Release dates for games leaving Early Access have appeared on Steam, the creators of MindsEye have identified the organizers behind a campaign to "sabotage" their shooter, and Nioh 3 has become Koei Tecmo's most popular game on Steam. Here are the main events in the gaming industry from this past weekend.
- Valve announced a new option in its digital store. They have added a special field on game pages in Steam where developers can specify the release date of a project leaving Early Access. Previously, this information was often just mentioned in the text descriptions of games. According to Valve, developers have the option to specify an exact release date if it's already chosen, or they can just indicate an approximate month, quarter, or year. If preferred, the field can be left blank to keep things as they are now.
- Co-head of Build a Rocket Boy, Mark Gerhard, during a staff meeting, named those responsible for the campaign to undermine MindsEye's reputation, reports Insider Gaming. According to the journalists, Gerhard blamed a certain "very large American company," noting that "it’s not the one you'd immediately think of." He claimed that this company didn't act directly, but instead hired the British platform Ritual Network to pay several influencers, media outlets, and even some Build a Rocket Boy staff to "sabotage" the game. Allegedly, over a million euros were spent on this effort. Ritual Network, in a statement to Insider Gaming, denied the accusations. Build a Rocket Boy representatives stated that they wouldn't discuss all the leaked information from the meeting but confirmed they did identify "saboteurs." The studio has already reached out to lawyers and plans to take action.
- As expected, over the weekend, Nioh 3's peak online player count on Steam reached new heights. According to SteamDB, on the evening of February 8, the number of concurrent players in the Steam version of the action RPG exceeded 88,000. This is the best performance among all Koei Tecmo games released on Steam. Previously, the record was held by Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, which at one time had a peak online presence of 75,900 players.