Opinion
47 CommentsValve deserves more of the blame for Counter-Strike’s disgraceful gambling scene
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of the most popular multiplayer shooters in existence, and its passionate players have found many ways to show off their love for the game outside of the game itself. There’s esports. There are dozens of forums and an extremely active subreddit.
And there’s also a growing portion of the community that uses Counter-Strike as a means of gambling.
That sketchy gambling scene has been in the news a whole lot this week. It’s a mess, and aspects of it may well be illegal. Right now a lot of the attention is on certain Global Offensive community personalities who have, at the very least, misled their audience and abused their power.
But the spotlight also deserves to be shined on Valve. We wouldn’t be in this mess if not for them.
W...
Cover Story
Issue
20
July 5, 2016
StarCraft: Ghost: What went wrong
Dig deep into what happened behind the scenes with Blizzard’s canceled StarCraft action game.
Read moreHands-on with the Battlefield 1 closed alpha
The general vibe amidst the mud and rubble of Battlefield 1's closed alpha this week is highly positive, as you'd expect from a game that enjoyed a good showing at E3, where the shooter impressed attendees and media.
This World War I-themed game follows the essential pattern evolved by developer DICE over its 15 years of making hit shooters, which translates into large battle spaces, lots of vehicles and environmental damage, dubbed "levolution" by Electronic Arts' marketing people. It's all familiar stuff, well-wrought and polished.
Based on this Conquest mode alpha, the Battlefield faithful are happy with how Battlefield 1 is shaping up. Most of the comments I saw during my 10 hours were glowing with praise. You can get a sense of the action from our video stream (below), posted...
News
29 CommentsEvolve goes free-to-play, back in beta (update)
Following yesterday's removal, Evolve is back on Steam with a new name and a new price: free. Developer Turtle Rock Studios has relaunched the game as Evolve Stage 2, a free-to-play Windows PC game that will enter beta testing later today.
Included in Stage 2 are several new modes, characters, maps, unlockables and more. It launches with much of this content today, and Turtle Rock Studios will continue to release content updates over the next few months, the co-founders said in a post about the re-release.
The user interface, various bugs and the game's overall performance will also be tweaked during the beta phase, according to the developer.
Last night, Chris Ashton and Phil Robb of Turtle Rock explained why Evolve has gone back into beta more than a year after the game hit retail.
...
News
4 CommentsHuge mod seeks to bring Seattle to the world of Fallout 4
An 18-member team is at work on an ambitious mod introducing a completely new region to the Fallout world through Fallout 4, though it is "several years away" from completion.
Fallout Cascadia, set in post-apocalyptic Seattle, aspires to offer a map roughly the size of Fallout 3, but with more quests and locations than the Far Harbor DLC just launched. The modders will release it for free.
Work on Fallout Cascadia began six months ago, but with the Creation Kit currently in open beta on PC, work has intensified and the team wants to get word out.
However, the team says "the expected release is several years away." That's far enough out that there is no way to tell if it will work on consoles. The team does plan to share the mod through Bethesda.net, which would make it available to...
News
47 CommentsGTX 1060 hits this month with 980 performance for $249
The GTX 1060 will be as powerful as Nvidia’s GTX 980 card but only consume 120 watts of power and cost about $249 when it arrives on July 19, the company announced this morning.
Cards are expected from ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, MSI, Palit, PNY and Zotac. Nvidia’s own founders edition of the card will sell for $299.
The 1060 is built on a new chip called the GP106. Both the 1080 and 1070 use the GP104. The new card features 1,280 CUDA cores, 6GB of GDDR5 memory running at 8Gbps and a boost clock of 1.7GHz, which can be overclocked to 2GHz.
As with both the 1070 and 1080 Founders Edition cards, the GTX 1060 Founders Edition has three DisplayPorts, an HDMI port and a DVI port.
Nvidia says that "across the top gaming titles,...
News
26 CommentsTurtle Rock’s 4v1 shooter Evolve removed from sale on Steam
Evolve, Turtle Rock Studios’ multiplayer shooter that pits four players against a giant playable monster, is no longer available for purchase on Steam. The change appears to have been made on the eve of an announcement from the studio, one that has been speculated to be a move to a free-to-play model — though Turtle Rock and publisher 2K have made no indication that the game’s business model is changing.
On Thursday, July 7 at 9 a.m. PT, Turtle Rock plans to host a livestream where it says it will talk about the next patch for Evolve. "A lot happens in the next patch," Turtle Rock said, calling the update "a big one."
Evolve launched on Steam — as well as on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One — in February 2015. Last month, a couple hundred PC gamers were playing Evolve at its peak on Steam,...
Inside
4 CommentsInside guide: How to find all of the orbs and unlock the secret ending
There's more to Inside than puzzles. This guide will show you how to find the game's hidden items, earn its achievements and unlock the alternate, secret ending.
Inside doesn't name its areas, so we've organized this guide based on geographical locations. Just head to the table of contents below to jump in.
Wrestling with puzzles? We've got your back.
Like its predecessor Limbo, Inside is an atmospheric puzzle game that puts a child in a disturbing situation. Your job is to solve puzzles, and our walkthrough has the solution for every one — including videos for the toughest of the bunch that you can also watch on Polygon's YouTube channel.
For more on Inside, you can read Polygon's review and press play above to watch our video review.
Table of contents
The...
News
34 CommentsCounter-Strike YouTuber offers apology in light of gambling scandal (update)
Trevor "Tmartn" Martin uploaded a video apologizing for not disclosing his involvement in CS:GO Lotto, a popular gambling site that he and fellow YouTube creator Tom "ProSyndicate" Cassel have equity in and were promoting on their channels.
The two-minute video opens with Martin playing with his golden retriever before he launches into his public statement.
"I'm going to try to make this as short and sweet as possible," he said, followed by an expression of gratitude for his fanbase and those who have stuck by him during the scandal, in which he was exposed by several YouTubers for obscuring the fact that he owned CS:GO Lotto during his promotional videos. He then moved into his involvement with CS:GO Lotto.
"Now, my connection to CS:GO Lotto has been a matter of public record since...
News
24 CommentsOverwatch's latest patch set to fix Competitive Play's leaving problem
Blizzard is taking care of a recurring problem with Overwatch's competitive mode, according to patch notes of an update now available to Windows PC players. Following complaints about punishments for leaving matches for any amount of time, the developer is adjusting the effect that leaving and rejoining will have in Competitive Play.
Fans have taken to various Overwatch communities, like Reddit and Battle.net, to call out the penalties for rejoining a game they have briefly stepped away from as too harsh.
"If you haven't already known, leaving a competitive game and then rejoining will still count as a loss, no matter how long you left for," a user wrote in a thread today. As a result, players' skill ratings have been affected, as have their match histories and win rates.
Overwatch p...
News
12 CommentsTeam Fortress 2 update adding matchmaking, ranked play and more
Team Fortress 2’s incoming "Meet Your Match" update will include the long-awaited introduction of competitive play with matchmaking, developer Valve announced today.
The Competitive Mode in Team Fortress 2 will feature ranked play in a six-on-six mode that supports all nine classes and all weapons. You will be able to make your way upward through 18 ranks; you’ll ascend by winning matches and descend by losing. The mode will determine a score for you based on your performance, and use that score to match you with players of a similar skill level.
Matchmaking will also be available for quickplay. Team Fortress 2 will match you into unranked 12-on-12 pub games with similarly skilled players.
"This means no more auto-balancing — you'll be playing a match from start to finish, with...
News
29 CommentsReport: This year's Steam Summer Sale was even bigger than last year's
The recently wrapped Steam Summer Sale proved to be an even bigger success than last year's, according to Steam Spy. Data culled from the second annual sales period points to this year's bargains generating more than $230 million in revenue, ahead of last year's $160 million pull.
Steam Spy founder Sergey Galyonkin hopes to publish a more in-depth breakdown of the year-over-year changes later this week, but early calculations include the number of games sold (37 million, four million more than last summer's sale) along with some of the biggest games.
The biggest of these, according to Steam Spy's own charts, is Limbo, which sold more than 1.1 million copies over the course of the sales period. What's especially interesting is that Limbo wasn't actually discounted during the Summer...
News
26 CommentsBlizzard releases major hint about Overwatch’s next character (update)
The Overwatch team just posted a major possible hint on Twitter about the next character coming to the hero-based shooter, further supporting player theories that a new sniper-support class is coming to the game.
The tweet shows a new blueprint for a weapon designed by turret master Torbjörn that incorporates the biotic technology used in Mercy’s Caduceus Staff and Soldier: 76’s Biotic Field healing ability. The weapon is a "prototype biotic rifle" that appears to offer its user the ability to heal allies from a distance — and potentially cause damage as well, if Mercy’s concerns are valid.
[ARCHIVE] Communications Records of Ziegler, A. – Overwatch File 00231 – Security Classification: CONFIDENTIAL pic.twitter.com/lLAxTL2DhO
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) July 6, 2016
"As...
News
26 CommentsThe Witcher 3 is getting a Game of the Year Edition
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt developer CD Projekt Red is planning to release a Game of the Year Edition of the open-world action game, the studio confirmed today in a statement to Polygon.
"With all the free DLC and updates the game received so far, including significant changes to the game’s interface and mechanics, many gamers have asked us if we’re working on some sort of a ‘Game of the Year Edition,’" said game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. "I’m happy to confirm – yes, plans are in motion to release such an edition. We’ll release more details, including the release date, in the future."
The news was first reported by Eurogamer, after a rating for such an edition was spotted on USK, the German ratings board. Citing an anonymous source, Eurogamer reports that The Witcher 3’s Game of...
Culture
8 CommentsSomeone gave the pope a copy of Undertale
When one visits the pope, it is customary to bring His Holiness a gift.
MatPat, a video gaming YouTube personality, was invited to the Vatican as part of a world summit on the Internet and how it brings people together. Informed that he should present Pope Francis with a gift, MatPat chose Undertale, the indie role-playing hit by Toby Fox that launched last year.
This is somewhat curious, as Undertale had no physical launch. Instead of a disc, it's assumed he presented Francis with a Steam code. No idea if the pontiff has redeemed it yet.
MatPat takes a desultory 16 minutes to explain the choice in the following video. If you want the CliffsNotes version, he says it's because the Pope proclaimed 2016 the "year of mercy for the Catholic church, a period celebrating forgiveness and...
Report
155 CommentsDeus Ex: Mankind Divided and the problem of 'mechanical apartheid'
When Square Enix began publicizing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the company used the phrase "mechanical apartheid," to illustrate and market a fictional world in which society is divided by governmental decree.
Apartheid (literally "separateness" in Afrikaans) was the brutal governmental system of political oppression and racial segregation used by white rulers in South Africa throughout much of the last century.
Some have questioned the use of a word like "apartheid" to sell a video game. And with more details of the game's story emerging, it looks like any similarities between its story and actual apartheid are fanciful, at best.
At the time of the game's first trailers in 2015, some objected to this allusion. The writer Austin Walker tweeted, "How might we feel if they called it...
News
7 CommentsKiller Instinct survey hints at possible Crackdown, Perfect Dark and Halo characters
The cast of Microsoft Game Studios and Iron Galaxy’s Killer Instinct may expand to include Joanna Dark, an agent from Crackdown and a new Halo character, according to a survey distributed by the fighting game’s developer.
The survey, which polls players of the Xbox One and Windows PC fighting game on which existing characters they play and enjoy most, names more than a dozen new and reimagined fighters for Killer Instinct. These includes variations on the existing roster, such as Shadow Orchid, a "pre-transformation" Cinder and a "Broccoli Man" version of Aganos.
Some all-new characters are also up for consideration, including a Magic Archer, a Djinn, Eagle (Thunder’s younger brother), a Lovecraftian fighter, a Wendigo and Eyedol (the two-headed boss from Rare’s original Killer...
News
13 CommentsReport: Call of Duty could have gone to ancient Rome (update)
Activision once considered a Call of Duty pitch that would have taken the military shooter franchise to the battlefields of ancient Rome, reports GamesRadar.
Citing multiple sources, GamesRadar reports that the project was known as Call of Duty: Roman Wars and was in development at Vicarious Visions late in the previous decade. Vicarious Visions, which is located near Albany, New York, is an Activision-owned studio best known for its work on the Skylanders and Guitar Hero franchises.
Roman Wars would reportedly have focused on Julius Caesar’s 10th legion, a cavalry unit that was Caesar’s most trusted legion. The unit was featured heavily in Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentary on the Gallic War), Caesar’s firsthand account of the wars he fought against various Gallic tribes from...
News
15 CommentsFallout 4's latest update gives Codsworth hundreds of new names to say (Update)
Fallout 4's lovable robot butler, Codsworth, just broadened his vocabulary. An update for the Windows PC version of the game adds more than 300 more names for him to say out loud, among other tweaks and features.
Bethesda Game Studios first launched the update in a Steam beta, but the butler's expanded library of names was not included. Instead, it makes for a surprise addition to the game's 1.6 update.
Codsworth will first say your name after creating your character. While a player can name their character anything they want, the robot only knew so many names to say aloud; Bethesda said it had programmed more than 1,000 to start. These included "Fuckface," "Boobies" and "Todd Howard," director of the open-world hit.
Names like Griffin, Allegra and Cheers' Sam Malone, however, were...
Opinion
33 CommentsThe Sonic series’ high point is not a game
Sonic the Hedgehog has been around for 25 years, and in that time the series has produced some totally fine games. Some of them (Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic Colors) even border on being great.
But in 25 years, Sonic has only managed to put forward one true masterpiece, and it’s not a game. We’re talking about "Escape from the City," the true artistic high point of Sega’s life in general and Sonic’s in particular.
[Note: This opinion piece is a collaboration between Allegra Frank and Phil Kollar.]
Keep movin’ on
To understand why this song qualifies as a masterpiece, you need to know its context. "Escape from the City" is the theme to the opening level of Sonic Adventure 2, the hedgehog’s final outing on Sega Dreamcast. That level is called, appropriately,...
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