🎮 More layoffs, Remakes from Ubisoft, Concord, Space Marine 2 Beta...
More layoffs in Gameloft and Ubisoft, Ubisoft confirm Assassin’s Creed Remakes, New Details about Concord, Space Marine 2 Beta Canceled, CDRP’s plans with the next Cyberpunk, Palworld’s new update
Hello friends,
Today is July 2nd 2024 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌
In today’s news:
🎮 More layoffs in Gameloft and Ubisoft
🎮 Ubisoft confirm Assassin’s Creed Remakes
🎮 New Details about Concord
🎮 Space Marine 2 Beta Canceled
🎮 CDRP’s plans with the next Cyberpunk
🎮 Palworld’s new update
😄 Personal Update
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 More layoffs in Gameloft and Ubisoft
We can’t catch a break with all of this.
Ubisoft Toronto recently announced yet another round of layoffs. The studio that recently joined the development team of The Sands of Time Remake decided to cut its team members to “deliver on its ambitious roadmap”. Honestly, I have no idea how these two things fit in the same sentence, but here we are.
The official statement says:
Ubisoft Toronto has decided to conduct a targeted realignment to ensure it can deliver on its ambitious roadmap. Unfortunately, this will impact the roles of 33 team members who will be leaving Ubisoft. We are committed to providing comprehensive support to them, including severance and career assistance, to help through this transition.
Also, Gameloft decided to continue cutting their staff in the Toronto studio as well. The studio laid off a bunch of people just last year and now they’ve decided to finish the job. According to LinkedIn posts of some of the people affected, the only people left in the studio are HR, IT and Senior Management. And the projects are being transferred to Gameloft Kharkiv (Ukraine) for long-term support.
I honestly have no idea what these companies are thinking and how downsizing is supposed to get them there, but I hope that everyone affected will get a new job as soon as possible.
🎮 Ubisoft confirm Assassin’s Creed Remakes
According to the company’s website, there was an interview with the company’s CEO where he addressed a bunch of questions like the company’s focus, GaaS and of course the crown jewel Assassin’s Creed.
Here are some of the quotes:
Firstly, players can be excited about some remakes, which will allow us to revisit some of the games we've created in the past and modernize them; there are worlds in some of our older Assassin's Creed games that are still extremely rich.
Secondly, to answer your question, there will be plenty of experience variety. The goal is to have Assassin's Creed games come out more regularly, but not for it to be the same experience every year. There are a lot of good things to come, including Assassin's Creed Hexe, which we've announced, which is going to be a very different game from Assassin's Creed Shadows.
We're going to surprise people, I think.
So far, there are only rumours about Black Flag being remade, but we’ll see more details probably somewhere between Shadows and Hexe. I have to say, it surprises me how long they are milking this cow. So far, there are 15 (!!!) games in this series if we count Hexe. And I bet that it’s not going to be the last one. I’m glad to see that they are at least trying something different with XDefiant, but I think it’s time for some new material…
🎮 New Details about Concord
So, one of the newest hero shooters has no intentions of backing down even after all the “mixed” feedback to say the least. Good for them. And thanks to Kotaku, we now have a new chunk of details surrounding Sony’s game.
It’s a lot, so here’s the gist of it:
12 maps and 6 modes will be available at launch (some without respawns)
All the heroes have double-jump and some even have triple-jump
There are no Ultimates (unlike Overwatch), just two unique abilities + one passive ability for all heroes
Players can deploy structures that will persist between the rounds unless destroyed by other players
Players expand their roster by “rescuing” different characters, and can only take six of them into any given battle. However, when they swap between them during rounds or respawns, they get to add the previous dead character’s class bonus to their current one
The only paid microtransactions in the game will be cosmetic
Players will be able to try Concord for themselves next month. The closed Early Access beta takes place on July 12 – 14 and requires pre-ordering the game to get into
So there you have it. I’m not particularly excited about hero shooters at this point, but I wish them luck. Since Overwatch 1 I haven’t been able to find both good and interesting shooters in the genre, so maybe that’s it. 🤷
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🎮 Space Marine 2 Beta Canceled
Saber Interactive announced last week that they are cancelling a planned multiplayer Beta as the team wants to focus all of its attention on the retail game and its launch. And based on my previous experience with Beta tests, it sounds smart.
According to the official announcement on Steam:
Space Marine 2 is almost ready. We are now entirely focused on optimization, polish and fixing remaining issues ahead of launch on September 9. This means we will not run a public online beta, as it would take the development teams away from preparing for the full launch, and our priority is to ensure the best possible experience at release.
I mean, there’s still a concern from some players that Saber Interactive is trying to hide the game before the release, but from what I’ve seen in the gameplayer trailers, it shouldn’t be that risky to put this game over the finish line successfully. I have hope in the devs and their ability to figure things out. 🤞
🎮 CDRP’s plans with the next Cyberpunk
Did you know that CD Projekt Red has a podcast? I didn’t until I stumbled on this news on Rock Paper Shotgun. They release it every once in a while where they address some of the questions from the community and share the progress on the upcoming titles. In the most recent episode, they discussed the recently founded Boston studio and their focus on the sequel.
The consensus is that the team hasn’t pushed the frontiers of a dystopian future far enough. For example, here’s what Paweł Sasko, Associate Game Director has to say on the matter:
I see that we didn't push the envelope far enough in some places, for instance. Like, let's say the homeless crisis... when I look at it, I'm like, we weren't far enough in '77. We thought that we were dystopian, but... we just touched the surface.
And the hope now is that with the Boston Studio, the team can make the sequel more true-to-life, and engage more deeply in some issues the first game didn't address. And this studio is probably not the only one. But with the company’s main focus on the Witcher game, we probably won’t see what they are cooking for at least 5-7 years.
You can watch the full episode here and I highly recommend it.
🎮 Palworld’s new update
This is probably the biggest content update Palworld had to date. The Sakurajima update v0.3.1 brought the game back to life for a bit.
Among other things, the update brought
New Island
Increased level cap
New Pals and enemies
New technologies, raids and crafting materials
And a PvP Arena
And from what I’m seeing in Steam Charts, this patch brought back a lot of players with a peak concurrent count of players growing from 15,000 to a peak of more than 130,000. It’s still quite a decline from the 2.1 million players the game attracted during the launch, but it’s definitely not nothing. And again, it’s still in Early Access.
I’m honestly tempted to get back to it myself. The devs are constantly updating the game with bug fixes and now a bunch of new content. And as I’m still having a hard time focusing on a specific single-player title, maybe it’s time to give this one another go and see what Sakurajima has to offer.
😄 Personal Update
My vacation is done and I’m back in action! I’m excited to get back to the team, but as usual, I am already looking forward to the next one.
I’ve managed to get a few things done, but if I’m being completely honest I spent most of my time playing games than anything else. With my day-to-day being mostly about writing this newsletter and my job, I needed some time to just relax. That’s what the vacations are for, right?
Also, the new Quite Place movie is quite good, but I expected something more. It doesn’t have a lot of action and no explanations as to who the monsters are. I’d say that’s a good one-off movie.
Now back to work 💪
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
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Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.
Assassin's Creed remakes are coming folks, but first some layoffs. Who's gonna make them, Ubisoft?
I am excited for Space Marine 2. I am fine with the beta being cancelled or even if it gets delayed. I'd much prefer a game come out polished and done then a buggy mess that they plan to fix after release.