This week in gaming: Rockstar comes under fire, Skybound Games discusses The Walking Dead’s final season, Fortnite’s bus gets boosted, and more!
In the spirit of keeping our readers up to date with what’s happening in the video game industry, the Doublejump Digest is a brief collection of the major news stories from the past week. Keep an eye out for the Digest every Sunday night, and head on into the archive for news from weeks gone by!
From Doublejump:
- Cai sat down to explain why “gatekeeping” has become a real problem in gaming.
- For this month’s Multiplayer feature, we celebrated Halloween by writing about the times when games have scared the living daylights out of us!
Major news:
Rockstar Games allows employees to sound off following mixed messages about 100-hour work weeks:
The Red Dead Redemption 2 developer temporarily eased its strict social media policy (via Kotaku) to allow employees to speak about their experiences during the game’s development. This move comes not long since the company came under fire after studio co-founder Dan Houser revealed to Vulture that some staff had worked “100-hour weeks” to finish the game this year. Rockstar Games later clarified to Kotaku that Houser was only referring his own senior writing team and that no other employees were required to work extremely-long hours.
Skybound aims to finish The Walking Dead’s final season with “100%” former Telltale staff:
Skybound Games CEO Ian Howe and former Telltale Games Creative Director Kent Mudle recently held a Reddit AMA (via Gamasutra) to discuss the next step for the development of The Walking Dead: The Final Season.
When asked about the story’s direction, Howe explained how Skybound plans to maintain the same creative process and creative staff.
“Regarding the story, the process of developing the narrative isn’t changing, there is a long standing collaboration between the writers and Skybound over story approval and all the same people will still be involved,” he wrote. Howe later confirmed that Skybound plans for the development team to “be staffed 100% by former Telltale staff”.
As for a timeframe for the season’s completion, Howe admitted that production on the title had not yet resumed, but that he would be “very disappointed” if the third episode was not released by the end of this year.
Epic speeds up Fortnite: Battle Royale’s flying bus:
Fortnite developer Epic Games has made Battle Royale’s Battle Buses fly “25% faster” to allow players to enter the action earlier in matches, just in time for the current Alpha Tournament.
Sony delays Days Gone out of “crowded February timeframe”:
In a post on the European PlayStation Blog, Sony Computer Entertainment’s Asad Qizilbash revealed that the company has delayed Bend Studio’s Days Gone to April 26 to avoid a “crowded February timeframe” and “further polish” the open-world title. The move sees the game miss a February-March release period that includes BioWare’s Anthem, Microsoft’s Crackdown 3, Capcom’s Devil May Cry 5, and FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Notable game releases:
- SOULCALIBUR VI (PS4 and Xbox One)
- Starlink: Battle for Atlas (PS4, Switch, and Xbox One)
Videos and trailer releases:
Red Dead Redemption 2 – Launch Trailer:
Eight years later, the game is finally here!
Battlefield V – Official Story Trailer:
DICE is having another go at telling individual soldiers’ tales in the game’s War Stories mode.
SOULCALIBUR VI – Launch Trailer:
We can all now create our own monstrous fighters!
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales – Official Gameplay Trailer:
Here’s a proper “trailer” for those of us who couldn’t be bothered watching 37-minutes of gameplay footage last week.
HITMAN 2 – Sean Bean Elusive Target #1 Reveal:
The actor most notable known for dying early on-screen is Agent 47’s first elusive target.
Other news:
- Discord’s official store is now in public beta: Polygon
- Dreadnought’s developer has laid off 45 staff members: Game Informer
- Half-Life 2: The Orange Box and the Left 4 Dead games are the latest to be “enhanced” for Xbox One X: Xbox Wire
- Police have search two Melbourne homes over alleged involvement in GTAV cheating: Kotaku
- OpTic India has banned one of its Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players for cheating: Eurogamer
- Check out these new Kingdom Hearts III screenshots: DualShockers
- Ubisoft is shutting down servers for its older Just Dance game: Eurogamer
- Splash Damage is no longer going to support Dirty Bomb: Polygon
- Angry consumers have review bombed Shadow of the Tomb Raider on Steam after it gets heavily-discounted: Eurogamer
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