Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II saw its full release just days ago on October 28. While fans of the series are excited over yet another return of the first-person shooter series, Netherlands news site De Volkskrant reports that an Amsterdam hotel isn’t too pleased due to its unpleasant inclusion in the game.
Throughout the years, Activision has taken inspiration from real-world events and locations for the Call of Duty series. Modern Warfare II is no different, with Amsterdam’s Conservatorium Hotel being included in a scene where it is destroyed in a battle’s crossfire. However, this inclusion may result in a lawsuit and future actions from the hotel against Activision Blizzard, according to reports.
“We have taken note of the fact that the Conservatorium Hotel is undesirably the scene of the new Call of Duty,” Conservatorium Hotel manager Roy Tomassen said to the Volkskrant. “More generally, we don’t support games that seem to encourage the use of violence. The game in no way reflects our core values and we regret our apparent and unwanted involvement.”
This isn’t the first instance of improper and unprompted usage of real-life locations in the latest Call of Duty. Modern Warfare II’s beta featured a location that closely resembled Los Angeles’ Getty Museum. The map doesn’t appear in the game’s full release, which could possibly be due to a similar situation to the one Activison Blizzard currently faces with the Conservatorium.
The museum map was in the beta for #ModernWarfare2 but wasn’t included in the full game at launch.
Activision hasn’t released any info on why it’s been removed from the game, but I think it has something to do with copyright or other legal issues with the Getty museum in LA. pic.twitter.com/2LU5QySDq8
— ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) October 30, 2022
We’ve reached out to Amsterdam’s Conservatorium Hotel for further details and future plans and will update this story when we hear back.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.