Game Bytes: More Activision Blizzard Evil, FFXIV Expansion Too Popular
It’s December and it’s beginning to look a lot like… big video game industry news and scandals. This week on Game Bytes we have news on some glitched naked Animal Crossing villagers, a Sony scandal, more on Activision and an update to Final Fantasy 14.
Sony has fired Senior Vice President of Engineering George Cacioppo, after he appeared in a video organized by the YouTube channel People v. Preds in which he appeared at a home, allegedly hoping to meet a 15-year-old boy he had been texting explicitly through the app Grindr. But the boy was a fake account managed by the people of the People v. Preds channel and Cacioppo was caught in a sting. “We are aware of the situation and the employee in question has been terminated from employment,” Sony said in an emailed statement to CNET. People v. Preds says it sent its evidence to the San Diego District Attorney.
Raven Software, a subsidiary company of Activision Blizzard, has been in the news for their public walkouts at the company. Last Friday, management at Raven Software told QA staff that their contracts would not be renewed, leading to 12 employees losing their jobs which is about 30 percent of the team. In response a number of QA staff at Raven Software staged a walkout in protest. In a show of solidarity, QA workers from Blizzard offices in Texas, Minnesota, and California joined the walkout, demanding that all QA employees be converted to permanent staff. Despite losing their jobs, those terminated are still expected to crunch in their final weeks following the release of Call of Duty: Warzone‘s Pacific map, which Raven Software is in charge of.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a very chill game but with the most recent update a glitch has appeared — full-frontal nudity. There isn’t anything inappropriate, but the clothes that you have given an in-game character in the glitch just don’t load in. Besides Animal Crossing nudity, Nintendo may have to change its policy for canceling pre-orders on the eShop after it lost a court case over the matter in Germany. The current policy is that digital pre-orders can be canceled up to a week prior to release. The court sided with the Federation of German Consumer Organisations and The Norwegian Consumer Council, who argued that pre-orders should be held to the same standard as other digital purchases in Europe which is a 14-day period in which the product could be refunded. The decision stated that since the pre-load was not a playable game, that the download is worthless to buyers and that Nintendo does not fulfill its part of the exchange until the game’s release date. Nintendo has not announced or made any changes to its pre-order policy on the eShop as of yet.
Final Fantasy XIV producer and director Naoki Yoshida has publicly apologized for the ongoing overcrowding issues occurring in the MMO due to the newest expansion, Endwalker. This expansion is alleged to be the last in the series for the MMO. Yoshida said that during the official release of Endwalker, all players “who own the full version of the game and have an active subscription” will be getting seven days of game time for free. This also includes players currently using the 30-day free play period when registering a copy of the full version of Final Fantasy XIV.
This week didn’t see too many games released but here are the ones that did. On the 30th of November, Beyond a Steel Sky (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch), Evil Genius 2: World Domination (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360), and Townscaper (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One) were released. Wreckfest (Stadia) was released on the 1st of December, with Dauntless (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S), Fights In Tight Spaces (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC) and Solar Ash (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC) all being released on the 2nd. Finally on the 3rd we had three more games released: Chorus (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Stadia, PC), Danganronpa Decadence (Switch) and Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp (Switch).
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