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Diablo 4 News – Blizzard Working on New Mobile Titles Across All of its IPs, Using its ‘Best Developers’

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Blizzard has risked further enraging its already frothing fanbase by telling investors that Diablo Immortal is only the start of its attempts to bring its most popular IPs to mobile. In fact, right now Blizzard has its “best developers” working on mobile titles.

“Many of us over the last few years have shifted from playing primarily desktop to playing many hours on mobile, and we have many of our best developers now working on new mobile titles across all of our IPs,” said Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham.

“Some of them are with external partners like Diablo Immortal. Many of them are being developed internally only, and we’ll have information to share on those in the future. I will say also that we have more new products in development today at Blizzard than we’ve ever had in our history, and our future is very bright.”

It’s quite the statement to make after dropping the ball with the way in which the Diablo Immortal reveal took place. It’s not so much the game, nor Blizzard over-promising for BlizzCon (quite the opposite), but announcing a mobile game at BlizzCon perhaps wasn’t the finest choice.

As if it needed explaining though, which for some reason it does, this doesn’t mean that Blizzard is abandoning its current core PC development. The reaction from some fans has been bizarrely extreme though, for something that really doesn’t matter in terms of if and when we get Diablo 4. At last count, Blizzard has an astonishing 4,700 employees, so there’s plenty of talent to share around. A lot of those will be involved in the active support of games like Hearthstone, Overwatch and World of Warcraft, of course, but there’s also sure to be a massive chunk working on new projects, one of which is almost certainly Diablo 4.

“For our diehard PC fans, we will say though, we still have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects,” offered Adham. So we haven’t forgotten about them.”

From the sound of things, we could be set to see mobile versions of the likes of Overwatch, Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, and Rock ‘n’ Roll Racing in the not-so-distant future, but this shouldn’t be seen as an indicator we won’t see totally new PC games either. Ultimately, this could be a rocky few months for Blizzard as it rides this one though, but a new PC game announcement could certainly help to paper over the cracks. Blizzard aren’t ones to be rushed, however, preferring the ‘it’s ready when it’s ready’ approach.

Thoughts on this one? Are there are Blizzard games you would actually like to see mobile versions of? Let us know!

Rainbow Six: Siege News – Rainbow Six Siege Operation Wind Bastion Teased – Moroccan Map and Operators

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Ubisoft has dropped the first details on the upcoming Rainbow Six Siege Year 3 Season 4 update, dubbed Operation Wind Bastion. We can expect a pair of new Operators along with a new map.

Morocco is the focal point of this free update, adding a pair of new Morrocan operators from the GIGR (Groupe d’Intervention de La Gendarmerie Royale), as well as a new level set within a giant fortress in the Atlas Mountains. Ubisoft is touting “unprecedented roof access”, whatever that means, as well as a kasbah to fight through, which could potentially suggest a few open-air battles.

Ubisoft hasn’t revealed the specifics of the new the Operators just yet, although we’re back to getting one Attacker and one Defender. The Defender is the commander of the fortress. He’s “strict and imposing” and oversees the Moroccan Special Forces. He’s a bit of a mystery, to be honest. In the artwork, he’s holding a cane and a pair of binoculars, so perhaps he’s got a special ability involving leadership or spotting, but we’d love to hear your best guesses.

The seconder Operator is an Attacker who “travels wherever the wind takes her”. So she’s either a bird or a nomad, take your pick. She’s well-versed in tackling different terrains and excels at environmental manipulation. Taking Ubisoft’s word at face value, a flying drone seems a distinct possibility, or perhaps she’s immune to fall damage somehow. That would certainly make her an aggressive Operator.

Anyway, we’re kind of feeding off crumbs here so we’ll have to wait and see, but the full launch of Rainbow Six Siege Y3S4 Operation Wind Bastion should be coming later this month. This update will also roll in the controversial aesthetic changes, including the removal of violent, sexual and gambling-themed content.

What do you reckon the new Operator abilities could be? Are you expecting a significant drop off in players once the aesthetic changes roll out? Let us know below!

Warframe News – Warframe’s Free Fortuna Expansion Launches in November – 4-5x as Big as Plains of Eidolon

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UPDATE: Warframe’s massive, and totally free, Fortuna expansion pack is coming to PC this week, offering up a huge open-world to explore set on a terraformed version of Venus.

Warframe: Fortuna follows in the footsteps of last year’s Plains of Eidolon expansion, offering a big old landmass to explore both on foot or on the new Bondi K-Drive Hoverboard. It’s the sci-fi Tony Hawk we’ve always dreamed of. Your hoverboard can be upgraded and modded, while there tricks, grabs, and grabs, or it can be used to combo-fuelled combat. Quite why you’d bother with Destiny at this point is a little confusing.

In terms of content, Fortuna sounds as if it’s going to be packed with things to do. A new faction known as Solaris united are introduced. They live in an underground trading hub city, although all is not as blissful as it at first seems. Meanwhile, above ground, there is The Orb Vallis, an alien terrain filled with mushroom forests, endangered creatures that need to be rescued and relocated, and strange, aquatic-influence flora.

There’s also robot fishing (edible fish are so passé), mining, exploration, a new Garuda Warframe that focuses on health-based abilities to tear through enemies.

Digital Extremes hasn’t provided a specific date for the Fortuna expansion’s release but Warframe updates typically happen on Wednesdays, so keep your eyes peeled. Console players will have to wait a little longer though, Fortuna will be coming to PS4 and Xbox One ‘soon’.

Original Story: 21-Oct-2018 – Warframe’s Free Fortuna Expansion Launches in November – 4-5x as Big as Plains of Eidolon

Warframe’s massive new open-world Fortuna expansion will be launching on PC in November, developer Digital Extremes has confirmed.

Warframe: Fortuna will be totally free and is promised to be between four and five times bigger than last year’s already huge Plains of Eidolon open-world expansion. It’s set underground on Venus, around the city of Fortuna and the Orb Vallis above, as well as the icy Venus surface populated by an alien ecosystem and the Corpus units.

“[Players] will follow the Solaris United faction’s struggle against their Corpus overlords by picking up bounties and missions underground in the internment camp of Fortuna, and, using the new K-Drive hoverboard, will get wicked across exotic new terrain peppered with Orokin structures, towering mushroom stands, and oceanic flora,” explains Digital Extremes.

The growth of Warframe these last few years really has been impressive to behold. From a relatively unassuming start, it’s ballooned into one of the most popular free-to-play games n existence, firmly ensconced in the popular games list on Steam. On the basis of massive free updates like this, it’s easy to see why.

Warframe: Fortuna is coming to PC in November, as well as PS4 and Xbox One later this winter. For gamers on the go, a Nintendo Switch version of Warframe is hitting the eShop on November 20th.

NBA 2K19 News – Piracy Potentially Cost a ‘Major Sports Title’ $21 Million in 2 Weeks according to Denuvo

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I got an email from Irdeto today, the cybersecurity specialist that recently acquired Denuvo. And, naturally, I wanted to share it with you all. The pair of them have been doing a little data tracking you see. It’s all in an effort to show the world the great service Denuvo is offering to games publishers and just how much money could be lost if they don’t use Denuvo Anti-Tamper DRM.

It’s quite a lot of money, as it turns out. Irdeto tracked the downloads for the first fortnight on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks of a major sports title that launched without anti-tamper protection. Irdeto detected 355,664 torrent downloads of the game by pirates. At full retail value, they pin the “total potential loss of revenue from P2P downloads at $21,336,283.”

Just over $21 million worth of copies of this sports title were downloaded illegally during its first two weeks on sale. Sadly, Irdeto hasn’t named the game but considering all EA Sports titles plus PES 2019 use Denuvo, it doesn’t exactly leave us with many ‘major sports titles’ to pick from. Basically, we’re sideways glancing at NBA 2K19 real hard right now.

Irdeto and Denuvo pinpoint the two-week launch period as the most critical part of any game’s sales success. Up to 80% of total sales often take place in this launch period, with 50% in the first four days alone.

“Piracy is a threat that is firmly established in the games industry and, as our research suggests, it can result in potentially huge revenue losses for publishers if their games are compromised within the 14-day window following release,” said Reinhard Blaukovitsch, managing director of Denuvo, Irdeto. “With this in mind, it is crucial for publishers to implement security strategies that make their games as difficult as possible to crack and reverse engineer. This way they will be able to better protect the revenues that allow them to continue to create such compelling games.”

There are, naturally, some major provisos attached to this statement. First of all, Irdeto is operating under the assumption that all 355,664 pirates would’ve gone out and bought a copy of the ‘sports game’ if it wasn’t available on torrent networks. Here’s the thing – pirates are pirating because they either don’t want to, or literally cannot, spend the money on a game. A few will trot out the tired ‘I was demoing it’ line, an excuse which holds about as much water as a rusty colander when Steam lets us trial literally any game for up to two hours. The vast majority of these pirates were never going to buy the game, this isn’t $21 million lost. NBA 2K18 was cracked on launch day last year and it was still the bestselling sports game of 2017.

The second issue is that Irdeto itself doesn’t even reliably protect games during those first two weeks on sale. Football Manager 2019 was cracked after 4 days. Two Point Hospital was cracked on launch day. Shadow of War, FIFA 18 and Total War: Warhammer 2 lasted under a day. If those first 14 days really are so crucial, it seems odd Two Point Hospital, a fairly innocuous management sim, is still riding high up the Steam charts three months after launch. The flipside is games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Dragon Ball FighterZ. The former has yet to be cracked while the latter took almost half a year. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, publishers are taking a big gamble on its implementation.

But it has to be said, Irdeto/Denuvo is an impossible position. It offers a service that publishers could want, but it’s impossible to provide concrete as to whether DRM affects game sales, either positively or negatively.

What do you think the real cost of piracy is? Do you believe games can suffer more in lost sales from implementing Denuvo than they do from piracy? Get your pitchforks out below!

Battlefield V News – Denuvo DRM’s Latest Version 5.2 Cracked, Could Spell Trouble for Battlefield V

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Denuvo’s latest 5.2 version of its Anti-Tamper DRM protection has been blown wide open, this time by a new hacking group known as FCKDRM. They’ve borrowed the branding from GOG’s new anti-DRM initiative, turning their hands to the business of cracking games.

There are currently just two games that support Denuvo 5.2 – Football Manager 2019 and The Quiet Man. The latter is, by all accounts, pretty damn awful and thus unlikely to be cracked, while Football Manager 2019 has been cracked within a week of its launch.

As we head into a busy few weeks, this probably comes as worrying news to AAA publishers. Battlefield V, Hitman 2 and Just Cause 4 are all going to be using Denuvo, and the likelihood is they’ll be using the latest 5.2 version of Denuvo unless an update can be rolled out pronto. The older, version 4.9 edition of Denuvo Anti-Tamper has yet to be cracked, so we may even see Denuvo roll back to a previous version.

Depending on whether crackers deem it worthwhile to put in the legwork, we could end up in a truly odd scenario whereby Battlefield V is cracked up to 11 days before its official November 20th launch date. BF5 is available 11 days before launch for those who sign up to the Origin Access Premier subscription service, providing ample time for hackers to get to work before the game’s full launch on November 20th.

That’s the risk EA takes when it makes its games available much earlier for EA Access subscribers so it should certainly be something to keep an eye on. The multiplayer element will be pretty much redundant, but if the single-player War Stories are decent then Battlefield 5 could become a target.

The never-ending battle continues then, this time with a new player in the shape FCKDRM. GOG seems to have inspired a whole new level of anti-DRM sentiment…

Assassins Creed: Odyssey News – Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Level Cap Increasing to 70 – New Quests and Cyclops Battle Revealed

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Ubisoft is getting serious with its service updates for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, announcing a huge raft of free changes and content additions set to come to its already mammoth open-world action RPG.

A level cap increase is probably the biggest change, bumping the current max level in AC Odyssey from 50 all the way up to 70. It took Blizzard about four years to do that in World of Warcraft, the absolute slow coaches that they are. “Later this month we will increase the level cap by no less than 20 levels,” explains Ubisoft. “This will be available for all players. For our players who have reached level 50, the XP earned before the level cap update will be rewarded with new ability points.”

There’ll be a bunch of new story content to help players actually take advantage of this rise, including the recently released The Show Must Go On questline, the upcoming Divine Intervention trials, and further episodes in the Last Tales of Greece.

Epic Events will also be kicking off, beginning with Steropes the Cyclops, a mythical creature that will grant the player an exclusive weapon once it’s been felled, the Legendary Bow. There’ll also be further Epic Events in form of Epic Mercenaries and Epic Ships, each of which rewards the player with an exclusive item and Orichalcum.

It sounds as if there should be plenty for players to sink their teeth into then, which makes the paid offering for the month seem a little paltry in comparison. Season Pack owners will get access to a Ulysses and Trojan Horse cosmetic pack for their horses and boat, which is, er, something I guess.

Who’s still plugging away at Assassin’s Creed Odyssey? What do you make of Ubisoft’s post-launch support this time around? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Fallout 76 News – Fallout 76 May Be Vulnerable to Hacking Already, Bethesda Plans to ‘Roll Out Fixes’

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When Bethesda called its Fallout 76 beta test a B.E.T.A. (Break-it Early Test Application), it probably wasn’t expecting PC players to break it so consummately just days before its November 14th launch.

To say Bethesda is showing its inexperience with online gaming is an understatement. Fallout 76 is being blown wide open on PC right now and there are already opportunities for hacks galore.

Posters on Reddit have identified a number of ways in which players can cheat in Fallout 76, ranging from incredibly simple tweaks to more complex hacks. For example, models and file integrity is not checked server side, so players are free to use Bethesda’s own modding tools to change the models. All other player character models could be turned luminous green, for example, or trees and vegetation could be shrunk so they don’t obstruct your view.

That’s just the start as well, with user ‘teetharejustdone’ claiming terrain and collision is handled client side. In theory, this would mean the files could be edited to allow walking through walls.

Things go even deeper from here as well, including forging data packets to knock other players offline, tell the server you have infinite health, or even grab specific players’ location. Even bullet collision is reportedly handled client side. Pair this with the ability to identify player locations and voila, instant headshots.

Since these claims were made yesterday, Bethesda has come out with a statement suggesting this is all wildly inaccurate.

“Many of the claims in the thread are either inaccurate or based on incorrect assumptions”, says Bethesda. “The community has however called to attention several issues that our teams are already actively tracking and planning to roll out fixes for. Our goal is always to deliver a great experience for all our players. Cheating or hacking will not be tolerated. We know our fan base is passionate about modding and customizing their experience in our worlds and it’s something we intend to support down the road.”

Bethesda doesn’t say all of the claims are inaccurate, so some are almost certainly possible. They are working on fixes, although it feels a little late in the day when progress carries over to the main game and we’re only just over a week away from Fallout 76’s launch. There are already mods available on NexusMods that begin to poke at the possibilities, including a lockpick hack based on an existing Fallout 4 lockpick mod, and retextured Nuka Cola bottles that point at being able to change the visual appearance of objects within the game world.

Has anyone had an opportunity to go hands-on with Fallout 76 yet? Do you think Bethesda’s inexperience with online games could prove a disaster for a launch of this scale? Share your thoughts below…

Crackdown (Xbox One) News – Crackdown 3 System Requirements Revealed Ahead of X018 Event

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Microsoft is hosting its big X018 event tomorrow afternoon, where it’ll be showcasing its Xbox One and Windows 10 gaming line-up for the months ahead. The system requirements for Crackdown 3 have just popped up on the Windows Store, presumably ahead of an imminent release date announcement. Crackdown 3 was originally announced over four years ago, so it’s been a long time coming. In the meantime, a PC release was confirmed and here are the PC specs required to run Crackdown 3.

 

Crackdown 3 Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows 10 64-bit CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 3.2 GHz or AMD FX-6300 3.5 GHz RAM: 8 GB System Memory GPU RAM: 2 GB Video Memory GPU: GeForce GTX 750 Ti or Radeon R7 260X DX: DirectX 12 HDD: TBA

Crackdown 3 Recommended System Requirements

OS: Windows 10 64-bit CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 4.0 GHz RAM: 8 GB System Memory GPU RAM: 4 GB Video Memory GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 290 DX: DirectX 12 HDD: TBA

As far as AAA system requirements, Crackdown 3’s requirements are very modest indeed. Back when Crackdown 3 was revealed, Microsoft made a big hoo-hah about the ability to offload destruction physics to the cloud. We’ve got no idea whether this idea has actually made it through to the final game or not, but it would certainly lighten the load on both the CPU and the GPU. However, it would also require a constant online connection in order to take advantage of the cloud.

In terms of what we have though, a fairly low-end 2GB DX11 video card such as the GeForce GTX 750 Ti or the Radeon R7 260X will suffice. Both are budget graphics cards and plenty of modern GPUs under the $100 price bracket should be able to run Crackdown 3 at stable frame rates. A quad-core processor is also required to play Crackdown 3, but any quad-core from the last 6 or so years should do the job.

There’s a decent leap up to the recommended specs for playing Crackdown 3 at 1080p screen resolution, but again, this is not as demanding as many of Microsoft’s other Xbox Play Anywhere titles. A GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 290 can max out the graphics settings in Crackdown 3. For modern equivalents, the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 580 4GB shouldn’t even break a sweat.

One final thing to remember is Crackdown 3 is a Windows Store exclusive. This means a Windows 10 installation is required to play Crackdown 3, along with a DirectX 11-capable video card.

 

As ever, remember you can always check out how well your PC can run Crackdown 3 System Requirements here, where you can check benchmarking and performance from other users. Compare your graphics card to Crackdown 3 GPU benchmark chart and we also have a Crackdown 3 Frames Per Second system performance chart for you to check.

GeForce RTX 2080 Ti News – Nvidia GeForce 416.81 GPU Driver Tackles RTX 2080 Ti BSOD Issues, Supports Battlefield V

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The latest Nvidia GeForce 416.81 graphics card driver fixes one of the high-profile BSOD issues affecting some GeForce RTX 2080 Ti users. This is a software-level fix only though, so it doesn’t tackle any of the hardware-based issues which appear to be causing a fair number of RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards to die.

This particular fix concerns GeForce RTX 2080 Ti’s having a blue-screen crash when exiting games while using a G-Sync monitor paired with a non-G-Sync monitor.

Elsewhere, the big draw for those of us who haven’t got $1200 graphics cards is day one Game Ready performance optimisation for Battlefield V. This should provide the optimal gaming experience for DICE’s multiplayer shooter, which is available to play from today for those of you with an Origin Access Premium subscription. From our time with the Battlefield 5 beta, it looked as if it was already running decently in our benchmarks, although DirectX 12 support was terrible at the time. Hopefully, this has all been ironed out in the intervening months though.

And that’s basically it for major changes, although there are the usual swathes of known issues and fixes that are worth keeping an eye out for. If you’re suffering from any of the issues fixed in the GeForce 416.81 GPU driver then be sure to give it a download, but otherwise, keep a wary eye on the known issues which may cause problems when you updated.

GeForce 416.81 WHQL GPU Driver Fixed Issues

[Windows Defender Application Guard][vGPU][Surround]: Edge Browser with Application Guard cannot be opened when Surround is enabled. [Turing GPU]: Multi-monitor idle power draw is very high. [GeForce RTX 2080 Ti][G-Sync]: Blue-screen crash may occur when exiting games when using a G-Sync monitor with a non-G-Sync monitor. [GeForce RTX 2080 Ti]: Stuttering occurs with HEVC video playback. [GeForce GTX 970]: When audio playback is paused, audio receiver switches from multi-channel to stereo. Increased period from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. [GeForce GTX 1060]AV receiver switches to 2-channel stereo mode after 5 seconds of audio idle. [SLI][NVIDIA TITAN X][NVENC]: Recording and streaming of NVENC applications do not work. [DirectX 11 games]: Mouse cursor causes FPS to go out of sync with windowed GSync. [ARK Survival]: Improved game stability. [Shadow of the Tomb Raider]: Improved game stability. [Witcher 3 Wild Hunt]: Flickering occurs during gameplay. [Monster Hunter World]: Corruption is seen when Volume Rendering is off. [Far Cry 5]: Flickering occurs during gameplay.

GeForce 416.81 WHQL GPU Driver Known Issues

[SLI][GeForce RTX 2080/2080Ti]: Single GPU response slows down after enabling/ disabling SLI, requiring system reboot. [GeForce GTX 1080Ti]: Random DPC watchdog violation error when using multiple GPUs on motherboards with PLX chips. [GeForce GTX 780]: Activity on the desktop lags. [SLI][HDR][Battlefield 1]: With HDR enabled, the display turns pink after changing the refresh rate from 144 Hz to 120 Hz using in-game settings. [Firefox]: Cursor shows brief corruption when hovering on certain links in Firefox. [G-Sync]: G-sync may not disengage after exiting games.

The latest GeForce driver can be downloaded from here, or you can just do an auto-update through your current GeForce Experience installation.