Daily Briefing: Wednesday 27th October

BlizzCon 2022 cancelled as Blizzard commit to focusing on teams

Blizzard have officially cancelled their upcoming BlizzCon event in the wake of this summer's discrimination and harassment scandal. Several solid months of lawsuits have seemingly made the company less than eager to celebrate their heritage, as the cancellation was announced this week alongside Blizzard's intentions to "reimagine" the longstanding event. BlizzCon 2022 was originally supposed to be hybrid event of sorts, mixing the digital format of this year's BlizzConline with "smaller in-person gatherings."

• In their statement confirming the cancellation, Blizzard outlined that any "BlizzCon event takes every single one of us to make happen, an entire-company effort, fuelled by our desire to share what we create with the community we care about so much...at this time, we feel the energy it would take to put on a show like this is best directed towards supporting our teams and progressing development of our games and experiences." This proposed new evolution of BlizzCon will apparently feel "as safe, welcoming, and inclusive as possible." Watch this space.

Lapsed Far Cry 6 players are getting rude emails from Ubisoft

Far Cry 6 released a wee while ago to a fairly mixed critical response and, as is literally always the case with any game, not everybody who started playing it has finished it. Far Cry 6 is another major tentpole Ubisoft release, however, and languishing engagement metrics were never going to just slip by without being thoroughly investigated and, in this particularly instance, grievously mis-remedied.

• There are several perfectly normal ways to boost engagement for a game that's lacking it: content updates, limited-time events, the odd freebie. What you don't do, is send lapsed players taunting emails alleging to be from your game's main villain saying things like "you disappoint me" and "it was amusing watching you fail." Aside from feeling like a gross misuse of players' uPlay information, very few ailing games are reinvigorated by spite and goading.

The Nintendo Switch Online N64 expansion is pretty ropey

The newer, more expensive version of Nintendo Switch Online launched earlier this week and Nintendo are under increasing fire for a rather extensive suite of problems with the $50 a year service. These issues include everything from input lag to low frame rates, via a few more confusing issues. In Mario Kart 64, for instance, players can't save Ghost Data because this feature originally required an N64 Controller Pak and Nintendo apparently couldn't think of a workaround. There also isn't a Controller Pak slot in the official controller rerelease, so it's not even money-grubbing laziness this time around.

• Button-mapping is another common complaint. Translating the N64's bizarre controller across to the Switch was also going to have a few teething issues, but games like Sin & Punishment for some reason remap all the buttons again while you're shooting things...in a shooter. Ocarina of Time will likely be one of the service's most popular titles but, as it stands, it's unfortunately also one of its most dodgy. Folks are complaining of muddy visuals and input lag making the game genuinely difficult to play. All in all, it's hard to say Nintendo bagged the win this time around.