This week had a bit of everything: PR disasters, accusations, a crashy-but-exciting No Man's Sky update, a microstransaction controversy, and another large Geralt. It's all of 2019 so far in a nutshell. Here's what happened:
• Subnautica dev to G2A: 'You now owe us $300,000' (opens in new tab)
Key reselling marketplace G2A recently challenged developers to prove they were the victims of credit card chargebacks, offering to pay out 10 times what they lost if stolen keys were truly sold via G2A. Subnautica developer Unknown Worlds took them up on the offer, saying that $30,000 worth of keys for Natural Selection 2 were moved through G2A in 2013. In response, G2A claimed that it wasn't operating in 2013 (opens in new tab), but archives of the site indicate otherwise. Even so, the developer, Charlie Cleveland, later told Kotaku (opens in new tab) that G2A appears to be right in this case—though he's no less opposed to the company.
After Ninja suddenly departed Twitch for Mixer—for a good deal of money, surely—Twitch put his dormant page to use, promoting other top channels to anyone who dropped by. And if anyone dropped by at a certain point on Sunday, they would've seen that one of the promoted channels was streaming porn. Twitch apologized for the incident and has reverted Ninja's channel, which still has over 14 million followers, back to its dormant state.
The big No Man's Sky Beyond update hit this week, and the changes detailed in the article linked above are exciting. What been less exciting are the bugs and crashes, which developer Hello Games has been working on (opens in new tab). Assuming it's working for you, here's a guide to riding creatures (opens in new tab).
Solo mode is here! And also, an absurdly expensive item (opens in new tab). Well, that's not as exciting. The reaction wasn't great, and Respawn is making some changes (opens in new tab) as a result.
• A new Telling Lies trailer tells the true release date (opens in new tab)
And that release date is August 23. A lot of us loved Her Story (opens in new tab), so we're excited for Sam Barlow's much bigger attempt at investigative narrative.
• The Borderlands YouTuber being investigated by 2K no longer has a channel (opens in new tab)
Copyright strikes have taken down SupMatto's YouTube channel after he was investigated by 2K—which went so far as to send investigators to his house (opens in new tab)—for Borderlands 3 leaks. Lots of things leak about in-development games, and we're still looking for answers as to why 2K decided to pursue this case so aggressively.
More news
- Epic stands by Fortnite's mechs, says they cause relatively few eliminations (opens in new tab)
- Destiny 2: Shadowkeep will bump all players to Power level 750 (opens in new tab)
- Blair Witch trailer shows completely safe and normal forest (opens in new tab)
- Evo 2019 attendees may have been exposed to measles (opens in new tab)
- Epic apologizes for selling a new Fortnite dog that was identical to an old Fortnite dog (opens in new tab)
- Steam adds 'played on another platform' as a new way to ignore games in the store (opens in new tab)
- Need for Speed: Heat will pit you against rogue cops in November (opens in new tab)
- Borderlands 3 will not be preloadable (opens in new tab)
Around the office
I had the opportunity to play Borderlands 3 last week, and you can see my thoughts and gameplay video here (opens in new tab). The short of it: It's fun, and isn't fundamentally different from any of the other main Borderlands games. Also, Ice-T is in it.
While I was worrying about all that, Chris was trying to impress alien Gordon Ramsay (opens in new tab) in No Man's Sky, as well as taming and riding animals (opens in new tab)—quite majestically, as you can see below.
Lauren discovered a mod (opens in new tab) which replaces Geralt's face with Henry Cavill's likeness in The Witcher 3, and as a result we also discovered one of our new favorite Witcher 3 images:
Glorious.
Finally, James can't get a certain Final Fantasy 14 song out of his head, and has chosen to infect the rest of us with the tune (opens in new tab) rather than letting us live in peace. Thanks, James.
Have a great weekend, and clean your monitor if you haven't recently.
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