Game scoops are here! EA is in hot water again, Sony has announced an upcoming State of Play presentation centered around Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Microsoft has announced the Xbox Games with Gold for May.
0:42 EA is in hot water again due to leaked documents. According to a report by GamesIndustry.biz, this document was 54 pages long and one page was titled “5 Things You Need to Know” with a point about players being incentivized to convert to Fifa Ultimate Team. Another page titled “Turning Up the Heat” had a strategy to drive excitement and funnel players towards the Fifa Ultimate team from other modes.
The insider who leaked the document said he took to the press because of the controversy around loot boxes being linked to gambling. He said that for years EA had been able to keep a layer of plausible deniability but that these documents clearly show their intentions – to drive players to the card pack mode. The insider added that it is getting harder and harder to defend what is very obviously unregulated gambling. While an EA representative told the CBC that the document was being misinterpreted due to a lack of context, exact context was not specified. They also didn’t respond to a request for clarification.
This wasn’t EA’s first push for their Ultimate Team loot box mode. In September, EA put an ad in an in-store magazine at UK retailer Smith’s Toys that listed four steps to play the Ultimate Team with the second step stating “use Fifa points to open packs”. EA pulled the ad due to backlash and promised to review their ad strategy to “ensure each of our marketing efforts better reflects the responsibility we take for the experience of our younger players”.
2:02 In lighter news, SONY has announced a new State of Play livestream on Thursday, April 29th, and you can watch on Playstation’s Twitch or YouTube channel at 2 pm pacific. This upcoming State of Play will focus on Ratchet & Clank and will show off more than 15 minutes of gameplay on Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. The new game will launch on June 11. Sony just released a short gameplay trailer on Rivet, the female Lombax character seen in previous trailers. She is a character who exists in an alternate dimension and will be playable in Rift Apart.
2:40 Microsoft announced the May 2020 Xbox Games with Gold – Armello, Dungeon 3, Lego Batman, and Tropico 4. Microsoft stated that these games add up to a value of 79.96 and come with 4,000 points of gamerscore for players to earn. Armello will be available May 1st and will be free to download with Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass Ultimate until May 31st.
Armello is a multiplayer card and board game set in a fantasy animal world that brings together the deep tactics of card games and the strategy of tabletop games all while pushing players to explore the fairytale kingdom in a quest to become the next king or queen of Armello. Lego Batman will be available May 1st to May 15th. Dungeons 3 will be free to download from May 16 to June 15th. And Tropico 4 will be available May 16th to May 31st.
