Games

More than 500 developers at Blizzard Entertainment who work on World of Warcraft have voted to form a union. The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild, formed with the assistance of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), is composed of employees across every department, including designers, engineers, artists, producers, and more. Together, they have formed the largest wall-to-wall union — or a union inclusive of multiple departments and disciplines — at Microsoft.

This news comes less than a week after the formation of the Bethesda Game Studios union, which, at the time of the announcement, was itself the largest wall-to-wall Microsoft union.

The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild is made up of over 500 members across Blizzard offices in California and Massachusetts. Despite its size — it is the second largest union at Microsoft overall behind Activision’s 600-member QA union — Cox said that Microsoft’s labor neutrality agreement helped get the organization ball rolling.

Interdisciplinary unions like Blizzard’s are relatively rare, especially in the video game industry, as each department has different needs and goals. Up until this point, the majority of unionization efforts in the video game industry have been spearheaded by QA workers who have traditionally been among the least paid and least protected employees.

The first union at Activision Blizzard was made up of QA workers, as was the first union at Microsoft’s game studios. In addition to the World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild, yet another new union made up of QA workers at Blizzard’s Austin, Texas, office has also formed. The Blizzard Quality Assurance United-CWA is a 60-person unit including QA testers for games like Diablo, Hearthstone, and other Blizzard games.

I bought this off Ebay but I am not sure if it is authentic or not. Can anyone here tell me or point me towards a resource I can use?

S&box is Garry's spiritual successor to Gmod. It's still in alpha from what it seems, but now anybody can download the game and give it a try. This is mostly meant for developers that want to start making game modes on Source 2. Excited to give it a try!

The game is Fallout New Vegas

Whelp...I'm out. (I expected this to happen before they said anything though, honestly.)

Lol. After all these years they're thinking of rolling back the 5v5 changes. To quote someone from Reddit:

PVE was dropped, heroes are free again, and now 6v6 is back. Blizzard spent the last couple of years turning overwatch 2 back into Overwatch 1.

Edit: See also the developer's blog post about this, which goes into great detail explaining their decisions over the year and how we got here. Really worth a read if you are (or were) an OW player.

I've been looking for some more instrumental music to listen to while working, besides putting FF and Stardew on loop.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has been delayed to November 20th
https://youtu.be/vxeGyXSM5Pc
@games

What if you’re trapped in an abandoned school, and a remote-controlled bear tells you that the only way to escape is to kill one of your classmates and get away with it? Well, this is exactly what happens in Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc! Let’s ring the doorbell to Hope’s Peak Academy, and dive into its world!

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From the article:

"Play is an integral part of human evolution and learning," she says, mentioning that this is a topic she covers in her book. "Gaming, being the most refined form of play in our time, has much to offer. Instead of focusing on what gaming is not, it's more effective to showcase its true essence. The industry's effort to create a more diverse range of games, beyond merely violent and intense ones, will help showcase the broad spectrum of gaming as an expression of creativity."

The game is Arkham Knight