Archived News:
A lengthy thread on the
Steam
Users' Forums discusses problems users are having with copies of Earth
2160 purchased through the service. Since a Steam update in February the
game returns a "failed to get SteamID error," and the
support page for the game offers no
help. Thanks Shacknews,
who have not received a response yet from Valve to their inquiries about this.
A new patch for Quantum of Solace is now available to update the James
Bond movie tie-in to version 1.1. The only note accompanying the patch is that
it "might" not work on versions of the game purchased via Steam. The download
is available from
AtomicGamer,
FileFront, and Gamer's
Hell.
Steam News announces the
availability of an automatic update for Tom Clancy's EndWar, offering a
number of bug fixes and optimizations for the real-time strategy game. The Steam
patch includes the same changes as the recent manual patch.
A new version 1.4 dedicated Linux server is now available for Call of Duty:
World at War, the latest installment in the military shooter series. The
patch to update the previous version 1.2 server is found on
AtomicGamer and
Gamer's Hell and the
full server is on
AtomicGamer and Gamer's
Hell.
A new "Bane Reveal Trailer" from Batman: Arkham Asylum introduces this
brutish super villain's depiction in the upcoming superhero action game. The
clip is posted on
ActionTrip,
AtomicGamer,
FileFront, Gamer's Hell,
and
MyGameTrailers.
A new Risen "mood" movie offers a look at environments from Piranha
Bytes' upcoming RPG. The clip can be found on
ActionTrip,
AtomicGamer,
Gamer's Hell, and
MyGameTrailers.
A new Majesty 2 Diary
includes both text and video to show off how temples are created and how they
function in 1C: Ino-Co's upcoming fantasy-themed strategy game. The clip is
mirrored on AtomicGamer.
There's also a new "power sentinels" clip on
Gamer's Hell and
MyGameTrailers.
A new Battlestations Pacific movie shows off the multiplayer modes in the
upcoming World War II action/strategy sequel. Here's the description of the
clip: "This new video gives viewers an explosive look at the game's five online
multiplayer modes: Island capture, Duel, Siege, Escort and Competitive. The game
will allow up to eight players (four on each side) to engage in huge multi-unit
battles online." The movie is posted on
FileFront and Gamer's
Hell.
Thanks Mike Martinez and Ant.
Thanks Mike Martinez and Ant.
The Starbreeze Forum
offers links to download a new patch for The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault
on Dark Athena that brings the just-preleased first person shooter to version
1.01 (thanks Bill). Here are the patch notes, presumably listing problems
solved, rather than problems added, in the new version: Multiplayer - User
is unable to join an online session hosted by a patched game or a game with
downloaded content and message "Blahblah" is displayed.
Multiplayer - User is unable to join an online session if the port is not
forwarded to 30000. This causes the message "session no longer exists" to be
displayed.
Assault on Dark Athena - Game crashes on throwing the guards body into the
rotating fan.
Steam News announces the
availability of a single
player demo for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, Relic's real-time
strategy. Word is: "The demo places gamers in the role of elite Space Marines
engaged in furious combat across the dark recesses of space, battling the
heretic Eldar, the pillaging Orks, and the ravaging Tyranid threats." In
celebration, Steam is offering a 25% discount on
sales of the game between
now and next Monday.
From Stardock: Demigod Day 0
Status Report has word on some issues with Demigod, Gas Powered
Games' new action/strategy game (thanks
Voodoo Extreme). The post by Brad "Frogboy" Wardell outlines four major
issues, and what's being done about them, as well as word to expect some
"Stardockians" populating online games: With the first official day of the
game's availability almost over, I'd like to give you a status report on 4
critical issues we're working on addressing:
#1 Custom Games. The lobby and the NAT connection are seperate which, in
hindsight, wasn't an ideal design decision. It's something that can be addressed
but it'll take some days to do it. Basically, the connection system needs to be
more like a lobby where the host can eject users who have problematic setups,
slow ping times, etc. In any other game, if you create a game and you see a user
who's got a slow ping, you'd eject them probably. But here, they have to first
connect to everyone else. And that assumes their router isn't set up like fort
knox whicha lot of users clearly have.
#2 You're connected but not in the game. This appears to be a genuine bug
on our part. We're looking to address this and with any luck we'll be able to
provide an updated build today or tomorrow. This is a very frustrating problem
for users.
#3 The Pantheon / Skirmish games create uneven teams and such. This is
mostly due to a lack of data for the system to work off of. When it was
developed, it had a ton of beta tester win loss data to create balanced teams.
Plus, from a "fun" point of view it was designed to try to get a skilled player
versus 2 or 3 unski-er less experienced players as we found that pretty fun
during the beta but the problem is, with everyone starting out with the same
rating, it ends up with some bad results. This situation will iron itself out in
the next couple of days on its own but now you know why it's happening.
#4 Server Load. We can't complete this list without talking about the
overall server load Demigod's Pantheon and community features are using. A lot
of this is simply volume but part of this is just finding areas where certain
calls were being made too often. This will take a bit of time to address but I
expect by the end of the week it'll be pretty responsive if not sooner.
As some of you know, we're all over the forums and on the chat channels hanging
out.
So how can we make any of this up to you? Well, we've decided one way is to
expand on something that our partners at Ironclad (developers of Sins of a Solar
Empire) really got going when Sins came out and that is put a lot of
"Stardockians" online to play multiplayer games with people later this week.
These Stardockians will be on to help show people how to play the game, give
them tips and provide just a good online experience. For people who found
themselves trying to get a game going today and couldn't due to server overloads
or network connectivity, you'll be able to get a good game going with us.
Thanks for your patience. We'll keep you up to date!
The Dawn Of War 2
Community Site has a follow-up on the newly released version
1.2.1 patch for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, Relic's RTS sequel. The
post offers details on how the game's matchmaking system works, what has been
done to change it, and offers a brief FAQ to cover questions the whole situation
may inspire. In a general sense the game's previous matchmaking algorithm placed
too much emphasis on creating matches immediately, while the new method makes
more effort at creating balanced matches, while also making sure that games
still eventually get underway.
PC Gaming Alliance president gives update on membership on Big Download
talks with Randy "Stute" Stude of Intel and the
PC Gaming Alliance about
recent changes to their membership, including the departure of
Activision and the addition of SecuROM purveyor Sony DADC. Stude admits to
concern that their membership currently only boasts three publisher/developers
(Epic Games, Capcom, and Microsoft), though he says it's possible Activision
Blizzard could rejoin at some point. As for the addition of the company behind
the reviled SecuROM, Stude talks of Sony DADC's qualifications to contribute to
the PCGA's piracy subcommittee's final report. Stude tells them he expects a
report on PC game piracy and recommendations on dealing with it before the end
of the year.
Konami may skip 'Six Days in Fallujah' Euro launch on Joystiq reports on
some info in German from
GamePRO.de indicating Six Days in Fallujah is not a sure thing for a
European release. The report states that unnamed representatives of Konami made
comments to the website at Konami's Gamer's Day in Frankfurt last week saying
they were waiting to see how Atomic Games' portrayal of the battle for Fallujah
turns out before deciding if the game will be released in Europe.
The Salt Lake Tribune
reports that Utah Senate President Michael Waddoups may be looking into
prosecuting crusading crusader Jack Thompson under the federal CAN-SPAM Act of
2003 over email harassment. The last straw was apparently an Easter morning
email containing a lap dance screenshot from Grand Theft Auto IV that
Thompson sent as part of his efforts at overturning the veto of
the Utah games bill he helped author. "I asked you before to
remove me from your mailing list," Waddoups replied to Thompson, saying, "I
supported your bill but because of the harassment will not again. If I am not
removed, I will turn you over to the AG for legal action." There is also a post
about this on the
Utah
Senate Site Website (thanks
GamePolitics) where the author of the post apparently opened his copy of the
mail in church on his Blackberry. As usual, Thompson's response indicates that
people just don't understand that his actions are eternally above reproach: "As
disturbing as the image is, it's something an adult ought to be able to handle
looking at. There are two women who are clad and a guy's looking at them," they
quote Thompson saying. "I would love to be being tried criminally for writing a
state senator an e-mail with something he thinks is pornographic but who is not
offended by the fact that children can buy this."
GameSpot.AU has word that
NecroVisioN is the latest game to run afoul of the notoriously tough
Australian censors, as the supernatural World War I FPS game has been refused
rating, meaning it is effectively banned down under. A subsequent update gives
the reason as excessive violence with the rating board saying the game contains
violence which could not be accommodated under the MA15+ rating, the most adult
rating in their system (in spite of ongoing efforts by activists to inspire an
R18+ rating to cover such games). Here is the board's direct quote on the topic:
"When the player shoots an enemy combatant, a large volume of blood spray
results and the enemy may be dismembered or decapitated. Injury detail is high
with pieces of flesh seen flying from bodies when shot or a high level of wound
detail visible on bodies. Post mortem damage occurs when bodies are shot
resulting in blood spray, dismemberment and decapitation." Thanks
Kotaku Australia.
GamesInustry.biz reports Sony Europe president David Reeves will be retiring
at the end of this month. His successor as president and CEO of Sony Computer
Entertainment Europe will be Andrew "Doctor" House, currently chief marketing
officer and group executive at SCEE.
The Tribal Trouble 2 Website offers
a new beta 0.8 of this browser-based real-time strategy game set in the Viking
age. Here's word from Oddlabs on the update: "Tribal Trouble 2 has undergone a
major makeover. The browser part of Tribal Trouble 2 has been transformed into a
virtual town for each tribe to expand. Upgrade your ship to go on far away
missions, build a hall to meet other players, setup a theater to watch epic
battles and much more. The new website has been moved away from the unstable
beta server and onto a brand new setup in Google's server park to make sure it
will have all the power and stability ever needed. On top of this, the new
version offers a new quest where you have to fight against a revengeful African
tribe."
The Tech Report -
Where have all the sims gone?
"Maybe simulators are just canaries in a coalmine, a genre representative
of a much larger trend in video games: the move toward simplicity. Even
before the days of Nintendo's Wii console, video games were becoming easier
and more accessible, all for the sake of becoming more mainstream. There's
no doubt it worked. Video games now generate $9.5 billion in revenue
annually, but at the expense of the more niche genres. Sim fans like myself
are a dying breed, it seems. All I have left to do is yearn for the glory
days and start working on my 'back in my day' stories for all of you young
whippersnappers."
The Bottom Feeder- Indie Games Should Cost More, Pt. 1. Thanks
Slashdot.
"XBox Live gave the trend a big push by charging $5 or $10 for most
titles. That was still enough to get rich on when the gold rush was going.
It isn't going anymore. I was genuinely surprised when people seriously
complained that Braid, one of the coolest, most innovative titles out last
year, was an entirely reasonable fifteen bucks."
GameBizBlog - Why Edge-Online's Whole Team Quit.
"Edge-Online's new bosses claim they want to "integrate" the online and
print facets of the magazine. I believe this to be an error. Although the
Edge voice ought to be maintained throughout all its activities, any attempt
to reshape a dynamic daily website in the image of a monthly print magazine
is conceptually and practically highly problematic. The story of the game
industry is now being told via lightning fast websites and blogs of
phenomenal competence and editorial quality. The days when giant print
brands dominated the mediascape are over."
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