Developer of the upcoming racing sim NASCAR 14, Eutechnyx, has announced that it has laid off 12 of its employees as part of some restructuring work going on. Some of these 12 staff members have been loaned to Ubisoft studio Reflections.

Eutechnyx also closed its London offices, which contained five people, in June last year, but with 131 current employees and other sub-contractors working for the company, this all represents less than ten per cent of the number of people the company employes.

“On Friday, we made unfortunately 12 people redundant,” said Eutechnyx CEO Darren Jobling. “It was part of restructuring at the company.

“We’ve made no bones about the fact we wanted to move away from being a work-for-hire developer on consoles to publishing our own titles,” Jobling added, “so it’s highly regrettable that we did have to make 12 people redundant.”

Stay tuned for further updates on the story as more info comes our way.

[Develop]

As part of a complete 180 that Microsoft has performed pertaining to pretty much everything about the Xbox One, they’ve now gone ahead and confirmed self publishing for indie games on their next generation console, in an attempt to keep the console attractive in wake of PS4’s aggressive indie courting policies.

Indie self publishing is coming to the Xbox One within the first year of the console’s lifespan. More details will be coming at Gamescon, but Marc Whitten, corporate vice president at the Xbox division, did have some details to share.

“Our vision is that every person can be a creator. That every Xbox One can be used for development. That every game and experience can take advantage of all of the features of Xbox One and Xbox LIVE. This means self-publishing. This means Kinect, the cloud, achievements. This means great discoverability on Xbox LIVE. We’ll have more details on the program and the timeline at Gamescom in August.”

So at least Microsoft rectified this as well before the console launched, and before it was caught with its pants down, ala Sony and the PS3 or Nintendo and the Wii U.

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Square Enix has faced a lot of problems in rceent times, but the one lone spot of hope for their fans has been Eidos, the company that Square acquired in an unlikely acquisition, and that has, against all odds, gone on to deliver some of the best Square published titles in the last few years. However, it seems that all is not as rosy at Eidos as was thought. Apparently, as of last Friday, Eidos Montreal’s General Manager and founder, Stephane D’Astous, has resigned.

D’Astous has spoken out against Square Enix, and the leadership and management there, slamming them for a complete lack of ‘courage.’

“Since last year’s financial short-coming performance of Square Enix Europe, we, at HQ London and GM Eidos Montreal, have had growing and divergent opinions on what needed to be done to correct the situation,” he said. “The lack of leadership, lack of courage and the lack of communication were so evident, that I wasn’t able to conduct my job correctly. I realized that our differences were irreconcilable, and that the best decision was unfortunately to part ways.”

Polygon reports that his replacement is David Anfossi, the man behind the recent Deus Ex titles, including the much celebrated Human Revolution and The Fall.

QuakeCon is coming up soon, and after we were given a list of sponsors and events for the event earlier this year, we now have more details. Notably, id Software’s legendary developer John Carmack will be hosting a second talk this year, talking about the physics of lighting and rendering.

In addition, Bethesda has also gone ahead and revealed additional sponsors and exhibitors for the event that kicks off in Dallas August 1. A list of exhibitors and sponsors follows:

• 505 Games
•  ADATA Technology
• AT&T BAWLS Guarana Cooler Master
• CPU Magazine
• DELL/Alienware
• Enermax & LEPA
• FRAGapparel
• Gigabyte
• Glitch Gaming Apparel
•  GX-Gaming
• Hi-Rez
• In Win
• Intel
• Interceptor Entertainment
• MAINGEAR
• McPVP
• Micro Center Modders-Inc.
• NVIDIA
• PC Perspective
• Plantronics Gaming
• Symbiote Studios
• Twitch.tv
• UPPER Cut Circuit
• Ventrilo
• XoticPC

Gamestop hasn’t exactly made itself a whole lot of fans. The video game retail giant, the last standing dedicated video games speciality retailer in a recessive economy marked with scaledowns and bankruptcies, seems to draw the ire of the gaming media and consumers alike, thanks to what are perceived as its exploitative policies. Today, it seems that this displeasure with Gamestop has extended to the development industry as well.

Ru Weerasuriya, the head honcho of Ready at Dawn, doesn’t seem to be too fond of the video game retail giant. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, he talked about how the Gamestop used games business is unhealthy not just for consumers, but for developers as well. “I walked into a GameStop, asked for a new copy of a game and without telling me he tried to slip me a used copy and wanted to sell it to me for $5 less. I flipped out in front of the guy. I was like, ‘Dude, wrong guy… You’re doing this to the wrong guy.’ I don’t think people realize, and the guy was trying to justify it to me. I was like, ‘You have no idea.’ There are developers out there who are making games for years and some of them will go down purely because the revenue stream is basically flawed and creating this place where developers don’t see even a little part of it,” he said.

The argument sounds suspiciously like the arguments that are used to justify console DRM; in the wake of the recent Xbox One fiasco, these arguments should be familiar to everyone in some capacity. Weerasuriya is quick to point out, however, that he does not believe that penalizing the consumers is the way to fix this problem.

“I don’t think we should stop used games, but we should do something about getting part of the revenue back from GameStop and places like that. That’s not penalizing the consumers; they’ll still get what they want. But I don’t know who’s going to address it.”

The full article is illuminating, and it talks about multiple issues in addition to this one, including the escalating costs of games for consumers, so be sure to check it out.

As part of the corporate restructuring that Microsoft announced earlier today, Microsoft has announced that the former Windows chief Julie Larson-Green will now be heading the Microsoft Devices division, handling everything from product conception, manufacture, and distribution. This should give a significant jolt to Microsoft’s devices division, which, apart from Xbox, and some decent sales of the Surface tablet, has been met with a lukewarm reception in the market at best.

Larson-Green has been working at Microsoft for twenty years, and she was most recently involved with Windows 8, Microsoft’s newest OS that met with a divisive reaction in the marketplace, and from professional tech bloggers.

The old equivalent of the Devices division at Microsoft, the Interactive Entertainment Business, was headed by Don Mattrick, who left in the wake of the Xbox One debut fallout, and joined Zynga instead. This new move should serve to restore some confidence to the brand as a whole.

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Bethesda has gone ahead and given us the details for this year’s QuakeCon. In a stunning move that surprises absolutely no one, this year’s QuakeCon shall begin with a keynote by, you guessed it, id Software’s John Carmack.

If you’re there, you will be able to check out all the upcoming games in Bethesda’s release schedule for the coming year. These include The Evil Within, The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstien: The New Order, and Dishonored: Brigmore Witches, the DLC pack for last year’s acclaimed action game.

In addition, the following exhibitors have all been confirmed for the show:

· ADATA

· BAWLS Guarana

· Cooler Master

· CPU Magazine

· DELL/Alienware

· Ecomaster (Enermax & LEPA)

· FRAGApparel

· Gigabyte

· Glitch Gear

· GX-Gaming

· IN WIN

· Micro Center

· MineCraftPVP

· Minecraft EDU

· Modders Inc.

· NVIDIA

· UCC

· Ventrilo

QuakeCon will take place in Dallas this August. The event is open to all. Stay tuned, as GamingBolt will have more coverage for you.

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Boy, Sony is really mining some hard talent for the PS4, isn’t it? After playing nice with indie developers and major third party developers and publishers, Sony is now out to deliver PS4 dev kits to students in universities with game developer programs, to get them acquainted with the hardware (and obviously, to gain goodwill and have them develop for Playstation hardware when they graduate). This follows up from the Playstation Vita dev kit program.

Sony is now seeking ‘Expression of Interests’ from universities, so that it can help foster and mine indie developer talent for Playstation hardware.

Says Dr. Maria Stukoff, Head of Academic Development for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, “The next generation of Indie developers are now in education, and PlayStation First is at the forefront of enabling students to gain future-fit skills for PlayStation console development by providing access to real professional tools”.

“PlayStation 4 is setting the pace for global indie development, we are very excited that through PlayStation First we are able to offer registered Universities access to PlayStation 4 for the next generation of soon-to-be Indie developers! Now is the time for new talent to get skilled up on PS Vita and explore the future of PlayStation game development,” Mick Hocking corroborates.

Paul Holman, Vice President of SCEE R&D further adds, “Since the dawn of PlayStation, SCE has provided opportunities for Universities to gain access to the full professional SDK and tools. Providing access to the PS4 SDK is a natural step for us, especially when building upon the complementary skills provided by experience of PS Vita development. I’m confident that these initiatives will be benefiting both students who gain access to these resources as well as the game studios across the world which these students will ultimately join.”

If Sony continues fostering developer talent and goodwill, then it will soon be the de facto development platform of choice in the industry.

Add another company to the list of creditors for the now bankrupt publisher THQ. The newest one is Sega of America, who, if you remember, bought out THQ’s acclaimed Relic studio (the people behind Company of Heroes). Apparently, when they bought the studio, they bought it with all its assets and liabilities, but THQ doesn’t seem to have given them all the assets yet.

Gamespot reports that THQ owes Sega nearly a full million dollars due to pre-orders for the sequel to Relic’s Company of Heroes game. To that end, Sega has filed a claim with the Delaware U.S. Bankruptcy Court seeking $941,710.93 from THQ — which is the amount Valve paid THQ for pre-orders of Company of Heroes 2 on Steam. Of that amount, Sega’s claim lists $508,877.85 as priority, as it was paid to THQ after Dec. 19, 2012 — after THQ filed for bankruptcy protection.

Relic Entertainment, and all its IP, were purchased by Sega for over $26 million, so it does make sense for Sega to want its accounts clean after that.

The original Halo: Combat Evolved was a legendary game, and set the standard for the console gaming industry going forward. it did, however, have a fair few issues, such as the infamous Library mission. One of these was poor weapon balance in spots. Nothing exemplifies that as well as the overpowered M6D pistol.

According to Bungie co-founder Jason Jones, that was all his doing. He tweaked the code for the weapon at the last moment because he felt it wasn’t strong enough.

“There was a moment towards the end of [Halo: Combat Evolved] where we were very close to locking down,” Jones said. “The balance on the pistol was such that both in the competitive game, but also in the solo game, it wasn’t where we wanted it to be. It was too late to change the… Well, we didn’t feel comfortable actually changing the data anymore. The game was so locked down that when you changed a piece of data, gigabytes of crap had to be reprocessed.

“What we did feel comfortable doing was changing the code, and so…I added code specifically, when the map was loaded, to change a single number on the pistol,” he added.

He went on to talk about the importance of minutiae in game design. “I will take the credit and blame for the pistol in Halo, I’ll take the blame for everything in Halo,” he said. “If it’s important to go micro on something, I’ll do that. I feel like design really is about the details.”

Source: IGN.