This Week In The Business: Dizzying Days For VR

STAT | $400 – The current asking price of an Oculus Rift and Touch Controllers bundle. As recently as March, it was $800. QUOTE | “We used to invest $100K, $200K, but we don’t have to do that so much anymore because those people can get paid out [from the install base].” – Oculus VP…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for assembling IKEA furniture in your un-air conditioned apartment, but you live alone now, so at least you don’t have to wear clothes. Also, video games. I’ve recently gotten on a Spelunky kick, because it makes a nice break between unpacking boxes from my recent move. I wasn’t that good at it…

Glitch Creates Unintentional Extra Ending In Sci-Fi Steam Game

Event 0 is a science fiction game that came out last year. Since release, players have discovered four different endings to the game—which is strange, because according to the designer, it only has three. SPOILERS AHEAD The emotional core of Event 0 rest between the player and an AI called Kaizen-85. Throughout the game, players…

Battlegrounds Is Addictive Because There’s No Wrong Way To Play

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is amazingly fun and offers an exciting experience every time you play. But how is it so good? One little sentences from PlayerUnknown himself makes it clear. We take a look in this critical video. Transcript: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is a giant battle royale game that’s simple in concept and exciting in execution, asking…

Final Fantasy XIV Besieged By DDoS Attacks

The biggest threat to Eorza isn’t the Garleans, or some other villain that I don’t want to look up because I haven’t even finished Heavensward yet. It’s Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which have been hitting Final Fantasy XIV since June and show no sign of stopping, according to the developers at Square Enix.…

The Pac-12 Doesn’t Consider College Esports Sports For Now, Thank God

A.J. Dimick sees big things in the future for collegiate esports. “I think college esports has a limitless ceiling, I really do,” Dimick told me over the phone earlier this year. To that end, Dimick, esports director at the University of Utah’s Entertainment Arts and Engineering department, has facilitated the creation of the first varsity…

Dating Simulator Lets You Netflix And Chill

In Flix and Chill, your goal is to basically Netflix and chill. The game doesn’t call it that, of course, but you’re still trying to invite people your back to your house to watch movies and have sex. The point-and-click game is divided into five different episodes, and while your goal always remains the same,…

Zynga Tries Charging Random Prices For DLC, Fails

Letty’s Sting Ray from The Fate of the Furious showed up as a premium microtransaction in CSR Racing 2 earlier this week. It cost $4.99 to unlock. Or $14.99. Or $34.99. According to Zynga, prices for the premium vehicle were set to random as part of a feature test. Really. The situation came to our…

Nintendo Switch Game About Sheep Seems Horny, Is Actually Sad

This new Nintendo Switch game about sheep is a little bit horny, and also very morbid. When you look at Shephy on the Nintendo Switch eShop, it looks like a cute card game about sheep. And for the most part it is. The goal of the game is to use all the cards in your…

How Three People Crushed Final Fantasy VII In Less Than Eight Hours

By the time it was Final Fantasy VII’s turn on the Summer Games Done Quick schedule, the trio of runners were already tired. A mixture of nerves and anxious excitement had kept them from getting a full night’s sleep, and starting at 1 a.m., they were about to steer the graveyard shift through eight solid…

If You Hear Someone Getting Harassed In An Online Game, Don’t Stay Silent

“I think we’d do better with a healer,” I suggested to my Overwatch team earlier this week. We were in the spawn room defending the Temple of Anubis and, without a healer, we would quickly forfeit the objective. Not even the slightest pause passed before a teammate told me that, instead, “What we need is…

Popular Pokémon Minecraft Mod Gets Shut Down [Update]

Pixelmon, a robust Pokémon-themed modification for Minecraft released in 2012, can no longer be downloaded. The developers say the take down is the result of a request by The Pokémon Company itself. “With much sadness, but keeping all our fond memories, we must announce that Pixelmon is ending its development,” MrMasochism, creator of the mod,…

What To Watch For This Weekend At Evo 2017, The World’s Largest Fighting Game Tournament

Every year, the Evolution Championship Series descends on Las Vegas, bringing with it the largest collection of fighting game players in the world. Evo serves as a reflection of the best the fighting game community has to offer, and players who manage to become champions in the sweltering Las Vegas desert are regarded as having…

Lode Runner Is A Classic No Matter What It Looks Like

While it’s sporting fancy new voxel graphics, the heart of Lode Runner Legacy is the same satisfying gameplay that made creator Douglas E. Smith’s prototypical puzzle platformer one of the greatest games of the ‘80s. Lode Runner’s still got it. Lode Runner Legacy, released this week on Steam by Tozai Games, is the latest in…

Indie Megabooth, the collective that brings smaller games to big shows like E3 and PAX, is hosting its first stand-alone event this weekend in Atlanta. The first Indie Megashow is 12 hours of good games and good music, going down at The Tabernacle from 1PM to 1AM Saturday. You can getinfo and tickets here.