Sid Meier's Civilization VI News

Civilization VI drops ad tracker Red Shell after a month of controversy

Last month, ad tracking software Red Shell generated controversy after it was discovered in a number of popular games. The program's information collection had - and has - many players concerned about their privacy, calling for Red Shell's removal from every game that contains it. Now one of the biggest titles on the list has cut the program.

The latest patch notes for Civilization VI make the simple note of "removed Red Shell." There's no direct acknowledgement of the controversy, though there is an additional note. "Firaxis Games and 2K are committed to making Civilization VI the best experience possible and will continue to support the title. If you have any feedback on this update or just the game in general, please let us know in the Steam forums or comment below."

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You can see the patch notes over on Steam. They also include cross-platform multiplayer across PC and Mac, which is nice, though nothing else.

The Reddit thread which brought this all to our attention has continued to collect relevant info, and since we last reported on Red Shell many of the titles which made use of it have either removed it or pledged to do so. Of the handful of titles that haven't addressed the tracker, most are small indie games and mobile ports - with the notable exception of Injustice 2.

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Cross-play should once again be back online for Civilization VI

The ongoing saga of Civilization VI seeing online cross-play broken between updates continues, with it now once again back online as of the update today, September 10.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/09/cross-play-should-once-again-be-back-online-for-civilization-vi

PC and Mac/Linux Crossplay Hotfix Coming Tomorrow

Sharing a follow up on a previous desync issue between PC and Mac/Linux players: tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. PT, we're pushing out a hotfix for Civilization VI that will re-enable crossplay between PC and Mac/Linux. We really appreciate your patience while we worked with our partners at Aspyr.

Sid Meier says Civilization's nuclear Gandhi bug isn't real

When Gandhi drops a nuke on you, you want to know the reason why. Civilization's take on the leader has always had a reputation for investing in nukes and making war, not love, and players eventually tracked that meme down to a bug in the original entry in the series of strategy games. We thought the issue had been put to rest, but Sid Meier himself says that no such bug ever existed.

The popular theory goes that Gandhi's nuke aggressiveness rating in the original Civ was set at one - far lower than any other leader in the game. However, once the AI started to adopt peaceful policies, that aggressiveness rating would go down even further - but the number couldn't go below zero, so it would roll over to the maximum value instead: 255. Thus, Gandhi starts dropping nukes on every neighbor.

It's a fun story, but according to Sid Meier, it isn't true. In his new memoir (via Bloomberg), appropriately titled Sid Meier's Memoir!, the designer confirms that the bug never actually existed. Instead, all the long-running jokes are all based on nothing. Meier says that "it's one of those mysteries that it's almost fun to keep mysterious".

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Sid Meier: "I'm not sure even I would play" Civilization today

Sid Meier isn't sure gamers today have the patience for old-school Civilization. In fact, the legendary game designer isn't even sure he could push through the time investment. In a new interview, Meier says that Civ 1 was perfect for its time and place, but that's "not where most gamers are" today.

"I don't think I could make Civilization today," Meier tells The Independent. "I'm not sure even I would play it. It wouldn't fit in the zeitgeist. It asks a lot of the player, and takes a while to work it out. You have to play it once in order to understand what's going on. You have to be willing to spend time with it, and that's not where most gamers are these days.

"Civ came out at the perfect time. The PC had got beefy enough for us to make it, but weren't inundated with so many possibilities. If it had been created two years earlier we'd only have had four colours and it would have been much shallower."

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