H1Z1 and PlanetSide 2 developers Daybreak Game Company went through another round of layoffs yesterday, though the number of employees affected is unknown. This is the third wave since the beginning of 2018.
]]>Daybreak Game Company have announced that Just Survive, the game that was originally H1Z1's survival sandbox, will be shut down soon. They've already delisted the game from Steam, so no one new can buy it, but current owners can play until the servers close in October. H1Z1 will continue in its current battle royale form (previously called H1Z1: King of the Kill), after the two split off earlier in development.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>H1Z1 continues to grow into its own as a bizarre group gaming experiment. The title, which split into two different games in 2016, has continue to split into even more sub-games this year. The current Battle Royale game mode has bolstered by Auto Royale, which allows single, duo, or quad teams to go Full Mario Kart on each other in a quickly diminishing map. And now there is a guided Rocket Launcher.
]]>H1Z1, the battle royale 'em up that Brendan "Playerunknown" Greene worked on before making his own Battlegrounds, is now going free-to-play. Developers Daybreak Game Company have announced that H1Z1 will switch to free-to-play at 10am PST (6pm UK time) today, which is a surprise coming only eight days after the game left early access. It seems a sensible move, given dwindling playercounts in the face of stiff competition from Plunkbat and especially Epic's free-to-play Fortnite Battle Royale. Hell, I will now download it to at least have a go at that new Auto Royale mode which locks four players into a car as a squad battling with other fightcars.
]]>H1Z1 has rolled out a major new update today, officially bringing the survive-y Battle Royale out of early access. Along with it, developers Daybreak have added a surprising new variant playmode, called Auto Royale. Auto Royale is a blend of regular Battle Royale systems and perennial PlayStation favorite Twisted Metal.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>This month's Humble Monthly is offering an early unlock of H1Z1 to those who subscribe. That'll cost you $12 / £10 at the moment if you fancy it. H1Z1 is currently available from Steam for £14.99 / $19.99, so even if it's the only game you want out of this Humble batch, you're in a good place.
]]>The Steam Charts is the only place on the internet to find out the most up-to-date information about the games you care about the most, the latest rumours of upcoming changes to early access hits, and secrets that can see your way to coming top of the gaming high score tables!
]]>Update Night is a new fortnightly column in which Rich McCormick revisits games to find out whether they've been changed for better or worse through ongoing development.
I had assumed that, were I trapped in a kill-or-be-killed nightmare future Battle Royale-type dealie, camouflage would be important. In a world where everyone very quickly gets their hands on some form of weapon, I’d want to take lessons from that Hunger Games kid and dress up as a rock, or — at the very least — find a nice pair of neutral khakis that would help me blend into the environment.
But the player-controlled murderers of H1Z1: King of the Kill [official site] don’t subscribe to that kind of wisdom. I’ve been killed by people in tie-dye leggings, by people in unicorn masks, and by one particularly memorable opponent who seemed to be cosplaying as a gorilla. They’ve killed me with luminous green shotguns and pearlescent assault rifles, and rather than pause to consider the emotional impact of taking another life, they’ve stood over my limp body, crotch-chopping like 1990s WWF wrestler.
I braved all this and more in order to appraise the game's current condition. Has H1Z1: King of the Kill been improved by recent patches, and is it yet worth your time and money?
]]>H1Z1: King of the Kill [official site] appears week-in, week-out in both our Steam Charts and in the list of the most played games on Steam, but it's come under increased competition and criticism for its bugs and problems since the release of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Some changes addressing a few of those problems were added to the game's test server last week, and now a Reddit Q&A with the community has outlined more tweaks to come.
]]>Every week we dump Brendan out the back of a plane and into the hotbed of gunfire that veterans know only as ‘early access’. This week, the competitive murderfields of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds [official site].
I’m halfway across the river when the net starts closing in. A huge electric field looms up behind me, sparkling and fizzing and nipping at my heels as I swim for my life. Having just dodged a player driving by in his jeep, I was now going to die of wounds slowly inflicted over time by the game itself, simply for not being in the right place. I kicked and swam, even as the electric field overtook me and my screen started to slowly bleed. If I didn’t reach the safe zone soon – marked by a white circle on the mini-map, I’d be dead. Oh well, I figured, there are less interesting ways to go.
]]>Good Coop, Bad Coop is our new series in which Graham and Brendan will be bonding in co-operative games through teamwork, friendship and shared trauma. This week, the rapid, open-world deathmatch of H1Z1: King of the Kill [official site], which is currently in early access.
Brendan: When we first landed on the outskirts of… *squints at map* ...Pleasant Valley, I believe it was only thirty seconds before you were shot and killed. I am sorry I wasn’t there for you. I landed on the other side of the suburb.
Graham: Actually it was... *squints at video timestamp* ...57 seconds. I survived almost a whole minute. Most of that time was spent running through a forest, attempting to escape from two assailants, one of whom was shooting me in the back with a machinegun. King of the Kill was not what I was expecting.
]]>Survival isn't enough for the youth of today, oh no, they must make sure everyone no one else survives. Battle Royale 'em ups have spun off from open-world survival games, bringing a faster, learner experience of rummaging in bins until you get a nice rod to stab a stranger in the neck. Heck, half of 'em are directly cut out from open-world survive games - like H1Z1: King of the Kill [official site] from those former Sony Online Entertainment folks at Daybreak Game Company. It's now slated to launch out of early access on September 20th, seven months after splitting from H1Z1.
]]>There's an archetypical plot running through a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, and particularly zombie fiction, where the survivors realize that they never before felt as alive as they do in the midst of their fight for survival. World War Z has no shortage of characters who found meaning and purpose in the zombie apocalypse, a disaster that liberated them from postmodern malaise. A similar sentiment ran through a couple early issues of The Walking Dead. Several times during its run, Battlestar Galactica paused to show you just how lost and hopeless the main characters were before their world was destroyed. If only, such fiction says, something awful would come along and imbue our lives with meaning as we fight to preserve them.
In H1Z1: Just Survive [official site], I think I've found the cure for apocalyptic romanticism. Because its name proves to be a pretty accurate summary of what's on offer in this Early Access build, and a reminder that sometimes survival isn't enough. Even in a survival game.
]]>Multiplayer open-world zombie sandbox crafting building survival etc. H1Z1 [official site] is splitting in half, like a zombie who got stuck in a door and its torso is crawling onwards ever hopeful while its legs wonder what they're going to do with all these t-shirts. Look, it's first thing on Monday morning, okay, so you're not getting That Sparkling Alice O'Connor Wit yet. But from next week, H1Z1 will be two games. H1Z1: Just Survive will keep doing that sandbox survival stuff while H1Z1: King of the Kill will focus on man vs. man arena murdertimes, like its Battle Royale mode. While H1Z1 was planned to become free-to-play, neither of these will.
]]>Ridealong is a new monthly feature where Brendan travels deep into game worlds to meet, question and journey with the inhabitants that dwell within. This week, the EVE Online pilots that are plundering H1Z1.
The Goons are invading. They're coming over the top and killing everyone in sight, without remorse, without even a word of warning. But this isn't an invasion into one of the unruly star systems of EVE Online, the usual scene you picture when you think of the brusque citizens of Something Awful. This is an invasion into an entirely different game. The Goonswarm has spread to H1Z1.
]]>H1Z1 [official site] is to hold its first official tournament on September 26th at TwitchCon, the streaming service's new event highlighting their community and broadcasters. It will use the Battle Royale mode, where groups of players are dropped into a world and then must duke it out until only one or a small group remains, like The Hunger Games with zombies. Or like Battle Royale with zombies, I guess.
Surviving means prizes, and here it will be share of a real-money pool funded by cosmetic purchases within the game, similar to Valve's International funding. Various famous streamers have been invited and a social media competition is running to let members of the public get involved too. The announcement trailer and details are below.
]]>"That's nice, dear," is my usual response to boasts of big business numbers. They rarely reveal much interesting unless you're really into the nitty-gritty of #business (in which case, fair play to you). Why do I raise an eyebrow at news that H1Z1 [official site] has sold over one million copies?
Well, while many (me included, probably) have muttered that the Early Access open-world zombie multiplayer survival genre is overcrowded with folks leaping on DayZ's bandwagon, it's evidently vibrant enough for a million folks to pay at least £15 for a game which will be free-to-play when it eventually launches. I'm surprised.
]]>A name change to the awkward-sounding'Daybreak Game Company' isn't the only consequence Sony's recent shock sale of its MMOy division SOE to management firm Columbus Nova. Barely more than a week after the acquisition, Daybreak is making lay-offs, reportedly including the long-time lead and public face of the Everquest games. "The operation of current games" won't be affected apparently, so while this is sad news at least we needn't panic that someone's going to take Planetside 2 or H1Z1 away from us.
]]>Why is Sony's unfinished multiplayer zombie survival game H1Z1 (official site) proving so popular? On paper, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Initial reports were negative; we've already got DayZ; even if we wanted a less hardcore DayZ with more crating, we've got 7 Days To Die already.
So what on Earth is H1Z1 for? And why am I enjoying it even though I really feel as though I shouldn't?
]]>Let's get all this out the way first: yes, this post is about paying to access a beta of a DayZ 'em up that will be free-to-play when it properly launches. This may not appeal to you; that's fine. For the curious, let's continue. Sony Online Entertainment yesterday launched their open-world zombie apocalypse survival multiplayer game H1Z1. SOE are bigger and have more resources than many folks making OWZASMPs (aʊ-sə-smʌp), so I'm interested in how this might end up.
Well, part of the answer at launch is "a bit buggy and making some grumpy about monetisation."
]]>We expect E3 trailers to be showy, bombastic, and entirely unlike the actual game they're advertising--that's how it works. So I have no idea what Sony Online Entertainment think they're playing at with their H1Z1 E3 trailer. It's clearly little more than lightly-edited snippets of gameplay from an early development build of their free-to-play open-world zombie 'em up, janky animations and all, with some text and a song over the top. Haven't they heard of E3 before?
]]>A quick primer for those who've been living under a rock: 1) SOE's making a spiritual successor to Star Wars Galaxies that is also a zombie game, 2) yeah I know, and 3) zombies have transcended mere fad-dom and become immortal cultural icons for reasons I'll never be able to fully comprehend. H1Z1's impressively ambitious within a very narrow lineage, though. Think DayZ or Rust, but with thousands of players per server, huge areas for them all to build on, and realistic fire to purify all that the unholy hand of man has wrought. Or piss off your friends/enemies. Whichever. Quick trailer and lengthier recording of a recent Twitch stream below.
]]>So maybe you weren't expecting SOE's vaunted Star Wars Galaxies spiritual successor to be an overtly DayZ-inspired zombie MMO called H1Z1. And maybe you're not exactly shaking the sand out of your old Tatooine-scouring boots in excitement. That's fair. But as far as these things go, SOE does seem to be kind of on the right track. CEO John Smedley isn't shamefully shambling (shamebling) away from DayZ comparisons, and he's tackling community complaints head-on. Case in point: the survival-obsessed masses are easily spooked by the notion of rampant nickel-and-diming, but Smedley assured Reddit's assembled hordes that SOE won't charge for anything that affects gameplay.
]]>If it wasn't already plainly obvious, survival games are all the rage these day(z), and zombies - thanks to DayZ's ever-looming influence - come part and parcel with that. The War Z/Infestation: Survivor Stories hit a little too close to home on that front, and Nether, with its possibly dubious ties to the former, also deals in apocalyptic baddie bashing, but with a slant toward the occult. Rust, meanwhile, frolicked through the gray-green fields with the shambling undead only for as long as it had to. And now it seems EverQuest and PlanetSide developer SOE has come down with a case of the Z diseaze as well, with its "soon" to be available H1Z1 promising DayZ-style antics on a much larger scale.
When Smedley promised a game "dedicated" to longtime Star Wars Galaxies fans, I'm not sure if this is what they had in mind.
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