Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Here’s a fact of a life: when a large corporation (for instance, a games publisher. For instance, EA) buys up an exciting, highly-respected smaller, independent firm (for instance, a games developer. For instance, PopCap), the following process will invariably happen:

1) Happy, positive talk of independence, unfettered creativity and bright futures from both sides
2) A gradual shift into having that developer do what it’s told, rather than what it wants
3) Redundancies at or closure of the developer once it doesn’t look to be providing a suitably enormous return on the obscene sum paid to acquire it in the first place
4) Repeat

So, best of luck to all those who sailed in the good ship PopCap Dublin, which newish owners EA closed down today. Edit: Though apparently it was “the PopCap leadership team” which pulled the trigger on this.
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It is Tuesday. You probably ate some cereal, went to work, and pretended to use the Force to open the automatic door at the grocery store – just like any other day. BioWare, meanwhile, ended an era. Specifically, Doctors Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka – the role-playing powerhouse’s co-founders – have left the building. Now then, I will briefly interrupt this message to read your mind. “Kickstarter, Kickstarter? Kickstarter! Kickstarterererer.” Congratulations, you’re thinking the same thing as everyone else on Earth. Unfortunately, based on their goodbye letters, the doctors seem to not only be done with BioWare, but videogames in general.

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The next Eurogamer Expo, which is taking place at London’s Earls Court from 27th-30th September, will have lot of playable games. Among these, shining like beacons, are Dishonored and Company Of Heroes 2. Yes, you can actually get to them before they’re released, at the Expo. That might just make things worse for your anticipation levels, of course, but there’s going to be a lot more stuff there, including the traditional Indie Arcade booth, with attendees from many RPS favourites. If you’re an indie who wants in, then you need email Mr Hayward to be considered. He says: “Screenshots are good, but videos and builds are even better for helping make a decision.”

In Electronic Arts news, FIFA 13, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Sim City, Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3 will all be playable at the event, too.

If it wasn’t already amazingly apparent, Valve is quite well-versed in the ways of moviefilm-fu. And while it may have recently offered its tools of the trade to all who would dare know their secrets, the Newellian empire is still very much the master. Case in point: a new short film promoting Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. While other games that do the whole good-guys-vs-terrorists shtick have entered into an arms race over biggest ‘splosions and who can make their flying drone swarms look like something out of a Hitchcock movie, this brief CSGO tale aims to be intimate, intense, and true to the spirit of the series. It won’t blow your mind or anything, but it’s still certainly a cut above.

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So Impire is Dungeon Keeper with slightly more strategic combat, right? That’ll do. As we know it’s coming from Cyanide Studios, they who brought us Chaos League and Game Of Thrones: Genesis, and being published by Paradox. You can read a bunch about it from Nathan, here. There’s a new trailer showing a good range of the different styles of play below.

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I doubt we’ll be hearing too much more about yesterday’s Uplay drama, given the security hole appears to have been safely plugged before any malevolent souls could take advantage of it. Ubisoft have passed further comment on the issue as they saw it, however, claiming an exploit that allowed a vast amount of access to Uplay users’ PCs was the result of a “coding error” and that their online infrastructure/shop/DRM did not include a rootkit.
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