Activision

Sources: Call of Duty 2020 In Upheaval As Treyarch Takes Over, Plans Black Ops 5

Next year’s Call of Duty has gone through a major upheaval, as publisher Activision informed developers this week that studios Raven and Sledgehammer, which had until now led the project, will no longer be in charge. Instead, according to three people familiar with goings-on at the companies, Treyarch will lead development on a new Black…

Crash Team Racing Finally Gets Kart Customization

The original Crash Team Racing, released in 1999 for the PlayStation, is a very robust kart racing game, packed with tracks, racers and game modes. Beenox’s upcoming remake of the game, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, tops it all off with extensive character and kart customization, giving players the ability to pick and choose skins, parts,…

Call of Duty Esports Is Getting Ready To Change Again

The Call of Duty World League has only been around since 2016, but it’s already making an overhaul that could spell the end of its current format, which mixes weekly matches that have their own cash prizes with bigger bimonthly tournaments. Activision is planning for its blockbuster shooter series to follow in the wake of…

Sekiro Speedrunners Are Using A Glitch To Swim Through The Air

Speedrunners use a variety of tricks to reduce Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice from a difficult combat gauntlet to a breeze. The fastest Any% runs now take less than 30 minutes, with the current world record at 24:37 at time of publication, held by Distortion2. Some tricks involve dying in the right place to avoid a…

Sekiro’s Smartest Boss Fight Is Against A Giant, Poop-Throwing Ape

There are plenty of tough bosses in Sekiro, from rival swordsmen to dangerous undead monsters. One of the best bosses sounds at first like it would be the silliest: a shit-throwing giant ape. But closer examination of this battle reveals a crash course on how to make a reactive and thematically interesting boss fight. It’s…

Report: Activision Blizzard Wants To Know How Its Employees’ Pregnancies Are Going

A story published by the Washington Post Tuesday night revealed that game publisher Activision Blizzard has been offering third-party fertility and pregnancy tracking services to its employees—and then receiving their anonymized data back in return. Ovia Health offers a suite of wellness apps for family planning, allowing users to input their personal information to keep…

There’s Nothing Like That Three-Star Puzzle Game Feeling

Every time I feel like I’ve grown past the need for validation from triple-starring a level in a puzzle game, I find myself drawn into a game like King’s latest, Pet Rescue Puzzle Saga Say what you will about Candy Crush Saga creator King, the Activision-owned developer knows how to make puzzle games feel good.…

The Spyro Reignited Trilogy has subtitles now. Not only doestoday’s patch finally make the three-game bundle more enjoyable for the hearing impaired and those who play with their sound down, it also gives players the option to turn off motion blur, making it look better as well.

In 2005, An Activision Designer Dreamed Up A Battle Angel Alita Game That Never Happened

Alita: Battle Angel finally made it to theaters this year, long after James Cameron first bought the rights and tried to make the movie in 2005. At the time, a young game designer at Activision thought it might be the right time to pitch an Alita video game. Casey Holtz has worked in the game…

The Skylanders Return In A New Mobile Game

Available today worldwide on iOS and Android devices, Skylanders: Ring of Heroes takes the colorful characters from the toys-to-life series and turns them into pawns in a free-to-play, character-collecting role-playing game. That’s fine, I guess. Not like Activision was doing anything with them recently. Aside from the animated Netflix series, we haven’t heard much from…

Black Ops 4‘s ‘Grand Heist’ Update Is Excellent Except For The Loot Boxes

The latest update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is a double-edged sword. It brings great new content to the game that I’m having a blast with, but also loot boxes. Ironic, considering that the update is titled “Grand Heist.” Black Ops 4’s “Operation Grand Heist,” available this week on PlayStation 4 and next…

The Fallout Of Activision Blizzard’s Massive Layoffs

Yesterday, at the exact moment Activision Blizzard chief executive officer Bobby Kotick hopped on a quarterly earnings call to inform shareholders that his company had just gone through a “record year,” employees across the publisher of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and more were being brought into conference rooms and informed that they were…

Activision Blizzard Lays Off Hundreds Of Employees

Publisher Activision Blizzard has begun its long-rumored layoff process, informing employees this afternoon that it will be cutting staff. On an earnings call this afternoon, the company said that it would be eliminating 8% of its staff. In 2018, Activision Blizzard had roughly 9,600 employees, which would mean nearly 800 people are now out of…

Activision-Blizzard Employees Brace For Massive Layoffs

Staff at the game publisher Activision-Blizzard are preparing for big layoffs next week, waiting to see who will be one of potentially hundreds of employees who could lose their jobs on Tuesday. There’s been no official news from the publisher yet, but we first heard word of upcoming layoffs late last year. At the time,…

Call Of Duty‘s Latest Microtransaction Is A Tiny Red Dot

For a game that’s already taking heat from its player base for the price of its extra cosmetic items, Black Ops 4‘s latest offering seems especially difficult to swallow. A red dot reticle showed up in the Black Ops 4 Black Market on December 25, wearing a price tag of 100 COD Points, or about…

Blackout Keeps Crashing On The Xbox One X

A recent Black Ops 4 update has made Blackout unplayable for many players on Xbox One X, and currently there’s no fix or update. On December 18, the arrival of Black Ops 4’s Absolute Zero event on Xbox One brought a new Specialist character, tons of new Contraband loot, and an unfortunate Blackout issue that…

Call of Duty Developer Evacuated After Bomb Threat

Infinity Ward, the Los Angeles-based developer behind various Call of Duty games including Infinite Warfare, evacuated employees today following a bomb threat, Kotaku has learned. Police showed up at the studio this morning telling employees to leave, according to one person who was there. Staff were able to evacuate without a problem. This comes as…

Crash Team Racing Remake Will Release In June 2019

Crash Team Racing, the PlayStation 1’s answer to Mario Kart, is coming back in 2019, Activision announced at The Game Awards this evening. In development at the studio Beenox, which created the racing portion of 2015’s Skylanders Superchargers, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is a “built from the ground up” remake of Naughty Dog’s 1999 kart…

The New Spyro Doesn’t Have Subtitles In Its Cutscenes, Which Is Crazy

While it has them during gameplay, the new Spyro Reignited Trilogy doesn’t have subtitles during its cutscenes. So anyone who is hearing impaired, or just likes to play with the sound down/off and wants to enjoy the game’s story, is shit out of luck. This is very much not normal, which is why what might…

The Spyro Reignited Trilogy Preserves The Excellence Of A PlayStation Masterpiece

Back in 1998, Insomniac Games gave us a small purple dragon who’s a joy to control, colorful free-roaming playgrounds and backed with exquisite music. The Spyro Reignited Trilogy looks different, but it feels just as good. Released in 1998 for the original PlayStation and followed by a pair of sequels in 1999 and 2000, Spyro…