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You expect football games to continue well-known faces in there, it’s kind of what a lot of the advertising gets built on. The licenses to use footballers’ likenesses must be drawn up beforehand though and it seems that Konami might have missed a step somewhere because one footballer featured in Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 says he is going to sue them for using his likeness without getting his permissions first.
Diego Maradona is a retired professional by now, but is in PES2017 and apparently Maradona says that he was not asked permission to be added to Konami’s game. He is in as one of the ‘Legends’ in myClub mode alongside other retired players such as Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry, Ronaldo, and Gary Lineker. It seems that Maradona only became aware of his inclusion a few days ago and made a post on Facebook in which he said that his lawyer would “initiate appropriate legal action” against the game studio.
Konami however have said that they did get permission and released the following statement out to Kotaku:
“At this time, there have been news that in Winning Eleven 2017 (international title: PES 2017 Pro Evolution Soccer) there is one player that is being used without permission; however, our company is using [this character] appropriately, with the basis of the license within the contract.”
What contract they’re talking about is unknown, but it could be that they approached someone who represents Maradona as opposed to the player themselves and the player simply wasn’t aware of it. Who knows? Either way, this will probably be concluded quickly and quietly behind the scenes so unless it blows up, this probably means that at worst Maradona could not be in future PES games.
Welcome to your weekly update in the world of gaming Kickstarter campaigns.
Starting with our previously covered campaigns, there’s not too much news to report on this week. One campaign has concluded a success, with Village Attacks having made over £500,00 to bring the game to life. Another campaign has unfortunately concluded having missed its goal and that’s Passenger – one that I thought had a great concept. Unfortunately there’s been no updates on the game’s future since conclusion, so we can’t know if it’ll see the light of day in another way eventually.
Two of the campaigns that are getting close to ending are also at different ends of the scale to each other. Pine has 7 days to go and a fair chunk of change to make, but it’s far from struggling to reach its goal. As I mentioned last week though, Dragon Lore needs to make some serious progress if it is to have any chance of being successful. With 31 hours to go at time of writing, I’m not sure it can.
Okay, so technically this one’s not a game, but bear with me.
Gametee are a small gaming brand from the midlands of England who have run previous successful campaigns. This time they’re funding some stylish leather-bound notebooks for tabletop gamers. Each comes with a clip as well to mark your place as well as the ability to change the notebook inside the leather binding once you’ve used up the pages of the one you’ve been using. Gametee are known to me and I’ve always found their stuff to be high-quality.
Originally the asking target was £7,500, but I can confirm that they reached that almost immediately. The campaign’s running for another 27 days though, so go check it out.
Next, with an actual game we have one that aims to recreate the magic of SNES era titles.
A platformer, Attack On Kitten sees you play as Kat the Cat Knight aiming to save the Cat Kingdom from the fins of an evil goldfish called Xerxes. Using magical cats as weapons, you need to make your way through the 2D levels. All of the weapons comes with names, but feline and cat-pun weapon names – and there’s even a demo if you wish to try before you pledge.
Attack On Kitten has made $7,413 of its $50,000 goal and has 21 more days to run.
This one is a metroidvania-type game that unites two people together.
Outbuddies’ story happens in Bahlam, a sunken city located deep in the South Pacific Ocean. Our main protagonist is a marine biologist named John who wakes up in the sunken city 36,000 feet under the sea after a shipwreck. He’s severely injured and somehow connected to a supernatural Buddy-system that enables John to make use of various abilities like hacking, scanning and telekinesis.
Outbuddies has a €5,000 goal with 29 days more to go before it finishes. It has made €965 so far.
Finally we have a card game about controlling the media and collecting people parts for a skin suit.
A game for 3-7 players, this plays on the big conspiracy theory of lizard people secretly controlling mass media and passing among us in human skinsuits. Play is done by using the cards in your hand, along with the cards played by the ‘editor’ to try to construct the best headline. If you win the editor’s decision, you get rewarded with a human body part – and the first to be able to build an entire body wins the game!
Lizard People had made $1,041 and has a $15,000 goal to reach in 27 days.
Well, Rockstar did say before that they were planning to bring some of the most popular cars back into GTA Online and now the Infernus has officially entered. Only for some reason it can’t seem to turn left.
Costing $915,000 players have been snapping it up and taking it for a spin only to find that it vibrates like hell, and while taking right turns is fine, the Infernus really does not like turning left at speed. At all. If you try it spins out for some reason, and it seems the issue is down to one of the rear wheels. More specifically it’s down to the wheel’s damage value which seems to be permanently stuck on a certain damaged value, which is a very odd little bug. There is a player-available solution to fix the turning ability though and it’s to break the other rear wheel too. Which doesn’t sound that great but at least it means you can expect similar levels of skid in both directions that way, and it’s probably more exciting to drive that way too.
Rockstar are aware of the issues and are seeking the fix as we speak so hopefully the Infernus will soon live up to its fan favourite legacy.
One of the things that was revealed this weekend at EGX Rezzed was the new game from Rocketwerkz, and today Dean Hall took to the stage to talk about it.
Stationeers will be a space station-building and management game, which can be played singleplayer or with other people cooperatively. Although it’s currently not out for people to buy, Hall did note that they are planning to bring it to Steam Early Access in the near future (“two to three months from now” was what was said).
The game will contain a lot of elements, including the building of the station itself before you then begin the process of adapting it for habitation. Settlers will come with traits both positive and negative to help shape gameplay and all will have needs, such as oxygen, hygiene, hunger, thirst and sanity to keep an eye on.
Hall said that the aim was for the building part to take place in stages, frames first, then layers on top – so construction should take place over time and the the growth of the station will be done over time – it will develop almost naturally and without a set order.
Servers at the moment are only able to support up to 16 people, but Rocketwerkz want to make them much larger in future and let players have their own servers with customisable options – if you don’t want something you can just toggle it off from the console screen. They are also looking to borrow the idea of ‘Realms’ from Minecraft (whose biggers modpacks were admitted to be inspiration for elements of Stationeers), so you can rent server space to save space on your machine.
While currently things like the building, basic placeholder characters and more are already in the game that was brought to try on the EGX Rezzed floor, more things were said to be coming during development – such as power, radiation, new characters, shuttles and more. Computers with logic circuits were also said to be on the schedule which will probably excite some players. Beyond that, there are also plans for Steam Workshop support and tech trees for the game. There will also be the ability to designate your station as a facility – for example a prison or tourist resort. And with the shuttles you can move from buildings in deep space to planetside and back.
Stationeers should cost around $20-$25 on Early Access release (at least this was the total Dean Hall estimated) and should spend about a year in Early Access once out. Of course, we all know plans go awry all the time so who knows really? All I do know is that Stationeers looks like a good bit of fun.
