Forza 5 launched with some nasty micro-transactions, made more upsetting by the fact that people already spent $60 to buy it.

Players were pissed, and creator Turn 10 spent months re-tuning the otherwise solid racer. What does this mean for open-world spin-off Forza Horizon 2? No micro-transactions whatsoever.  At first.

Ralph Fulton, of Playground Studios’ (Forza Horizon 2’s primary developer) talked openly about the prospect of being able to spend real money on things—cars, upgrades, and the like—otherwise earn-able in-game at a recent preview event in San Francisco, and he didn’t mince words: the firestorm that came down on Forza 5 provided a valuable—though indirect—learning experience for the Horizon team.

“Obviously we couldn’t help but notice what happened with Forza 5,” he said. “Absolutely. But at the same time, I did feel bad for the team [at Forza Motorsport creator Turn 10]. They worked incredibly hard on that game and then things erupted.”

Their solution, then, is to launch at the end of this month with no in-game micro-transactions, no cars buy-able for real money, whatsoever.

You either earn your way to the top or stall out at the starting line. Why? Playground wants to make sure the game’s economy isn’t broken—that is, obnoxiously slow for people who don’t spend real money—like Forza 5’s initially was. They also want to show fans that this game is designed to be fair and rewarding first and foremost, that it won’t repeat the sins of its series cousin.

“We’re not trying to short-change anybody out of the experience,” he said. “We want a massive amount of content available to everyone on day one.”

“There’s a twofold strategy to that. First, we want to make sure our economy is as we planned it. From the start, we want to make sure progression, the economy, the amount of credits you get in the game—that all of that is fair and rewarding. Our job is to make you feel good about your progression. We need to make sure that’s the case once the game is out in the wild and people can play it.”

“The second half of that is to demonstrate to everyone else—to the players—that we have a game which is balanced such that you never need to spend a penny on it. It will reward you. You will feel great. You’ll feel like a rockstar for the progression you make through it.”

How exactly will that work, though? What’s the difference between “feeling like a rockstar” (or, you know, a famous race car driver, which might have been a more apt analogy) and feeling like you’re being swindled by a used car salesman? Fulton explained it like this:

“We tried to make the game really generous. We give you two or three cars in the first hour. The wheelspin mechanic [that gives you a random reward when you level up] is really important too. Everybody loves a slot machine, and you have that sense that you’ll be leveling up every 15 or 20 minutes. With that, you have this next opportunity to get more cash or even to get a car.”

Horizon 2’s world is allegedly three times larger than that of the first Forza Horizon, too. Fulton boasted that doing everything in it would take at least 100 hours.

Of course for now, that’s just a boast… empty air, no substance. What I can say with certainty is that in my experience of the game’s first hour, rewards came fast and furious. I leveled twice and got pretty good in-game money both times. I also won a championship in my muddy, thoroughly-dented-from-driving-like-a-maniac Camaro, which netted me even more glittering prizes. Also my car’s mutant healing factor kicked in after I crossed the finish line, so I didn’t have to pay pesky repair fees or anything like that.

As is, Forza Horizon 2’s economy—at least, at this early point—inspires confidence. We’re not entirely in the clear, though. Assuming players largely get on well with Forza’s new, more generous side, Playground hopes to add micro-transactions at a later date.

“I’m sure there will come a time when we want to offer our players more choice,” said Fulton. “But we won’t do that at first. The crucial thing is to make this point [about our economy] to our fans.”

An admirable goal. I’ll confess, I’m not in love with the idea of putting micro-transactions in a $60 game at all, but—for the time being—it’s looking like The Way Of The Future. Here’s hoping more creators opt to nail down the, you know, fun side of their reward systems first and then sweat the other details. If Playground keeps to its word, Forza Horizon 2 will at least provide a good model to follow.

In a joint effort between Overkill, the makers of Payday 2, and Dennaton Games, the makers of Hotline Miami, a new DLC has been spawned. A DLC for the former game that will take cues from the latter.

The DLC will release on September the 30th so there’s not long to wait for it either. When asked about the DLC Overkill said “Why is Payday 2 getting Hotline Miami DLC? “Because we at Overkill fucking love Hotline Miami”

There’s no price yet, but given that previous Payday DLC packs have never cost more than £4.99 and a few were even free it’s not expected to be that pricey an add-on. Overkill are known for being pretty generous with their community around the Payday 2 game as well, so that bodes well.

The Oculus Rift’s second version is proving to be pretty popular, enough so that the company has had to cut off a supply flow of their development kit 2s to people who were selling on the hardware for a marked up price. A consumer release has yet to be officially announced, but some sources are suggesting that it could be as soon as mid-spring of next year.

Several places claim to have gotten hold of leaked copies of the VR company’s plan, which will manifest as a limited rollout in April 2015 so that Oculus can gauge the interest for the second version of their headset first before they release it to a wider audience. However that date isn’t a definite and the release could well be pushed back for a summer release instead.

Last week it was revealed that they wish to keep the price within the $200-$400 price range; that’s about £123-£245 for those of us in the UK. As of writing the dev kits are still available to purchase for around £215 or $350.

Smite goes through frequent periods of change and shifts in the meta game, almost every patch Hi-Rez have something new to offer us as players and sometimes it is completely game breaking, or sometimes it does nothing. This patch is so far proving to be the former.

In this patch for Smite we see a rework for two of the most underpowered gods in the game to attempt to bring them back into the meta: Arachne the Weaver and Odin the Allfather. Another change was that Ao Kuang was removed from the game and his abilities were given to Kukulkan whose skins and model look gorgeous. It is a shame his voice pack is a twelve year old boy with a lisp.

The new reworks are great, they take elements from the old kits of both gods. First off, lets take a look at  Odin. For a very long time Odin felt more like a support/tank than a bruiser or damage dealer. His kit was based around a huge team fight ultimate where Odin summoned a ring of spears to envelope enemies and allies alike- nobody could escape unless they jumped out. Odin WAS the king in the ring and thankfully they have not take this away from him. Now however his ring is somewhat more powerful, anybody can shoot into it and Odin’s allies can leave at will while Odin and his enemies cannot. This is a huge and possibly game breaking change as they also took Odin’s crowd control immunity and steroids from him when he is inside the ring, now he is simply immune to being rooted to the floor or slowed which means his ultimate is now even more risky for him to cast. From there the changes continue. He retained 2 elements of his kit- his leap which deals a huge amount of damage still and his circular slow where he swings his spear around himself damaging and slowing enemies hit. From here we come to his second ability which used to be a huge attack speed stim for his entire team, giving them a whooping 55% extra attack speed at max level which made Odin a huge threat in a team fight… now he instead has a shield that once it’s timer expires explodes for an amount of damage depending on how much health the shield has. An added bit of complexity is found in using your first ability immediately after the shield, causing the shield to detonate immediately and deal an unbelievably high amount of damage. Finally there is his passive which used to grant him double the vision radius of other gods, meaning he could forego placing wards around his lane and use the vision to protect himself and anybody else in his lane…. now Odin gains a good physical power buff from killing somebody inside the ring. It feels like they wanted to remove everything apart from his ultimate that made him a team player and instead have turned him into a massive burst warrior which is not actually a bad thing, it just leaves our resident Novindus a bit salty because he loved playing Odin in the support role.

Digmbot’s Thoughs On Odin:

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been killed because and allied Odin trapped me in his spear wall and I couldn’t jump out, leaving me to be focused down by the enemy trapped with us because I was critically injured. The new changes to Odin are welcome, and in my opinion make him much more viable outside of team fights. The Raven Shield/Lunge combo feels a bit overpowered to start with, but can quickly be mitigated by items and alert players. Its still a threat, but it moves from devastatingly effective to simply powerful as the game progresses. Of more concern to me is the new look and feel of his ult. While I appreciate and welcome the ability for allies to simply walk out of the ring, Odin becomes much more vulnerable in his ring than he ever was before. Fortunately, the power buff he receives from his passive in the ring occurs if an enemy dies in the ring. This means that Odin himself doesn’t have to secure the kill. He simply needs to set up the situation where an enemy – or multiple enemies – are caught in the ring for the team to collectively burn down. That being said, during my play with him, I have had serious issues with dropping the ring before the timer on it runs down. This comes under the heading of “A BAD THING”, since Odin is stuck in the ring – unlike his allies. Once you find yourself trapped in that ring with a VERY pissed off Bastet who has a critical hit build, you’ll understand why this is a problem.

Next, we come to Arachne… what is there to say about her before the patch, frankly she was useless. Her ultimate had a short cool down but in reality all it did was pull people into you- which was great early game. In the late game however,  it killed her horribly. Her third ability only had a slow and her two was just a silence leaving gods unable to cast abilities, but as you were on their back this dragged you out of position and killed you more often than not. Finally her first ability, the only ability in her kit that even has a memory in the new rework, was her ability to place eggs on the ground and if someone stumbled into range of them they spawned two spiderlings which went to town on whoever triggered them, this has become a web wall where if someone walks through one of the two web walls you place they are slowed and arachne is given vision of them where ever she is on the map while the fight off the spiderlings. Again this ability feels fairly useless late game except for getting the spiderlings to attack objectives and soak up the initial damage but otherwise all it does is give a slow and vision (which is better than it’s old uses). Her first ability is now an unbelievable attack speed steroid that applies a poison which heals Arachne for a huge amount and can be comboed with her two which is another stim;  however  after a 3 successful basic attacks the victim is wrapped in webs unable to escape for a period of time while Arachne goes to work on them. With these stims Arachne has become a hugely potent threat in the early and mid game. Her passive makes this even more menacing with her dealing extra damage for every 5% of the targets health that is missing, making her very opportunistic in play style and very deadly. Finally we come to her ultimate which is something that has never been seen in Smite before where Arachne climbs up onto a great web above her head gaining immunity to anything but tick damage and she moves insanely fast for a whooping seven seconds! Just like Odin, Arachne needed a rework and to be completely honest she is not a top tier god, but is now perhaps too powerful.

Digmbot’s Thoughts On Arachne:

I’ll be upfront here. I don’t like Arachne, old or new. I do enjoy playing assassins and playing in the jungle, but Arachne is my absolute last pick in that role. That being said, this was a god that was sorely in need of a rework. Her old kit had left her with no place in the meta, and in many of the matches I played she was taken as a joke or to troll people. Her new rework is a vast improvement, but I’m worried Hi-Rez might have swung from one extreme to the other here. The chain effect on her stims makes her unbelievably powerful early game. She also has incredible chase potential, since her ultimate will not trigger towers to attack her while shes crawling on the roof of the screen. Of course, Freya can do the same with her ultimate as she flies. But Freya’s movement speed isn’t buffed nearly to the extent as Arachne’s. Couple this with the fact that you can also buy and use the Sprint active ability before you use her ult and Arachne is basically a roof dwelling, creepy spider version of The Flash. Still, this was a much needed rework. Her spiderlings were simply a nuisance once you got past level 8, and her pull could easily be nullified by an alert player with the right items. All in all, I’ll be interested to see where she slots into the meta with her new kit. But I won’t be playing her.

Last night’s news about a possible Microsoft buyout of the indie developer responsible for Minecraft, Mojang sparked quite a reaction last night. A lot of people do not seem to relish the thought.

Now Bloomsberg have reported that far from Microsoft approaching Mojang as was assumed, founder Notch approached Microsoft first. The report states that Notch “reached out to Microsoft a few months ago, based on a positive working relationship on Minecraft for Xbox,” and that details have been being hammered out ever since that time. If the deal did go through it would also see Notch leaving Mojang entirely after assisting with the transition.

The news comes as a bit of a shock given that Notch has a reputation for being big on indies but not as much on bigger companies, having once famously pulled out of a Minecraft/Oculus deal after the VR company was acquired by Facebook. Personally I am still a tiny bit sceptical, but then $2 billion is a lot of money and you can never really tell.

All we can do now is wait and see whether there’s any truth to the news flying about.