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Ubisoft turns off online services for over 90 games

In a post on its website, Ubisoft, the publishing giant behind numerous blockbuster triple-A franchises, announced that it is shutting down online services in over 90 of its games.

Owners of any of the games Ubisoft listed will still be able to play their games, just without any of their online features. Things like online co-op and multiplayer will no longer be available. Likewise, users will no longer be able to unlock Units from any games that used Ubisoft Connect services. Units are a special currency used by the publisher that players could unlock by completing in-game challenges to spend on cosmetics.

Unlockable content in these games, which Ubisoft describes as “maps and skins” are disabled going forward, meaning players can no longer unlock them. For PC players, these pieces of content are being removed entirely, even if they’ve already been redeemed. Console players will still have access to unlockable content in their games as long as they don’t reset their saved game files.

As for the games that have been affected by Ubisoft’s online service shutdown, they’re a mishmash of popular and less well-known titles, but only releases on specific platforms have been affected. Far Cry Blood Dragon has had its online services shut down across PC, PS3, and Xbox 360, for instance. It’s worth noting that some of the games present on Ubisoft’s list have had their online services shut down last year. Assassin’s Creed 2‘s online services have been unavailable on PC since June 1, 2021, along with online services for Far Cry 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, and other titles.

The company’s decision to shut down online services for so many of its games follows rumors that the company is being eyed up for an acquisition. According to Bloomberg, private equity firms, namely Blackstone Inc. and KKR & Co. have expressed interest in buying the French game publishing giant.

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Otto Kratky
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Otto Kratky is a freelance writer with many homes. You can find his work at Digital Trends, GameSpot, and Gamepur. If he's…
iPhone 15 Pro can natively run the latest Resident Evil and Assassin’s Creed games
Leon and Ashley in the Resident Evil 4 remake.

In a major stride forward for mobile gaming, Apple announced during today's event that console games like Assassin's Creed Mirage, Resident Evil 4's remake, and Resident Evil Village are coming to the iPhone 15 Pro. These aren't watered-down mobile spinoffs or cloud-streamed games either; they're running natively with the help of the A17 Pro chip.

During the gaming segment of Tuesday's Apple event, the power of the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro chip was highlighted. The 3-nanometer chip has 19 billion transistors, a six-core CPU, a 16-core Neural Engine that can handle 35 trillion operations per second, and a six-core GPU that supports things like mesh shading and hardware-accelerated ray tracing in video games. Several game developers were featured following its introduction to explain and show off just how powerful the A17 Pro Chip is. While this segment started with games already native to mobile, like The Division Resurgence, Honkai: Star Rail, and Genshin Impact, it didn't take long for some games made for systems like PS5 and Xbox Series X to appear.
Capcom's Tsuyoshi Kanda showed up and revealed that natively running versions of Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 4 are coming to the iPhone 15 Pro before the end of the year. Later, Apple confirmed that Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Mirage, which launches next month on PC and consoles, will also get a native iPhone 15 Pro port in early 2024, while Death Stranding is slated for a 2023 iPhone 15 Pro launch.
Historically, console-quality games like these have been impossible to get running on a mobile phone without the use of cloud gaming. Confirming that these three AAA games can all run natively on iPhone 15 Pro is certainly an impactful way for Apple to show just how powerful the A17 Pro chip is.

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Game developers are furious over Unity’s new runtime fees
Art of Unity

The makers of Unity, one of the most popular video game engines, announced a new "Unity Runtime Fee" that is set to take effect next year. Game developers aren't taking kindly to the announcement as the new fee is financially punishing, especially for smaller developers using the Unity Personal and Unity Plus plans.
Unity went into more detail about this in a blog post on Tuesday morning. It explains that starting on January 1, 2024, games that pass certain revenue and install thresholds will have to pay the Unity Runtime Fee. For developers using Unity Pro or Unity Enterprise, games "that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months and have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs" will have to pay the fee. For smaller developers using the free Unity Personal plan, this threshold is for titles that "have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months and have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs." It doesn't matter whether or not your game was released before January 1 or this announcement, the fee will still apply starting next year if your game boots up with Unity Runtime.
This chart breaks down the fees Unity game developers will have to pay. Unity
According to a chart produced by Unity, Personal and Plus plan holders will end up paying the big fee proportionally, with it being $0.20 per install. For indie titles that have cheaper price tags and don't make that much more than $200,000 but are installed a lot, the financial risk is clear. While Unity said it "set high revenue and game install thresholds to avoid impacting those who have yet to find scale, meaning they don’t need to pay the fee until they have reached significant success," this announcement is not going over well with indie developers, many of whom used Unity Personal because of its cheaper and more accessible nature.
A tweet from game developer Rami Ismail explains that this fee being tied to the number of times the game is installed makes using Unity a risk for developers accounting for subscription service downloads, charity bundles, a free-to-play model, giveaways, and even piracy. Tomas Sala, the developer behind the Falconeer franchise, tweeted about how he's worried about paying exorbitant fees in the future because he's given away so many keys to charity. "This is ball-and-chaining me for an engine I already pay every year," Sala says.
Ultimately, the Unity Runtime Fee will punish developers that release receive don't receive much in the way of revenue but do see high install counts, which is not uncommon in the indie space bolstered by Xbox Game Pass and Humble Bundle. For now, Unity seems to be sticking with its decision, but this is definitely something developers using one of the most popular game engines out there will need to keep in mind when releasing games in the future.
Update: In response to the backlash, Unity posted the following statement on X:
"Today we announced a change to our business model which includes new additions to our subscription plans, and the introduction of a Runtime fee. We wanted to provide clarifying answers to the top questions most of you are asking. Yes, this is a price increase and it will only affect a small subset of current Unity Editor users. Today, a large majority of Unity Editor users are currently not paying anything and will not be affected by this change. The Unity Runtime fee will not impact the majority of our developers. The developers who will be impacted are generally those who have successful games and are generating revenue way above the thresholds we outlined in our blog. This means that developers who are still building their business and growing the audience of their games will not pay a fee. The program was designed specifically this way to ensure developers could find success before the install fee takes effect. We want to be clear that the counter for Unity Runtime fee installs starts on January 1, 2024 - it is not retroactive or perpetual. We will charge once for a new install; not an ongoing perpetual license royalty, like revenue share. We looked for ways to lessen the impact on developers, and provide ways to bring the Runtime fee to zero. If you’re using any of our ad products, Unity Gaming Services or cloud services, etc. please contact us to discuss discounts. We are actively listening to and following your questions closely. Please review our FAQ on today’s announcement. We also invite you to continue to discuss these changes with us on our forums."

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 1 improves the game in over 1,000 ways
Karlach in Baldur's Gate 3.

Larian Studios released Patch No. 1 for Baldur's Gate 3 today, almost a month after launch and following several hotfixes. It brings over 1,000 gameplay improvements and bug fixes to the highly successful RPG.

Baldur's Gate 3 has been a massive success since its August 3 release on PC, but it definitely hasn't been free of bugs and some other weird quirks. Four hotfixes have addressed some of the most pressing issues, but these patches are much larger in scale when it comes to what they add and fix. Larian says Patch 1 is primarily focused on game balance and flow tweaks, as well as bug fixes. There's nothing too glamorous or game-changing, but it should make playing Baldur's Gate 3 an even smoother experience. 
A couple of these fixes have to do with the game's romance system. A bug causing the conclusion to Shadowheart's romance to not activate properly has been fixed, and animations have been added so taller characters don't awkwardly kiss or hug shorter ones anymore. Fixes have been made in preventing bugs at the Morphic Pool, an issue where loot wouldn't appear on corpses in multiplayer, and some Game Over screens problematically appearing where they shouldn't have. There are way too many tweaks and bug fixes to list here, so we recommend going to the Baldur's Gate 3 website to check out the full list.
Unfortunately, game performance improvements aren't part of Patch 1, as Larian Studios is saving those for Patch 2. But it says that we "won’t be waiting long" for those. Baldur's Gate 3 is available now for PC, comes to PlayStation 5 on September 6, and will launch on Xbox Series X/S before the end of the year.

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