Author: Admin

[Steam Direct] Valve Isn’t Doing Basic Checks On Marketplace Items For Scams


Actions speak louder than words, and for Valve and Steam nothing furthers the allegations that the company doesn’t put much stock in the quality of its services than the repeated instances of outright fraud that have occurred on the Steam platform over the past few years. We’ve seen meme games, troll games, asset flips, abusive developers, Greenlight vote fraud, a developer taking critics to court, and of course the repeated return of Ata Berdiyev who Valve repeatedly ignore until whatever latest game he is involved with starts bringing embarrassing attention to the Steam store.

Our latest controversy comes to us in the form of scam artist indie developers and Steam items. Valve has opened up the floodgates allowing developers to give their games inventories with tradeable items on the Steam market and, as usual, they have put absolutely zero effort into quality control and as a result, some shady developers have come out of the woodwork to start exploiting the unchecked system. Reports are popping up from numerous communities of developers uploading items that are visually identical to items in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2, in order to con unsuspecting players into making trades.

This type of scam is different than what we’ve seen in the past, although it has been spotted before, because it directly implicates that game developers themselves are knowingly taking part and likely even perpetuating the scams. In addition, it shows that Valve is doing next to nothing in regards to checking against its sellers shenanigans. Are they vetting logos? No. Are they vetting tradeable items? No.

In the case of Abstractism, that includes tradeable items like the Team Fortress 2 rocket launcher knockoff shown above, the game has shown that Valve isn’t even properly vetting their games for viruses or other malicious programming. Abstractism has numerous negative reviews noting that the game is being flagged by several anti-virus programs as containing a trojan horse virus, uses a shady looking steam services executable that may or may not be authentic, and thanks to the work of several sleuths on the net, has more or less been shown to be a cryptocurrency mining operation.

Both games we’ve shown in this article, Abstractism and Climber, have been removed from Steam and their developers presumably banned from selling further titles. It does show, however, that Valve’s commitment to dealing with troll or illegal games is hollow, if not mostly fabricated.

En Masse Entertainment Will Close 22 TERA Console Servers



TERA publisher En Masse Entertainment this week announced a major culling to the game’s servers on Xbox One and Playstation 4. On August 21 of this year, both versions will see their server list massively reduced from 22 servers to seven. The remaining servers break down to four for PS4 (2 NA/2 EU), and 3 for Xbox One (2 NA/ 1 EU).

The official date is August 21, 2018, but because the merge could take up to 12 hours, we’re going to start the merge on August 20, 2018 at 9 p.m. PDT. During this time, the servers will not be accessible.

PC mergers are coming later this year.

(Source; TERA)

Jagex Wants To Publish Your Indie Games


Gamesindustry.biz is holding its Investment Summit in September, and RuneScape developer Jagex will be there to seek out new publishing opportunities. After announcing last year that the company is seeking to publish more independent titles, Jagex will join a list of publishers and investors including Nintendo, Sega, Fig, Humble Bundle, and others to give speeches, have lunch, and hopefully close some deals between big name publishers and indie developers.

 “Our participation is an important part of the third age of Jagex as we look to support studios and development talent by opening our live game publishing services to studios seeking success in the living games market.”
-James Burns, Jagex

For more information on the event, check out the link below.

(Source: GI.biz)

[Video] Destiny 2: Forsaken New Weapons


Bungie this week is showing off new weapons coming in Destiny’s Forsaken expansion, including a projectile sword, a rocket launcher that shoots two rockets, and a bow that lets you see through walls. Check it out at the embedding above.

H1Z1 To Launch On PS4 August 7


Daybreak Game Company announced this week that H1Z1, the formerly zombie-based survival shooter turned Battle Royale title, will be launching on Playstation 4 officially on August 7. Upon launch, the game will officially become free to play and introduce a bevvy of new content including two new weapons, a new vehicle, season one of the game’s battle pass, two launch bundles, and optimizations to be sure.

H1Z1 has been trucking away on Playstation 4 in open beta, attracting more than 10 million players (that’s about 1 in every 7 PS4 owners). For more information on the update, check out the link below.

(Source: H1Z1)

No Man’s Sky: Steam Concurrency Explodes With New Update


Somewhere the folks at Hello Games must be breaking out the champagne. Following the launch of its latest update, dubbed NEXT, No Man’s Sky has seen a population explosion on PC. Steam figures currently show a concurrent user count of just under 50 thousand, up from a peak of two thousand in June. Reviews have similarly seen a dramatic increase, up to an 83% “very positive” rating. In addition, No Man’s Sky is currently available for a 50% discount, down to $29.99.

Coinciding the the launch of the Xbox One version, No Man’s Sky’s latest update NEXT introduces a number of improvements to the game, including the multiplayer mode, an extensive visual overhaul, unlimited base building, and commanding freighters. For more information on the NEXT update, check out the trailer below, and the patch notes here.

Diaries From RuneScape: Let’s Talk About Rune Pass


Now for the record before we begin: I bought the Runepass with my own money, this is not a sponsored post nor was the thought ever proposed by Jagex.

My game time credentials in RuneScape are such; I have played RuneScape since 2004 pretty much nonstop, my account has more than 187 days of pure game time invested and I’m willing to be that I’ve easily put over a grand in real life dollarydoos through a combined cash shop purchases and the fact that my membership has literally not lapsed since March 2005 and still has me grandfathered in at the $5/month rate. Knowing this, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that I dropped the $10 on the Runepass almost immediately.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that RuneScape’s Runepass didn’t disappoint me in the slightest. There have been a lot of comparisons of this pass to ones sold in Fortnite, in PUBG more recently, and in games like Counter Strike: GO and Dota 2. If you compare Runepass to other games, it’s a terrible value proposition. Fortnite’s battle pass costs $10 and each season runs for about two months where as RuneScape’s first pass costs $10 and gives you approximately 15 days to complete 30 tiers. In Fortnite from my understanding you can generally accumulate enough v-bucks to essentially buy the next season pass, in RuneScape you get jack all in terms of existing content. In Counter Strike: GO, the items you obtain from passes can actually be sold on the market and used to buy more games on Steam. Here? Don’t even think about it.

On the subject of Dailyscape: Dailyscape is the lovingly applicable name given to RuneScape by players concerned that the game has become heavily reliant on daily tasks and while Runepass does contribute to Dailyscape, I’m willing to argue that it does so at a much lesser degree than previous events. This is RuneScape we’re talking about, so ultimately most stuff is going to come down to a grind. As someone who quit the previous three treasure hunter events because the gain of currency was stupidly slow.

This time around the point gain isn’t excruciating. The daily repeatable task has been gaining experience, starting at 10,000 then 100,000 and increasing from there. Daily pass tasks are simple things like cut 50 logs, mine 50 ore, etc. It’s the kind of stuff that you can complete in the matter of a few minutes by going for the low level and thus easy to mass-produce resources.

To put it into perspective, if you completed both weekly tasks: Complete 5 slayer tasks and harvest 50 times from farming patches which take no time at all, you’re five levels deep. There were 28 daily tasks that stacked (meaning you didn’t have to log in every day to complete them) and individually might take at most ten minutes to complete. That’s 140 points, or another 14 levels, and you’re up to 19 levels. This leaves 11 levels to be gained via experience which can likely be done by playing an average of an hour or so a day.

On the subject of MTX: On the subject of real money economy, Jagex has stated that the aim for this is that if Runepass is successful on the non-public level that they are aiming for, that it will lead to less Treasure Hunter promotions.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Jagex has the same relationship with promises and timelines as, well as I do. Jagex makes a lot of promises, a lot of those go unfulfilled. When it comes to money, especially, Jagex has not followed up on a lot of promises in the past. Let’s not forget that most of RuneScape’s microtransactions go directly against some promise that Jagex has made in the past in one form or another regarding what players can and cannot buy.

On the subject of rewards: On the subject of rewards, for $10 the Runepass rewards are rather…crap. A small handful of untradeable cosmetics and a bunch of untradeable experience items. And if you’re a maxed player who doesn’t much care for the ocean theme? There’s nothing for you here. I’d like to see Jagex put better rewards in future Runepasses considering this is something they expect players to throw $10 in for on a semi regular basis.

Give something good as a reward, to at least give the impression that people are getting their dollar’s worth. Throw in some rare tokens, some runecoins, something.

In Conclusion: Again, it’s hard to pass final judgement since this is effectively a pilot program and a lot of it depends on how Jagex treats its other microtransaction promotions going forward. If Runepass proves successful and they ease up on the other promotions as a result, all the better. If they double down on both, then we have a problem. But Jagex does need to have some sort of perspective on price and quality. If they’re going to charge the same amount that other games do, they can’t offer a fraction of the duration and rewards.

Bad Press: Saudi Arabia Did Not Ban 47 Games Over Child Suicides


If you’ve been reading the news this week, you may have come across a story that the Saudi General Commission for Audio-Visual Media has banned a list of 47 video games following the suicide deaths of a 13-year old girl and 12-year old boy. You might be more confused by the fact that the two were playing the “Blue Whale” social media game and not a video game at all, let alone one on the list of banned titles. The news piece caught me by surprise as I was fairly certain that I had read about games like Yo Kai Watch and Okami being banned in Saudi Arabia years ago.

Your confusion would be well founded, because much like the Blue Whale game itself, this appears to be a case of fake news with patient zero as none other than the Associated Press. Other than the AP’s claim that the ban list was associated with the Blue Whale Game, there has been no confirmation and the AP article even admits that the agency did not specify a connection. If you try to check local Saudi news on a new video game ban wave, you won’t find anything.

Thankfully the crack investigative team at MMO Fallout was able to get their hands on a list of prohibited games dating back to June 2017, showing that not only is the AP report incorrect, but that the conclusion it leads to is rather easily fact checked. Through the power of the Web Archive (please excuse the slow servers), you can view the list of prohibited titles published in June 2017. The list includes numerous titles that are on the current list: Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6, Yo Kai Watch, God of War, Assassin’s Creed, etc.

Unfortunately the web archive only goes back to 2017 for the Saudi website, but it is evidence enough that the AP’s report on the General Commission is inaccurate. MMO Fallout is not the first to bring this to light, as Ubisoft’s head of communications and localization for the Middle East took to Twitter to call out the Associated Press and request a retraction on the article. The AP report is still up as of this publishing, as are most of the websites that source their news stories from the AP.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Among the press that carried this coverage, Nick Santangelo over at IGN pointed out that there are no secondary sources for the AP’s claim. Games Industry has fully retracted their article. None of the other press websites at this time appear to have altered or retracted their coverage.

IPE Update: Class Action Lawsuit v. Trion Worlds Responds To Amended Complaint


It’s been quite a while since we last checked in on the ArcheAge class action lawsuit, so I figured we’d go ahead and see if anything has changed over the past few months.

First, a recap for those keeping score. Back in what feels like the far flung past of September 2015, two individuals by the names of Aaron Van Fleet and Paul Ovberg launched a lawsuit against Trion Worlds regarding ArcheAge. It’s probably irrelevant to most readers, but noteworthy that they didn’t “launch” a class action lawsuit but filed a lawsuit and are seeking class action status that won’t be ruled on until 2019, just an oversight that a lot of people (including myself) probably haven’t made clear.

The plaintiffs were willing to admit under oath that they had purchased the $149.99 collector’s edition of ArcheAge, and are now suing for a myriad of reasons including the infamous 10% discount and allegations that ArcheAge’s lootbox system violates California law on illegal lotteries.

In my initial discussion on the lawsuit, I noted my doubts that the lottery claims would hold up and that the plaintiffs might be damaging their case by including their exhibit A (and only exhibit) as 50 pages of random players complaining in the forums about loot boxes. Trion Worlds attempted to have the lawsuit moved to arbitration and lost, appealed their case to the First District Court of Appeals…and also lost there. Then the lawsuit went back to the San Mateo County Court and the plaintiffs were given an opportunity to file an amended complaint.

Well they’ve filed their amended complaint and of all that has changed, well, there isn’t much of it. James Longfield has been named as a plaintiff, the screenshots are of much higher quality in the copy available on the court’s website. Apart from one sentence that is changed from present tense to past tense, this is exactly the same complaint, word for word. Nothing outside of the addition of a new plaintiff has been amended in this amended complaint.

Which means that the lawsuit’s pitfalls are still there. The plaintiffs make virtually no attempt to show how Trion’s loot boxes violate the lottery penal code, nor does it actually explain the penal code in any real capacity, an oversight to be sure since it’s basically a large portion of the lawsuit. As far as I could find in the docket, they didn’t even bother citing the penal code that they are attempting to prove violation of. I noted the California lottery penal code in my previous article, the plaintiff apparently didn’t bother and still has not done so. There is also the matter of the 50 pages of forum complaints that are hardly relevant to the case at hand and basically come down to players musing the idea that “this is probably illegal because I don’t like it.”

Trion Worlds has filed a demurer, an objection that questions the validity of the plaintiff’s claims, and unsurprisingly it mostly targets the question of the illegal lottery claim. The demurer mostly attacks on the basis that items obtained in ArcheAge have no measurable value, and thus can not be covered by the penal code definition of property. In addition, Trion argues against the idea that the plaintiffs can claim that they lost money or property, as they exchanged real money for digital goods and received exactly what they paid for. Finally they attacked the lottery on the same merits that I did, that the plaintiffs didn’t really bother staking a claim on the rules of the penal code or how Trion even allegedly violated them.

Notably absent from Trion’s demurer is commentary in relation to whether or not the 10% discount offer change constituted misleading advertising, but presumably the demurer is to carve up the lawsuit and get rid of the extra fat so that the main points of contention can be handled either during the trial phase or in a supplementary demurer. Considering this lawsuit has now gone on for three years and has rulings and applications for various statuses dated for early to mid 2019, I’m sure Trion is just trying to bring this closer to some kind of resolution.

I have included a link to the docket down below, thankfully San Mateo’s county court allows you to view their dockets at no cost. MMO Fallout will continue covering this lawsuit when any noteworthy events happen.

(Source: San Mateo Docket)

Germany Outlaws Pre-Orders With Vague Release Dates


In the gaming industry, it’s become increasingly common for retailers to offer pre-orders earlier and earlier into a game’s development, promising vague release dates like “coming soon” or “spring 2019.” If you’re in Germany, this won’t be an issue moving forward, as the Higher Regional Court of Munich has ruled that such tactics are illegal.

Originally decided in regards to the smartphone sector of the electronics market, retailers are no longer allowed to sell pre-orders for items without a concrete date that the item will arrive by. Presumably this will lead to retailers and manufacturers using placeholder dates, which stores in the United States like Gamestop and WalMart have a tendency to place on their websites once a game is announced.

 

(Source: GI.biz)