With every week that goes by, things are looking more and more bleak for the gaming industry.
Despite many major games making huge amounts of money for their respective publishers, layoffs are endemic, and it’s looking increasingly like the current AAA landscape simply can’t be sustained.
This week brought some slight respite from the relentless barrage of bad news we’ve been enduring in the last couple of weeks, so although the ongoing cavalcade of layoffs is unlikely to be over, we can at least breathe easy for now.
Here’s what’s been going on this week in the world of gaming.
Hackers claim an attack on Epic Games…but not really
At the very beginning of this week, the so-called “hacker group” Mogilevich admitted that its purported attack on Epic Games was, in fact, a scam.
A Mogilevich spokesperson told industry news platform Cyber Daily that the group is not, in fact, a ransomware collective, but instead a cabal of “professional fraudsters”.
According to the spokesperson, the entire Epic hack story was a ruse in order to “build meticulously [a] new trafficking of victims to scam”.
It doesn’t make much sense in isolation, but then, one probably shouldn’t expect much from a group that calls its members “criminal geniuses”.
Halo’s composer runs for office
Early this week, Halo and Destiny composer Marty O’Donnell announced his intention to run for US Congress as a Republican, a move that came rather as a surprise to anyone who’s following his career.
O’Donnell says he’s never wanted to be a politician, but that he’s tired of seeing the USA “being influenced by the toxic divisions that are tearing apart our families and society”.
Embarking on a lengthy screed detailing his reasons for running for office, O’Donnell decries the state of the nation, pointing to big corporations, a lack of family values, and “big union bosses”.
Honestly, to us, O’Donnell’s announcement smacks of painting with too broad a brush, but maybe he really is the person to bring some sense back to US politics.
TimeSplitters reboot footage surfaces online
When the TimeSplitters reboot was shut down and developer Free Radical was shuttered by its parent company Embracer Group, many despaired.
One of those people, it seems, was former Free Radical art staffer Rob Steptoe, who posted a scathing put-down of Embracer Group on his LinkedIn page (the post has since been deleted).
The post was accompanied by footage of the TimeSplitters reboot as it stood in July last year, showing off a game that looked a lot like Epic Games’ Fortnite, complete with a new third-person perspective.
It’s hard to imagine that this version of TimeSplitters would have been particularly impressive for fans of the series, but we’ll never know now, unfortunately.
Warner Bros says it’s moving towards free-to-play and mobile games
Speaking at a Morgan Stanley event this week, Warner Bros gaming head J.B. Perrette spoke about the company’s recent fortunes in terms of console gaming.
He said that the market for console games, especially those of the AAA variety, is “volatile”, and that the company will look to pivot towards free-to-play and mobile experiences in future.
That doesn’t mean Warner Bros is done making console games, of course; Hogwarts Legacy has been a huge success for the studio, despite the failure of February’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
It does, however, mean that we’re very unlikely to see Rocksteady move back towards single-player-oriented Batman games, so that long-awaited Arkham followup probably isn’t coming anytime soon.
Capcom raises Japanese employee salaries
It can be easy to believe that the entire gaming industry is heading towards disaster, but a rare ray of hope showed itself this week as Capcom announced it would raise starting graduate salaries for Japanese employees.
The Resident Evil and Monster Hunter developer said that salaries would go up from 235,000 yen to 300,000 yen, an increase of about 28%.
What’s more, average monthly salaries for all Capcom employees will also be raised by about 5% over the course of the next year or so. We expect Japanese Capcom employees will be pleased.
Of course, this increase doesn’t seem to be on the cards for Western Capcom employees, but who knows; maybe the company’s success will trickle down to its international offices.
Ghost of Tsushima comes to PC
At last, Sony’s open-world samurai epic Ghost of Tsushima is coming to PC. It’s been rumoured for a PC release for quite some time now, so in many ways, this was an open secret.
Arriving in May, the game will feature all of the usual benefits you’d expect from a PC release for a Sony game; it’ll have unlocked frame rates, mouse and keyboard controls, and more.
Since it’s the Director’s Cut version of the game, you’re also getting the Iki Island DLC expansion, which is just fine, if not particularly incendiary.
More and more PlayStation 5 games are making their way to PC, which prompts the inevitable question: when will we get a Final Fantasy XVI PC port?
Xbox Partner Preview brings some Microsoft surprises
This week saw the arrival of a new Xbox Partner Preview, complete with looks at upcoming Xbox games and a couple of surprise announcements.
We saw footage for games from Capcom, Nexon, and EA, all of which we already knew about, and we also got reveals for Persona 3 Reload’s upcoming DLC, a Frostpunk 2 release date, and a new Roblox event.
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy also made a surprise console appearance (although it had been rumoured to appear on consoles for a while) as the Legends of the Zone trilogy, packing in the original three games.
All in all, while not a particularly surprising event, the Partner Preview offered a good glimpse of what Xbox gamers can look forward to in the next few months.
Akira Toriyama passes away
We’re ending on a sad note this week, unfortunately, as one of the most influential figures in the world of gaming passed away.
Akira Toriyama, who created the Dragon Ball series and also contributed art for Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger, sadly died at the age of 68 from a subdural hematoma.
Tributes for Toriyama poured in from around the world, including from the creators of One Piece and Naruto, and his death even prompted an official statement from the government of El Salvador, showing his immense influence and reach.
