Bloomberg has details on progress on West v. Activision, the legal action between Activision and Electronic Arts/Jason West/Vince Zampella over EA's hiring of West and Zampella (thanks
Computer and Video Games). Word is the $400 million lawsuit is headed to California Superior Court (Los Angeles County):
Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS), the second- biggest U.S. video-game publisher, lost a court bid to dismiss the $400-million contract-interference claims by its larger rival Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI)
California Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle, at a hearing yesterday in Los Angeles, denied Electronic Arts’ request to throw out the claims, saying Activision had provided sufficient evidence that a jury should decide whether Electronic Arts broke the law by talking to two creators of Activision’s “Call of Duty” franchise while they were still under contract.
Berle rejected Electronic Arts’ argument that it was perfectly lawful for the two top executives of Activision’s Infinity Ward studio, Jason West and Vince Zampella, to explore future employment opportunities. It was ’’a whole different scenario’’ if Electronic Arts approached the two executives while there was still more than two years left on their contract, the judge said.
DICE's Tomas Danko tweets that Comrose 2.0 is coming to
Battlefield 3 in February, saying: "Comrose 2.0 will launch in February, even though some previous patches included part of the functionality. Submission procedures are slow." Thanks
BF3blog, where they note: "Some of the new features in Commo Rose 2.0 is the ability to request ammo/medic, which was the main reason most players used the system in Battlefield 2."
The Battlefield Play4Free Forums discuss the removal of "legacy" weapons that players had purchased within the online military first-person shooter. There is a FAQ explaining that they were imbalanced, that there are no refunds offered for these, and that they are being replaced by "unique" +3 weapons. There is followed by page after page of complaints about this, as summarized on
GamingBolt: "However, these weapons have been stripped of all attachments, and those players who had customized their weapons to their liking using attachments will now have to buy new ones from a new catalog. So basically, EA is asking players to pay for something that they’re already pay for. Say, if you increased your ammo capacity using attachments, you will have to do that again now, since all Legacy updates have been removed." Thanks
Ant via
Digg.
The
MechWarrior: Living Legends Website announces the release of a new version 0.5.4 of the public open beta for this Battletech modification for Crysis Wars. The new version includes new mechs, a new weapon, balance changes, bug fixes, and more.
Infinity Ward's
Robert Bowling tweets the first image from the first DLC for
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Word is: "Exclusive sneak peek at 'Park' - some of the first #MW3 DLC hitting Jan 24th for Elite subscribers! More info in Jan!" Thanks
VG247.
A new homebrew patch is now available for
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, extending the unofficial support for Troika's action/RPG by updating it to version 7.9. The new version finds still more bugs to exterminate while also restoring missing art and music. The unofficial patch can be found on its official home:
The Patches Scrolls.
Well it's officially winter here in the northern hemisphere, as the solstice hit sometime in the wee hours of last night. Things have been pretty mild around here following our freak autumn blizzard a couple of months back, but I'm not very optimistic that my snow shovel will be gathering much dust, though I'll be happily proven wrong.
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