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Report lists Steam’s most popular (and most untouched) gamesApr 17, 2014 - PC Gamer Have you played every single game in your Steam library? No? Neither have I and that accomplishment is apparently just a small sand grain in the over 288 million games in Steam collections that have never felt a press of the Play button. That's a surprising figure from a new report by Ars Technica researching the most active and popular games on Steam straight from the recorded statistics of some of the platform's 75-million-strong community. Ars' method for its number flood involves sampling registered games and their played hours via profiles and their unique Steam IDs. With the help of a server for computational muscle, Ars randomly polled more than 100,000 profiles daily for two months to pull together an idea of which games see the most time on everyone's monitors. In other words, your Backlog of Shame (don't deny it, everyone has one) probably took part in some SCIENCE at some point. Exciting. Some caveats exist, though. The data Ars looked at for its research only extends back to 2009, when Steam brought in its "hours played" tracking system. Owned and played/unplayed games are thus slightly skewed to not account for older releases from the early noughties, and any length of time spent in offline mode wouldn't get picked up by Steam either. Still, Ars claims its results deliver a good picture of Steam gaming trends for the past five years albeit with some imperfections. Predictably, Valve's personal products stack high on the list in terms of ownership and most played hours. Dota 2 takes the crown with an estimated 26 million players who ganked faces at some point in the MOBA, but free-to-play FPS Team Fortress 2 follows closely behind with a little over 20 million users. Counter-Strike: Source rounds out the top three with nearly 9 million players, but it's also collecting dust in over 3 million libraries. As for non-Valve games, Skyrim wins in activity, barely edging out Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with 5.7 million estimated active owners. Civilization V kept 5.4 million players hooked for Just One More Turn, and Garry's Mod boasts 4.6 million budding physics artists. Want to know what the most unplayed Steam game is? It's Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, the Source tech demo given free to pretty much everyone on Steam who bought or fired up Half-Life 2. It hasn't been touched by an approximate 10.7 million players. I guess that old fisherman is feeling pretty lonely right now. My favorite stat is the total of played hours divided by game mode, more specifically the separate multiplayer clients of the Steam versions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops. The single-player campaigns for each respective title sits modestly within the mid-20-hour range, but the multiplayer side balloons well into the hundreds of hours. It's a pretty obvious indicator of where the biggest chunk of popularity resides in FPS gaming, but it's not like you wouldn't get weird looks for claiming you play Call of Duty for the story anyway. See more of Ars'...Call of Duty “has almost ruined a generation of shooter players,” says Tripwire InteractiveMar 13, 2013 - PC Gamer Tripwire President John Gibson holds an M1 Garand inside the team's studio, one of the guns carried by the Americans in Rising Storm. Earlier this month I visited Killing Floor and Red Orchestra 2 creator Tripwire Interactive to play Rising Storm, the upcoming standalone expansion to RO2 (look for a preview on Monday). After the demo, Tripwire President John Gibson and I got talking about the state of first-person shooters, and Gibson laid out a detailed criticism about the way Call of Duty "takes individual skill out of the equation." Gibson also expressed frustration over how difficult it had been trying to design a mode for Red Orchestra 2 that appealed to Call of Duty players. PCG: How do you feel about the state of FPSes? John Gibson, President: I think that single-player shooters are getting better. I think they’re finally coming out from under the shadow of the Hollywood movie, overblown “I’m on a rail” linear shooter. I’m talking about Call of Duty-style shooters. In the late ‘90s, you had the original Deus Ex, which was an RPG-shooter. And those kind of games almost took an eight year hiatus. And I’m so excited to see them coming back with interesting gameplay. Like the Fallout games, even though their shooting mechanics could really use some improvement, just mixing a really cool story, but not a linear story, one that you create yourself. The melding of RPG elements and shooter elements has been great. I’ve seen this reflected in a lot of the reviews, it’s like, “Okay guys, we’re tired of this on-rails experience.” On the flip side, I’m really discouraged by the current state of multiplayer shooters. I think that, and I hate to mention names, because it sounds like ‘I’m just jealous of their success,’ but I’m really, I feel like Call of Duty has almost ruined a generation of FPS players. I know that’s a bold statement, but I won’t just throw stones without backing it up. When I was developing Action Mode , I got a group of people that I know that are pretty hardcore Call of Duty players. And my goal was to create something that was accessible enough for them to enjoy the game—not turn it into Call of Duty, but try to make something that I thought was casual enough but with the Red Orchestra gameplay style that they would enjoy. And we iterated on it a lot. And just listening to all the niggling, pedantic things that they would complain about, that made them not want to play the game, I just thought, “I give up. Call of Duty has ruined this whole generation of gamers.” Red Orchestra 2. Gibson says he's "discouraged" by the state of multiplayer shooters on PC. What did they complain about? Gibson: It’s the gameplay mechanics that they become used to. The way that players instantly accelerate when they move, they don’t build up speed. “The weapons really don’t have a lot of power” . They’re all very weak. The way they handle... They’re like: “I hate Red Orchestra, I can’t play it.” Well, why? “Because the guy doesn’t move like he does i...Let’s Reboot … Call of DutyMar 2, 2013 - PC Gamer The quiet rage of a man who can't remember which pocket his keys are in. Call of Duty - what a monster. With clockwork precision a new edition pops up every year and sells millions without fail. It's doing perfectly well, but in spite of an audacious shift to a far future setting in Black Ops 2, it's becoming increasingly repetitive. It's become a slapstick dose of noisy annual nonsense with an arcade multiplayer mode attached. It's a game about gun-lovin' superheroes who are 90% bicep and 10% stubble shooting hundreds of enemies, shouting and occasionally getting into knife fights. Activision have found a golden formula for mainstream success that has changed the genre. Call of Duty perfected iron sights aiming and ushered action movie set pieces into shooter environments, but those set pieces have gradually subsumed the challenge and tension of the series' rolling street battles. The series' ballooning love for noise and bombast masks a dearth of substance, and its ability to deliver those famed set-pieces is increasingly hindered by an engine that's starting to fall behind the pack. Activision and their army of CoD developers are surely plotting a next-gen leap right now, so let's pip them to the post with a few ideas. Changing CoD is a monolithic endeavour, influential as it is, so perhaps it's better to think of this as a wish list for war games. What do we like? What do we hate? What would we love to see from gaming's glorious future? Death to the "follow" blob Follow! Fetch the ammo! Sit. Stay ... stay ... SHOOT THE MEN. Let's consider the process of playing a game purely as a series of player decisions. In a good shooter you're making dozens, perhaps hundreds of decisions per minute. You're choosing targets, acquiring them, pulling the trigger, seeking cover, adapting to incoming fire, grenades and enemy movement. Decisions vary in quality depending on the challenge of the task and narrative context. If you're embroiled in a story and you're attached to a character, a decision that alters their fate can matter hugely. When you're given an objective marker and told to follow it, you have made just one decision - to follow or turn off the game and go away. The longer you're following, the longer you're spending not making any decisions at all. You're no longer playing a game. I went back to Half-Life 2 recently and rediscovered the simple pleasure of navigating an environment designed to coax rather than control. There is only one path, of course, but there's a sense of discovery to uncovering it that's more motivating than any quest arrow. CoD has done this before, it can do it again. An early mission in Call of Duty 2's Soviet campaign leads you into a block, and then gives you enemy emplacements to clear. You can advance on each position in any order, from an angle of your choose, using smoke grenades to mask your advance. There's no instruction beyond the objective markers on your map. The most satisfying form of progress is that whic...Respawn Entertainment will be at E3 with “no intention of showing up empty handed”Feb 26, 2013 - PC Gamer On March 1st, 2010, Activision fired Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West. Things were said, lawsuits were filed, Zampella and West formed Respawn Entertainment, half of the Call of Duty studio's staff walked out, EA jumped in and got sued too, then Yakety Sax played until everyone got tuckered out. Amid all that, Respawn seems to have developed a very blurry game, which may come into focus at E3 according to a pair of tweets from Zampella. I've gotten a 'few' questions about @e3expo plans this year. Yes, we will finally be at E3!— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) February 25, 2013 I have no intention of showing up empty handed! I can't say anything else right now.— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) February 25, 2013 The news is notable because Zampella and West are notable, and not just for their role in creating Call of Duty. Before forming Infinity Ward, they were at 2015, Inc., where they designed one of my favorite shooters ever: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The duo is partially responsible for two of the best-known FPS franchises ever, making Respawn's next game potentially a major competitor. But if they do announce a game at E3, just how will they announce it? At EA's press conference? Maybe, but I think it's also likely Microsoft or Sony has snagged the announcement as a card to play in the battle between the PlayStation 4 and Xbox DifferentNumber. Even so, that won't necessarily make it a console exclusive, whatever it is. And by "whatever," I of course mean, "probably a shooter."Do video games make people violent?Jan 30, 2013 - PC Gamer The debate over the relationship between violent games and violent behavior continues inside and outside the United States. In its initial response to the tragedy in Newtown, CT, the US government said it intends to ask the Centers for Disease Control to “study the root causes of gun violence, including any relationship to video games and media images.” Critics cite studies that link aggression and violent games, claiming that interactivity as a component of games makes them unusually potent. One politician labeled games as "electronic child molesters." It's an enormous and serious topic—one that we believe gamers shouldn't shrug off, but take it upon themselves to engage critics and fellow citizens on. In the interest of that, Logan, Evan, and Tyler hopped into our podcast studio (inappropriately, the room that most makes it look like we're inside an insane asylum) to talk about their personal relationship with violence in games.Activision’s Bobby Kotick shares thoughts on Infinity Ward founder firingsDec 17, 2012 - PC Gamer Outspoken Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was recently the subject of an extensive profile by The New York Times which charted his rise as the head of one of the most prolific publishers in the industry. As part of the interview, Kotick said the decision to fire Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella after they were planning to switch publishers in breach of contract was an easy one. "You find out two executives are planning to break their contracts, keep the money you gave them and steal 40 employees," Kotick said. "What do you do? You fire them." West and Zampella, now in charge of Respawn Entertainment, initially filed a suit for $36 million against Activision in 2010 for unpaid royalties from the Call of Duty franchise after Activision fired them. The claim ballooned to an astounding $1 billion earlier this year before EA, Infinity Ward, and Activision settled their cases for undisclosed amounts. Court documents later revealed Activision apparently considered terminating West and Zampella as early as 2009. Kotick also strongly rebuffed several offers from Hollywood studios over the years to create a Call of Duty film, telling the Times that silver screen adaptions of games rarely succeed and could sour the franchise's reputation among gamers. Considering the horrifying movie treatment of games like Alone in the Dark, one of the lowest-rated films on IMDB, Kotick may have a point.Infinity Ward animator talks FPS design, animations in Reddit AMANov 5, 2012 - PC Gamer It all started with mirrors. Spurred on by its insatiable hunger for the unknown, Reddit's gaming community flitted between poring brainpower over why reflections don't commonly appear in FPS games, the inevitable meme-orized destruction of the topic, non-Euclidean mind trips, and kittens. Eventually, the Jeopardy-like attention span shifted to first-person animation design. Discussion threads sprouted, recipes were shared, an expert was called in: Infinity Ward animator Chance Glasco who, in a weekend AMA thread, shared knowledge on the intricacies of constructing and positioning some of the most frequently glimpsed weapon animations of the genre from the Call of Duty series. As an animation veteran of numerous multiplayer shooter mainstays such as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Modern Warfare, Glasco tweezed tiny finger motion joints and figured out creative magazine ejections of such weapons as Modern Warfare 2's FAL and Allied Assault's Kar98K. We've pulled out a few of Glasco's more noteworthy responses below, but check out the rest of the thread for more info. On jumping: "When the player hits the jump button, he/she expects an immediate response. In reality, if you were to jump, there would probably be a good half to full second of anticipation. Because the server you are playing on isn't psychic, it's going to end up playing the animation from the instant you actually leave the ground. Anticipation is a basic rule of animation, so if you get rid of it it looks awkward. "You also have the issue of looping. If you're jumping off of something, there's going to be a point where you might have to loop an animation until it is told to play the landing portion of the animation. The more you see this loop, the more gamey it feels. Gamey, like a BBQ Duck at Sam Woo BBQ." On invisible torsos/legs: "It's one of those things we technically could have done, but have always found features more important to add. Often, the difference between a good game or a bad game is someone putting the hammer down on cute and fun little features that take as much time as important features that might be seen or used often. That was also a huge run-on sentence." On the FAL animation: "I personally thought my FAL animation was one of my weaker animations in the game, but it was literally saved by the concept behind the animation. People like it because you knock out the empty magazine with your new magazine, not because it was my best animation. There are some things I wish I could have changed/cleaned up in it. It really goes to show you how a good reload idea can really propel a gun into popularity." On Battlefield having the AK-47's ejectors on the wrong side: "It keeps me up at night." On the animation process: "Before I start animating, the gun will be modeled and textured by an artist and then given to a rigger to add bones and skinning (attaching model to bones) so that I can animate it. My animation file will have that particular gun in it with the first...Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 in development at IW according to Captain Price actorOct 30, 2012 - PC Gamer The actor behind the most famous walking talking 'tache in gaming, Bill Murray (not that one), has made mention of a somewhat inevitable follow-up to Modern Warfare 3. "Yeah, on Monday I am off to meet Infinity Ward about the next game, Modern Warfare 4, I’m doing work on the sequel to Modern Warfare 3, it carries straight on and I only ever appear in the Modern Warfare games” he told This Is Xbox. It looks like Treyarch and Infinity Ward will continue to share the Call of Duty series year on year. I quite like the idea that Modern Warfare will continue as an ongoing 24-esque action series while Black Ops becomes steadily more bonkers. By 2022 Captain Price will have come back from the dead eighty times and killed every single terrorist in the world and Black Ops will be set on Mars. What would you like to see from Modern Warfare 4?Modern Warfare 2 Favela map returnsOct 23, 2012 - ShacknewsThe controversial "Favela" map has been reinstated in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, after being pulled temporarily due to complaints of religious insensitivity. A small update will let the map show up on playlists again, with the offending portions now removed. The patch is only 17 MB, reports MP1st, which is likely just enough to change the map's trouble spots. So far the patch has only hit the PlayStation 3 version of the game, but this should mean we'll see it coming to all platforms soon. The Favela had previously reused assets from a picture frame in a bathroom, apparently unaware that the calligraphy read: "Allah is beautiful and he loves beauty." Activision apologized and worked on patches for both MW2 and Modern Warfare 3, where the map was reissued. Black Ops 2 launch trailer rocks to squirrel-suits, spiderbots and splodesOct 17, 2012 - PC Gamer Launch trailers usually go up at a game's launch. Not so in the case of Black Ops 2, which has boldly put this video out a whole month early. Unless this isn't a trailer to celebrate the launch of the game but a trailer for the launch event itself, in which case the arrival of Black Ops 2 on shelves will herald no small amount of flaming, screaming death, destruction, gunfire, horses and humourless-looking men throwing themselves off cliffs and out of planes. Most companies settle for free drinks and a tombola, but not Activision. Well, gosh. The promise of more tactical play in the Strikeforce missions certainly doesn't take a back-seat to simple bombastic destruction. But will the focus on rogue robots remove some of the guilty visceral thrill of gunning down hordes of squishy, jam-filled men?Windows 8 won’t allow adult games on its storefrontOct 11, 2012 - PC Gamer An analysis of the Windows 8 app certification requirements by programmer and tech blogger Casey Muratori suggests that games with a rating over PEGI 16 or ESRB Mature will not be allowed on the Windows 8 storefront. This means we won't be seeing many of the current crop of games on the store, or, given the proliferation of rating-baiting neck-stabbing seen at E3, many of next year's either - not unless publisher's are willing to heavily sanitise their content. The guidelines are pretty explicit about creating a walled-garden within Microsoft's hitherto anything-goes OS. As section 6.2 of the certificaiton requirements state: "Your app must not contain adult content, and metadata must be appropriate for everyone. Apps with a rating over PEGI 16, ESRB MATURE, or that contain content that would warrant such a rating, are not allowed." As Kotaku pointed out, this might not be such a problem in the US, where relatively few games receive a mature rating, but it will be very significant in Europe, where games such as Dishonored, Skyrim, Sleeping Dogs, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty all fall foul of the restriction. Of course, you'll still be able to buy and install these games on the OS - you just won't be able to get them from the official Windows storefront. So is this a problem? Perhaps - games that don't make the cut won't be able to make use of Windows 8's bespoke features, and by bifurcating the platform Microsoft risks fragmenting the PC gaming marketplace. If games are rated as mature in one location and not in another, will that create stark regional differences? And what's more, from a creative perspective, it may force developers to censor themselves in an attempt to reach that wider audience. It's a curious direction to take for a platform which prides itself on being open, and the reaction among devs is sure to echo the fears already annunciated by the likes of Gabe Newell, Blizzard's Rob Pardo, Notch and others. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 map 'Favela' pulled following religious complaintsOct 7, 2012 - ShacknewsActivision has temporarily pulled the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer level 'Favela' from the map rotation following complaints that a quote attributed to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad was written on a texture used in a bathroom. As you may imagine, some took issue with hanging holy words above a toilet. A picture frame texture used twice in the level in a bathroom features ornate calligraphy of the quote "Allah is beautiful and He loves beauty," Kotaku reports. That's probably not the only place it was used in MW2, though, and it reappeared in Modern Warfare 3's DLC re-release of Favela. "We apologize to anyone who found this image offensive," Activision said in a statement. "Please be assured we were unaware of this issue and that there was no intent to offend." Activision's "urgently" working on a title update to remove the texture from MW3, and less urgently to get it out of MW2. It's also scouring its texture libraries for the texture and any similar. "Activision and our development studios are respectful of diverse cultures and religious beliefs, and sensitive to concerns raised by its loyal game players. We thank our fans for bringing this to our attention." Here's one video complaining about the textures: Black Ops 2 multiplayer leak video shows ‘finger guns’Sep 10, 2012 - PC Gamer Some cheeky blighters have obtained what Activision are calling a “development demo build” of Black Ops 2, and uploaded a vid to prove it. It’s an extremely short snippet of action, and overlayed with a superfluous dev interview and some dreadful music, but it does show off the capabilities of the engine. Spotted on Kotaku, the video sees the player activate a no-clip mode, allowing the camera to zip off, around and above a rather pretty hillside township - which the player then proceeds to fill the the bodies of his foes. A crossbow makes a brief cameo and the video ends with the player running about making 'finger guns' at the enemy - a returning weapon from previous CoDs accessible via the 'giveall' cheat. The original video has been removed, as you’d expect, but it came from the channel of Call of Duty modder iHc James. Kotaku still have a working version at the time of writing, if you are that needy of your BlOps fix.The origin of Call of Duty’s most-heard soundAug 14, 2012 - PC Gamer When you shoot someone in Call of Duty, there’s a noise. It's positive feedback—a fwip-fwip-fwip to let you know that your bullet, knife, claymore, or phoned-in helicopter is hurting someone. While visiting Treyarch I asked the Black Ops 2 sound team about the creation of the simple-but-essential effect. PCG: Why does it sound the way it does when I shoot someone in Call of Duty? Brian Tuey, Audio Director: So... The sound has impact and it has meaning and it's useful and all that, but it's not a particularly pleasant sound, especially in isolation. There was a time recently where I was like, "You know? I'm gonna redo this with something else." So I kinda went a different direction, and it felt like this was going to be good. I checked it in, and within three hours, my email box was full of, like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SOUND?" I'm like, "But it's so much better!" Chris Cowell, Audio Lead: The other thing that you might not actually know, it's different every game. Really? Cowell: It has to be. They're all very similar, and they serve the same purpose, but the actual content and the creation of it is redone every game, because our guns sound differently, you know? The music's different, the situation's different... Tuey: Our whole DSP chain in the engine is completely different. The same stuff doesn't sound the same anymore. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHs1sOdcuEE Cowell: Little things like that can be a really difficult sound to make. The last game, it took me weeks to get that little thing right, because you have to fire it, get the tick and hear it and know what it means. Tuey: But it has to cut through the guns, the explosions, and give you the same exact feeling you had when you heard it last game. Cowell: Yeah. It's the same experience. That experience needs to be consistent across all of them, but not the sound. Tuey: And that's what the problem was with the new one I dropped in, it sounded different. So the experience was different, so people who were playing the game didn't even know I'd changed it, right? It's not like we make a big production about, "Hey, I changed this sound!" Well, sometimes we do. But usually we just want to see what people's reactions are. What did it sound like when you changed it? Tuey: I made it sound more like a bullet hitting somebody, as opposed to a tick. But it's more important for us that the gameplay aspect of it is supported, versus "Hey, now it sounds more real." Shawn Jimmerson, Sound Designer: You want to know that your bullet has hit someone, especially in MP. You're firing and you want that immediate feedback that I am actually scoring hits. There's a lot of expectation, you know, even in films, when somebody punches somebody else, it's not a realistic sound... Cowell: Whpssh! Jimmerson: But people have that expectation. Within our community, there's that same sort of thing. There are certain things that you just don't want to mess with too much, because you just upset people who are playing...Modern Warfare 2 designer explains the thinking behind No Russian missionAug 9, 2012 - PC Gamer Modern Warfare 2's No Russian mission asked players to choose to take an passive or active role in an airport civilian massacre. It caused quite an uproar back when it was released, but a lot of time has passed. A legal battle has been fought, a new studio has been formed, and many of the designers who worked on Modern Warfare 2 at Infinity Ward are now working for Respawn Entertainment. Mohammad Alavi is one of them. The designer responsible for one of Call of Duty 4's most memorable levels, All Ghillied Up, also had a hand in creating Call of Duty's most controversial moment. With the legal NDAs surrounding his attachment to Infinity Ward expired, he's spoken to Matthew S. Burns on Magical Wasteland about the intent behind No Russian. "We were trying to do three things" he explains, "sell why Russia would attack the US, make the player have an emotional connection to the bad guy Makarov, and do that in a memorable and engaging way. "In a first person shooter where you never leave the eyes of the hero, it's really hard to build up the villain and get the player invested in why he's 'bad'." Alavi describes early versions of the level in which the massacre takes place at the beginning of the level and quickly turns into a shoot out. He mentions that that version "felt cheap and gimmicky. It felt like we were touching on something raw and emotional and then shying away from it just as soon as it became uncomfortable. “I’ve read a few reviews that said we should have just shown the massacre in a movie or cast you in the role of a civilian running for his life. Although I completely respect anyone’s opinion that it didn’t sit well with them, I think either one of those other options would have been a cop out," he says. "atching the airport massacre wouldn’t have had the same impact as participating (or not participating) in it. Being a civilian doesn’t offer you a choice or make you feel anything other than the fear of dying in a video game, which is so normal it’s not even a feeling gamers feel anymore.” No Russian served a pragmatic storytelling purpose. The player's outrage would be the emotional leverage needed to make Makarov a more weighty villain. As heavy handed as that might seem, Alavi suggests that, from his perspective, getting a strong reaction of any kind from players is a victory. “It isn’t really relevant whether that makes you enjoy the entertainment experience even more because you’re being naughty (à la Grand Theft Auto) or it engrosses you further into the story and makes you resent your actions. What’s relevant is that the level managed to make the player feel anything at all,” he says. “In the sea of endless bullets you fire off at countless enemies without a moment’s hesitation or afterthought, the fact that I got the player to hesitate even for a split second and actually consider his actions before he pulled that trigger– that makes me feel very accomplished.”Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 gets free game mode, map Collection 2 DLC releasedJun 22, 2012 - PC Gamer If you're partial to Modern Warfare 3's tight arena tussles then you might be interested in investigating the new game mode, Face off. It allows for quick, violent 1 v 1, 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 contests on "smaller, super-concentrated multiplayer maps." Two of these new maps have been released for free and are playable right now. This free taste of Face Off could help to move copies of the newly released Collection 2 DLC, which comes with two more Face Off maps, a standard multiplayer arena set in a hotel poised on top of an ancient fortress (why not?), and two co-op spec ops missions. The first co-op mission, Kill Switch, casts one player as a well situated sniper and the other as a terrified ground soldier who must infiltrate a carrier to set of an EMP bomb. Iron Clad puts one player inside a tank, and the other outside the tank, where they'll be best placed to deliver some powerful moral support from the safety of the Abram's shadow The pack costs £11.49 / $14.99, which seems even steeper than previous packs given that there are fewer multiplayer maps than usual, and two of them are smaller than ordinary CoD maps. BUT, free maps for everyone! If you were to distil the essence of Face Off mode into a quick series of carefully choreographed moving images designed to shift product, it might look a little bit like this: Activision settles Call of Duty suitMay 31, 2012 - ShacknewsAfter a recessed hearing yesterday that allowed the parties to try to resolve their differences, a settlement has been reached in the case involving Activision, Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vincent Zampella, and 40 ex-Call of Duty developers from Infinity Ward. The settlement details are confidential, an attorney for West and Zampella told The Verge today. While West and Zampella wouldn't offer comment, The Verge's Michael McWhertor told Twitter that there was a "beaming smile" on West's face. A statement released by Activision tried to allay any financial analysts' concerns, saying the one-time charges related to the settlement shouldn't impact the company's earnings outlook for the current quarter or the calendar year, citing "stronger-than-expected operating performance in the current quarter." The deal brings a close to the contentious case, which started almost two years ago. The trial was scheduled to begin tomorrow, with billions of dollars at stake. Shacknews will stay on top of the story and add more details as they become available. Former Modern Warfare devs wanted to give Call of Duty series a 'rest'May 24, 2012 - ShacknewsWhile interest in the Call of Duty franchise remains high, many of the developers that worked on the original games have since left Activision. Many former members of Infinity Ward, the studio that worked on the incredibly successful Modern Warfare games, are heading to court over unpaid bonuses for the two games. Activision has already paid $42 million to former members of Infinity Ward, but there's a lot more at stake. Ultimately, what caused the huge rift between Infinity Ward execs Jason West and Vince Zampella and Activision? The two say that the team's desire to work on a game other than Modern Warfare 3 made an already tense relationship even worse. Speaking to Game Informer, Jason West discussed a contract that would have given Infinity Ward free reign to work on any game after the release of Modern Warfare 2. "That contract gave us the right to make whatever game we wanted after Modern Warfare 2. Apparently, they didn't want to live up to that." West and Zampella believe Activision promised independence after Modern Warfare 2 so that the game would be made one way or another. "I think they just wanted the game, and were like, 'Tell these guys whatever you need to,'" West said. The pair's representing attorney Robert Schwartz added: "I don't think Bobby ever intended to honor that until he had to honor it. They were in breach of it the day they signed the contract." When the trial goes to court, West and Zampella will try to convince a jury that Activision wrongfully terminated the two in order to back out of paying them their originally promised bonuses. Leaked emails show a panicked Activision preparing for the fallout from firing the two, with contingency plans laid out for retaining other Infinity Ward employees. Activision claims that West and Zampella conspired against the company by speaking with rival company Electronic Arts. (West and Zampella's new studio, Respawn, currently has a publishing deal with EA.) However, West believes that's an absurd claim. "They said, 'He orchestrated his own ­firing,'" he told the magazine. "I said, 'Don't give me 100 million ­dollars - fire me! That would be awesome,'" he added sarcastically. Infinity Ward ultimately lost a significant talent pool to West and Zampella's new studio, and it took the efforts of another developer, Sledgehammer Games, to finish Modern Warfare 3. West and Zampella never had the opportunity to work on the game, or develop the new IP they wanted to create for Activision. "Maybe we would have done a new IP, maybe we would have done Modern Warfare 3, or maybe we would have done a new IP and then Modern Warfare 3," Zampella said. Ultimately, Zampella thought that taking a break from Call of Duty would have been good. "Resting a brand isn't a bad thing," he said. "We saw it as protecting it. And it's like, we're always working, it's not like we're going to sit around and do nothing for a while. So it's like let's do something else that will be good for Activision, and then ...Released e-mails show Activision preparing for Infinity Ward falloutMay 22, 2012 - ShacknewsThe legal battle between Activision and Infinity Ward is coming to a head, and newly released court documents are giving us a better look at Activision's internal dialogue in the days leading up to firing Jason West and Vince Zampella. The e-mails range from frustrations, to plans of how to keep projects and teams on-track without the known leadership. Court documents published by the LA Times show conversations between CEO Bobby Kotick, and executives Dave Stohl, Mike Griffith, and Rob Kostich. Tensions began to boil after Infinity Ward failed to get a gameplay demo of Modern Warfare 2 ready for Microsoft's E3 press conference. "Msft will go ballistic over this and the deal is seriously risked," Kostich wrote in one email. Griffith, who was president of publishing at the time, called West and Zampella and said they hung up on him. Kotick replied, "If they really did I would change their locks and lock them out of their building." Griffith then suggested that Treyarch could take it over, but says that option is "scary given the tight timeline." Plus, Stohl said the group should "discuss what the plan B is going to look like" since "there could be a ton of risk getting the project done depending on how the team takes it." And in a moment of truth in hindsight, Stohl also said, "Is everyone ready for the big, negative PR story this is going to turn into if we kick them out? freaking me out a little." Activision had also set in motion a retention plan for the top 12 team members, besides West and Zampella. This was to "help ensure we retain the team if things blow up at the top," according to Griffith. The company recently settled its suit against Electronic Arts, and paid a hefty non-settlement sum to the Infinity Ward Employee Group. All indications are that it's clearing the arena for the main event against West and Zampella, and these new e-mails show just how tense the situation was before the company fired the two former executives. Activision, EA settle Infinity Ward disputeMay 17, 2012 - ShacknewsActivision Blizzard and Electronic Arts have reached a settlement in a lawsuit surrounding the firing of Infinity Ward heads Jason West and Vince Zampella. EA had been accused of conspiring with the pair to leave Activision form an independent studio. Neither party has disclosed the terms of the settlement, but they will reportedly ask the court to dismiss the claims. "Activision and Electronic Arts have decided to put this matter behind them," said Activision lawyer Beth Wilkinson. Robert Schwartz, a lawyer for West and Zampella, took a less cheerful tone. "Activision dragged EA into the case hoping to distract from Activision's wretched conduct towards West and Zampella," he said, according to a Bloomberg report. "In dismissing EA today, Activision admits that it was never going to convince anyone that EA conspired with West and Zampella to breach their contracts or did anything else improper." This is coming out just as court documents are released, alleging that former senior IT director Thomas Fenady was instructed to "dig up dirt" on West and Zampella. The LA Times reports that Fenady expressed concern about the so-called "Project Icebreaker," but was told not to worry about repercussions. Outside companies worried about the legal hurdles, and Fenady considered a fake fumigation or mock fire drill to gain access to the pair's computers. Ultimately, he didn't follow through on these ideas. Giant Bomb reports that chief public policy officer George Rose denies asking Fenady to dig up dirt, but does affirm he asked Fenady to monitor e-mail traffic. With the EA matter settled and some money paid out to IWEG employees, it seems like Activision is clearing the stage for its legal battle against West and Zampella themselves. That trial is still set to go forward on May 29. The Infinity Ward Employee Group will also be included in the suit, still seeking $350 million in damages and unpaid royalties. A few days ago the group was given $42 million in unpaid royalties plus interest, which the group's lawyer called a "cynical attempt to look good before the jury trial."

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