Currently, there’s not much you can do about getting a refund on a digital purchase of an Xbox or Windows 10 game. Microsoft’s policy as it stands now is a simple “no” on returns. But that may soon change. Selected Xbox and Windows 10 Insider members have access to a self-service refund pilot program, with parameters that are similar to the Steam return policy. Games eligible for a full refund must have been purchased within the last 14 days, and can only have less than two hours of play time recorded across all accounts. DLC and other digital add-ons are not allowed.
While the refund policy being tested seems like a great idea for customers, not everyone is pleased. The Chinese Room, the studio behind Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, has been firing offon Twitter about the impending policy change, mostly taking issue with the two-hour play window.
It’s REALLY simple. Refunds should operate off a percentage of game completed. Simple, fair, representative.
A common complaint of Steam’s refund policy by some independent developers follows in the same vein. Critics say the two-hour refund turnaround is unfair to smaller, more “artsy” projects. Games that can be finished or have a majority of their content experienced within the time limit can then be returned for a full refund because there is no difference in the policy between a two-hour linear videogame story and a limitless open world sandbox. Essentially, Steam customers can consume the whole product, get their money back, then leave the developers in the lurch.
Microsoft hasn’t officially commented on their refund policy yet, but it’s possible we may get more news at E3 in June. Also, it will be interesting to see if Sony follows suit.
Ranked Crossplay matches between Windows 10 and Xbox One players are coming to Gears of War 4 multiplayer. While Crossplay multiplayer has been available in Gears of War 4 since the beginning, it’s been stuck in the ghetto of social playlists, meaning it got about as much play as Marcus Fenix had with anyone not named Dom. With the upcoming change, mouse and keyboard warriors will face off against controller beasts in competitive ranked matches. It will be a welcome change for the PC players of the game for whom it’s been “increasingly difficult to find matches” likely due to a low population. According to The Coalition, the Ranked Crossplay feature will be largely controlled by console players, who will have access to a toggle to allow PC players into matches. Don’t be cowards, controller users! Let your system rivals in and settle the question once and for all!
In related news, the April Update for Gears of War 4 includes the pictured monstrosity.
Sega was pretty coy for how they implied, but didn’t actually announce, that Platinum Games’ Bayonetta would be available on Steam today. So while it wasn’t exactly a surprise when it showed up, it was nevertheless a delight. It’s a great game and certainly my brawler of choice. I’ll take the Palin-esque Bayonetta over the emo Dante or brooding Kratos any day of the week.
However, don’t expect Bayonetta 2 to follow. The original game was published by Sega, who is more than happy to provide for venues other than the console systems in your living room. But Bayonetta 2 was published by Nintendo. Although they’ve flirted with other platforms (Pokemon Go, anyone?), they’re awfully parochial when it comes to non-Nintendo platforms. You’ll probably see Mario Kart on Steam before Bayonetta 2, which should happen sometime around the heat death of the universe.
There’s almost nothing more terrible than seeing the notification for an iOS version update. What does this one do? Is it important? Will it break my stuff? Inevitably, some apps will work differently after the update. Others may just stop working entirely. It’s Darwinism by software. The next big Apple iOS update is a doozy that threatens to render hundreds of games inoperative. It’s the meteor coming to strike down the dinosaurs of legacy apps.
The iOS 11 update will reportedly push iPhones and iPads to a 64-bit system, leaving the 32-bit architecture behind. Good news for people that want more speed and stability in their Apple products. Bad news for people that want their old games to continue working. Despite warnings from Apple for years, many games are just not ready for the change. According to one estimate, over 187,000 apps are in danger of being made obsolete with iOS 11. Many of those on-the-edge apps are games, and unfortunately, some of them have been largely abandoned by the developers. Some are victims of neglect. Some are orphans whose developer went out of business. Apple mobile owners will have to make the painful decision to update their iOS to keep up with technology, while killing their outdated apps.
You can check this out yourself in the current version of iOS. Go to your General menu under Settings, then select About, and choose Applications. You should get a list of apps that will “slow down” your hardware and “will not work with future versions of iOS if they are not updated.” You’ll also see a helpful warning to “contact the app developer” for more information.
It was only a matter of time before Microsoft engaged the community and let them create the paid content for Minecraft. Mojang and Microsoft have announced the Minecraft Marketplace. It’s the paid mods model that everyone was so keen on when Valve and Bethesda tried it with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Your one stop shop for other people’s Minecraft work. There’s a new currency to go with the in-game shop, of course. Minecraft Coins ($9.99 for 1,720 Coins! Best Value!) are now available for all your shopping needs. Microsoft takes a 30% cut of the marketplace purchases, but the community creators get more, which the publisher hopes will encourage budding entrepreneurs.
The Minecraft Marketplace is available now in the mobile and Windows 10 versions of Minecraft.
Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry has the exclusive tech analysis of Microsoft’s next iteration of the Xbox One. Buried in all the teraflops, gigawatts, numbers, (so many numbers) CPU and GPU talk, there is the intriguing revelation that Project Scorpio uses a vapor chamber heat sink to cool its chips. That’s a first for a console. Rather than being a millennial way to ingest tobacco products, advanced PC gamers will recognize the technique from higher-end graphics cards. Friction heats the 4K graphics, so Scorpio sprays a fine mist on them as they pass by to keep the textures cool. It’s like a Slip ‘N Slide for the graphics.
We still don’t know what the final product will look like, nor do we have any pricing information, but Microsoft will undoubtedly have more to share at E3. In the meanwhile, eager consumers should enjoy reading comparison charts and discussing ad nauseam which company is winning the console war.
Gazillion recently retooled the skill system in their very good free-to-play Marvel Heroes Online (for the record, the phrases “very good” and “free-to-play” rarely appear next to each other). It was quite the makeover. A whole bunch of bits and bobs were either cut out entirely, or streamlined, or clumped into larger bits and bobs. There were fewer skills with more distinct kinds of powers. Characters like Doctor Strange who required multiple hotkey bars got simpler. A crazy endgame thing called Omega Powers or something just vanished. Marvel Heroes suddenly worked well with a gamepad. I wonder why they did all that? Who can say?
Oh, speaking of Gazillion, guess what. Today they announced Marvel Heroes Online for the Playstation 4! Who could see that coming? It will be called Marvel Heroes Omega, so no wonder they had to cut the Omega thing from the PC game. That just would have been confusing.
The console version will retain the free-to-play model. No cross-platform play, of course. It will launch with 38 of the 61 superheroes currently in the PC version. Yep, there are 61 heroes in the PC version. I didn’t even know there were 61 Marvel heroes. I figured we’d run out after Ant-Man. But looking through the game’s roster, I see there’s one named Angela. Just Angela. Someone wasn’t even trying. The latest addition to Marvel Heroes was a guy named Black Bolt. He looks like Captain America trying to be edgy by wearing a black suit. He borrowed Hawkeye’s stubby little wings, which sort of takes the edge off. It makes him look like a little girl playing fairy princess. But, you know, in black.
Of course, the big question on everyone’s mind is whether Squirrel Girl will be among the 38 characters available at launch. We’ll find out soon enough, because Marvel Heroes Omega is due out this spring. As in, the season we’re currently in. Expect a beta announcement soon.
Retailer exclusive versions of games is a tradition that all customers seem to vocally loathe. “If you want this unique tchotchke, you have to buy it from this store!” usually elicits a hearty “Dicktits!” in response. Despite, these deals remain popular with sellers and publishers for obvious reasons. For the first time, G2A, a reseller known for being more of an intermediary marketplace than an actual store with its own stock, has secured an exclusive version of a game with Gearbox.
The G2A Collector’s Edition of Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, as its name implies, will only be available through G2A.com. If that’s not enough artificial scarcity for you, there will only be 48 total units of the G2A Collector’s Edition available at all. Each will come packed in a “bullet-ridden” steel box. Buyers will get a statue of an in-game character, dog tags, and the Steam key for the game. The Premium upgrade will come with a mouse pad and t-shirt, and the statue will be “expertly” hand-painted. Act fast! There are only six of the Premium packages for sale.
To say that Mass Effect: Andromeda is a bit sloppy is putting it mildly. Since its launch a couple of weeks ago, the latest installment of BioWare’s space roleplaying adventure has become a meme factory for anyone looking to poke fun at the glitches, tin ear writing, and clumsy animation. A particularly bad dialogue sequence between the player character and a Director Addison quickly became a social media joke. “My face is tired.” The grammar-Nazi correction. The garish rouge. Those dead doll eyes. Those eyes.
The 1.05 patch for Mass Effect: Andromeda may correct one of the more simple issues in the game. BioWare is “improving the appearance of eyes for humans and asari characters.” It may not completely end the “my face is tired” joke, but it could fix those uncanny valley eyes. Fixing all the animation in the game would be quite the undertaking, but revamping the eyes so they aren’t glassy stuffed animal orbs jammed into every character’s face could be a good start.
War for the Overworld, Brightrock Games’ dungeon management game, has never been shy about its inspiration. Despite its 2015 whiz-bang graphics and quality of life improvements, War for the Overworld is as much of a follow-on as possible to the classic Dungeon Keeper in every way short of a lawsuit from Electronic Arts, the current license owner of the franchise. The latest addition makes that connection even more explicit. The My Pet Dungeon DLC, available today, adds a sandbox campaign similar to the My Pet Dungeon mode in Dungeon Keeper 2. Completing the eight mission campaign unlocks God Mode, allowing dungeonmasters access to all sorts of in-game cheats and developer tools.
The developers at Brightrock say May Pet Dungeon was made possible by the strong sales for the Heart of Gold DLC, which financed continued updates and support for the game. Josh Bishop, managing director at Brightrock, says they will likely make one more bit of DLC for War for the Overworld before moving on to their next project.
It’s not unusual that a movie studio options a book before it’s published. Especially if it’s a well-known author or a story with some sort of early buzz because it’s part of a franchise or based on a well-known event. But as far as I know, that’s never happened with a videogame. Instead, a game comes out, some sequels get made, lots of people buy them, and eventually Hollywood is all, like, “Huh, what, marketing groundwork already laid? Built-in opening weekend audience? Let’s make a (modest) deal!” Then several months later a Max Payne or Assassin’s Creed movie tanks at the box office. Worst case scenario, Crackle plops a Dead Rising movie online.
But Variety reports that it went a little differently today. A minor studio called Gold Circle Entertainment bought the rights for We Happy Few, which isn’t even out yet. It’s a successfully Kickstartered currently early access game by a bunch of veteran Montrealer developers gone indie. To its credit, We Happy Few has a unique sense of style. And by unique, I mean indebted to Bioshock without being slavish. That’s not something you find very often in videogames.
Gold Circle has been around for a while, and their success comes from stumbling into a couple of accidental hits that appealed to underserved female audiences. The first was My Big Fat Greek Wedding back in 2002. The second was Pitch Perfect back in 2012. Pitch Perfect — which is a very very good movie whether you’re a dude or a chick — is a commercial juggernaut for Gold Circle. The sequel — which is a very very bad movie whether you’re a dude, a chick, or even a Pitch Perfect fan — put it on the map as an Official Franchise with its $70 million opening and eventually a 10-to-1 worldwide return on its production budget. A third Pitch Perfect is in the works, adding the awesome Ruby Rose to its already awesome cast. With actors like these, who cares if the movie sucks? I can say this because it’s been several weeks since I suffered through Table 19, which I saw because Anna Kendrick, Lisa Kudrow, Craig Robinson, and Stephen Merchant were in it, so who cares if the movie sucks? I’m nearly over the trauma.
Obviously Gold Circle is casting about for new properties. Someone figured maybe this We Happy Few videogame might do well, so let’s get it while the getting’s good. The average internet reader will take this as an announcement that a We Happy Few movie is ON TEH WAY!!!1! But that’s not how these things work. Variety is just announcing a deal has been made. The majority of these deals do not result in movies. It’s unlikely a We Happy Few movie will ever see the light of day, much less a theatrical screen projector. But if We Happy Few 2 does well, it just might get handed over to some hapless European director as his entrance fee into the Hollywood creative mulcher. So stand by for news of a potential announcement concerning the early stages of what could be a possible We Happy Few movie sometime in 2020 or so.
Seasons in Diablo III are a way to play a self-contained character facing a unique set of challenges. Basically, an optional reset button so you can enjoy the early stages of the game all over again, without all the other hours you’ve played twinking the experience. Seasons also earn you unique rewards. When they end, everything you’ve earned gets transferred to normal Diablo III.
Seasons have only been available on the PC version of Diablo III. But the 10th season, which starts today, is available for those of us who play on the PS4. In other words, there is no longer any reason to play Diablo on the PC, where you can’t use a controller, where you can’t enjoy same-screen multiplayer support, where you don’t get all the cool interface shortcuts to manage your inventory on the fly, where the right stick won’t let you do a super helpful evasive roll, and where you have to sit in your office chair instead of on the comfy couch in the living room.
It was one heck of a run, PC Diablo. We’d remember you fondly if we weren’t so busy playing Diablo III on the PS4.
If your Xbox One home screen looks a little different today, calm down. It’s supposed to be different, thanks to the March Update. (If your console’s menus haven’t changed, you can do a manual update by checking under the settings screen.) The March Update for the Xbox One brings a number of features and usability enhancements such as speedier menus, Beam streaming, and more granular parental controls.
The update also did away with Snap, the previously much-touted ability to multitask by “snapping” an application to the side of the screen while doing something else. Remember the ideal scenario? You could be playing Madden and then Snap the live NFL broadcast through your cable connection to your screen so you wouldn’t miss a thing! Alas, this was back in 2013 when Microsoft’s vision for the Xbox One was still a fusion of TV, gaming, and an all-in-one multimedia hub. Multitasking is much simplified in the new Xbox One strategy.
We’ve added a new achievement tracker that is active based on the game you’re playing, and allows you to select and follow multiple achievements in an overlay, all while you’re playing. Cortana will also appear as an overlay on your screen, allowing you to set reminders and alarms, access Party controls, and play music with simple voice controls.
Blizzard is bringing big changes to Heroes of the Storm. The new initiative, dubbed Heroes of the Storm 2.0, features a new reward system with Overwatch-style loot chests, a new currency, more cosmetic items, and level caps are being removed. In the revamped MOBA, experience curves will be flattened to present a more consistent progression experience and rewards will comes at regular intervals. With every level, players will receive a loot chest which can contain skins, emotes, sprays, or even a new hero on a rare roll. (Of course, you will be able to purchase chests outright as well.) Duplicate goodies received from chests will break down into shards which can be crafted into other items. Players will earn gold through matches, but gems, the new currency, will be required for purchasing items in lieu of the real-world money pricing currently in use. With the 2.0 update, Cassia, the Amazon from Diablo 2 joins the Heroes of the Storm roster.
Beta testing for Heroes of the Storm 2.0 begins this week.
The next patch for Civilization VI will make conquest a little less painful. The Spring 2017 update, features tweaks to harbor bonuses, combat unit strength, and finally adjusts penalties for warmongering so that the political game hopefully won’t seem as capricious. On the diplomatic side, Firaxis has reduced the warmonger penalty for declaring war or capturing a city based on your existing relationship with that other civilization. Players will now get less of a penalty if they are already denounced, and much less if they are at war.
Macedon is at war with Persia. If India goes to war with Persia sometime in the middle of this Macedonian/Persian War and captures a Persian city, Macedon will reduce its warmonger penalty against India by 40%.
The developers are also reducing warmonger penalties for city population after a city capture if the city is smaller than the average city in the game.
Persepolis is conquered and its population after conquest is 6. But the average size of a city in the game is 8. So this city is 2 / 8 = 25% below the size of the average city in the game. Therefore the warmonger penalty is reduced by 25%.
The Spring 2017 update is scheduled for later this week. Just in time for the Double Civilization & Scenario Pack featuring Persia and Macedon.
