Delays and Leaks
Edition 41 - September 13th to 19th
Good morning gamers. Welcome to another week, time to evolve.
Last week was tough, the gaming industry saw several upcoming games be delayed. NVIDIA fell victim to a huge database leak that had fans going crazy about potential games on the way. Despite the rough week, Discord and 1047 Games definitely emerged as the winners.
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Delays for Days
Battlefield 2042: What started off as a cryptic tweet by industry insider Jeff Grubb quickly turned into a spiralling rumour mill with Battlefield 2042 at its core. Once all the guns and smoke settled, and only after the EA stock price dropped by 5% did DICE officially announce that Battlefield 2042 was being delayed until November. The press release cited that “the global pandemic has created unforeseen challenges for our development team” and that they hoped their team would be back in the studio working on the game. The beta dates have yet to be announced but the new release date will be November 19 for Standard Edition owners and November 12 for Gold and Ultimate Edition owners.
Dying Light 2: Stay Human has been delayed (again) to February 4, 2022. The highly anticipated first-person survival-horror zombie game developed and published by Techland is being pushed a few months because the developers need “more time to polish and optimize it”. That said, they will be sending preview copies to select media outlets and content creators next month so fans can get a deeper look at the game.
Star Wars: Hunters, the free-to-play arena shooter by Zynga is being delayed until 2022, for both the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. The delay announcement came alongside a new cinematic trailer that confirmed players can battle using various Star Wars and The Mandalorian characters such as a Jedi, Sith, Stormtrooper, Wookie or a pair of Jawas.
Total War: Warhammer III has been officially delayed to early 2022 by Creative Assembly. Their message to fans was very transparent saying that “the extra time means we can accomplish more than we could if we rushed to release this year”.
NVIDIA GeForce NOW Leak
GeForce Now is a cloud gaming service used by NVIDIA that launched on February 4th, 2020. Earlier last week Ighor July, a C++ developer with a passion for reverse engineering found a list of 18,000+ games on the NVIDIA GeForce NOW database. July says he never expected to find the list and was just experimenting with an interface for GraphQL queries testing.
NVIDIA said that the publishing of the list was unauthorized and it contains both unreleased and released games. The went on to say that the list should not be considered an announcement or confirmation of any game as the titles are used for tracking and testing. Unfortunately, that means that a majority of the names on the list could just be placeholders used by developers.
The leak includes games like: Batman: Arkham Knight RTX Remaster, God of War (2018, PC), Returnal (PC), Demon’s Souls (PC), Titanfall 3, Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2022), Halo 5: Guardians (PC), Injustice 3: Gods will Fall, Gears of War 6, GTA Remastered Trilogy, Bioshock (2022), Crysis 4, Bayonetta 3 (PC), Final Fantasy VII Remake (PC) and more.
What does this mean? Even though NVIDIA was quick to burst our bubble, if a game is on the list that means it was/is under consideration by the developers and publishers. Therefore, if you see a game on the list that you want, keep hoping because it could become a reality one day.
Splitgate Bet on Themselves
Splitgate is a free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter and it is the most recent game to rise in popularity in the gaming community. The developer and publisher, 1047 Games, has just secured $100 million in funding for Splitgate and are now valued at $1.5 billion.
In an announcement last week 1047 Games confirmed that they are “not selling our company to one of the big guys” and will remain an independent, community-first game studio. The new funding will allow them to hire new developers and other team members to better support their game. Splitgate is looking to improve their ability to fix bugs, introduce new content, accommodate more players and release the full game. The founders said that they believe Splitgate is only at 25% of its full potential.
The ceiling for Splitgate is hard to predict as it has sort of been labelled the “Halo Infinite waiting room”. The Splitgate Beta surpassed 10 million downloads in August and have since launched “Season 0,” which included a new map, a battle pass with 100 levels, the new “Contamination” game mode and much more. Splitgate must continue to take inspiration from successful games such as Fortnite, Halo and Portal and implement that into their game.
Forge Mode was released in Halo 3 which allowed players to make changes to existing maps and publish them for the community to play. 343 Industries recently confirmed Halo Infinite will not have Forge Mode or co-op campaign at launch. Splitgate says they’re planning to release a Forge Mode before Halo Infinite.
If you’re interested in hearing more about Splitgate, check out our review here.
Esports Corner
🥇 Congratulations to Gambit Esports for winning the Valorant Champions Tour 2021: Stage 3 Masters - Berlin.
ESL Is BACK!
ESL Gaming has announced the full 2022 ESL Pro Tour tournament calendar for its CS:GO competitions. The season will feature more than 25 tournaments including two EPT Championships (IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne), five Masters tournaments, four ESL Challenger tournaments, four ESL Challenger League seasons and more than ten National Championships. One major change for this year's calendar is that all EPT Challenger tournament winners will now get the chance to play into the ESL Pro League. The ESL also confirmed that LAN & live audiences will return for the EPT Masters and Championship events. More than $5 million is up for grabs in 2022!
Rocket League in 2021/2022
The Rocket League Championship Series (RCLS) is back and this year's season will include new regions, an expanded format and a record-breaking $6 million total prize pool. The upcoming season will welcome teams from the Asia Pacific North and South regions as well as the Middle East and North Africa (with support for Subsaharan Africa). The season will be divided into Fall, Winter and Spring Splits, each consisting of 3 regional events followed by a Major. Each regional event will begin with an open qualifier where every event in each split will consist of 16 teams. Throughout the season teams will be accumulating points based on performance to help them qualify for the Rocket League World Championship. The Fall split will begin as a player-only LAN event in Stockholm, Sweden with plans to reevaluate spectator attendance in 2022.
New Record for a Classic Game
Esports has experienced exponential growth over the last decade but who would have thought that Tetris would be the cause of excitement in the competitive scene. Last week, Tetris pro “Jounce” broke the Tetris all-time Classic world record by surpassing 1.62 million points; 130,000 more than the previous record holder. Jounce achieved this incredible score by using a “rolling” technique to help increase his move precision by placing his thumb over top of the NES controller and then using his other hand to tap the back of the controller. Jounce will now be heading to the Classic Tetris World Championships as a record holder.
Game Review: Deathloop
Deathloop is Arkane’s gift to gamers. They created a game that combines the complexity of time, with the uniqueness of an investigative murder-mystery and then slammed it into a first-person shooter. Colt, the game's protagonist, wakes up on a strange beach with no memory. You quickly come to realize that he’s experiencing an ever-repeating day and must murder eight targets before midnight to break the time loop. As one of Arkane’s most ambitious projects yet, Deathloop features a thrilling narrative, otherworldly powers and a quirky graphical style that makes the 1960s feel much more vibrant than expected. If you’re a fan of choice - to either blow through a level with guns blazing or to sneak around inconspicuously, this is the game for you. We give Deathloop a score of A.
Gaming Roundup
According to Bloomberg, Discord has raised $500 million in a new round of financing. The instant messaging and digital distribution platform is now valued at $15 billion, after being valued at around $3.5 billion at the start of 2020.
According to Nick Baker, host of the Xbox Era podcast, Indiana Jones might be an Xbox exclusive. Bethesda is currently in development of the “Uncharted style” game in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games.
God of War: Ragnarok Director Eric Williams says the game will be the end of the Norse saga. Williams explained that two games were enough for them to successfully tell the story of Kratos and Atreus.
In a recent software update, the Nintendo Switch finally received Bluetooth audio support. Nintendo dropped the price of the Switch in Europe but have “no plans” on lowering it in North America.
Anthony Mackie, known for playing Marvel’s Captain America and The Falcon will star and executive produce a Twisted Metal live action TV series. The series will feature heavy action and comedy from the writers of Deadpool.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy has “Gone Gold” ahead of its October 26th release. The Eidos Montreal and Square Enix game will no longer be delayed and has basically guaranteed its release date.
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