Verdun News

The First World War was one of the first major conflicts where photography and film were highly significant, due among other things to smaller and improved cameras. The nations involved also began to realize the value of photography and film for propaganda purposes. We thought it would be interesting to give players a chance to experience some of the challenges faced by early filmmakers, working with black and white on top of other technical limitations.

Ernest Brooks, one of the relatively few British photographers on the Western Front.

Amateur photographers were able to take cameras with them to the front (sometimes smuggling them against regulations), and press outlets sometimes put out calls for photos from these amateurs when the officially released images didn't satisfy their desire for images from the front.

Soon you'll be able to try recording your own black and white war footage, with our upcoming 'Film Memoir' mode! If they say a picture paints a thousand words, a video must be even more... so check this out:

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Update
Verdun has received a number of improvements this March. Among these are floating weapon shadows, setting issues and animation related trickery.
We’ve also increased the AFK (=time to get yourself some drinks and snacks) in private and public matches, ensured certain matchups are more historically accurate in Attrition mode, added a potential fix for game crashes occurring after sound outage and stuttering and that’s not all! For a complete overview of the fixes and improvements, be sure to take a look at our changelog here.

Tannenberg Wolf Truce event!
The Eastern Front needs capable soldiers! Be sure to enlist yourself or a friend and join the fray!
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Tannenberg is now 55% off during it's thrilling Wolf Truce event!...

Inspired by several historical reports and newspapers, hungry wolves are roving the Eastern Front forming a frightening new foe both sides have to face.



Players are now faced with a dilemma, do you call a truce to face this new threat together, or do you use the ensuing chaos to press on! A special medal can be earned if the truce holds true, but restraining yourself is harder than it sounds!



We look forward to seeing you on both on the Western and Eastern battlefields!

[h2]Happy President's Day to our US fans![/h2]
Of course, this is a holiday which has changed quite a bit since WW1. Originally it was known only as Washington's Birthday, and fell on February the 22nd since that was, well, his birthday.

It wasn't until the thrillingly named Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 that the holiday was officially set to be the third Monday in February. This change might make things more orderly, but it does also mean that (at least since 1971) the holiday is effectively never actually on Washington's birthday anymore. We'll come close in 2022, when it'll be on the 21st!

Here's a couple of cartoons from February 22nd in 1918, taken from the Stars & Stripes, the American military newspaper. There's no mention of the holiday in the paper.



[h3]Updates[/h3]
We rounded off last week with a small update on Friday which fixed a few bugs and ironed out a couple more exploits relating to in-game user names, which followed up on an earlier update that fixed a few things, including slower machine gun firing for some players with slower computers.

Read the full changelog here.

[h3]Player Screenshots[/h3]
We have a couple of more unusual screenshots from players today!

echo1 put together this wide shot of a soldier bearing down through gas.

A bogged down tank catches the eye in this watery scene by Tom Grump.

[h2]We also hope you had a great Valentine's Day![/h2]

We've been busy lately, but mostly on secret projects that aren't ready for sharing yet! That doesn't mean we don't have anything interesting for you. Quite the contrary...

[h2]A hot topic[/h2]
There has been some discussion in the community about the Wex - the German flamethrower you might not have seen getting much use in the game. In this thread on the forum people went back and forth on the weaknesses of this unusual weapon. We can say we are looking into ways to make the Wex a powerful, satisfying weapon to use without it being as overpowered as it has been at times in the past. Veteran players will likely remember how the Wex has changed previously - we hope that we can find a happy middle ground for it!



[h3]Too colourful?[/h3]
It appears that some people have been able to give their in-game names bright colors by using a Steam formatting trick. This isn't intentional, and we are planning to fix this with an update soon.

We already released an update in January with some fixes. As always, find the latest changelogs here!

[h2]1917[/h2]
Who's seen 1917 in cinemas? It's an incredible experience, filmed in such a way as to give the impression of one continuous shot without obvious cuts.



We had some discussion on Facebook and Twitter, with people recommending a whole host of interesting WW1 films. In particular there were a couple of foreign films which sounded intriguing, put forward after one person said that they found another film from an allied perspective rather dull and uninspired.

One of those films is the Hungarian movie Szürke senkik (Grey Nobodies), recommended by György!

It's not technically WW1 itself, but Meelis also suggested something a bit different with Names in Marble, which is about the Estonian War of Independence shortly after WW1. They do caution that it's perhaps not the most historically accurate film!

Finally, Markus mentioned Westfront 1918, a German film from 1930 that he thought had similar vibes to All Quiet on the Western Front.

A still from Westfront 1918: Vier von der Infanterie.

There are even more recommendations on the Facebook post itself if you're in need of new films to watch!

As a final note, the anniversary of the start of the Battle of Verdun is coming up soon, on February 21st... does anyone have any books or films they'd recommend that cover the Battle of Verdun?

[h2]What's your squad defence highscore?[/h2]
Bartoft posted a screenshot from what must have been an epic squad defence game. In their own words:

"A marathon late night Squad Defence game in Verdun. The game started at 11:15pm on 31.1.20 and ended at 5am on 1. 2 .20. This is my last screen shot before our 4 man squad were finally wiped out by the attacking Germans on wave 70. The total game playing time on this shot shows 339 minutes and 51 seconds at the end of wave 69. The screen shot shows enemy dead in our final trench.



In the foreground I am holding my favourite weapon in the game - a Short Magazine Lee Enfield bolt action rifle with a ten shot magazine. I was also equipped with 3 hand grenades at each load out and a trench club for hand to hand fighting.

My game log showed I achieved 2035 kills in the game. This could only be achieved with the cooperation of the other players in the squad. Together we worked well as a team backing each other up as necessary when the enemy almost broke through on numerous occasions."

Verdun remastered out now on PlayStation 4!
We're pleased to announce that the PlayStation 4 release of Verdun remastered has passed certification and is now live as well! The update brings new maps, squads, AI bots, a whole new look and feel, revamped audio, and much more...
Read the full changelog on Reddit!

The update is free for all Verdun owners on PlayStation 4.

Steam Winter Sale
In other news, the Steam Winter Sale is live and Verdun is 80% off - or expand your war to the Eastern Front and pick up Tannenberg for a 60% discount.