News Picks/Weekly Round-up from Auryn Cox @Ciaran’s Customs

Xbox has officially acquired Bethesda games

Microsoft confirmed their acquisition of Bethesda studios and announced that some future Bethesda games will be Xbox/PC exclusives.

Microsoft confirmed the news in a statement on their website which welcomed Bethesda to ‘Team Xbox’.

With the new acquisition Microsoft was able to add 20 of Bethesda’s titles to the Xbox Game Pass. These include titles from the Elder Scrolls, Dishonoured, Doom, Fallout and Wolfenstein franchises.

“Now that everything is official, we can begin working together to deliver more great games to everyone,” said Head of Xbox Phil Spencer.

“At every step building toward this moment, I’ve been inspired and motivated by the creativity, insight, and community-first approach of the talented people at Bethesda. Our goal is to give these teams the best foundation for doing their greatest work and to learn from them as we continue to build Xbox into an inclusive platform for all players.”

EA Gate the FIFA 21 Ultimate Team cards scandal

EA suspended all FIFA discretionary content granting earlier this week as it investigates allegations that an employee had been selling FIFA 21 ultimate team cards for real money on a black market of sorts.

EA gave an update on the scandal, which the FIFA community has labelled ‘EA Gate’, in which they assured players that a full investigation was underway and that the company would take proper action against any employees involved in the scandal.

They also assured players that any items gained through ‘illicit activity’ will be removed from the game and any accounts which acquired content through these means will be permanently banned.

One example on Twitter showed screenshots of super rare ‘Prime Icon’ cards being sold for €1700.

Many in the FIFA gaming community were left disappointed and angry over EA Gate.

“I truly feel bad for people who have put thousands of dollars into FIFA points or thousands of hours into grinding the game," Twitch streamer 'Nick28T' said on his YouTube channel.

"To not be able to get a single one of these players when someone who has a bit of money or just has the knowledge that this is even possible can basically go over to a WhatsApp group or rogue."

Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 2 DLC Trailer will be dropping next week

Bethesda Softworks and id Software announced that the second DLC for Doom will be showcased next week.

Titled, The Ancient Gods Part II, the DLC will also come with a free update for all users which will provide some minor tweaks to the game.

Tweaks such as a new optional, close to crosshair mini-HUD that will let you know your grenades, Bloodpunch, health and armour status.

The update will also come with bug fixes, notably a fix for the Bloodpunch bug which causes the attack to fail occasionally.

Roblox IPO

If you missed out on investing in GameStop stock maybe you could try your hand investing in Roblox.

Roblox joined the stock market last week with a new IPO that has put its valuation far above its competitors.

Since going public Roblox has amassed a valuation of $40.6 billion. EA currently has a market cap of $37.4 billion, Take-Two $18.9 billion and Ubisoft $8 billion.

There are only a select few games companies currently worth more than Roblox, examples being Activision and Nintendo.

If you feel that Roblox, the online platform which allows users to create and share their own video games is going to continue its success into the future, a share in the company is currently trading for around $70 or around €60.

AMD Milan processors

AMD announced that its set to launch its next generation enterprise EPYC processor family during on online event on March the 15th.

The processors, collectively known as their codename Milan, will be seen at the online launch event which starts at 15:00pm (GMT). The event will feature presentations from the companies CEO Dr Lisa Su.

AMD’s Milan processor line will feature up to 64 Zen 3 cores, using a seamless transition from the Zen 2 EPYC Rome ecosystem with pin-compatible processors. Milan will also offer up to 128 PCIe lanes, eight channel memory, and dual socket configurations.

Reddit User resorts to using a bot to purchase a GPU

To tackle the craziness of the current hardware market one reddit user decided to build himself a bot to help him find a graphics card to buy.

Reddit user u/GennaroIsGod created the Bot using NodeJS. The Bot was set up to email the redditor whenever the GPU of his choosing was back in stock at BestBuy.

After receiving an email from his bot that a Nvidia Geoforce RTX 3080 was back in stock u/GennaroIsGod managed to purchase the card for $699.99, a steal given the current market.

About the Author

Auryn is a student journalist and an avid gamer. He enjoys strategy games as well as all the new releases from 10 years ago. He also has a few hours on Overwatch.

Thanks for Reading.

If you want to talk about any of the Games or Hardware news mentioned here, whether its to get upgrade advice, getting an estimate on a new build or just to ask a simple question feel free to get in touch. We are always happy to help out. You can reach us on Facebook or via email on our Contact Us page.