With the speed at which news comes out in the gaming industry we sometimes miss important or news worthy things. Some of these things we want to talk about in a way that is both easy for you guys and allows us to get all the facts together as some of these stories develop quickly. Sometimes we also just cover topics that we find interesting and want to discuss.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will only be on Battle.net

We are getting the first bits of information regarding this year’s Call of Duty title for PC thanks to an article on Charlie Intel. This sort of big news in the sense that it’s a first for the series. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will not be available on Steam and only purchasable and playable on Blizzard’s Battle.net platform.

Source: Ars Technica

Wiggin’s thoughts on the subject :  This is information that should not surprise anyone in 2018. As more digital platforms are coming into their own, it’s no surprise that publishers want to their own cut of the preverbal pie. Why would they keep giving money to Valve for the privilege to host their games on its platform. It’s not like these games are unknown titles, these are the biggest games on the market every year. We saw EA do something similar years ago with their game franchise so it makes sense that others would follow suit. We have Ubisoft, Blizzard, EA and Epic all having their own launchers and while this keeps your games organized by publisher, I’d say it’s not very helpful to the consumer. Having them jump through more hoops to get to playing a game doesn’t seem helpful but many say that Steam is the same way and I’d agree. I’m not fan of Steam in the sense that I think they are now  too large to fail and have cease making improvements to their platform as a result. Some may not care and for someone in my position it’s just the way things are and if we want to stay on top of this industry that means we have to have them all. My real concern is when are we going to stop getting new ones, what’s the limit consumers are going put up to enjoy the newest games  by each publisher. There are a subset of players that will straight up refuse to buy games unless they show up on Steam and while I think that is a bit silly to limit yourself to one platform I also understand that not everyone wants to put up with all these store fronts. I’d love if the big publishers got together and made 1 platform where they would all get full profits from their games but they were all in one place. A man can dream at the end of the day, in the mean time I’ll keep track of different .exe files and make sure I keep track of all these different digital stores.

Stalker 2 once again in development

After Stalker 2 was first announced in 2011, then canceled, then in development again, then canceled again, once again we have been told it is being developed by it’s original studio, GSC Games with a supposed 2021 release according to an article on PCGamer.

Source: Pcinvasion.com

Ozzy’s Thoughts:  Stalker (“S.T.A.L.K.E.R.”) was my first (proper) RPG I ever played and I absolutely loved it (after all the patches were downloaded.)  I’ve always been fascinated by the real Chernobyl event and having this “alternate history” with it is just so cool and the sequel and prequel came and went without me even noticing sadly (still haven’t finished the sequel) and the development of Stalker 2 has always been rocky and I thought that it was done for.  While I am happy it’s come back, with the previous starts/stops, I’m a bit more cautious after all that’s happened so I’m not exactly dancing around the room going “YAY!” but I’m happy it’s back and hope it stays back.

One wish though, coop maybe?