Nobody wants to argue that kids deserve less protection from predatory game design. That isn't the fight here. The fight is over what happens to everyone else when a law built for children gets written too broadly.
That is the warning the Stop Killing Games movement is sounding this week. Its target is the proposed EU Kids Act, and the language is not subtle. The campaign says the legislation could turn into a "bomb that could implode the whole video games industry." That is a huge claim. But Ross Scott, the movement's best-known voice, is clearly willing to stand behind it.
ArcheAge Chronicles wants you to fight. Not monsters, not scripted bosses, but other people.
That's the clear message behind the game's upcoming demo, which the developers have confirmed will go live on October 19 as part of Steam Next Fest. Steam Next Fest is Valve's recurring showcase where unreleased games put free demos in front of the platform's audience. Anyone can download it, and the whole thing is built around one idea: player-versus-player combat, switched on and unrestricted.
If one of the reasons you've been watching ArcheAge Chronicles is the chance to round up your friends and go after rivals, neighbors and complete strangers, this is the first real opportunity to see whether that fantasy holds up.
Lord of the Rings Online isn't raising its level cap this month. That might sound like a strange headline for an expansion, but Standing Stone Games has a different plan for how players will keep growing their characters.
The studio, usually shortened to SSG by the community, has published a new developer blog about Survival Instincts. It's an alternative advancement system that arrives with the Wolves of Mordor expansion later this month. Instead of chasing another handful of levels, players will earn and improve a set of traits that sit alongside their existing character progression.
Warframe's Iceblade of Narin update has been out for a week now. One of the more patient reviews of it comes from a Massively OP columnist who held off on writing until they had actually played the new frame.
That delay wasn't a choice. Narin's parts simply refused to drop. After enough failed runs, the columnist gave up on luck and bought the components with Entropic Kuva instead. It's a familiar Warframe story, and it shapes how the rest of the update lands. A lot of this patch only makes sense once you have Narin in hand.
Star Citizen made another $8 million in September.
If you've followed the space sandbox for any length of time, that sentence probably won't raise an eyebrow. The game is still in alpha. It has already passed $1 billion in total funding. And month after month, the pledge money keeps arriving. Writing about it has started to feel like announcing that the sun came up this morning.
This particular month has a wrinkle, though. For the second time in a row, the total is lower than it was a year ago.
A Big Number, But a Smaller One
The scale matters, so let's start there. Eight million dollars in a single month is a huge amount of money for any game. It's even more striking for a project that hasn't reached a full release. Plenty of finished, launched multiplayer titles would be thrilled to bring in that kind of cash over thirty days. Star Citizen does it while players are still, technically, testing an unfinished product.
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