Welcome back to This Week In Gaming! This week will be a little more in-depth than last week due to more planning, and more time to review possible topics. On our plate this week we have Blizzard responding to and refunding the common tier Warcraft III Reforged, EA swings, misses, but swings again and hits with Sims 5 news following two FIFA 20 Gambling lawsuits and some new Chinese laws that say no more English and no more ‘Imperial Harem Games’ ya dirty heathens. There will be some other topics in this weekly recap, but these are some of the biggest ones right now.

First off is a look into all of the things going on with our local BattleNet hosts Blizzard. Warcraft III: Reforged has been on a large number of players waitlists for months if not years now, since the initial announcement at BlizzCon 2018. Unfortunately after the games January 28th launch last week, it seems players could’ve waited longer. After what was a visible graphical downgrade from the content shown in advertising, 30GB of content installation that overwrote some classic game data, and a bug-ridden launch with server issues, Blizzard didn’t issue a response until February 4th, and only after they expedited the refund process for the game. The response acted as a “half-apology” that said sorry for not hitting expectations, but then outlined all the anticipated changes for the game. As promising as this is to see game developers doing more and more often now when unfinished products are released to the public, it shouldn’t be this common in the first place. Second to that is we’ve seen this before in other titles that will be “updated” like Mass Effect: Andromeda that ended up dead in the water after sitting in pseudo “development hell” for a few years. Blizzard has a long journey ahead of them now that they’ve picked their path, now just to see if they can stick to it.

In some minor news, Nintendo came out with a statement that they don’t fear competition from the next-gen consoles from PlayStation and Microsoft. Personally, I totally agree with this statement even if it does seem a little cocky. Nintendo has been making a number of risky maneuvers lately between the latest Pokemon generation and making Fire Emblem: Three Houses more accessible to the incoming casual player base who is now on the Switch due to its versatility. The niche Nintendo provides for its players has always brought them back and I think it will continue to serve them well. I’d like opinions on this one though, is Nintendo too cocky for what they produce? Or do you agree that their niche, as well as the influx of people to the Switch, will help sustain them through the next generation of consoles?

The next major topic is on the ever-present teeter-totter that EA finds themselves on. This time around we have two of their more prominent franchises, one published from their homegrown EA Sports established in 1991 and the other published by EA main from developer Maxis games, acquired way back in 1997 only a decade after its original inception. We’ll start with the “bad” since it really can’t do too much more the former worst company in America, especially because the issue isn’t even being brought forward in America. This lawsuit actually stems from two Parisian lawyers who claim the 11 ish year old game mode Ultimate Team is the cause of gambling addiction. For reference, this game mode has always been a TCG for FIFA with packs purchased via real money and cards being available for trade among players. It started as a DLC for FIFA 09 and released February 2010 for FIFA 10 following its October 2009 launch. Each pack cost (get ready for a flashback) 400 Microsoft Points, or the equivalent of 5 USD or Euros (even though the currencies have never quite been equal). Now though after the outrage over loot boxes and micro-transactions in recent years Belgian legislators ruled that the Ultimate Team packs were indeed gambling and EA then removed them from the store in 2018. Many mental health professionals and a number of National Legislatures have called loot boxes a form of gambling and stated how they are harmful and addictive. This raises the question though of if this went unchecked and fine for nine years before being raised as a formal issue, and another before being raised again, is it because video games are becoming more common in households as an outlet for people in the information age? I’m not openly defending the practices, that’s a different debate for another day, but I am curious of others opinions.
Now for the other topic, making this likely the longest segment I’ll cover this week, is the further teasing of The Sims 5. The latest installment got a fake trailer back in December that sparked a load of new hype around the upcoming game. As for now though there has been no official announcement beyond a confirmation in an earnings call from EA CEO that Maxis is pushing more for a somewhat online concept in coming years like they tried with The Sims Online, later known as EA-Land until being shut down in August of 2008, way back in 2002. Personally, I really do enjoy The Sims and hope to see another strong showing with the next installment. Though I likely won’t buy immediately and will never own all the DLC available, it is a fun game to go back to and mess around in. Also happy birthday to the franchise as it turned 20 on February 4th this week.

Next up in minor news, a bit more of Lionhead’s legacy begins to fade away as Fable Fortune has an announcement on its website of the game closing down. The post was made on January 29th thanking players for joining them on the 30 season, over two year long, journey since the games early access launch in July of 2017. The game will see its official two year launch anniversary on February 22nd, a week and a half before the servers officially close on March 4th.

Another bit before we tackle some information on new Chinese regulations is game companies dropping the ban hammer. New game TemTem dropped the metaphorical Mjolnir on 900 players accused of cheating or abusing exploits, originally offering no appeal. After some criticism, they are now taking appeals into review, but have held tight that all of the bans are legitimate. If you prefer a Gravity Hammer for your bans current Halo developer 343 Industries is right there with you. They announced in a recent blog post that there is another ban wave coming for players who go AFK and use Macros or are abusing Grifball and the ability to farm XP by standing in a line and trading sword kills (lovingly called Sword Lining) back and forth while team killing all who try to play the classic game mode the way its intended. Finally, players are getting banned for committing suicide in Firefight once they’ve reached maximum XP for the match. They effectively drain their team’s life pool to fail so they can quickly queue into a new match. But hey, 343 says PC forge mode is on its way so there is a silver lining.

For the last main topic, I want to hit on a recent notice of changing Chinese laws. The laws officially changed just under a year ago in April of 2019, but most developers don’t have much to say due to the difficulty of getting games approved for release in China. The new rules require all text to be in Simplified Chinese, as well as the removal of blood pools permanently and dead bodies after a handful of seconds. Furthermore, in-game marriage systems are to be made inaccessible to minors and loot boxes are to have a specific number of times they can be opened before a certain item is guaranteed to drop. Let’s just hope you have enough of the 50 loot box openings you are allowed a day to get to the one you want. China continues to produce much of its own market though with less than 15% of its games in 2019 being imported from foreign countries. This is also possibly attributable to the approval system for games in that if a game is denied 3 times it is not allowed to apply again for sale in the country. All I know is that if I wasn’t allowed to marry 37 times in Fable 3 for “business venture” purposes then what was the point?

Closing bits for this week are Gears 5 director Rod Ferguson leaving The Coalition for Blizzard to oversee Diablo, CD Projekt Red announced that there are no current plans for Cyberpunk 2077 VR support, and in a more major topic I was unprepared to cover, Rockstar VP, co-founder, and head writer on titles such as Red Dead, Bully, and co-writer on many of the GTA games, Dan Houser is leaving the company in March. There’s nothing on a why or if he will continue pursuing any projects at this time, but this marks a major loss for Take-Two Interactive.

That was supposed to be the end but I had another pretty interesting story come across today that I at the very least mention since we already wrote a miniature story on EA. Many EA games have strictly been on EA Origin for some time, but there are talks of the publisher bringing more of its products back in the direction of Steam especially after the success of Fallen Order on Steam. Though if this has you looking at other EA titles that you may want to jump back into, players outside the US will notice a price hike averaging almost 5 Euro for some games that are on Steam such as Dragon Age: Origins. While EA has not released a statement that I have seen on the price hike, perhaps they’re preparing to bring more titles from Origin to Steam and maybe start a sale to make some of their other titles more appealing to the consumer. But I stray into speculation now so that is where I’ll leave this news round-up for the week. Have a specific story you want me to do an opinion piece on or a game you want me to review? Leave a comment below or shoot me an email at surelynotnoah24@gmail.com and I’d be glad to look into it!

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