Daily Briefing: Tuesday 21st September

Activision Blizzard hit by federal investigation

That's according to The Wall Street Journal, who this week reported that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission have launched a full investigation into how Activision Blizzard have handled the ongoing allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination, and misconduct. Citing documentation and sources familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reports that the SEC have subpoenaed Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick along with key members of his executive leadership.

• The SEC are reportedly looking for details of Kotick's communications with his upper leadership regarding the allegations, as well as separation agreements for any staff who have left Activision Blizzard in the past year. In particular, the federal agency are looking for the personnel files of six specific staff members, plus all board meeting minutes dating back as far as two years ago. They're also examining whether the company had an obligation to inform investors of the various allegations before the California Department of Fair Housing and Employment's lawsuit made them all public back in July.

Halo Infinite is getting two "even bigger" multiplayer weekends this month

Halo Infinite's first technical preview event took place back at the end of July, and developers 343 Industries this week confirmed that two more multiplayer test flights are scheduled for this weekend and next. 343 community manager John Junyszek wrote in a new blog post, "it feels like just yesterday we were battling against Bots during our first multiplayer tech preview. Now, as launch approaches, it’s time to look forward to our second – and even bigger – tech preview."

• These new tests will run from September 23rd to 26th and September 30th to October 3rd, and will apparently focus on "full-blown multiplayer." The first event will focus on 4v4 Arena battles, while the second will involve 12v12 Big Team Battles. All Halo Insiders are invited to participate, provided their accounts were created before September 13th. The test will also be time limited to specific periods of the day to ensure matches are properly populated.

Call of Duty: Vanguard is already full of hackers

Vanguard's final beta weekend is actually still live thanks to a handy extension (it ends tomorrow) but it looks like a lot of folks around the world are already dealing with hackers. This most recent multiplayer test added cross-platform play between Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. This also brought the hackers, manipulating games with a mixture of wallhacks, aimbots, and the ability to crash games altogether.

• Full-scale anti-cheat measures will be rolling out across the various Call of Duty games following Vanguard's release later this year, but for now that means that any hacks that work in Call of Duty Warzone or 2019's Modern Warfare most likely still work, and that's what's messing with players. The devs haven't been shy about banning cheaters, and hopefully these new anti-cheat measures are along sooner rather than later so that honest players aren't having their day ruined by some cretin hacking a beta.