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Warner Bros. Contradicts Itself While Trying to Fix the Forthog Debacle

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Earlier this month, Warner Bros. Interactive announced the release of a special Uruk, Forthog Orc-Slayer, for the upcoming game Middle-Earth: Shadow of War in honor of the late Executive Producer Michael Forgey. Originally, this Uruk was available as a $4.99 DLC, and $3.50 from every sale was to be donated to Forgey’s family. While some gamers viewed the DLC as a kind gesture to both Forgey and his surviving family, others saw less-than-hidden signs Warner Bros. would profit  from these sales. Yesterday, the company announced it would make Forthog available to all Shadow of War owners for free. However, this decision might have made the controversy even worse.

Let’s start with something I immediately noticed in Warner Bros. recent statement: it notes Warner Bros. Interactive will refund all purchases of Forthog Orc-Slayer and will directly donate money to the Forgey family, but it doesn’t specify how much. Will the donation be a few thousand dollars or several million? Will Warner Bros. Interactive give more or less money than would have been donated from the DLC sales? The news might be good for us gamers, but not necessarily for the Forgeys.

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Furthermore, the statement also tries to clarify some information regarding the original donation controversy but ends up contradicting the original announcement. Yesterday’s post explained Warner Bros. Interactive intended to sell the DLC worldwide and donate all profits to the family, but the original announcement video stated Warner Bros. Interactive would donate only $3.50 per sale. Forthog Orc-Slayer originally cost $4.99, and when we subtract the 5% cut platforms such as Steam take from sales and the $3.50 donation, $1.24 would have gone to Warner Bros. Interactive and Monolith Productions. 

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor sold over 3,000,000 copies on the PlayStation 4 alone; therefore, one could easily assume that the sales for Middle-Earth: Shadow of War and its Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC would eventually have reached the millions. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that even with $3.50 from each sale going to the Forgey family, eventually the increments of $1.24 would have added up to a hefty profit beyond the cost of development. Therefore, the new announcement contradicts the claim that Warner Bros. Interactive always wanted to donate all of the DLC profits to the family

The Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC debacle left a really bad taste in my mouth and almost completely turned me off from purchasing Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. While I appreciate Warner Bros. Interactive trying to make amends and satisfy both gamers and the Forgey family, the company could stand to do a better job at fixing this mess.

All you have to do to get my attention is talk about video games, technology, anime, and/or Dungeons & Dragons - also people in spandex fighting rubber suited monsters.

Gaming

Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made

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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.

 

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You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5

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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.

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This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive

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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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