Gaming News Roundup – Aug 7: Bioware Montreal Shut Down, Battlegrounds Unjust Ban, Xbox One X 4K Fluke
Gaming News Roundup – Aug 7:
Bioware Montreal SHUT Down
After the critical disappointment that was Mass Effect Andromeda, the series and subsequently the development studio has had it pretty rough. Earlier this year, it was reported that the Mass Effect series was put on hiatus indefinitely due to the rough state of the game and bad reception it got. Just this week we got news that the studio of Andromeda has been absorbed in EA Motive with the crew allocated to other projects, such as Battlefront 2 and whatever else EA may be working on. As a fan of the Mass Effect series, it’s unfortunate to have further confirmation that we won’t see another Mass Effect game for quite a while, but I do understand the reasoning for doing so. Got to do what you got to do.
Was PlayerUnknown’s Ban The Right Decision?
The question of rightful banning has been in high discussion this week after the studio behind PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds banned a player for possibly “stream sniping” a streamer. A streamer called Shroud was streaming the game and ended up getting killed by multiple players, the alleged sniper named Lotoe was one of them. You can see the kill here. Shroud was playing with another streamer called Summit1G, who Lotoe also killed not long afterwards. Lotoe then was abruptly kicked from the game by a ban screen with no explanation as to why. This is where it gets a little shaky. A community manager told him that he was reported for stream sniping, which Lotoe denies and claims that he “doesn’t even watch Twitch”.
“The only way people are saying I was stream sniping them was because the devs surely banned with evidence, but in reality they banned me within 1-20 minutes,” Lotoe said. “I don’t see how they could of [sic] received reports and investigated the case in that amount of time.”
The community of the game has since exploded with discussions over whether or not the ban was just. Many saying that while possible he could have been stream sniping, there’s no way to detect that and therefore the developers have no proof of it to justify the ban. Others saying he couldn’t have killed he streamers so frequently without the aid of the stream. The lead director, Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene spoke on the subject.
“I have seen the data the community team looked at before issuing the ban, and the ban was indeed justified,” Greene posted to his Twitter. “The tracking data shows that the player in question tried to join the same lobby as their target multiple times. While we understand we cannot prove that this player was watching the target’s broadcast, we see no other reason why they would consistently attempt to be in the same lobby as someone who is broadcasting live other than to have an advantage in the game.”
Now while he may have been repeatedly attempting to get into the streamer’s lobby, he could have just wanted to play with him without stream sniping, and they probably shouldn’t have acted on this suspicion so quickly without real more solid evidence.
Here’s a summary of the situation:
Killing Floor Dev Says Xbox One X Can’t Run 4K
Killing Floor 2 will be ported to the Xbox One and the Xbox One X, but recently one of the lead developers claimed that the game couldn’t run in 4K with a reliable frame rate. For those that don’t know, the Xbox One X’s main claim at its E3 presentation was the native 4K capabilities, so this could spell trouble for it since it possibly can’t do that while remaining stable in every other aspect. The developer did note that the console did great at running Killing Floor 2 with the ultra settings and at 1800p which isn’t too bad a consolation. Hopefully the Xbox One X can still run other games in 4K, but if not, it probably won’t be too bad.
Friday The 13th A Commercial Success
Despite the poor state the game was upon release, it looks like Friday The 13th struck a chord with horror fans and gamers alike. As previously spoken on in this piece, the release of this game was abysmal, bugs and crashes galore. While they’ve since fixed most of the issues, I assumed the poor release and consequently poor reception would heavily effect the game’s sales, but I’ve been proven wrong. The game has sold an astounding 1.8 million copies across all platforms, breaking lots of expectations doing so. It looks like the namesake of this game and the patches have saved what could have been another Kickstarter failure.
That’s the news this week, do you think the Battlegrounds ban was unnecessary? Are you going to be sad with the thought that we may not see a new Mass Effect game for a long time (like I am)? Let us know below, and if you missed last week’s news roundup, you can click here to get caught up. Be sure to come back next week for another gaming news roundup!
