Is Arctic Combat a Counter Strike ripoff with some COD thrown in?

Outrage spreads around the web as Arctic Combat has been accused for stealing the famous Counter Strike map, de_dust2. This map has been in every Counter Strike game, including the newest one, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, often abbreviated as CS:GO. In terms of gameplay, many people say it is very similar to the newer Call of Duty games. Want to be your own judge? Watch this video from PCgamer.

Any Counter strike fan, hardcore or casual recognized the map right off the bat. Want to play it for yourself? Sign up for the beta, or look around, as everyone who gets a Beta key gets an extra five to give to friends. But I wouldn’t play the game, as it would fuel them to actually carry on with their thieving ways. So far Valve has done nothing in terms of legal action, but we wont be surprised if they do.

Skyrim’s New DLC Hearthfire Announced For Xbox 360 September 4th

The new Skyrim DLC, Hearthfire,  will let you build your own house, WITH YOUR BARE HANDS LIKE A MAN (or a woman). As you have seen in the trailer above, you can pick what you want to put in your house, like a greenhouse, or alchemy lab. You can make a farm! You can hire people to tend to this farm! You can hire a bard! You can move your spouse in! You can adopt children! You can raise a family!

This is the second DLC for Skyrim, and so far Skyrim has seem to been following the Oblivion style of DLC with some DLC being bigger than the other, instead of the Fallout 3 style, where every DLC is about the same size. The DLC comes out September 4th, for the Xbox 360, because of the deal made with Microsoft where Skyrim DLC would come out exclusively on Xbox live at least thirty days before the other platforms.

No date has been announced yet for the PC and PS3 versions, but we can expect the PC version to be out on Steam, the earliest being early October, with the latest being late October. It’s hard to speculate for the PS3, as the PS3 version of Dawnguard hasn’t even been announced yet. Will any DLC ever come out for the PS3? The world may never know, but we’ll let you know if the world ever does!

Now, are you a PC gamer who just can’t wait for this DLC? Well you can use this Mod to hold you over, and who knows, it might even be better!

-From the basement of Alex_N

‘I Am Alive’ Coming To The PC On September 13th

The post apocalyptic survival game I am Alive by Ubisoft Shanghai and published by Ubisoft is coming out next month on the PC, five months after it’s debut on XBLA on April 7th. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as many Ubisoft games come out later on the PC compared to the console counterparts. This isn’t  due to a problem with developing for the different systems, as Windows and Xbox development are very similar, to the point where 4chan’s /v/ board got Skyrim DLC Dawnguard’s Xbox version that released 30 days earlier working on the PC.

So why does Ubisoft do this? Well, Ubisoft has been known to delay PC releases for most, if not all of their games, and recently in an interview the Ubisoft CEO  Yves Guillemot was quoted saying “On PC it’s only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it’s only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It’s around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage”.

Now, PC pirating is nothing to joke about. PC games are much easier to pirate compared to console games, but still overall, the processes is painstaking to pirate a game for your PC. Gabe Newell (The god of the internet and also happens to be the CEO of Valve) once said that “The people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russia” and that “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work, It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates”. Ubisoft tends to treat the PC market like it’s filled with thieving people, when Valve has proven the opposite.

So will Ubisoft stop their shenanigans of delaying PC ports, or shall it only get worse?

-From the Basement of Alex_N