Well it was a fun 12 years, but it's time to turn off the lights and put the key under the door. #RIPMaxisEmeryville

— Guillaume Pierre (@MaxisGuillaume) March 4, 2015

With those 117 characters, SimCity lead gameplay scripter and designer Guillaume Pierre revealed the sad news that Electronic Arts has closed down SimCity studio Maxis Emeryville. After 12 long years, the company have apparently decided to close the studio in order to consolidate Maxis IPs into existing Maxis studios.

EA confirmed the closure and intentions with the following statement:

Today we are consolidating Maxis IP development to our studios in Redwood Shores, Salt Lake City, Helsinki and Melbourne locations as we close our Emeryville location. Maxis continues to support and develop new experiences for current Sims and SimCity players, while expanding our franchises to new platforms and developing new cross-platform IP.

 

These changes do not impact our plans for The Sims. Players will continue to see rich new experiences in The Sims 4, with our first expansion pack coming soon along with a full slate of additional updates and content in the pipeline.

Although Pierre had additionally tweeted “everyone’s out of a job” in reference to the studio’s employees, EA included a further paragraph in their statement in regards to the affected employees:

All employees impacted by the changes today will be given opportunities to explore other positions within the Maxis studios and throughout EA. For those that are leaving the company, we are working to ensure the best possible transition with separation packages and career assistance.

At this time, it’s unknown how many employees will be affected by the closure.

Maxis was founded by Will Wright and Jeff Braun in 1987, and was acquired by EA in 1997. The studios are well-known for their town-building and life-sim franchises, SimCity and The Sims respectively; but following the adoption of a new engine in their latest title, Sims 4, causing a large loss of content from that found in previous games; and a disastrous attempt to revive the SimCity franchise in 2013 as an online game which was plagued by numerous technical and design flaws as well as server instabilities, Maxis’ future under EA has found itself on an unfortunate downward spiral.

This is the Third (and final) installment of the Five Nights at Freddys trilogy. This game is set 30 years after the first game. The Freddy Fazbear Pizza incidents are a distant yet horrifying memory. A man decides to make a horror house themed around the dead pizza place. They try to find authentic Freddy Fazbear pizza items. They found a few masks here, a few pictures there, some voice recordings. Until they suddenly found one -An animatronic that looks like a golden Bonnie. Thats where things start going down hill. It’s not even turned on and yet it’s… moving… and there are other things bumping around and the systems are all going screwy.

The gameplay is vastly different from the other two games while also keeping some things. Scott Cawthon listens to all of our complaints on how we can’t pay attention of the cameras so he makes the game fully about the camera system while also adding a few other things. You have to pay attention to 3 different systems Video (which is the one thing he keeps throughout the games), Audio which is the only thing to protect you from the animatronic (it distracts him), and Ventilation, if the Ventilation goes down you start to black out and hallucinate. This game only has one Animatronic but it’s not the only thing you need to worry about. Other animatronics which are now hallucinations are back (Foxy, Chica, Freddy, and Ballon Boy (there are more but you go have fun finding them). The only way to avoid them is to ignore them which means switching cameras fast. This makes the game quite stressful because if you stare at them for to long then you get attacked forcing some of your 3 systems to go down. But if you ignore them then you might miss seeing where our Bunny Friend (named Spring Trap) is and that’s not quite a good thing. This does make the game more suspensful because if any of those things go down it takes time for you to reboot them back up and with multiple systems being down it takes all the more time being away from the camera. But if you go back to the camera you might get attacked by an halusination and if that happens more systems go down which takes longer to defend yourself and if… well I think I made my point. Theres not much to the story sadly, though it does give you some closure explaining to you on what happened to the animatronics and what happened to the murderer. I won’t say anymore then that.  If I had to give this game a score out of 10 it would be a 6.5/10. The gameplay has vastly been improved and it’s quite scary and suspensful. Sadly since I’m a story whore this lost alot of points for me. Anyway this is Nekokitwolf sayyyyinggggggggggggggggg caio.

Now you can get drunk with you favorite Dwarf and sing along with the songs you heard in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Bioware created a place on its website where you can download the tavern songs for free.

The songs include “I Am The One,” “Grey Warden,” and “Empress of Fire” among others, and you have until February 9th to download the MP3s.

Players pretty much guessed it but Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns being an expansion is confirmed! At the “Beyond The Point of No Return” panel at PAX South, ArenaNet president Mike O’Brien told players the good news and Guild Wars 2 Game Director Colin Johanson went over the major features coming in the expansion. Players will be heading into The Heart of Maguuma where players can fight Mordrem minions and discover allies from ancient civilizations. From the announcement trailer, it looks like the Mursaat (or whatever those spectral beings are) are probably a new ally. There will be challenging group content, open world jungle maps, new events, a new story line, and new boss battles.

Max level and gear stats are not changing but progression shall be done using the Mastery System. The Mastery System is available at max level and is account based so you only need to apply points once if you have many characters. This system is used in order to adapt and survive in the Maguuma Jungle. Points for this system are earned by doing Heart of Maguuma jungle content. There are abilities such as hang gliding and combat abilities such as tearing bark off a heavily armored Mordrem. Also, precursors can be earned from the Mastery System via building and completing new collections. Speaking of precursors, Johanson confirmed new legendaries and new legendary precursors in Heart of Thorns.

Specializations are another form of progression being introduced in the expansion. Players will be able to gain access to a new weapon that was unavailable to their character. There will also be new traits, skills and unique mechanics. Some specializations described in the panel for Rangers is the ability to use a staff and Druid Form which provides new skills and mechanics; Necromancers will be able to use greatswords. From the trailer, it seems that Engineers will be able to wield hammers.

The expansion introduces a new heavy armor class: Revenant. Destiny’s Edge member Rytlock Brimstone was confirmed to be a Revenant when he returns from the Mists by Johanson at the panel. Revenants are able to channel the powers of the Mists as well as powers from past Guild Wars great legends such as Jalis Ironhammer (from Guild Wars Prophecies and Eye of the North) and Mallyx the Unyielding (from Guild Wars: Nightfall).

The PvP side is receiving new things as well! For WvW, there will be a new borderland in the borderland rotation where keeps have distinct themes. Certain abilities can be obtained when in control of objectives around a keep. For example, Johanson said the Earth Keep will raise up parts of the ground to defend itself when attacked if players control the shrines around the keep. Core changes to WvW will also be made in order to promote holding objectives. For sPvP, there will be a new mode called Stronghold which is a throwback to Guild Wars 1. Players will be able to hire troops with supply in order to assault the enemy team’s keep in order to defeat the enemy guild lord for the win. Guild teams will be available for this mode in order to see who makes it to the top of the leaderboards.

Finally, there will be Guild Halls. Guild Halls can be upgraded and can be a centralized place where guilds can organize and head out for guild missions and Heart of Maguuma jungle content.

In a post interview by Twitch, Mike O’Brien said that the first (public) playable version of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will be available at PAX East. If you missed the panel and want to see it for yourself, you can check it out on Guild Wars 2’s Twitch channel!

As a part of a larger investigation involving the attacks that brought down the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live last year, UK’s South East Regional Organized Crime Unit arrested an 18-year-old male last week.

The statement released to USA Today cited not only the DDoS attacks on Sony and Microsoft but also numerous swatting offenses

At this time, we are unsure if formal charges have been made against the teen, but the suspected charges will be unauthorized access to computer material contrary to section 1 of Computer Misuse Act 1990, unauthorized access with intent to commit further offenses contrary to section 2 of Computer Misuse Act 1990, and threats to kill contrary to Section 16 of Offenses against the person Act 1861.