Sony has been given permission to obtain details of people who downloaded files needed to hack the PlayStation 3.
A judge in San Francisco granted the electronics giant a subpoena that would allow it to see a list of IP addresses. The software, used to crack the PS3′s operating system, was posted on the website of George Hotz, who is also known as Geohot.
Court documents, obtained by Wired magazine, show that the company successfully petitioned to obtain IP addresses from the web-hosting company Bluehost.com
The details could be used to trace the real-world geographical locations of users who accessed George Hotz’s website, Geohot.com.
Mr Hotz denies that he set out to help software pirates, claiming instead that he was championing the ‘home brew’ community – users who write their own software for the PS3.
Sony has said it is now able to remotely identify users who are running hacked PlayStation 3 consoles and that it will ban persistent offenders from using its online services.
Blizzard have started to slowly poke out clues into what we can expect from Heart of the Swarm – the first expansion to Blizzard’s Starcraft II. The expansion will have as much of an e-sport focus as Wings of Liberty, and they’ve made a plea for gamers to embrace the new breed as a spectator sport.
During a talk entitled The Game Design of Starcraft II: Designing an E-Sport at GDC, Justin Browder one of the designers on the project admitted that the team did encounter some surprises when the game was finally released: “We’re going to maintain the e-sport values. We’re still working on it. These values are real. We’re not going to chicken out on e-sports in Heart of the Swarm.”
According to Browder, every aspect of Starcraft II’s development centred around the idea of making the game balanced and enjoyable to spectate: “Multiplayer was hugely impacted by e-sports. We took a ton of damage in trying to make this game’s multiplayer. A huge amount of effort. We were completely screwed around for five or six years. The art team got hit hard by the decision to make this an e-sport. Even the vision and the story were affected by the fact that this was going to be an e-sport. We did anything we could to make this a more watchable viewing experience.
Tonnes of gamers are staying in touch with the spectator aspect that the game is responsable for, PC Gamer proudly admit to it, and so does Inappropriatebunny.com, but what about you guys? The Bunny enjoys these places, Where we watched the Moon Vs. Squirtle Semi on friday, and HERE for all the latest on the Koreans.
Where and what gaming tournemants are you enjoying? Share some links. Search for my gamer tag on SC2, help me put together a good Bunny 4v4 team. InappBunny, come on gamers Team Bunny top of Grand Masters by the end of the year.
Saints Row has always seemed to play second fiddle to Grand Theft Auto in the world of crime games.
But with Saints Row’s over-the-top naughtiness, a bit more like Getaway, which included pumping pedestrians with pooh in the last game, you can’t really call it a clone. Expect the series to continue pursuing its own brand of potty humour and action in Saints Row: The Third, which was just announced for all platforms.
The slick art you see here comes from Game Informer, which will feature Saints Row: The Third on the cover of the magazine’s April issue.
Warner Bros. has announced that it intends to fight the Mortal Kombat ban that was imposed in Australia last month.
While the game is obviously gruesome, the publisher says that the gore in Mortal Kombat is on a par “with numerous other titles available for sale in the Australian market”.
The official Statement read:
“After careful consideration Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Australia have decided to appeal to the Australian Classification Review Board against the RC (Refused Classification) decision given to Mortal Kombat. After reviewing both the game play and the Board’s original decision WBIE Australia believe the violence in the game is on par with numerous other titles readily available for sale in the Australian market. As such the company wants to exhaust all options to make the game available to Mortal Kombat fans in this country. An identical version of the game will be submitted for appeal.”
Currently, Mortal Kombat is rated mature which was deemed necessary to create the unimaginable brutality that the franchise is best known for, according to NetheRealm Studios anyway.
Penny Arcade and Minecraft are teaming up to make a new game that seeks to reinvent the classic collectable card game genre.
Scrolls will be developed by indie game studio Mojang and feature writing by Penny Arcade’s Jerry Holkins.
Holkins brings his flair for writing and deft use of adjectives to the game’s back story. Holkins says he and the rest of the folks at Penny Arcade are big fans of Minecraft.
Still in beta, computer game Minecraft already has more than 4.5 million registered users and has sold more than 1.4 million copies. The game was developed by Markus Persson. Persson has since formed Mojang, a studio of nine based in Stockholm, Sweden.
The PC Gaming Alliance have released some figures ahead of their GDC report, showing that the PC gaming market grew by 20% in the year 2009, taking $16.2 billion in revenue. The report also predicts that the PC games market will continue to grow and could hit profits of $23 billion in a few years time. Almost doubling
Digital distribution is the main reason given for the explosion in growth. Selling digitally bypasses the cut taken by high street retailers,simply cutting out the middle man and allowing developers and publishers to take more direct profits. The report says that the PC gaming market will continue to grow, driven by digital distribution, and could regularly be worth $23 billion by 2014. the report also predicts that Steam will face tough competition from other contenders in the near future.
Blizzard are releasing another main patch for StarCraft II, and are allowing players to try it out before the official release date. The 1.3 patch is now current available to download via StarCraft’s public test server.
Patch 1.3 adds a new Grandmaster League to the 1v1 ladder matches, an extra league above Master. This league is available to the top 200 players in each of StarCraft II’s global regions. Additionally, the usual fixes of balance changes and general bug fixes are all present and correct, along with some improvements to the Join Custom Game feature and the game’s editing tools.
Activision as it confirms plans to release more download content for the series thanks to huge continued support from fans. With a bit of DJ Hero too it would seem.
After axing both the DJ Hero and Guitar Hero series in a shock announcement earlier this month, the publisher then confirmed that February’s planned Guitar Hero Downloadable Content releases would be the last, and that it “will not be able to release new DLC packs” in future. This month would official see the end of the GH and DJH series.
But it seems Activision has had a change of heart (sensed a money-making opportunity says I). A statement on the GH Facebook page reads: “Thank you for being a part of this community and all 3 MILLION of you rock! In thanks for your continued support, we’ve decided to celebrate by releasing some more downloadable content. Details coming soon…” As well as the DJ Hero fan-page on twitter states, ”Thanks for being a member of our community. In recognition of your continued support, we’ve decided to release more DLC! Details soon!” If it was a REAL gift and a GENUINE thank you, the content would be free wouldn’t it.
The Sony Experia Play in our opinion is doomed from the off.
The planet seemed to be moving towards tablets before it actually arrived there, it somehow seemed inevitable. The iPod evolved into an iPhone, that happened organically, the touch screen was there already, you had your music in it and Guitar Hero was still cool so it seemed and easy slide into touch screen portable games. Sony’s attempt at a game phone seems 5 years too late somehow, and regardless of arriving late, its already out of date. Why start from scratch in a ultra-competitive saturated market when they could have followed the iPod-Phone movement and just made PSP-Phone, that would would have made more sense to me, they would already had a game library anyway.
I WANT TO SEE SONY INNOVATE SOMETHING ORIGINAL FOR ONCE! Shoulder button, L2 and R2 and all that, snes did it first. Playstation move, Wii came first. Four control ports, GameCube. Silly bollocks crash team racing game, Mariokart. But now at least they’ve done a gaming phone eh. Nintendo don’t have one of those yet do they. No, but nokia have have done it already Ericson. Over five years ago, keep up guys.
For the past few months I have been playing a lot of Starcraft 2. I came across this video of Artosis (a commentator of professional games) and his reaction to a recent Starcraft 2 Pro game in Korea. Check it out!
