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Guild Wars 2 Kills, Deletes, Then Bans Cheater

What could be worse than having your account publicly banned on an MMO? When the developer films themself logging into your account and manually deleting your characters. Chris Cleary, game security lead over at Arenanet, did just this against a rather notable cheater, first committing suicide and then logging out and deleting his characters, all uploaded to Youtube.

Cleary posted later in the same thread that the cheater’s other accounts were banned as well. You can see the video at the link below.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Law Firm Investigating PWE Privatization

The recent announcement that Perfect World Co. is going private has sparked an investigation by the Levi & Korsinsky law firm. In a shareholder alert sent out alongside the announcement last week, the firm confirmed that it is looking into the fairness of the sale.

Perfect World Co. is set to go private in the second half of this year, in a $900 million acquisition that will see ownership transfer over to Mr. Michael Yufeng Chi. Shareholders are expected to receive $4.04 in compensation for standard shares, a 28% increase over the price as of December 31, 2014.

Persons or entities that purchased Perfect World stock before April 26, 2015, can get in contact by phone or email at no cost to themselves.

(Source: Shareholder Alert)

League of Angels Using Assets Lifted From Final Fantasy XIV

League of Angels developer Youzu Interactive Co. Ltd (or whoever is responsible for their advertising) is directly stealing video and audio assets from Final Fantasy XIV for use in promotional materials. This revelation isn’t particularly new, it’s in a footnote on the game’s Wikipedia article. Follow the link in League of Angel’s advertising and it takes you to a Start Game page that will show either a direct rip of Final Fantasy XIV’s Heavensward trailer or the End of an Era trailer alongside the Answers song.

I reached out to both GT Arcade, whose website hosts the videos, and Square Enix, and haven’t received a response from either. I’m going to assume, given Square’s protective nature of its assets, that the usage has not been approved.

Youzu Interactive and GT Arcade are both headquartered in China.

Weekend Wrapup: Iron Man MK3 Edition

Another week has come to an end, and that means it’s time to look at the news you may have missed or forgotten. Weekend Wrapup goes over the highlights of the previous week, not all of which were covered by MMO Fallout.

For Marvel Heroes players, today (Saturday the 2nd) is the only day to grab Iron Man’s MK3 armor.

Perfect World Entertainment is going privately owned. No more investors, no more shareholder meetings, no more quarterly earnings for me to dive through.
Daybreak Game Company shows its support for Project 99. The developers can rest easy without the worry of overzealous lawyers.
Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dacey isn’t happy with player recruitment, perhaps showing unrealistic expectations for an MMO that is already charging a subscription fee for early access.
Alganon is still receiving support and will launch on Steam in May.
The Secret World’s cinematic director is going on to different projects.

Perfect World Entertainment Is Going Private

Perfect World Entertainment has announced that it is going private. In an announcement posted to investors earlier this week, Perfect World will merge with parent company Perfect Peony Holding Company Limited, a limited liability corporation located in the Cayman Islands and owned by Mr. Michael Yufeng Chi. The acquisition will take place to the tune of $900 million bankrolled by China Merchants Bank and Wing Lung Bank.

Shareholders will be bought out at the tune of $4.04 for ordinary shares, $20.20 for American Depository Shares, and no payment for shares held by the parent company or any of its subsidiaries. The price marks a 28% increase over PWE’s closing price at the date that privatization was originally announced (December 31, 2014).

All of this, of course, is still subject to a majority vote at the next shareholder meeting.

(Source: Pwrd.com)

Marvel Heroes Introduces Achievements

Marvel Heroes players have another set of things to collect, with the introduction of in-game achievements. Today’s update adds hundreds of achievements, rewarding players with credits, costumes, pets, and more. Achievements span everything from leveling up, collecting items, defeating enemies, and more.

You can find the announcement at the link below. Also coming with today’s update is new content tasking heroes with battling Ultron, tying in with the new Avengers movie.

(Source: Marvel Heroes)

Daybreak Game Company Embraces Project 99

It isn’t too often that developers acknowledge, let alone embrace a private servers emulating their games, especially if the title in question is still in operation. Daybreak Game Company, however, has decided to embrace the Project 1999 private server, an emulation project of Everquest as it was in its early days, to officially recognize and approve its existence.

We have recently entered into a written agreement with Daybreak Game Company LLC that formally recognizes Project 1999 as a fan based, not-for-profit, classic EverQuest emulation project. The agreement establishes the guidelines that we as a project must follow, but it will allow to us continue to update the game without risk of legal repercussions.

P99 players can rest easy knowing without the threat of legal action hanging above their heads.

(Source: Everquest)

Perfect World Consolidating Forums

On May 4th, Perfect World Entertainment will merge all forums into a single location. The changeover affects all games in Perfect World’s library except for those that are already on the new system (APB, Swordsman, etc).

If you only play one of our games, this migration will positively affect you as well. Beforehand, we were using vBulletin to host our forums, but now, we’ll be hosted by Vanilla – anything that shares the same name with ice cream is good, right? The main features of the Vanilla forums are the customization options and the ease of access.

The new forums go up May 4th.

(Source: Perfect World)

Mortal Online Hit By Another Hack

Star Vault is assuring players that payment data has not been stolen in what appears to be a breach of Mortal Online’s servers. Servers for the MMO were shut down after players noticed alterations to in-game menus, text changes, and strange dialogue shouted by town crier NPCs. The website is down as of this writing, however Star Vault has acknowledged the breach via their Facebook page.

As we use Global Collect as our primary payment processor, they would need to have been breached for any payment information. They have not been, so there is no need to worry about your payment information. This information is not stored on Star Vault servers so you won’t need to worry about that.

There are unverified reports of the attacker being able to ban and unban accounts. You can see some images from in-game at the link below, they contain heavily offensive language.

(Source: Images #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6)

Valve Shuts Down Paid Skyrim Workshop, Refunds Everyone

Valve’s controversial decision to introduce a system where mod makers could put their creations up for sale is dead in the water just a couple of days after it was introduced. Last week Valve announced that creations in the Skyrim workshop would be able to charge a fee for use, with the creator taking a 25% cut of earnings.

The resulting backlash inspired groups of customers boycotting Valve, protest creations popping up in the Steam workshop, and a Reddit AMA by Valve’s own Gabe Newell.

In an announcement posted to the Steam Community, Valve admitted to underestimating the differences between the revenue sharing models in their previous ventures (TF2/DOTA cosmetics) and the mod community.

We’re going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we’ll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.

Going by the announcement, it seems that this isn’t the last we will hear from paid mods. Perhaps Valve will introduce some donation method to help mod creators.

(Source: Steam)

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