According to Respawn Entertainment, the “biggest” update for Titanfall is on it’s way. And it will include some interesting new additions.

To start with, players that are all about competitive play will now have a Ranked Play mode that will give you challenges and rate you on a 3 star system based on your performance in each match. The real meat of the patch, however, is the new Frontier Defense mode. Frontier defense is a horde mode style wave defense. You can join forces with three other players and fight to defend an objective against waves of AI opponents. Players will be able to change loadouts mid-match at new Loadout Crates as well as raining death from above after death, as they return to the battlefield in a dropship. Respawn promises new, never before seen enemy types in Frontier Defense as well. Suicide Spectres, Nuclear Titans, ranged Mortar Titans and more will do their best to make sure you and your teammates have a bad day.

In addition to the new modes, there are new Titan OS voices coming, as well as Private Match Burn Cards, new Titan Insignias and the ability to bring up a full screen minimap. Two new game modes, Deadly Ground and Marked For Death Pro were also announced. Deadly Ground sees the floor covered in deadly electric fog, forcing pilots to use their wall running skills wisely. Marked For Death Pro is a classic round-based version of Marked For Death. A host of other improvements are being added to the back-end of the game as well.

Are you excited to fall again? Or are you over the giant mech/pilot parkour fest?

Its been a long road for the teams fighting to reach the Smite North American LAN Tournament. Grueling weeks of competition all leading up to a chance to compete for a prize pool currently worth over $1 million dollars. For those teams that didn’t perform well enough to guarantee a slot, there is still a chance to get in via the Wildcard series. Unfortunately, for Team Five Angry Men, that chance has just been swept aside. Following questioning from some members of the eSports team, and an investigation by the Hi-Rez Admin team, it has been discovered that in Week 7 (oct 11, 2014) Team Acceleration “threw” their match against Five Angry Men.

Apparently, this was orchestrated by team manager “Clow” in order to improve their chances against VishusNDelishus. Upon examining the chat logs, it was discovered that members of Five Angry Men and Acceleration had in fact been in contact before the game, discussing a “fix”.  As a result, Five Angry Men have been stipped of their winnings in weeks 7 of the Challenger’s Cup and have been discqualified form the Wildcard event in North America. Team Acceleration meanwhile, will be stripped of all wins in week 7 as well as receiving a one year suspension of competition eligibility, to be lifted on Oct 21, 2105. This affects Jellly, oddtunes, mystx, radiomyst and dre10, collectively referred to as Team Acceleration.

The Wildcard will proceed with 3 teams.

Hi-Rez’s full log of the incident can be found here.

Five Nights at Freddy’s became an almost overnight hit. This was down to coverage on Youtube by content creators with big userbases and its fairly unique mechanics – you couldn’t move, only fend off the homicidal animatronics as they came for you. And despite hints, we never found out if they were faulty or haunted…

There’s going to be a sequel too, for which creator Scott Cawthon has been releasing teaser images at a steady rate. And now? We have a trailer and a handful of screencaps to boot.

Let’s hope that this time, we’re ready for Freddy… both of them…

Death threats on the Internet are a thoroughly condemned thing. Simply: Don’t do them, they lead to no good and they’re generally seen as a terrible way to act.

So when Mike Maulbeck of Code Avarice saw that his company’s game of Paranautical Activity was mislabelled on Steam as Early Access you’d think he would be angry. So angry that he actually tweeted out a stream of ranting that ended with a death threat being made against Gabe Newell himself. Steam’s response? They’ve basically ‘unreleased’ Paranautical Activity from Steam.

There had previously been some tension between Steam and the developers over a publishing deal with Adult Swim that Steam was afraid might cause a loophole in the Greenlight system some time last year. While they got past it, it seems that the bad blood hadn’t quite been forgotten and now it’s cost Code Avarice dearly.

As a response Maulbeck has since stepped down from the company, leaving a final blog post message to announce this and reassure the world that he “won’t receive any money from the sale of Paranautical Activity or any future games CA develops, I won’t be consulted on business decisions, and I won’t have any hand in development” in an attempt to make sure that the entire company won’t suffer from his actions.

” I feel is it my responsibility to step down from Code Avarice completely so that Steam has no reason to harbor any more ill will towards the company, and maybe even if we can’t see Paranautical Activity restored, at least future Code Avarice games may be allowed onto the platform.”

Seems like a wise move on his part, and it’s a shame that this happened. While not a great game, Paranautical did have some promise as a decent game. In the end this probably stands as a wonderful example of why being aware of what you say on the Internet is a very good habit to get yourself into.

Code Avarice Blog – “Mike is leaving Code Avarice”: [x]

So, tonight it was announced that the Human Resources Kickstarter was pulled due to a lack of funding (two weeks before completion).

Now before I get people calling me a Grintch (I am, Bah Humbug!), there is a reason for how I feel about this… It’s called Planetary Annihilation!

funded – 247%
pledged – $2,229,344 (of $900,000 goal)
backers – 44,162
Funded – Sep 14 2012

Planetary Annihilation, the successor of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, was a massive draw on Kickstarter, as you can see above…

But THEN, they released it on STEAM, for… wait for it… £40 ($60) on Early Access, After making $2,229,344 on Kickstarter.  Hell, it was £20 for Kickstarter backers, so they actually paid for the game TWICE!

All this and two years down the line, PA is STILL not complete, its only just gotten its offline mode and the game is atrocious

“Today, we busted out a new Kickstarter for a new strategy game called Human Resources. Built on the same engine that you helped us create for Planetary Annihilation, Human Resources expands on the scale and destruction you’ve come to love in exciting and different ways. We realize that some of you might take this news as concerning, so we wanted to come out and say this: work on Planetary Annihilation will not stop if Human Resources funds; both games will have a team dedicated to these separate projects”

So, Human Resources was a second team?

Ok, lets quickly look at the now cancelled Kickstarter for it

Now, I admit, the game looks cool (actually, its looks like the Planetary Annihilation we wanted and mainly thats because it uses the game engine made for it)

But there are two reasons Human Resources failed.   GREED and GREED

The loyal fans that would have backed this in a heartbeat didn’t, because of the unfinished game Planetary Annihilation.

The fans with more money than sense though, even most of them saw through the kickstarter rewards this time:

They start off fairly reasonably (ok, I backed it too)

Then it ramps up

Then it starts to get a little crazy…

$125 pledge to get a tshirt and soundtrack?   Oh and team colours…

The mini figures and USB stick look fun, but that’s a LOT of money

Ok, this is getting silly now…

Umm…   No!

Ok, this is getting stupid

I’ve heard a lot of Indie devs talking about the demise of Kickstarter, even on our own Indie Game Show on a Sunday.   And Uber Entertainment prove why this is happening.   They aren’t being realistic!

They made $2.2mil just from the KICKSTARTER for Planetary Annihilation.  Thats MORE than enough to release a game of the quality PA should have been.  But this is hurting the smaller developers more than anything, as backers are starting to lose faith in Kickstarter and what its actually for.  Helping small companies bring us good new games and getting going.  Its not just Uber Entertainment, 22Cans did the same with Godus last year and there are many others.

So while I am a little disappointed that another potentially good RTS has died, I am laying the blame squarely on the developers this time.