The Last of Us Part 2 was announced back in 2017 but the game hasn’t revealed too much of its story or launch date. Naughty Dog showed a new teaser for the upcoming title.
It showcases Ellie’s famous knife from the original game. The PlayStation State of Play will occur September 24th, 1PM PST.
Loot boxes are the new FPS game in the game industry. They’re everywhere but now the government is becoming more involved than ever. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has stated that the Big 3 (Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony) are working on new policies to require loot box odds disclosure on their systems. The ESA are “major players of the video game industry work together to support the bright future of video games.” They are organization filled with members of every gaming company.
ESA’s chief counsel of tech policy, Michael Warnecke, stated that they are working with the Big 3 to create “new platform policies with respect to the use of paid loot boxes in games that are developed for their platform. Specifically, this would apply to new games and game updates that add loot box features. And it would require the disclosure of the relative rarity or probabilities of obtaining randomized virtual items in games that are available on their platforms.”
The policies are scheduled to release some time in 2020. Not only are the Big 3 involved but also several gaming companies such as: Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Bethesda, Bungie, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and Wizards of the Coast.
However, there are several other companies who are part of ESA who have not committed to the future policies: 505 Games, Capcom, CI Games, Deep Silver, Disney Interactive Studios, Epic Games, Focus Home Interactive, Gearbox Publishing, GungHo, Intellivision Entertainment, Kalypso, Konami, Magic Leap, NCsoft, Natsume, Nexon, Rebellion, Riot Games, Sega, Square Enix, THQ Nordic, Tencent, and Marvelous.
With these policies in place, you can expect DLC loot boxes to come with odds before all purchases. This will help buyers make more educated decisions on whether they wish to purchase a loot box. As the policy is ESA and not a government agency, a gaming company is not forced to follow the same policies if they disagree.
How often do you buy loot boxes in your games?
Below is Sakurai (Director of Super Smash Bros Ultimate) going through the Hero’s moves.
Lineup of all heroes: 1:30
Critical Hits are random: 5:02
Special Moves: 5:35
Down+B are a random set of spells: 7:31
Final Smash: 11:00
Gameplay showcase: 11:30
New Stage: Yggdrasil’s Altar: 13:55
New Mii costumes: 17:00
Version 4.0 update: 19:00
Bethesda surprised fans of the old Doom series by porting Doom 1,2, and 3 for all game consoles yesterday. However, players noticed you needed a Bethesda.net account to play the game! ResetEra Nibel tweeted his experiences that you were forced to log-in to play the offline single-player game.
It is a confusing system, considering that the game has no online features. It does have an offline multiplayer for players though. Still, forcing players to create a Bethesda account is a way for the company to send users marketing emails and track active users. Bethesda has since responded saying that creating a Bethesda account was meant to “be optional.”
They are working to patch that option in. I can only speculate that Bethesda is now stating that after being caught by fans. They were hoping fans wouldn’t be mad or mind.
Twitter has obviously been making memes about being forced to create an online account for a single-player game. So I will leave them below.
The Gaming News Corner 