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In what might be a legitimate leak of information, the first two DLC heroes for Ubisoft’s For Honor season pass have just been posted online. The screencaps look like internal ones and have been posted by a user onto the For Honor subreddit.
User Bones404 has made the post in which the two heroes, the Centurion and the Ninja are revealed to be the first two new heroes joining the roster. The Centurion wears heavy armour, complete with a large face-covering helmet that has an armoured mask, the only the hilt of his weapons in view but people are guessing that it could be either a hasta (a Roman thrusting spear) or a pilum (a Roman javelin). The Ninja is your typical shinobi design, wearing the ninja mask, leather armour and wielding what looks to be a kusarigama or chain sickle. This means that it’s likely the Ninja will fight at somewhat more of a distance, which would make sense.
Evidence to support this leak’s legitimacy stems from the fact that the silhouettes seen on the artwork for the season pass do match up with these two characters in the screencaps, and both would fit in nicely with the existing factions in the game. However, if these leaks are legitimate they’ve been taken from an unfinished version of the updated game, with the place where a character usually has “Hybrid”, “Assassin” etc listed being filled with “Scrubmode” – which is likely to be some sort of placeholder name if this is from an official source.
However, others have speculated that maybe these two will be part of a forth faction, a possible Mercenary one. This has come from the fact that according to the screenshots, both of these characters are being listed on a row separate from the other three rather than next to the factions you’d expect them to be aligned with. It’s possible however that the DLC characters might just get their own section on the screen though, so don’t expect there to be a forth faction added. It’s not a certainty.
Like all leaks of information, take this with a pinch of salt until something official comes out. It is exciting though, For Honor was amazing fun in the open beta and these two should liven things up a bit if they’re real.
They do say that when one door closes another opens… or in this case when one indie developer with a problem with review videos goes away, another one appears.
Today on the discussion page associated with their simulator game Airport Master, STiCLi Games posted up a topic entitled “IMPORTANT! As per EULA you can only make YouTube videos with our written permission!” Airport Master is an Early Access game right now, which requires you to agree to a third-party EULA to play it. Usually this wouldn’t be an issue, but in the aforementioned discussion topic the developer lists a part of that EULA agreement that they claim means they’re allowed to tell people they cannot make Youtube videos about their game without first getting permission from the developer:
4. TRADEMARKS AND RIGHTS TO THE SOFTWARE
The End User recognizes that all of the rights associated with the Software as well as the rights related to the trademarks, royalties and copyrights, are the property of STICLI Games and are protected by international laws and treaties. Any use of Copyright Holder’s trademarks, imagery content, videos, graphical elements, names, plot in any activity (including but not limited to: producing 3d party video content, electronic and on-paper publishing, creation of promotional content etc.) is only possible with prior written permission of Copyright Holder.
That means you MUST obtain prior written permission from us before uploading any videos to YouTube. Otherwise, you are breaching the EULA and we can terminate your software license without refund and fire a copyright strike on YouTube.
So, to all Youtubers, please write us and apply for your written permission before publishing any videos about Airport Master!
This should instantly throw up red flags for gamers, as policing who can and can’t talk about your game is often linked to a developer wanting to hide that their game isn’t very good. Of course, this is an Early Access title so you’d expect it to not be finished, but if the game is at that supposed level why restrict access? It doesn’t make sense, unless the developer doesn’t want bad press cutting their sales or really doesn’t understand how a EULA and Fair Use works.
And in case you’re wondering just why they’ve chosen to post this statement to their game’s Steam page – look no further than Mr. Jim Sterling. Is this all beginning to sound familiar?
Sterling’s video has been hit by a claim already, and instead of the usual DMCA claim Sterling says that he has been hit with a trademark claim. For context, this would mean Sterling would have to be doing something using a symbol that meant he could be confused with whatever trademarks STiCLi has on Airport Master… which he clearly isn’t.
Right now, reviews for the game are mixed to say the least. Most reviews have sunk at least a few hours into it; but reading through the reviews even the ones that are ‘positive’ recommend waiting until the game is more finished, with many containing the phrases “tech demo”, “very early access” and “glitchy” – and a few say that the game really has been released much too early with planes vanishing only to never return making the game “unplayable”. Others say that there’s really not much gameplay available – and the game costs £11.99 in the UK so that’s not encouraging.
For now, STiCLi has time to reverse their course. Maybe they’re literally just small developers who released their game a bit too early, don’t understand how fair use works and they will actually turn Airport Master into something decent worth the price tag. I really hope that is the case here.
However, history has taught us that indie devs who decide they are above criticism often don’t learn their lesson. Tangling with Sterling or any other Youtube critic with a big audience often results in their loss of reputation in the lesser case, and at worst the entire studio going under (as happened with Digital Homicide).
All we can do now is wait and see what route STiCLi choose to take.
As far as the lifetime for games, GTA V has had a long one. It shows no sign of slowing down either, as Rockstar continue to develop and release new content for the highly popular GTA Online, and they’ve just revealed their content plans for the next few months of it. And if you’re a long time GTA fan, there might be something here you’ll like.
Fifteen new stunt races were released this week as part of a special event, and soon GTA Online will be gaining a new ‘Cunning Stunts’ circuit to race in. These race types will focus around the ridiculous and extreme vehicles added a few months ago which include the Rocket Voltic (a car with a jet engine strapped on) and the Ruiner 2000 (which is literally KIT from Night Rider – really). Each track will be making use of the vehicles’ unique abilities, so this ought to be good fun.
Rockstar are also planning to listen to fans who have asked them to bring back some of the most requested cars from previous GTA games and put them into GTA Online. These include the Infernus and Turismo Classic, vehicles made famous back in GTA 3. Further throwbacks to older GTA games are coming with new Adversary modes for GTA Online too, including a 2D inspired Top Down gamemode as well as a “gallows humor take on dodgeball” called Resurrection.
And future updates will add to the weaponry available too, with the Gunrunning update adding new missions, weaponized vehicles and militia factions into the mix of anarchy that GTA Online already is on many server public and private.
GTA Online has been going a long time already. It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop any time soon either, with all this coming up.
Following on from a big Unreal Engine presentation at GDC 2017, Epic Games have announced the release date for their new VR editor for Unreal 4. It has been created to allow developers to design worlds for VR using a headset and the full creation tool set of Unreal 4.
Epic Games technical director Mike Fricker stated that the new VR editor will allow designers to create worlds with a proper sense of scale, before then being able to place themselves into that newly-created world to check that everything looks correct, effectively putting them in the place of their players. If something’s not right for them, it probably won’t be for the player either.
Like all VR at the moment though, special considerations were given to making sure the user wouldn’t become motion sick too easily if at all. Lauren Ridge, who is a tools programmer at Epic Games said that you “can’t tip yourself over” while in the editor and they’ve restricted the rotation of the actual person in the VR to only one direction to stop you getting dizzy. Ridge has said that no one at Epic ever got ill while using the VR editor, but they have put the safeguards in place just in case others are more prone to motion sickness.
What is interesting is that Epic partnered with Pixar for Unreal Engine 4, making both the standard engine as well as the VR editor compatible with the studio’s Universal Scene Description graphics pipeline. Which means that the VR editor could see use outside of gaming for Pixar’s future film efforts.
