Latest news with #Middle-earth:ShadowofWar
CNET
6 days ago
- Business
- CNET
EA Reportedly Cancels Black Panther Game, Shutters Cliffhanger Studio
Almost two years after it was initially announced, EA has reportedly canceled a Black Panther game that was in the works, and the publisher closed the studio that was developing the game. According to a report from IGN, news of the Black Panther game's cancellation came on Wednesday. Along with canceling the game and closing the studio, EA laid off additional workers from various teams, but there were no specifics on the number of people affected. An email from EA Entertainment President Laura Miele laid out these changes along with details about layoffs, saying they were to "sharpen our focus and put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities," according to IGN. "These decisions are hard," Miele wrote in an email, according to IGN. "They affect people we've worked with, learned from and shared real moments with. We're doing everything we can to support them, including finding opportunities within EA, where we've had success helping people land in new roles." EA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the game's cancellation. EA formed Cliffhanger Games to develop the open-world single-player Black Panther game. Heading the studio was Kevin Stephens, a former VP of Monolith Productions, which made the Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War games. Few other details about the game were known other than that it was supposed to take place in Wakanda, the fictional home of Black Panther. This Black Panther game is different than the Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra game that was announced back in 2022. That game was expected to feature Captain America and Azzuri, T'Challa's grandfather, who was the Black Panther during World War II. Marvel 1943 is being published by Skydance New Media, partnered and Plaion, and was initially planned to come out this year, but Skydance announced earlier in the month that the game is being pushed back to early 2026.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Legendary Studio Monolith Shuttered, Assassin's Creed Shadows Leaked, And More Of The Week's Top Stories
This week, Warner Bros. shuttered Monolith, the legendary studio responsible for games ranging from 2000's The Operative: No One Lives Forever to 2017's Middle-earth: Shadow of War. The closure means that the studio's promising Wonder Woman game, first revealed in 2021, has been cancelled as well. In other news, Assassin's Creed Shadows has leaked a month prior to launch, a gorgeous new 2D, pixel-art game based on Terminator 2 was revealed, and we got a look at what the Pokémon franchise has in store this year. All these stories and more await in the pages ahead. Monolith Productions revealed it was making a Wonder Woman game back in 2021. Now,publisher Warner Bros. Games has announced that the project has been canned, and the studio best known for the Middle-Earth: Shadow of War games is being shut down as well as part of larger cuts. The shakeup comes after 2024's Suicide Squad bombed and platform fighter MultiVersus failed to make a comeback. - Ethan Gach Read More Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 players have been accusing various loading screens and calling cards from the game of being AI-generated since it came out last fall, but it was only ever based on vibes and the occasional very convincing piece of seemingly obvious AI slop. Now Activision has admitted to using AI-generated assets in the hit multiplayer shooter on its Steam page. - Ethan Gach Read More It's that time of year when Pokémon fans get to have an early Christmas. It's Pokémon Day, which commemorates the anniversary of the launch of the original Pokemon Red and Green in Japan in 1996. Each year, The Pokémon Company puts on a livestream to talk about upcoming games, updates on current ones, and other projects within the franchise. Last year's was a little lowkey because it was the first year in a while that Game Freak didn't release a new RPG or DLC, but this year, the studio is releasing Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the second installment in the Legends subseries set in Kalos. That wasn't the only announcement, although things were still pretty quiet. If you want to watch the full livestream, you can check that out below. If you just want the highlights, read on: - Kenneth Shepard Read More It looks like at least a few people have got their hands on physical copies of Assassin's Creed Shadows ahead of the game's official March 20 launch. Reportedly, one player streamed themselves playing the next entry in Ubisoft's long-running franchise online. (No spoilers are included below.) - Zack Zwiezen Read More It's looking like a good Game Pass harvest this year, especially because Microsoft's backlog of big first-party Xbox games like Doom: The Dark Ages and Fable are coming in 2025. But tons of other cool stuff is headed to the subscription service as well, and a bunch of them were announced during the company's ID@Xbox showcase on Monday. - Ethan Gach Read More Terminator 2D: No Fate, a newly announced game based on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, looks like a rad retro-inspired side scroller. And you luckily won't have to wait too long to play it. - Zack Zwiezen Read More Oh no. A new Sims 4 update went live yesterday, and it seems to have added a very disturbing bug. According to some players online, kids are now walking around with big pregnant bellies in The Sims 4. Yikes. - Zack Zwiezen Read More It's only been a month since Pokémon TCG Pocket's Diamond and Pearl-inspired Space-Time Smackdown expansion released, and it looks like the mobile card game's next set of cards is already here. A promo for a set called Triumphant Light, starring the god Pokémon Arceus, leaked earlier this week. Now fans with unfinished collections are already freaking out about all of the new cards they'll need to collect. - Ethan Gach Read More After a year of waiting, we finally got our first look at Pokémon Legends: Z-A during the annual Pokémon Presents showcase. The Switch game seems like a significant departure from the untamed open zones of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which is exciting because we don't know what to expect. The stream gave us a trailer as well as a general breakdown, and we skimmed through both to see what details we could find. Here's everything we noticed. - Kenneth Shepard Read More Forza Horizon 5, which launched over four years ago on Xbox and PC, is making the leap to PlayStation 5 soon, but because it's 2025, the game will lock 'early access' to Xbox's open-world driving sim behind a pricey special edition. It's the next evolution in publishers holding games hostage for extra money. - Zack Zwiezen Read More For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Shadow of Mordor's innovative Nemesis system is locked behind a patent until 2036
Warner Bros Discovery recently shut down a trio of game studios, including the well-regarded Monolith Productions. This has put one of the coolest game mechanics of the 2010s in limbo. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's excellent Nemesis system is locked behind a patent owned by Warner Bros all the way until 2036, according to reporting by Eurogamer. The Nemesis system was featured in both 2014's Shadow of Mordor and the follow-up Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Simply put, it's a gameplay mechanic in which enemies remember previous encounters with the protagonist. These antagonists, typically orcs in the LOTR games, would use these humiliating memories to fuel their thirst for revenge as they rose through the ranks. This mechanic also worked both ways, so enemies would remember besting you in a previous encounter. It was the best part of those two titles and Monolith had planned on bringing back the mechanic for a now-cancelled Wonder Woman game. Now the system is lying unused, locked behind a patent vault in David Zaslav's mega-yacht or whatever. Gigantic multinational corporations are awesome! *Monolith makes the awesome Nemesis system for Shadow of Mordor, everyone loves it**WB patents it, making it pretty much impossible for other devs to use it**WB shuts down Monolith*RIP the Nemesis system, I guess! — Cade Onder (@Cade_Onder) February 25, 2025 Warner Bros Discovery patented the system in 2016, which you can read right here. The patent is active until 2036, so long as the company keeps up with the associated fees. It's worth noting that in the nine years since patenting the system, it's only been used in a single game. That's Shadow of War, which came out in 2017 and was already in development when Warner Bros went ahead with the patent. It remains to be seen if Warner Bros Discovery will do anything with the Nemesis system. It had nine years of heavy game development to make use of it across its entire IP portfolio, but didn't. In that time period, plenty of Batman games and Hogwarts Legacy all came out. Those would have surely benefited from the unique mechanic. Oh well. WB will still focus some resources on game development, but the company's efforts will be primarily spent on four franchises. These include Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, the DC universe and Game of Thrones. Three of those four seem like good fits for the Nemesis system to me.
