Daily Briefing: Friday 28th January

Hitman 3 Steam owners get free upgrades following messy launch

The Hitman trilogy (the new one, not the old one) is a bit of an odd duck. The games have released to fairly universal commercial and critical acclaim despite the fact that developers IO Interactive have seemingly been making every misstep known to man. They caused a bit of a stink last year when Hitman managed to launch with DRM on GOG.com, a historically and philosophically DRM-free marketplace. Then Hitman 3 finally comes to Steam after a year of Epic Games Store exclusivity and not only was the game hilariously expensive, but its much-touted VR mode was janky to say the least.

• The game currently has a “Mixed” rating on Steam based on just over 900 reviews, with the $60 price tag bearing the brunt of criticism and not helped by Hitman 3 being heavily discounted on Epic over the holiday period. However, IO Interactive have pledged to make things right, starting with an acknowledgement that the launch “didn’t go as planned.” In a statement released earlier this week, the developer confirmed that “everyone on Steam who has already bought Hitman 3, or anyone that buys the game through to February 19th 2022, will be granted a free upgrade.”

Hyper Scape is shutting down in April

Ubisoft really haven’t been having a great time of it lately, and the latest addition to their ever-growing loss portfolio is the news that beleaguered battle royale Hyper Scape will shut down at the end of April. In a new blog post confirming the closure, Ubisoft write that they “have made the difficult decision to end development of Hyper Scape and shut the game down as of April 28th.” The post states that Ubisoft “set out to create a vertical, close-quarters, and fast-paced shooter experience and we are extremely grateful to our community for joining us on our journey. We will be taking key learnings from this game into future products.”

• Hyper Scape released back in 2020 as Ubisoft’s (now provenly ill-advised) attempt to break into a battle royale genre that even then was dominated by Fortnite, Apex Legends, and PUBG. It was a fine game, really, supporting 99 simultaneous players and putting an emphasis on loot and customisation on top of all the shooting. However, the game never really took off at launch and things didn’t get any better from there. Developers Ubisoft Montreal pledged to “take action” following the release of the game’s second season toward the tail end of 2020, but things didn’t recover.

Union calls for new Activision Blizzard investigation

The Communication Workers of America (CWA) union have asked the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate alleged “inaccurate and misleading” disclosures made by Activision Blizzard during the announcement of their impending acquisition by Microsoft. As part of this announcement, Activision Blizzard said that the company were unaware of any pending union activities or any kind of strike action, seemingly ignoring the then-ongoing collective action at Raven Software.

• Activision Blizzard’s assertion that they didn’t know about any potential unionisation raised more than a few eyebrows, given that the company had previously acknowledged the distribution of union cards in an email asking staff not to sign them. The CWA also take issue with Activision Blizzard’s claim that they aren’t facing any unfair labour practice complaints even when the CWA had filed one with the National Labour Relations Board back in September. The CWA " urge the SEC to investigate this claim and take appropriate action to remediate the situation and ensure that readers of Activision's filings have accurate disclosures available as they consider the proposed merger with Microsoft.”