Update Patch | February 2022
February 2022 definitely happened. There was the Winter Olympics, unrest in Ukraine, and incredibly, Boris Johnson is still Prime Minister. But plenty has been happening in the gaming sphere. The small matter of Elden Ring’s release, the announcement of Mouthful Mode, and PlayStation pleased players with plenty of releases, with Sifu and Horizon: Forbidden West being the highlights. Of course, plenty happened in the world of video game news so let’s get to that.
1. Acquisition Roundup and Ubisoft Feeling Left Out
January saw the industry begin a period of corporate consolidation with acquisitions announced and money changing hands. As the looming threat of inflation become more of a reality and many companies seek to spend the money they have while it is worth more than it will be next year. The trend has continued this month including numerous companies making statements on acquisitions.
Genuinely thought this game had come out… or was canceled.
Firstly, French publisher Nacon has acquired Daedalic Entertainment, who are developing The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, for €53 million. In the press announcement, Nacon stated that the current CEO and COO, Carsten Fichtelmann and Stephan Harms, will remain in their roles and “will support the future projects by combining forces through its sales, publishing and marketing teams.” Nacon has been embroiled in a dispute with developer Frogwares over The Sinking City, which can be read up on here.
Nintendo have also made an official and somewhat surprising acquisition of SRD. Surprising mainly as the company has worked with Nintendo for many, many years on classic franchises such as The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox and Super Mario.
Other companies have made statements on the current state of acquisitions. Platinum Games’ new CEO Atsushi Inaba made comments on the possibility of the acquisition of the studio with comparison to Activision’s own acquisition by Microsoft, saying:
Trying to think of funny caption here but I think Babylon’s Fall actually speaks for itself.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of mutual respect there and I think Activision will be able to continue doing what they do best. That’s also what’s most important to us at the end of the day, whatever form that takes for us and our company. So I would not turn anything down, as long as our freedom was still respected.”
Additionally, Ubisoft has made a statement on the possibility of receiving an offer at an investor’s call, with CFO Frédérick Duguet saying “What we can say is that as we mention we have high value assets, we have the scale to remain independent and create very meaningful value in the future because we have scale [in] workforce, as well as engineering, technology, IPs, and strongly engaged communities.” Which is a very corporate way of telling investors, ‘it depends how many bags of money we are talking about here?’
2. Phil Spencer Talks to Staff About The Activision Blizzard Deal
As Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard continues (which don’t forget also includes the mobile giant King), further details are emerging about the background of the acquisition as well as further developments regarding the purchase.
Overwatch 2 is still slated to come out… eventually… Oh and maybe in two parts but we will get to that next month.
Firstly, Xbox chief Phil Spencer sent an internal email to staff saying the leadership trouble was “disturbed” by the allegations and the company would be “evaluating” its relationship with Activision Blizzard. However, in a new legal filing for the acquisition, it is revealed that Spencer actually called Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick on the 19th of November to discuss the possibility of an acquisition, one day following the email. According to the documents, Kotick would have a phone call with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and would share the details of the call with fellow board members. CNBC has also pointed out that in the four days following the publication by the Wall Street Journal about Kotick’s knowledge of affairs in the company, shares in the company dropped 11%.
Additionally, the acquisition has been disrupted by a pair of lawsuits filed against Activision Blizzard by Shareholders. The first, Kyle Watson, files a suit that says the acquisition is “unfair”, the deal “will produce lucrative benefits for the officers and directors” without benefiting shareholders, and that the companies’ SEC filing on February 18th is “materially misleading and incomplete”. The other suit, filed by Shiva Stein, again alleged the SEC filing to have the same flaws as Kyle Watson’s suit.
3. Battlefield 2042 Disappointment
One of the franchises which had a new instalment recently was Battlefield, with Battlefield 2042 launching in October of last year. However, bugs aplenty have required a lot of work from Dice to fix since launch and have caused the studio to scrap the games’ planned postrelease road map. This month things only got worse for the troubled game, as it found itself the subject of a very large petition which demands Sony give refunds on PlayStation platforms.
Genuinely quiet sad that BF2042’s marketing campaign was Michael K. Williams final acting role.
This month has also seen EA address the game’s performance to investors, with CEO Andrew Wilson quoted as saying that the title “did not meet expectations”. As to why this happened, Wilson felt the core design for the game “did not resonate” with players and led to disappointing sales performance.
In a Town Hall meeting with staff, however, additional factors were discussed, with EA’s Chief Studio Officer Laura Miele also putting down issues to the changes of working-from-home, stating “Add up… all of this ambition for the new project, and then you add a global pandemic halfway into the project, where the game teams had to work from home, we ended up with more new variables in development than we have ever experienced before.” More surprisingly, one of the factors which those in attendance claimed was brought up was the surprise release of Halo: Infinite’s multiplayer component, with the game being comparatively polished. However, after EA has since refuted this, with the VP of Communications John Reseburg stating “These stories are not accurately capturing the discussion and the context, which was an in-depth and very humble internal conversation… It was about key learnings and actions we are taking, not blaming external factors.”
4. Nintendo Removing Games
Nintendo has announced the end of support for the storefronts for the 3DS and Wii U. This will include preventing the addition of any virtual currency and preventing the purchase of any games digitally on these systems. The storefronts will shut “As of late March 2023”. However, Nintendo has stated that players will be able to redownload previous purchases for the system after this date (for the time being).
Nintendo seen here trying to *checks notes* “cure piracy.”
In the announcement, Nintendo said that this decision was taken because “This is part of the natural lifecycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time.” Once the store closes, Nintendo also confirms that players won’t be able to “download demos, download free-to-start demos, redeem a download code, (or) add funds to their Nintendo eShop balance” on the 3DS and Wii U.
The move has been widely criticised, including by the preservation charity The Video Game History Foundation. A statement on Twitter said that “we understand the business reality that went into this decision. What we don’t understand is what path Nintendo expects its fans to take, should they wish to play these games in the future.” The statement also points to Nintendo’s funding of lobbying from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) that “prevents even libraries from being able to provide legal access to these games.”
5. Nintendo Direct News
In the realm of good news, Nintendo’s Direct this month did provide plenty of reveals and highlights to distract from a generally dower month for the industry.
The headline announcement was the third & latest instalment of the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise which is due to release in September. This will be the first instalment for the franchise since Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition two years ago and will apparently tie together both the first and second entries.
There were some very happy people in the startmenu Discord when this was announced.
Aside from this, the Direct provided plenty of updates on some of the upcoming titles. Kirby and the Forgotten Land got an extensive gameplay demo detailing ‘Mouthful Mode’, with the Kirbster now getting to control cars, vending machines and more. Splatoon 3 had a short gameplay demo shown with the new Salmon Run Co-op mode on display and an unexpected sequel was unveiled for Wii Sports in the form of Nintendo Switch Sports.
Additionally, a free update for Metroid Dread was dropped with a boss rush mode and further DLC was announced for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with 48 more tracks from previous games in the franchise being added from the 18th of March through to the end of 2023.
6. Gaming’s Response to Ukraine Crisis
Of course, the only thing that has really dominated the news has been the conflict in Ukraine which has seen huge warfare throughout the country and innumerable responses from countries across the world.
The gaming industry has had a number of responses to the crisis, including:
11 Bit Studios, developers of This War Of Mine, have donated £520k to the Ukrainian Red Cross from profits for the game.
CD Projekt Red will donate approximately £181,000 to a humanitarian organisation in Poland known as Polska Akcja Humanitarna, and have stopped sales of their games in Russia.
EA have removed Russian and Belarussian teams, including the national team, from FIFA 22 and NHL 22.
Ubisoft, which had offices in Ukraine, have provided emergency housing and additional funds to Ukrainian employees as well as donating €200k between the Ukrainian Red Cross and Save The Children.
Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov has called on games companies to stop selling video games in Russia, and has called on Microsoft and Sony to temporarily block Russian and Belarusian accounts.
This is obviously rapidly evolving, and hopefully the invasion is resolved sooner rather than later in a peaceful manner. If you would like to donate to help people affected in Ukraine, a few links are below.
Disasters Emergency Committee (UK)
Patch Notes:
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood, who was arrested on suspicion of rape and assault by Greater Manchester Police, has been removed from FIFA 22 in Active Squads and in Ultimate Team packs and Konami is removing him from their football games.
Netflix and Take-Two have announced the development of a film adaptation of BioShock. Currently, there is no director or writer linked to the project.
Gary Bowser, a member of a hacker group Team-Xecuter who created devices for people to play illegal ROMs on consoles including the Switch, has been sentenced to 40 months in prison for his role. Bowser had been arrested in September 2020 and his legal team has asked for an imposed 19-month sentence, which would see him released in three months.
Marty O’Donnell and Mike Salvatori, the original composers for Halo, have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft due to unpaid royalties going back over 20 years, with the pair finding themselves unable to deal with the issue in other amicable ways with Microsoft.
In a call to investors, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki revealed plans to launch 10 live service games by March 2026. It’s unknown if these live service games will be based on an existing or new IP.
Wired Productions’ upcoming horror game Martha is Dead will be delayed in physical release on the PlayStation platforms owing to content which has been cut from the Sony version.
The Nintendo Switch has surpassed the sales figures of the Nintendo Wii with a new figure of 103.54m units sold, passing the 101.63m figure set by the Wii.
