Dying Light 2 postponed, UK NHS recognizes loot boxes as gambling, Sony's next PC project is Gaming News Digest # 1.03 from Cadelta. Part one (Topic)

Also in our digest: transfer won't save CD PR staff from crunches, Sonic 2020, Rockstar pays little taxes.

Dying Light 2 has been moved to an unknown date

According to forecasters, this week we have another transfer of games. This time, the victim of this phenomenon of early 2020 was Dying Light 2 from the Techland studio.

According to the developers, Dying Light 2 is the largest Techland project, so they need more time to fully recreate their entire vision in the game.

“We have heard this more than once,” you say, “when is the release?”. But we were not told this. The developers did not report the date or the approximate month of the release. They want to tell us at least some details in the coming months. If the studio's global plans remain unchanged, the game will be released not only on PC, PS4 and XOne, but also on the next generation consoles.

Loot boxes are considered gambling by the UK's NHS

The UK NHS [National Health Service] has drawn attention to loot boxes and the fact that they are often compared to gambling. Its head Claire Murdoch said that the games with loot boxes, which teach children to gamble from childhood, should be removed from the market. She also called on the industry to impose restrictions on spending money so that players do not leave thousands of pounds in the game; show the real drop rate of items, as well as tell parents about in-app purchases and their dangers.

According to the NHS, which cite the British Gambling Commission, 55,000 British children have been found to have signs of addiction. It is reported that 86% of parents calmly allow their children to play projects labeled 18+ and believe that it does not negatively affect them, and 62% select the game if they notice that it affects their children negatively.

The next Sony project on the PC will be the Dreams constructor

Something strange is happening with Sony. The Japanese were once conservatives, releasing games exclusively on their own console. We now have rumors similar to Horizon: Zero Dawn coming to PC. And it also became known that after her we are expected to enter the great and powerful designer Dreams from the studio Media Molecule.

Eurogamer news editor Tom Phillips writes about this on Twitter. Like Jason Schreyer, he says Sony will be much more willing to share its exclusives in the future.

However, the news about Dreams cannot be called sensational, as the developer reported that they planned to release the game on PC if the game has a huge fanbase on PS4. The game itself will be released on February 14.

Migrating Cyberpunk 2077 does not cancel CD Projekt Red rework

As we wrote last time, Cyberpunk 2077 has been postponed until this fall. It may seem that this is how the studio has ensured a normal pace of work. Alas, no.

The head of the company, Adam Kichinsky, spoke about this in an interview with the studio's investors. He was asked if crunches will continue in the studio, to which he replied that they are trying to limit rework, but the development of the game is on the final path, and unfortunately, they are.

The studio solved the problem with crunches in May 2019. Then the co-founder of the company, Marcin Ivinsky, said that the management decided to use the tactic of "no forced crunches." Employees might only be asked to stay late in the evenings or on weekends, but they might not agree.

Recall that in 2017 there was a scandal around the company related to rework, when anonymous developers from the studio published a review on the Glassdoor job search service, saying that the CD PR was just insane rework and they laughed at the fact that employees Bungie and Bioware were called crunches.

Celebrating 30 years of the Sonic Series, SEGA launches Sonic 2020

Next year, the blue hedgehog Sonic will turn 30 years old. To prepare for this anniversary, SEGA has announced the Sonic 2020 project. Each month of this year, it will publish new information about the franchise on the 20th.

The first news on January 20 is the very announcement of the project. Plus, the company has posted a few images that can be used as phone screensavers, twitter backgrounds, and PC wallpapers. The company also posted 21 images for avatars on social networks.

SEGA is looking for new artists who will paint even more pictures to accompany each new news. Obviously, the culmination of this whole project will be the announcement of a new game.

UK analysts think Rockstar has too much tax incentive

Let's go back to Albion. Video Games Tax Relief is a tax incentive system for UK developers. A game studio can get this benefit, for example, if a game is scripted by a citizen of the United Kingdom, thereby bringing British culture to the game, or if the game is created on the mainland.

There is also a TaxWatch analytical center in the kingdom, which tracks who gets what benefits and investigates if someone evades payment. The organization says that Rockstar Games has saved the most savings from Video Games, ? 37.6 million. This is somewhere around 48.8 million dollars and 37% of the total amount of money that was part of the program for the period from 2018-2019.

The company speculates that this is due to the studio making GTA 6 [developers can claim the tax break even if they haven't released the game yet]. They assume this, since Video Games Tax Relief is often associated with taxes on money spent on creating, so we can already see how much resources are spent on creating a new GTA.

This is where we can finish, they say: "Uraaa, a new GTA in development." However, TaxWatch believes that the government mismanages money and allows companies to save a lot. Thus, it was calculated that the total amount of benefits will not exceed 35 million pounds per year, and assistance will be provided to small studios.

As a result, the amounts exceed one hundred million, and four giants use the service: Rockstar, Sony, SEGA and Warner Bros. And according to analysts, Rockstar has not yet paid corporate tax on the word at all, and this despite the fact that GTA 5 has earned over 6 billion for all the time. Classics of the capitalist world.

They conclude that the company should be taken away from the trough and provided assistance to those who need it most.

This was all news from the beginning of the week, stay tuned.

The Topic of Article: Dying Light 2 postponed, UK NHS recognizes loot boxes as gambling, Sony's next PC project is Gaming News Digest # 1.03 from Cadelta. Part one.
Author: Jake Pinkman