The DLCs were announced a few weeks ago, and now we finally have the trailer for the first DLC public.

Automatron will release on March 22nd and will pit you against the mysterious Mechanist who has assembled an army of hostile robots and released them into the Commonwealth to cause havoc. You will be able to find these robots, destroy them and take their parts to construct your own robotic companions to fight back against the enemies of the Commonwealth. The trailer showed off the construction screen as well as many different scenes that resemble what I imagine Robot Wars would look like in the Wasteland. This content will be available to purchasers once they get their character to Level 15, which means you’re not going to meet a mechnical death machine just outside of Vault 111 with your fresh character.

Either way, I’m looking forward to making my own robotic companion. If you’re not so much, then maybe the following two months’ DLC packs – Wasteland Workshop in April, and Far Harbor in May – will be more up your street.

Square Enix have put up an offer for an Easter bundle of games at quite a good price. The catch is that it’s a mystery box on offer.

The mystery box in question can be acquired from the Square Enix Store and will include five Steam game keys for just the low price of $9.99/£4.99/€6.49. Thing is, until the buying period ends, you won’t know WHICH games you’re getting keys for. So it’s a game of chance – will you get some good stuff or things that you’re not so interested in?

It’s not the first time SqEnix have done such a box, the Christmas one contained Thief, Final Fantasy 13, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, Life is Strange Episode 1, and Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn inside. There were also discount codes for the other four episodes of Life is Strange, as well as Just Cause 3 inside as well.

You’ve til midnight PST on March 20th to decide. Is it enough to tempt you?

The Internet and new media have brought a lot of new things into the world. Now we get to find out if online accounts can be considered transferable property.

A Twitch streamer by the name of Ara_Gaming took a few months hiatus while she sorted out some things in her personal life, mainly divorce proceedings with her current husband. Yesterday that hiatus ended and the stream went live… only it wasn’t “Ara” streaming.

It seems that the Twitch account was wholly owned by an LLC that had been set up in the names of both the husband and the streamer, and as part of the divorce proceedings the husband was awarded the account. Neither is the original streamer allowed to stream on any other account for five years as a part of a non-compete clause.

This information has come from ‘nanospynet’, a user who claims to be the said husband. Because he himself is not a streamer and no longer owns the LLC, he has asked his cousin to take on the account and it was her who streamed last night.

Understandably the nearly 30,000 followers of the account weren’t happy and the chatroom moderators almost all chose to revolt against the new operator of the channel, other followers also took to Twitter to spread news of this ‘injustice’ via the #aragate hashtag.

Whether or not this is even allowed has also come into question, as Twitter’s sign-up says that ‘a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, freely revocable license’ is granted to new broadcasters. The husband is apparently in talks with Twitch now to sort out that particular snarfu.

Either way, this is possibly one of the first of its kind to occur so who knows what’ll happen. The original owner of the account seems to have stayed quiet so far, so maybe they’ve a different story.

We’ll keep you updated if any more news emerges.

Seems there might be bad times ahead at Carbine Studios – known for their sci-fi MMO Wildstar. NCSoft announced today that it has reduced the staff at the studio, and it’s not just a few people either. It’s around seventy, which accounts for about 40% of Carbine’s strength. Ouch.

Wildstar of course launched well, but has hit harder times recently. The game was due to come to China as well but that’s been cancelled along with the staff cuts and when it went free-to-play about six months ago it was in a bid to try and attract players to the game. Despite reassurances that the staff losses were just down to ‘restructuring’ we all know that’s the word that studios use when they’ve had to lay off staff because things aren’t performing quite as hoped.

The ‘restructuring’ was announced in a post on the Wildstar forums, in which NCSoft said that the cuts are related “to Wildstar‘s evolution from a product in development to a live title, to the cancellation of work to bring Wildstar to China, and to the overall performance of Wildstar since launch in 2014.” They do say however that they remain “committed to the game” and will be delivering some major updates and community events in coming weeks.

The full statement from NCSoft regarding the layoffs is below:

Earlier this morning, Carbine Studios completed a reorganization of its operating structure. Moving forward, the studio will focus on operating and updating WildStar as a live game in the US and Europe. As part of this change, the studio has canceled its plans to bring WildStar to China.

 

Unfortunately, as a result of these changes, we’ve had to reduce staff. These cuts are directly tied to WildStar’s evolution from a product in development to a live title, to the cancelation of work to bring WildStar to China, and to the overall performance of WildStar since launch in 2014.

 

These kinds of decisions are exceptionally difficult. The talented and passionate professionals who are impacted by these cuts have been valuable team members and respected colleagues. We wish everyone well for the future and will be providing severance and employment search assistance.

 

As for WildStar, we remain committed to the game. Over the next few weeks and months we will deliver a significant update to the game, kick off a variety of community events, and continue our work on new content that we will talk more about in the near future.

Obviously yesterday’s announcement of Hearthstone’s latest expansion meant that we got to see the first of many new cards. Some are brand new while others… look a little familiar.

Check them out below, they’ll all Neutrals so far so you could find use in any of them:

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Beckoner of Evil

Minion, 2 Attack, 3 Health, 2 mana cost.

Battlecry: Gives C’Thun +2/+2 wherever it is.

Corrupted Healbot

Mech Minion, 6 Attack, 6 Health, 5 mana cost.

Deathrattle: Restores 8 Health to the enemy Hero.

Polluted Hoarder

Minion, 4 Attack, 2 Health, 4 mana cost.

Deathrattle: Draw a card.

Twilight Elder

Minion, 3 Attack, 4 Health, 3 mana cost.

Gives C’Thun +1/+1 wherever it is at the end of your turn.

Validated Doomsayer

Minion, 0 Attack, 7 Health, 5 mana cost.

Minion’s Attack is set to 7 at the start of your turn.

C’Thun

Legendary Minion, 6 Attack, 6 Health, 10 mana cost.

Battlecry: Deals damage equal to this Minion’s Attack randomly split between all enemies.

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As you can see, there’s already some cards made to work together even in this handful.