Gaming
Machinima Settles In FTC Xbox Promotion Case
Machinima, the massive YouTube gaming network, has settled its case with the Federal Trade Commission over its “deceptive” promotion of the Xbox One. Machinima paid its content creators to talk about the Xbox One after the console’s launch without disclosing to its audience that it was part of any promotion. The content creators were also prohibited from discussing the details of the deal with the public.
The promotion, which ran in early 2014, saw Machinima content creators offered additional payments for videos that featured Xbox One footage. The terms of the deal meant that the video-makers couldn’t show anything disparaging about the Xbox One or any of its games. The creators were offered an additional $3.00 per thousand views on the videos. The creators were also prohibited from discussing the deal publicly or even disclosing that the deal existed, which is against FTC guidelines.
The FTC noted that the videos not only failed to disclose the existence of a deal between Machinima and Microsoft regarding the Xbox One, but that they were also presented so that it appeared that the videos “reflected the independent opinions of impartial video game enthusiasts.” According to the FTC, Microsoft also had the power to have any of the videos taken down if it felt that its products were portrayed in a negative light.
“In truth and in fact, the video reviews for Xbox One and the Launch Titles did not reflect the independent opinions of impartial video game enthusiasts,” the FTC complaint reads. “Respondent’s influencers created the video reviews as part of the global advertising campaign to promote sales of Xbox One and the Launch Titles.” The complaint went on to say that “this fact would be material to consumers in their purchasing decisions regarding Xbox One and the Launch Titles.”
The FTC called this behaviour “deceptive practice” and noted in particular a deal that lead to one prominent Machinima YouTuber getting $30,000 for a video promoting the Xbox One and another who received $15,000. The two videos were commissioned to revolve around talking points about what features they were looking forward to in the Xbox One.
The settlement sees Machinima promising to disclose any future video promotions in full to its viewers and to refuse to pay video makers who fail to disclose any deals they may have.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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