Fully Charged: Homefront: The Revolution gets new makers, Google’s self-driving car Hangout, and a charity begins accepting Bitcoin

Crytek exits Homefront: The Revolution, shutters studios

In recent weeks, Crysis and Far Cry developer Crytek has been dogged by reports of unpaid wages to employees and related turmoil amidst its worldwide studios, but the studio said earlier this week that the situation has been stabilized. Now we have an idea of why.

Yesterday, publisher Deep Silver announced that it has acquired the Homefront first-person shooter franchise from Crytek, and that Crytek UK will no longer be working on sequel Homefront: The Revolution. A new Nottingham upstart called Deep Silver Dambuster Studios will take over, and many of the folks working at Crytek UK will transfer over to continue developing the game.

Deep Silver had already agreed to co-publish the game, but now owns the IP and will keep all of the work that Crytek already performed on The Revolution. Crytek UK will officially close, it seems, as will Crytek USA in Austin, Texas, which was working on Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age. Hunt will resume development at Crytek’s Frankfurt, Germany home base as the company refocuses on publishing free-to-play experiences.

[Source: Polygon]

Live Hangout demo of Google’s self-driving car tomorrow

Self-driving cars are about to start making their way over to the UK next year on a trial basis, thanks to soon-to-be-amended laws, and Google is one of the companies leading the charge in the market. Curious about its efforts to date? There’s a live Hangout for that, and it’s tomorrow.

Google is co-hosting what it calls a “virtual field trip” with Make magazine, and it’s happening tomorrow, 1 August at 7pm UK time. The interactive stream aims to show how the vehicles work, cover recent happenings, and allow viewers to ask questions on the fly.

[Source: Google+]

Royal National Lifeboat Institution charity accepting Bitcoin

In a tough economy, charities need to be innovative to keep funds coming in to support their causes. So kudos to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which yesterday announced that it has begun accepting donations in the form of Bitcoin. For now, donations of the digital currency can be done through a specialized page, but if the move works out well for the RNLI, it may make Bitcoin a standard giving option via the website.

The RNLI offers a 24-hour search and rescue service primarily via volunteers, with 236 lifeboat stations and also 1000+ lifeguards covering more than 180 beaches across the UK. Now celebrating 190 years of service, the charity has saved more than 140,000 lives in that span. If you have some spare Bitcoin sitting around on a drive, surely they deserve a little assistance for all the help they provide.

[Source: RNLI]

A deeper look at Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s story

Multiplayer might be the biggest draw for most Call of Duty players, but this year’s Advanced Warfare looks to have the most intriguing narrative the series has concocted in a good few years. The new campaign trailer digs deeper into the far-future setting and the private military corporation driving the action, with a fun little tease of multiplayer action at the end. We’ll get to see much more of that in about two weeks.

[Source: YouTube]

About

Andrew writes features, news stories, reviews, and other pieces, often when the UK home team is off-duty or asleep. I'm based in Chicago with my lovely wife, amazing son, and silly cats, and my writing about games, gadgets, esports, apps, and plenty more has appeared in more than 75 publications since 2006.