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Otherland: Returning to Steam

Back in late January, Otherland was removed from the Steam store due to developer Drago requesting that the game be moved to a different account. This might have been prompted by talks to change the game to a different publisher. Ultimately, the move was more complicated than the studio anticipated, but Drago reported last weekend that Otherland should be coming back “any day now.”

The studio gave an update on the status of the game:

The reappearance of Otherland on Steam will still take a bit longer.

Let me give you an update: everything has been already set up on the new account, Steam transferred all relevant data and retained the AppIDs so the switch should not even be noticeable for existing players. While at it, the pricing for upgrades has been adjusted so that upgrading from the Standard Edition of Otherland does not cost much more than buying a higher edition right away.

Now Otherland is waiting for Steam to complete their approval process of the changes and Otherland will back in the Steam store. Since there is only one step left it should be any day now after the weekend.

 

Saga of Lucimia : Supporter Early Access on April 30th

After much silence since late 2015, the Saga of Lucimia team has finally made a comeback with a big update, most notably ready to impart the news that supporter Early Access is ready to launch on April 30th. To spice things up more regarding the next month’s big happenings, the team has produced and published a new video that you can check out below.

For more information and to become a supporter, please click here.

The Long Journey Home: Forthcoming RPG!

Recently, Daedalic Studio West has shared the first details of its forthcoming space exploration RPG which is The Long Journey Home. Featuring a living, procedurally generated galaxy, players have to focus on their ultimate goal to find their way back to Earth. The Long Journey Home is set for release in mid- to late-2016 for PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4 and XBox One.

The Long Journey Home is a Space Exploration RPG that combines the best of classic space adventures like Starflight and Star Control II with the replayability of modern roguelikes, in a procedurally generated, endlessly surprising living universe inspired by beloved modern Science Fiction shows like Farscape and Firefly.

For more information, please click here or checkout the teaser below!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr2NMdxU8PE&w=560&h=315]

Seas of Gold: Open beta starts today!

R2Games has announced that Seas of Gold has started its open beta and is underway for players looking for a nautical themed browser-based MMO to check out. To introduce players to the game, the team will be hosting several events including ways for players to score free diamonds, a “level dash” event for the next ten days and more.

Seas of Gold is a naval strategy game where you will face your fleet off against rival fleets, opposing factions, and all manner of terrifying sea creatures. Recruit sailors to your cause, upgrade your ship, and explore the world as you discover what life as a Pirate is really like.

For more information, please click here.

Stronghold Kingdoms :To launch in Summer 2016

Stronghold Kingdoms, a MMORTS genre game, will be launching across several platforms in Summer 2016. Players will be able to cross-play between PC, Mac, iOS and Android devices.

Stronghold Kingdoms recreates the fictional setting of the original Stronghold (2001) as a massively multiplayer grand strategy game. Cast as a feudal Lord – or Lady – players are free to farm peacefully, engage in political mind games, become a wealthy trader or aggressively siege thousands of other players! Starting with a humble village players must design and defend their castle before turning their eye to the rest of the country, Europe or the entire ‘Global Conflict’ world map. Whatever path they choose players will find strength in numbers as they band together, uniting with local Factions and player-led Houses.

For more information, please click here.

Sony replies to Microsoft regarding Cross-Gaming

On Monday, a news that shook the gaming world had spread out and about where Microsoft had announced that they had opened the door to cross-network gameplay between Xbox One and PS4 – an initiative to allow cross-network gaming with other networks — specifically the Playstation Network. Finally , Playstation have given a response.

What did they say?

Sony has responded to Microsoft’s “open invitation,” stating that they are “open-minded” to an online collaboration.

PlayStation has been supporting cross-platform play between PC on several software titles starting with Final Fantasy 11 on PS2 and PC back in 2002.

We would be happy to have the conversation with any publishers or developers who are interested in cross platform play. – PlayStation Spokesman

However, Sony’s response is, as expected, as equally cautious as it is promising. The tech giant has responded to its rival’s news but has stopped short of giving away any real details.

For more information, please click here.

 

 

 

PlanetSide 2 : Shutting down on 31st May

Recently, The9 revealed that it will not extend its Chinese publishing contract for PlanetSide 2 according to a report at MMOCulture. It is stated that the game will remain available until May 31st and will be shutting down then. PlanetSide 2 originally launched in 2013 but did not captivate the audience over the long haul.

Publisher The9 recently announced it will not be extending PlanetSide 2‘s contract, and the game will shut down on 31 May.

On an interesting side note, The9 claims that it will be making a major push to launch Firefall in the near future, a game that may find a niche in the online shooter category but no fixed launch date has been revealed.For more information, please click here.

War Thunder: Battle March update deployed!

The Battle March update has been deployed to War Thunder and has brought the formidable Sunderland Flying Boat, new snowy maps, new ground armor and the P61 Black Widow into the game.

War Thunders ‘Battle March’ 1.57 update will introduce more than 20 new aircraft and ground vehicles. Among them – a giant of the skies, the S.25 Sunderland flying boat, one of the largest sea planes to see active duty during WW2. Also joining the War Thunder ranks is the deadly American P61 night fighter, ‘Black Widow’ (otherwise known as the “flying tank”). Further demonstrating its ability to bring a diverse range of vehicles to its combat sim Gaijin Entertainment are also introducing the FW 189 A-1 ‘Uhu’. This unique looking aircraft was known as the ‘flying eye’ due to its reconnaissance role and unique all glass cockpit design. Another exotic plane, the Do 335 heavy fighter, Germany’s fastest piston powered aircraft with two propellers in alignment also makes it into the latest update.

For more information, please click here.

Runescape : Jagex Ltd has been bought over!

Runescape fans will be shocked to hear that in a surprising turn of events, UK’s largest independent developer, Jagex Games Studio which is better known and referred to as Jagex has been bought over. According to DealStreetAsia, a Chinese firm has purchased Jagex Ltd in its entirety for $300M. Shandong Hongda Mining Co Ltd is the new owner and is said to be metal mining company headquartered in Shanghai, China. The news report states that Shandong is investing in a “business transformation”.

China-based Shandong Hongda Mining Co Ltd has fully acquired for $300 millionJadex Ltd, the largest independent games developer and publisher in the United Kingdom (UK).

US law firm Skadden represented Shandong in acquiring Jagex.

Shandong is a listed ferrous metal mining industry firm with headquarters in Shanghai, China. It produces iron powder, copper powder and iron ore, operating mostly in the domestic market.

Located in Cambridge, England, Jagex is the creator of the multiplayer online role-playing game Wild World (RuneScape), played by around 200 million players worldwide.

For more information, please click here to visit the news report.

Cross-network gaming coming to the XBOX and Windows 10.

Many years console gamers and pc gamers have wondered when cross-platform gaming will ever come to fruition but with a recent announcement Microsoft lay claim that the Xbox One and Windows 10 will be the first of its kind. What this means is that players on the Xbox One and users of Windows 10 will be able to play against each other in a battle for the ages. The first game to be featured with this new multi-networking setup is Rocket League a physics-based vehicle soccer video game that is highly popular and an official eSport sponsored game.

The complete announcement can be found below.

This will be ID@Xbox’s third Game Developers Conference showing off amazing new games from independent developers in the ID@Xbox program. For us, it’s a great time to highlight new games, but also a place to connect with new developers and old friends and listen to their feedback about our program – what people are liking, and where we can do better.

We actually started ID@Xbox by going out on a listening tour that seemed huge at the time (more than 50 developers!), but today, with more than 1,400 studios creating games for Xbox One and Windows 10 via ID@Xbox, 50 seems like a pretty small number!

Our core principles haven’t changed though – make sure we deliver a huge variety of awesome games to players on Xbox One and Windows 10 by making it as easy as possible for independent developers to publish games on our platforms. The developers have certainly held up their end of the bargain! The list of unbelievably good games on Xbox One from independent developers is really too long to list. And we’re still listening, and we’re still working every day to make things better.

I’m excited today to announce a couple new things that grew directly out of developer feedback.

Cross-Network Play
First, in addition to natively supporting cross-platform play between Xbox One and Windows 10 games that use Xbox Live, we’re enabling developers to support cross-network play as well. This means players on Xbox One and Windows 10 using Xbox Live will be able to play with players on different online multiplayer networks – including other console and PC networks.

Of course, it’s up to game developers to support this feature, and Xbox Live players will always have the option of choosing to play only with other Xbox Live players. We’re thrilled to confirm that Psyonix’s Rocket League will be one of the first games to take advantage of this new capability by enabling cross-network play between Xbox One and PC players, with an open invitation for other networks to participate as well.

MonoGame Support
Microsoft’s XNA programming framework isn’t supported natively on Xbox One, but there’s an open source solution for developers called MonoGame. This news is a little overdue, but we’re stoked that MonoGame support will be coming to Xbox One soon, thanks to Tom Spilman and our friends at Sickhead Games.

And we’re really excited to be able to welcome MonoGame with a bang, thanks to a partnership with another developer named Tom – Tom Happ. I met Tom at an indie dev event shortly after we confirmed that XNA was not natively supported on Xbox One, and I remember being super bummed that his game was not going to be able to come to Xbox One straight away. Well, today I’m stoked to be able to say that Tom’s game, Axiom Verge, is going to be one of the first games shipping on Xbox One using MonoGame. And hopefully that’s just the first of many!

Continuing Xbox Game Preview
We’re also really excited about Xbox Game Preview, which we launched last year at E3. Many ID@Xbox games, such as Ark, The Long Dark and Layers of Fear have participated in the program, and the success developers have had there is great to see. As a player, getting to play and offer feedback to an in-development game is a pretty cool experience – especially when you see a feature you requested make it into the game!

Creating a Sustainable Marketplace
When we started ID@Xbox, another goal was to make sure we kept the same sustainable marketplace for developers that we had on Xbox 360. We don’t just want to provide a platform to ship games, we want to provide a marketplace where games have the opportunity to sell, so developers can achieve commercial success and keep doing what they love to do – make great games for us to play!

Like all entertainment industries, the game industry is hit-driven, and not every game will be a success. But we’re really happy that a lot of developers are having great financial success on Xbox One. As the director of ID@Xbox, I sign off on every monthly royalty statement to each developer in the program, and getting to sign off on royalty payments to different developers that are five-, six-, seven- or even eight-figures for the month makes me feel good that we’re delivering on that promise to developers. (And to Xbox One players – thanks for your awesome support of independent games!)

ID@Xbox on Windows 10
Last year at GDC we announced that we’d be extending ID@Xbox to Windows 10, to support developers who want to include Xbox Live in their Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games. You can already play some great games from ID@Xbox developers with Xbox Live on Windows 10 now (check out Oxenfree, Pinball FX 2, Fire: Ungh’s Quest and Stealth Inc 2), and we’re excited that hundreds of developers have committed to shipping on Windows 10 with Xbox Live. And we’ll see the first titles with cross-play between Xbox One and Windows coming soon. (In fact, a little bird told us that tweeting @idarbgame might get you a token to test out cross-play as part of a soft launch now!)

Looking Ahead
The lineup of independent games that will be coming to Xbox One this year is really amazing –Cuphead, Below, INSIDE, SuperHot, We Happy Few, Worms WMD and Pit People, just to name a very few. And the games that are a bit further out are no less cool.

We’ll be showing 40 different games from independent developers working with ID@Xbox this year at GDC, both at Media Showcase event, and the Microsoft Lobby Bar in Moscone South. If you’re at GDC, please swing by, check out some games, talk to your fellow devs, and say “hi” to the ID@Xbox team, who will be at the Lobby Bar, helping out and answering questions. And if you’re an Xbox player, thanks again for playing and supporting the amazing work that independent developers are creating today on Xbox One and Windows 10! You can read more about the games we’re featuring at GDC tomorrow here on Xbox Wire.

It’s been an amazing two years since we showed the first ID@Xbox games off in 2014, for both players and developers, and everyone on the ID@Xbox team is stoked to be a small part of that. Independent developers are changing games and innovating in ways that continue to blow us away, and we can’t wait to see what happens next!