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Around a month ago Mojang tightened up their enforcement of their EULA, coming down hard on servers who were offering what could be described as ‘pay-to-win’ services as well as those keeping parts of the vanilla game locked away for those who hadn’t paid for the privilege of having them. There was some uproar over it of course, but as Mojang better explained and outlined what they considered okay (donations and paying for cosmetic items for example) and not okay (anything that gave unfair advantage or took away from the core game) things died back down to normal. Or so we thought.
Earlier the lead on the Bukkit project, EvilSeph, made a lengthy post on the Bukkit forums announcing that they had decided not to continue developing the mod, which forms the backbone of many, many Minecraft servers out there. He cited concerns over Mojang’s “recent abrupt turn-around” on enforcing the EULA rules and was fearful that they might start deciding what category mods could fall into – mod, plugin or hack of the game; the last of which would violate the EULA rule of not distributing anything that Mojang have made.
He continued on to say that “it’s no longer worth it for us to put up a fight” to keep Bukkit alive, stating that the new 1.8 update was going to bring “large and significant changes” that the team was going to find hard to provided support for, stating that Mojang was giving them a “lack of support… with updates” to help them update Bukkit. He also stated that the team was having difficulties finding volunteers to work on the project now as well and the EULA and 1.8 update combined were the final nail in the coffin for Bukkit.
However, it seems Mojang had other plans and have now stepped in to make sure Bukkit continues, hoping to quash the fears that the EULA changes would greatly affect Bukkit and other similar big mods to the game. For now Minecraft developer and former Bukkit developer Dinnerbone is taking over the lead to make sure that Bukkit is developed to work with all 1.8’s new updates.
I started Bukkit, I’m going to personally see it through for 1.8. Updating it now 🙂
Minecraft lead Jeb publicly tweeted earlier that Bukkit was not EvilSeph’s to shut down as Mojang had owned them for two years; possibly to reassure fans that the mod was not going to become outdated and broken any time soon.
Warren over at bukkit seems to have forgotten that the project was bought by Mojang over two years ago, and isn’t his to discontinue. — Jens Bergensten (@jeb_) August 21, 2014
EvilSeph has since confirmed on his Twitter that if Mojang wish to continue Bukkit he’s all for it. You have to wonder how it got to this point though…
Well this is an announcement that’s brought a smile to a great many faces around the UK.
Mojang posted today on their site that because a great many people had been asking why there had been no details for Minecon posted up yet when Minecon 2013 had already been announced this time last year; they wished to give some more concrete details of their plans. Vu Bui wrote that the next event wouldn’t be until sometime in 2015, as much as Mojang would love to run the event every year this time they were moving it back to give more time for them to give it the attention needed.
What stuck out for most though was that Vu said he was aiming to schedule Minecon 2015 for a spring date. And in London.
For the past few years many British Minecraft players, myself included, have pleaded with Mojang for a Minecon that was to be set in Britain, where many prominent Minecrafting Youtubers were based. Petitions were even set up by some to see if focusing the cry would work. And it seems that Mojang have decided to listen to the players.
I’m already trying to guess what venue they’ll take it to.
A survey of around 2000 gaming developers was done recently by the International Game Developers Association in which a question was asked – who in the industry would you most enjoy working for? The result is that Valve seems to be the place most developers would really love to work at.
The result was part of a survey published this week and the results included many well known names besides Valve, with Double Fine, Activision Blizzard and Bioware all placing within the top ten. The top ten also included ‘the company I’m currently working with’ at number 6 and at number 2, ‘my own company’ which is referring to indie game development. This shows the temptation of starting out on their own is still very appealing to developers currently working in the industry, even if Valve still came out on top in the end.
Asked what he thought of the result, Valve’s Doug Lombardi said: “It’s awesome.”
What about you? Who do you think you’d most enjoy working for if you got the chance to?
The developers of popular little horror game Binding of Issac have slowly been trying to release the game of its original flash build, which has proved to be restrictive enough to need to go resulting in what has been called Binding of Issac: Rebirth. Along the way they’ve found the time to make the graphics 16-bit and added other new things, including a co-operative mode.
The co-op is local and sees Player 1 as Issac (or presumably one of the other playable children) offer up a heart to a friend who then spawns in as a floating fetus-like baby, randomly assigned with any number of different skills and stats. So it could be useful or it could be a hindrance, you just won’t know until you spawn in Player 2.
Below is a video by the McMillens as they demonstrate the co-op in a procedurally generated challenge dungeon. It obviously can’t show off everything but we do get a good look at the basic mechanics and of one of the Player 2 skillsets – a bomb spawner that plants random bombs about the room that can’t be controlled by the player.
About a week ago, a site bearing the name and logo of the old Sierra brand appeared on the Internet. Thing is, Sierra was bought by Activision and shut down a while ago, so its return was a bit of a surprise. But as the site mention Activision on it, people instead turned to asking what purpose Activision had in mind. Now it seems that they want a slice of the indie gaming pie that’s grown so huge in the past few years.
“The indie movement is happening, and for Activision not to be involved in that… it has the big brands sure, but I think it would be a miss if we didn’t look at the indie movement as well.” said Sierra’s MacLean Marshall in an interview.
It was announced at Gamescom last week that Sierra already have two game projects to handle – a new King’s Quest game and Geometry Wars 3. There will also be more projects, based on what catches the eye of the people at Activision or Sierra.
For around half a decade Activision has been narrowing down their IPs to a handful, but it seems now that they wish to broaden their reach once more to fill the gaps in their catalog and target audiences that maybe they aren’t hitting right now.
Senior director of external development Bob Loya said of the decision to move into indie, “We wanted to do this stuff for a long time, and unfortunately there wasn’t a path in Activision to do it because we were focused on the big blockbusters… With digitally distributed games becoming bigger every year, we were able to make a compelling business argument that we could be financially successful doing this, while working with really cool indie talent on great IP.”
So that’s why Sierra has returned – Activision want to start taking on indie talent. Think this’ll turn out well for the indie developers? Tell us below.
