Welcome to Replay, your one-stop destination for all of the biggest gaming news of the last few days. This week, we explore some Nintendo copyright concerns and some Epic Store updates, along with a nice game recommendation to boot. Grab a beverage and let's get going.
First off, Nintendo has every right to request that YouTube take down archives of its videogame music. Second, that's still a bummer. As Kotaku reports, Nintendo has recently started throwing down copyright strikes against YouTube channels that archive their games' music for casual listening. GilvaSunner—a channel that archived music from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Super Smash Bros 3DS, among many others—recently received at least 115 copyright claims regarding music from Fire Emblem: Awakening, with other channels also reporting similar strikes.
Another truly unfortunate element about this is that a lot of this music isn't actually available anywhere else. In a search for the Fire Emblem: Awakening soundtrack, I found only pricey used copies from unofficial sellers. These YouTube channels don't want to steal money or promotional energy from Nintendo—they just want to share some tunes that you can't really hear without turning on the games and letting them run. That's not the easiest thing to do; there really ought to be better ways to listen to these tracks.
In Epic's ongoing quest to create a game store and launcher that can compete with Steam, there's been a big problem hanging over their heads: features. Steam has accrued a lot of quality-of-life conveniences over the years that make playing games on the platform a very appealing prospect. Features like cloud saves and the ability to track how long you've played a particular game are pretty essential to a lot of people at this point.
Now, Epic is finally rolling out some of those offerings, with cloud saves slowly coming to more games and playtime tracking on the way in the near(ish) future. I'm no serious believer in the glories of capitalism, but I do think fostering competition between stores is good at this point in time, as it erodes a bit of Valve's iron grip on the distribution market. If nothing else, it gives gamers one more viable option.
If you're really into first-person shooters, you probably know the name Tim Willits. Over the past 24 years, he's been at id Software, helping to put together some of the biggest names in the gun-shooty gaming business, from the Dooms to the Quakes to the, uh, other Dooms and Quakes. But now, he's moving on.
Earlier this week, Willits announced that he's joining Saber Interactive, the company behind such games as World War Z and NBA 2K Playgrounds. Quite a change of pace, and it'll be interesting to see what sort of things the company produces now that Willits is in a place of power as the new chief creative officer.
A knife in the dark, a cascade of cruel magics, and an intimidating mask. In Dishonored, you are Corvo Attano, the disgraced guardian of a dead queen who has to decide how, and to what degree, to seek vengeance for what has become of you. It's riveting, a stealth action game set in a wonderfully crafted, bizarre world—half steampunk, half sorcery. It has its weak points, but Dishonored one of the most striking games of its time, and every time I play I like it more. Just don't go with the remastered versions on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, they're a bit of a mess.
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