Trion Worlds has announced that their MMO shooter Defiance will be getting five DLC offerings this year. The first pack, called Enter The Castithan, will enable new weapons for all players and access to Sieges which will be a new open-world game mode. People that pay $10 for the pack will additionally get access to play the Castithan Species as well as a new set of story missions. Nathan Richardsson, the executive producer, wrote that each DLC release will come with free benefits for everyone, as well as content only for players that buy the DLC.
We do our DLCs a bit differently with Defiance. Every time we do a DLC, of which we have 5 planned this year, we have a free component, a paid component and a store update. The free part is for everyone. We want people to be playing with their friends; we don’t like to isolate players.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be exclusive content in the DLCs, quite the contrary. The difference is that you can usually bring your friends with you. The catch is that they can’t directly benefit from all of it, like DLC specific loot or gain abilities.
In related news, the SyFy TV show has been picked up for another season. Thirteen new episodes will be created to air in 2014, which is good news for people that want their transmedia products to keep chugging along.
Wargaming has filed a lawsuit against Chinese companies Changyou.com Limited and Gamease for their Project Tank which seems to be a blatant copy of World of Tanks. Polygon reports that the complaint alleges that Project Tank (also known as Ground War Tanks and Tanks Ground War) “copied the plot, theme, dialogue, mood, setting, pace, and character of World of Tanks, in addition to copying specific features, items, tanks, and artwork.”
For their part, Gamease and Changyou claim that Wargaming is bullying them. No. I’m not kidding.
“We feel truly shocked and bullied by Wargaming. A giant company of the gaming industry who is apparently ‘threatened’ by a closed beta phase browser game aiming to provide a cheaper, fairer, and more accessible war game to players around the world.”
The filed documents point out examples of the copying. These include features unique to World of Tanks such as historical inaccuracies made for the sake of gameplay and specific tanks that never existed in reality. Wargaming also accuses Project Tank of violating their patent on dynamic matchmaking.
Too Human developer, Silicon Knights, has laid off almost all of their staff and sold most of their assets, but CFO Mike Mays told Polygon that the studio is “definitely alive” and “very busy.” Mays did not elaborate on what Silicon Knights is busy working on, or even where they are located, but an Ontario real estate agent confirmed that the offices in which Dennis Dyack’s former company used to work are empty and available for lease. Silicon Knights has not filed for bankruptcy as of yet.
Some of the old hardware (to include computers and desks) was sold to Dennis Dyack’s new studio Precursor Games, which is currently working on Shadow of the Eternals. Assets such as computers were wiped clean before the sale to ensure that no art or coding work from Silicon Knights would transfer to the new company as specified by the courts.
Silicon Knights still faces a $4.45 million judgment against it due to a successful lawsuit from Epic Games for breach of the Unreal Engine license agreement used during the development of Too Human.
Call it the little VR kit that could. The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is getting support from all corners of gaming. Hobbyists to professional developers are coming forward with headset projects so we can watch videos of guys wearing a black box on their faces swing their heads around. Pretty good for a product that started out as a Kickstarter that still hasn’t actually been released for the general public.
After the jump, let’s check out some head-bobbin’ projects! Continue reading →
