Monthly Archives: August 2013

Great news for avid Robot Entertainment forum goers! The bots have now launched their brand new website and forums. The new website takes a more simplistic approach and makes it easier for people to find out about Robot games, the studio and get support information. The new website is squeaky clean and works on all types of devices.

The forums receiving a big upgrade, in fact, the forums are brand new! Running on the latest and greatest VBulletin software means they are faster and work much better on mobile devices than the previous forums. Unfortunately old forum posts will not be carried over to the new forums. However, a link to the old archived forums will be made available in due course so fans can still look back at their old posts. Fans can also copy important threads to the new forums as needed.

You can login to the new forums with your existing RobotEntertainent.com login credentials so go ahead and check out the new forums and the shiny new website at:

www.robotentertainment.com

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Many gamers will have heard that for a while Microsoft has been aiming to replace their currency for Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live from Microsoft Points to real local currency. Ie. Dollars, Euros and Pounds Sterling, or what ever your local currency is. In doing this the Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live services will need to make the switch over. This is scheduled to be be kicking off on August 22nd.

However, the bad news is that Games for Windows Live will not be making the transition to local currency and as such, Microsoft is infact closing the GFWL service all together. Infact as of just August 22nd the Games for Windows Live Store will be closed to new purchases of any kind. This means that no additional copies of Age of Empires Online or any DLC will be available via this store from August 22nd. It would seem that any DLC purchased through Steam would also not be available based on a now removed article on the AOE-O support website as reported by Age of Empires Online Heaven. Although the Steam issue is still awaiting official confirmation.

The bad news continues I’m afraid. While existing players will be able to continue to play Age of Empires Online beyond the August 22nd cut of date, the game will be shuttered completely on July 1st 2014 when the entire GFWL system will be taken offline.

This is of course very sad news for the co-developed Robot Entertainment and Gas Powered Games title. Many AOE-O fans are incredibly disappointed by the closure news and discussions are aplenty on the official forums. According to a recent article on Gamasutra there was another “post-mortem” conducted on Age of Empires Online by its Executive Producer, Kevin Perry at GDC 2013 just recently. The presentation was titled “F2P the wrong way” indicated that there was not enough content at launch, and by the time they were rolling out new content the efforts unfortunately did not result in bigger enough population boosts. As a result development was halted in January earlier this year.

I would say that now would be the time to spend any Microsoft Points you were thinking of spending on AOE-O before August 22nd. However, as it seems the game will be closing entirely in July 2014 this will no doubt be a quandary for many players.

Stay tuned for REF for further updates on this sad situation.

With OMD2 Steam Workshop support having been available for the past month many community modders have been hard at work developing lots of interesting new costumes, weapons, onslaughts and more.

Many mods are now available on the workshop and REF wanted to find out which ones you are enjoying most! Introducing the OMD2 Steam Workshop Awards! Thats right folks – its time to nominate your favourite OMD2 mod and give the author the recognition they deserve!

Why nominate?

The winning mod will be featured on both REF and the official Robot Entertainment website and the author will receive some fantastic Robot Entertainment swag! An OMD T-Shirt, signed copy of the OMD prequel comic, and a hat are all destined for the winning modder. So go ahead and nominate your favourite mod below and make their day! They’ll sure appreciate it 🙂

What’s in it for me?

For everyone that votes for their favourite mod they to will be in for a chance to win some of that special Robot swag. Thats right, if you nominate using the form you two can get your hands on that sweet merchandise!

Rules

The rules are simple – just one vote per person. You need to specify a valid email address. REF will be in-touch with the winners via their email address. The nomination period will be open for two weeks and closes on August 25th.