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There’s a bunch of new content appearing in the Firefall beta, and Red 5′s bossman Mark Kern has been wheeled out to explain precisely what is going on in a new dev diary video, which you can see below. Basically signing up gives you a chance to sign up, and then to invite others. Kern also does some clever stuff with a map made of lasers. I’m genuinely interested to see how the PvE world works, which is what Red 5 are beginning to roll-out properly now. If there game can give players a genuine sense of urgency in fighting the NPCs, rather them just being a conveyor-belt of MMO-style targets, then it could make for an interesting proposition. I’m a bit less interested in the PvP because, well, Planetside 2, or Tribes Ascend. Anyway, there’s some new footage in there, so take a look.(more…)

#firefall Red 5's Firefall is an upcoming shooter whose development is being led by Mark Kern, former Team Lead on World of Warcraft. All we've seen lately about the game is some cosplay, so let's get back to basic with gameplay footage. Two hours of it. More »

Red 5 Studios will shut down the Firefall beta on January 18, joining Reddit in its one day protest of the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA). CEO Mark Kern told Shacknews that the "misguided legislation" would hurt smaller game companies that wouldn't have the legal resources to protect themselves in case of an "unwarranted shutdown."

"We are also ashamed of the ESA for supporting a bill which is clearly not in the best interests of gamers or the game industry," Kern said, taking his protest of the organization that puts on the annual E3 event one step further. "We will not attend E3 unless ESA reverses their stance."

"We issue a call to all our industry peers, including developers, publishers and game press, to join us in letting the ESA know they do not represent our views on this issue, and strongly oppose SOPA and PIPA."

Despite the ESA's support of SOPA, some members have spoken out against the political lobbying group's stance. Non-member developers have also started speaking out this week, including League of Legends developer Riot Games and Torchlight's Runic Games.

Update: Markus Persson has stated Minecraft.net and Mojang.com will join in the protest.

Firefall developers Red 5 are going further than simply expressing their denunciation of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in words. On January 18th, the studio will close the Firefall beta and website for 24 hours in a show of protest. More drastically, the developers are also refusing to show the extremely promising free-to-play multiplayer shooter at E3 this year because of the organiser’s support of SOPA. Commendable. More below.

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Red 5 Studios will shut down the Firefall beta on January 18, joining Reddit in its one day protest of the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA). CEO Mark Kern told Shacknews that the "misguided legislation" would hurt smaller game companies that wouldn't have the legal resources to protect themselves in case of an "unwarranted shutdown."

"We are also ashamed of the ESA for supporting a bill which is clearly not in the best interests of gamers or the game industry," Kern said, taking his protest of the organization that puts on the annual E3 event one step further. "We will not attend E3 unless ESA reverses their stance."

"We issue a call to all our industry peers, including developers, publishers and game press, to join us in letting the ESA know they do not represent our views on this issue, and strongly oppose SOPA and PIPA."

Despite the ESA's support of SOPA, some members have spoken out against the political lobbying group's stance. Non-member developers have also started speaking out this week, including League of Legends developer Riot Games and Torchlight developer Runic Games.

#sopa You may have noticed a few websites around the place pledge to "shut down" on January 18 in protest against the awful Stop Online Piracy Act. That's all well and good, but now Red 5 Studios, the developers behind the upcoming Firefall, are doing it as well. Thing s, they're shutting down their video game. More »

Not content with the impressive CG versions of their main characters from multiplayer open-world shooter Firefall, Red 5 Studios have gone a bit overboard on the cosplay and brought in pros to play the parts of a couple of their armoured cartoon soldiers. I don’t think the jetpack actually works, so he won’t be making a Jingle All The Way entrance to PAX or anything. Yes, it’s more than faintly ludicrous, but I couldn’t help playing into the hands of this bizarre promotional strategy: seeing a grown man and woman enthuse about wearing plastic space armour is something we should all witness. As, you know, a warning.(more…)

#firefall To help shill their upcoming Firefall, Red 5 Studios is employing two models to play the part of the game's characters at press events and shows. One is cosplayer Crystal Graziano, who Red 5 is also sponsoring for a full year. The other is not a cosplayer. He's an actor and...American Gladiator. More »

#cosplay Regular readers of our Fancy Pants cosplay feature here on Kotaku will be familiar with the phenomenal work of Crystal Graziano. From Metal Gear to Valkyria Chronicles, she's one of the most recognisable and successful video game cosplayers around. More »

Developer Red 5 has recruited one of the masterminds behind CryEngine 3 and Crysis 2, Ury Zhilinsky, to work on its coming titles, the shooter-RPG Firefall and an unannounced, cloud-based project titled Stage 5. Zhilinsky is now Red 5's senior programmer, and the studio isn't done searching for fresh talent.

Considering Firefall entered beta this summer and it is scheduled for release in winter 2011 (that's now), we assume Zhilinsky and his new team will be working on this mysterious new game, Stage 5. Or maybe he was hired to completely redesign the Firefall character models to include water wings and ball gowns before its release any day now. Maybe.

There are the jetpacks, of course, which instantly drew out a nod of approval, but my first impressions of Firefall were only of mild interest. The marketing campaign has been rarely effective though, not because of increasing bombast or social network integration which would be more likely to make me ignore it’s attempts to inflitrate my life, but because it has increasingly taught me what it will actually be like to play. The latest developer diary is another convincing burst of information. It sits before me and tells me how the various classes will work and, most importantly, why that will be fun. Observe.

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Lead class designer David Williams is in the hot seat to explain "heroic moments" in Firefall. We imagine these will be like that one time we rescued a scared kitty trapped in a tree. We felt pretty heroic afterwards.

It was years before I stopped writing “jetpack” on my Christmas present list. My parents sat me down and told me that they didn’t exist. Also that I was adopted. That second bit wasn’t true, but I really wanted jetpack and they were trying to soften the blow. I’ve never forgiven them for taking my jetpack dreams away. But a new Firefall trailer is adequate recompense. It has jetpacks in an open-world that’s built to take advantage of the vertical movement. It’s pretty as a picture to boot.(more…)

Most of the footage I’ve seen of the hugely ambitious and massively multiplayer shooter Firefall has made me nod approvingly at the scale and design of the world, which not only looks the part but also seems a place it’d be fun to soar through, raining death from above, and probably from the front, sides and back as well. Lo and behold, there is a new trailer that takes a different perspective; instead of whooping about size and numbers, this one zooms in on an individual piece of kit, giving a better idea of individual skills. It takes the form of an advertisement for the heavy weapon specialist’s Dreadnaught frame and it’s one heck of a sales pitch.

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Back in July, Red 5, developers of the upcoming MMO RPG/Shooter hybrid Firefall, filed for legal arbitration against their Korean publisher Webzen. Alleging breach of contract and a host of other accusations, Red 5 later found themselves hit with a counter-suit courtesy of Webzen, and... you really don't care about any of this, in all likelihood. What you do care about is whether or not you'll ever be able to play Firefall, and why wouldn't you? It sounds pretty sweet.

Well, good news! Webzen and Red 5 have settled with each other, according to a press release sent out this evening. The details? Webzen gets "compensation" for the development costs they covered, and they'll get cut into revenue generated by Firefall when it launches "for a time." Red 5 gets, well, to finish the game, and no longer has to deal with Webzen.

Full press release details after the jump.

The developers of the upcoming free-to-play FPS MMO Firefall have announced a new feature that's sure to make a couple of you squee: There will be in-game pets. Red 5 stopped by Shacknews last week to reveal that players will be able to summon little creatures that follow their avatars around in-game, and they'll also be able to kill the pets of enemies. How that will work isn't quite laid out yet, but CEO Mark Kern suggests that players will be able to buy special ammo that lets them fire on their enemies' little friends.

The shooter types among you may laugh, but part of the appeal of big MMOs like World of Warcraft is the cute little bits of customization that come along with building a big, colorful persistent avatar. And while pet combat doesn't sound like anything more than a little extra fun, we won't ever turn down a little extra fun. Pile it on, please.

There's so much to fight on Firefall's planet: Indigenous creatures, invading aliens and, if the voice in this trailer is any indication, air full of particulate matter that can clog up your vocal folds. Need some water, dude?

There's a good chance that Firefall is going to be your absolute, undeniable jam. It's just one of those combinations of features and ideas that should apply to at least (but probably more than) one of your sensibilities: It has class-based shooting, customizable loadouts, loot, strategy, a persistent world, character creation and a focus on cooperative, Player vs. Environment gameplay.

Any of those tickle your fancy? They tickle mine. They tickle all of my fancies simultaneously.

And what a handsome trailer, below. Information about the beta can be found here, and there’s a sign up here. I remain pretty excited about this, even in light of Planetside 2 possibly being awesome. It’s going to be fascinating to watch some prime MMOFPS candidates duke it out in the coming year or two.(more…)

I can't wait for Red 5 studios to launch Firefall. With MMO elements borrowed from games like World of Warcraft and Borderlands-style, sci-fi, RPG-shooting, Firefall blends many elements. It also has totally sweet jetpacks, is set in a large open world, is free to play and cures lupus. Okay, that last one was a lie, but the rest is true...

Laguna Hills, CA - Red 5 Studios announces it will bring its highly anticipated free-to-play, team-based shooter Firefall to Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, starting August 17, followed by a hands-on unveiling at PAX Prime in Seattle, Washington, August 26...

Red 5 Studio's upcoming free-to-play shooter, FireFall, will launch this December. The news comes via Red 5's Mark Kern in an interview during the ChinaJoy gaming expo. For those who like a little extra sauce on their launch date news, Kern reconfirmed the date in the FireFall forums.

FireFall, lest you've forgotten, is a massively multiplayer online shooter headed up by lead designer Scott Youngblood. Yeah, the same Scott Youngblood that designed Tribes. And did we mention it's going to be free?

Curious gamers should keep their eyes peeled, as a beta test is slated to roll out sometime before launch.

Unhinged, semi-airborne shooter Firefall, which looks a bit like Borderlands meets Tribes meets Brink meets WoW meets Unreal Tournament, has only gone and done the new trailer thing. It is fun to watch! It is also Firefall’s first big show of footage since announcing contentious author Orson Scott Card would be writing this sorta-MMO’s story. But never mind that: this trailer has some remarkably upbeat music. It has some grand views. It has a giant spider-robot. It has men and women flying over vast terrain. Terrain! Music to any PC gamer’s soul.(more…)

Prepare to team up with hundreds of players in Red 5's free-2-play, skill-based shooter in the upcoming beta of FireFall.

Prepare to team up with hundreds of players in Red 5's free-2-play, skill-based shooter in the upcoming beta of FireFall.

#firefall Firefall is an upcoming co-op shooter for the PC, made by Red 5 Studios, which is helmed by the guy who was team lead on World of Warcraft. So it should know what it's doing when it comes to online gaming. More »

People like video games with guns. They're exciting and explodey, and are super popular for a reason. Firefall looks especially exciting and explodey and, well, really, really awesome. Check out the latest Firefall trailer...

It looks like Webzen won't be taking Red 5 Studios' recent filing for arbitration lying down. In the wake of Red 5 Studios seeking to end its Asian publishing agreement with Webzen, the Korean publisher has filed suit against Red 5 Korea. According to Korean website This Is Game, Webzen accuses Red 5 Korea of breaching its publishing agreement on several occasions.

Among the claims, Webzen alleges that Red 5 Korea delayed an offline test of FireFall. Red 5 Korea subsequently announced the test, using Webzen's logo, without the publisher's permission. Red 5's Korean branch is also alleged to have sent a press release about Orson Scott Card's involvement with the game, again without Webzen's permission. The proverbial final straw centers around G-Star 2011, a Korean gaming convention. It seems Webzen was preparing to show FireFall at the convention but, after hearing that Red 5 Korea was planning to display FireFall independently, the publisher decided to file suit.

Just where all of this leaves the Asian release of FireFall remains to be seen. The game will be self-published by Red 5 in both North America and Europe.

Firefall devs, Red 5, have revealed that their Tribes-a-like online shooter has its story written by Orson Scott Card, he behind the SF novel Enders Game, and other games including the exquisite Shadow Complex. Some will greet this news with enthusiasm, as it means the already promising action MMO will have something deeper than “the man shoots the other man” as a backstory. Others will start scrawling protest banners.

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