February has quickly come and gone, and so we kick off the start of this month of March Madness with another batch of gaming news!
Humble Bundle launched a fund to aid the victims of the recent earthquake disasters in Turkey and Syria. The bundle includes a mixture of both tabletop and video games, alongside comics. It also features some work by Turkish creators.
To help support Turkiye-Syria earthquake relief efforts, we’ve joined forces with our industry friends for a bundle of games & books to lend aid to the people of the region.
100% of proceeds will go to @DirectRelief, @IMC_worldwide, and @SaveTheChildren.https://t.co/unv9sLdRCE pic.twitter.com/SA1nmjio0b
— Humble Bundle (@humble) March 1, 2023
Elden Ring will be getting its first expansion, “Shadow of the Erdtree”, hinted to be possibly taking place before the main events of the game. The expansion is currently still in development and developer FromSoftware’s announcement has not elaborated on much more beyond a shiny piece of new concept art that has Elden Ring players rabidly speculating. Elden Ring has sold about 20 million copies since its initial release.
God of War Ragnarök finds itself sweeping claim on many nomination categories in this year’s BAFTA Games Awards. The other games nominated include Cult of the Lamb, Stray, Olliolli World, and A Plague Tale: Requiem.
Blumhouse Productions is reportedly in talks of doing a Dead by Daylight movie adaptation. Blumhouse is known for producing primarily horror films, such as the Paranormal Activity franchise, The Purge, Get Out, and M3GAN.
The FTC officially rejects Sony’s motion to quash the Microsoft-Activision merger. Microsoft maintains that its merger would not impact competition in the industry, and has allowed the subpoenaing of Sony to gain access to internal documents to review during the initial lawsuit. Microsoft has been meanwhile maintaining leverage by conducting deals with other companies, ensuring that games like their Call of Duty franchise are to remain unaffected on their respective platforms and storefronts. Just last week, Nintendo has negotiated with the company to now allow Xbox games on Nintendo consoles.
But once again, Activision Blizzard is possibly in trouble for what the Communication Workers of America (CWA) has set forth in filing as an unfair labor practice in the recent, unprecedented firing of two QA workers. The employees in question had to undergo a series of disciplinary meetings that resulted in their termination, due to what management testifies as their use of “strong language” in response to Activision’s recent attempts to bring workers back to an in-person schedule, the CWA reports.
Meanwhile, Electronic Arts abruptly laid off more than 200 QA testers for Apex Legends. Workers allege the sudden move was retaliatory against slowly growing unionization efforts.
The Wolf Among Us 2 has been delayed and will not foresee a 2023 release. According to Telltale Games, the team had wanted to avoid burnout, and the game’s development is also now taking a pivot to using the Unreal 5 system. No new release date has been given. The original Telltale Games was forced to shutter back in 2018, assigning their assets to LCG Entertainment, who has since been working under their name.
Babylon’s Fall has officially ended service this week. The co-op RPG developed by PlatinumGames was unfortunately considered a commercial failure, and has barely lasted half a year in service.
Hot off the presses and on top of Forspoken developer Luminous Productions being disbanded to merge with the company, Yosuke Matsuda will no longer be President of Square Enix. He will be succeeded by Takashi Kiryu, rising from his position as the Chief Strategy Officer. Matsuda was President of the company since 2013.
And finally, enemy of the site Yuji Naka has come around to fully admit that he has indeed, committed crimes. He has acknowledged he was fully aware of unreleased information that enabled him to engage in insider trading. Yuji Naka was one of three former Square Enix employees who were arrested and indicted for insider trading around the tail end of last year in 2022. Naka spared no breath in getting arrested a second time, not that long after for the same offenses.
