While it may be of little surprise to many, Infinity Ward and Activision have confirmed that Modern Warfare 2 is coming this year.  Numerous rumors have popped up after Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard earlier this year, but a recent Tweet from the Call of Duty Twitter has put most of those to rest.  Granted, we do not know the long-term effect the new ownership will have on the series going forward and it is highly likely that this release was completely unaffected by the purchase.

The teaser showed a logo for Task Force 141, which was the protagonist group for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), but does not have any information about the game itself or what the group will be involved in.  It is safe to assume that the game is not a simple remake of Modern Warfare 2 as the company is taking steps to differentiate it from the older game.

Speaking of those steps, the series appears to be switching to Roman numerals to number the games going forward so there is no confusion about the non-Roman numerical games with the exact same name.  While that might do little to remove confusion for the casual gamer, the excitement for the new game is certainly not small as it follows up the most successful Call of Duty of all time, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. 

Warzone 2 also appears to be coming in as a free-to-play game separate from Modern Warfare II.  Activision has focused marketing on the new Warzone being “built from the ground up” as a Battle Royale game.  This might mean better performance and fewer bugs as it will be a full-featured stand-alone game, unlike Warzone which was heavily entangled with the original Modern Warfare and following CoD games (although this is Activision we are dealing with here, so only time will tell). 

Today marks the start of Halo’s HCS Kansas Major of 2022 happening Friday until Sunday in Kansas City, Missouri where Cloud9 will be trying to earn their 3rd Major Championship in a row!  24 teams from around the world will be trying to stop this from happening and OpTic is certainly looking for a rematch in the finals. 

The dates and times of the streams can be found at the bottom of this article, and we will certainly be hosting the stream on our Esports Page as teams complete for a piece of the $250,000 prize money.  The event will also host a Free for All event after the main event is complete on Saturday.  Fans can tune into either Twitter or YouTube (although we know you will be watching it at Uncrowned Gaming) to watch the event live. 

The event is a pool and therefore we do not have a bracket or more details to break down until the event starts.  Twitch drops will be available during the streams for players to earn in-game loot, just be advised that you must be watching on Twitch.tv to earn the drop.  We don’t have details of the drops, but it is likely you will need to watch the mainstream and partnered watch parties to earn all the loot!

Broadcast Dates:

• Friday, Apr 29 – 12:00 AM CT
• Saturday, Apr 30 - 12:00 AM CT
• Sunday, May 01 - 12:00 AM CT

Stream Information:

• A Stream: Twitch.tv/Halo - YouTube.com/Halo
• B Stream: Twitch.tv/HCS - Twitch.tv/Xbox - YouTube/HaloEsports
• C Stream: Twitch.tv/HCS_Red - YouTube/HaloEsports
• D Stream: Twitch.tv/HCS_Blue - YouTube/HaloEsports

Prizing Breakdown:

• Total Prize Pool: $250,000
• 1st: $100,000
• 2nd: $60,000
• 3rd: $30,000
• 4th: $15,000
• 5th - 6th: $8,000
• 7th - 8th: $5,000
• 9th - 12th: $2,250
• 13th - 16th: $1,500
• 17th - 24th: $1,000

As the COVID pandemic has pushed many workers to remote work over the past year, offices are now beginning to open their doors to these employees, and returning to the office settings seems to be the norm once again.  However, Microsoft has dropped a massive arsenal of tools to help game studios remain remote and even released these tools for small indie studies to boost their workflow outside of the office.

ID@Azure is a collaboration of cloud-based initiatives to focus on team-based workflows without the need to be geographically next to each other.  This project might not appear to be much different than standard work from home tools, but game developers are faced with massive file-sharing problems and continuous version tracking needs that are simply not possible within other tools. 

Microsoft’s Azure platform is one of the industry’s most capable and powerful cloud systems and the new ID@Azure is focused on indie game studios and allowing them to compete with much larger studios without having to generate the overhead costs of a large office and internal servers to build their games as a team.

Beta testing has begun and seems to be reporting positive feedback, but many details of the system are still to be discovered and the scale at which it can operate is also an unknown.  It can be assumed that the system is aimed to help studios place their games onto Xbox and the Xbox Game Pass cloud service, but details have yet to be released.

It was recently reported that numerous content creators and even Bungie themselves received copyright takedowns on Destiny 2 related videos.  Bungie now came out and announced that the problem was created by fake accounts posing as Bungie’s intellectual property protection service, CSC.

Along with this announcement, Bungie has stated that the issue should be resolved for creators and the submitted strikes will all be reversed.  Thankfully, Google (the owner of YouTube) has stated that they are using this to improve the platform’s generally disliked copyrighting system and will focus on trying to prevent fake strikes in the future.

It is worth noting that CSC, Bungie’s real intellectual property protection service is still up and running as normal.  Bungie advised content creators that actions, such as uploading OST songs, are still subject to copyright and will not be allowed unless done for archival reasons and following their program rules.  Bungie’s official rule for monetizing their material is that at least 20% of the video needs to be player-created content (e.g., player gameplay or commentary).

A full listing of their findings and links to their full content usage rules can be found on the blog post they provided here: https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/51193

Halo’s HCS first LAN event of 2022 is happening February 11th to 13th in Anaheim, California where North America’s best teams will compete at the North American Regional Finals! 16 teams will be featured at this major with 8 being the top 8 teams from the Raleigh Kickoff Major and 8 additional teams that qualified in the days leading up to this major. Dates, times, and other details can be found at the bottom of this article and we will be hosting the stream on Uncrowned Gaming!

The teams will be competing for $125,000 and fans can tune in on Twitch for the live stream of the event.  Cloud9 is the favorite going into the event with a dominant performance up to this point, but eUnited and FaZe are looking to dethrone the juggernaut of a team with the 2nd and 3rd seed positions. 

The tournament will be setup up via 4 pools of 4 teams selected by a random drawing to compete in a bracket where the team that wins the best of 5 moves on.  The tournament features an elimination bracket and the Grand Finals will be the best of 7.  Twitch Drops will be available for fans and the streams will be on both Twitch and YouTube. 

Broadcast Dates:

• Friday, Feb 11 - 11:30 AM PT
• Saturday, Feb 12 - 11:30 AM PT
• Sunday, Feb 13 - 11:30 AM PT

Stream Information:

• A Stream: Twitch.tv/Halo - YouTube.com/Halo
• B Stream: Twitch.tv/HCS - Twitch.tv/Xbox - YouTube/HaloEsports
• C Stream: Twitch.tv/HCS_Red - YouTube/HaloEsports
• D Stream: Twitch.tv/HCS_Blue - YouTube/HaloEsports

Prizing Breakdown:

• Total Prize Pool: $125,000
• 1st: $45,000
• 2nd: $27,500
• 3rd: $14,000
• 4th: $7,800
• 5th/6th: $3,850
• 7th/8th: $3,000
• 9th - 12th: $2,500
• 13th - 16th: $1,750

Call of Duty Mobile has kicked off a series of events and rewards to celebrate the Lunar New Year.  The celebration offers multiple events including the Winter Wish Event where players can complete daily tasks in-game to earn tokens that can be utilized to win prizes out of multiple prize pools.  It also features Tiger Coins that can be achieved by completing various tasks within the game to unlock all sorts of loot and blueprints for players.

The Lunar New Year event has a heavy focus on the Battle Royale modes of the games, and players can experience numerous new items and interactions within the map.  New BR loot is obtainable that includes grenades where players can turn opponents into snowmen and fireworks.  There is also a new loot platform that players can be launched up to in order to obtain high-tier loot, but only snowballs can be used in gunfights on the platform.

Nuketown has been given a fresh Lunar Year theme that includes lanterns, temple items, and more!  The map is featured in the event as a way to unlock event-themed blueprints and other items, such as XP boosts. 

The event has a heavy focus on tasks and challenges building off of each other, so jump on in and check it out while you can!  Overall, the Lunar New Year design appears well done and the items add a nice winter touch to the game.  Decent work has been put into the event as even the dog tags in Kill Confirmed will be themed as Red Envelopes during the event.  You can check out all the event notes HERE.

The developer of the hit Destiny series of games has now become a PlayStation Studio after Sony has announced that the developer has been purchased for $3.6 billion. Sony has stated that they are committed to keeping Bungie a multiplatform developer and the studio will remain an independent subsidiary within Sony in a recent GameIndustry report.

Bungie has released a statement that the deal will not affect the status of Destiny 2 and that their future games will not become PlayStation exclusives.  While Bungie is no stranger to being acquired by major publishers, the brand has done well to ensure the future and independence of its games in the past. 

Microsoft’s recent buyout of Activision Blizzard certainly eclipses this deal, but the Bungie studio has been a long-time fan-favorite developer of many blockbuster hits.  Bungie does have a major investment partnership with NetEase, according to PC Gamer, which is a Chinese online gaming company, and the impact of the Sony deal is still unknown.

The gaming giant Activision Blizzard and its arsenal of top-tier games are coming to Xbox Games as Microsoft has purchased the company and all of its assets.  The maker of Call of Duty, Overwatch, and many more games beloved by gamers is excepted to land on Xbox Game Pass once the dust has settled.

Activision Blizzard has been embattled with its fanbase due to scandals within the company and lawsuits regarding all sorts of activities that are beyond inappropriate.  CEO of Activision Blizzard is Bobby Kotick and he has been surrounded by a PR nightmare as news reports have not only stated that he was aware of the misconduct taking place but allegedly took part in some of the activities directly.

Xbox’s Phil Spencer has been openly against how the scandals were handled, but Microsoft has announced that Bobby Kotick will retain his position as CEO after the merger.  This has been followed up by numerous reports stating that Kotick plans to leave the company after the deal is complete.  Officially, he is still their CEO and Microsoft has publicly announced their support for him to remain as such.

Overall, we do not know the long-term effects of this deal.  Will Call of Duty be an Xbox exclusive?  Will World of Warcraft come to console?  We can base some of these answers on the Microsoft-Bethesda purchase and assume that all their current games will remain as is and continue to support all platforms while new games will release as Xbox Exclusives. 

Call of Duty’s yearly releases and Overwatch 2 fall into “new games” when they release and the fate of these are still unknown.  Most would agree that in the short term, making Call of Duty an Xbox Exclusive would be a poor decision as it remains the world’s top-selling video game each year, and the majority of players are often found on PlayStation.  However, nothing about dropping nearly $70 billion is very “short term” and only the future will tell how things play out.

Steam has released their top games of multiple categories from 2021 that shows their best sellers, most players, and many other stats in the PC gaming world.  These numbers only reflect games on the Steam Platform, so items from Epic Games, Battle.net, EA Origin, etc. are not factored into the mix.  Lists are presented in random order as Steam does not release exact information on most of these statistics.

Below you will find the three most asked for lists, but more lists can be found linked at the bottom of this article.  Top Selling Games is the first list and it is based around the gross revenue of the game on Steam and therefore DLC and in-game purchased should be factored int these results.  The second list is Top New Releases and the results of this list are based around the game's performance during the first two weeks of its release.  The last list we placed here is the Most Played List and that is based around most concurrent players on at one time, Steam did state the free weekends and other promotional playtime events are not factored into this list.

Top Selling Games
Games are provided in random order and were selected by gross revenue.

• New World
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege
• Dead by Daylight
• Dota 2
• Valheim
• Battlefield™ 2042
• Apex Legends™
• PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
• NARAKA: BLADEPOINT
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Destiny 2

Top New Releases
Games are provided in random order and were selected by revenue over their first two weeks.

• Back 4 Blood
• Resident Evil Village
• Mass Effect™ Legendary Edition
• Halo Infinite
• Battlefield™ 2042
• New World
• Age of Empires IV
• Valheim
• Forza Horizon 5
• Farming Simulator 22
• OUTRIDERS
• NARAKA: BLADEPOINT

Most Played Games
Games are provided in random order and were selected by highest peak concurrent players.

• Grand Theft Auto V
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Halo Infinite
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
• Dota 2
• PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS
• New World
• Apex Legends™
• Rust
• Valheim

There are a few other categories of rankings that they proved as followed:

• Top Early Access Graduates
• Top Selling VR Games
• Top Controller Games

Image: Wirestock - stock.adobe.com

Halo Infinite’s surprise launch and solid gameplay have been loved by many gamers, both casual and competitive alike. However, the game is not perfect, as players rush to point out the game’s terrible cosmetic system and horrible XP progression, other players have noticed some oddities about the ranked play of the game.

Players trying to get the most out of the competitive side of Halo have reported numerous matches where players are not all equal in rank.  This has caused some uproar as it means lower-skilled players are being placed with higher-skilled players in competitive matches.  Unequal player ranks also defeat a major part of the concept of having a “ranked” system if the ranks get mixed anyway.

343 has confirmed this as a feature of the game as they currently place players on ranked teams to balance the team, not the players.  This concept does have a few good merits as it allows for mixed players to matchmake as a team, but for solo players, it is discouraging when you are not matched with players of your skill to make the team balanced. 

However, after a Twitter posting, 343’s Junyszek has posted that they are looking into making this system better and seemed to confirm that random matchmaking should not be balancing teams when it isn’t needed.  We have no idea what those changes will be or how they will affect groups, but the ranked system needs numerous aid as players continue to face unequal teams, 3v4 starts, and cross-platform cheats.