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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.
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.
——
As you can see, there’s already some cards made to work together even in this handful.
Of course, the tweet doesn’t include a date and none has so far been announced as to when players can expect to see it available. Numbers for the game were high originally upon the game’s launch in 2014, but the flame seemed to quickly cool as players moved onto other games quickly, so hopefully this’ll boost numbers for the sakes of the dedicated core of players who’ve stuck with it this long.
Of course, there’s a reason why Titanfall is coming to Access and that’s because EA want to keep the game in the gaming spotlight enough to make sure that the sequel Titanfall 2 sells well. That game’s due to be shown off at EA Play probably, and is set to release before April 2017.
This means that Origin Access now has seventeen games available through it, with Titanfall joining Dragon Age Inquisition, FIFA 15, The Sims 3 Starter Pack, all the main Dead Space games, multiple Battlefield games, and more. Subscribers pay £3.99 a month for this, so it’s not a bad deal. Too bad it involves EA and Origin…
So, following on from the announcement of an incoming… well, announcement, Blizzard finally revealed what the big deal was. And as we guessed, it’s the next big Hearthstone installment.
Whispers of the Old Gods will introduce into the game a whole bunch of new cards based upon the ancient and powerful beings that sleep under the surface of Azeroth… and they’re not exactly what you’d call merciful gods either. Among the 134 new cards incoming to decks around you will be four Legendaries based on the ‘Gods’ and a number of cards that contain some corrupted and twisted versions of familiar Minions you might have met before.
As with The Grand Tournament there’s a pre-purchase offer for 50 packs of the new cards at a discount, which will also include an exclusive card back. It’s $49.99 or the equivalent for your region to buy these. Otherwise you’ll need to wait until the release in late April/early May to begin adding these new cards to your collection of playable virtual cards.
Also, check out the trailer if you’ve not already caught it. It sets the atmosphere quite nicely…
