Rocksteady Studios, the creators the Batman: Arkham games and the newly-announced Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, on Friday night issued a response to the week’s reports of sexual harrassment and discrimination. These allegations stemmed from a 2018 letter of complaint written to management by most of their female employees, one of whom felt the company hadn’t done enough since then and shared the letter with a newspaper. Rocksteady say they investigated all formal complaints and disciplined or terminated some staff back then, and now have called in a independent third-party to help investigate any potential further complaints.

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Follow recent reports that Rocksteady Studios failed to sufficiently address sexual harrassment, the Batman: Arkham developers have responded in a most curious way. While they have yet to issue a public statement themselves, they have posted an “unsolicited letter” from some of the employees behind the 2018 letter which first raised the issues. The new letter’s writers say they think Rocksteady have been better than was alleged. But without meaningfully addressing the allegations themselves, Rocksteady just casually posted that letter on Twitter. That makes it their first public response and defence, a purpose for which the letter is woefully inappropriate and inadequate. This is: mystifying.

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In November 2018, the majority of the female employees at Batman: Arkham studio Rocksteady reportedly signed a letter raising issues of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Since then, a Guardian report says, things haven’t changed enough. In light of this, the former senior writer of Rocksteady’s upcoming Suicide Squad game – who was behind that 2018 letter – has asked Rocksteady to take her name off it.

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My VR column returns! Now that my Oculus DK1 is replaced by a less nauseasome DK2 at last, the pressing problem is less “ooh, me poor peepers” and more “so, er, what is there to actually play?” The stark fact of the matter is that very few developers have yet included meaningful Oculus support, because this is not yet a consumer device. This is very much the case at a software level as well as a hardware one.

In the next column I’ll do a round-up of some of the more interesting experiments doing the rounds for DK2, but today I want to talk about VorpX. It’s a name that sounds like an ill-advised sci-fi remake of Jabberwocky, but actually it’s paid software which forcibly injects VR support into all kinds of PC games that don’t otherwise support it.

Important update: Alien Isolation now working. Aaaaaaah. … [visit site to read more]