Today was the first day of the EGX Developer Sessions, and the first thing to take to the stage was an indie title from studio Tarsier Studios – Little Nightmares.

Originally revealed at Gamescom a month ago, Little Nightmares is a suspense-adventure game in which you control the protagonist in her bid to make it through and escape the floating, travelling location of The Maw – a place that draws in people to offer them the fulfillment of their desires. Some remain stuck there though, as prisoners and our protagonist aims to not become one of them.

Speaking of our protagonist, we play as a young child called ‘Six’ throughout the presentation, a small figure in a yellow raincoat. The world around her is full of strange things that she doesn’t understand and that are larger than her, but with some clever thinking and manipulation of objects she may just make it out from The Maw.

The game presented on screen was one that out sized Six greatly, and this was deliberate as it was explained that they had hoped to catch the perspective of childhood – one of uncertainity, size, fear, but also playfulness and adventure. You can move objects around and some you can even break. The aesthetics of the game in both visuals and sound try to keep up an atmosphere that is suspenseful, slightly creepy but not overly horror-themed. The strange world around Six is meant to depict only that she is of an age where not everything yet makes sense to her and it shows.

With a lighter to light the way and a few lanterns, and a whistle to attract things towards her, it’s easy to see that this game’s puzzles will take some figuring out and there is a story waiting to be discovered inside The Maw as you progress. Look forward to this game coming out some time in the Spring of next year.

I’m sure it’s not too long ago that GTA Online had an update for CEO shenanigans… although apparently it was a few months ago. either way, it seems enough time has passed that Rockstar are ready to release yet another big update to the game, this time focused around bikers, their vehicles and all the things biker-related.

This will give players the chance to form their own Motorcycle Clubs, with up to eight players per group. There will be roles for all, from Prospects who are fresh to the club President right at the top. It will also bring (unsurprisingly) new bikes and properties to the game – but also some new co-op and competitive gameplay as well.

“Beyond a range of opportunities to climb the ranks within a gang and build lucrative businesses as a formidable MC, Bikers also includes a selection of appropriately-themed new modes for bikers of all kinds, along with new weapons, styles, tattoos and features to make this a huge addition to the world of GTA Online. And while loyal MCs will fight to expand their foothold alongside black-collar CEOs and Organizations, there’s always another opportunity to make your mark just around the corner. Keep an eye out for high-level, high-risk vehicle based business ventures to spring up across Los Santos and Blaine County soon.”

These new places will be Clubhouses with biker mechanics available as well as some dodgy businesses.

No release dates yet, but keep your eyes open for this one. As if GTA Online wasn’t noisy enough with all the explosions and jets nosediving into the ground…

RuneScape has been going now for fifteen years. It’s been around a very long time, and that means as all games have people who cheat and abuse the rules, it’s got an awful lot of banned accounts in the game – all with their own inventories. Now Jagex, the developers of the game have announced that they plan to do something with all that frozen loot – auction it off!

The way it’ll be done is through an activity called Bank Bidders, inspired by Storage Wars where players will get to bid on the contents of a banned account’s inventory – but they won’t know exactly what it is they’re bidding for until they’ve won it. This could mean you end up with an inventory of nothing, or be lucky enough to get the ill-gotten spoils of an account that was banned for abusing an XP exploit.

It’s not a complete mystery though, the players will at least get told how old the account was when banned and how the account ended up being under the banhammer in the first place.

It’s certainly an interesting way of dealing with the backlog of items lost to the ban void.

Anyone who thought that Valve’s action yesterday against Digital Homicide was going to be the end of the story, think again. The studio’s put out a statement about Valve’s actions and they’re not happy, saying that they’re going to… file another case of legal action this time against Valve.

Anyone else getting deja vu right now?

For those of you who’ve somehow missed out (and why? Go read the other article I linked in the first paragraph!), Digital Homicide have gotten a bit of a reputation for churning out games that are very similar and, it has to be said, not really that great either. The entire debacle started when they took offence at a review of one of their games by notorious critic, Jim Sterling. That ended in a lawsuit filing against Sterling for ‘libel and slander’, one that they’ve turned to crowdfunding to get running (no, seriously).

Due to this, a group of Steam users set up a group called Digital Homicides to act as some sort of self appointed watchdog group for the games the studio churned out. The studio got fed up with this, and filed a second lawsuit against some 100 Steam users for harassment among other things. In order to get the real names of these users they filed a subpoena with Valve to get those names. And Valve, having had enough of this, removed all of Digital Homicide’s games from the Store, as well as all traces of any Greenlight games they put up – past, present, failed, in-progress and successful. Ouch.

Still the funniest thing to have come out of this.

Now on their site the studio has made a statement stating:

“I’d like to give some context to [Valve communications director Doug Lombardi’s] offficial statement: “Valve has stopped doing business with Digital Homicide for being hostile to Steam customers.”” What has actually transpired was a lack of resolution from Steam in regards to moderation of their platform which might sound like a tough job to do, but coming from a company that brags its profitability per employee is higher than google, it just shows a reckless disregard for for the well being of their community for profits.”

They then go on to assert that this means that Valve is supporting the user’s harassment of them, saying that it’s okay for these users to threaten families and the lives of Digital Homicide staff, but that if they attempt to seek reparations that’s not allowed.

“The only thing that prevented me seeking legal counsel for a long list of breach of contracts, interference with business, and anti-trust issues was the fear of losing my family’s income. Since that has been taken away I am seeking legal representation. The case will benefit from a long list of organized documentation of events that have happened over the past 2 years including dates, screenshots, emails, and more on over 100 infractions in need of litigation.”

The statement ends with an e-mail address for anyone interested in taking up the case to contact them.

Let’s get this out of the way now – death threats on the Internet, while often never seriously meant, are not cool and neither are threats against a person’s family or friends. However, deleting fair if negative criticism of a work, as well as threatening legal action against people who don’t like your work is also not cool and does not win people over to your way of thinking.

This probably isn’t over by a long shot. Stay tuned for more updates.

Battle.net has a system set up for their ‘Battletag’, which is the username you display when playing any of Blizzard’s games. Your tag can only be so long (which is why mine is cut down to ‘PredictedCy’ right now), and has a 4-digit code slapped to the end which you either need to memorise or look up every time you’re you’re trying to tell people what your tag is.

Up until recently, you could only change that tag once after making it. It was free to do, but after that change that was it – that was your lot. You could never change it again so if you ended up disliking the change, you were stuck with it. Now however it seems there’s been a quiet little update and you can change your Battletag as often as you’d like – provided you’re willing to pay for it.

The first change is still free, but every change after that needs the new Battletag Name Change which is now available as a Battle.net Game Service for the price of $10. You’re allowed to buy and change your tag as often as you want to, so if you’re the sort to change your mind on your online tag often, you’re now able to keep your Battletag up to date like your other accounts.

Blizzard don’t seem to have announced this change anywhere, but people have been asking for it for a while so I don’t see anyone complaining about it.