Monday news, the long part two:
Cyberpunk 2077 fixes and free DLC have all been delayed until 2022
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/cyberpunk-2077-fixes-and-free-dlc-have-all-been-delayed-until-2022/
An update to the Cyberpunk 2077 development roadmap has revealed that all "updates, improvements, and free DLCs" for Cyberpunk 2077 have now been pushed into 2022. The fixes and new content had previously been set to arrive before the end of 2021.
>> Booo!
Former Uncharted creative director Amy Hennig is working on a Marvel game
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/former-uncharted-creative-director-amy-hennig-is-working-on-a-marvel-game/
In 2019, former Uncharted creative director Amy Hennig teamed up with film company Skydance Media to launch a new studio that the company said will "shape the future of interactive media." Now we know what they're getting up to: Skydance New Media announced today that it's teaming up with Marvel on a "narrative-driven, blockbuster action-adventure game."
>> shikamaru317 made a thread about this reveal a couple days ago.
Skyrim Anniversary Edition includes new quests based on Morrowind and Oblivion
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/skyrim-anniversary-edition-includes-new-quests-based-on-morrowind-and-oblivion/
November marks 10 years since Skyrim was released, and to celebrate the occasion Bethesda is offering you yet another chance to spend money on yet another version of Skyrim. Sort of.
PUBG's parent company now owns Subnautica studio Unknown Worlds
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/pubgs-parent-company-now-owns-subnautica-studio-unknown-worlds/
PUBG Corporation parent company Krafton will soon be the proud new owner of Subnautica studio Unknown Worlds. Krafton said the acquisition will help it "expand its IP and diversify the company’s portfolio of groundbreaking games."
Amazon deploys fix for New World exploit that let players crash the game using chat
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/new-world-players-are-crashing-the-game-with-malicious-chat-exploit/
New World players may want to turn off global text chat for a while. An exploit in New World's chat system allows some users to send messages containing disruptive images and, in some cases, malicious code that will crash the game.
Update: Amazon has deployed a fix that "should resolve this issue and prevent players from abusing and exploiting this feature. This should already be enabled in each region," the forum post reads. Item links should be safe from here on out, but stay vigilant.
Ubisoft workers demand swifter action from leadership after Activision concedes to employee demands
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/ubisoft-workers-demand-swifter-action-from-leadership-after-activision-concedes-to-employee-demands/
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick made significant concessions yesterday to demands raised by studio employees in the wake of a lawsuit over allegations of widespread discrimination and sexual misconduct at the company. (...)
That win for the workers was also noticed by A Better Ubisoft, a similar workers collective working for "real and permanent change" at Ubisoft, which has been dealing with its own sexual misconduct scandals since mid-2020. The Ubisoft employees said they were "celebrating some great progress made by @ABetterABK," and said they would "continue to stand together as we work to #EndAbuseInGaming." They also used Activision's promise of action to draw attention to Ubisoft's failure to address its own issues meaningfully, despite having had much longer to do so.
Destiny 2 players held Xur hostage for two days to snag god-tier weapons
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/destiny-2-players-held-xur-hostage-for-two-days-to-snag-god-tier-weapons/
Destiny 2 players know the drill. Every Friday, like clockwork, Xûr will show up somewhere in the solar system with rare goods to sell. Every Tuesday, he leaves. Except, some players have figured out ways to get the vendor to stick around a little longer—and last week, they were determined not to let him leave at all.
>> Naughty, naughty.
Roblox has been down for nearly two days
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/roblox-has-been-down-for-nearly-two-days/
Roblox, one of the most popular games in the world, has been unavailable for nearly two days. The massive games platform, most used by children under 13, first started having issues the evening of October 28th at 7PM ET, and both the game and its website haven't been working since. Roblox Corporation has only issued two statements since the outage began, both on Twitter, saying that they're "working hard" to get things back to normal.
Update: After three days of outage, Roblox is back online.
This visual novel is also a puzzle about getting the characters out alive
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/this-visual-novel-is-also-a-puzzle-about-getting-the-characters-out-alive/
It's a trope in visual novels that there are more than a few ways to fail, die, get offed, or generally meet up with what is colloquially known as a bad end. Recent release Bad End Theater plays with the idea that Bad Ends are to be avoided, or that they're bad at all. It does that by embracing the puzzle-like metagame of the visual novel, where players like to map out and tweak the world for precisely the ending they'd like.
Oh, and fair warning: The art is cute. The story, however, is pretty violent. It's definitely for adults.
Payday 2 adds Halloween cosmetics, joins skeleton army
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/payday-2-adds-halloween-cosmetics-joins-skeleton-army/
The 2021 crop of in-game Halloween events continues, with co-op wealth redistribution FPS Payday 2 the latest game to join this year's spoopy harvest. Payday 2's crew of crims have apparently signed up to join the skeleton army, because players can get a free thematically appropriate suit and mask, as well as a weapon charm from the in-game store.
Id Software is hiring, maybe for a new Quake?
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/id-software-is-hiring-maybe-for-a-new-quake/
The Zenimax website currently has a bunch of open job opportunities at the Texas branch of id Software, and several of them mention the positions will be involved in "the development of a long-running iconic action FPS." Assuming that Wolfenstein remains with Machine Games and Rage with Avalanche, that leaves Doom and Quake as the only id games that fit the bill—unless your personal definition of FPS includes Commander Keen somehow.
Yep, Skyrim has spider grenades
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/yep-skyrim-has-spider-grenades/
The other week on the Skyrim subreddit, a player explained that, despite years of playing Bethesda's vehicle for cool mods, they'd come across something they'd never seen before: craftable spiders you can throw at people. Spiders that explode into flame, jumping shock spiders, poison spiders, mind control spiders, and more. Over the next several days, players either admitted they hadn't noticed them either, or crankily declared that everybody knows about the Skyrim mind control spider grenades, come on.
Romance an eldritch horror in this kiss-a-Cthulhu dating sim from DreadXP
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/romance-an-eldritch-horror-in-this-kiss-a-cthulhu-dating-sim-from-dreadxp/
DreadXP, the publisher of the Dread X collections of indie horror hors d'oeuvres, is doing something a little different for its next game. It's a romantic visual novel and dating sim called Sucker for Love: First Date, it's coming in December, and we've got the very first, very weird, trailer.
New World is not 'client authoritative,' says Amazon
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/new-world-is-not-client-authoritative-amazon-says/
An invulnerability exploit was recently discovered in Amazon's massively multiplayer colonialism simulator New World. Though it's now been patched, the simple trick made players unkillable when they moved the window New World was running in. This started a conversation about whether the exploit worked because New World was "client authoritative", that it was trusting the game client's version of reality over that of the server, which would be a significant flaw. Reddit posts and viral Twitter threads explained that this was the cause of New World's troubles (one popular thread posted last week has since been deleted).
On Friday, Amazon responded to the claims, saying on the New World forums that "New World is not client authoritative". According to community manager Luxendra, the New World simulation is "entirely server based." Inputs from the client are fully animated on the server, and only after the animation is complete does the information get sent back.
Here's a bit about Haunted Chocolatier's combat
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/heres-a-bit-about-haunted-chocolatiers-combat/
(...) ConcernedApe has posted a new developer diary on the Haunted Chocolatier website with some design details about his vision for how Haunted Chocolatier's combat will go. The post is accompanied by a gif of the combat in action, showing how off-handed items like Shields will play out in fights to stun opponents who attack you.
Cyberpunk action-RPG The Ascent gets a photo mode
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/cyberpunk-action-rpg-the-ascent-gets-a-photo-mode/
Dystopian Diablo-em-up The Ascent has an extra gorgeous setting, a planet called Veles that is 80% burnished gunmetal by weight. (The other 20% is neon.) It's so good-looking that players have been using the Universal Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker to take sweet screenshots, but now there's a way to do that without downloading a third-party program. The latest update by developers Neon Giant adds a photo mode, which you can activate by turning it on in the gameplay settings and then pressing P.
Dusk update brings console features to the PC version
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/dusk-update-brings-console-features-to-the-pc-version/
The intense Gen X FPS known as Dusk recently arrived on Nintendo Switch, which wouldn't be news to us except that Dusk developer David Szymanski made it so by using this as an opportunity to update his game. Various console-specific features have been ported back over to the PC version as part of the New and Old Update.
PAX South is no longer due to Covid-19 and lack of growth
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/pax-south-is-no-longer-due-to-covid-19-and-lack-of-growth/
PAX South is no longer, organizer ReedPop has announced via the official PAX Twitter account. The Texas arm of the convention is on the chopping board due to its failure to expand since its inaugural 2015 outing, though the Covid-19 pandemic hasn't helped things either.
Sega and Microsoft partner up to develop cloud-powered 'Super Games'
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/sega-and-microsoft-partner-up-to-develop-cloud-powered-super-games/
Back in May, Sega expressed its desire to create what it called a "Super Game" within the next 5 years. Now, the Japanese publisher has entered a strategic alliance with Microsoft, with plans to use the tech giant's Azure cloud platform to power those ambitious plans.
Resident Evil Village will be getting some free DLC
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/resident-evil-village-will-be-getting-some-free-dlc/
Capcom is set to release either some or all of its DLC for Resident Evil Village free of charge, according to the company's recent annual integrated report.
