Daily Briefing: Wednesday 31st March

CDPR 'Reconsider' Cyberpunk Multiplayer & Overall Strategy

In a call with investors, CEO Adam Kiciński said they've 'reconsidered' - rather than full standalone AAA releases, future multiplayer content for CDPR's games will be 'supportive production' for their existing titles. They're changing their approach to online so it enhances their single-player games, without losing or changing their single-player RPG DNA. On the marketing side, they've announced they will be marketing games much closer to launch and focusing on using only fully polished footage in their material, and showing footage from all release platforms.

• It seems like they were absolutely caught off-guard by the nightmare that was CDPR, and are changing things under the hood in a huge way to make up for it. They spoke about parallel AAA development as a model, they bought out a Cyberpunk support studio and are refocusing efforts on employee wellbeing. Big changes, and necessary ones.

Insomniac Are On The Warpath With Updates

Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Ratchet & Clank (2016) were hit with surprise updates yesterday. Miles gets a new suit and bugfixes, but also the addition of muscle deformation on PS5. Using an AI-driven solution, Insomniac have managed to get realistic muscle deformation applied to the character's mesh - meaning Miles' suit can cling to and highlight his musculature. Basically, advanced film and TV tech, but applied to real-time graphics. Over on the Ratchet side, the update expected in April came early, enabling a 60FPS mode for the PS4 game when running on PS5.

• The new Spider-Man update isn't very exciting, but it shows they're committed to improving their existing games as PS5 adoption continues - those launch titles are far from done being played. Ratchet on PS5 at 60FPS is also great, especially as it was given out for free this month! That's another good marketing move leading up to the release of Rift Apart in June. Insomniac are knocking it out of the park with all those Sony resources!

Biggest Bust Of Cheaters Yet

Chinese police picked up over $46m in assets, including luxury sports cars, from a bust targeting peddlers of cheats in online games. Chicken Drumstick were selling subscription services that provided the latest cheats for a multitude of online games globally. Tencent were involved in the investigation, as the integrity of their online games is worth a lot in revenue.

• Hunting down the violators of terms of service agreements in big police busts might feel small-time in comparison to more traditional crimes, but there's a huge amount of money at stake for companies running massive online games. An epidemic of cheaters in a title can ruin playerbases and monetisation efforts to the tune of millions - especially as the likes of Fortnite, Warzone and some mobile titles become billion-dollar operations.

Vita Devs Learned Of Store Closure When We Did

Sony's swiftness in bringing down the Vita store was apparently news to many devs currently working on Vita titles. Despite the console being fairly old and niche, it still has a thriving community where indie games and small Japanese titles are collected and revered. Lillymo Games and The Domaginarium are two developers who have to cancel projects or Vita ports, while Flying Oak Games and Tikipod will release full Vita titles that will only be available for 4 months.

• Some of the Vita models had an OLED screen, so indie titles could shine on a low-res but beautiful display, as well as being a versatile handheld. Despite not being a huge success, taking the store down now feels like it's before it's time. This is likely to facilitate large back-end changes on PSN and the Playstation Store, following a barrage of criticism at the store's lack of functionality and poor user experience.