Update Patch | August 2021
After last month’s devastating but necessary news regarding the allegations of rife misconduct at Activision Blizzard, it feels rather unsavoury to dedicate a huge show to celebrating games only weeks later. However, the Cologne-based Gamescom festival stops for no one and once again was held at the end of August. This month’s Update Patch is here to look at some of the bigger stories that came to light in the industry and continue to provide updates on previously reported big stories.
1. Activision Blizzard Continuation
Following last month’s lawsuit against Activision Blizzard going public, the story has continued to develop with an update to the lawsuit.
The suit was amended by California’s Department of Fair Employment & Housing (DFEH) to include temporary employees of Activision Blizzard as part of the people that the department is sueing the company on behalf of. Additionally, the suit has been updated to include allegations from the DFEH that “documents related to investigations… were shredded by human resources personnel.” This amendment follows the company hiring law firm WilmerHale to conduct an investigation, which workers were unhappy with due to the firm’s “history of discouraging workers’ rights and collective action” as well as their services including “advising on union awareness and avoidance”, most recently at Amazon.
As this has rumbled on, company CCO Fran Townsend, who called the lawsuit a “distorted and untrue picture of our company”, stepped down from her role as executive sponsor of the company’s women’s network. This was following the deletion of her Twitter account when she received a wave of attention after she tweeted an article called “The Problem with Whistleblowing”.
What if we just replaced all of Activision Blizzard’s management with BOB?
The company is setting about removing references to accused and former staff in their games, with Blizzard announcing that famed Overwatch cowboy McCree will be renamed in a now delayed story update for the game. The character was named after designer Jesse McCree, but will be removed after he has left the company and was pictured in Alex Afrasiabi’s ‘Cosby Suite’. Further to that, references to Luis Barriga and Jon LeCraft will be removed from World of Warcraft in the latest update. Blizzard also vowed to end its practice of naming in-game characters, items, etc. after members of staff.
2. US Politicians Wade Lootboxes
In yet another issue for Activision Blizzard, CEO Bobby Kotick has received a letter from three Democratic members of the US government, two of which are members of the U.S. Congress and one U.S. Senator, addressing the issue of lootboxes and microtransactions.
What if instead of suckering money out of children with lootboxes, we built a baseball team from all the players no one wants USING STATISTICS(…. and Jonah Hill)?!
The letter, sent on August 10th, asks the company whether they will consider complying with the UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code (AADC) in the U.S. This code, which was worked into the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018, was issued by the Information Commissioner's Office last year and comes into effect on 2nd September 2021. The code sets 15 “flexible standards” that help to provide children in-built protection when services are developed for the internet so that young people’s data has strong protections in place.
Whilst the code is wide-ranging, one of the standards states, “The best interests of the child should be a primary consideration when you design and develop online services likely to be accessed by a child.” This letter argues that that extends to the design of microtransactions and loot boxes, and would indicate designing them with safeguards. Activision Blizzard, of course, participates heavily in these sorts of microtransactions and as such has become a focal target for those arguing against their implementation.
The letter was sent by Congresswomen Lori Trahan (D) of Massachusetts and Kathy Castor (D) of Florida, as well as U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D) of Massachusetts. The letter asks if the company will “make changes to your product or service’s design… to comply with the UK [AADC]?” and if the changes will be implemented for U.S. users and why. There is yet to be a response at the time of writing.
3. Magst du Videospiele?
Gamescom 2021 was held over the end of the month, with numerous announcements coming from the show, alongside a number of notable updates on upcoming games.
If you are not down with The Gunk WE CAN NOT BE FRIENDS!
Microsoft’s annual conference kicked off the event in earnest, on the 24th, the day before digital doors opened. This event was a much more muted affair than past years, instead, it was more of a chance for Xbox to basically do the video game news equivalent of housecleaning. A new Forza Horizon (and we’ll call it colourful) controller was shown, alongside a very green Halo-themed Elite Series 2 controller and a very snazzy black and gold Halo 20th Anniversary Series X console. A bunch of new upcoming Game Pass games were announced thanks to a partnership with Humble Games (yes, of Humble Bundle fame). The first full gameplay trailer for The Gunk was shown, as well as a further 20 minutes of gameplay updates for Forza Horizon 5. We all also learnt a lot about trebuchets thanks to Age of Empires IV.
Geoff Keighley’s Opening Night Live was the biggest public event to display a number of games. Marvel’s Midnight Suns premiered, the latest game from developers of the recent XCOM games Firaxis which will see them applying the familiar tactical approach to the Marvel universe. The heavily rumoured Saints Row reboot also appeared as well as a new extended trailer for LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and an utterly bizarre but brilliant trailer for an open-world action-adventure DokeV. Guerrilla Games had an exciting announcement to share, which ended up just being confirmation of Horizon Forbidden West’s delay to the 18th of February next year. Some small games like Midnight Fight Express and Sifu graced the stage to literally kick some ass. While 343 showed back up to confirm an 8th December release date for Halo: Infinite. And last, and arguably, least Death Stranding: Director’s Cut received an extremely long trailer to cap off the show.
On one hand, I get people not liking the idea of a card-based Fraxis game.
On the other hand………. BLADE.
The following days of the Gamescom show itself were light on announcements but plenty of indie games were demoed to the press and Life is Strange: True Colors received some new gameplay. While some fresh images dropped for the highly-anticipated Elden Ring with some extremely lucky members of the press and the Souls community got to see ten minutes of gameplay.
4. As Streamers Face Problems, Twitch Keeps Stepping on Rakes
Over the last month, streamers on Twitch have been speaking up after facing hate raids from groups flooding individual’s chats with Nazi imagery, racism and other inflammatory behaviour. In particular, black Twitch streamers have been targeted, leading to streamers taking a day off on the 1st of September in protest against Twitch for their perceived lack of action.
The campaign, entitled #ADayOffTwitch, was organised by streamers Raven, LuciaEverblack and ShineyPen, who are encouraging viewers to participate in not watching or even logging on to the platform following numerous hate raids against them using racist language. Following that, Raven started using the #TwitchDoBetter to raise attention to the platform. Following continued harassment against LGBT and BIPOC streamers, the three streamers organised this campaign, which has seen support from prominent streamers such as Kinda Funny, Steven Spohn and Steve Saylor.
In response, Twitch has been looking into updating methods that allow the platform to negate these kinds of actions, stating “We've been building channel-level ban evasion detection and account improvements to combat this malicious behavior for months. However, as we work on solutions, bad actors work in parallel to find ways around them—which is why we can't always share details.”
5. Outriders Profits are MIA as Square Enix Continues to be Weird
Earlier this year, developers People Can Fly released looter-shooter Outriders and saw immediate success with over 3.5 million players tackling the game between the title’s April 1st release and the beginning of May, likely boosted by its release day one on Xbox Game Pass. However, whilst the title did well to engage players, recent suggestions from the developers have indicated that the company itself has made no revenue from the game as of yet.
I’m just going to leave this headline right here…
In a note to investors, the company CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski said the company had estimated that sales were between “2 and 3 million copies” yet People Can Fly haven’t received payment from Square Enix, the publishers. In the same note, it’s stated that the lack of payment may be “determined by some elements of Square Enix’s sales policy, the details of which we do not know, such as partnerships concluded by the publisher with distribution platforms”. Further to that, they speculate that “the costs incurred by the publisher” could also contribute to the lack of payment.
Despite this news, the company is positive that with continued updates, such as potential large expansions similar to Diablo. In that vein, they hope that “the first royalties... will come to the company this year.” However, this story has highlighted to many the worries of developers as we enter a subscription service era of games where publishers can keep developers in the dark as to agreements made with platform holders and (in this case) even withhold potential revenue as a game may not have technically sold any copies, despite seeing massive player counts.
“Your next target 47 oversees the decision making for the western studios at a multi-million dollar Japanese video game conglomerate.”
This is the latest in Square Enix’s long history of strange and confusing interactions with western studios. Dating back to 2013, the company has been infamous for setting lofty sales targets for its western developed games, while also often shifting blame to its western wing after a quarter where the company has underperformed. This trend has continued with the way to the controversial release of IO Interactive from its stable of developers after Hitman (2016) failed to reach sales targets, right up to the apparent mishandling of the release of Marvel’s Avengers last year resulting in a $48 million loss for the company.
6. Ubisoft Singapore Continuation
Following Kotaku’s investigation into Ubisoft Singapore detailing the racial pay disparity and a lack of accountability from HR, Singapore’s national department on fair employment has launched an investigation into the company.
Skull & Bones is never coming out, is it?
The department, known as the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (Tafep), told publication The Straits Times it had received feedback in July containing links to articles about the allegations and they urged those with knowledge of any cases of criminal conduct regarding sexual harassment and assault to report them. Tafep has the authority when investigating cases of harassment to ask employers to interview employees and review evidence.
Tafep may find the company in violation of the country’s Ministry of Manpower’s Fair Consideration Framework, which can allow the MoM to prevent Ubisoft Singapore from applying for any work passes for ex-pats for anywhere between 12 and 24 months, as well as other potential laws such as the country’s Protection from Harassment Act.
When asked about the allegations at the beginning of the month, the company’s managing director Darryl Long said “It's very important that we can talk about these things and that we acknowledge what's going on in our industry right now… We need to start to change the way we are perceived and the way we act internally as well."
Patch Notes:
*insert joke about stringer bell being just like knuckles*
Fortnite has introduced a new limited-time mode known as Impostors, in which players join a 10-player lobby with two Impostors where the other eight must complete tasks. For those wondering, I was describing the game Among Us, which is remarkably similar. Innersloth, the devs behind Among Us, have expressed frustration with the team wishing there had been a collaboration.
Following the two successful RPGs, a new South Park game has been confirmed in development by co-creator of the series Matt Stone, with the studio developing now being an internal one as opposed to recent titles produced in collaboration with Ubisoft. Hopefully, this new game will be more The Stick of Truth and less South Park: Chef's Luv Shack.
In film casting news, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, currently slated for 2022, has cast Idris Elba as Knuckles the Echidna. Ben Schwartz and Jim Carrey are set to reprise their roles from the first entry as Sonic and Dr. Eggman respectively.
Delays continue, with the remaster of Life is Strange and Drinkbox’s Nobody Saves The World now set for 2022.
11 Bit Studios, who recently announced Frostpunk 2, have called out key reseller Kinguin after the company immediately began pre-orders for $37 for its new game, despite the studio themselves not even having generated keys or having settled on a price. Kinguin has since removed the listing.
The Pokémon Company have revealed more details about the upcoming titles, with a new trailer for Pokémon Legends: Arceus showing evolutions for the new Pokémon Basculin and Stantler in a pre-Pokédex world. While a new trailer for the remakes Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl displayed secret bases, and new sections called Hideaways where players can find wild Pokémon.
