It’s claimed that former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra wanted to bring about some massive changes to hero shooter Overwatch, as well as reduce microtransactions in action RPG Diablo 4 before his departure from the company earlier this year. PC Gamer reports that in Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier’s new book about Blizzard, it’s mentioned in the final chapter that Ybarra was planning to “reboot Overwatch,” which sounds like a pretty enormous deal. It’s not clear what form this might have taken – after all, Overwatch 2 has only been out for two years (less than that when Ybarra was still at Blizzard), and it straight-up replaced its predecessor. Attitudes about Overwatch 2 haven’t always been, uh, fantastic since its launch – the hero shooter is still tarnished with a ‘Mostly Negative’ rating on Steam after a rough start last summer – so perhaps a reboot could have helped give it a fresh start?Then there’s Diablo 4, and Ybarra’s supposed old plans to “cut d…
343 Industries has rebranded simply as Halo Studios to kickstart a “new chapter” in the iconic series’ long history, which includes multiple games in development.Announced at this weekend’s Halo World Championship Series 2024, the series steward unveiled its plan for Master Chief’s bright future. The entire team is now switching to Unreal Engine 5 and ditching its proprietary Slipspace tech. A research venture called Project Foundry is laying the groundwork for multiple Halo games. And, the studio’s rebrand is more of a turning page for the series as a whole.”If you really break Halo down, there have been two very distinct chapters,” studio head Pierre Hintze, who took over after Halo Infinite’s wonky launch, explains in an Xbox Wire blog. “Chapter 1 – Bungie. Chapter 2 – 343 Industries. Now, I think we have an audience which is hungry for more. So we’re not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe of how we make Halo games. S…
Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi says he reversed course on his retirement plans because he simply loves making games that much.In a machine-translated Famitsu interview, Sakaguchi confirmed he’s still working with the same team behind the 2021 mobile RPG Fantasian, which is finally getting a console and PC release this winter, on a brand new project, although he had no new updates to provide.”I made Fantasian thinking it might really be a retirement piece, but yes, I am withdrawing it,” Sakaguchi said. “We are starting to make progress on a new work … which means we are working on a new one.”This isn’t a new announcement, by the way. We first learned back in December 2022 that Sakaguchi was working on a “dark fantasy” game after he made comments suggesting Fantasian could be his final project. In November 2023, he again affirmed he was working on a new “dark fantasy” game, and at the top of this year he revealed he’d finished a plot outline despite being kept thorough…
Deadlock, Valve’s new shooter/MOBA hybrid, already has a problem with cheaters, which is presumably giving fans of Valve’s other shooters delicious schadenfreude and/or terror-filled flashbacks.Last week, footage of players utilizing some of Deadlock’s first cheats emerged. In the video, two players can be seen taking advantage of aim-botting and what appear to be bullets that curve around corners. An innocent player, reacting to that footage, notes that the cheaters are “very blatant,” and seemingly “do not care at all” that their wicked ways are so obvious to anyone watching.Taking a look at deadlock cheaters from r/SteamIt’s not an ideal situation, not least because Deadlock is a game in an invite-only alpha state that’s so early Valve has had to tighten restrictions against stat-tracking sites. It makes you wonder what the cheaters have to gain – with matchmaking and MMR changes also on the horizon, it’s not like winning a bunch of games now will offer long-term benefit.Hopefully, …