Actor Lance Reddick has passed away. Although primarily known for many of his on-screen roles, such as Cedric Daniels in The Wire, Charon in the John Wick franchise, and a recent portrayal of Albert Wesker in a 2022 Netflix series adaptation of Resident Evil, Reddick contributed his talents to various other mediums, such as providing his voice to the Destiny games series as the character Commander Zavala.

Disco Elysium has added a photo mode feature to the game called Collage Mode, which many have rushed to point out was announced in the midst of a lawsuit between ZA/UM’s original founders and the studio’s current leadership. Some reports are indicating that the dispute with former poducer Kaur Kender has officially settled, but there is argument that these reports are misleading and that the legal battle is not quite over yet.

Create the Disco scenes of your dreams.

Introducing Collage Mode: the new functionality that gives you the creative freedom to stage just about anything in-game.

Available now for PC and Mac players, with console rolling out soon: https://t.co/PTkM4PBmLy pic.twitter.com/3dCZGmGzyQ

— Disco Elysium – The Final Cut (@discoelysium) March 16, 2023

Emmett Shear is stepping down as Twitch CEO. Dan Clancy will be taking over the role.

Meta is continuing to fall apart, and the predicted 10,000 layoffs that some analysts have foreseen has come to fruition. In the middle of restructuring, NFTs seem to no longer be a priority in Meta’s pipeline, in which many of these roles were tied to.

Meanwhile, Square Enix continues to insist NFTs are part of its future, releasing a new trailer for its NFT game, Symbiogenesis.

The FTC has fined Epic Games for what it has charged as misleading tactics to trick Fortnite players into making unintended purchases.

IO Interactive is expanding their horizons and opening up shop in Turkey. That said, the region is still in the midst of reeling and recovering from a fatal earthquake.

Former Blizzard leaders have come together to form a new games studio called Magic Soup.

The UK government is increasing tax relief support for video games.

The next Guilty Gear Strive DLC character is Delilah and “Bedman?”, a pair that will function as a single unit.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is coming to Steam on April 6.

Everyone here is pretty hyped for the release of Dokapon Kingdom: Connect, and the game now officially has a release date for North America on May 9.

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Rieko Kodama, producer of Skies of Arcadia and a core leader behind the original Phantasy Star games has passed away. Kodama’s career with Sega spanned over three decades, especially significant when she began her career in a time when women’s presence and contributions in games were largely overshadowed.

Takahiro Sakurai, the Japanese voice actor for Cloud Strife in the Final Fantasy franchise since 2002, has admitted that he has been in an extramarital affair with a work colleague for about ten years. The affair has forced the cancellation of his radio travel show, P.S. Genki Desu. Takahiro this past week. Sakurai’s marriage—and specifically a marriage to another industry professional—has been withheld from public information until now, and his talent management agency has acknowledged and published a statement apologizing to the impacted women, who both remain anonymous. Sakurai prominently works in anime, and has been recently performing as Giyū Tomioka in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Reigen in Mob Psycho 100 III, and Tsubame Ozuno in the Urusei Yatsura 2022 remake. These roles and others currently have not been impacted.

Rocksteady Studios’ co-founders, Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker, are leaving the company by the end of this year. The news comes accompanied by the information that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is almost finished with production.

Unable to meet the demands of the guidelines set by Japan’s CERO rating system for games, The Callisto Protocol will not release in Japan. The game’s marketing has made its excessive level of violence a point of highlight, and the game’s developer, Striking Distance Studios, does not want to make changes to said content to secure a CERO rating. The company has vowed that Japan pre-orders will be refunded. CERO’s standards have grown increasingly stricter over the years, impacting game releases in order to produce region-specific copies of titles like Cyberpunk 2077, The Last of Us, and Resident Evil.

After accusations against PQube for exploitative behavior, Toge Productions and Mojiken Studio’s A Space for the Unbound was successfully able to find a new publisher under amicable terms. The game’s developers accused their former publisher of withholding grant money to leverage and increase their own revenue.

Following the outcome of a a slow, internal takeover that pushed out the original core team behind Disco Elysium, Robert Kurvitz, one of the co-founders of the original ZA/UM collective, is attempting to file a lawsuit against ZA/UM the game studio. This information was discovered on public Estonian court records, accompanied with the scheduling of a hearing date in late November.

The Communications Workers of America have officially filed unfair labor practices charges against Activision Blizzard due to threatening, anti-union messages made by executive Lulu Cheng Meservey via Slack. Meservey was recently hired with a wave of new employees in attempts to bring more women onto executive positions into the company, but has been quickly critiqued based on her prior working for Substack.

Meta’s Reality Labs is steadily hemorrhaging billions of dollars. The company’s latest third quarter financial report show that profits are also continuing to shrink since their foray into exploring VR, while Horizon Worlds, their proprietary virtual space, is attracting less than 200 thousand monthly active users. Meta’s own stock shares has plummeted at its lowest in the last four years.

Capcom’s latest financial reports confirms that Street Fighter 6 will likely not see a release until 2023 next year. The Resident Evil 4 Remake is also slated to be released around that same time.

CD Projeckt Red will be remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5. It is confirmed that this is the same project that was publicly teased under the code name, “Canis Majoris”.

And the wait is over.

Blaseball is back.

The post The Bulletin: Playing Chess appeared first on Gamesline.

In the news, Resident Evil demos were announced, Nintendo Indie World Showcase happened, modders are de-VRing Half-Life: Alyx, rumors of a Square Enix buyout, Twitch purges millions of viewbots, and IO Interactive is opening a new studio!

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There’s a new Animal Crossing Uudate, the #fremelee hashtag has people mad at Nintendo, IO interactive is making a new James Bond game and MAG is having problems with their administration.

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, and @SolaireHazard

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

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Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

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Announced today was a new Hitman series being developed for Hulu. The series’ pilot will be written by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad who will also produce. In the final line of the announcement on Deadline, one of the better sources of TV and movie news, the site confirms that two new Hitman games are being worked on at the moment by IO. This is the first real confirmation that Hitman’s second season isn’t the only new source of Agent 47 we’ll be getting.

This announcement falls in line with a recent quote in a blog post by IO’s CEO Hakan Abrak where he says the “next Hitman game” is coming. It wasn’t clear if this just meant season 2 of 2016’s Hitman, or an entirely new title. Now it may be both.

IO is clearly putting in overtime into the Hitman franchise and have confirmed they’re seeking more partners for future development. Being cast aside by Square may have been for the best after all.

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Luckily, it seems the split worked out for Io. It isn’t instantly clear if Hitman’s upcoming Season 2 will still have the same level of content and release schedule as the first season did. Also, no clue if Io can maintain and keep the same relationships and financial responsibility that a typical publisher could. Can Io just keep updating last year’s Hitman? Do they need to establish new working relationships from the ground up? Can they afford a physical release? There’s a lot to figure out, but at least Io and Hitman have survived and moved on.

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No word about when Season 2 will start, or how much it might cost. Season 1 came with the $60 version of Hitman, but $60 seems crazy high for DLC. I’d settle for a $40 even if it meant a few less levels. Hopefully the disc release goes well and Season 2 comes soon enough, because I’m still not done sneaking around, and throwing soda cans at rock stars in their hotel penthouses.

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To be honest a few months delay doesn’t amount to much and if it means these larger levels are even more impressive and intricate then I’d rather see IO get it right. Hitman is already an inconsistent series and if they want this new release schedule to work they’ll need to have everything come out smelling like roses.

Check out the E3 trailer below:

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