Hi-Rez, the developers of Smite and Paladins, don t have it easy. They compete head-on with Blizzard s juggernauts; with their fingers stuck in the same hero-shooter-flavoured pies the comparisons are inevitable, and rarely favourable. Depending on whose questionable extended metaphors you listen to, you might hear it argued that they spend their time looking at where their competitors fingers are, and then follow suit.

You might also hear that their games can be uneven, or poorly managed. Some of that rings true, though much is hyperbole. Hi-Rez have made a few missteps, but that s partly because they take a lot of steps in general.

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The Smite and Paladins World Championships didn’t get off to an impressive start. Several thousand fans gathered around several adjacent screens occupying the back wall of Dreamhack Atlanta, each blasting out hype reels with near identical scripts. It was cookie-cutter drama played in disconcerting semi-stereo, leaving me uncomfortable in half a dozen different ways.

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You’ll often hear Hi-Rez described as a company living in Blizzard’s shadow. Sometimes, that rings true. Other times, they go ahead and reveal a black female character for Paladins the week after Overwatch fails to – a character named Imani, a mobile damage dealer that can turn into a dragon. You win this round, Hi-Rez.

They’ve also revealed plans for the Assembly of Champions, an elected group of eight players who’ll collaborate with the devs from the start of next year. I’m at the Hi-Rez Expo in Atlanta, and had the chance to ask Paladins brand director Alex Cantatore about both dragons and democracy.

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Two weeks ago, I was sat in a dive bar so scuzzy it was practically underwater. It was there my friend told me he spent nearly all his time playing Paladins on his Xbox, and I learnt two things. 1) Paladins must be bigger than I thought, and 2) platform restrictions can make me sad.

Today, in the opening announco-blast of Atlanta’s Hi-Rez Expo, Hi-Rez announced that cross-platform play is coming to Paladins, Realm Royale and Smite.

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The developers behind Paladins, Smite, Realm Royale, and Tribes: Ascend today announced they’re formally splitting into distinct new studios to handle their big games (no, not including Tribes) under an overarching publisher. At the very least, this should assuage some fears about Hi-Rez’s track record of ditching older games when their limited teams shifted over to newer games. For now, it seems their three core games are secure. Hi-Rez are also opening two new arms, one company focused on running esports events and the other making art assets. To speak in business terms, all of Hi-Rez’s limbs are possessed by alien parasites and wrenching out their sockets to skitter off on lives of their own.

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We’ve just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It’s a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you’ll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.

2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets. (more…)

I m surprised by how much I like Realm Royale, the free-to-play battle royale spin-off to Hi-Rez’s Paladins. This is battle royale by way of wizards, and an even goofier spin on the genre than Fortnite s. Neither has the same tension as Playerunknown s Battlegrounds, but – oddly – this isn t really a game about tension. This is a game about soaring into the air, whacking down a fireball and getting turned into a chicken when your flashy plan falls apart. (more…)

Take the class-based wizard shooter action of Paladins, riff on the battle royale modes whizzing all over games these days, and bish bash bosh you’ve got Realm Royale. Hi-Rez’s Paladins spin-off, which previously bore the remarkably cheeky name Paladins Battlegrounds, has now properly launched onto Steam Early Access, letting all play for free. Are you a bad enough wizard to murder like 99 other wizards? Throwing magical class abilities into the battle royale mix might make for interesting team-building in squads, so I’m curious about this one myself. (more…)

It feels almost unfair to call free-to-play ‘hero shooter’ Paladins an Overwatch clone, but then I look at screenshots like the one above, and another one with a big n’ heavy character with a chain-hook attack and… yeah, it’s pretty clear that Paladins is riding on Blizzard’s coattails. But it’s also fun, good-looking, and free to jump into. It’s been a regular in Steam’s top ten most played games for some time, and has officially left early access as of today.

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Free-to-play class-based FPS Paladins will launch properly next week, developers Hi-Rez Studios (the Smite lot) announced today, on Tuesday the 8th of May. It’s been in open beta testing for almost twenty months, long enough that I’d forgotten it’s not actually out-out, and added heaps of heroes and things since then – as well as dabbling in battle royale. Development won’t end when it hits version 1.0, of course, but it will be done enough to remove that “early access” label. (more…)