Light Start: Elden Ring on your table, EVGA breaks up with Nvidia, Mr Price in the metaverse, and GTA 6 leaks everywhere

Elden Ring – coming to a table near you

Before From Software’s Elden Ring launched in February of this year, it was one of the most anticipated upcoming games. In the month or two following its launch, it reached a peak of 952,523 concurrent players, according to Steam charts. Now, seven months later, it is still one of the most talked about games and will probably win at least a few accolades come video game awards season. It makes sense then, that this is the latest title Steamforged Games – the company responsible for the board game adaptions of Horizon Zero Dawn, Resident Evil, and Dark Souls – will turn into a tabletop game.

The game promises to offer one to four players the ability to “embark on a huge and varied adventure, visiting iconic locations and crossing paths with familiar enemies and characters.” Unfortunately, there’s no info on when the tabletop version is launching. If you’re interested you can sign up to receive notifications from the game’s Kickstarter page.

Source: The Verge

Video card maker EVGA ditches Nvidia partnership

EVGA, one of Nvidia’s biggest graphics card partners, is dropping out of the third-party graphics card manufacturer game. Prominent tech YouTubers Gamers Nexus and JayzTwoCents reported the news on Friday last week after having met with EVGA CEO Andrew Han.

According to their reports, EVGA is citing disrespect and poor communication – particularly with regards to launch prices – from Nvidia as the reasons for ending the partnership. Han said, according to Gamers Nexus, that Nvidia would not reveal launch pricing to its partners before the public announcements. The partners would have to find out along with the public when CEO Jensen Huang announced it on stage.

Steve Burke, Editor-in-Chief of Gamers Nexus, says video cards accounted for 78% of EVGA’s gross revenue. The company said specifically that it wasn’t closing its doors so it will need to make up that revenue elsewhere if it hopes to retain its staff.

It also said, in a statement on its forums, that it would not carry the next generation of GPUs from Nvidia and it would sell off remaining inventory, but would still offer customer support for the current GPU lineup. Burke also asked pointedly if EVGA would be partnering with another GPU manufacturer, like AMD or Intel. The company said it had no plans to do so.

Mr Price is the latest to jump aboard the sinking NFT bandwagon

Local apparel retailer Mr Price is the latest to offer NFTs as ‘rewards’ in a competition recently held on its Instagram page. The brand offered nine unique tokens with eight of them also coming with a R10,000 cash prize and one of them with R50,000. Even if you are actively against NFTs as a concept, you wouldn’t turn your nose up at cash, would you?

These non-fungible tokens, called “NF-Tees”, feature strange-looking dancing creatures wearing different t-shirts. The clothing company didn’t handle minting the NFTs itself. That was done by MetaLabs Africa. You might remember them from the VW NFT campaign from earlier this year.

Similarly to VW’s NFTs, Mr Price’s NFTs garnered zero interest after they were minted and transferred to winners. Not one is listed for sale and none have any offers of purchase. Sure it’s only been a few days, but aren’t NFTs supposed to be the next big thing? Apparently, the tokens will actually serve a ‘purpose’, for want of a better word. Owners can reportedly make use of them as avatars in blockchain-based virtual worlds like Decentraland. What a time to be alive.

Massive GTA 6 leak breaks cover

This wasn’t a good weekend if you work at Rockstar Games. A member on GTAForums going by the username ‘teapotuberhacker’ dumped what could very well be the biggest video game leak ever. Some 90 videos with over an hour’s runtime from GTA 6 were posted online to GTAForums, Reddit, and Twitter. The footage, apparently from an early test build of the still officially unannounced game, gave credence to some rumours we’ve already heard, including the game being set in Vice City and featuring a playable female character.

At first, many speculated that it was a hoax but the validity was confirmed by Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier. The collective penny dropped when Rockstar started posting DMCAs and takedown requests of the video footage. You’ll still find most of it online if you know where to look.

This has undoubtedly caused a large headache for almost everyone at RockStar Games working on the project. The game has already taken a reported eight years to develop so far. This will probably push the launch back even further. Not that we knew when launch day was.