A little while ago the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), a body that monitors and regulates the stock market in France accused a handful of Ubisoft’s executives of insider trading. Ubisoft of course refuted those claims, but now the AMF have decided they are convinced enough of wrongdoing to issue sanctions against the individuals accused to a combined tune of €1.2 million.

AMF have alleged that during a period in early October of 2013, Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat and four other executives sold up stock, knowing that the company’s share prices would drop when it was announced that both Watch Dogs and The Crew were going to be delayed until 2014. Both games at the time were very anticipated and the value of Ubisoft’s stock did indeed drop by 25% in the wake of the announcements.

The breakdown of fines levied are as follows:

• Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat – €700,000
• Ubisoft VP of corporate affairs Francis Baillet – €200,000
• Ubisoft worldwide studios exec director Christine Burgess – €200 000
• Ubisoft Montreal VP of executive operations Olivier Paris – €100,000
• Ubisoft brand development director Damien Moret – €15,000

Ubisoft have said that they intend to appeal the decision against them. Their argument hinges on saying that Mallat nor any of the other four had any sort of insider knowledge that they would have acted upon when deciding to sell on shares.

“Ubisoft acknowledges the AMF’s decision, but continues to assert that the people involved acted in good faith,” a Ubisoft spokesperson said in a statement. “We are convinced that these team members did not intentionally commit any acts contrary to market regulations.”

They went on to say that “the processes and timetables” that are involved in the making and production of major games at Ubisoft mean that there was no possible way that any of the five could have been aware of or anticipate Yves Guillemon’s decision to delay the games’ release dates. They also said that “the AMF’s decision represents a serious misunderstanding of the game development and production process at our company and common to our industry.”

(For Digmbot’s initial impressions of Titanfall 2, head over to his article here ~Lone)

Along with many of you, I was a little apprehensive about picking up the new Titanfall sequel this past fall. As of recently, the game has been on sale and had a price drop for the holidays/Game Awards. The game did boast a single player campaign mode, which was entirely lacking from the first incarnation, and I was hopeful to see what the Respawn Entertainment writers had in store for us.

I’ve never been more impressed with a game that I had so little expectation of. Having completed the campaign, I can say that it was certainly a welcome surprise to play through such an accomplished story. Aside from being well written and developed, I found myself really feeling connected to BT-7274, a titan that we ‘fell’ into responsibility of piloting. With the game telling us right at the beginning that the connection between a pilot and a titan is paramount in being successful, I really felt that theme flowing through the whole story. I cared when he was in jeopardy, and I feel like he cared about me as well. I do think that the theme of connection was dealt with really well through the campaign with something I was also not expecting: speech options. Now, I’m not talking about branching Mass Effect/Witcher conversations, but as a player you are in regular contact with your titan. These conversations are usually limited to a few lines, and the player only has a few different speech options to choose from. As a result of the abbreviated exchange, and the fact that the game does not pause for these quips, there is no loss of immersion or speed at which you are playing. That is HUGE. Had they decided to have the conversations with the BT stop the gameplay, or even forced you to walk, they would have been incredibly annoying. Luckily, they thought of that already, so sit back and get ready to enjoy an adventure with your new Vanguard-Class titan buddy.

Aside from the writing and flow of the story, the level design was also extremely well executed. Each area looked independent of the last, but still flowed together. There is always somewhere for your pilot to explore in each level, which you may want to do because there are secrets in the form of fallen pilot helmets to collect in hidden areas all over the place. I found myself a fair few times jumping out of my titan to traverse the levels and leave my titan on auto to help me clear the areas. Why in the world would I jump out of my massive, destructive suit of amazing armor to clear anything? Because it’s fun! Which brings me to another note about the gameplay: It’s SMOOTHER. Insanely better executed than titanfall 1’s wall running. In fact, it may be better than any wall running/jump pack type game I’ve played to date. Strangely, that also brings me to the first negative I have about the game. Get ready to wall run, a lot. Even as early as the first level, the game will demand that you are able to execute complex chains of wall running, or you will not be able to progress. Luckily, if you sit in an area for too long, the game will generate a ‘ghost’ for you to follow through difficult areas. That being said, being able to chain jumps and wall running is a pretty integral part of the gameplay, so it is good that they create a steep learning curve for the mechanic early. Don’t worry, the game comes up with several other fun mechanics to play with during the campaign including: cranes to create pathways, a maintenance gun, and time travel. I will say, I’ve never seen a game that included a time travel mechanic where the story-line was note entirely based on time travel as a theme, so well played on that one Titanfall 2.

But of course, we all want to hear about the multiplayer. My statement before about the game feeling smoother applies here as well. As a pilot, you feel as if you can easily traverse the maps and as a result, the pace is very fast. There’s nothing like getting murdered in the first few rounds after coming back to a game because you’re out of practice, but I was quickly able to regain my stride. Some of the new pilot weapons brought onto the scene feel really well optimized, but I don’t have enough time in yet to say how balanced they are. I really appreciate the additional titan loadouts, and look forward to learning how they counter each other. Having such specific strengths in the new titan classes has added an additional aspect of strategy to the multiplayer, much more than just waves after waves of titans being summoned where only numbers on either side is all that matters. The game-modes are a mimic of the first game, with a few interesting things added that seem to be targeted towards either titan or pilot gameplay alone.

The game is definitely an improvement on the first Titanfall, and 100% worth picking up. If you were into playing Titanfall 1, and were always wondering what a backstory on the war was, this is your game. Get ready to be ‘tossed’ into a fantastic adventure with your new mechanical friend.

A Titanic 9.5/10! Worth purchasing!

Earlier this year, one of the biggest legacy WoW servers was forced to close its doors. Nostalrius was hit with a cease and desist by Blizzard and so had to close, causing the players who used it to ask Blizzard if they could consider doing some legacy servers of their own instead if they couldn’t have an unofficial version. Blizzard’s response was of interest at first, but as time went on with no more news people began to wonder. The announcement that it wouldn’t be covered as a topic at this year’s Blizzcon seems to have signalled to a few of those waiting that legacy servers, if coming, were not going to be a priority for Blizzard.

Now the people behind Nostalrius have announced that their legacy server is coming back online, hosted by the Elysium Project. From December 17th, the server will be back and as it’s using the same server code and database that Nostelrius was using before it was closed, all of the characters on that server will be transferred over. Apparently stress tests of up to 10,000 concurrent players have already been done and they’re ready to get back online. Elysium have also announced that more information would be on its way later on this week.

Just what Blizzard’s response to the return of the biggest unofficial WoW vanilla server will be interesting to see. They’re already had to closed down once, and might take harsher action this time if pushed. As mentioned previously, Blizzard have shown a willingness to work with people to get up some legacy servers officially, but the lack of a more immediate response seems to have convinced Nostalrius that they would have to wait a long time for them. Not surprising given how Legion is currently ongoing in the official WoW lore and servers right now.

We’ll keep our eyes on this story and bring you more if things develop.

Welcome back to the weekly Kickstarter gaming campaign round-up, where I point out some of the interesting things happening right now on Kickstarter.

As always we start with updates on previously covered campaigns, and we’ll start with the good news. Goodwill, The Bird Told Me to Do It and A Little Less Desperation have completed their campaigns this week, successfully, both finishing on Dec 2nd. Agony meanwhile has 4 days to go, and has made over double its target – so we can hopefully expect great things from that game if things go to plan. DämmerLicht has also already reached its (admittedly very small) target since I covered it last week, so well done to the developers of that game. Finally, Dragon Skies VR, the campaign that was offering the game for $1 to every person who backed has finally concluded with a total of $811 pledged. While not an intended use of crowdfunding, it’s an interesting and clever way for them to build a small community for their game off the bat.

Of course, as always there are some campaigns not doing so well. Space Jammers is just over halfway to their target with only 70 hours to go; and the campaign for Overstep was cancelled 3 hours before time of writing as the team behind it felt that they needed to regroup to better explain the game in their next campaign. However this week we have a first in that one of the campaigns I previously covered now redirects to a page saying the the campaign is unavailable due to an intellectual dispute – Bergnein. As the game is based on a real-life place, it’s possible that the owners of the club were not happy to have their club represented without permission and have contacted Kickstarter about it. Stay tuned for more news on what the future will be for this game.

Bitdude

First up, we have a VR game that retells a well known game from another point of view.

We’re all aware of that classic dot-munching game aren’t we? This game tells the same story but from the point of view of one of those dots. Bitdude sees you play as the ‘bit’ aiming to collect and liberate your other bit brethren before ‘Chompman’ can get them to try and satisfy his everlasting hunger. You’re also able to eat the fruit before Chompman too.

Bitdude has a $125 goal, and has made $85 of that so far. It has 25 days to go.

Blanco

Next up we have a simplistic little 3D platformer.

Blanco is a little platformer made in Unity, made to be simple and not overly complicated. There’s not a great amount of information available on the page, but the developer wants to make 32 unique levels for the game. They estimate a release around mid-year of 2017, but say it depends on how well the campaign does.

Blanco has a $1,000 goal, of which it has 29 days left to make. It has yet to raise anything.

Project: Liberty

Next up is an open-world survival and RPG.

A popular genre, Project: Liberty sets you in a world where you are free to do as you please – be a citizen, join a faction, travel, work, scavenge. The developer is not planning to add any sort of story because they want the players to have full freedom in what they do in the game. The world of Monroe will be populated by other players and actions will have effects on not just the player but the area around them, other players and even players who happen upon some stuff later on long after the actions have taken place.

Project: Liberty has made $150 of a strangely unrounded total of $147,592. It has 28 days to go.

One Up This

Lastly we have our card game of the article, and one about telling stories. Something I can always get on board with.

One Up This takes the social gathering situation where a group of friends starts telling stories about things they’ve seen or heard happen, and makes a game out of it. Each card has a situation on it such as “Tell a story about a bad date” and then each player takes turns to tell a story relating to it. The group then votes on the best story of that round and at the end the person who won the most times is the over-all winner of the game. Simple really.

One Up This has 27 days to go, and has made $1,093 of its $12,000 goal.

It seems that recently the PC release of the remastered Darksiders games has been suffering a few performance issues, mainly on cards made by AMD. Now THQ Nordic say that they’ve managed to fix the issue and released a patch.

Players were experiencing some frame spikes on AMD cards, with a few getting particularly severe ones. Now that the patch has been applied, people are beginning to report that the frame rate is keeping a lot more consistent around 60FPS. This bodes well for people who were previously having issues, and unless you hear reports of something going wrong because of an update, it’s always a good idea to keep your games and software up-to-date anyway.

The patch has also fixed an edge case where players couldn’t save their keybindings if they already had a pre-existing configuration set. However, there is still a memory leak issue that hasn’t been quite stamped on. Games seem to be able to run for around 2 hours before crashing to desktop, but given that custom-build PCs are always different to each other it varies wildly from machine to machine. THQ Nordic are still working on the leak issue.

Either way, if you have the game on PC, best log into Steam and let it do its updating work. It’ll save on patching time when the memory leaks do get sorted out after all.