The publisher cut employees throughout all of its development houses as part of a company-wide restructuring endeavor. The affected studios include Wideload Games Playdom Gamestar Fall Line Studios Avalanche Software Black Rock Studios and Warren Spector's Junction Point Studios. Junction Point Studios recently finished Epic Mickey which sold over 1.3 million units in North America during December and is Disney Interactive’s fastest-selling single-platform game.
Silent Hill: Downpour is being developed for Konami by the Czech-based Vatra Games and it's going to have a major focus on story.
When Bethesda originally bought the Fallout franchise for $5.75 million from Interplay in 2007 one of the conditions was that Bethesda would license the rights to a “Fallout-branded MMOG” back to Interplay and while that may seem relatively straightforward the two sides have gone to court to determine the legal meaning of a Fallout MMO.
Bethesda originally bought the Fallout franchise for $5.75 million from Interplay in 2007. One of the conditions of the acquisition was that Bethesda would license the rights to a “Fallout-branded MMOG” back to Interplay “under certain conditions”.
Zynga - which built a Facebook empire with its Sim City-like -Ville series of aps - is claiming that other companies no longer have the right to add the -ville suffix to their games. The company whose credits include FarmVille CityVille FishVille FrontierVille PetVille and YoVille has issued a cease-and-desist order to the makers of Blingville and is threatening to sue if the alleged trademark infringement continues.
The game which originally began development in 1997 (oh the accuracy of the “Forever” subtitle) finally has a North American release date: May 3 2011 for the Windows PC PS3 and Xbox 360.
According to court documents obtained by Gamasutra former Infinity Ward execs Jason West and Vince Zampella deliberately delayed the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Pack map pack in order to allow EA’s competing military shooter Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to launch before the downloadable content would come out.
Bethesda confirmed that they'd be releasing a "Creation Kit" on their forums:
It all started when a particularly resourceful and creative gamer Ryan Winzen started working on the MMO mod. He was using the StarCraft 2 modkit created by Activision-Blizzard to create the work-in-progress he called World of Starcraft. Winzen decided to post some early trailers and demos of the mod in action via YouTube and the videos quickly went viral. After it got to about 150000 views Winzen says that Activision pulled it. He received a copyright infringement notice on his YouTube channel. Since he was using the modkit put out by Activision-Blizzard to make the MMO Winzen wondered on his forum how that could be copyright infringement:
After months of searching Activision has been unable to find a buyer for the Liverpool-based Bizarre Creations and has recommended that the studio be shut down. The closure is not yet final but the early indication is that Bizarre will accept Activision’s recommendation and the company’s days could be numbered.
