Business

Welcome to the most delicious dating simulator ever created. Do you have what it takes to be the business partner of and win the heart of the most famous chicken salesman of all time? Play to find out! Go ahead, Colonel Sanders is waiting.

Sure, fine why not. The developer behind this has some experience making narrative-based games, so it won’t be terrible. Probably. I loved the gimmicky-ness of Dream Daddy and Hatoful Boyfriend,  so I look forward to giving it a try since it’s free. But only time will tell if this dethrones Burger King’s Sneak King as greatest fast food video game tie in. 

Also, why are we not talking about how weirdly on-point whatever the hell @KFCGaming is doing on Twitter and Instagram?

I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator on Steam

Welcome to the most delicious dating simulator ever created. Do you have what it takes to be the business partner of and win the heart of the most famous chicken salesman of all time? Play to find out! Go ahead, Colonel Sanders is waiting.

STEAM

I keep going back and forth between how I feel about the whole situation. On one hand, this is exactly what community managers are for. As developers, it’s not our responsibility (nor do we often have the experience) to interact directly with fans. It’s not really a surprise that some developers resorted to name-calling and poor judgment when they started to receive death threats. 

But, on the other hand, you need to act in a professional manner when you’re representing your product. 

One thing is certain though- this is just another example of how toxic gaming communities can be.

Apex Legends developer Respawn is looking to deter cheating by forcing those who break the rules to play together.

Too bad they don’t take this concept one step further. If painted in the right light, this could be a huge opportunity for a hacking type of competition, much in the same vein of Facebook’s CTF. They could even go so far as offering rewards for players who disclose exploits, as a sort of bug bounty program.

In concept, it was a great idea to have a hidden high level code editor right there on a console as an easter egg. But in practice, this opens the console up to a slew of exploits. there’s no saying what kind of system access the editor really has, and players that do not know how to read code could potentially brick their systems. Nintendo made the right call to remove it.

I’ve had a Steam account long enough to know how annoying Steam can be. It started out terrible, got better, then somewhere around the time of trading cards, music player, and other useless features, its started to turn to shit. It does have some great features for everyone though; Steam workshop and game forums for example. Epic isn’t even trying to compete in these areas, making it clear they arent trying to make a better platform, they’re just trying to steal users.

With worsening PC platforms, this just makes consider buying my next game on Plsystation or Xbox instead.

Google is shutting down its Emmy Award-winning VR film division, Spotlight Stories, after six years of building out content

Between this and they’re Daydream platform not being updated for over a year, it’s clear Google is exiting VR. A shame, because projects like Spotlight Stories highlighted the notion that VR can be used for other forms of entertainment besides just video games.

“The world thinks we’re making Titanfall 3 and we’re not – this is what we’re making,” he said. “To try and convince a skeptical audience for months with trailers and hands-on articles, we’re just like, ‘Let the game speak for itself’ – it’s the most powerful antidote to potential problems. We’re doing a free to play game, with essentially loot boxes, after we were bought by EA, and it’s not Titanfall 3. It’s the perfect recipe for a marketing plan to go awry, so why have that – let’s just ship the game and let players play.”

This was…a very smart move. No one would have cared about the hype of another battle royale game coming soon. Instead, they hit 1 million unique logins within 24 hours.

But the real story here, is that Titanfall 3 was in development. With the poor sales of the previous game, I’m not surprised if EA canceled development of 3 and repurposed it into Apex Legends. Either way, it will be a long time before we a proper third game in the series.

Since the inception of Substance, our technology and tools have evolved to make 3D creation accessible to artists of every stripe. In Adobe, we’ve found a great partner who shares our love of creation and our drive for innovation and growth.

As someone who used to be a heavy user of pretty much the entire Substance Suite, I have mixed feelings about this. One one hand, Substance software will be around for a lot longer. On the other hand, there’s this statement (emphasis by me):

When it comes to licensing, nothing changes for now. Your current licenses will continue running and getting updates. As we join the Adobe family, we will also unveil new and more flexible subscription offers in the coming months. We will share more details about these new and exciting licensing options at a later date.

This is a pretty thinly veiled message that they’re going to move fast to add this to the adobe subscription model. The Substance suite used to provide a great set of tools for creating beautiful textures for 3D artists. As it joins Adobe, it will leave a pretty big gap in the market that will be hard to fill.

Linux gamers who rely on Wine or native game clients will have a new option to play games thanks to the latest update. Valve’s fork of Wine, received a major update allowing users to choose to use Proton in place of games’ clients, in some cases providing new functionality such as controller support, better frame rates, or even better multiplayer support. Even better? It works with non steam titles.

Linux users still don’t have the same level of support as Mac or Windows users do, but with tools like Proton and Wine, its finely plausible to actually play games with relative ease.

Additionally, Wine hit 4.0 this week as well.

Shortly after announcing the game was going completely free after live development has ceased, Splash Damage also decided to release their original crowdfunding awards, one of which is a 300 page game design doc. I love reading these things.

“Unity has clarified to us that this change effectively makes it a breach of terms to operate or create SpatialOS games using Unity, including in development and production games,” Improbable said today.

As soon as I read the news earlier today about Unity’s decision regarding SpatialOS games, I knew it was only a matter of time before another engine partnered with them. I just wasn’t expecting them to put forth such an absurdly large amount of money.

Now maybe a portion of that can be used to invest in some proper documentation.

We have enjoyed a successful eight-year run and would like to thank Activision for their partnership on Destiny. Looking ahead, we’re excited to announce plans for Activision to transfer publishing rights for Destiny to Bungie. With our remarkable Destiny community, we are ready to publish on our own, while Activision will increase their focus on owned IP projects.

It’s hard to believe it’s already been 8 years since Bungie joined Activision. We all like to take the easy jabs and poke fun of shitshow the series has gone through over the decade, but Destiny is one of the most underrated games franchises out right now, and I’m excited to see what Bungie can do with their newly acquired freedom. There’s so much untapped, half-baked lore just waiting to be explored.

And thanks to a recent $100 million investment, they have some room to take a “its ready when it’s ready approach for whatever they do next.