Welcome back to another quick roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news! And for once, this set of headlines doesn’t include CEOs showing off their brain worms like they’re Las Plagas-infected monsters. Will wonders never cease?
Europe lobby pushes against Stop Killing Games: Readers will likely remember that the Stop Killing Games initiative started by YouTuber Ross Scott recently hit its 1M petition signature threshold in order to bring the matter of online games being bricked by studios to the European Union. Well, you’ll be shocked to learn that a European games lobby is pushing against the complaint. A statement from Video Games Europe argues that private servers aren’t always viable due to data security and “unsafe content” leaving rights holders liable, that players are given advance notice of a shutdown, and that creating offline availability or private servers for online-only games is “prohibitively expensive to make.” The statement closes by expressing its eagerness to argue its position with EU leaders in the coming months.
SAG-AFTRA ratifies contract agreement with games companies: This was an arguable formality when we all learned that voice actors represented by the SAG-AFTRA union were suggested to ratify an agreement with major game studios, which effectively ended the months-long strike, but now it’s official: Union members have officially voted in favor of the agreement with a final vote of 95% in favor. “This deal was achieved thanks to the solidarity and dedication of the video game performer community, all of you who held the line, raised awareness, inspired others, attended and engaged in info meetings and voted,” reads part of the statement.
More on Hytale’s attempted resurrection: Remember when Hypixel Studios’ original founder Simon Collins-Laflamme resolved to revive voxel-y MMORPG Hytale after it was cancelled? Well, it’s back in the news again, though this time it’s through the angle of other devs and fans attempting to do the job themselves: A video shared by fan site Hytale News depicting a voxelbox open world sparked reaction from the developer, arguing that fans attempting to recreate or rebuild Hytale through a different engine are missing the point. “Most people don’t even know or remember why we made Hytale in the first place. They only see the surface level of Hytale and don’t understand all the early decisions, direction and vision,” he writes.
Meanwhile, the developers of the hard-bitten voxel survivalbox Vintage Story – a game that counts a former Hytale dev among its team at Anego Studios – wrote in a recent dev blog about the creation of an “adventure mode” that hopes to capture the MMORPG’s spirit; plans still sound nebulous here but the idea is to release this alongside the base game at no additional cost.
