Bugs, mergers and vagueries...
Suicide Squad's unfortunate release, yet more layoffs following the Acti-Blizz/Xbox acquisition, and Nintendo allude to Palworld in this weeks brief summary.
Anyone else down with the PLAGUE right now? Something not-covid but feeling very covid has invaded my body, so excuse if this reads a little drier than usual, the mischief segment of my brain is hibernating.
The inevitable happens
Last year the merger between Activision-Blizzard and Microsoft was finally approved, leading to the retirement of controversial long-time CEO Bobby Kotick, amongst other leadership changes. This week we saw the first real effects of Microsoft kirby-swallowing the Dev-publisher giant in the format of a not-insignificant number of layoffs announced. Almost 2000 people in fact. I won’t harp on too much about layoffs in the industry since I seem to be writing about it each week at this point, unfortunately, but rest assured the news comes as yet another blow.
The only mild silver lining, if you could call it that, is that the majority of those layoffs were not due to underperformance or money concerns, but more just due to the boring reality that is acquisitions and mergers. When one company folds into a larger one, there tends to be a lot of overlap that gets identified quickly - legal divisions, human relations and other things that just come part and parcel of being in a big company. Once there’s a handover those positions are redundant. But alongside the loss of these positions came the news of Blizzard’s survival game ‘Odyssey’, announced only just 2 years ago, being cancelled due to ‘engine difficulties’. Having been in development for 6 years now this is a monumental loss of years of work that will likely never see the light of day.
Here’s hoping that’s the end of any layoffs we’ll see this year from Microsoft/xbox.
Suicide Squad struggles with unfortunate Day 1 bug that completes the story for you
Still an evolving situation, but the brand new Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, one of those ‘always online’ games that requires the external servers to constantly be in contact with your device for the game you’ve paid for to actually be playable, seems to be having a lot of Day 1 issues, forcing the servers offline almost before they’d even fully launched. This isn’t actually even the release date - this is paid early access, with gamers paying up to $30 to play the game 72 hours earlier than anyone else. Some refunds might be on the horizon in that case, if the issues don’t get resolved very quickly, but with at least 5 hours of downtime so far with very few updates, things aren’t looking too promising on that front.
Of course, as always, a wider discussion to be had about the merits of offline-only games, but not today. Not today. The bug in question is quite a nasty one too, forcing full story completion on players when they log in for the first time. Oof.
Update: Since originally writing this on Monday the bug has been fixed and folks are able to play the game.
NINTENDO SPEAKS!
Regarding last weeks discussion about the survival horror taking the Steam charts by storm, Palworld, Nintendo actually have released a vague press statement:
’Inquiries Regarding Other Companies’ Games
We have received many inquiries regarding another company’s game released in January 2024. We have not granted any permission for the use of Pokémon intellectual property or assets in that game. We intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokémon. We will continue to cherish and nurture each and every Pokémon and its world, and work to bring the world together through Pokémon in the future.
The Pokémon Company’
Not a yes, not a no. Not even an explicit mention of the game itself or it’s developers. Interesting. Of course we can and will read between the lines, but I’m sure if there is anything more to this it will largely be kept under wraps for the forseeable future.
Upcoming releases:
Tekken 8 actually released a few days back and had a pretty cool drone show in London to celebrate. I’m only mentioning this because I’ve been told off for Tekken erasure, and the sheer spite of that almost made me not write about it again, but the drone show was pretty cool.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League comes out properly on the 2nd of February, let’s hope they’ve resolved that nasty bug by then so you can actually play the story.
Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash releases next week on the 2nd also, a 2v2 fighting game with the recognisable characters from the popular anime. God I sound like a boomer.
Helldivers 2 - February 8th. An upcoming third person shooter that at least visually looks pretty good, even if I’ve heard nothing about it in the lead up to release. Perhaps I’ll look a little closer for next week.
And that’s that for the week. Be safe, don’t let the not-covid, covid flu get you (it’s miserable believe me) and i’ll catch you next week with hopefully 100% more wit, enthusiasm and things to say.
The Suicide Squad situation is as always fascinating, truly one of the franchises of all time!
Feel better soooon!
First Helldivers was pretty cool, think Destiny meets Startship Troopers (though the first one was an isometric twin shooter and not a super eye candy third person shooter like the new one)