50 Million!
E82: Fall Guys surpasses 50 million players in two weeks.
Good morning gamers. It looks like there’s a new sheriff in town. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is a battle royale game developed by Mediatonic that recently went free-to-play on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Publisher Epic Games seems to have perfected the formula to creating popular video games.
Fall Guys was initially released on August 4th, 2020 for PC and PS4 and users had to purchase the game. The developer Devolver Digital was later acquired by Mediatonic which shifted the publishing rights to Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite.
Fall Guys announced that they’ve surpassed 50 million users in the two weeks since the launch of Season 1: Free For All. The game originally passed 20 million users in under 48 hours when it went free-to-play on June 21st. According to video game insider Benji-Sales, it took free-to-play battle royale games Call of Duty: Warzone and Apex Legends one month to reach 50 million players. Fortnite took 100 days to reach the 45 million players milestone.
Ragnarök is Coming
God of War Ragnarök is PlayStation’s most exciting upcoming exclusive release and after months of speculation and rumors, it will officially release on November 9th, 2022 for PS4 and PS5. The announcement came via a PlayStation.Blog post alongside a brand-new “Father and Son” cinematic trailer that showed some of the dangers Kratos and Atreus find themselves up against.
Pre-orders for God of War Ragnarök open July 15th, 2022 at 10:00 am Local Time and four different versions containing various special edition items are available.
Standard Edition: The base game, either physical or digital.
Digital Deluxe Edition: A digital download version of the game, a mini steel art-book, the official game soundtrack and various cosmetic and in-game items.
Collector’s Edition: Includes everything from the Digital Deluxe edition plus various physical items like the 2’’ Vanir Twins Cravings, a Dwarven Dice set and a 16’’ Mjölnir Replica.
Jotnar Edition: Includes everything from the Collector’s Edition plus even more physical items including a 7-inch Vinyl Record, The legendary Draupnir Ring, the Yggdrasil Cloth Map, an upgraded dice set and the Falcon, Bear and Wolf Pin Set.
Despite all the excitement that God of War Ragnarök has generated, Santa Monica Studio has received a lot of toxic and unacceptable harassment over the last few weeks. As a community, we need to be better. Santa Monica Studio creative director Cory Barlog said it best when he tweeted “treat people that make the things we love with some human decency and respect”.
Esports Corner
🥇Congratulations to DarkZero for being crowned the Apex Legends Global Championship winners.
Former CS:GO professional player turned Twitch superstar Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek has signed for Sentinels as the newest addition to their Valorant roster. His return to competitive play has long been rumored. He will be replacing Hunter “SicK” Mims for the Valorant Last Chance Qualifier.
Dignitas, one of esports longest standing and most reputable competitive organizations received a ton of backlash last week over a tweet that said “agreeing that mobile gaming is not gaming”. Mobile gaming is thriving on a global scale where Free Fire, Mobile Legends, TeamFight Tactics, Wild Rift, Arena of Valor, PUBG Mobile and COD Mobile are leading the charge.
The FIFAe World Cup 2022 is set to begin on July 14th with 32 of the world's best FIFA players competing. Players will be split into four groups and the top four players from each group move on to the knockout stages. The event will be held at the Bella Arena in Copenhagen and will feature a $500,000 prize pool.
More than a dozen players were disqualified from this past weekend's Apex Legends Global Championship Series in Raleigh due to positive COVID-19 test results. EA reiterated their policy which states that players who test positive are “ineligible to compete”. This has caused huge controversy in the professional scene with pro players and the community highlighting that other esport LAN events have provided an isolated playing environment for players who test positive.
Gaming Roundup
Shuhei Yoshida, the former President of SIE Worldwide Studios for Sony Interactive Entertainment announced 7 new indie games for PlayStation.
Capcom will be participating in San Diego Comic-Con 2022 from July 21st to 24th, there will be a World of Capcom panel.
Ubisoft listed several projects that are currently in development including Beyond Good and Evil 2, which was rumored to be cancelled.
E3, the largest video game convention which has been canceled for the last few years will return in June 2023 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Xbox will be attending Gamescom 2022 from August 24th to 28th in Cologne, Germany despite their Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase.
Forspoken, the game from Square Enix and Luminous Productions has moved their launch date to January 24th, 2023.
Rockstar Games wanted to make GTA IV and Read Dead Redemption remastered but eventually decided to not move forward with the projects.
343 Industries has hired former Bungie director Paul Bertone to work on Halo Infinite as the Technical Design Director.
Respawn Entertainment is hiring for a “brand new single-player adventure” FPS set in the Apex Legends / Titanfall universe.
If you enjoyed this week’s edition of the Weekly Recon, please send it to some friends and share it on social media. We strive to be your best source of gaming news.
Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok for more gaming news. To contact us directly email us at gaming@weeklyrecon.com.