Category: News

Valve Implements New Policies In Response To Developer Scams


Steam has played host to some malicious developers in the past, from Ata Berdyev to James Romine of Digital Homicide, but this week saw Valve’s lacking moderation pushed to a new level as several developers started uploading fake items to their in-game inventories with the intent of either directly defrauding or assisting in defrauding players. One game, Climber, changed its logo to Dota 2’s to further the scam while a third game actually changed its name to Team Fortress 2, logo and all. All of these games have since been removed and their developers permanently barred from releasing future titles, but the fact that the incidences occurred at all has shined a big light into how poorly Valve moderated its systems.

As reported by PC Gamer, Valve has begun requiring approval for game name changes, and has added in extra protections to make sure you don’t accidentally trade items for a fake indie game version. The trade screen will now flash a warning requiring the user to accept twice before trading items to a game that they do not own or have never played.

“We also started requiring approval for app name changes, and have more planned to address this sort of problem that we couldn’t get done in one day,”
-Tony Paloma

(Source: PC Gamer)

Steam: Rend Enters Early Access To Mostly Positive Reviews


Team-based survival game Rend has entered early access on Steam this week, and the reviews are so far looking mostly positive. Developed by Frostkeep Studios and published by the same, Rend is a game inspired by Norse mythology that tasks players with building their faction’s stronghold and then of course battling it out with both other players and creatures that populate the landscape.

Initial response has been positive, with the game gathering a 75% mostly positive rating on Steam.

“Since we first announced Rend, we have been developing it side by side with our players through Pre-Alpha and Alpha testing and by gathering feedback through Discord and our official channels,” said Jeremy Wood, co-founder and CEO, Frostkeep Studios. “Our goal has always been to transform the way players interact and participate in survival games while delivering on the fantasy that they have come to expect from this genre.”

Frostkeep Studios is an independent developer whose list of talent includes names from vanilla World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and League of Legends.

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.

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)

This Week’s Update Killed Old School RuneScape’s Economy, So Jagex Rolled It Back


Old School RuneScape is reeling from a massive bug that resulted in the servers being taken offline for a few hours and, in an unprecedented move, Jagex rolling characters back to pre-update. An unfortunate oversight in this week’s update allowed players to turn various items into fat stacks of cash upon death. As you can imagine, Jagex didn’t want players generating coins in the billions out of thin air and out of concern for the integrity of the game, they delivered a quick Vulcan nerve pinch and brought the servers offline so the bug could be fixed.

When converting a stack of items into a stack of coins, it’s appropriate to check that the calculation doesn’t overflow the max integer limit of the game’s language (2.1 billion). Unfortunately, the logic used for this calculation was incorrect, and when executed on stacks of other items (not the pouch itself) the result was to convert the stack to 2.1b coins. Regrettably, although the pouches were found to be acting correctly during testing, the flaw affecting other items was not spotted as it was not expected to have changed.

Unfortunately MMO Fallout investigations have discovered evidence that Jagex didn’t so much reverse the update as much as it did transport all of us to a timeline where the bug never happened, and all of us happened to conveniently disappear around the same time. Keep an eye out for doppelgangers.

(Source: RuneScape)