Here at Goonhammer, we know that it’s hard to keep track of all the news happening all the time in the games industry. So much is always going on with games of all sorts, and their related media, it can be a real blink-and-you’ll miss it situation.
That’s why every week, we round up five of the biggest stories in the gaming sphere from the past week in the Games Industry News Roundup. This week, it’s me, your girl Marcy, here to bring you the news you need.
Grief Looms Over Magic the Gathering as $5k Event Cancelled
Starting off the news this week is the announcement that Owl Central Games decided to cancel their upcoming $5k Legacy that was originally scheduled for Saturday, July 20th. Organizers cited the recent downturn in player opinion of the health of Legacy.
The news comes during a period of disquiet in the Legacy format over the card aptly named Grief, which WotC decided not to ban in their recent announcement, instead having stated that, “While the community explores Modern Horizons 3, we will continue to monitor the play rate and win rate of reanimator,” in their June announcement. It seems the community has called WotC’s bluff that they simply just wanted to sell MH3 on the hopes it would ‘solve’ a problem.
Interestingly, according to a tweet by Star City journalist Nick Miller, WotC’s own Legacy expert recommended they ban the card ahead of the release, so it seems that while WotC was aware of the Grief problem, they’ve chosen not to act, causing one of the larger Legacy events to get cancelled in protest of an unhealthy play state. It remains to be seen what action they take in August.
Huge Hiccup Hamstrings Historical Hobby Homepages
This week’s most bizarre story serves also as a reminder that you may want to hire professional hosting services for your website run businesses.
Posted on Karwansaray Publisher’s site with little initial detail, the announcement was made that over 30 Historical Wargame publishers, including Too Fat Lardies, were out of commission for the foreseeable future. Many affected have been told their websites are “unrecoverable”, meaning that not only are these companies out of a website, they’re also out of years of work and effort, with hobbyists left scratching their heads as to what comes next. Most publishers have turned to social media to get the message out and try to stay in contact with their customers; if your favorite Historicals game is suddenly without a webpage, check your publisher’s socials for more info on what their interim plans are.
We reached out to Goonhammer’s professional computer toucher for expert comment on the matter, who had this to say:
GREGNOTE: I realize that “lmao” probably comes off incredibly mean in this situation, but it is admittedly an accurate quote, so instead of trying to weasel out of it I just wanted to add what I feel is some important context.
Obviously, as a human being and a gamer, I feel bad for what happened to these companies and their customers, and even a lot of empathy for the sysadmin who is probably freaking out because he just had his server melt down. It’s happened to all of us at one time or another, there but for the grace of God, etc. I do hope they (the hosting company and the gaming companies) recover, and that the entire UK indie gaming scene doesn’t disappear from Online – that no one loses their livelihood – because of one failed hard drive. Here’s the “but”: as a professional, as someone who does this stuff for a living, it is objectively bonkers to be in this position in the first place. I don’t mean to pile on, but to have no backups in place, no procedures, no other point of contact to handle fielding issues while you’re hard offline on a boat (that ludicrously awful timing, more than anything, is what got me), is wild. This isn’t an abstract concept to me: I am personally responsible for keeping Goonhammer and most of our other properties running, and I take it very seriously. This place has ruined my weekend plans so many times, but that’s the job. So yeah, in a gallows humor sort of way, when Marcy asked me for a comment I fired off an instinctual “lmao”.
In short, it’s the sort of comment that plays well in a war room during a P1 issue (ask anyone in the business and they’re likely to agree), but comes off much harsher when presented to a wider audience. We wish all parties involved the best of luck getting through this. Hopefully everyone gets their company up and running again, no orders get lost, and this ends up being a small blip in the history of the gaming scene and a teachable moment in the IT scene.
Warner Bros. Reveals First Looks at Lord of the Rings Animated Film at Anime Expo
Anime Expo once again descended upon Los Angeles this past weekend, and during the mammoth event, Warner Bros. Pictures revealed some of the first visuals from the upcoming anime film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Showing off some of the key characters in the film, including the main character, Héra. Speaking to the press, director Kenji Kamiyama said: “In Japanese animation, it’s not uncommon for a female protagonist to be the main character, but it’s more rare in the live-action films made from The Lord of the Rings,” which while perhaps not an intentional burn, certainly has some fairly funny implications. Anime 1, Lord of the Rings 0, I guess.
Set 183 years before the Lord of the Rings trilogy, War of the Rohirrim follows Héra as she and her people fend off an attack from a man known as Wolf, a Dunlending, culminating in a battle at the site that would eventually come to be known as Helm’s Deep. Warner Bros. Pictures also revealed the film will get a theatrical release in December of this year, so the Lord of the Rings Holiday Movie Experience is back on the menu for 2024’s holiday season.
Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail Publisher MiHoYo Launches New Character Action Game, Zenless Zone Zero
Hot on the heels of the success of Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail comes MiHoYo’s newest game, Zenless Zone Zero, a character action game featuring urban sci-fi theming and fast playing action gameplay. Early reception of the game seems to be quite positive, and the character action gameplay is unique in comparison to the open world concept of Genshin and turn-based action of Star Rail.
Players curious to try it out can find the game for free, but be aware that there are in-game transactions and a gacha element if you do wish to check it out.
Rivenstone Kickstarter by Broken Anvil Miniatures Receives the Type of Update You’d Expect
As seems to happen more often than not with large Kickstarters, the Rivenstone campaign from Broken Anvil Miniatures updated with news that the project was being passed off to another company (unnamed in the update, which is always a great sign) that is “well-established” according to BAM, promising a new website, Discord server, and community infrastructure for the transfer.
While the BAM team promise that this new nebulous owner “understand the value of Rivenstone,” they also quietly mention that “changes may need to take place by the new team,” without any explanation of what those changes are to the final product, or what type of impact this has to people’s pledges and expectations.
When and if future updates emerge, we’ll keep an eye out for who the new property owners will be, and what that means for the game, and report it for you here. As for what it means for backers in general, probably nothing good, and most backers seem (with reason) unhappy, as there is little accountability on how or if the project will ever deliver from this point on, regardless of who owns Rivenstone or what they chose to do with it.
Overwatch 2 Collaboration with Transformers Produces a Trailer That’s More than Meets the Eye
Perhaps one of the more surprising news bits of news this week is the announcement of a collaboration between Overwatch 2 and Transformers, complete with a fairly lovingly done animated trailer.
Overwatch 2’s trajectory has been an odd one, with content promises removed or pushed back indefinitely, but this collaboration seems to be well received by the game’s audience and has people excited to spend money on the game. Coming to Overwatch in skin form are Bumblebee, Arcee, Optimus Prime, and Megatron, reskinning Bastion, Illari, Reinhardt, and Ramattra respectively. As a long time Starscream fan, I suppose I am sad that he didn’t make it in as a second Decepticon skin, but hey.
The trailer itself is quite fun to watch, and importantly free, unlike the skins. These also look a lot more promising than some of the early collaborative skins, such as the Cowboy Bebop ones, which is probably helped by not trying to squeeze Overwatch proportioned characters into other human visages. Sometimes, it really is about what meets the eye.
And that wraps it up for our Games Industry News Roundup this week! Join us again next week for more news about the tabletop games industry and related media.
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