Episode 550: Kowtowing to China

Blizzard finds itself in hot water as it finds itself having to explain its actions in pleasing the Chinese government, in news that’s still hot and doesn’t look like it’s going to cool down anytime soon. It’s enough to overshadow even an official console announcement from Sony. There’s a Gaming Flashback, the embarrassingly bad FMV game Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties.

The news this week includes:

  • Blizzard is facing a boycott after removing a Hearthstone Grandmaster
  • PlayStation 5 launches Holiday 2020
  • Doom Eternal delayed until March 2020, Doom 64 goes multiformat

Let us know what you think.

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The other news items included in the podcast are:

  • 2K announces Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
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Command and Conquer: Red Alert – Free!Command and Conquer: Red Alert – Free!

It is the 13th anniversary of the Command & Conquer Series, Red Alert, and Electronic Arts is giving away the original C&C: Red Alert as a download for free. Holy crap, how neat is that?

This is also a great marketing technique, Red Alert 3 arrives soon, so this will help you keep it fresh in your head prior to the new release. Maybe this also gives new gamers the ability to experience the old title before heading into the third revision.

“Download both the Allies and Soviets discs (each disc contained the single-player campaign for its respective faction), but the files are actual ISO images of the CDs themselves. That means that in order to play them, you’ll either need to burn the ISO images onto a blank disc, or use a Virtual CD program to load them.” (1up)

The free Red Alert game download will run on XP/98/Me/95 but no official Vista support. Now, you’ve got a chance to play Red Alert… what about Red Alert 2? If you pre-order Red Alert 3 you’ll get the second in the series for free as well- genius!

There is really no reason not to take advantage of this awesome deal if you’ve never played a Red Alert game and want to see how the foundation of early RTS style games started. Although this isn’t the first C&C in the game franchise it launched a few new advancements on the original C&C title so you’re really getting an RTS based on learning experiences from the first, at no price.

Heck, maybe we’ll download it again just because we can! Excellent.

DRM Free Spore Steams Forward!DRM Free Spore Steams Forward!

Gamers get upset when developers sneak ugly hacks onto their computers when they just want to play video games. Although gamers really only revolt when they know their being exploited, Spore is a fine example of how not to lock down a video game. Using SecuROM was a bad decision on the part of Electronic Arts, no matter what their PR spin tries to tell us.

Imagine a world of DRM free spore and you may be imagining reality using the Valve’s Steam software download architecture.

“The moderator specifically mentioned Spore but it’s possible this extends to other EA games that used SecuROM as well (like Mass Effect). If a game on Steam uses third-party DRM, it’s supposed to be mentioned on the product page.” (cinemablend)

We’ve been complaining about the Spore DRM for month snow on the gaming podcast, perhaps we’ll have to shut our mouths soon enough.

(Thanks, GameStooge)