Episode 61 – The People vs Blizzard/China

recorded on 2019-10-11

Headliners

Concrete Genie launched on Tuesday to a 77 on MetaCritic which is pretty good

Blizzard recends Hearthstone Pro’s prize money and bans him for a year for his support for Hong Kong in the ongoing protests in that country against Chinease extradition (The Verge)

• A western company is supporting communist China by censoring freedom of speech
• Blizzard said they harshly punished Blitzchung because he violated one of the rules
• Blizzard’s statement on Chinese social media was very different; it goes like this:

• “We are very angered and disappointed at what happened at the event and do not condone it in any way.  We also highly object the spreading of personal political beliefs in this manner.  Effective immediately we’ve banned the contestant from events and terminated work with the broadcasters.  We will always respect and defend the pride of our country.”

• This statement is terrifying to hear from an American based company and has caused massive rage on the internet and has prompted internal protest within Blizzard.
• Blizzard will no longer allow collegiate level Hearthstone to be streamed or recorded because, during the college championships, American University held up a sign that said “Free Hong Kong.  Boycott Blizz.” during the livestream.

New next gen PS5 details have emerged from an exclusive Wired article (Sony, Wired)

• Official name for Sony’s next gen system is indeed the PlayStation 5
• The PlayStation 5 will be ready and ship out in the holiday 2020 time period
• Next gen system will use discs and have optical drive that doubles as a 4k Bluray player
• Ray-tracing support is hardware based as well as software implemented
• New SSD will help boot up times, download speeds, streaming, overall performance
• The unnamed controller (DualShock 5 likely) has haptic feedback forgoing motors
• The mystery controller will also have adaptive triggers offering varied levels of resistance
• The controller will also have USB-C charging doing away with micro-USB
• The UI for PS5 will be more dynamic and show what the player can do in real time
• There will be an official event early next year where Sony unveils the next gen system

Little Bits

Games that will launch with Stadia will run at 4k/60fps from day 1 (Google) 

Rapid Fire

Mike Ybarra, corporate vice president of Xbox, has departed Microsoft (Eurogamer) 

Marvel’s Avengers critical story path is around 10-12 hours long w/o side stuff (Comicbook.com)

• Doing all of the content will result in around 30 hour playthrough but not sure if that is only single player content or multiplayer content included

Sony has brought the PS4 Remote Play feature for all Android devices this week (xda.com)

Sony is removing Facebook integration and sharing support for the PS4 (resetera) 

Doom Eternal has been delayed from November 22, 2019 to March 20, 2020 (Wario64, IGN)

COD: Mobile has over 100 million downloads in its first week of release

• Activision really wants to bring this over to China but that may not look good for them

New Digimon game available now if you don’t want to pay for Sword and Shield

Ubisoft is making a Watch Dogs animated TV show targeted at tweens

New feature on Steam “Remote Play” with friends (engadget)

            Basically lets you split-screen play remotely and only one friend needs the game

Someone stole +$40,000 worth of games, equipment, and merch from Steam HQ in Washington state (Polygon)

• Then Gamestop stole from him (43 games roughly $330) and thats how he got caught

Upcoming Releases and Deals

Games making their way to Xbox Game Pass for PC are the following: (Wario64, Xbox)

• F1 2018
• Minit
• Stellaris
• State of Mind
• The Outer Worlds
• Saints Row IV: Re-Elected
• Lonely Mountains Downhill

Free trial of Mortal Kombat 11 on all platforms from now until the 14th (NetherRealm)

The free game on EGS is Surviving Mars from now till Oct 17 and from then till Oct 24 both Observer and Mad Max’s American Nightmare will be free (Epic Games)

Rumor Mill

Blizzard-Activison bad news keeps coming. Bobby Kotick (Activision CEO) has been linked to Jeffery Epstein in his “little black book” (Gawker) 

PS5 may launch with a version that has integrated VR tech included (Foxy Games UK)

PS Now subscription to bundled with PS5 at launch for a limited time (Foxy Games UK)

Some PSVR2 patents have surfaced from a few months ago and reinforces a wireless headset with possible pass through video and inside out tracking (Eurogamer)

Apparently the maps for COD: Modern Warfare have been leaked early before launch (Dexerto)

• 3 Ground War Maps, 7 Gunfight Maps, 10 Normal Maps – leak by TheGamingRevolution