Headline RePLAY – 2.29.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: The Binding of Isaac gets rejected from the 3DS’s eShop, Blizzard layoffs and the star of Assassin’s Creed 3 may be revealed.


The Binding of Isaac is an indie game that was released on Steam in late 2011. It’s named after the biblical tale of the same name—except in this version, Isaac tries to escape his mother, who was tasked to sacrifice him, by navigating through randomized, Legend of Zelda-esque dungeons. According to Isaac’s creator, Edmund McMillen, the game’s “questionable religious content” was enough for Nintendo to reject it from being sold on the 3DS’s eShop.

“Nintendo is saying that Isaac can’t ever exist in the 3DS shop ever,” said McMillen. “All I know is they passed on it due to problems the religious aspects of the game might cause. I don’t have details on what aspect of “religion” they are most bothered by, but I did hear that they didn’t care about any blasphemy in games, but cared more about religion period and how something based on the bible might effect things.”

“Honestly it was a pretty muddy response,” continued McMillen, “but I did hear that religious games are far more bothersome than blasphemous ones, and the game being based on a story in the bible and being “by the book” in a lot of ways could have actually been an issue.”

“It’s nice to have the freedom to publish something that speaks its mind about religion on a platform like Steam.”
                                                                                                                                                                  


Blizzard is reducing its global workforce by 600 workers following a review of the company’s organizational needs. 90 percent of the layoffs are from departments not related to videogame development; specifically World of Warcraft’s development team will not be impacted.

“After evaluating our current organizational needs, we determined that while some areas of our business had been operating at the right levels and could benefit from further growth, other areas had become overstaffed,” said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. “As a result, we need to scale down some of our departments and part with some of our colleagues and friends here at Blizzard.”

Morhaime acknowledged how difficult the situation was for those affected, so Blizzard is offering each laid off employee a severance package in addition to other benefits.

“I also want to emphasize that we remain committed to shipping multiple games this year, and that our development teams in particular remain largely unaffected by today’s announcement. We’re continuing to develop, iterate, and polish Blizzard DOTA, Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, as well as other, unannounced projects.”



Ubisoft’s announcement on Assassin’s Creed 3 left a lot of unanswered questions: When and where is it set? Who is the main character? A Best Buy employee may have the answer to these questions.

The unnamed employee sent Kotaku a picture of the game’s promotional art, which possibly features Assassin’s Creed 3’s star.

As of now, the art is completely unconfirmed, but if accurate, the rumors about Assassin’s Creed 3 being set in the American Revolution are true. The background contains the Continental flag and the assassin is wearing an 18th century military jacket, a tomahawk, a pistol and appears to be Native American.

*Source: Kotaku

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