While many displaced developers are currently seeking jobs in the wake of a recent round of layoffs at Crysis developer Crytek, one studio has emerged from the aftermath with its staff intact, and is revealing that it has a new project in the works as an independent entity.
Bulgarian studio Black Sea Games, formerly Arena of Fate developer Crytek Black Sea, is now seeking applicants who are committed to “chasing your dreams and having the courage to keep going on, no matter what.”
Crytek Black Sea was one of five worldwide studios that were shut down by Crytek in December. Other affected businesses include now-shuttered Crytek studios in Hungary, South Korea, China, and Turkey.
The mass closures arrived after rumors surfaced suggesting that Crytek had been unable to make payroll payments to its employees throughout 2016. Black Sea Games’ website notes that the studio was founded in November, suggesting that Crytek had started shuttering its worldwide studios before December’s announcement.
“Black Sea Games is a new game company, but we have been around for awhile,” the reformed studio announced this week. “Recently we realized we missed the ‘old times,’ the good old core-gaming, the sleepless nights spent solving that quest or defeating the next enemy on the map, while at the same time working hard during the small hours to quickly add another great feature to our own game. Well, this is how Black Sea Games was born again!”
Crytek itself has outlined a similar back-to-basics strategy for 2017.
“Our focus now lies entirely on the core strengths that have always defined Crytek — world-class developers, state-of-the-art technology, and innovative game development, and we believe that going through this challenging process will make us a more agile, viable, and attractive studio, primed for future success,” Crytek co-founder Avni Yerli stated following last month’s mass studio shutdown.
Industry veteran Vesselin Hanjiev has stepped up to lead Black Sea Games after serving as the studio’s managing director under Crytek. Details regarding the studio’s upcoming games are not yet known.
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.