Dev Promises To Make Up For Hated Game With Free Remaster

A developer on the third-person stealth-action game Grey Skies: A War of the Worlds Story has come forward to comment on the game’s abysmal Steam ratings, saying the team will address the concerns and release a free remaster.

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But first, a bit of context. Grey Skies: A War of the Worlds Story launched on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and Steam in November 2020. An atmospheric survival game with action-adventure and stealth elements based on the works of science fiction author H.G. Wells, Grey Skies was rocked by a plethora of negative Steam reviews. Players criticized it for sloppy animations, illogical gameplay, atrocious controls, and much more, with the general consensus being that it’s a janky mess of a misbegotten game. This dragging has persisted to this day, and Steel Arts Software never responded.

That was for a reason, as developer Nathan Seedhouse confirmed in a July 15 post on Grey Skies’ Steam page that personal issues kept him preoccupied.

“After a couple of years of crippling personal issues that kept me away from development, I came back to find that Grey Skies has issues, and has been reviewed extremely poorly,” Seedhouse wrote. “I was unaware of just how bad it was until recently. I came back to it with fresh eyes after more than two years and completely understand the issues most people have taken with it.”

Seedhouse went on to say that although Grey Skies undoubtedly has problems, many of which the Steam reviews point out ad nauseam, he firmly believes the team “made a decent game” underneath it all. As such, Seedhouse has outlined some upcoming plans to rectify the mistakes.

“I am remastering the game with new technologies that have become available, and my own improved knowledge of development,” Seedhouse continued. “I will read through all the concerns carefully and address each one, paying close attention to the most common complaints, such as clunky movement and frustrating stealth elements. I really appreciate each and every one of you that took a chance on it. So the remaster will be automatically added to any library that already owns the original Grey Skies, free of charge of course.”

In an email to Kotaku, Seedhouse said the development team is just him now and that the artist he worked with “left a couple years ago.”

“There is no development team,” Seedhouse said. “[The update post] wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. I was just hoping to quietly replace Grey Skies for the people on Steam and carry on with my next game.”

It’s unclear how the studio will remaster the game and, should such an event come to pass, whether it’ll win back players who already took a chance on it. We also don’t know if the theoretical remaster would hit platforms other than Windows. Still, with confirmation that the remaster will be free for those who own Grey Skies, and that the original version of the game will be removed from sale soon, we can only hope that things go well for both Seedhouse and Steel Arts Software.

Update: We’ve added a statement from the developer to this story.

 

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Destiny 2 Promises ‘Climactic Conclusion’ In Next Expansion

Cayde-6 and Ikora Rey look out at The Final Shape.

Image: Bungie

Destiny 2 players have spent a long time waiting for answers to some of the loot shooter’s biggest questions. Bungie claims they’re coming in 2024’s The Final Shape expansion, and they won’t be dragged out across four seasonal story updates like some of the most important parts of Lightfall were.

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The studio has set up Destiny for a giant confrontation between players and The Witness, an ancient alien entity intent on destroying The Traveler, the giant sentient magic orb that set all of the game’s events in motion. Lightfall brought that conflict to the cyberpunk city of Neomuna on Neptune, where fans hoped to uncover some of the mysteries around a powerful artifact called The Veil and its connection to The Witness and what its ultimate goal is. Instead, some of the most substantial reveals were drip-fed to the community in subsequent seasons. The result made Lightfall one of the most poorly received Destiny 2 expansions ever.

“We know there are some who would have preferred to experience these stories during Lightfall’s campaign,” game director Joe Blackburn wrote in Bungie’s latest state of the game blog post in an attempt to reassure players that next year’s big update will deliver what this year’s didn’t. “With those players in mind, we believe the totality of this year’s narratives will set the stage for The Final Shape in ways that a single story beat never could. And to put concerns to rest right now: The Final Shape and its raid will provide a climactic conclusion to the Light and Darkness Saga before we look ahead to what comes next in Destiny 2.”

It’s a bold reassurance for a game whose long-standing relationship with its vocal and passionate community constantly rubber-bands between complete adulation and melodramatic exhaustion. Destiny 2 has always been subject to the competing demands of players wanting to get every rare piece of loot and high stakes lore revealed now and wanting to have a reason to keep playing their favorite game endlessly for years.

Especially as it entered its modern seasonal model with weekly micro-story updates, it’s often felt like a Shōnen anime where months of filler are punctuated by short but dramatic plot progressions that inch the space opera forward. Why let Gohan go Super Saiyan 2 right away when you could milk the Cell Saga with a dozen preliminary fights and extraneous side plots first? Fortunately, it sounds like players won’t have to wait months after The Final Shape launches to experience the final showdown of Destiny 2’s current, 10-year story arc.

          

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Destiny 2 Promises Free Stuff After Players Revolt

The Destiny 2 community has been spiraling ever since a disappointing State of the Game update earlier this month failed to address what some fans see as core issues with the modern version of Bungie’s sci-fi MMO. Now game director Joe Blackburn has taken the unusual step of addressing the community directly in a new video that promises a free Eververse armor set in Season 22 and a free PvP map pack for Crucible in 2024.

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“A few weeks ago we put out a State of the Game communication that wasn’t up to our standards for what y’all have come to expect for those kinds of communications,” Blackburn said in an August 15 video recorded at his home office work desk. “It didn’t provide the high-level vision we normally provide and really and truly a bunch of us were heads down working on The Final Shape and weren’t able to give it the sort of care and love we usually put into these sorts of communications.”

He then proceeded over the next 15 minutes to set expectations for the August 22 Destiny 2 Showcase revealing more about next year’s The Final Shape expansion (it will be focused on top-level ideas aimed at casual fans) and address some of the biggest points of controversy coming out of the State of the Game blog post from earlier in August. Those mostly had to do with the current state of PvP, which sits somewhere between benign neglect and full-blown abandonment, and Ritual armor sets which players were once upon a time used to seeing refreshed every year.

On the Crucible side, Blackburn promised a new streamlined PvP development striketeam that can decide on changes and new content and communicate those changes to the community sooner. While Destiny has always primarily been a PvE-focused game, Crucible matches used to be a much more significant pillar in the daily lives of players. One big fear, which was seemingly always unfounded, was that Bungie’s development of the recently announced extraction shooter Marathon meant Destiny’s PvP development resources had completely shifted away from Destiny. Blackburn tried to make clear that’s not the case.

To that point, he said the current system of periodically injecting one new PvP map into the game at a time wasn’t helping. Instead, the plan is to release a bunch of maps all together as part of one free map pack in 2024 that experiments with lots of new ideas and zaps the stilted mode with a lot more energy and excitement all at the same time. The “free” part will also help dissipate some of the recent frustration with how Destiny 2 has been nickel-and-diming players for every piece of old and new content.

Destiny’s Ritual armor blues

Microtransactions angst has also been a source of a lot of backlash on the armor front. Fundamentally a game about looking cool while doing alien genocide, many players have been angry with the lack of new Crucible-, Vanguard-, and Gambit-themed outfits earned in the game rather than bought from the Eververse shop. February’s Lightfall expansion skipped them entirely. Blackburn said this was part of a conscious choice to focus more on armor sets designed for top-tier activities like raids, dungeons, and Trials of Osiris, as well as the seasonal-themed looks like Season of the Deep’s underwater set. To try and make it up to players for not properly communicating that shift, he said one of Season 22’s paid Eververse sets will be made free instead.

So far the surprise transmission is working. The video’s been received positively by players, not just because of the extra information and freebies, but because it added a more personal and intimate framing for the news. Of course, given the heated nature of Destiny debates, and recent legal action Bungie has taken against players who have overstepped boundaries or made violent threats against the studios and its developers, it’s easy to understand why Blackburn’s casual on-camera video hasn’t always been the norm.

“We want to be talking to you all more, but talking to you all more our number-one priority we have to keep our community members and our community leaders safe from the Bungie side,” he said. “I don’t want anyone that signs up to come work at Bungie and to talk to y’all about the game to have to worry about their personal safety.”

              

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$245 PS5 Controller Promises To Get Rid Of Stick Drift

French gaming accessory distributor Nacon opened preorders for its Revolution 5 Pro controller for PS5, PS4, and PC. The officially licensed, polished-looking product is listed at $199, about half the cost of a digital-edition PlayStation 5. But if you can’t stand stick drift, maybe that’s a small price to pay.

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For a while, it’s seemed like no modern controller could escape stick drift, or phantom joystick movement that affects in-game actions. Nintendo offers Switch owners free repairs for its freewheeling Joy-Cons, and Sony similarly covered drifting DualSense controllers under its warranty. But there are few permanent fixes for any controller.

Nacon, then, attempts to cut the problem out at the root. Like a growing number of other manufacturers (and Sega back in the ‘90s, with its Saturn and Dreamcast controllers), it uses contactless magnet technology, powered by a phenomenon called the Hall effect, to track the movement of its analog joysticks and triggers. This is in contrast to the degradable potentiometers and springs living in a typical Joy-Con or DualSense controller.

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“This asymmetric controller offers revolutionary features to improve precision and gaming performances,” Nacon writes on its website. “Exceeding all expectations with its technology optimized for the PS5. Enjoy an enriched configuration interface, improved and ergonomic modular design, all wrapped in premium materials for unparalleled comfort.”

Aside from utilizing the magnetic Hall effect for its sticks, the Revolution 5 Pro controller also uses magnets to supply its trigger stops. The company touts its odd-looking d-pad for apparently being made in collaboration with its sponsored fighting game player, which it suggests imparts “exceptional control and precision.” As for the battery, $199 gets about 10 hours of playtime, which is comparable to a DualSense controller (that gives up around the 12-hour mark).

As with many of these high-end “pro” or “elite” controllers the Revolution 5 Pro has various modular pieces you can swap in as you’d like. It offers “four profiles saved per platform, three sets of weights, three stick sizes, three sets of stick heads, one external microphone jack and no less than 60 customisation options,” according to Nacon. So, go crazy.

The expensive controller, available in white or black, will start shipping in October.

 Updated: 9/29/23, 12:10 p.m. ET: This article previously included pricing information based on the European list price of the controller, €229. Nacon has since announced that the U.S. price will be $199.99.

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