Before getting into this week’s winners and losers, an update on a previous King. SAG-AFTRA has concluded voting, and 96% of eligible members have voted to authorize a strike. It should be noted that this is just authorizing the National board to strike if necessary, not an actual declaration of a strike. It’s possible that they will get a deal they like and approve of without ever actually striking at all. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Again, if you want to see what they’re fighting for, click this link.
Okay, time for the main event. Take this only as seriously as you wish. It’s Last Week’s King and Kong.
KING
First off, an apology for not getting this done last week. A number of things came up and doing this sort of slipped my mind. If I had gotten to it, I would have proclaimed all gamers King for a week, particularly those that spoke out against Square Enix’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided stretch goal pre-ordering. A ridiculous gimmick for a game that will already sell millions easily. They weren’t the first to do this, but they may have been the first to do it for a game this big.
Anyway, this edition’s King honors go to the people behind the modified Satoru Iwata amiibo that was up on eBay last week. For those that missed that news, an artist customized a Mii Fighter amiibo to look like the late Nintendo President. In addition to the look, certain features were added to it, including a 1-Up mushroom, the Master Sword, the shield from Wind Waker, a Poke Ball, a Star Rod, and Diddy Kong’s hat.
The amiibo sold for over $1,900, which is just a bit more than what you would probably expect to buy a normal amiibo on eBay. However, the seller will not be keeping the money. Instead, the proceeds from the sale will be going to the charity Child’s Play. Nice of them to do that.
KONG
Congratulations, Ubisoft. You get a free pass due to me not writing this last week. You would’ve gotten it for the micro-transactions that will be coming to your full priced retail title, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. It’s bull when it happens in manipulative free-to-play games. It’s bull when Square Enix put it in Bravely Default. And it’s bull when you put it in your high priced retail games. Stop it!
Kong of the week goes to Unity asset-flipping company Digital Homicide. You’ve probably heard about this company as the whipping boys of Jim Sterling, but there’s a reason for it.
First things first, the company has apparently been pumping out asset flips to the tune of about 20 titles in one year, with 9 of them currently being voted on in Steam Greenlight. But up until recently, you wouldn’t know that it was them as they were publishing them under different names. The most notable was ECC Games. Funny enough, ECC Games is also the name of a European mobile gaming company that was looking into legal action against them. Because of this, the Digital Homicide ECC Games changed its name to Every Click Counts Games.
Of course, these are just some of the things that people know about Digital Homicide. To get a fuller story, you can check out the latest Jimquisition episode.
However, I will mention the latest part in all of this, and this is where things are starting to go farther than beyond ugly. Digital Homicide is apparently threatening legal action against Jim Sterling after the critic said that a particular asset was taken from DeviantArt. This asset was apparently also available through purchase via Shutterstock, a service that sells stock video, images, and music. Sterling made the proper edit to reflect this, but apparently the company is still looking to punish him.
Obviously, there are people out there that would love to see Jim Sterling get taken down a notch. However, there’s no reason for a petty lawsuit simply because you’ve been getting pantsed for over a year… and just in case their lawyers are reading this, yes, accusing someone of stealing is a bad thing. I just disagree that it’s lawsuit worthy.
Either way, if this comes to litigation, it will be fun to watch this go down. Bring popcorn.
Agree with the choices? Have your own nominees? Let us know who you thought was King and Kong in the comments below.
