Checkpoint XP Daily – Call of Duty League and Getting Old
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We’ve finally got a confirmed start date for the Call of Duty League, plus we go over other big headlines from the week in gaming and esports.
The eagerly anticipated Call of Duty League has finally got a start date and it’s going to be overlapping with just about every other major esports league. The League starts in January of 2020 and will take place over Friday through Sunday. We also cover other huge headlines in both the gaming and the esports world. Plus we asked our social media followers if they could do a perfect cosplay of any video game character for Halloween, who would they pick?
Check out an excerpt about our conversation on the recent gaming news headlines below.
Joe Sloan EA Games is officially returning to Steam. EA and Valve have struck a deal for their games to appear on the platform along with EA Access and that partnership will begin with the upcoming Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order on November the 15th. EA Access will become available on Steam in spring of 2020.
Robbie Landis Aww was Origins not working out for ya?
Joe Sloan There are so many spins off like this grand partnership that they’ve finally come to, but everyone just looks at it and goes, “No, you want your games to start selling well again.”
Nate Bender All I can think, all I could think of is the Loki meme. You must be truly desperate to turn to me for help.
Robbie Landis No, I hope this means we get Mass Effect 3 on Steam finally.
Joe Sloan Oh, please.
Norris Howard Wishful thinking, Robbie.
Nate Bender Here’s the thing, though. This is the first domino in a long line of dominoes that will eventually end up falling because a lot of these, you know, first party digital distribution platforms that every development company suddenly decided they needed are definitely going to be coming all the way back to Steam, because that’s where the largest potential pool of, you know, paying audience members. That’s where the biggest pool of customers is.
Joe Sloan Steam and Epic Store are going to start hoovering these things up left and right.
Robbie Landis I wonder if it was Steam that went to EA because of the traction that Epic’s been getting. Because imagine if this would’ve been the other way around EA and Epic partner up.
Nate Bender You know, that’s an interesting theory, Robbie. I don’t know how how much water it holds, but it’s definitely interesting.
Joe Sloan Ubisoft has admitted that Ghost Recon: Breakpoint was, well, pretty much a disaster. The game has had one of their rockiest launches in recent memory and has now outlined their plans to fix it. While the immediate focus will be on fixing bugs and improving stability, November will play host to two major updates for the game. Yeah, I got to play a little bit of a Breakpoint and no, it is morbidly plain.
Robbie Landis I’m not really sure how they mess that up after Ghost Recon: Wildlands. Which I played. And it was fine. I’m glad that I didn’t get this on release and decided to kind of wait till maybe there’s like a lull in the seasons and I’ll pick it up then.
Joe Sloan They stripped out some of the features that were good in Wildlands. It’s just so mediocre and boring and its buggy too. So it’s like, yeah, it’s time to fix this.
Nate Bender With its reception you would think it was called Point Break.
Joe Sloan I hate you so much.
Nate Bender Sorry.
Robbie’s Drop Board [Crickets sounding.].
Nate Bender Ow! That’s the loudest drop. Why is the loudest drop we have crickets?!
Joe Sloan Anyone active in EVE Online knows how hectic things have been lately. A mysterious faction with new ships and new weapons has been invading the galaxy and now chapter 2 of the invasion will launch in November. The new launch will see players get an opportunity to fight back and capture an enemy ship. Again, EVE Online is eternally the most interesting game that none of us will ever play.
Norris Howard Nobody will ever play it. The people who play EVE Online are the same people who’ve been playing it for a decade. It’s all run by like 46 year old accountants. Those are the only people who still play it. And yet they have one of the most interesting communities out there. That game is brilliant to report on.
Nate Bender I have to believe that it’s because of the amount of freedom that CCP gives their players inside of EVE. There is an enormous amount of freedom that the players have to be able to, you know, create events and make an ongoing history that sometimes is counter to what the developing company wants. But they go, oh, OK. So we’re going to we’re going to go with the way that the momentum is.
Norris Howard And I think that’s a really good point, too. Usually massive online games like that have a very well established law, EVE Online gave you the rough, broad strokes and lay and let the lore be created by the community itself.
Nate Bender Yeah. It’s actually an ongoing history. That’s, you know, a history of actions taken by the players. It’s pretty amazing when it comes to online games.
Joe Sloan Counter Strike keys can no longer be resold. For a long time players have been able to buy and trade keys used to open the game’s equivalent of loot boxes. However, that ability is being removed from the game as Valve says the feature is being abused for money laundering purposes.
Nate Bender That’s terrifying.
Joe Sloan They said that originally they would monitor a lot of this and most of time was a harmless thing if they have a key they’d sell it or whatnot. But now they’ve said that almost all the transactions of keys these days, like a statistically negligible amount, are harmless at this point. Most all of them are for money laundering.
Nate Bender Between this and skins trading in CS:GO I think tha Valve really has a problem on their hands and they’ve got to really come to the table with some solutions to be able to rectify it.
Joe Sloan Here’s a good start, take that ability out of the game.
Nate Bender Yeah, absolutely.
Joe Sloan Death Stranding is set to release in mid November and pretty much the entire PlayStation world seems pretty excited about it. We found out this week that not only will the game be released on PS4, but that a PC version is also in the works. Yeah, you’ll have to wait a while for that one, though as it’s not scheduled to release early summer 2020.
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