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Apple goes for the throat
Over the past few days, Apple and Epic Games have been entangled in a legal conflict over revenue cuts and policy. Today, Apple has announced that they are terminating all Epic developer accounts as of August 28th. What this means is that Epic would be unable to develop on iOS or Mac on any project, let alone Fortnite. Now this is a huge deal, because this means that they would not be able to work on the Unreal Engine. Which then means that anybody who has an app on the Apple store and uses Unreal Engine to power it, would no longer be supported moving forward. Here’s a good explanation:
It’s not that Apple is outright removing every game that uses Unreal Engine from iOS, but for many…devs the result may as well be the same. Without access to Apple’s development tools…Epic is then unable to keep Unreal Engine compatible with new iOS versions, a harm that trickles down rather quickly…
Apple is no longer going after just Epic Games, but anybody who relies on their services. I’m not going to lie, regardless of what Epic’s true motivation is through all of this, Apple making this strong of a move is exactly what Epic is fighting against in their complaints. Also, I previously thought that Epic alone wouldn’t be able to do enough to change anything, but Apple probably just angered a whole lot more people with this. We’ll see how it plays out.
Ghost of Tsushima receiving online co-op
Sucker Punch Productions have announced a brand new game mode for their newest game, Ghost of Tsushima: Legends. It is going to be an online co-op mode which is completely separate from the main story.
With two people, you can do a bunch of co-op story based missions, which are probably similar in style to the single-player campaign. And then with four players you can play a horde mode. In either case you can play it with friends or go through the online matchmaking.
Legends will be arriving some time this autumn, and it will be a free update to everybody who owns the game. Looking forward, it looks like they will also be adding a four-player raid mode at some point, which is pretty cool.
Microsoft Flight Simulator reviews are out
A game that has made many headlines over the past few months is Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it is finally releasing some time today. This also means that the reviews are out, and boy oh boy are they ever good.
Many outlets gave it a 10/10, with none of them going lower than an 8, and positive comments throughout. In fact on Open Critic it is the third-best reviewed game of the year, behind Half-Life: Alyx and The Last of Us Part II.
Most critics praised the technology, which of course uses Bing maps to recreate literally the entire world. They also said that you can play this game at any skill level, with a bunch of QoL options that lets you set your own pace. Apparently the multiplayer is pretty cool as well. The game is out now on PC, and is also available through the Xbox Game Pass. I’m very much looking forward to flying over my house.
Mortal Shell also has reviews out
The Souls-like Mortal Shell is also releasing today, although it did not review as well as people may have expected. I’ve talked about this game before — it pretty much looks exactly like Dark Souls, but the question is whether or not it plays like Dark Souls.
Most reviewers were average to above-average about the game. Critics praised the world-building and the visual aesthetic, but were disappointed with the combat. Many of them said that there were really cool ideas, but the mechanics weren’t fleshed out enough. That being said, if you can get on board with the idea of a budget Dark Souls, which isn’t as good but has its merits, then you might interested in this game.
Also In The News
Fall Guys developers offer free cross-over to the brand who donates the most money to charity
Jagex (Runescape) signs first publishing deal with Shadow Warrior developer
More From TGO
Huge shoutout to my beta testers on this newsletter. I’ll address some comments here:
Images should go above the story breakdown, not below - Done, thanks Elpis
Hyperlink the title of the story breakdown so you don’t have to scroll up - Done, thanks again Elpis
Put interactivity at the end (5-star reviews, mailbag segments, good Discord messages, etc.) - Yup good idea, thanks Colby. Will do that for full release.
Add more colour - Yeah I wish I could, but the editing options on this service are fairly limited. It’s supposed to be a traditional newspaper style! I assume…
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