Well, this is quite a blow to fans of the Fable series.

Today Microsoft have announced that the upcoming game Fable Legends has stopped development, and what’s more Lionhead Studios could also be no more soon. All this comes from an update that’s detailing changes to the company’s internal development studios, one of which is Lionhead. The update also mentions that other studio Press Play is a certain to be shut down:

After much consideration we have decided to cease development on Fable Legends, and are in discussions with employees about the proposed closure of Lionhead Studios in the UK. Additionally, we will close Press Play Studios in Denmark, and sunset development on Project Knoxville.

 

These have been tough decisions and we have not made them lightly, nor are they a reflection on these development teams – we are incredibly fortunate to have the talent, creativity and commitment of the people at these studios… These changes are taking effect as Microsoft Studios continues to focus its investment and development on the games and franchises that fans find most exciting and want to play.

Fable Legends would have been a multiplayer title that would have taken the series in a new direction – pitting the majority of players as heroes against their sole opponent who would have been controlling the monsters and other various hazards. It even had a beta and a lot of time had already been spent promoting the game to players so it’s a shame to see all that effort going to waste.

Press Play was currently working on a third-person multiplayer survival game codenamed Project Knoxville, chosen through a fan vote campaign. With the studio’s closure it seems this project might be dead in the water as well.

Of course, given the wording of the update, it’s not yet certain that Lionhead will be closed although Microsoft say they are in talks with the studio discussing its closure.

Either way, it’s a sad day for anyone who was looking forward to the next Fable game and our thoughts are with those people at Lionhead and Press Play.

Those of you who remember our Indie Game Show might remember one of our guests Shaz.

He came presenting his local co-op game BFF or Die in which teamwork is required to progress through all the levels and screwing over your teammates might mean screwing yourself over too. Now the 2-4 player game is up on Steam Greenlight waiting to get approved. It is a very good game, and I can say that having actually given it a try at one event. Go give it a look even if you don’t have some nearby friends to play this game with – it also comes with a singleplayer mode.

——

BFF or Die Greenlight: [x]

Yeah, I know. We’ve not even had the first one yet.

The news comes from The Tracking Board who say that New Regency is “officially underway with plans” for another film and will work with Fassbender, who is doing the first one, through DMC Films to produce the sequel. The names of Jean-Julien Baronnet (Ubisoft Motion Pictures) and Frank Marshall, a big-time Hollywood producer have also been linked to the supposed project.

Of course at this point nothing is properly confirmed and as I said, we’ve not even had the first one out yet. There’s every chance that any sequel project currently underway could be shelved if the first one doesn’t do so well.

Speaking of the Assassin’s Creed film that we do know is coming, that’s due at the end of this year on December 21st. It’ll follow Callum Lynch, a guy with assassin’s memories dating back to 15th century Spain. It’s not really set around any of the games, but it has been confirmed to exist in the game’s expanded universe.

Either way, we’ve a long time to go yet to see whether or not a sequel exists or indeed if the first film will be successful.

After declaring that they were going to tackle the issue of rage-quitters in Street Fighter V last week, Capcom asked for the community’s help in identifying people who were doing it through submitting video evidence for them to look at. Now it seems that they’ve gotten enough evidence because they’ve posted about how they plan to punish people caught at it.

The punishments will be handed out to those people who have a high win ratio, but also a high disconnection rate (around 80-90%) – hopefully missing out those people who genuinely are having connection issues to their games. As for the nature of the punishments, Capcom will be docking League Points from those they deem guilty of this, which has a negative effect on online rankings – a punishment that’s already been handed out to around 30 players. Those who log in to find that they’ve been hit with this can consider this “a warning” say Capcom.

Speaking on the issue Capcom wrote: “Ever since last week, we’ve received a ton of videos both here on Unity and our social channels which we’ve been able to cross reference with our data and put together a clear picture as to which players are abusing the system. Though we were pretty confident that players in our system who had high disconnect rates were indeed those who were attempting to avoid a loss at all costs, we didn’t want to start dishing out any punishments without clear proof. We’ve been working hard with the SFV server team to put together a process to pinpoint users who are clearly abusing the system and we’re happy to announce that we can now do this without any proof of video.”

While Capcom will now be carefully monitoring accounts with high disconnect rates, they do say they’re wanting to find a more permanent solution for the rage-quitting problem though. They’ll be keeping the community up to date on their progress towards this goal.

Seems some big news for Hearthstone is due to be announced in just under a week’s time.

Blizzard have announced that there will be a big announcement related to the game coming on March 11th, just before the start of the Americas Winter Championship. It’ll be coming to the Hearthstone Twitch channel on the say, around 10am PST.

“Something inside the Tavern stirs…  what could it be? Don’t worry – you won’t be alone! Our very own Lead Designer Ben Brode and Senior Producer Yong Woo will kick off the weekend of the Americas Winter Championship with an announcement about what’s coming next for Hearthstone,” says the Battle.net post.

It’s not the first time Blizzard will have announced something new for the game just before a tournament, and if patterns hold true it’s likely that we’re about to get the announcement of a new single-player adventure expansion or maybe the next set of cards – along with some previews of upcoming new cards and new Keyword effects. With the new Standard coming into effect they do need to bolster it with some new cards after all.

As for the tournament itself, it’ll be taking place over three weekends in March with winners up for a chance to make it to this year’s Hearthstone World Championship at Blizzcon.