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Daily Briefing: Tuesday 12th October
🕑 Added 2021-10-12 14:30:00 +0000 UTCThose Activision Blizzard lawsuits just got a bit more complicated
A few weeks ago, Activision Blizzard reached a settlement with the United States Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. Among other stipulations, under the terms of the agreement Activision Blizzard were obligated to establish an $18m fund to "compensate and make amends to eligible claimants." At the time, the $18m figure was heavily criticised as being a "slap in the face" to victims given the extent of the allegations and the depth of Activision Blizzard's pockets.
- Recently, the California Department of Fair Housing and Employment (whose lawsuit first brought everything public) issued a challenge to the settlement. They allege that the agreement shields Activision Blizzard from claims against them, and could lead to the destruction of evidence vital to the progress of the DFEH's own lawsuit. Surprisingly, the EEOC hit back with a few allegations of their own - suggesting that the conduct of the DFEH's legal constituted a breach of professional conduct laws. The EEOC allege that two of the DFEH's legal team previously worked with the EEOC during their investigation of Activision Blizzard, and as such helped draft the settlement they're now challenging. This could question the validity of everything the DFEH have worked for up until this point and, according to Virtual Legality's Richard Hoeg, could even act as a point of defense for Activision Blizzard in their ongoing battle with the DFEH. Yikes.
Diablo II: Resurrected's servers still aren't working right
Staying with Activision Blizzard for a bit, it looks like Diablo II: Resurrected's servers still aren't in the best spot weeks after launch. The game went offline for a good few hours over the weekend as support teams carried out emergency maintenance but, even with all that attention, the issues stuck around. A new report from Gamespot points out that Blizzard's North American Customer Support Twitter account posted almost exclusively about Diablo II: Resurrected for two entire days.
- Diablo II: Resurrected's September launch was marred by a suite of server connectivity issues reminiscent of the release of the original Diablo II way back in 2000. Players had to deal with everything from extensive login issues to vanishing characters, and things are evidently still ropey nearly one month later. This latest batch of issues seems to revolve around problems with the game's authentication servers and, judging again the North American Customer Support Twitter account, it seems that anytime a problem is solved a new one takes its place. Not great for the first major Blizzard release in years, and since all those lawsuits dropped.
Epic Games finally admit that Fortnite's Impostors mode was inspired by Among Us
Fortnite's Impostors mode first released way back in August and raised more than a few eyebrows throughout the gaming community for one very good reason: it looked very like Among Us. Yet, mention of Innersloth's social stealth phenomenon was nowhere to be seen. This sparked a bit of a debate about partnerships and the ethics of a massive corporation like Epic Games stomping all over an indie studio in the name of chasing trends. Developers Innersloth themselves even took to Twitter to highlight similarities and emphasise that Epic were previously reluctant to officially collaborate.
Now, just a few entire months after the controversial mode released, Epic have finally publicly acknowledged that Among Us was a big source of inspiration. In a blog post outlining the ins and outs of Fortnite's new 18.20 update, Epic games confirmed that the update "brings improvements to Impostors, the game mode inspired by Among Us from Innersloth." While this is at least a step forward, there's still no official reference to Among Us or Innersloth within Fortnite itself. So, still gross, but now slightly less so.
