GameTrailers has shut down after 13 years in business
Video game magazine and website GameTrailers has shut down after more than 13 years. The website posted the announcement on its Twitter account and Facebook page on Monday, Feb. 8.
The majority site’s staff members later hosted a Twitch stream of Grand Theft Auto 3, the first game the website’s staff captured footage of, back in 2002. The stream was mainly a cheerful goodbye to the website’s many fans, and few details were provided about the decision to close. The staff had only been informed of the closure four hours beforehand and were not involved in the decision.
Though nothing was confirmed, many staff members implied they may continue creating content elsewhere in the future.
Riot retires the Dominion game mode from League of Legends.
League of Legends is an immensely popular game and is dominant in the modern MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) genre, but not every aspect of the game sees the same amount of play by gamers. Riot has announced that they will be disabling the Dominion game mode and removing the Crystal Scar map from the game effective Feb. 22.
The game mode is only routinely played by less than 0.5 percent of the game’s active player base, many of which Riot is concerned may be bots. After analyzing the costs and effort required to maintain an additional game mode and map for the game, Riot ultimately decided it was simply not worth the investment.
As a consolation to the minority of players who still actively participate in the Dominion game mode, Riot has created a special icon that will be only given to those who have won 100 or more matches in the mode.
Blizzard considers giving out free copies of World of Warcraft with Warcraft movie tickets.
Duncan Jones’s Warcraft movie has generated a lot of hype from long-time fans of the series and newcomers alike since its initial announcement. With the barrage of new trailers and merchandise already hitting store shelves, it’s no surprise that Blizzard is looking to capitalize on the film’s popularity. What better way than to give out a free copy of the game that made the franchise so popular in the first place, World of Warcraft?
As confirmed by a Blizzard admin on Reddit, Blizzard is considering giving away a free copy of the game and a month of subscription time with every ticket to the movie, roughly a $55 value. Though the final decision has not yet been made, this may be part of a plan to bring the subscriber numbers of World of Warcraft up from the losses that followed its most recent expansion, Warlords of Draenor.
The player base of Blizzard’s powerhouse MMORPG has been steadily declining since its all-time high of 12 million concurrent subscribers in 2012. The game currently rests at about 5.5 million subscribers, the lowest number since the release of the game’s first expansion Burning Crusade. Though this may seem like a substantial loss, Warcraft is still one of the most popular games in the world and firmly holds the title of the most profitable game of all time, with over $10 billion in profits since release.