Twitch streamer JerValiN has accomplished something many people thought was impossible for the past 18 years: a complete “LASO” run of Halo 2 on Legendary difficulty with all skulls enabled (except for the Active Camouflage Envy Skull, because that would make things too easy).
This means that JerValiN took home the $20,000 USD ($25,731 CAD) bounty offered up by Twitch streamer MoistCr1TiKal. The bounty was initially set at $5,000 USD ($6,432 CAD) in late June but was then raised to $20,000 in July.
He did it! Halo 2 LASO, deathless. Congratulations, @Jervalin 🏆
In total, the run took six hours, 29 minutes and 44.17 seconds. It involved the use of several glitches and what is best described as a slow, very methodical approach to Halo 2’s campaign. Some of the skull effects include giving enemies permanent cloaks, limited ammo, removed HUD elements and more, making Halo 2’s campaign on ‘Legendary’ far more difficult than it would typically be.
It’s important to note that to qualify for the $20,000 USD bounty, JerValiN also needed to finish the entire game without dying once. Almost 50,000 people watched as the streamer accomplished what at one point seemed entirely impossible.
MoistCr1TiKal is reportedly preparing a new ‘Goliath’ task tied to Halo 2’s campaign that requires the player to finish the game’s campaign “without shooting.”
After over three years of development and teasers about a World of Warcraft mobile title, a Bloombergreport suggests that Blizzard and its partner NetEase have cancelled plans for the game.
According to sources familiar with the matter, NetEase has reportedly dissolved a team of more than 100 developers that were tasked with creating the mobile title, with some being offered internal transfers.
Bloomberg says the two companies “disagreed over terms and ultimately called a halt to the project.” No specifications regarding what terms were disagreed upon have been released, though the issue is believed to be finance-related.
The mobile title, which was reportedly codenamed ‘Neptune,’ was imagined to be a vast multiplayer online role-playing game based in the same universe as the PC title. The game was rumoured to be set in a different time period and didn’t aim to be direct replica of its PC counterpart but rather, a spinoff.
NetEase is China’s number two gaming giant. It publishes World of Warcraft and other Blizzard titles in the country. NetEase also happens to be a co-creator of Blizzard’s controversial Diablo Immortal mobile title.
Activision Blizzard, which was recently acquired by Microsoft, launched a different Warcraft title for mobile in May, titled Arclight Rumble. The game experienced a rough start due to a disappointing alpha and beta releases. It’s possible that the controversy surrounding Arclight Rumble and Diablo Immortal is what led to the cancellation of this World of Warcraft mobile title.
If you’re still looking to pick up a PlayStation 5 but haven’t been able to secure the sought-after console yet, Shoppers Drug Mart currently has theHorizon Forbidden West PlayStation 5 bundle with a red DualSense controller in stock.
It’s worth noting that this is the disc version of the PS5 that costs $794.98. Shoppers is offering free shipping, alongside 11,910 PC Optimum points for the order. As usual, there’s a limit of one console per household.
Click here to head to the product page on Shoppers.
This story will be updated when the console is no longer available.
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Last year, the Entertainment Software Association of Canada found that about 50 percent of the country’s gamers identify as female, but only 23 percent of video game developers are women. Of course, not everyone who plays games will want to become developers, but it’s still a grossly uneven split in the demographics of those who make them for a living.
As I’ve spoken to spoken several women in the industry, including those at Square Enix, Ubisoft, EA and Behaviour Interactive, a common thread that’s come up is visibility. In other words, why not help bring more women into gaming by letting them see and hear from those already in the industry? Being able to see women be successful in this space in spite of adversity — including, but not limited to, harassment — can make all the difference.
With that in mind, Insomniac Games senior writer Mary Kenney has penned a wonderful book called Gamer Girls: 25 Women Who Built the Video Game Industry. In it, Kenney looks across countries, decades, genres and job types to assemble an outstandingly varied list of both famous and lesser-known women in the industry to profile. I was already intrigued by the premise, and I only became more interested upon seeing Kenney’s name, given her work on great games like Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (including writing for a barrier-breaking Deaf character), Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apartand Batman: The Enemy Within.
But the best part of Kenney’s Gamer Girls is that you don’t have to be a big gaming aficionado like me. Smartly, Kenney has written the book in a very engaging, easy-to-pick-up manner, making it approachable for anyone. There’s even a glossary that defines everything from “AAA games” and “bugs” to “mechanics” and “assets” if you need it. That said, Kenney’s writing is informative while keeping things simple and jargon-lite, which will no doubt be welcoming to more casual gamers.
“I approached writing this book with a simple goal in mind: to show girls that they can make video games,” writes Kenney in Gamer Girls‘ introduction of her target audience. “Young girls, teenage girls, middle-aged girls, cis girls, trans girls, Black girls, Asian girls, mixed-race girls, people who aren’t girls at all but are reading this book, girls who want to be bosses and girls who don’t, girls who love math and girls who love art. Any girl can be a game developer.”
It’s a powerful, meaningful message, and Kenney uses the many other talented women featured in her book to convey it. Did you know that Uncharted, the popular Naughty Dog action-adventure series that just got a Tom Holland-led live-action film, was created by former English literature and film student Amy Hennig? Speaking of adventure games, were you aware that the entire genre was co-created by Roberta Williams with 1980’s Mystery House, just one of her many groundbreaking and influential works? Would you believe that the first-ever game with Marvel’s iconic wallcrawler, Spider-Man for the Atari 2600, was created by engineering technology grad Laura Nikolich? Can you guess in which year the first female programmer, then-18-year-old Joyce Weisbecker, started out? (Answer: 1976 with TV Schoolhouse 1 for the RCA II!)
While I was familiar with some of the women in Gamer Girls, there were many, like Nikolich and Weisbecker, whom I discovered for the first time while reading. That’s the real brilliance of the book — everyone can learn something from reading it, regardless of their level of familiarity with the gaming industry.
It should be noted, however, that one of the women featured in Gamer Girls, Journey produced and Funomena founder Robin Hunicke, was accused by multiple developers earlier this year of creating an emotionally abusive workplace. Of course, Kenney would have been putting this book together well before this came to light, so it’s no fault of hers. On top of that, Hunicke’s chapter does still contain great insight into everyday sexism, as well as some potential ways to counter it. Nonetheless, it’s important to give context about the allegations made against her.
Those saddening circumstances aside, the two dozen other women featured in Gamer Girls are all fascinating and commendable in their own ways. On a personal level, I was happiest to see the inclusion of Yoko Shimomura, the beloved composer of Kingdom Hearts. I’ve written before about how much the Disney-Square Enix series means to me, in no small part due to Shimomura’s involvement in it, and so it warms my heart whenever more people may be introduced to her work through things like this book. (On that note, the excellent remake of the once Japan-only Live A Live — and her first Square game — also released this month, and her music for it is masterful.) And as a Canadian, it was especially nice to see a chapter on Montreal’s Jade Raymond, the co-creator of Assassin’s Creed and founder of Ubisoft Toronto and Quebec’s EA Motive and PlayStation-owned Haven.
Structurally, Gamer Girls is laid out in an appealing, digestible package. Each chapter is only a few pages long, offering a succinct but well-researched overview of each woman’s contributions to the industry. As a nice touch, Kenney has also included “Side Quests” — little blurbs about folks like BioWare Edmonton (Mass Effect) lead editor Karin Weekes or Media Molecule (LittleBigPlanet) studio director Siobhan Reddy to offer further insight into the work of women in gaming.
From passage to passage, you can feel Kenney’s infectious enthusiasm for the industry and her peers, making for quite a pleasant read. Accompanying all of this are lovely illustrations from Sri Lanka-born, Toronto-raised artist Salini Perera, which add even more colour and personality to Kenney’s words.
Jade Raymond (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
At the same time, Kenney crucially doesn’t shy away from some of the darker sides of the gaming industry, especially for women. In her intro, she mentions how a Q&A with a girl-centric game design boot camp raised questions about toxicity in gaming, especially from the perspective of the misogynistic online harassment campaign, GamerGate. After a few moments to think, she gave a nuanced response that acknowledges the unjust hate women get simply for being women while pointing out the joys of game development, like the passionate collaboration between coworkers and the satisfaction of players finally getting their hands on their work. Throughout the book, Kenney also outlines the struggles that each of the profiled women faced, like Raymond’s accomplishments being dismissed because of her looks or how artist Kazuko Shibuya, the woman behind some of the Final Fantasy series’ most iconic visuals, sadly went uncredited for decades.
It’s important that Kenney recognizes these hurdles, not only to be honest to aspiring game developers, but to show how these women were nonetheless able to overcome them. “The stories in this book are about passion, hope, resilience, optimism, and grit,” writes Kenney in her intro. After reading through these stories, I completely agree. There’s a lot to learn and be inspired about here, and I encourage anyone with even a passing interest in games and technology to check it out.
Gamer Girls: 25 Women Who Built the Video Game Industry is now available for $22.99 CAD from retailers like Indigo, Amazon and your local bookstore.
In a series first, rumours indicate Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI) could feature a Latin woman as one of its leads.
Bloomberg says that Rockstar’s open-world title will feature a Bonnie and Clyde-like relationship at the core of its story, and that the game aims to break free from making jokes about marginalized groups like the trans community.
The report goes on to say that Rockstar’s efforts to avoid development crunch have affected the scope of GTA VI and its release window. While the game initially aimed to feature large sections of North and South America, the title now focuses on the Miami area. This hints that Vice City could make a return, though it’s unclear if the game will be set in the 1980s like 2002’s GTA: Vice City.
Rockstar has also reportedly expanded its various teams, offered more vacation opportunities, and fired abusive leaders.
Bloomberg says that GTA VI is at least two years away from release. Though it might not seem like it given its several re-releases, GTA IV first dropped almost nine years ago back in September 2013. GTA V and GTA Online were most recently released on the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.
While Grand Theft Auto IV skewered American culture while telling the tale of an immigrant attempting to rise to the top of Liberty City’s criminal underworld, Grand Theft Auto V took a more over-the-top approach to its single-player narrative and often revelled in what its predecessor critiqued.
Based on this leak, it seems like changes at Rockstar and GTA VI‘s direction could result in a more grounded experience that has a lot in common GTA IV‘s story and world.
Since the launch of Apple’s gaming subscription service, I’ve been curious to see what happens to titles when they inevitably leave the platform.
Now, I finally have an answer — sort of.
As first reported by 9to5Mac, 15 titles are set to leave Apple Arcade in the near future. In an updated support document, Apple explains that titles leaving Arcade will still be playable for “at least two weeks” and that developers can then choose to make their game available in the App Store.
“Games might sometimes leave Apple Arcade. If you download a game before it leaves Arcade, you can play the game for at least two weeks after. If you try to launch an Arcade game that is no longer playable, you receive a No Longer Available message,” the support document states. “After a game leaves Arcade, the game developer might choose to make their game available on the App Store. These games might vary from the Arcade version. If the developer makes their game available on the App Store and allows you to load your saved progress, you can pick up where you left off in the Arcade version.”
Similar to Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, it’s believed that Apple signed three-year deals with several of the developers that brought their titles to Apple Arcade back when the service launched. Many of these contracts appear to be ending, and it looks like Apple isn’t renewing all of them.
Some of the games set to leave the subscription service include Dead End Job, EarthNight, Explottens,Lifeslide and more. Though there are likely at least a few gems in this list, it looks like most of the games leaving Apple Arcade aren’t particularly notable.
As several video game developers and publishers dive into the wild world of NFTs and the blockchain, the studio behind Minecraft has made it very clear it has no interest in the technology.
Mojang Studios made the statement following a request from community members regarding “clarification and transparency” on where the developer stands on the issue.
“While we are in the process of updating our Minecraft Usage Guidelines to offer more precise guidance on new technologies, we wanted to take the opportunity to share our view that integrations of NFTs with Minecraft are generally not something we will support or allow,” writes Mojang.
The developer goes on to say that it wants Minecraft to be a place “where everyone has access to the same content” and that they believe “NFTs can create models of scarcity and exclusion that conflict with our Guidelines and the spirit of Minecraft.”
Mojang released this update following the launch of play-to-earn NFT servers by some players of the popular block-building game.
Toronto-based Spin Master has announced a new licensing agreement with Sony tied to first-party PlayStation titles, including God of War, Horizon, The Last of Us, Uncharted and future games.
The toy maker says it plans to create products “in the action figure, collectible, playset, plush, roleplay, vehicles, RC and games & Puzzle categories.”
Here’s hoping Spin Master creates the remote-controlled The Last of UsClicker of my dreams nightmares.
“Both SIE’s PlayStation and Spin Master share a common goal, to inspire and entertain consumers through the relentless pursuit of innovation. Together we will bring the interactive storytelling of Sony’s immersive PlayStation games to life in an all-new way, extending the fandom from digital to reimagined physical play,” said Spin Master COO Chris Beardall in a recent statement.
Spin Master’s PlayStation toy offerings are expected to arrive in early 2024 and include game console branding surrounding the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. The Canadian company also controls brands like Paw Patrol, Bakugan, Kinect Sand, Air Hogs, Hatchimals and more.
Pokimane is currently the most-followed woman streamer on Twitch. She was also included in the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 category in the Games section and has roughly 9.2 million followers on Twitch and 6.6 million on YouTube. Her typical streaming schedule is five days a week.
While Pokimane wasn’t born in Canada, she moved to Quebec when she was four and attended university in Hamilton. She’s also a member of OfflineTV, a collaborative YouTube channel that features other content creators.
