Tradegy has struck Aliens vs Predator‘s developer Rebellion – they’ve been forced to close their Derby office. And, despite decently high game sales, they’ve also been forced to get rid of some of the employees at their headquarters in the UK.
There’s no reason why exactly this has happened or how many employees were left off but Rebellion’s comment includes “a few staff in junior positions had been let go.”
Here’s hoping to a happy future for all of those who had to be let go.
Back in early February, Rebellion told us that Aliens vs Predator would be getting a DLC pack at some point in the future but didn’t give us any details about its content. We now know that the new pack will be calld the ‘Swarm Map Pack’ and will dro pon March 18th for 560 Microsoft Points or about $7.
The Swarm Map Pack includes 2 regular multiplayer maps and 2 brand new Survival Mode maps. No details were released on what these maps will be like so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Modern Warfare 2 has been out for a while now and yet it still doesn’t have dedicated servers even with the constant complaining of the community. Sure, Infinity Ward has a legit excuse for it, sort of, but what is a PC game without dedicated servers? Aliens vs. Predator developer Rebellion has taken the note of this and has announced today that the game now has dedicated servers. Of course, it’s included with a pretty hefty patch that throws in a bunch of other stuff which you can check out below.
General
Stability improvements to address rare and infrequent hangs
Implemented a workaround for missing audio issues with certain hardware (SoundBlaster X-Fi, Realtek onboard, etc.)
Fixed save games being lost or corrupted if connection to Steam is lost or if user switches to offline play
Multiplayer
Added client-side support for dedicated servers
Ranked match lobbies will no longer end after every match
Fixed XP being incorrectly affected by offline play (though only in the local stats; this will be corrected next time you connect to multiplayer)
Fixed other players sometimes appearing to have the wrong weapon or continuing to fire indefinitely after dying
Fixed rare issue where players would be temporarily invisible
Fixed some selection of servers and players in menus sometimes being incorrect
If you recently picked up Rebellion Developments’ Aliens vs. Predator for the PC, you most likely know that it did not ship with any dedicated server functionality. However, this will not be a Modern Warfare 2 repeat and Rebellion says that they are working to release a dedicated server for the game.
Below the studio comments:
Rebellion are busy preparing the dedicated server for the Aliens vs. Predator community. We hope to have a beta release with reduced functionality out in the next few days and further updates to improve functionality and fix bugs over the next few weeks. The files will be available to download from the “Tools” tab in the Steam client and will be a free download.
So, Infinity Ward, when are you going to accept your fault and bring us dedicated servers for Modern Warfare 2?
Another short and rather staged multiplayer walkthrough of the upcoming Aliens vs. Predator game, and honestly, we really don’t know what to think, as the trailer/walkthrough appears too staged to give any decent impression of what the game will be like.
When the original Aliens vs. Predator shipped a good ten years ago, it didn’t include multiplayer — it was only added later in an expansion — and when released on Steam under the title “Aliens vs. Predator Classic”, it didn’t include multiplayer either. However, a multiplayer feature has now been patched in for the game, and despite now having dedicated servers, it’s still a quite decent gesture of the developers.
Developer Rebellion has confirmed that a demo of the upcoming Aliens Vs. Predator will be released early February, with the full game out mid-February. The game is a highly anticipated reboot of the AvP series, which didn’t fare well with the last few installments.
Australia, recently at the forefront of Internet and videogame censorship, has apparently decided to unban Aliens vs Predator, which wouldn’t have otherwise seen a release in the country, as developer Rebellion refused to dumb-down the game for the Australian audience. Publisher SEGA appealed the decision, and now the Classification Review Board of Australia has overturned the initial ban of the game, and it will now be available to release in its original form, with no changes.
Yesterday we got word that the Classification Operations Board of Australia refused to let Sega‘s Aliens vs. Predator hit store shelves down under. We then learned that they were looking at way to get around this banning but it seems that the game’s developer, Rebellion, is none too pleased with the banning.
In fact, they have absolutely no intentions to clean the game of its content for an Australian release with their explanation below:
“The content of AVP is based on some of the most innovative and iconic horror movies, and as such we wanted to create a title that was true to the source material. It is for adults, and it is bloody and frightening, that was our intent. We will not be releasing a sanitized or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices.”
So Australian gamers, unless Sega successfully appeals the original banning, chances are you won’t get a chance to play the game.
The whole world, Australian gamers in particular, know that the Classification Operations Board of Australia is none too keen on letting fun overly violent games pass through their radar undetected. Unfortunately for you Australia AVP fans, the board’s latest victim is Sega‘s soon-to-be-released Aliens vs. Predator which got banned due to violent content.
Luckily, Sega Australia hopes to remedy this road block by either resubmitting the game with the violent content tuned down a notch or two or appealing the initial banning.
Will they succeed? Let’s hope so but as for us American folk well we’ll still be getting the game in February of next year.
