Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Ex Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick’s recent comments on the Grit podcast regarding “fake lawsuits” brought against Activision Blizzard around 2021 are “false”, “insulting” to alleged victims, and “unsurprising”, a spokesperson for the Communication Workers Of America (CWA) has told RPS.

Kotick appeared on venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins podcast earlier this week, alongside former EA CEO and current Kleiner Perkins advisor Bing Gordon. Discussing the above legal cases alongside petitions to remove him as CEO, Kotick spoke of “fake lawsuits against us and Riot Games making allegations about the workplace that weren’t true,” claiming his former company was “targeted” by the CWA in a bid to increase union membership.

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We interrupt our regular schedule of fish puns and naughty jokes about holes to warn you that a huge chunk of celestial debris has a 2.3% chance of impacting Earth in December 2032 and wiping out the city of Bradford. I name Bradford because it’s the first city that occurs to me and also, because several of my ancient enemies live there, but the asteroid could hit anywhere. Where do you live? Maybe wear a hard hat when you go Xmas shopping in 2032. Asteroid 2024 YR4 loiters somewhere along our planet’s orbital trajectory, like a rake in the grass.

If this were the 1980s we’d seek comfort in the pages of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, which has the words “DON’T PANIC” in large, friendly letters on the cover. But it’s the twenty-twenties and nobody reads Douglas Adams anymore, so instead I’m playing Neal.fun’s free tool Asteroid Launcher, which lets you pick asteroids of different sizes and compositions like you’re choosing brands of cereal, then splat them capriciously against world map data provided by Apple Inc.

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Chinese developers Eclipse Glow Games have revealed Tides Of Annihilation, a fantasy hack-and-slash set in a “twisted”, modern yet Arthurian version of London. It casts you as Gwendolyn, a baby-faced blood-letter who must defeat Avalon‘s demi-gods by *checks notes* throwing the Knights of The Round Table at them.

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Tracking down an RTX 5090 has become an exercise in patience, luck, and frustration. With standalone cards constantly out of stock, prebuilt systems are quickly becoming the most reliable way to secure Nvidia’s flagship GPU.

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Hunt: Showdown and Crysis developers Crytek are dismissing an estimated 15 percent of their workforce – around 60 people out of 400 – in the face of “the complex, unfavourable market dynamics that have hit our industry these past several years”. This comes after they paused development of mechsuit FPS sequel Crysis 4 last year, with staff shifting over to Hunt Showdown’s live service reboot Hunt: Showdown 1896. Crytek now say they need to cut back in order to remain “financially sustainable”.

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Sharkmob have punched the green light, cracked open the hangar doors and launched a public playtest for their windblown open world extraction shooter Exoborne, which I would gingerly summarise as Anthem meets Just Cause with a touch of PUBG. From today till 17th February at 1pm GMT, 2pm CET, or 5am PST, you’ll be able to get your fill of mech-o-looting via Steam. Here’s a trailer’s worth of wiggly whooshes, big bangs and exowotsits to celebrate. Mmm, exowotsits. They used to be 25p a bag in the 1990s.

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Well, this is nice. Remedy’s exceptionally good horror game Alan Wake 2 is finally making royalties for the studio for the first time since its release in late 2023, after shifting over 2 million copies. The jubilant news comes from Remedy latest financial report, as spotted by VG247.

As of September last year, the musical-with-guns had “recouped most of its development and marketing expenses”, but still wasn’t quite in the green. Since then, they’ve released both The Lake House expansion and physical console editions, which appear to have done the trick. “October saw particularly high activity around Alan Wake 2,” says the report.

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The developers of upcoming survival game Subnautica 2 have warned fans that some dastardly do-badders are sending “fraudulent invites” to a playtest for the game via Steam messages. The playtest isn’t real, say Unknown Worlds, who point out that any such invite will only come in an email from their own domain.

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Monster Hunter Wilds features an absolutely dreadful spider monster – a spider that, going by preview encounters and trailers, strives for the point on the Venn diagram between Malenia in Elden Ring and the demon arachnid from Hunt: Showdown. The spider monster is called the Lala Barina. If I saw “Lala Barina” out of context I would assume I was reading about a successor to Suzuki’s subcompact automobile the Holden Barina, whose brave and sturdy outline once graced the roads of Oceania. I would not picture a giant, greasy rose blossom with jet-black darting mandibles. I would not picture nests of scarlet silk and status effects literally out the wazoo.

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Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 is out now in full public access on Steam, Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store and once again, I ask myself: does Sid Meier keep a hit list of journalists who just call it plain old Civilization? What about journalists who come up with cute puns like Sidilization or CiviliSidtion or SimSiddy: The Meier The Merrier and whoops, I’ve just been assassinated by sniper drone. Fortunately the drone is equipped with one of those generative AI chatbots and can write the rest of this news post for me.

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