Riot Could be Making an Among Us Game

It looks like Riot is gauging interest in an Among Us style game, but using their League of Legends characters and themes.

Among Us has taken over twitch and social media, being one of the most played and viewed games in recent weeks. The game had been out since 2018, but didn’t gain as much traction as it suddenly did these passed several weeks. All the biggest streamers have been jumping on this game of social deduction.

There are other entries into the genre such as Project Winter and Deceit, but none of them blew up quite as much. The friendly graphics and accessibility of the game probably aided in its popularity. Among Us is free to download and play on your mobile device, while the Steam version costs just $4.99. It is quite easy to learn, but difficult to master, which invites new players to try it out.

Riot is always chasing the latest trends now that they are trying to rapidly expand from their base that is League of Legends. It looks like they want to jump on the social deduction train now as you can see by the survey they have sent out.

What do you guys think of a new deception game with League of Legends themes?

Valorant: Riot Adds Changes to Ranked Mode in Act 3

  • Riot tightened up the rank spread for team matchmaking again. So you have to be within 3 tiers so a Gold 1 and Queue with up to a Plat 1.
  • You can select your preferred server, so even though its not guaranteed , you should still experience more consistent ping overall.
  • Personal performance no longer matters in immortal or higher ranks. Your elo gain or loss will only be determined by the end result of winning or losing.

You can read the full notes here

Genshin Impact Releases But You May Have Trouble Downloading it

You might remember the original announcement of Genshin Impact and how it received a lot of criticism and even hate since it took a lot of influence from Zelda Breath of the Wild. Many gamers were calling it a copy cat of BoTW. But ever since the official launch, the script has flipped and we’re hearing a lot of praise for the game. Many are saying while it does draw some elements from BoTW it is a completely different game with its own strengths. Think of an MMO with an open world like BoTW and heavy on the anime style art and animations.

Currently the download servers may be seeing high load as we see many people complain of painfully slow downloads or even issues downloading it at all. I am currently sitting at 1 MB/s which equates to about a 4+ hour download time. Some people are reporting speed boosts by pausing and starting the download again, but everyone’s mileage may vary.

I also had trouble accessing the website itself, if I went to the home page directly it would get stuck loading some assets and then lag out eventually. I was able to circumvent this by going to a miscellaneous page and then going to the home page from there. So if you are trying to download the client try accessing from this page first (its the news page), then heading to the homepage to create an account and download.

We’ll be back with more thoughts after this finishes!

3 more hours…

No Man’s Sky New Expansion Dropping this Week

Origins is coming this week.

Patch notes will be released soon with it as well. The No Man’s Sky team has transformed the game greatly since its initial release in 2016 when it received a ton of negative criticism. The team remained persistent and has been releasing steady content over the years. The next is coming this week as Origins. See their statement below!

Statement from the NMS Team:

“Four years ago we announced FOUNDATION, our first major update for No Man’s Sky, we promised “It won’t be our largest update, but it is the start of something”. Those words were true at the time, and they ring true for Origins. We called it Origins because it is the beginning of something new, as No Man’s Sky continues to grow and evolve.

Beyond came out last year, bringing VR and hugely expanded Online play, and since then we have focused on releasing more regular updates. SYNTHESIS, BYTEBEAT, LIVING SHIP, EXO MECH, CROSSPLAY, and DESOLATION have been some of our most popular, surprising and transformative updates – leading No Man’s Sky to have its biggest year to date.

We know there is a huge appetite in the community for No Man’s Sky content, and the team has worked our socks off this year to deliver in difficult circumstances. We have been quiet, but we are always listening and focusing on improving the game that our team loves and feels so passionately about.

This update will be another small step in a longer journey. We hope you can join us.”

Microsoft to Purchase Bethesda Company

What does this mean for Bethesda Games?

Microsoft has officially announced that they will move forward with the purchase of game company Bethesda. Most of you are probably familiar with Bethesda or their huge blockbuster game franchises such as Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Wolfenstein, and more. Microsoft has agreed to purchase the company for $7.5 Billion.

More specifically the purchase for is ZeniMax Media – the parent company of Bethesda and Id software. The deal is stated to close in 2021. Microsoft has stated that Bethesda will still operate in its own division and retain current company structure.

So what does this mean?

Aside from giving Microsoft even more game studios under its belt and some control of these franchises, many may be worried about games becoming exclusive to only Xbox/PC. I personally don’t think the biggest franchises will become exclusive to Xbox and PC. The bottom line is if they did become exclusive they would be missing a lot of sales from people who only have a different platform. Exclusivity may drive demand for Xbox up, but at the same time Microsoft is pushing for cloud gaming with their newly released XCloud. This would remove some need for consoles, thereby making sales of copies of the games a bigger source of revenue.

Official Microsoft Release