July 2020

It’s time to have a bit of a soak

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Bandai Namco, Capcom, NetherRealm, and Mane6 pulled games from Evo Online following abuse allegations against Joey Cuellar.

The post Evo Online Loses 6 Games Following Abuse Allegations (Update) appeared first on Siliconera.

Following troubling accusations made against Joey "MrWizard" Cuellar, one of the organizers of the annual Evo fighting game tournament, the organizers of the event announced they are canceling Evo 2020. The move comes after multiple participants, supporters, and commentators dropped out of the show, leading to publishers like NeatherRealm, Capcom, and Bandai Namco pulling their support as well.

Originally, Evo placed Cuellar on administrative leave pending a third-party investigation into the claims made against him. Less than a day later, the organization announced it is parting ways with Cuellar and that Tony Cannon is taking over as CEO.

pic.twitter.com/eUl8rF9TkC

— EVO (@EVO) July 3, 2020

The cancelation of this year's event looked like an inevitability as the number of participants and partners pulling out of the show grew. Now, Cannon and the rest of the Evo team are going to have to rebuild trust in the fighting game community.

Today Bandai Namco Entertainment released a brand new trailer of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4.

This trailer showcases the second DLC character coming as part of the first character pass in action. It’s Charlotte Cracker, who will come alongside Charlotte Smoothie and Vinsmoke Judge.

Not only we get to see her overwhelming attacks in action, but also his ability to summon biscuit puppets to his aid.

We already know that two more character passes will be coming following the one releasing in the summer. The second has a fall 2020 release window, while the third doesn’t have one just yet.

You can check the trailer out below.

In case you are unfamiliar with One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4, here’s how the publisher describes the game.

Today Level-5 announced a Japanese release date for its upcoming Yo-Kai Watch game Yo-Kai Academy Y: Wai Wai School Life, a spin-off of the series.

The game is going to launch in Japan for Nintendo Switch on August 13, while the PS4 version is coming “soon” within 2020. 

Alongside the announcement, we get to see plenty of new TV commercials that will be aired in Japan to advertise the release in the country.

You can enjoy them below.

Today the organizers of the fighting game tournament EVO announced the cancellation of the event that was already going to be hosted exclusively online due to the COVID 19 pandemic.

The announcement was made on Twitter following serious allegations of abuse made against co-founder and former CEO Joey Cuellar.

This prompted Bandai Namco, Capcom, and NetherRealm Studios to withdraw their games from the tournament as many players and commentators also distancing themselves from the event. 

Alongside the cancellation of EVO online, Cuellar has been removed from his position as CEO while co-founder Tony Cannon will step in as CEO.

Cannon’s new leadership position comes with the promise of greater accountability across the organization. 

We also read the commitment to making every change necessary in making EVO a better model for a “stronger and safer culture.”

All players who purchased a badge will be refunded and the equivalent of the proceeds will be donated to Project HOPE.

You can read the full announcement below.

There’s a whole new subset of sealife to find

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Pascal will gift your DIYs to make beautiful mermaid-themed furniture in exchange for fresh Scallops

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We may be watching a Katsuhiro Harada Twitch stream soon, as the head of Bandai Namco's esports wonders what do with Evo plans.

The post Katsuhiro Harada May Consider Streaming on Twitch After Canceled Events appeared first on Siliconera.

Following sexual misconduct allegations, Evo CEO Joey Cuellar has been replaced by Evo co-founder Tony Cannon. Evo Online is canceled.

The post Evo CEO Joey Cuellar Replaced by Tony Cannon, Evo Online Canceled appeared first on Siliconera.

Evo 2020 has been cancelled following allegations of sexual misconduct made against Evo CEO Joey Cuellar, who was placed on administrative leave earlier in the day, and is now being relieved of all responsibilities with the company and tournament. Early this morning, Evo released a statement saying "The behavior in these accusations runs directly counter to Evo's mission of building a safe, welcoming environment for all of our players and attendees."

Over the course of the day, commentators James Chen and Maximilian Dood tweeted that they would no longer be a part of this year's tournament. Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, and other games were also pulled by the developers and publishers behind them. NetherRealm, the studio behind the Mortal Kombat games, said "We stand in solidarity with those who have spoken out against abuse. We will be pulling MK11 from EVO Online."

Cara Stratton is an artist from Canada.

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While Anime Expo won’t happen physically this year, MangaGamer just made its traditional announcements that normally would have come at the show.

The first is Steam Prison: Fin Route, an expansion of the otome visual novel by HuneX Steam Prison, which is already available on Steam.

It’s coming soon to Steam and MangaGamer’s own store. 

The second new game announcement is Jeanne at the Clockwork Tower, a rather unique isekai visual novel by Liar-soft.

The story starts during Operation Overlord in World War II, as the Allies are landing in Normandy. 

The hero is a soldier belonging to the Free French army whose aircraft is hit by anti-aircraft fire and is forced to crash-land in a forest behind enemy lines.

Alongside a comrade, he is attacked by… medieval knights. 

When he wakes up after the attack, he finds himself in a fantasy version of France where magic exists, on an epic quest alongside Jeanne, the lady who saved him. 

This is also coming “soon” to Steam and MangaGamer’s own store.

The video also includes a reminder of the July 9 release date for NyanCafe Macchiato and August 7 for Room No.9.

Science, the most difficult of the arts. We are trained from toddlerhood to respect and fear the products of scientific advancement, such as the selfie sticks or mechanical pencil. The unsurpassed boffins who create such devices are worthy of admiration. But there is one realm in which science is not such a gentle guardian of the people. That’s right, it’s videogames. In games, scientists are treacherous, evil, stupid, murderous or some genetic concoction of all the above. Here are the 9 worst scientists in PC games.

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Arise: A Simple Story

is a game about the three Ls. No, not Lemons, Lemons, Lemons (a small joke for RPS Vid Bud fans, there), but life, love, and loss. You know, the BIGGIES. In it, you’re reliving the memories of a sweet old man as he journeys on to the after life, taking in everything from the breathless rush of childhood, where you’re bounding across giant sunflowers in the wind and hitching rides on the back of bumblebees, to the first blush of romance and the heartache of later life. It is, as its title suggests, not a complicated story, but man alive does it go places.

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Did you know that they're making a new Test Drive Unlimited? It's true! Kylotonn, the French studio behind the well-regarded WRC and Isle of Man TT series, has acquired the Test Drive licence from Atari, and there are veterans of the Eden Games team that made it working at the studio. It's exciting, but also a little scary. Kylotonn is a small studio owned by a small publisher. Test Drive Unlimited was something of a scrappy underdog in its day, too, of course, but back then its only competition in open-world racing was Need for Speed, a very different beast. Now, a new TDU would be going up against a game that has taken its rough frame and polished it to a gleaming finish: Playground Games' Forza Horizon. Why bother?

It is, however, only fair that the French series returns to try to grab a slice of this pie: it wrote the recipe. Forza Horizon simply wouldn't exist if it wasn't for 2006's Test Drive Unlimited. Released so early in the last generation that it beat the PS3 to market, TDU dreamed of a different kind of real-world road racing to the studious lapping and tweaking of Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport. Inspired by the original 1987 Test Drive's winding ribbon of cliffside tarmac, this would be a game about the glory of the open road; about exploring exotic, sun-kissed landscapes; about freedom and danger as you weave through traffic; about cruising as well as going flat out.

Kellogg's has announced a new Minecraft breakfast cereal.

Minecraft Creeper Crunch is a cinnamon flavoured cereal which looks suspiciously similar to Lucky Charms.

Tucked in amongst the brown bits no one likes are "Creeper Bit" marshmallows. Who said you shouldn't play with your food?

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Trackmania has always been a bit of a mess. It's something as hard-baked into the series' DNA as lightning quick reaction times and the instantaneous restart, and Trackmania Turbo - the accessible console-focussed compendium of all that's great and good about Nadeo's series and that was the last we saw of it - increasingly feels like something of a blip. If you're a veteran, though, you might be pleased to know the new Trackmania is a return to the old ways; this is fussy, frustrating and frequently brilliant, too.

Trackmania - as this new entry is simply known - is a remake of sorts of Trackmania Nations, the popular 2006 entry which helped make the series' name. Essentially it's a return to basics, stripping away most of the excess gained over the years. There's a single car, and essentially a single track type - different surfaces are now folded into the same environment, with smooth tarmac joined by outrageously cambered road, slippery terracotta dirt and oh-my-god-this-is-impossible ice - and the objective is the same as it's always been. Get from one point of a tortuously twisted track to the other. Then do it again, but faster. And again, but faster still.

Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot has detailed a set of changes to its internal processes and top editorial board, following numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assault concerning employees across the company over the past few weeks.

The company's leading editorial group, whose makeup has previously sparked controversy for its lack of diverse voices and ability to handle the issues its games flirt with, has already seen top members Maxime Béland and Tommy Francois suspended while Ubisoft investigates allegations made against them further.

"The situations that some of you have experienced or witnessed are absolutely not acceptable," Guillemot said in an internal memo titled Change Starts Today. "No one should ever feel harassed or disrespected at work, and the types of inappropriate behavior we have recently learned about cannot and will not be tolerated. To those of you who have spoken up or have supported colleagues, I want to be clear: you are heard, and you are helping drive necessary change within the company.

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Starting July 18, a VR Mega Man (aka Rockman in Japan) will be playable at the Plaza Capcom shot in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro.

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The military has long had a foot in gaming, most notably as a recruitment tool with efforts like the early 2000s' America's Army series. The army's gaming arm came back into the public eye this week, after the U.S. Army's esports account tweeted "UwU" in response to a tweet by chat app Discord.

The tweet went viral, with many criticizing the army's use of the esports initiative as a recruitment tool to target young people. Naturally, hilarity ensued. The team was not in on the joke.

Soon, a new speedrun challenge spawned on Twitter where users competed to get banned from the US Army esports Discord server the fastest, Polygon reported. The server was flooded with users posting in an effort to try and get banned--while some posted classic "copypasta" text, others simply linked to the Wikipedia page for "United States war crimes."

It's not unusual for Fortnite's battle royale map to change and evolve throughout a season, but the end of Chapter 2, Season 3's water-themed event may see the map go through bigger changes than usual. As reported by Polygon, dataminers claim to have identified a new area filled with ruins that will be revealed as the water recedes. As of right now, we cannot see any of it, with the game's recent The Device event flooding a huge portion of the map. This came in preparation for Aquaman's challenges.

A map posted on Reddit shows the potential upcoming state of the map according to datamined images, with a new location in the top left corner of the map called "The Ruins." Some have speculated that this area may have something to do with Aquaman, as the DC hero was introduced in the new Battle Pass. Our guide to all the currently available Aquaman challenges can be found here.

This article references accusations of sexual assault.

EVO 2020, which was to be an online tournament in 2020, has been cancelled. Earlier, it was reported that EVO CEO Joey Cuellar was being placed on administrative leave following several accusations of sexual misconduct. Following these events, several game brands announced they were no longer going to participate in the event, including Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Now, the event will no longer go ahead, and Cuellar will no longer be involved with EVO.

In a statement released to Twitter, it has been announced that Tony Cannon is taking over as CEO, and that he is "prioritizing greater accountability across Evo, both internally and at our events."

As the November election approaches, a number of Roblox accounts have been hacked to share pro-Trump propaganda, the BBC has reported. The online game also functions as a social platform, with Roblox reporting that half of all American children between the ages of nine and 12 used its platform.

Posts from Roblox players on social media show a number of accounts where avatars have been changed to wear a shirt with an American flag and eagle, along with a red cap with white lettering that resembles Trump's signature Make America Great Again, or MAGA hat. Each of the hacked accounts also now displays a profile message saying "Ask your parents to vote for Trump this year! #MAGA2020".

Users have also reported receiving messages from hacked friends with the same "ask your parents" call to action that was posted on their profiles. One Twitter user claimed that the hacker accepted all their outstanding friend requests in order to send the message to more people.

Less than a month after the UK government launched a call for evidence into loot boxes to decide whether they should be further regulated, a House of Lords Select Committee on gambling has called for loot boxes to be immediately re-classified as gambling, GamesIndustry.biz has reported.

The original inquiry into loot boxes led the government to establish an open call for evidence, with the results to be considered alongside the review of the UK's Gambling Act 2005. Now the latter report is in, and it condemns loot boxes in no uncertain terms.

"The liberalization of gambling by the Gambling Act 2005, the universal adoption of smart phones, and the exploitation of soft-touch regulation by gambling operators has created a perfect storm of addictive 24/7 gambling," the Lords report reads.

Recompile, a 3D Metroidvania game with a unique sense of style, is the latest title to be confirmed for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The game is not coming to PS4 or Xbox One, which makes it a rare next-gen exclusive indie title.

The game, which mixes combat and 3D platforming with physics-based hacking (and you can apparently hack and change just about anything you encounter), will feature multiple endings depending on how you place. Players will control, according to the press release, "a rogue piece of semi-sentient code, trapped in The Mainframe--a sprawling digital wasteland dead-set on deleting trespassers."

Publisher Dear Villagers also released a new trailer to celebrate the announcement and show off how the game will look on next-gen systems, below. It features the Aoife O'Donovan song Jupiter.

A lot of people are now working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Being at home means more time to spend with your pets, and the same is true for the developers of Halo.

A new blog post from 343 Industries showcases many fine furry friends that belong to the developers of Halo Infinite and The Master Chief Collection. There are many adorable cats and dogs, along with a couple of horses, birds, and lizards. Some of the developers also own chickens and a pig.

You can see all of the adorable creatures here on 343's website. Two pugs, Buddy and Gyoza, are actually contributing to Halo Infinite, as 343's audio team recorded their sounds for use in the game.

Along with many other sections of the gaming world, the fighting game community has been rocked by a wave of sexual misconduct and abuse allegations over the past few weeks, and the latest involves the CEO of fighting game tournament Evo. After the allegations were made, several companies, players and casters announced they would not participate in this year's event: resulting in the firing of the CEO, and the cancellation of this year's Evo Online.

Former president and Evo co-founder Joey "MrWizard" Cuellar was accused of sexual misconduct and predatory behaviour towards several teenage boys, an account later backed up by another community member with evidence of inappropriate comments sent by Cuellar over Twitter. Following the allegations, NetherRealm, Capcom and Bandai Namco announced they would end their participation in this year's Evo Online, while several players and casters including SonicFox and Stephen "Sajam" Lyon announced they would not participate in the event.

In response to the allegations, Evo last night announced that Evo Online 2020 would be cancelled, and Cuellar would no longer be involved in Evo "effective immediately".

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Burnout and Need for Speed developer Criterion has released six gamejam titles for free to raise money for charity.

The games are available to download on Criterion's website alongside a message of encouragement to donate to the British Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and The Red Card.

The games are Rock Hardcore, which is described as "a roguelike Rick Dangerous"; Steak 4, a voxel-based endless runner; QuaranTea ("make bubble tea and throw it to your customers"); Purrfect Cleaning Company ("program robot vacuum cleaners to clean a house without crashing into each other."); Daydream ("Mr Zuzu makes a run for it during nap time, but what's waiting for him in the garden?"); and Arcadron Arena, a drone flying simulator.

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Apologies for the brief absence but Five of the Best is back! It's a weekly series about the incidental details we don't celebrate enough. We've talked about all kinds of things so far from Game Over screens to Villains to Scares - there's a whole Five of the Best archive if you're interested. Yet, there's so much more to talk about too.

Five of the Best works like this. Various Eurogamer writers share memories and then you - probably outraged we haven't included the thing you're thinking of - can share that thing you've been thinking of in the comments below. Then we all have a lovely chat about it. Your collective memory has never failed to amaze us - don't let it stop now!

I still get excited seeing a video game advertised on the TV or at the cinema. It's like proof this thing I do is real. I get all energised and spin to the person next to me, trying to tell them what's being advertised before it's announced. I must look ever so impressive to them.

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Today we all witnessed not only the largest in-game memorial but also the largest in-game player-driven event in the history of World of Warcraft

The 25 pictures in a cluster foxer are arranged in 5 discretely/discreetly themed clusters. Pictures in a particular cluster must be cardinally contiguous to be valid. For example, a1, b1, c1, d1, d2 is a possible cluster, unlike a2, b2, c2, d2, e3. To fully defox today’s enlargeable puzzle identify the themes and constituent images of all five clusters. (more…)

When I was teenager buying a budget computer game involved pedalling your penny-farthing along cobbled streets until you happened upon a branch of GAME, Electronics Boutique, WHSmith, or Woolworths, entering said store, selecting a hardback-sized box largely filled with air, and then handing a shop assistant a crumpled banknote with a picture of Florence Nightingale on one side. Today, my penny-farthing sits rusting in the shed, most of the local game emporiums are now nail bars or coffee shops, and a tenner buys ten golden oldies not one. Modern life is a curate’s Cadbury Creme Egg and no mistake. (more…)