Daily Briefing: Monday 8th November

Ubisoft employee group ask public support following continuous corporate refusal to meet demands

A Better Ubisoft, a group of current and former ex-Ubisoft employees currently campaigning for improved working conditions at the global publisher, have turned to the public for help in a time of severe frustration. Over the summer, A Better Ubisoft issued an open letter to company management calling for "real, fundamental change" in light of numerous allegations of abuse and sexual harassment, both in the wider industry and at Ubisoft themselves. Over one thousand people signed the open letter, in what was a bit of a watershed moment for collective action in the games industry.

• Sadly, the group are yet to receive a substantial response to any of these demands. In fact, A Better Ubisoft claim that the bulk of their demands have been outright ignored by management. In a new statement posted to Twitter, the group wrote that "100 days ago we signed an open letter and set out our four key demands. None of our demands have been met. So today we're launching a new petition, open for ALL our supports to sign." Ubisoft management confirmed back in July that they had indeed read the letter and were taking its contents "very seriously," but that was over three months ago.

Metal Gear Solid games are being temporarily removed from digital stores

Konami announced this week that they will be pulling, among others, Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 from all digital storefronts. This caused quite a bit of panic among series fans, but Konami quickly clarified that the removal will only be temporary and is down expired licenses for some of the real-life archival footage used in both games. Once these licenses have been renewed, the games will return.

• Konami's statement reads “we are currently working on renewing the licenses for select historical archive footage used in-game, therefore, we have made the temporary decision to begin suspending the sale of Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid 3 and all products that include these games from digital storefronts globally starting from November 8th, 2021." Quite a few games are affected by the removals, actually, across various different platforms (Xbox 360, PS3, PlayStation NOW, GOG.com, Nintendo 3DS, Nvidia Shield etc.)

Ray-tracing will be patched into Elden Ring

Elden Ring may have been delayed recently (but only by a month, we need to keep reminding ourselves) but we've been getting more details than ever in advance of the game's upcoming closed network tests. Bandai Namco confirmed over the weekend that players will be able to choose between five classes in Elden Ring;  Warrior, Enchanted Knight, Prophet, Champion, and Bloody Wolf. And now, we also have new details about how the game will perform on consoles and PC.

• Bandai Namco have confirmed that ray-tracing will be added to Elden Ring in a patch following launch. They haven't confirmed how it will be implemented just yet, but we do know it'll be supported on PC, PS5, and Xbox Seres X. Over on PC, Elden Ring will support 4K resolution and, as is customary for FromSoftware's games, framerates will be capped at 60fps. On PS4 and PS4 Pro, the game will run at 30fps with 1080p and 1800p resolution respectively. PS5 will do either 60fps or 30fps depending on whether you choose to prioritise performance or resolution. Xbox is a little weird, as always. Xbox One is locked at 30fps and will display in 900p, Series S will do 1440p 60fps, and Series X 4K 60fps. Numbers, man.