TGO Daily | March 18, 2021 | Scummy CEOs
A Day of Scummy CEOs
I hate to have this as the headline story, but there are two game company CEOs in the spotlight today for very bad reasons.
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is currently set to receive $200 million in financial bonuses. This is because he activated a clause in his contract which allowed him to collect bonuses that he previously failed to acquire — thanks to the current stock price being so high. There is criticism that he’s essentially being “awarded gold medals” for previous faults, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic doing so well for the entire industry. As usual, they also recently announced layoffs at the company which effected somewhere between 50-190 people. While their CEO gets hundreds of millions in BONUSES. Right.
Riot Games CEO Nicolo Laurent was recently found to have been innocent of misconduct and sexual harassment by the private investigation held by the company. The accusations were made by his former assistant, who also accused the company of failure to pay wages and unfair dismissal. Of course, this whole thing still needs to go through the courts — but who would have guessed that the Special Committee of a company who has been dealing with discrimination issues for years found the CEO innocent. Eyeroll.
Of course, there’s not much we can do about these issues besides be vocal about it. It just sucks to see, you know?
Sony and Xbox
Both Sony and Xbox made significant announcements regarding their content schedule today.
By far the biggest news is that Sony is going to be giving away ten high quality games to anyone with a PlayStation account. Starting from March 25 to April 22, they will be giving away Abzu, The Witness, Enter The Gungeon, Subnautica, and Rez Infinite (I can highly recommend all those games except the latter, which I haven’t played). They will also give away four PSVR titles: Moss, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Paper Beast, and Thumper. The headliner of the giveaway happens starting April 19 to May 14, where they are giving away Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition. That’s a ton of amazing games as part of the “Play At Home” initiative, which is currently giving away Ratchet & Clank (2016).
On the other side of the aisle, Xbox made another announcement regarding the Xbox Game Pass. Back in November, they integrated their console offerings with EA Play, which added a bunch of games from the EA back catalogue. It was supposed to also arrive on PC, but they inexplicable dropped out on the same day that it was supposed to happen. Today, they revealed that EA Play will now finally be available on PC today.
Final Fantasy Update
Square Enix have made a few updates around the Final Fantasy franchise.
The biggest note is that they have no more plans for additional content on the Final Fantasy VII Remake, as they are focusing on its second part. They recently announced a PS5 update to the game called FFVII Remake Intergrade, which is going to be adding a new story episode — but that’s all people are getting. It arrives on June 10.
They also provided some more details about the FFVII battle royale, called The First Solider, which is releasing on mobile.
There is a strong belief that we should not be sitting on our laurels with the weight of the FFVII name behind us though, and so we set about developing FFVII FS with the gumption to compete as a new challenger in what is the hottest gaming genre right now
— Tetuya Nomura on Famitsu, via VGC
It’s an interesting move on a few fronts. Expanding Final Fantasy into different/newer genres will hopefully allow for some creative expansions in storytelling. It’s only coming out on mobile, but there have been plenty of successful BRs on the platform so we’ll see how it does!
Two Game Updates
Disco Elysium - The Final Cut is going to be releasing on March 30th. It will be on PC and PS4/5, with a planned Xbox release this summer. The biggest new thing is that it adds full voice acting (that’s a lot of lines!), alongside some new content. It will be a free upgrade to all current owners.
Doom Eternal will have its second and final DLC “The Ancient Gods Part Two” releasing today! It’s probably advised that you play the first DLC before this one — though neither require the base game in order to play it them.
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