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Archived News:
The
SEGA Blog announces that Company of Heroes 2 outdid Total War: ROME
II in a community competition, entitling Company of Heroes 2 owners the chance
to download two DLC packs for the World War II real-time strategy sequel at no
cost for a limited time: To the victor goes the spoils and the valiant
efforts of the Company of Heroes 2 community have earned all Company of Heroes 2
owners the opportunity to download two brand new commander packs on Steam, for
free, until February 22, 2014, 10:00 AM PST.
Company of Heroes 2 Free DLC
Soviet Commander: Advanced Warfare Tactics. He will help you gain vital
intelligence and exploit enemy movements with PPSH equipped conscripts and the
most powerful incarnation of the vaunted T-34 tank armed with a hard hitting
85mm cannon.
German Commander: Close Air Support Doctrine will help you gain tactical
air supremacy over your foes by providing close Air Support and cover for
frontline engagements by utilizing the powerful weapons of the versatile JU-87
and its destructive power.
A full list of abilities for both commanders can be found on the Steam product
page here:
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/38625
Owners of the Windows edition of Battlefield 4 can head
to Origin where they can get a free copy of a handgun shortcut kit that's
listed as a $4.99 value (thanks
Shacknews). Word is: "The Handgun Shortcut Kit contains the following
unlocks: M9, QSZ-92, MP443, SHORTY 12G, G18, FN57, M1911, 93R, CZ-75, .44
MAGNUM, and Compact 45. Does not include any weapons added by expansion packs."
The
GeForce website now offers new version 334.89 WHQL-certified drivers for
NVIDIA graphics cards. Here's word on the performance improvements these
promise: "Today’s Microsoft-certified WHQL driver increases performance by up to
19% in over half a dozen titles. Gains were measured on the GeForce GTX TITAN,
GTX 780 Ti, GTX 780, and GTX 770, but should apply to other GPUs also. (please
note that results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration)."
Thanks Iggy.
Daedalic Entertainment announces new Untold Legends DLC coming to
Blackguards on March 4th, adding new weapons, quests, battle maps, and music
tracks. They note that this will coincide with the release of a new version 1.3
patch for Blackguards with some major changes for the turn-based RPG. Word is:
"The patch will majorly improve the game’s balancing system, giving players
better insights into their characters’ hit chances, and how to improve these.
Showing the Hit Chance during battles is no longer depending on the talents
Warcraft and Animal Lore, so players will always know the odds when choosing
among normal- and special attacks. Also, the new patch will now allow to display
a full battle log, including all dice rolls, to allow full transparency of all
events while in combat." Here's more on the DLC: Untold Legends sheds new
light on the background and heritage of Takate, the former slave and arena
fighter, who joins the player’s party in Chapter 2 of the original Blackguards.
Takate’s home is in the foothills of the rainforests in Southern Aventuria,
where most of the native people of the Moha originate from.
In Untold Legends, players will learn how Takate became a slave gladiator, and
get the chance to take revenge on all the slavers that caused so much pain to
him for much of his life.
Deep Silver announces the release of NASCAR '14, ETX Racing's new
motorsports simulation for Windows, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. The
official launch trailer
offers a look at the hard-driving game, and here's word: As the "Great
American Race" approaches, NASCAR is hitting the gas on the racetrack and into
gamers' homes with the release of NASCAR '14. Deep Silver announced today that
the racing game NASCAR '14, developed by ETX Racing, is available in North
America on the Xbox 360® games and entertainment system from Microsoft,
PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Steam for Windows PC for the
suggested retail price of $49.99.
NASCAR '14 includes the most requested gaming feature: online leagues, allowing
gamers to band together to overtake rivals on the track. NASCAR '14 also
delivers skill-based matchmaking for the first time in franchise history.
When gamers aren't competing online, they can build their career or take the
wheel of their favorite drivers to relive the best NASCAR moments from 2013 and
purchase new 2014 highlights throughout the season. Using authentic physics and
real race data from licensed drivers, and featuring all NASCAR-sanctioned
tracks, fans can keep current with the 2014 NASCAR season by buying monthly
content packs filled with multiple races for only $5 each. NASCAR fans can now
do more than just watch the race - they can drop into a recreation of an exact
race moment soon after it happens to relive or rewrite history.
Continue here to read the full story.
The FTL: Faster Than Light website
has details on FTL: Advanced Edition, the upcoming free expansion for the
throwback space strategy game (thanks nin via
Shacknews). They note that player ships will still be limited to eight
systems, and outline some of the new options of ways to outfit your ship,
explaining the workings of clones, hacking, mind control, and the backup
battery. They also outline plans for visual improvements and a new hard mode for
the already difficult game: Visual Improvements: As we’ve mentioned
before, along with the new content we’ll also putting in a host of minor tweaks
and improvements to the game. One example would be the new and improved reward
boxes, making event outcomes more clear.
Hard Mode: For our more masochistic fans, we’ve also added an additional
Hard difficulty to the game. More challenging enemy generation, lower scrap
rewards, and other small tweaks should help keep the game interesting for anyone
who might be bored of Normal.
A hearty thank you to Frans for his hard work at piecing the site back together
after our hard drive crash. We think everything is back where we left it, and
all the static HTML stories that were posted during the outage are now in the
database. Here's a big thank you to Frans for his efforts, and to all of you for
your patience and encouragement during the downtime.
Link of the Day:
Chèvres en
équilibre - goats balancing on a flexible steel ribbon. Thanks nin.
R.I.P.:
Devo guitarist Bob Casale dies at 61. Thanks Neutronbeam.
The Irrational Games website has a
message from Ken Levine saying he is "winding down" operations at Irrational
Games, and is starting a smaller "more entrepreneurial" effort with Take Two to
"make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable,"
saying this will involve about 15 other former Irrational staff. "When I first
contemplated what I wanted to do, it became very clear to me that we were going
to need a long period of design," he explains. "Initially, I thought the only
way to build this venture was with a classical startup model, a risk I was
prepared to take. But when I talked to Take-Two about the idea, they convinced
me that there was no better place to pursue this new chapter than within their
walls. After all, they’re the ones who believed in and supported BioShock in the
first place." Here's more on what this means to Irrational:
When Jon Chey, Rob Fermier and I founded Irrational
Games seventeen years ago, our mission was to make visually unique worlds
and populate them with singular characters.
We built Rapture and Columbia, the Von Braun and The Rickenbacker, the
Freedom Fortress and some of the nastiest basements a SWAT team ever set
foot into. We created Booker and Elizabeth, the Big Daddy and the Little
Sister, MidWives and ManBot. In that time, Irrational has grown larger and
more successful than we could have conceived when we began our three-person
studio in a living room in Cambridge, MA. It’s been the defining project of
my professional life.
Now Irrational Games is about to roll out the last DLC for BioShock Infinite
and people are understandably asking: What’s next?
Seventeen years is a long time to do any job, even the best one. And working
with the incredible team at Irrational Games is indeed the best job I’ve
ever had. While I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished together, my
passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done
before. To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a
smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with
gamers. In many ways, it will be a return to how we started: a small team
making games for the core gaming audience.
I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it. I’ll be starting a
smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two. That is going to mean
parting ways with all but about fifteen members of the Irrational team.
There’s no great way to lay people off, and our first concern is to make
sure that the people who are leaving have as much support as we can give
them during this transition.
Besides financial support, the staff will have access to the studio for a
period of time to say their goodbyes and put together their portfolios.
Other Take-Two studios will be on hand to discuss opportunities within the
company, and we’ll be hosting a recruiting day where we’ll be giving 3rd
party studios and publishers a chance to hold interviews with departing
Irrational staff.*
*If you’re a 3rd party interested in interviewing some of the best game
developers in the world, please contact
chris.bigelow@2k.com
A
recent reddit post created a sensation by revealing
a code snippet said to
be from Valve's VAC anti-cheat system showing programming to sniff out the
entries in the user's local DNS cache. In spite of no evidence that this
actually happens, the post also states that VAC then sends a hashed copy back to
Valve's servers, causing
much hue and cry. Due to the concerns this raised, Valve's Gabe Newell
uncharacteristically directly addressed what is being said about all this in a
reddit thread. Here's what he said:
We don't usually talk about VAC (our
counter-hacking hacks), because it creates more opportunities for cheaters
to attack the system (through writing code or social engineering).
This time is going to be an exception.
There are a number of kernel-level paid cheats that relate to this Reddit
thread. Cheat developers have a problem in getting cheaters to actually pay
them for all the obvious reasons, so they start creating DRM and anti-cheat
code for their cheats. These cheats phone home to a DRM server that confirms
that a cheater has actually paid to use the cheat.
VAC checked for the presence of these cheats. If they were detected VAC then
checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted. This second check
was done by looking for a partial match to those (non-web) cheat DRM servers
in the DNS cache. If found, then hashes of the matching DNS entries were
sent to the VAC servers. The match was double checked on our servers and
then that client was marked for a future ban. Less than a tenth of one
percent of clients triggered the second check. 570 cheaters are being banned
as a result.
Cheat versus trust is an ongoing cat-and-mouse game. New cheats are created
all the time, detected, banned, and tweaked. This specific VAC test for this
specific round of cheats was effective for 13 days, which is fairly typical.
It is now no longer active as the cheat providers have worked around it by
manipulating the DNS cache of their customers' client machines.
Kernel-level cheats are expensive to create, and they are expensive to
detect. Our goal is to make them more expensive for cheaters and cheat
creators than the economic benefits they can reasonably expect to gain.
There is also a social engineering side to cheating, which is to attack
people's trust in the system. If "Valve is evil - look they are tracking all
of the websites you visit" is an idea that gets traction, then that is to
the benefit of cheaters and cheat creators. VAC is inherently a scary
looking piece of software, because it is trying to be obscure, it is going
after code that is trying to attack it, and it is sneaky. For most cheat
developers, social engineering might be a cheaper way to attack the system
than continuing the code arms race, which means that there will be more
Reddit posts trying to cast VAC in a sinister light.
Our response is to make it clear what we were actually doing and why with
enough transparency that people can make their own judgements as to whether
or not we are trustworthy.
Q&A
1) Do we send your browsing history to Valve? No.
2) Do we care what porn sites you visit? Oh, dear god, no. My brain just
melted.
3) Is Valve using its market success to go evil? I don't think so, but you
have to make the call if we are trustworthy. We try really hard to earn and
keep your trust.
Steam News announces
that Early Access to GunZ
2: The Second Duel is now underway, taking advantage of Steam features,
saying: "Unlike the EU and Taiwanese versions, Steam version will have its own
unique features such as VAC Support, Steam Trading Card, and Steam Achievements.
Steam version will also offer new item system, 3 new PvP maps, new game mode,
and a new character class." Here's word on the game:
GunZ 2 is an official sequel of GunZ the Duel which
was released back in 2004. MAIET has spent the last 6 years developing this
new title. At release, GunZ 2 will offer 4 different character classes, each
offering unique skills, costumes, and gears. GunZ 2 also consists with co-op
PvE mode and auto-matching system where players are matched with opponents
with similar level of game experience.
A
new Kickstarter campaign is underway attempting to raise $60,000 to develop
a commercial edition of Platinum Arts Sandbox Game Maker, the software designed
to allow kids of all ages to create their own games. The plan would be to create
a commercial edition that's less child friendly, and more suited to grown-up
game development. Here's word on their goal:
To change the world! No really, we want to make it
as easy as possible for people to not only make video games but also other
creative aspirations they might have including world creation, movie making,
interactive guides, reconstruction of historical sites, CAD Design,
storytelling, etc! Sandbox is already changing the world and is being used
in hundreds of Schools worldwide, and has nearly a million downloads just
from our webpage alone! Now we have a chance to make an even bigger impact!
- AMD FX-9590 and FX-9370 on
X-bit labs.
- AMD Radeon R7 265 2GB Video Card Review with Sapphire Dual-X R7 265
on
Legit Reviews.
- AOC G2460PQU myUltraSpeed 144Hz Gaming Monitor on
pcGameware.
- CM Storm Quick Fire TK Stealth on
ocaholic.
- EVGA Z87 Stinger (Intel LGA 1150) on
techPowerUp.
- GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-OC on
X-bit labs.
- GIGABYTE Z87X-UD4H (Intel Z87) Motherboard on
TweakTown.
- Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ G3 32GB on
APH Networks.
- Larkooler SkyWater 330 Liquid Cooling System CPU Cooler on
TweakTown.
- Mionix Naos 7000 Gaming Mouse on
Mad Shrimps.
- Mionix NAOS 7000 Optical Gaming Mouse on
Nikk Tech.
- MSI R9 290 Gaming on
LAN OC.
- NZXT HALE82 V2 550W Power Supply on
ThinkComputers.org.
- OCZ Vector 150 and OCZ Vertex 460 on
X-bit labs.
- TYAN S7053GM2NR (Intel C602) Server Motherboard on
TweakTown.
- Classroom Aquatic touts itself as "the world's first
trivia/stealth game." The game's
website offers six playable alpha demos (Oculus Rift and regular demos
for Windows, OS X, and Linux) and
a trailer in
support of their
Kickstarter...
Okay, databases still offline? Check. Fresh snowfall to shovel? Check. Okay, I
don't need a safe (or Ned Ryerson) to fall on me... it's Groundhog Day!
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