Fast Travel Through the Week: October 6th Edition

by Jordan Love | Oct 6, 2017 | News, News Section, weekly

Fast Travel Through the Week: October 6th Edition

by Jordan Love | Oct 6, 2017 | News, News Section, weekly

Each week, Fast Travel helps you get caught up on everything going on in the gaming industry. We start by highlighting a few of the week’s biggest news pieces. Then it’s on to a dollop of indie news. Followed by a helping of “The Best Thing on the Internet, This Week” to help you along. And finally, we gather up all the week’s headlines and smash them into a TL;DR pie for you to enjoy.

This Weeks Headlines

League of Legends World Championship Gets Underway

The League of Legends World Championship began this week and we have all the coverage you NA fans could hope for. Our recaps, previews and analysis are all nestled onto our esports page, along with VODs of everything you might have missed.

We’ll also be on Discord off and on discussing the games and playing some LoL so be sure to stop by and join in, especially if you hate or love C9.

Our day one and day two recaps are already up, so be sure to check them out. And if you’re late to the game, you might want to brush up on our preview.

Nearly 200 Games Removed From Steam by Valve

Valve has a pretty big problem on its hands. Earlier this week they removed 173 titles from the Steam library because of what they say were “extreme actions” that were “impacting the functionality of the store and our tools.” Polygon first broke the story earlier this week.

The root of the problem is asset flippers and there desire to make a quick buck, no matter the consequences. Asset flippers, a term coined by YouTuber Jim Sterling, turn out cheap and poorly made games and then sell them on stores like Steam for marginal profits. The developer behind the recent Steam Direct ordeal is known as Silicon Echo Studios. They’ve been producing games en masse since early this year and have been doing so under many different names. Some of their games are nearly identical to one another and nearly all of them were part of the Steam Direct program.

Call of Duty: WWII Beta Has over 20,000 Negative Reviews

The Call of Duty WWII Open Beta has been active for less than a week and its already amassed over 28,000 Steam reviews. The bad news is they’re overwhelmingly, crushingly negative. With the exception of the graphics, which most fans enjoy or find standard, nearly everything else about the game has been heavily criticized.

Call of Duty has become an Activision staple, with a new game being churned out nearly every year. But things have become gloomy for the storied franchise. Many fans feel as if the games have grown static. Each new installment feels like a lazy copy of the last, with the same ideas being hashed out over and over again. Nonetheless, the games have always been at least acceptable in their game play, especially for casual fans. If WWII can’t even muster acceptable game-play, then we might soon be seeing the end of COD’s reign.

New PSVR Model Announced by Sony

A new model of Sony’s PSVR was announced this week and it looks to fix a lot of small things that make using the PSVR on a regular basis a bit of a hassle. The new model of PlayStation’s virtual reality headset has “an updated Processor Unit that supports HDR pass through, enabling users to enjoy HDR-compatible PS4 content on a TV without having to disconnect the Processor Unit in between the TV and the PS4 system.”

Mdel number CUH-ZVR2, the new hardware will also feature a big upgrade in the audio department. According to Sony, the updated design “enables the stereo headphone cables to be integrated with the VR headset and a slimmer, streamlined connection cable.” This means an overall cleaner look and hopefully a smaller chance at those cables snagging on things.

There isn’t an official release date set for CUH-ZVR2, but we’d expect it to be sometime soon given that we’re fast approaching the holiday season. It’s possible that we’ll get a look at the headset at Paris Games Week in November and that it’ll go on sale shortly thereafter.

RECENT VIDEOS

TRENDING NOW

PlayStation VR Just Got Cheaper Read Now

eSports come to YouTube Red with Good Game Read Now

Gamescom Drops a Trailer for Biomutant’s Open World Read Now

Indie Games Looking to Take on AAA Titles Read Now

Is Blizzard Making Overwatch More Sport than eSport? Read Now

Criticize Us!

Indie Spotlight

Why Patreon Could be the New Platform for Indie Devs

Despite its booming popularity, there are still those unfamiliar with Patreon. The premise is simple enough; it’s a crowdfunding format on a monthly basis. Creators have a few ways to handle payments, but the most popular is in small donations every month. These can be discontinued at a patron’s behest at any time. Also, unlike Kickstarter, the return is generally much, much faster. This is because the projects are usually ongoing or released in stages, allowing patrons to enjoy what they are paying a monthly fee for, and seeing as how the most commonly paid amount is $1-$3, this is a pretty good return.

Patreon also circumvents much of the frustration donors have felt with other services. Some games have taken 2-5 years to launch Some have never even made it to launch. For donors that have invested hundreds or thousands of dollars, this can be a frustrating process. But Patreon offers a monthly choice to jump ship. If the project keeps stalling out, a patron can simply stop donating.

Telltale games was one of the first major developers to work with this model—though they did so without using Patreon. Their games are often released episodically for small fees and are bundled together later on. As you probably know, this strategy has worked out great for them.

Granted, an episodic structure only works for certain games and styles. Telltale games fit this niche, so do games with uncomplicated engines like RPGs. Those games that need years just to develop a combat system will probably stick with the larger platforms, but it gives a very viable option for smaller games more focused around concept and story.

The Coolest Thing on the Internet This Week

People Parent’s and Grandparents Kicking Ass at Games

This week’s ‘Coolest Thing’ is dedicated to this Reddit post from oxid22. As the title states, this Redditor showed the game 2048 to his granddad. He’s been playing it ever since and has achieved a score of 42,505,32. That’s awesome and if you read the comments, it is apparently pretty common for parents and grandparents to beast at games their offspring showed them.

Redditor wowzahs098 says that their grandmother became one of the top 50 Dragonvale players in the world after being introduced to it by wowzahs098’s cousin. docandersonn‘s mom is the number one Wheel of Fortune player in the world and Dm4c1997‘s granpa is a beast at Runescape. Meanwhile, CrystalineGemstones‘s mom is still leveling up in PokemonGo and my mom still plays Clash of Clans on a near daily basis.

At the same time, Mathy16‘s grandma still argues with the voicemail lady and robyrob78‘s grandparents still pay for AOL Mail. So maybe not all grandparents are living it up in the age of tech quite like oxid22’s granddad.

Of course, this is all just stuff said on the internet and it could all be lies, but for the sake of wholesomeness, we’re going to choose to believe it all until proven otherwise.