Latest news with #Metaphor:ReFantazio
Time of India
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
How is Ubisoft's EULA clause contradicting the 'Stop Killing Games' campaign?
Image via Ubisoft. The whole gaming world right now is divided into two parts following the feud regarding the 'Stop Killing Games' campaign. This is actually a consumer driven movement against the developers who delist their games out of nowhere. This actually affects a whole bunch of playerbase, who actually bought the game with real-money, but won't ever be able to play it as the game's server was actually made offline, with stopping all services. However, no one would have thought one of the biggest gaming companies would be against this movement. Ubisoft's EULA clause is why the 'Stop Killing Games' campaign exists The Ubisoft EULA is against the 'Stop Killing Games' campaign. | Image via Stop Killing Games. Amidst the clash between the 'Stop Killing Games' campaign and Pirate Software , fans have now found out Ubisoft is actually against the former. It has been discovered in Ubisoft's licence agreement that there is a claw which orders the owners to destroy the game if the developer chooses to end the service of that particular game. This clause in Ubisoft's end user license agreement (EULA) clearly states players are obliged to immediately uninstall the game and delete all the copies of the product which is in their possession if the specific game is being delisted. And this exact clause has stirred a huge controversy amidst the heat of the 'Stop Killing Games' campaign. This clause is exactly what the campaign is fighting against. SKG is fighting for the online preservation of the multiplayers games which suddenly stops its services, even after people purchase these games. The Ubisoft EULA is absolutely opposite to this, making people mandatory to dispose of all the possessions which they actually bought. Now the irony here is that Accursed Farms aka Ross Scott started this campaign after Ubisoft suddenly delisted The Crew in 2024. So, Ubisoft was the real reason behind this petition and now might be becoming the biggest reason people sign this petition, more and more. However, it's disappointing to note that such clauses aren't restricted to EULAs of Ubisoft only. It has been found out that EULAs of several games like Oblivion Remastered, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and many more contain that same clause, which prompts their users to destroy the ownerships of the games, if they ever get delisted by the developers. Read More: Pirate Software claims being made 'the villain' boosted petition's momentum as Stop Killing Games hits 1 Game On Season 1 continues with Mirabai Chanu's inspiring story. Watch Episode 2 here.
Newsweek
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Last Year's Best RPG Just Got a Massive Discount on Steam
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors Last year, publisher Sega and developer Atlus gave the world one of the best turn-based RPGs in recent history — Metaphor: ReFantazio. Now, the award-winning gameis discounted to its lowest price ever, along with a host of other Sega and Atlus games. Sega has revealed its slate of Steam Summer Sale discounts, and among them are discounts for most of Atlus' games. Metaphor: ReFantazio, of course, is the big draw card here, with a massive 40% discount on Steam worldwide, bringing it down to just $41.99. The game's Atlus 35th Digital Anniversary Edition – which comes with eight additional DLC costume sets that are normally paid when bought separately – also got a 40% discount, bringing it down to $59.99. Villain Louis Guiabern sitting atop a throne in a cutscene from Metaphor: ReFantazio. Villain Louis Guiabern sitting atop a throne in a cutscene from Metaphor: ReFantazio. Sega RGG Studio's Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth – another turn-based RPG from Sega that won plenty of awards last year – is also seeing a deep discount, with all editions of the game receiving a 60% discount. That's in addition to the latest game in the series, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which is 30% off for the first time. Here's the full list of highlighted Sega games getting discounts on Steam during the Summer Sale: Alien Isolation – 75% off Football Manager 2024 – 75% off Hatsune Miku MegaMix+ – 60% off Yakuza: Like a Dragon – 50% off Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name – 65% off Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth – 60% off Like a Dragon: Ishin – 75% off Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii – 30% off Lost Judgment – 70% off Metaphor: ReFantazio – 40% off Persona 3 Reload – 55% off Persona 4 Golden – 50% off Persona 5 Royal – 60% off Persona 5 Strikers – 70% off Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance – 50% off Sonic Frontiers – 70% off Sonic Superstars – 65% off Sonic x Shadow Generations – 40% off Total War: Rome 2 Emperor Edition – 75% off Total War: Three Kingdoms – 75% off Total War: Warhammer 2 – 75% off Total War: Warhammer 3 – 66% off Total War: Warhammer – 75% off Two Point Campus – 75% off Two Point Hospital – 75% off Two Point Museum – 20% off Virtua Fighter 5: REVO – 30% off You can pick up all of these games and more on the Sega Steam Summer Sale page, or visit the Steam frontpage to see all the games available during the sale. Steam's Summer Sale lasts until July 10, 2025.
Metro
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
PS Plus games for July includes one of the best dungeon crawlers ever
Sony has announced the new PlayStation Plus line-up, and it's a great month for rock climbers and those with an affinity for fighting games. There's been no shortage of great role-playing games over the past few years between Baldur's Gate 3 and Metaphor: ReFantazio, but one of the best is set to land on PlayStation Plus next month. As announced by Sony, Diablo 4 will be free for PlayStation Plus subscribers across all tiers on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 from Tuesday, July 1. While it was already a great game when it launched in June 2023, it has only improved following all the updates developer Blizzard has rolled out since. Next month's line-up is strong in general. The King Of Fighters 15, an overlooked SNK fighter, will also be available across PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, along with the excellent climbing sim Jusant. All these games will be available to claim from July 1 to August 4, 2025. As always, if you want to play them down the line, you can add them to your library within this window and download them later, as long as you have an active PlayStation Plus subscription. More Trending Next month sees Sony celebrate the 15th anniversary of PlayStation Plus with various special offers as well. These include free trials for WWE 2K25 and Monster Hunter Wilds for premium subscribers, special discounts on Sniper Elite: Resistance, Civilization 7, and Star Wars Outlaws, a free Valorant pack, and special tournaments. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. For anyone who isn't subscribed to PlayStation Plus, a free online multiplayer weekend is taking place from Saturday June 28 at 12.01am BST to Sunday June 29 at 11.59pm BST. So it's a great time to test out any multiplayer games you've been hanging onto. You still have time to pick up last month's PlayStation Plus Essential games, with NBA 2K25, Alone In The Dark, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, and Destiny 2: The Final Shape all available until June 30. Earlier this year, Sony announced it will stop offering PlayStation 4 games on the monthly PlayStation Plus line-up from January 2026. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 climbs chart after 'unusual' sales boost MORE: Time Crisis and Point Blank lightgun console smashes Kickstarter goal within hours MORE: EA Sports FC 26 cover star leaks and they've been on before
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Game Developers Choice Awards 2025 Names ‘Balatro' Game Of The Year — Complete Winners List
LocalThunk's Balatro, developed by Playstack, was deemed a royal flush as it was crowned Game of the Year at the 25th Game Developers Choice Awards. Handed out on Wednesday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Balatro also snagged wins for Best Design, Best Debut and the Innovation Award. Other winners included Astro Bot, which won Best Audio and Best Technology. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth garnered a win for the Audience Award while the Best Narrative went to Metaphor: ReFantazio. Black Myth: Wukong and Astro Bot came into the ceremony with a leading seven nominations apiece. Baldur's Gate 3 dominated last year's GDC Awards, taking three awards, including Game of the Year. More from Deadline Game Awards Names 'Astro Bot' Game Of The Year - Complete Winners List The Game Award Nominations: 'Final Fantasy VII Rebirth' Slices Its Way To Leading Seven Nominations Harvey Fierstein Says He's "Banned" From Kennedy Center Amid Trump Takeover: "How Freedom Ends" This year's Game Developers Choice Awards honored indie developer Lucas Pope known for cult hit puzzle games Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, with the Pioneer Award. Another honoree also included Remedy Entertainment's creative director Sam Lake, fresh off of numerous industry wins for the critically praised Alan Wake II, with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Reflecting on his three decades in the industry, he offered advice to his fellow gaming peers and developers in training. 'It's important to find your team, your unique voice to stand out and go where your passion takes you. Trust your vision. Be patient with this, but stay true to it and keep pushing forward, but also always be a team player. Always listen to the good ideas from the talented people around you and find ways to incorporate those ideas in a way that compliments your ideas. Hide in as much art as you can get away with. This is your vital secret mission,' the Finnish director continued. 'Art is what makes you excited, what gives you joy and what makes you proud. Roll with the punches when you face an obstacle and you have to change your ideas, take it to mean you've been now given an opportunity to come up with something even cooler and better. I feel that we are easily laced with our initial ideas. Obstacles force us to be creative and something creative can come out of that and often does.' Here are the winners of the 2025 GDC Awards: Best Audio Astro Bot (Team ASOBI / Sony Interactive Entertainment) Honorable Mentions: Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack), Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (Simogo / Annapurna Interactive), Metaphor: ReFantazio (ATLUS / SEGA / Studio Zero), Neva (Nomada Studio / Devolver Digital), Silent Hill 2 (Bloober Teams SA / KONAMI) Best Debut Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack) Honorable Mentions: Manor Lords (Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse), Mullet Madjack (HAMMER95 / Epopeia Games), The Plucky Squire (All Possible Futures / Devolver Digital), Tiny Glade (Pounce Light) Best Design Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack) Honorable Mentions: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix), Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios / PlayStation Publishing LLC), Satisfactory (Coffee Stain Studios / Coffee Stain Publishing), The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Grezzo, Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development / Nintendo), UFO 50 (Mossmouth) Innovation Award Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack) Honorable Mentions: Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios / PlayStation Publishing LLC), Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (Simogo / Annapurna Interactive), Thank Goodness You're Here! (Coal Supper /Panic), The Plucky Squire (All Possible Futures / Devolver Digital), Tiny Glade (Pounce Light) Best Narrative Metaphor: ReFantazio (ATLUS / SEGA / Studio Zero) Honorable Mentions: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix), Frostpunk 2 (11 bit studios), Life is Strange: Double Exposure (Deck Nine Games / Square Enix), Neva (Nomada Studio / Devolver Digital), Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (Ninja Theory / Xbox Game Studios) Best Technology Astro Bot (Team ASOBI / Sony Interactive Entertainment) Honorable Mentions: Animal Well (Billy Basso/ Bigmode), Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Threyarch, Raven Software, Beenox, High Moon Studios, Activision Shanghai, Sledgehammer Games, Infinity Ward, Demonware /Activision), Dragon Age: The Veilguard (BioWare / Electronic Arts), Satisfactory (Coffee Stain Studios / Coffee Stain Publishing), Tekken 8 (Bandai Namco Studios Inc / Bandai Namco Entertainment) Best Visual Art Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science) Honorable Mentions: Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack), Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoftware Inc. / Bandai Namco Entertainment), Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (Ninja Theory / Xbox Game Studios), Tiny Glade (Pounce Light), Ultros (Hadoque / Kepler Interactive) Social Impact Life is Strange: Double Exposure (Deck Nine Games / Square Enix) Honorable Mentions: Closer the Distance (Osmotic Studios / Skybound Games), Distant Bloom (Ember Trail / Kina Brave), Dragon Age: The Veilguard (BioWare / Electronic Arts), Tales of Kenzera: Zau (Surgent Studios / Electronic Arts) Game of the Year Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack) Honorable Mentions: Animal Well (Billy Basso / Bigmode), Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios / PlayStation Publishing LLC), Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio / SEGA), Satisfactory (Coffee Stain Studios / Coffee Stain Publishing), UFO 50 (Mossmouth) Best of Deadline 'The Last Of Us' Season 2 New Cast: Who Is Joining The Next Installment?
The Guardian
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Avowed review – Annihilation meets Oblivion in a vast, intricate fantasy
Every time I have to switch between fantasy realms I feel a little like the workers in Severance. Who am I again? What am I here to do? Who are all these people? It's been a golden time for fantasy lately and having inhaled Dragon's Dogma 2, Metaphor: ReFantazio, both seasons of House of the Dragon and all of Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing novels in less than a year, I'm starting to blur the finer details of one kingdom with another. Avowed's fantasy universe comes ready-made, from developer Obsidian's other Pillars of Eternity games. The lore is dense, the in-game text plentiful and characters verbose, but thankfully The Lands Between is fascinating to look at and the realm of Eora full of political tension and cool monsters. I remember precious few names or historical details, but I will remember several of my experiences in this game – the view from the rickety path hugging the walls of an underground cavern big enough for a mad priest to have built as gigantic automaton inside, and the skin-crawling secret I discovered in the basement of a companion's family home. The look is Annihilation-meets-Oblivion, with fungal and floral detail embroidering the structures and peoples you encounter, and and ever-present tension between the organic and the corruptive. The Lands Between is being ravaged by a disturbing plague that sends people mad, before they are consumed by mushroom-like growths. You, an envoy from a distant centre of empire, have been sent to investigate. You are a godlike, touched by the immortals, and you are guided through this strange place by a divine voice in your head and a range of native companions, whose chatter I found genuinely edifying. There's a lot of choice and self-direction in Avowed, and it's a game that always respects your intelligence. Characters are interestingly (if densely) written and there are plenty of ways to respond to them. It's a lot less patronising than the cringeworthily Whedon-esque good guy/bad guy/joker responses that other games force out of you. I expected a brisk 20-hour adventure in the vein of Obsidian's sci-fi comedy The Outer Worlds, but reader, this is not that. This game is immense. I took my time in the opening area of Dawnshore, having a fine old time probing into spider-webbed caverns (there are lots of those, this is not a game for the arachnophobic) and combing through ornate, abandoned ruins and climbing lighthouses looking for loot. (This was partly because I stalled on the main quest, having forgotten a vital piece of information that popped up once in a text tutorial for about five seconds.) Only after 15 hours in this pleasant coastal land did I meet one of the central antagonists, an impressively frightening warlord in intricate armour and a mask with smouldering eyes. I then found myself in a dense and rotting jungle-swamp full of surprisingly cheerful necromancers, and it was even bigger than Dawnshore. When I arrived at a third new location after around 30 hours I realised that I very much did not have the measure of this world at all. Unfortunately Avowed would be better if it were 20 hours long. I always had fun striking out from town and getting lost, coming across interesting things to do exactly as you would in Skyrim or Fallout. But there are two sticky problems that suck the fun out of it over time. The first is common to a lot of open-world games: when you arrive in a new place, all the quests and fights are a little too hard. After a few hours' questing, exploring and upgrading your weapons and armour, it hits a brief sweet spot where everything feels challenging but conquerable. Then you empower yourself to such an extent everything gets too easy, and it starts to feel like a box-ticking exercise. This pattern repeated itself over my time with the game, eroding my patience. The second issue is that Avowed's combat just isn't as fun as it thinks it is, and there's so much of it. There are an impressive number of weapons and techniques available to you – grimoires and wands for spells, giant two-handed axes, bows and pistols, maces and shields. No matter what you choose, though, it feels imprecise and tedious, and your chances of success are determined by invisible numbers rather than skill. Try to take on enemies above your level and it will barely matter how well you dodge out of the path of a greatsword or how cleverly you combine your magic effects to freeze and shatter undead skeletons. What matters is the quality of your gear, which must be continually and laboriously upgraded with a warehouse's worth of random materials that you find in every chest and lockbox. I got very sick of smashing R2 to fire magic projectiles or hack away at tree-monsters with my sword, chipping away determinedly at their hit points. My companions never felt especially helpful in battles, either. All the variety and texture that can be found in the fiction here is lacking in the combat and the loot. There are unique swords and trinkets at the ends of the most interesting quests, but the fun of exploring is tempered by the realisation that outside of the views and the characters, you'll rarely find anything that interesting. If you come across a powerful enemy, you may well be underpowered for the fight. If you find a tantalising glowing chest in a cavern, there's a strong chance it'll be full of pennies, chunks of iron and a few pelts. Avowed started out as Obsidian's answer to Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, and it did remind me a lot of Oblivion and Skyrim in the exciting moments where I stumbled across something unexpected in the wilds. But it also shares those games' tendency towards repetition, and the weightless feel of their fighting. My first 15 or so hours in The Lands Between felt rich with potential, but I got fed up with it long before the end. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion Avowed is released on 18 February; £59.99
