TALKESPORT

Following a short run of nearly two years, the developers behind the AR title ‘Minecraft Earth’ have confirmed that the game will be shutting down this June. The news that disheartened thousands of its fans was shared through Twitter today.

For the unaware, Minecraft Earth is an augmented reality sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios and published by Xbox Game Studios. It was a spin-off of the popular video game Minecraft. However, unlike Minecraft, the AR title failed to gain such significant popularity among players worldwide.

The likely reason behind the sudden shutting down of Minecraft Earth is likely due to the global pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak made players reluctant to leave their homes, which in turn negatively affected the game’s overall player base in a similar way it affected the player bases of other AR titles like Pokémon GO.

If you’re planning to give this game a shot, now might be the last chance you get to do so. Minecraft Earth will be available to download on the App Store and Google Play Store until June 30th.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’re probably aware how the Rust server developed by the video game streaming group ‘OfflineTV’ has been the talk of the town as of late.

The server has become the home of the most popular Twitch and YouTube streamers including the likes of xQc, Pokimane, Valkyrae, Moistcr1tikal, and many others.

Unfortunately, the OfflineTV Rust server was temporarily taken down on 4th December at 12 am PST. This left many fans worried as they were unable to see their favourite streamers enjoying the game on one of its most popular servers. Luckily, we do have a date of its return.

It has been confirmed that the OfflineTV Rust server will make a return on January 7th at 5 pm PST.

The server will now feature a lower number of players, which means that the chances of smaller streamers making it to the server are extremely low. The owners have also confirmed that the rules will be enforced more strictly from now on and more custom elements will be added to the server “to protect everyone and their experience.”

Furthermore, the server will be split into two, with the primary server being kept up “for everyone who want to focus primarily on competition, PvP, raiding, etc.”

On 5th January, ImperialHal became a victim of swatting (an act of faking an emergency call under false pretenses to harm an unsuspecting person), while he was queuing in Apex Legends on Twitch.

The event occurred during the 7th hour of his stream as the officers started banging on Dosen’s door while asking him to “step out” and get down on the ground.

Dosen immediately cooperated with the authorities and followed their instructions and was released by the officers soon enough once they realized the situation at hand and understood what had occurred. “It was pretty civil” Hal explained and went into further detail, “they knew the situation. Yeah, you’re playing video games, you’re streaming, and you got swatted, use a VPN.”

The entire ordeal that lasted less than a minute was not only witnessed by the viewers of Imperialhal but also his in-game teammates Ryan “ImMadness” Schlieve and Eric “Snip3down” Wrona who were waiting for him in the lobby and understandably, were worried for their friend’s safety.

Although this isn’t the first time someone has been swatted. Recently Tfue was also a victim in a similar incident where he was swatted during his Minecraft stream back in December. In 2019, Andrew Finch was shot and killed by Kansas police due to being swatted unintentionally as the perpetrators got the wrong address for their victim.

The prank caller was soon apprehended and banned from online games for a period of two years and sentenced to 15 months in prison along with a $2,500 restitution fine.