Blizzard’s RealID controversy, TF2 finally updates the Engie, Crackdown 2 and much more.
Things have been hectic in GNSU HQ (especially with the holiday cutting the week short) but despite being insanely busy a lot has been going on game wise so let’s take a look at this past week in gaming.
A leaked photo from the RealID Meetings
The first thing on everyone’s mind this week is most definitely the Blizzard RealID Controversy. The backlash against the RealID announcement has been massive. Any gaming blog you hop onto has something to say about it, and with good reason. Penny Arcade made light of it while drawing attention to the fact that people want to be someone else when they play. Yet it also makes mention of the focal point of it all – safety and anonymity. A plethora of jokes, comics, rants, videos and more have centered in on our online privacy. This blog addressed what you could dig up with a Blizzard employee’s name and job title. Now they’re doing the same to millions in their playerbase.
Or is it Blizzard? Rumors are flying that it’s not actually Blizzard’s doing and I wouldn’t be surprised. Activision, now their parent company, is not necessarily the most trustworthy bunch of individuals. Mr. Kotick, pictured on the left in our blatant propaganda photoshop, has gone on record stating that he’d make Modern Warfare games a subscription based service as soon as possible if it were up to him. This isn’t to say he’s not a smart business man – this would surely draw in a ton of profit – it’s to say he doesn’t give a shit about what the player base thinks.
As of right now, Blizzard is going to go through with RealID, and based on that we can only wonder what’s next in the gaming world. EA is trying to clamp down on sales of used games. There has been more than enough complaints about all of these but nothing happens. As much as people protest the general public will continue to buy the product without questioning it. The gaming industry has become huge in the past 5-10 years and is rivaling Hollywood in sales and scale. With big companies doing these sort of things it’s kind of frightening because they know they can take a hit and get away with it. Even with other companies refusing to go along with strict DRM, or Valve being as community oriented as they are, what is to stop others from following suite?
Tags: activision, blizzard, bobby kotick is the devil, crackdown 2, engineer, realid, TF2, valve