Although Epic Games only released its new Battle Royale mode in the free-to-play (FTP) shooter Fortnite a couple weeks ago, it’s already had to unleash a new weapon – the banhammer.
On its game site, Epic Games Community Coordinator Nathan Mooney pulled no punches with a blog post about maintaining the integrity of online matches. “Let’s be straight for a second, nobody likes playing with cheaters. Not you, not me. Nobody,” he wrote. “We’re exploring every measure to ensure these cheaters are removed and stay removed from Fortnite Battle Royale and the Epic ecosystem.”
Mooney was vague about the actual tools and methods Epic is using to identify cheaters, but he did confirm that thousands have already been booted “and we have no plans to stop!”
Fortnite Battle Royale, built using Unreal Engine 4, is a new free-for-all style multiplayer frenzy, where all 100 players begin on a massive map in a floating bus with a glider and a pickaxe. From that point on, it’s every man or woman for themselves. There are weapons to discover, traps to set, and the last one standing is declared the winner of the match.
Epic also announced that it’s rolling out Account Progression in the next few weeks, letting you earn (and presumably accumulate) items as you play. It also encouraged using its contact form to provide any info about possible cheaters, including any video or screenshot evidence.
Over 1 million players have partied on the Battle Bus during the first day of Battle Royale! Thank you and party on! 🙌🎉🚍 pic.twitter.com/Tdqnk8YClb
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) September 27, 2017
The game has become insanely popular in just a short time, surpassing seven million players as of this writing (that figure includes all Fortnite players, not just the FTP Battle Royale mode). In addition to the emphasis on cheaters, Epic also released Duos (letting you play Battle Royale with a partner) and Supply Drops (“the best loot you can find” dropping randomly from the sky).
But wait a minute – isn’t there another very popular multiplayer game out there using Unreal that’s quite similar? Indeed there is, and there have been grumblings from PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds about that issue. In a rather rambling interview with PC Gamer, the Bluehole developers seemed to indicate that it was not the style of the Battle Royale mode they objected to, but the fact that Epic implied some sort of endorsement by PUBG in their announcement.
“It was in their promotional video that was posted on Twitter and they would openly mention that they were fans of PUBG,” said Events Manager Sammie Kang. “That kind of gave the impression that we were officially involved in this.” Bluehole also vaguely threatened some sort of “action” against Epic, but it’s not clear what that means.
Epic has announced plans to make the campaign mode of the game free-to-play at some point in 2018. Fortnite is available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, and Mac.
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.