Gaming
Valve Will Not Be At E3
Valve has a reputation for skipping E3, with its last presentation at the show being about Portal 2 in 2010. The company has now confirmed that this year will be no exception. So no, there won’t be any Half-Life 3 announcements. And no, there won’t be a Half-Life 3 at all.
In all seriousness, the main reason for people thinking that Valve might rock up at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this year was to dish out some more information about its upcoming virtual reality hardware, the HTC Vive. With the headset due out before the end of the year, it wasn’t unreasonable to expect Valve, or its partner HTC, might want to take E3 as an opportunity to talk it up. It’s not even listed as a participant in E3’s first ever media briefing to be dedicated to PC gaming, which, as the company behind PC gaming’s biggest digital distributor, seems a little strange. But it’s most likely that Valve intends to use Steam, as well as smaller future events throughout the year, to release information about its VR hardware.
Have all you Half-Life fans recovered from your collective sobbing yet? Yes? Good. So Valve’s absence from E3 will mean the media won’t be able to get its hands on the HTC Vive, at least not any time soon. That means there won’t be any reviews from people who have had hands-on time with the device for quite a while.
Is that a bad thing? Well, on the one hand, it could be an indication that Valve and HTC still aren’t at a stage yet where they can present a fully working model, which, with the device releasing by the end of the year, would certainly be bad news. But it may simply mean Valve has plans for revealing the device that just don’t involve E3. That’s not entirely unexpected, after all. Valve, and its platform Steam, are big enough that they can rest assured that anything they announce, no matter when they decide to do it, will get full coverage across the web. So we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
Disney Speedstorm, Gameloft’s free-to-play kart racer, will enter its latest season with a wintery backdrop of Arendelle. Let It Go will add Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Kristoff, and Hans as racers. As always, they’ll have unique moves and abilities.
Oaken and other musical movie crew members will be unlocked, along with a new Golden Pass. After fan feedback, the developer is rebalancing this aspect of the release so you can progress faster and unlock more rewards.
The developer also announced on Twitter that it’s lowering in-game shop prices starting today, and if you’ve paid for microtransactions, you’ll get a big payout. The French studio appears to be betting on this season’s success.
Adding non-Frozen characters Oswald, Ortensia, and WALL-E could also help. A comprehensive game update should bring back lapsed players and attract new ones. Will you challenge the kart racer?
Bungie has pulled a contentious $15 starter pack from Season of the Wish, which launched yesterday. The pack had a poor selection and was marketed to new players, which the community strongly opposed.
The starter pack proudly stated that players could “experience the power of build-defining Exotic weapons by instantly unlocking three of Destiny 2’s finest: Traveler’s Chosen, Ruinous Effigy, and Sleeper Simulant.” An exotic ship, a sparrow, a ghost shell, 125,000 glimmer, 50 enhancement cores, five enhancement prisms, and one ascendant shard are also included.
This offering may seem harmless to a new player, but Forbes’ Paul Tassi says, “You sort of have to be a Destiny 2 player to understand what an outrageously bad deal this is.” The Forsaken Pack, another Bungie release, includes two dozen Exotics, a dungeon, and a raid. It cost $20 and is now $5. It looks bad, from what we can tell.
Guardians retaliated with negative Steam reviews. They orchestrated the DLC page to include “Capitalism,” “Crime,” and “Psychological Horror” user tags, which is funny.
After Bungie pulled the pack, Redditor Grizz3d summarized the community response: “I don’t get how that starter pack was approved. What part of stealing from new players wasn’t going to result in community outrage? Bungie’s disconnect with players is shocking. I’m glad you got rid of the pack, but it’s disappointing that Bungie thought it was a good idea.”
This follows the Witcher 3 crossover armour sets, which look great but are expensive. Sony’s independent live service outpost is in danger due to a delayed expansion and studio layoffs.
Sony announced last year that it would plant trees for Horizon Forbidden West PlayStation fans who unlocked a simple trophy in the open-world game. This, in partnership with several charities, sought to protect the global environment and biodiversity.
Over a year later, it released a trailer showing its progress. The company has planted 600,000 trees worldwide, restoring 1,800 acres. More importantly, the gaming industry has planted 2.5 million trees worldwide.
Gaming is fun, but we must protect our world. Sony has taken steps to be more environmentally friendly, such as adding energy-saving features to the PS5 and shipping all its products in fully recyclable packaging.
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