In The News
Don’t expect to watch any epic headshots at the Olympics. International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said, “‘We want to promote non-discrimination, non-violence, and peace among people. This doesn’t match with video games, which are about violence, explosions and killing. And there we have to draw a clear line,” according to the South China Morning Post’s Sidney Leng. “E-sports that mirror those played in real life – like soccer or basketball – could be considered for the Olympics, but those that involve gratuitous violence and bloodshed went against ‘Olympic values.’”
It’s unclear if that inclusion of “gratuitous violence and bloodshed” encompasses games like Dota 2 and League of Legends or is more specifically targeted at games like CS:GO, Overwatch, Quake and Halo.
CEX — a game retailer in the United Kingdom — has reportedly been hacked. The hack hit 2 million customers, GamesIndustry.biz’s Christopher Dring reports. “The online security breach has seen hackers obtain personal information and ‘encrypted data from expired credit or debit cards’. It says it hasn’t stored customer card details since 2009 … The personal information that has been made available are names, addresses, emails and phone numbers.”
While it feels like Sony has locked its doors and thrown away the key (hopefully not forever), Xbox continues to position itself as open and willing to embrace cross-platform play. Microsoft is telling developers it wants to have conversations with any team interested in “crossplay support on consoles and PC,” VG247’s Matt Martin reports. “Mike Ybarra, vice president of Xbox, told VG247 that it’s happy to talk to the likes of Valve and Nintendo when it comes to getting multiplayer games working across multiple platforms, not just between Xbox One and Windows.”
NRG Esports now owns Northern Gaming, The Esports Observer’s Jared Wynne reports. “NRG Esports will own all Northern Gaming’s team and organizational assets, including player and streamer contracts. Northern Gaming’s Chance “sodapoppin” Morris, one of the world’s most popular streaming personalities, will join the ownership group at NRG. Mark Maring will transition to a role as Assistant General Manager of Gaming.”
PUBG’s first competitive tournament happened at Gamescom, and theScore esports has put together a great 10-minute video of the biggest fails and funniest moments from the invitational — like a “missed shot counter.”
Additionally, we now know the upcoming desert map will be bigger than expected. Brendan Greene confirmed this to Eurogamer’s Ian Higton, saying, “For 100 players an 8×8 just makes more sense and it gives more flexibility when we move onto custom games and things like that.”
Sony’s Tokyo Game Show pre-conference will be held at “4 PM JST on Tuesday, September 19,” GameSpot’s Chris Pereira writes. “Those in North America, in particular, will likely have to adjust their sleep schedule to follow along live–that translates to 12 AM PT/3 AM ET/8 AM BST.”
Bethesda’s Creation Club didn’t get the warmest reception at E3, and now it’s looking like players are continuing to give it the stink eye by choosing free content provided by modders.
“Now that Creation Club is live, however, some players who already patched the Hellfire Armor into their copies of Fallout 4 are incredulous that Bethesda wants them to pay for something that’s freely accessible,” Polygon’s Allegra Frank writes. “The Road to Liberty team did a comparison video that shows the differences between both Power Armor suits, but that’s only stoked players’ ire further.”
PrasannaWelangoda (Credit: Instagram)
Lanka Comic Con ended a few days ago, and Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett has put together a list of some amazing cosplay photographer Prasanna Welangoda captured from the two-day event in Colombo.
They’re in! Lunatic-Hai intends to field teams in both CS:GO and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. “The South Korean organization announced on Aug. 27 on its official Facebook page its intentions to create two new esports teams,” Dot Esports’ Nicole Carpenter reports.
Sea of Thieves looks awesome and you can’t wait to play, but money’s tight and the disappointment of a rig too weak to handle the game is settling in. Well, cheer up! Rare is here for you, and announced Sea of Thieves will have a “540p resolution option, and you’ll be able to lock it to 15fps if you wish,” PCGamesN’s Ali Jones writes. “Sea of Thieves’ executive producer Joe Neat says that his team are ‘trying to go as low as possible’ when it comes to the game’s graphics options.”