Video game movies seem to be everywhere right now, with game series such as Assassin’s Creed and Five Nights At Freddy’s having rumoured projects in the works and in the case of the former, a lot of hype beginning to build around a film coming soon to cinemas. Minecraft is another such game to have a project attached, and now we have a speculative release date for it.

Minecraft: The Movie will release on May 24th… 2019.

The official Mojang announcement on the date says, “Yes, that might seem like a long time away, but it just so happens to be the right amount of time to make it completely awesome. And we all want an awesome Minecraft movie, right?”

Yes, that would be nice. Video game movie adaptions don’t exactly have a great reputation – they’re usually terrible and only few ever manage to beat that. Given Minecraft’s open-world, sandbox nature god knows what sort of a story they’re going to pull from it; but open world does mean a lot of possibilities as well so I guess we’ll wait and see.

People attached to the project so far include the LEGO Movie producer Roy Lee doing the production with his Vertigo Entertainment production compnay as well as Jill Messick also helping with production. Other than that, details are still sparse.

Well, at least we’ve some idea now of when we can expect to start seeing actual news about the film. Right?

Recently Ford, the car manufacturer has been sending out an ad campaign with the word ‘Freedom’ emblazoned under an art piece of a wooden watch cabin in the midst of trees tinted orange by a setting sun. It’s beautiful and evokes a sense of getting away from it all with your car… and should also look startlingly familiar to anyone well acquainted with the game Firewatch – it’s artwork made for that game and what’s more it looks like Ford never got permission to USE it in their e-mail ad campaign. Oops.

@BeefythePaladin yes and of course not.

— Olly Moss (@ollymoss) June 27, 2016

It seems that the ad might be just for a single dealership in Quincy, Massachusetts; but when Game Informer called up said dealership they didn’t seem too troubled about it.

“I guess that whoever made the email blast must have grabbed it from the website or something,” they were told, before being hung up on when they asked about their official process for sourcing artwork.

The Firewatch team are at least having a little fun with it on Twitter now, but it’s a stark reminder that even after so many years there are still people on the Internet who see anything they can find on Google as ‘fair game’.

It has previously been mentioned by Blizzard that they were planning to balance the console and PC versions of their game Overwatch separately to avoid accusations of one platform ‘ruining’ it for the other platform. Now the first change in this manner is being made, with an incoming patch set to nerf the damage of Torbjörn’s turret.

Comparing the win rates for Torbjörn, they come in as 59.6% for PC but 68% for consoles. While that doesn’t seem like a big markup, you have to remember just how popular Overwatch is. During its first full release week players totalled up 119 million hours of play across all platforms, and many, many copies have sold. Heck, even as I write this someone else across the room is currently playing the game – 10% is a fairly large percentage in this context.

Game director for Overwatch Jeff Kaplan spoke about the upcoming nerf patch on a Reddit topic saying “In an upcoming patch, we will reduce the damage done by Torbjörn’s turret by 30% on Xbox One and PS4. PC will remain unchanged.”

The patch should be coming sometime towards the end of the month once it clears certification and is just the first step on the plan to balance each game separately.

Separate balancing might sound like a lot of unnecessary work for Blizzard but I’m in favour of it. Remember, PC gamers have more choice of input devices while console players usually only have use of their game controllers. As well, the way you will play games on each platform also varies, with console users having less distractions than a PC player who might also be connected into a Discord buzzing with messages or their Skype. Separate balancing for each version therefore makes sense because each platform is bound to have their own little quirks that could make a hero overbalanced on one platform but not the other. If nothing else, it’s nice to see Blizzard taking a chance by trying something a little bit different with one of their games.

So it’s been a while since I highlighted a mod, but I feel this one deserves a mention purely because I really want to try it out myself.

YellowAfterlife, the creator of the unofficial mod for Vlambeer’s Nuclear Throne, has spent a lot of time and effort reverse engineering the inner workings to create a mod that allows for online multiplayer between yourself and an online buddy over Steam. And that’s pretty exciting. It also includes some bug fixes and a replay mode to record runs which works outside of the co-op parts as well.

For those unaware, Nuclear Throne is a very fast-paced rogue-like shoot em up set in a nuclear apocalypse landscape. You choose ‘mutation’ upgrades after accumulating enough pickups and you use whatever weapons spawn for you as well as whatever ammo does. It’s addicting as hell, and the idea of playing with a friend as well is a very appealing one.

Although the mod is not developed by Vlambeer themselves, the creator has been in contact with Rami Ismail who has been on a legal quest to see if releasing the mod would even be allowed. And it seems that the answer was yes, fortunately.

If you’re as interested as me, go check out the blog entry for Nuclear Throne Together here. I meanwhile am going to see if anyone on my Steam List is interested in two-teaming the wastelands with me.

Last year, Bethesda unveiled Fallout 4 at it’s E3 conference. So many were asking, what could they bring to 2016? The answer: A lot.

Since so much was revealed, I’ll just run down the major bullet points now with more detailed articles to come:

• Dishonored 2 gameplay was shown, with some awesome footage of Emily in action.
• Dishonored 2 will have a sweet collector’s edition featuring Corvo’s mask and Emily’s ring. But supplies will be limited.
• Prey isn’t dead! Its getting a reboot headed by Arkane studios and it looks great.
• Fallout Shelter is getting a huge update and a PC version.
• Fallout 4 is getting about 90 DLC packs. Experiment on people! Build Rube Goldberg machines. It looks nuts!
• Quake is back! Quake Champions was revealed, although we have to wait for Quakecon in August to get more info.
• Skyrim is getting a remaster for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
• The Elder Scrolls Legends is coming, and its now going to be on Mac, Android and iPad as well. Plus, it has a campaign mode!
• The Elder Scrolls Online is getting an update called One Tamriel, which will let players explore the world freely after the tutorial. No level restrictions.
• Doom is getting a DLC called Unto Evil.
• id promises more play modes, playlists, SnapMap updates and more coming to Doom in the next few months.
• Fallout 4 and Doom are getting VR versions for HTC Vive in 2017.

A brief clip during the Quake trailer seemed to tease a new Wolfenstein.

It looks like a pretty epic year for Bethesda, with a little something for everyone.