Players Sue Ubisoft Over The Crew

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14 November, 2024

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

In late March, Ubisoft shut down the servers for the racing game The Crew, rendering it unplayable due to the need for constant connectivity. At that point, the title stopped selling, and due to “always online”, it couldn’t even be launched after that. However, not long after, players began sharing that they had completely lost access to the game in their library, which they didn’t like. Those who bought the game as recently as before the announcement of the end of the servers were entitled to a refund, but long-time players were not affected. While some fans are attempting to revive the first installment using server emulation, others have decided to file a class action lawsuit against Ubisoft.

The lawsuit was filed on November 4 in a California court by two gamers, Matthew Cassell and Alan Liu, as reported by Polygon magazine. The lawsuit claims that Ubisoft denied consumers access to something they purchased and assumed they owned. According to the lawsuit, gamers were deceived on two occasions – first, they were misled into thinking they were buying a game and not just a license, even if they bought a physical copy on disc. The second offence is Ubisoft’s “false claim” that the game files are actually on the physical discs and that they are not just a key to access the digital game. In this way, Ubisoft was alleged to have violated California consumer protection laws.

Both plaintiffs alleged that they would not have purchased the game on the discs under “these conditions,” and further allege that the servers were shut down and not made available offline play so that The Crew could continue to be played. While Ubisoft has previously partially responded to the server shutdowns by promising offline modes for The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest, this obviously does not solve the problem with the first game. This situation is then likened to a pimball manufacturer eventually coming to a slot machine owner’s home and taking away their flippers or displayed scores.

Plaintiffs are seeking a class action lawsuit so that other players can join them in an effort to seek financial compensation for all those affected by the server shutdown. Coincidentally, a new law, AB 2426, was just recently passed in California and will go into effect next year. It will require all retailers to explicitly state that they are only purchasing a license when purchasing digital content.

Sony Says it is Learning From its Mistakes – Explains About Concorde Failure

Gaming News

By

Petko

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11 November, 2024

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Sony executives explained the failure of Concorde in a call with investors. They blamed the failure of the August PvP event on the company’s inexperience in live service titles, lack of cooperation between divisions, and the unpredictability of the new brand. The statement was noted by VGC magazine. “At the moment, we are still learning. And when it comes to new IP, you don’t know how it will turn out until you try it,” says Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s president and chairman of PlayStation, who also briefly led as interim CEO in the spring.

Sony’s Strategy for Improvement: Lessons Learned

“In terms of our reflection, we’ll probably have to add a lot of checkpoints, including user testing or internal reviews, and time those checkpoints. We need to go through them much earlier,” he continues. “In addition, we have very isolated divisions, and crossing their boundaries in terms of development or sales planning could have been much smoother, in my opinion,” he adds, talking about a poorly chosen release date that may have made Concord and third-party titles parasitic. He’s referring to Black Myth: Wukong, which arrived three days early.

The Short Life of Concorde

Totoki is complemented by Sadahiko Hajakawa, Sony’s finance and investment vice president: “We launched two live service games this year. Helldivers 2 was a huge hit, while Concord was discontinued. In both cases, we gained much experience and learned a lot.” He reveals that they want to build on established brands with live service games in the future. Concord didn’t even last three weeks active after its release on August 23. Due to a lack of players caused by abysmal sales, Sony pulled the game from sale, shut down the servers, and refunded customers. The Firewalk studio shut down at the end of October.

Sony Revealed PS5 performance and Astro Bot Sales

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Petko

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10 November, 2024

PlayStation 5 Pro and PlayStation 5 Slim

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Sony has boasted some interesting numbers and information as part of their financial results solution. In the last three months, the manufacturer has shipped 3.8 million consoles to stores and total PS5 sales have already climbed to 65.5 million units. Meanwhile, the PS5 is only slightly behind the PS4 in the number of consoles sold over the same period of time. Software sales are up 10 million year-on-year to 77.7 million. Digital copies accounted for 70 percent of the total and their share is growing steadily. Sony wants to continue to focus on single-player game production, where it has traditionally been strong, but combine those titles with live service production, where it hasn’t been as successful.

Hiroki Totoki, by the way, also spoke briefly about the failure of Concord in a debate with investors. According to him, they are still learning in this field. PlayStation is still interested in live service games and seems to want to learn from this failure. On this occasion, we also learned that Astro Bot has sold 1.5 million copies. It might deserve even more, so I sincerely hope that more still-hesitant customers will give it a chance in the upcoming pre-Christmas season.

Servers For The Elder Scrolls: Legends Will Be Shut Down Soon

Card Game

By

Petko

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9 November, 2024

The Elder Scrolls: Legends Feature Picture

The Elder Scrolls: Legends card game will be shutting down in a few months. The developers have said goodbye via an in-game announcement. The shutdown of the servers specifically will happen on January 30. In conjunction with the move, Bethesda has also discounted all items and event entries

Offline mode is apparently not going to happen. The card game The Elder Scrolls: Legends was released in 2017, but it can’t be said that it has managed to find its place in the market. In fact, Bethesda announced it was pausing development after two years. It was clear that it was only a matter of time before the servers were shut down.

“Operation of The Elder Scrolls: Legends servers will be permanently shut down on January 30, 2025,” the developers announced via an announcement that appeared directly in-game. Items in the store and event entries have been discounted, and the developers have decided to make all content available for the last few months so that fans can reminisce about the moments spent playing fantasy. “Thank you for playing and we hope you enjoyed your time in Legends,” they said in parting. Bethesda doesn’t seem to have any plans to make the game available offline or through private servers, with “last cards” apparently really being dealt in January.

GTA Online on PC will Finally Receive a Next-gen Update

Grand Theft Auto

By

Petko

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6 November, 2024

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Regardless of the anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI, which will arrive next year, Rockstar developers are still working on GTA Online. Traditional updates and new content aside, after more than two years, PC gamers have finally seen the announcement of an enhancement that will bring the much-requested next-gen update features from PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles to the PC version. The news was rather inconspicuously hidden until the end of the post dedicated to the details of the Rockstar GTA 5 Online December update.

The next-gen versions of the game for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series were released on March 15, 2022. As far as GTA Online is concerned, they included various graphical improvements across the game, ray tracing or general fixes and adjustments to improve the quality of the game, but such new vehicle customization options (Hao’s Special Works Auto Shop) or a new intro and tutorial, also included is a special GTA+ membership. Rockstar hasn’t been specific yet, specifically mentioning only “porting much-requested features to PC”, so it can’t be ruled out that players could also see the possibility of porting their character from another platform. All this at the beginning of next year, not together with the December update. Rockstar will share more information later.

The announcement coincidentally arrived just days before Rockstar’s financial results, which will be released on November 6. On that note, there is also speculation in the community that some GTA VI-related news might arrive then as well. This is “supported” by the officially released image (in the preview) of the moon, which has once again sparked related theories from earlier. But of course, we don’t have any certainty.