Daily Briefing: Thursday 7th April

First off, apologies for the occasional missed Daily Briefing! We’ve been a man down on news for a while now, and sometimes I miss getting the Briefing sorted within a reasonable timeframe. I’ve reorganised my day a bit so this shouldn’t happen in future, and we have a new writer joining us soon who will almost certainly do a better job than I do!

Thanks for your understanding and have a good day! - Matt

GOG Are Focusing On ‘Good Old Games’

After facing financial difficulties, layoffs and fan backlash in recent months, GOG have given their third major update for the year, and this one is about their future. They will continue to sell new games where possible, but they’re refocusing on their original vision: Being the definitive home for classic PC games. This doesn’t mean anything huge for now, but they are tagging games they consider classics as ‘Good Old Games’ for ease of browsing on their store and pushing for more in the future. This news comes shortly after they partnered with Nightdive to bring 1999 classic magic-based FPS The Wheel of Time to their store, DRM-free and complete with modern OS support and options for widescreen & up to 4K resolution.

• They might face financial difficulties again, but better to try what they really wanted to do again than just keep bashing their head against of wall of combining “AAA” and “DRM-free”, two incompatible concepts. I wish them all the best! A more in-depth analysis of this is coming via video over the weekend.

Unreal Engine 5 Is Now Available For Developers

In a showcase from Epic Games, it was announced that UE5 is now available for all developers to use, and a list has been made public of developers currently using the engine for their games. Game Science, who are making Black Myth: Wukong, Square Enix, CDPR, Ninja Theory Obsidian, Gearbox, Remedy and more - including Crystal Dynamics, who announced a new Tomb Raider game built in the engine.

• UE5 should make for a series of beautiful and efficiently-developed games... emphasis on should. Using any off-the-shelf engine has advantages and disadvantages, so here’s hoping some of UE’s shoddy past don’t make their way into UE5 games, like the performance issues from UE3 that plagued 7th gen, and some of the poor default gameplay mechanics and physics from UE4.

Simply Games, The UK Retailer, Ceased Trading

Simply Games was a UK games retailer known for shipping games notoriously early, sometimes breaking street date by up to 3 or 4 days - a unique selling point that, surprisingly, never got them into any public trouble, except for when they promised to break a Call of Duty street date and Activision got in touch. Unfortunately for those of us in the UK, they’ve cancelled all their preorders and stopped trading. We don’t really know why, but the company that currently owns them lost their CEO in March 2022... sometimes, businesses like this just get complicated.

• I personally never ordered from them regularly, but it’s unfortunate that we lose a small enough rogue-ish trader like this. Games showing up at your door early is always a great experience!

LEGO Star Wars Is Rocking Steam

Unusually, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, is doing extremely well on Steam. Hitting a peak of over 82,000 users at release, it’s over ten times as popular as Lego’s previous peaks, and seems to deserve it. Rated 83 on Metacritic by critics and 8.8 by users, TT have made “one of the best Star Wars games ever made” according to VGC. Twitter videos are showing off remarkable character action-like tech, the variety of gameplay mechanics feel great, and covering 9 whole movies, there is a ton of content to work through. Unfortunately, we have the context that Traveller’s Tale were forced to go through an extreme amount of crunch and even bullying from leadership to create and release this game.

• The last Lego game I felt excited to play was Lego Star Wars 2, and I was a hell of a lot younger, and a lot less jaded on Star Wars then. It’s great that the game is truly excellent, but with 3 delays and a ton of employee suffering mixed in... it’s a complicated situation, both literally for the industry, and morally when considering a purchase