Author: dpugh007

THQ Nordic, the Austria-based company currently in possession of the Darksiders, Red Faction, and de Blob properties, has acquired Koch Media, the parent company of Dead Island, Saints Row, and Metro publisher Deep Silver. The deal, which is set for approval later today, was worth €121 million (approximately $149 million).

The acquisition means that THQ Nordic now owns all of Koch Media’s assets, which includes its studios, intellectual properties, and licenses, such as the Metro game series. Koch Media’s business also includes films, which are created “primarily for German and Italian speaking territories.”

Noteworthy studios that are part of the acquisition include Volition, which is responsible for the Saints Row series; Dambuster, which is behind Homefront; and Fishlabs Entertainment, known for the Galaxy on Fire series.

“I strongly believe that THQ Nordic is a great strategic fit with Koch Media,” said Klemens Kundratitz, Koch Media CEO, who will continue in his role as chief executive. “In addition to having long experience within games development and publishing, THQ Nordic has the skills, willingness and capital to deliver growth in the future.”

Lars Wingefors, CEO THQ Nordic, indicated that Koch’s studios will continue to operate as normal, with both Volition and Dambuster working on new, unannounced AAA games, in addition to 4A’s Metro Exodus.

“Koch Media has a long history of profitability despite losses incurred from some less successful game releases,” he said. “THQ Nordic is convinced that the development studios of Deep Silver as part of THQ Nordic will successfully deliver at least four ongoing AAA game projects including Metro Exodus as well as the next Volition Studio AAA release and the next Dambuster Studio AAA release, together with a number of other game development and publishing titles.”

Last year THQ Nordic announced Biomutant, a third-person action game set in a fantasy universe. It is also has Darksiders 3 in the pipeline, which is being developed by Gunfire Games, a studio made up of many ex-Vigil Games employees, all of which worked on the original Darksiders and its sequel.

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Lawmakers in Hawaii have put forth a pair of bills that, if enacted, would limit the sale of video games with “gambling mechanisms” to minors and require that loot box odds be disclosed. The bills were introduced into Hawaii’s legislature recently by Democrat Chris Lee, who you may remember was the politician who called out Star Wars: Battlefront II for being “predatory.”

The first bill is HB2686. It states that video game publishers have recently begun to use “predatory mechanisms” in their games that are “designed to exploit human psychology to compel players to keep spending money in the same way casino games are designed.” It goes on to say that things like loot boxes–which are popular and prevalent in games today–are similar to slot machines because they let users pay money for a chance at winning something.

“One common variety of this type of predatory mechanism, known as a loot box, can present the same psychology, addictive, and financial risks as gambling,” reads a line from the bill. The document goes on to note that digital stores exist where players can sell the items they acquired through loot boxes and other “gambling-like mechanisms.” In turn, this gives players the ability to “effectively cash out their winnings,” as they might in a casino, the author wrote.

HB2686 goes on to reference the World Health Organisation’s recent announcement that “gaming disorder” is a real mental condition that requires more clinical research. “Mental health experts have raised particular concern about the exposure of youth and young adults to gambling-like mechanisms, which can affect cognitive development and lead to addiction, and to which youth and young adults are particularly vulnerable,” reads a line from the bill.

This bill’s main focus is to prohibit the sale of video games that include a “system of further purchasing, including randomised reward or a virtual item that can be redeemed to directly or indirectly receive a randomised reward,” to people under the age of 21.

The other bill, HB2727, includes much of the same text as HB2686, but it goes further to say that video games with loot boxes should be required to making “certain disclosure[s]” about the odds that players will receive a certain item. More, specifically, this disclosure must be featured “prominently” at the time of purchase and in the game itself when loot boxes appear. If this bill becomes a law, Hawaii’s Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, potentially in conjunction with a third-party, may conduct audits on video games sold in Hawaii to ensure that accurate probability rates are disclosed clearly and transparently.

Both bills note that it is not uncommon for video games to get frequent updates after release. However, HB2727 states that “no video game publisher shall at any time modify a game to contain or otherwise permit the inclusion of additional content for which the game was not appropriately labeled at the time of original sale.”

In the United States and most other parts of the world, video games generally do not disclose things like loot box odds, though regulators in China recently started enforcing this.

Bear in mind that these bills, if they become law, would only apply to games and gamers in Hawaii, whose population is only around 1.4 million. That being said, lawmakers from other states, such as Washington, have also put forth bills with similar language. Lee told GameSpot in an interview that it will be a combined effort to enact the kind of change he wants to see. Already, Lee tells us that he has seen bipartisan support for these efforts. More significantly, he said other elected officials across the country, including US Senators and members of Congress, have reached out to voice their support.

Battlefront II sold many millions of copies, but it failed to meet EA’s sales expectations, a failure that the publisher attributed in part to the controversy over the game’s use of mictrotransactions. Just before the game’s public launch, EA removed all microtransactions from the game, but they are coming back soon.

If the new bills introduced in Hawaii and Washington, as well as other parts of the country and world, become law, it could significantly impact the world’s biggest publishers such as EA, Activision, Take-Two, and others. Just recently, we learned that Activision Blizzard made $4 billion from microtransactions in 2017, while Ubisoft makes lots of money from add-on content as well. Not all of this money comes from loot boxes or what Lee and others might call “predatory” mechanics, but a portion does. So it stands to reason that these companies, and organisations that represent them in Washington–such as the ESA–would want to protect their interests. This is all to say, this is a story that we don’t imagine will fade away anytime soon, but will rather pick up steam and debate in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

We will have more from our interview with Lee in the days ahead. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.

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AMD put out a new version of its Radeon Adrenalin software suite, and with this 18.2.2 update comes a driver that boosts performance in a few popular PC games. Two of the top battle royale games, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite, are getting some extra frames per second on AMD cards. In addition, the newly released Kingdom Come: Deliverance gets proper support and improved framerates.

The benchmarks were performed by AMD internally and the results come out of a system consisting of an Intel Core i7-7700K CPU clocked at 4.2GHz and 16GB of DDR4-3000 RAM on the Windows 10 64-bit operating system. Tests were done with the RX 580 at 1080p and RX Vega 56 at 1440p, and comparisons were made between previous driver versions and the latest version 18.2.2. The following is a breakdown of the benchmark results.

Fortnite

Fortnite is getting a slight boost for AMD users; the new driver shows up to 3% faster performance on the RX Vega 56 video card compared to driver version 17.12.1 at 2560x1440p (1440p) and Epic graphics settings (jumping from an average of 63 FPS to 65 FPS). With the RX 580 at 1920×1080 (1080p) and Epic graphics settings, results show up to 6% faster performance using the new driver, going from a 72 FPS average to 76 FPS.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

When looking at PUBG, the RX Vega 56 showed up to 5% faster performance using the 18.2.2 driver compared to version 17.12.1 at 2560x1440p (1440p) and High settings; the improvement was from 76 FPS to 80 FPS. In testing the RX 580 at 1920×1080 (1080p) and High settings, AMD indicates that you can see up to 7% faster performance with the new driver; results showed the average framerate go from 81 FPS to 87 FPS.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

The RX Vega 56 will get up to 3% faster performance using the new 18.2.2 driver at 2560x1440p (1440p) with Ultra High settings; the average framerate went from 46.1 FPS to 47.4 FPS. When it comes to the RX 580, the new driver shows up to 4% faster performance with 1080p and Ultra High settings, by jumping from an average of 53.5 FPS to 55.9 FPS.

We’ve been covering PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite extensively here on GameSpot, so do yourself a favor and check our camparison between the two battle royale games. We also had a quick conversation about Fortnite’s exploding popularity that you can watch. Kingdom Come: Deliverance just released and had a huge day-one patch and we break it down for you. For more on how AMD’s graphics cards perform, check out our RX Vega 56 review or our RX 580 review.

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Big day-one updates have become relatively commonplace over the past few years, but it’s still notable to see one come in at the size of some games. To play medieval role-playing game Kingdom Come: Deliverance, you’ll have to download a colossal, 23GB day-one patch on PS4–but it includes a whole lot of performance, quest, and mechanics improvements.

Reports of the huge update surfaced recently on ResetEra, where players posted screenshots of their PS4 download screens with hours left before the patch finished downloading. To respond to complaints and frustration, Executive Producer Martin Kilma explained that developer Warhorse has made many improvements and additions since it had to submit a version of the game for certification. As a result, it needed a large first-day patch.

“The production realities of game development mean that a ‘release’ version has to be finalized some time before the actual release date,” he wrote. “We could have used this time to get some rest, or we could use it to create some additional content and sell it to you as DLC, but we went back to the version-to-be-released and worked on it. The results are obvious: quests are more balanced, RPG progression is smoother, the game runs faster and every facet of the game got more polish.”

Further, Will Powers from publisher Deep Silver explained that the patch isn’t entirely composed of new data–in other words, you won’t have 23GB on top of the size of the base game downloaded to your system.

“The way that I’ve been told that the engine works, is it takes the entire game and separates the PKG or ISO into 2GB archives,” Powers said. “If during a patch you so much as alter a 1KB text file within any of these 2GB archives, then you need to reupload the entire 2GB portion… Essentially you are having to redownload the game to replace the existing files. It shouldn’t stack them and inflate on your harddrive, but rather replace the previously downloaded build files.”

Kingdom Come: Deliverance launches tomorrow for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and you can check out its launch trailer at the top of this article. It’s been in development for a long time: it was originally Kickstarted back in 2014, and you can read our 2014 preview of Kingdom Come here.

[News via Eurogamer]

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Pokemon Go is celebrating Valentine’s Day this week with a higher chance of catching certain Pokemon and earning extra Stardust. Alongside this special holiday event, Pokemon Go also received a new update.

Update 0.91.2 on Android devices and 1.61.2 on iOS was released today, announced on developer Niantic’s Twitter account. It’s a small update, and the iOS and Google Play stores haven’t listed patch notes yet, but Niantic states that it focuses on fixing bugs.

Meanwhile, the big holiday event is happening from now until Thursday, February 15. It increases the chances of running into the Pokemon Luvdisc and Chansey, and it grants triple Stardust for each of those that you capture.

In other news, the next Pokemon Go Community Day event is coming up soon. It’ll take place on February 24 and, like the first Community Day in January, players will have a chance to capture a special Dratini that knows a move normal Dratinis don’t know.

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