Daily Briefing: Thursday 9th December

CD Projekt begin settlement talks with angry investors

CD Projekt confirmed back in may that four class action lawsuits filed against them in the United States had been consolidated into one bumper list of grievances. A lead plaintiff was appointed at that time in preparation for potential common court proceedings. However, in a regulatory update posted earlier this week, the US District Court for the Central District of California have "suspended proceedings concerning the motion to dismiss due to the parties having entered into negotiations concerning a potential settlement." In other words, all the affected people are having a chat.

• The regulatory filing goes on to outline that "should a consensus be reached with regards to the conditions of the potential settlement, the parties will file for its approval by the Court" The Court will then make the final decision on whether to approve the settlement and recommend its implementation following the weighing up of various additional factors. It looks like things are moving on for CD Projekt.

Ubisoft delist NFT announcement video

This week's announcement that Ubisoft will be branching out into the NFT game was somehow one of the most and least surprising gaming stories of the year because, honestly, when it comes to identifying which games company is most likely to chase a cheap (and potential unscrupulous buck), Ubisoft will always make the shortlist. The announcement was received about as poorly as you would expect, and now Ubisoft have unlisted the announcement video.

• The video, which introduced the new NFT cosmetics coming to Ghost Recon: Breakpoint as well as Ubisoft's new Quartz NFT management platform, was uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday. Though YouTube actively hides dislike numbers now, a little bit of online tool fiddling revealed a dislike ratio of around 20:1. In other words, Ubisoft pulled their big, fancy new announcement video once it topped 22,000-odd dislikes.

News Assassin's Creed Valhalla update will reduce install size and boost performance

Sticking with Ubisoft but moving across to some uncharacteristically good game news, Assassin's Creed Valhalla is set to get a sizeable title update next week that will significantly reduce install size while also reducing load times and generally boosting performance. The upcoming Patch 1.4.1 will reduce the game's install size by 34GB on PC, 30GB on PS4, 13GB on PS5, 30GB o Xbox One, and 44GB on Xbox Series X|S.

• There is a catch, though, as all players will have to redownload the game in order for the changes to take effect. It's all part of an ongoing "data restructuring" effort by Ubisoft to improve Assassin's Creed Valhalla's performance across all platforms. It's all for a good reason but having to reinstall a game as sizeable as Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a bit of a drag. Though there is a saving grace in the fact that expansions will not be affected by this data restructuring, so players will only have to redownload the considerably smaller base game. The patch launches sometime next week and Ubisoft will check back in with additional details before launch.