays drove home, it’s that Commander Shepard’s story comes to a definitive end. For many, that means Shepard meets perhaps the most definitive end: death.
Most of Mass Effect 3’s story focuses on Commander Shepard’s last-ditch effort to defeat the encroaching army of Reapers, a collective of sentient machines who roam the galaxy every 50,000 years and eliminate all traces of moderately intelligent life. At the end of Mass Effect 3, though there are various endings, you’re given a series of broad choices as to how you defeat the threat.
One choice allowed you to destroy all synthetic life in the galaxy, including the Reapers. Another allowed you to subsume them under your control. A third, available only if you did enough side-questing, gave you the option to fuse all synthetic and organic life. (Post-release DLC infamously added a fourth potential ending, which allowed you to simply blow up the Catalyst, condemning the galaxy to death.) All are available in Legendary Edition, and all show Commander Shepard making that ultimate sacrifice (y’know, death). But if you manage to get to a maximum “military readiness” score—meaning you basically did all of the side-questing, and the collect-a-thons—you’d see a cutscene of Shepard taking in a single breath.
Since-deleted text for an N7 Day poster sold on BioWare’s store suggested that the hard-to-achieve, 3.4-second long cinematic was canon. (N7 Day is BioWare’s annual fan celebration of the Mass Effect series.) As pointed out in a recent video by MrHulthen, a YouTuber who specializes in covering Mass Effect, the flavor text initially read: “While Shepard and the survivors are left to pick up the pieces, fans are left wondering what’s next.”
That text was revised—see if you can spot the difference—to “The threat of the Reapers might have been ended, but at great cost including Earth itself. While the survivors are left to pick up the pieces, fans are left wondering what’s next.” And currently, the poster’s product page doesn’t contain any reference to plot details regarding Mass Effect.
Representatives for EA, which publishes Mass Effect, did not respond to a request for comment. Mike Gamble, Mass Effect’s project director, said on Twitter that the original text mentioning Shepard’s survival was put out in error. But if it’s even the barest indication of what the next Mass Effect is about, the potential ramifications are flummoxing, to say the least.
I mean, if Commander Shepard truly makes a comeback, does that mean time travel is in play? After all, if this new game is meant to connect to Andromeda, which takes place six centuries after the events of the main trilogy, the narrative would need to do something to bridge the gap in time. Or, oh, maybe there’s a multiverse thing going on, though I certainly hope not; we’re already at peak cultural multiverse fatigue, and I can’t imagine such sentiment subsiding by the time the next Mass Effect comes out. (The next game does not have a name or a release date.)
Given that we know next to nothing about the plot of the next game at this point, I suppose it’s impossible to rule out the laziest of all worlds: that Shepard actually survived getting disintegrated in an incandescent flash of heavenly blue light, or disintegrated in an incandescent flash of heavenly red light, or disintegrated in an incandescent flash of heavenly green light, or, uh, trampled by an ageless species of intergalactic machines who are strong enough to level cities.
Read More:Everyone Makes The Same Choices In Mass Effect, Apparently
But all speculation is, ultimately, beside the point. The return of Commander Shepard would likely come as a disappointment to fans—it would essentially do away with the entire thrust of the original trilogy, whose appeal was predicated on making tough choices at key narrative moments, of living with the consequences, and seeing the ramifications all the way through to the finale. That finale was pretty damn definitive. Fans have had a decade to let it gestate. There’s no reason to rewrite that history.
Plus, c’mon, if there’s any supposedly dead character who should make a comeback, it’s not the good commander (who, again, has seriously earned some peace and quiet 10 times over). It’s Thane.