I’ll just come out and say it: I hate DLC.

Once upon a time, developers and publishers would laud an upcoming game on its merits alone, highlighting the work done on a compelling story or new gameplay mechanic. We’d buy into the hype after a couple of screenshots, an interview or even a video if we were lucky. But now we’re lucky to hear an announcement or see a trailer that doesn’t mention the bundle of pre-order extras or day one DLC that’s available. Extra guns? $5. Extra missions? $10. Feel like recruiting that master assassin into your ranks? Well, that’s $7, or part of the package if you sign up for the MasterEliteUltraPass that guarantees you all* of the extras for one low, low price of half the initial game’s cost, again.

Skyforge is an MMO in development by Allods Team, the same people who made the aptly-named Allods Online — and at the recent Russian Game Developer’s Conference, they announced that they’ve brought Obsidian on board to assist in development.

We haven’t heard anything about the game since its announcement in 2012, and even that flew under many people’s radars. The involvement of Obsidian may act to counteract that however, with the high-profile RPG developer known for their successes in storytelling.

“Skyforge is very interesting and promising project, claimed Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart in a statement. “I am glad that Obsidian Entertainment is involved in working on this game.”

“I am confident that the cooperation with the Allods Team will be a great experience for all of us.”

The only known Skyforge trailer was released last year, and can be seen here. It is expected to launch in 2014.

EA’s attempt to join the MOBA scene with new title Dawngate comes at an odd time, with League of Legends currently generating enough concurrent players to populate a small nation, and DotA 2 ripping up the Steam charts. But nevertheless, launch it they will — and here’s what it looks like (courtesy of Machinima).

According to the team, there are territorial control points on each map, including ones that deliver economic boosts to your team by spawning workers to harvest resources. Your towers serve as your bases like normal, but the creatures which guard them can be set loose to roam the map, and the energy flowing down lanes can be redirected. Interesting stuff.

If you’re keen on trying it out, beta testing will begin on Friday May 24. Sign up here.

With the news that Path of Exile were launching a gateway to bring down the lag for players in Australia and New Zealand, we called Grinding Gear Games’ Chris Wilson to get the low-down on where the F2P-ARPG is at, why now is the right time for a low-ping gateway, and their plans for the future.

Zeboyd Games have announced that Episode 3 of Penny Arcade’s On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is free for a short time today, to celebrate the announcement of a release date for Episode 4.

For today only, you can head over to the official site and grab a Steam key for Episode 3 completely free — check that out here.

Episode 4 is now schedule for release on June 7, and is to be the final game in the series — “which everyone here agrees is easily our best game to date,” says Zeboyd. Excellent stuff.

Source: Blue’s News

Warner Bros. have released the full trailer for which they so teasingly teased us last week, and it’s unfortunately not straight gameplay footage but it’s nice and pretty anyway. Here, then, are nearly five minutes of Batman kicking the snot out of various thugs, as well as some iconic enemies.

The press release sent over by Warner Bros. also reveals that Deathstroke will actually be a playable character in Arkham Origins, but only in the challenge modes. If you pre-order the game, you’ll apparently receive exclusive early access to this Deathstroke content.

To update our story from yesterday, it seems that Kevin Conroy will actually not be voicing Batman in Arkham Origins at all. When he spoke at Dallas Comic-Con he was referring to another unannounced Arkham game at Rocksteady — he clarified the position on Twitter, before immediately deleting the tweet (which basically is the same as saying “whoops, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that yet”).

The news that Kevin Conroy would not be voicing Batman in the upcoming Arkham Origins seemed to come out of nowhere, and — though it couldn’t be verified — was still enough to upset many fans. But never fear! Kevin Conroy will be returning in Arkham Origins — although whether or not he’ll be actually voicing Batman remains unconfirmed.

At the recent Dallas Comic-Con, Conroy revealed that “I can talk about it now. We’ve been working for about 9 or 10 months on the next Arkham.”

“We were all signing these contracts that we weren’t allowed to talk about it – you know the studio likes to completely control the roll out of any product, so they don’t like any of us to talk about anything.”

Although this being widely reported as confirmation, Conroy actually stops short of saying “I will be voicing Batman”. It’s hard to imagine what else he’d be doing, but considering this is a prequel, there’s every possibility he may be perhaps providing a voiceover from the perspective of an older Batman, along with a newer actor. Stay tuned!

Source: GameArena

Late last week, we sat down with Blizzard’s lead encounter designer, Ion Hazzikostas. Aside from having an awesome superhero-style name, Ion also manages the raids, scenarios, and other encounters that make up Mists of Pandaria’s patch 5.3. Read on for all the details of the new scenarios, why Blizzard are cutting the XP required for the final five levels, and how he feels about WoW’s recent drop in subscriber numbers.

The BBC is reporting that one of the hackers self-identifying as Lulzsec has been slapped with a 32-month jail sentence for their involvement in the hacking attacks against EA, Sony, Nintendo, and others. 32 months is reportedly the longest sentence ever handed out for hacking in the UK.

One additional member received 30 months, while another who acted as the main publicist received 24 months in a young offender institution. An 18-year old member who was sitting his exams at the time received a 20-month suspended sentence and 300 hours of community service.

Unfortunately for these four offenders, that’s not the worst of it — they now face possible extradition to the US for additional charges under the US legal system.

A 24-year old Australian man has also been arrested.

Source: VG247

Epic Games’ co-founded and president Mark Rein has used Twitter to lambast processor-manufacturing giant Intel for holding back PC innovation.

“For years we tried to convince Intel to fix their graphics but their data said they were good enough,” claimed Rein. “PC innovation suffered for it.”

“Intel still owned the lions’ share of the graphics market with integrated,” he continued. “That’s why their data said it was good enough.”

Rein doesn’t provide an idea of when they attempted to convince Intel to fix their graphics, but it’s an interesting perspective nonetheless — although many modern games sadly no longer push the boundaries of PC gaming, with multiplatform releases meaning a lower-end hardware requirement. Who knows what might have been?

Source: Kotaku

The game formerly known as Alien Fear is now Alien Rage, and to celebrate their emotional turnaround they’ve released a teaser trailer showing some of the game below. It’s not clear how much is in-engine and how much is cutscene, but their tried-and-true premise of “you are a badass space marine who must kill thousands of aliens” means you’re probably in for a good time anyway.

Take a look below and let us know what you think.

When I played Anomaly: Warzone Earth a couple of years ago, it was a refreshingly different take on the tower defense genre, but one that seemed almost more like a proof-of-concept. Now, with Anomaly 2, this reverse-tower-defense concept has been polished up and expanded into a well-developed new iteration that offers a number of neat new twists on the idea. This includes a multiplayer mode that is the real selling-point of the sequel, but which might struggle to find a stable player-base.