Technology - Google News

Bethesda demands seller remove his copy of The Evil Within 2 from Amazon Marketplace
21 Things We Learned About Fallout 76 Today
Fortnite Streamer 'Ninja' Reveals Why He Doesn't Stream With Female Gamers

Bethesda demands seller remove his copy of The Evil Within 2 from Amazon Marketplace

Posted: 12 Aug 2018 06:04 AM PDT

'People sell used games all the time...We're not trying to stop that.'

Early yesterday morning, Polygon reported that Bethesda had issued a cease and desist order to Amazon marketplace seller Ryan Hupp, for his listing of a sealed copy of The Evil Within 2. Bethesda's case was that Hupp was not an "authorized reseller," and that his sale of the game as new was "unlawful." That issue seems to stem from the wording of "new" in the store description, since Bethesda is claiming Hupp should have the item listed as "used."

Bethesda's legal firm, Vorys, sent the letter to Hupp and threatened to take action should he not comply. Hupp told Polygon that he has previously sold goods on the Amazon Marketplace with no issue. He even brought up the US Law of "First Sale Doctrine," which protects users looking to resell legal copies of trademarked products they have previously purchased.

According to Bethesda, though, Hupp's sale of the product is not covered by the law. Since he isn't reselling his copy in what Vorys considers its original form, the game is "materially different from genuine products" as far as Bethesda is concerned. Hupp provided the legal document to Polygon, which reads:

"Unless you remove all Bethesda products, from your storefront, stop selling any and all Bethesda products immediately and identify all sources of Bethesda products you are selling, we intend to file a lawsuit against you."

Since this story just happened to break out during the weekend of QuakeCon 2018, Eurogamer felt it proper to ask Bethesda directly at the event. Speaking with Pete Hines (Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications), writer Robert Purchase got this response:

"He's not trying to sell a secondhand game, he's trying to sell a new game. He was listing the product as if it was new. All we're saying is if it's a previously owned product, you have to sell it as a previously owned product - you cannot represent it's new because we have no way to verify what you're selling actually is new."

Hines then explained how Hupp could have opened the game, used it for a couple of hours and then resealed the package. For that matter, all warranty cards or special codes for pre-order DLC could have been used and Hupp could be deceiving users by claiming the product is "new". If any of that had happened, then the game should be listed as "used" to prevent other people from being scammed.

Hines then went on to stress, "We're not trying to stop anybody from selling used games. People sell used games all the time - we understand that. We're not trying to stop that...We don't want our customers buying stuff from a vendor like Amazon where they think they're buying a new product and suddenly finding out they got a disc that's been played, somebody kicked across the floor and scratched."

I'm not a legal expert, but I'm pretty certain one can buy any product and then resell it without having opened the packaging. From my short time working at GameStop, I do know it specifically has a policy where it will not take trade-ins if the products are sealed, but that is in an effort to cut down on store theft. Unless Hupp has tossed his receipts and has no proof of purchase, he should be legally protected to sell his copy of The Evil Within 2 regardless of whether or not it is still sealed.

On the other hand, I definitely see Bethesda's point of view on this. While I don't believe it should be threatening legal action against resellers, I would hate to be on the receiving end of what I assumed is a "new" game only to find out someone had previously opened it. Consumers tend to buy new products specifically because they are sealed and should be 100% functional (barring manufacturing defects).

For the time being Hupp has removed his copy of The Evil Within 2 from Amazon. Speaking directly to Polygon, Hupp stated, "I understand the legal arguments Bethesda are relying on, and accept that they have some legitimate interest in determining how their products are sold at retail, but threatening individual customers with lawsuits for selling games they own is a massive overreach."

Bethesda blocks resale of a secondhand game (update) [Polygon]

Bethesda defends its legal threat against a man who tried to resell a "new", sealed copy of The Evil Within 2 on Amazon Marketplace [Eurogamer]

You are logged out. Login | Sign up

Let's block ads! (Why?)

21 Things We Learned About Fallout 76 Today

Posted: 11 Aug 2018 10:55 AM PDT

QuakeCon 2018 hosted a Fallout 76 panel today, and it was chock full of tidbits of information about the upcoming game.

The panel was composed of Development Director Chris Mayer, Project Lead Jeff Gardiner, and Game Director Todd Howard. Split evenly between a talk about the game’s leveling system and a longform segment where the team answered common questions about the game, the panel was very informative about what the actual experience of Fallout 76 is going to be like.

You can watch the full video here, or you can read my distillation of all the fun facts below. Note that you need to skip 40 minutes into the official video to see the panel.

Here’s some of the stuff we learned.

They showed a short Vault-Tec explainer video about leveling up and mutations followed by more elaborate explanations by Howard and Gardiner. Each level up gives you a single point to dedicate to a S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat, and for each point in a stat you can assign a certain perk. Perks are chosen from a bank of options. If that sounds confusing, well, I think it is. Watch the video above if you want the best explanation possible.
Since perks are assigned, you can swap them out based on what you need in the moment. For example, if you’re doing some heavy PVP with friends, you might want an increased damage perk. If you’re scavenging, then you might want more carrying capacity. As Howard said, “you’re swapping a thing out here or there.”
The game’s level cap for attaining S.P.E.C.I.A.L. points is 50, but you can continue to accrue new perks beyond that.
You are susceptible to mutations at certain levels of radiation, and it doesn’t seem like you have a choice about it. Gardiner told a story about getting a surprise mutation called “Bird Bomb” that increased his jump height while decreasing his strength.

The game has a photo mode that can be used with friends, enemies, and everyone in between. We saw a little bit of how it worked during character creation, but not how it functions in the open world.
Player versus player combat is opt-in. To initiate it, you shoot at someone and it does a small amount of damage. Howard likened this to “slapping someone at a bar.” If that person wants to do PVP with you, they fire back, and then weapons do full damage. Winning a PVP battle gives you some caps (the game’s currency) and some experience points based on your levels.
If you kill a player who never accepts your invitation to do PVP, you become a “wanted murderer.” You get no caps or experience.
Players are incentivized to hunt down wanted murderers. The murderers are marked on the map and players are encouraged to hunt them down. As Howard said, the mechanic “turns assholes into interesting content.”
PVP does not start until level 5.
You can ignore and block other players in a session, preventing them from interacting with you, and you can flag yourself as a pacifist if you don’t want to deal with the PVP mechanics.
PVP combat numbers are normalized between players. Howard claimed that a low-level player could fight a high-level player in power armor, although obviously it’s going to be hard and the higher level will have the advantage.
When you die, you keep all of your equipment and caps. You will drop your “junk,” an upgrade material that you use in your camps for building objects and equipment. Upon death, the key question for a player is “is it worth it to go back and get my junk?”
Another death thing: when you die, you have the option of respawning close to your death point or back at Vault 76 for free. You can also respawn at other locations for the cost of caps, with that cost increasing the further away from your death spot that you want to respawn.
When a nuke goes off, camps are destroyed, there are higher level enemies, and the map’s loot changes.
But fear not! Camps have a blueprint system, so if you make a building you like, you can “blueprint” it so that you can easily construct a replica somewhere else. So if your replica of Hagrid’s Hut gets nuked, you can build it somewhere else as long as you’ve blueprinted it.
The blueprint system also allows you to easily deconstruct and relocate your camp to other places in the map. The panelists said this was a fairly common thing for people to do during internal testing.

You can make musical instruments. Todd Howard pretended to play an invisible tuba.
There is team voice chat as well as area-based public chat. You can mute it if you want to.
Inon Zur is doing the score. There are more radio tracks in this game than any previous Fallout title.
The VATS system is still in the game, but it is real-time, and you cannot target body parts unless you have the perk. It is unclear from the panel how exactly this works, although Howard clarified that putting points into the Perception stat will make you more accurate.
There will be private servers as well as mods. Howard said that mods in particular are difficult to implement due to the game’s online nature, but that it is a problem they are “100% committed to solving.”

And that’s it! It’s kind of a rollercoaster of Fallout 76 information, but it’s the biggest information splash that we’ve had about the game since E3, and it gets me thinking about two dozen other questions I have about how this will actually work in practice.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Fortnite Streamer 'Ninja' Reveals Why He Doesn't Stream With Female Gamers

Posted: 11 Aug 2018 01:15 PM PDT

Internet trolls, gossip and rumor culture, and the constant scrutiny that comes with fame has led Fortnite and Twitch's most popular streamer, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, to take a position to not stream with female gamers.

“I don’t play with female gamers,” said Blevins while speaking with Polygon. And according to the face of Fortnite streaming, it has to do with with the aforementioned rumor culture, the era of clickbait, and how when you have millions of viewers watching you, everything is dissected, everything is prone to be misinterpreted, and even as something as small as a conversation with a female streamer during a stream can be morphed into a storm of gossip that produces fallacious and defacing conclusions.

“If I have one conversation with one female streamer where we’re playing with one another, and even if there’s a hint of flirting, that is going to be taken and going to be put on every single video and be clickbait forever,” said Blevins.

And this makes sense coming from Blevins, who is married, and thus unsurprisingly doesn't want fictitious Internet rumors floating around about misconduct on his part. Because, like the streamer notes, even having a conversation with a female streamer can be skewed into all types of messy headlines.

And we see this type of activity on the Internet all the time. As Polygon notes, when another prominent Twitch and Fortnite streamer, Ali “Myth” Kabbani, had Imane “Pokimane” Anys on stream, viewers quickly began firing off and probing about the two's relationship, as well as making all types of conclusions based off the two merely streaming together.

And not only is the gossip machine common, it's not anything new. TMZ, People Magazine, and others have made an entire lucrative industry of gossip for decades. So, it's only natural the bigger streaming and online personalities get, the more gossip, rumors, and silly speculation they attract.

It's classic celebrity culture. And it's not surprising that Blevins wants to stay far away from its grasps, and not complicate his martial relationship with its insanity.

Blevins adds that he hasn't received any negative feedback from his fellow Twitch (female) streamers about his streaming policy, suggesting they understand the situation, and thus respect his decision.

“There hasn’t been a single female gamer or streamer on Twitch or anything like that who’s been upset about that,” said Blevins. “I honestly think that [...] it’s just kinda like a respect thing.”

The best way to avoid trampling gossip crowds, the rumor-sellers, and the invasive speculation, is to never invite them to the party in the first place. And the only way to do that, unfortunately, is to not stream with any female gamers, unless of course that female gamer is Blevin's wife, whom he streams with regularly.

0comments

“The only way to avoid that [gossip] is to not play with them at all.”

Hopefully one day, the obtrusive, prodding, and wildly speculative nature of the Internet and large fan bases will change, but at the moment, that doesn't look likely.

Let's block ads! (Why?)