Morning DLC: Video Game News & Rumors 2/24/2016

"Activision Blizzard, already one of the largest gaming publishers in the business, has now grown further. The company today announced that it’s completed its acquisition of Candy Crush developer King Digital Entertainment. The company paid $18 for each outstanding share, for a total buyout price of $5.9 billion.GameSpot"

Activision Blizzard certainly wears many diverse hats. They’re responsible for Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Guitar Hero, Skylanders, Destiny, and more. With the addition of Candy Crush, Activision Blizzard stated that their games reach over 500 million users, making it the “largest gaming network in the world”. With strong new IPs such as Overwatch as well as these new acquisitions, it does make you wonder if their older offerings, such as World of Warcraft, will reap the monetary benefits, or be left to wither.

"Earlier this month 343 Industries announced an update to Halo 5: Guardians that will bring back the community-made gametype known as Grifball. You can watch the first footage in our exclusive video above. The free update, which doesn’t yet have a release date, will include all the weapons, maps and matchmaking infrastructure to make the melee-based sport work.Polygon"

Grifball is an interesting little community-created game created by folks at Rooster Teeth puttering around with the Heroic map pack, which they had early and no one else was able to play on, at the time. The name comes from an episode of Red vs. Blue. The game’s goal is for a team to place a bomb inside the enemy’s base–two teams armed with hammers and swords run around killing each other and hitting the ball. The game famously took off and has since been implemented in Halo 4 and now in Halo 5. It’s a great way for players (especially those who don’t have particularly tight Halo skills) to unwind, and stellar that 343 Industries has recognized it and continues to implement this fan-creation.

"The Fallout 4 mod support that Bethesda Game Studios has promised for consoles as well as PC should arrive sometime this spring, director Todd Howard told Game Informer.Mods, of course, already exist for the PC edition; what Howard is referencing here is the Creation Kit, the free toolset based on the same utilities Bethesda used to make the games. The kit facilitates the sharing of the mods. That’s how they’ll be available for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 editions of the game.Howard said Bethesda is aiming to release the Creation Kit for PC between the first two DLC add-ons, which are coming in March and April. The Xbox One will get the Kit a month or so later, Howard said, and then the PlayStation 4 will get it a month after that. So this figures to be an April-May-June rollout.Polygon"

People are already doing awesome and crazy things in Fallout 4, both with existing mods and the built-in settlement tools, including much-needed dialogue mods and replacing radroaches with cats. More tools surely means more awesome additions we didn’t know we needed on consoles, offering further incentive for those who haven’t yet picked Fallout 4 to do so on the system of their choice, without worrying about lack of mods.