Daily Briefing: Thursday 22nd July

Activision Blizzard sued for harassment by the state of California

The lawsuit was filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing this week following a two-year investigation into allegations of harassment, bullying, and unfair pay at Activision Blizzard. The lawsuit alleges that female employees (who make up around 20% of staff at Activision Blizzard) are regularly subjected to discrimination.

• The allegations presented in the lawsuit make for some incredibly troubling reading and paint a very dire picture of internal working conditions at Activision Blizzard. The studio reportedly failed to take adequate steps to prevent discrimination and harassment during the investigation, with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing now seeking an injunction to force compliance by instilling new workplace protections to unlock lost wages and benefits for female employees.

Assassin's Creed franchise art director leaving Ubisoft

Raphael Lacoste spent 16 years at Ubisoft, where he worked on eight Assassin's Creed games including the original in 2007. Lacoste was the art director on the Assassin's Creed franchise for almost a decade - with experience stretching across titles like Revelations, Black Flag, Origins, and Valhalla.

• In a series of posts to Twitter, Lacoste said that "it is not without emotions" that he announces his departure and would like to thank the community and the "incredible talents" he's worked with over the years. There's no word yet on what he'll be doing next although he has previously taken a break from games to create concept art for films. Meanwhile, that's another high-level creative out the door at Ubisoft - and they just announced dramatic plans to overhaul the Assassin's Creed series with Infinity.

Amazon respond to claims that New World is bricking RTX 3090 graphics cards

Amazon's often-delayed MMO launched in beta earlier this week and what should have been a brief moment of victory turned sour even faster than normal when reports began to surface that the game was bricking expensive RTX 3090 graphics cards. A thread on the New World subreddit contains several reports of issues from separate players and, while the bricking seems to be specifically affecting EVGA RTX 3090 cards, players have also reported other brands overheating or draining power.

• The subreddit is also full of discussions as to what is causing these problems - the current consensus seems to relate to power spikes and overheating tied to uncapped frame rates. We're still waiting on an official response from Amazon, though a customer service rep on the game's official support forum acknowledged that the game can cause 100% GPU usage on EVGA cards and blamed "driver setting and frame rate limiters." The rep suggested disabling driver overrides and capping at 60FPS, though these solutions haven't worked for everyone. Watch this space.

Tom Clancy's Elite Squad is shutting down after a year

Ubisoft announced this week that servers for the crossover mobile F2P action RPG will be shutting down at the start of October, despite the game itself only releasing in August 2020. An update posted to the game's official website reads “it is with a great deal of sadness that we are announcing we will no longer be releasing new content for Elite Squad.” Apparently, after exploring multiple options with their teams, Ubisoft decided that the game is "no longer sustainable."

• It's odd that Ubisoft are canning Elite Squad in the same week that they revealed another F2P crossover Tom Clancy game in XDefiant. They obviously feel the format is worth pursuing at least - perhaps Elite Squad being a mobile title just didn't work out. It's safe to say Elite Squad won't be missed, however, it was the game that tied real-life BLM imagery to an in-game terrorist organisation.