Gaming and filming rights to J.R.R Tolkien projects including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are reportedly up for sale and the rumors suggest that Amazon is leading the race for both.

According to Variety, J.R.R owner Saul Zaentz Co. has hired ACF Investment Bank to orchestrate the sale of its Tolkien holdings. The holdings include; merchandising, live events and theme parks, reports suggest that the cost of the holdings are valued at $2 billion. The Saul Zaentz Co was set up by producer Saul Zaentz who died back in 2017. He was responsible for Oscar-winning films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus and The English Patient.

As stated above, Amazon have an interest in obtaining the rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit licenses, Amazon are also set to launch a new Lord of the Rings TV show in September. Currently, Amazon are leading the race to obtain the rights at this time.

It has been put forward that Amazon could have possibly spent over or at least £500 million pounds on the first eight episodes of the upcoming TV adaption; The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Interestingly enough, last April, Amazon Game Studios said it had cancelled a Lord of the Rings MMO it was co-developing with Athlon Games, a US subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Leyou Technologies. The cancellation of that project was due to a dispute between Amazon and Tencent  which acquired Leyou in December 2020.

The post Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film and gaming rights up for sale. first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Now, despite being a self-proclaimed leftist, I’ve developed something of a parasocial affection for New World and it’s formation from mega-rich borderline monopolistic parent company, Amazon… Yes, I know the game’s by Amazon Games, but let’s not mince words, that’s the corporate equivalent of tomato-tomato. In the spirit of being informative and not overdosing on my slightly unhinged tendency to tangential tirades, let’s jump into the news first. CUE THE MUSICAL INTERLUDE!

🎵In olden days a glimpse of glitching
Was looked on as something shitting
Now God knows, anything goes🎵

Amazon Games Studio has recently released a December update for New World and a video explaining future content in store for the game. The world of game design is a pretty complex beast at times though, so hopefully the new content plans don’t end up putting the cart before the ass in terms of ironing out the past glitches and bugs in the game. Even Rich Lawrence (studio head for Amazon Games) admits in the video (here) that the teams’ attempts at fixing glitches accidentally caused even more problems, so… Amazon… Honey. Babydoll. You can afford to just take your time with fixing New World, it’s okay… Or maybe don’t because then I’ll have less comedy fodder for my line of work, who am I to judge?

“What we’ve been trying to do is balance new features as much as we can in with our fixes. And what we’ve discovered is we have a rate limit. We are going too fast, honestly.” – Rich Lawrence.

Luckily, Lawrence has also claimed there will be plans to slow down the work pace for better analysis of issues in New World. Specifically, upcoming patches will have fewer features (with fewer bugs by extension) for the time being, which is a-okay for me because if Hollow Knight has taught me anything, sometimes less is more.

As for some of the new features, New World will be seeing the addition of Mutators, weekly modifiers to enemies within the game’s expeditions (or dungeons). These can vary from exploding enemy types, to skill-immune foes and other game-changing abilities. Dave Hall (player experience lead on New World) also announced the addition of a blunderbuss, basically a sort of badass fantasy musket I heard about from one too many DnD campaigns. The game will also see destructible objects coming to it, so that’ll probably get the Crackdown fans hot n’ bothered.

Narrative Lead Rob Chestney also claims the first chapter of the game’s story is nearly finished, with plans to add more to it in updates.

Trade skills will be making a return sometime, so assuming that means the earlier debacle with the game’s trading system is nearly fixed. There will also be better fast travel accessibility and shrine-viewing icons for the map.

The Winter Convergence Festival event is also currently ongoing in New World. New World is available on PC for anyone looking to get stuck in on the experience before the glitches get fixed and I end up being out of a job… I jest of course, we’ll always have “Bobbert Kotique“!

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The post Lefty Gamer ROASTS New World with QUIRKY JOKES and… LOGIC? first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Oh, New World, New World, New World. My dearest roast-pet. You sweet little mechanic-banning ragamuffin. You character creation-stopping little cutie pie! We KNEAD! Nay, KNEED! Nay, NEED… To talk about branding.

Amazon recently released a statement confirming plans to crack down on the problem of bots in New World. As a result, thousands of in-game bot accounts have been banned… I’m sorry, the fact I’m more surprised that the New World team HAVEN’T purposely wiped swathes of it’s player base from itself is probably more telling about the game’s reception than you think!

So, you win this time Amazon! You’ve been spared this time around from the ritualistic roasting I partake in whenever some new glitch or bug pops up in New World. Parting from that pastime for the remainder of this blog is such sweet sorrow, but I shall… If I can help it.

Goodbye Roast-Master Steff, hello Stefanham Subtle-Tea.

An Apt Summary Of The Nature of Bots: A great many video games use bots to varying degrees. For example: Sometimes, when Fortnite matches are a few players short of the usual Full Monty (100 player combatants), the game will slap-dash a handful of bots to make the difference. Many bots in contemporary digital media are made or inserted by players for a variety of reasons, ranging from hacking and scams, to advertising and grinding (not in the fun way). While banning bot accounts is useful, this is only a temporary solution to a self-perpetuating problem that requires ways of systematically making it harder for bot accounts to be made.

On The Bot Problem: It appears the bots of New World aren’t just any run-of-the-mill vagabonds, but in fact, mostly high-level warriors that have been spawning at quite an alarming rate. These heathens have even been harvesting important materials set aside for players!

If I may be so bold, this is a most-unfair experience to have to go through indeed. I mean, going about your day in The New World without a care in it, only to find out your lands have been virtually COLONISED by the robot uprising Stephen Hawking tried to tell us about!

Statements From The Amazon On The Bot Problem:

“We’re aware of player reports about increased bot activity in New World. Bots pose a persistent challenge for MMOs, and our team has deployed dedicated resources and tooling to identify and combat them”

“We banned over 7,700 accounts for using bots. Our goal is to ensure New World is fun and fair for all players. We’ll post updates to the New World forums and Twitter as we have them”.

Good, Bad and Ugly News: While Amazon is taking steps to fix this problem, a great many others still exist in New World, including the item-duplication bug that’s lead to in-game trading posts getting #Cancelled.

On the bright side, New World has seen incredibly generous reductions to the game’s housing tax system, but that does ring a little hollow considering the company owner practically owns the free market in real life!

Product Poems:

GTA, what a game, horses, farms and all that hay. It’s J-Bae!

Pre-Order Hoarder, PS4 and 5. I smash bros like- ORA!

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The post New World Bans Thousands to Fight Bots! first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Since 2007, the Mass Effect series has become somewhat of a cultural phenomenon within the gaming world. The original trilogy was greeted with both critical and commercial success. The focus of this praise was put on the games’ narrative, characters, voice acting and world building. Could this all be translated over into a television show? Clearly one former Bioware writer thinks not.

David Gaider was the lead writer on another Bioware franchise, the Dragon Age series. Unfortunately, he left his position at the company in 2016, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a lot to say about his former employers. Speaking on Twitter, he addressed recent rumours that Amazon Studios are in the process of gathering the rights to a Mass Effect TV series. This is what he had to say upon the matter:

“I’m relieved to see that the Mass Effect / Amazon deal is for a potential TV series and not a movie,” Gaider said. “Even so, the possibility (and likewise for Dragon Age) makes me cringe just a little, unlike many fans who appear… excited?

“For starters, Mass Effect and Dragon Age have a custom protagonist, meaning said TV show will need to pick whether said protagonist will be male or female. Boom, right off the bat you’ve just alienated a whole bunch of the built-in fan base who had their hopes up”.

Of course, this is a very good starting point from the lead writer. Alienating your fan base before your show has even started is a dangerous approach, especially with a franchise as revered as this.

Mass Effect TV Show: Doomed To Failure?

David Gaider had a lot to say upon the situation, showing he clearly feels passionate about his former company. In regards to the series protagonist, he evidently had a lot more to discuss than just their gender.

“Secondly, those protagonists are designed to be a bit of a blank slate, one that the player fills out with their decisions. That’s not going to work for a passive medium. So, suddenly, the protagonist will have their own personality, and their own story. That will be weird”.

“You think I’m wrong? Consider just how much of the story is off-loaded onto the companions. They are the cyphers through which the player gets most of their emotional engagement from. On their own, the Dragon Age and Mass Effect protagonists are… well, pretty boring. That’s not going to fly”.

Once again, David makes an extremely valid point. Part of the the franchises intrigue is that we get to grow alongside these characters, who are essentially ourselves transformed into the game. Not only this, but the characters our protagonists meet on their adventures have become iconic parts of the series. Obviously, David has his concerns about how they will be handled.

“And think of those companions. Think of how much the fanbase is attached to them. Now consider the fact that there is no way in hell any single story could encompass them all equally. Think of the howls of rage when companion X is relegated to a cameo, or not there at all”.

“Having a TV show instead of a movie allows for more companion options, sure, but consider your own playthrough: only a handful of them had any meaningful presence in a single game. That will need to be the case for this story, to maintain coherence. A few companions, one romance”.

David Believes The Plot Doesn’t Make For Good TV Viewing

As previously mentioned, the side characters are very much important components of the franchise for fans. The likes of Mordin Solus, Urdnot Wrex and Thane Krios serve as great companions for our protagonist to bounce off. As such, David believes their lack of screen time could expose the series’ pretty generic plot.

“Those plots had to take into account the player’s agency. They were kind of the shell upon which that player’s emotional engagement was delivered – usually through the companions and the choices themselves. Choice heightened engagement. Interactivity was the star, not the plot.

“Take all that out, lose most of the companions, and you potentially end up with a pretty run-of-the-mill fantasy or science-fiction show, one where a lot of the built-in audience has possibly been turned into outraged, howling malcontents before it’s even released.

“All that is, of course, if the Dragon Age or Mass Effect series is mishandled. I can think of any number of ways it could be done better, but that involves doing more than a strict adaptation, and that comes with its own complications”.

Despite all this, David does still wish the best for the show, even though it may come off as quite sarcastic.

“Anyhow, good luck to the showrunners. They’ll need it.”

What do you think about the potential of a Mass Effect TV show? Reckon it’d be right up your street? Or should video games just stay as video games? Let us know in the comments below. If you want to check out the latest entry in Bioware’s hit franchise, be sure to pick up a copy here! Similarly, be sure to check out this article which details what famous director left the company days ago.

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The post Mass Effect Show Makes Former Writer Cringe first appeared on Get2Gaming.

The Original Mass Effect was released back in 2007, and told the story of Commander Shepard. A story that would go on to span 3 games, with your choices from each game carrying over from one to the next. A decade later, in 2017, Bioware followed up the series with mass effect: Andromeda which… was not so well received.

Today, a report from deadline has suggested that the series may be getting a tv adaptation through amazon studios.

This is no-doubt coming off the heels of Netflix adapting League of Legends as “Arcane”. Amazon studios seems hell bent on taking a crack at adapting mass effect to a wider audience. As of right now, neither Amazon or EA have actually agreed to the project, but the report from deadline does suggest a deal could come about in the not too distant future.

As of right now what this series will be is unclear. Its possible that this could be an original story set within the universe of mass effect, which would probably be for the better in my opinion, or this could be a film or TV adaptation of the mass effect games. A film was in production briefly in 2010, being produced by Warner Bros. and Legendary studios, best known for the recent Godzilla films and pacific rim. 

Despite interest in adapting the story of the game, I personally feel it wouldnt work. Mass effect is all about the choice aspect. Everyones playthrough is different, with everyone choosing different relationships and places to go. Unless it was A “bandersnatch” choose your own adventure type situation, the preferable option is to do a story set within the world, but not a direct adaptation.

EA and Bioware have recently been teasing a potential new game in the series, this one set back within the milky way galaxy and set centuries after the end of mass effect three. While right now this is little more than rumour, the next few years may prove to be a bit of a renaissance for mass effect fans.

You can pick up mass effect legendary edition, a collection of all 3 main trilogy games, for PS4 from go2games.com

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The post Mass Effect TV show Rumored to be in the works first appeared on Get2Gaming.

New World. Honey. Baby. Sweet Prince. Sugar lips. Brother from another mother that loved another to smother under covers with Danny Glover… Actually, we DON’T need to talk about branding this time. Because at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were doing this on purpose for attention! To which I say, ‘fair play to ya, as long as I keep getting paid to take the Mick, I’m a happy duck’.

Amazon, admittedly, has addressed the issues with New World and has been very candid about how a fair amount of the game’s issues being the result of a specialized bot not picking up on things, but hey, you win some you lose some. And in this case, what you lose is THE ABILITY TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FREE MARKET… In the game of course.

Admittedly can’t put ALL the blame on the folks at Amazon here, the reason the trading posts in New World have been disabled now is because of a player fiddling a little too hard with the mechanics and discovering a new exploit.

A dramatic explanation of the exploit in the character of a wise old mentor in the pending post-apocalypse of 2020 Part 3: “Long ago, in the firey depths of Tartarus, a cunning warrior of phallus-thickeningly epic proportions discovered a way to duplicate difficult-to-craft items and re-sell them at exorbitant prices. Even going so far as to “dupe” in-game trophies! For you see! Upon discovering one could eat a deep-fried pumpkin-battered lamb chop in one hand and exploit video game hacks with the other, THUS, the first capitalist was born… But why do the ruins have so many part-bitten apples and strangely-curved legally-distinct logos laying around”?

Why Trophies? Trophies are furnishing items tied to the game’s housing system that provide the player with powerful passive bonuses that remain active in every zone of the game. Think “what if that hand-furnished IKEA table I got on sale inexplicably made me better skydiving”. Players can have up to 5 trophies at a time in their in-game lodging and are very powerful.

The players who discovered the duplication glitch allegedly tried to inform Amazon’s Developer Team of the issue to no avail, which resulted in them going public. Based on fan discourse and criticisms, Amazon’s leniency with the “duping” crowd honestly makes no sense. I mean, the whole point of games like this is you DON’T want people to be able to make cool things super easily on their own, look at Fortnite! It took me grinding through around 3 seasons of Fortnite to get by own cosmetic skin without having to pay legal tender for Vbucks! It may not be ideal for me, but it’s a good system if you want to incentivise people to pay real money to get in-game cosmetics (or in this case in-game special abilities).

The Product Haiku Power Hour:

Greedfall. PS4 and PS5. My gift: Jeffe Bethos.

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The post New World Trading Post Restriction: Oops, I did it Again first appeared on Get2Gaming.

The Skippable Backstory Cutsce- I mean paragraph: New World. Sweetie. Darling. Love of My Life. You may have addressed issues that wouldn’t have been present if you just delayed the game’s release. You may have pinned a lot of said issues on AI programming to fix things on the fly. You may have even disabled transfers and character creation for a time due to said rushing of release… But I love a good roast, so thank you Amazon. Also, I’m don’t know how much my knowledge of Post-Colonialist or Critical Race Theory will be relevant (spoiler alert, not much since I haven’t played it yet), but there’s always our PS4 and Gold Edition PS5 versions of Greedfall on our store given its supposed similarities to New World.

For the blessedly uninitiated: New World is an open-world RPG action game. Also, not gonna lie, before I found out of the oodles of bugs and issues, the New World trailer really does paint a picture for a (hypothetically speaking) pretty good game.

Canadian YouTuber and Twitch streamer Shroud has claimed New World will be seeing an improved gameplay patch, though some players aren’t as enthusiastic as others.

The developers of New World announced in a recent blog post that the main combat changes will include tweaking of dodge-cancels, weapon swapping and attack input windows. More specifically, the devs want weapon swapping to be more integral to combat, maybe hinting at a sort of contextual weapon weakness system where some tools work better on specific enemies than others (though let’s not mince words, it’s mostly because sometimes you end up attacking with your last weapon even after clicking to change to another one).

There will also be some changes to some in-game skills to encourage more use of multiple abilities for different situations.

The post ended with the developer’s stating they want combat to feel as fluid as possible, also encouraging feedback from players… So you got me New World devs. Taking the mick is fun, but I fancy myself a bit of an “ArTiStE” at the best of times, so I understand how it can feel to work long and hard on something that doesn’t turn out quite right… I mean, not right now, because I get paid to make non sequitur jokes about vampiric burlap sacks and gaming news, but I hope things pan out for you New World devs.

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The post New World Upcoming Combat Updates With a Twist first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Amazon‘s foray into the world of gaming with New World has been off to a Rocky start!

First it’s removing character customization from full in-game servers, then gear clipping woes, a bug for kicking off players via messages, reducing number of players and more! Patches have fixed most of the main issues, including the most recent glitch, a method of invincibility received by moving the window of the game during play.This sparked a conversation from some (and by some, I mean Reddit and Twitter discourse) questioning whether the exploit was intentional due to Amazon being ‘client authoritative’, which isn’t exactly the most likely presumption. I watched CJ The X’s multi-hour long heavily cited deep dive into Jeff Bezos and reading Bo Burnham’s soul for filth, one of the big takeaways from that video is essentially “say what you will, but Bezos loves the customer the way a Fujoshi loves yaoi paddles“… I’m exaggerating, but not by much!

While you’re here, I’ve heard some compare New World to a ‘Colonialism simulator’, so if you want a story-based gaming experience that definitely touches on a perspective on colonialist takeover, have a butcher’s at our store for our special edition PS5 and PS4 versions of Greedfall.

On Friday, Amazon stated in an official forum site for New World that the game is ‘not client authoritative’. The statement then goes on to read as:

 ‘New World is entirely server based. At a high level the model is this: clients dispatch controller inputs to the server, and the server then checks that input for limits that might invalidate it, then if accepted uses it as an input to a character (“actor” is our internal name) within server memory’.

This ‘server based’ claim was also supported by community manager Luxendra, stating: ‘we do full physics detail for all such actions. Upon receiving the outcome, either hit or miss, the client will adjust its visual display to match what the server has determined. There are some client side tricks we use here to ‘stretch’ the animation while the client is waiting for the server answer, but the outcome is always based only on the server answer’… In lay terms ‘we do lots of checking and managing to make sure things run smoothly in-game, but at the end of the day, the server’s own analysis and outcome is king’. So, oddly enough, THANK GOD the machine didn’t pick up an issue this time round, because again, CJ’s infinite droves of galaxy-brained genius incoming, but it’s a very real possibility that cyborg transhumanism will indeed become a thing (and to a degree already is). Even Stephen Hawking and a bunch of other big-name scientists signed the Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence that essentially boiled down to “don’t fiddle too hard with Artificial Intelligence, or it may fiddle you back”… I’m exaggerating, but not by much!

As of yet, around 8% of New World players have reached max level and the game is sitting comfortably as one of Steam‘s Top 3 most played games.

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The post Amazon-‘New World is NOT Client Authoritative’ first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Source codes and user payouts leaked by an anonymous hacker in a 128GB torrent.

We can confirm a breach has taken place. Our teams are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. We will update the community as soon as additional information is available. Thank you for bearing with us.

— Twitch (@Twitch) October 6, 2021

Twitch has confirmed that the data breach is, indeed, authentic. Yesterday, October 6th, a user on 4chan posted a 125GB torrent link, claiming the leak was intended to “foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space” because “their community is a disgusting toxic cesspool”.

The file is publicly available to download, as verified by VGC, The Record, and more.

The leaked Twitch data reportedly includes:

• The entirety of Twitch’s source code, back to its early beginnings
• Creator payout records from 2019
• An unreleased Steam competitor named Vapor, from Amazon Game Studios
• Mobile, desktop, and console Twitch clients
• Proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch
• Information relating to Twitch’s other properties, including IGDB and CurseForge
• Twitch’s internal ‘red teaming’ tools – designed to improve security by having staff pretend to be hackers

Here's a more comprehensive list of leaked Twitch payouts (I will keep updating this thread as more things come out). pic.twitter.com/15JItvp6l4

— KnowSomething (@KnowS0mething) October 6, 2021

Twitter uses have started combing the 125GB of leaked info. One user claims that the leak includes encrypted passwords.

It is recommended that you change your Twitch password and set up two-factor authentication. If you were using your Twitch password for any other sites, it’s best to change those as well.

Here’s how to turn on two-factor identification:

Log on to Twitch, click your avatar and choose Settings.
Go to Security and Privacy, then scroll down to the Security setting.
If you haven’t already, you will be able to activate two-factor authentication from here. You’ll need your phone to follow the instructions.

As always, stay safe online and be careful which sites you give your personal data. Avoid reusing password and email combinations on multiple sites, and keep your personal data as private as possible.

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Before you go: grab these voucher codes for use at Go2Games!
These offers end on October 18th

Use HARVEST5 for 5% off Monster Harvest!
Use WRC10 for 10% off WRC10 on all platforms!

2 days to go…

The post Twitch confirms massive 4chan leak is a genuine data breach first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Sony has officially cut the price of The Order: 1886

When released in February earlier this year, The Order: 1886 didn’t do as well as expected. Quite a few retailers began slashing the price of the game quite a bit soon after it’s release. Some offered it for half of it’s original price.

Both Amazon and Best Buy, just last month, were selling off their stock of the game for just $20 (near enough £13) which is the cheapest it has ever been. Sony has now officially cut the price of the game themselves. The official MRSP on the game is now $40 (around £26), which is actually still more than most retailers are selling it for. Amazon are selling the game for $30 (about £19.50).

The Order: 1886 was actually the first big flop on the PS4. So much so, that Sony has actually cut ties with the game’s developer, and they did so just after a month of the game’s release.

The post The Order: 1886 – Sony Officially Cuts Price first appeared on Get2Gaming.