Category: News

Fantasy War Tactics R Celebrates 800 Days With Anniversary Event


Nexon’s Fantasy War Tactics is hitting its 800 day anniversary and if you don’t know what kind of present to buy for that kind of event then don’t worry about it. The presents are coming to you. Starting yesterday (November 11) and running for eight days, players can log in and gain daily gifts and participate in events revolving around dishing out gold and diamonds.

The anniversary update delivers tons of new in-game giveaways and events for players to enjoy. Beginning on Thursday, Jan. 11, players who log-in daily will hail the 800-day milestone with 8 days of valuable item drops, such as:

  • Day 1 – Random Rune Box x3
  • Day 2 – Unknown Fruit x40
  • Day 3 – 15,000 Soul Stones
  • Day 4 – 8,000,000 Gold
  • Day 5 – Dungeon Subjugation Ticket x100
  • Day 6 – Universal Transcendence Ticket x1
  • Day 7 – 5-Set Selection Ticket x1
  • Day 8 – 6-Equipment Piece Selection Ticket x1

Those who seek more information can find it on the official Facebook page.

Lost City of Omu Update Hits Neverwinter In February


Perfect World Entertainment has announced that the next Neverwinter expansion will drop on February 27 on PC. Lost City of Omu continues the story where Tomb of Annihilation left off, pitting adventurers against the evil lich Acererak (are there any other kind of liches?)

The expansion introduces new adventure zones, an endgame trial, expands the Tomb of Annihilation campaign, and even features a giant undead T-Rex. Players of all stripes will be happy to hear that the leveling curve from 60 to 70 has been smoothed out for a more fluid progression, with more information on additional tweaks coming in the next few weeks.

Lost City of Omu hits PC on February 27 with Xbox and Playstation coming at a later date.

(Source: Perfect World Press Release)

IPE News: VIolating A Terms of Service Is Still Not A Crime


Good news, internet-goers, violating a website’s terms of service isn’t a crime. It hasn’t been for years, but a recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has gone to solidify and embolden that ruling.

In this case, Oracle USA sued Rimini Street Inc in Nevada District Court over allegations of misuse of their website violating established terms of service. Rimini was brought into court over their use of automated programs downloading support materials from Oracle’s website, which is against the company’s terms of service. Oracle sent a cease and desist, but did not restrict access to said files, and eventually filed suit. The judge ruled in favor of Oracle, stating that violating the terms of service constituted a breach of state computer crime statues.

Rimini appealed the ruling to the Ninth Circuit who overturned the lower judge’s decision, noting that Oracle prohibiting certain methods of collecting material does not constitute a violation if the material is already readily available. In short, it’s not illegal just because the website owner doesn’t like your methods.

More analysis can be found on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website piece linked below.

(Source: EFF.org)

Gazillion’s Bankruptcy Lawsuits Filed: First Hearing February 23


It’s been a short time since Gazillion Entertainment folded into bankruptcy and, as one might expect, the debt collectors are coming out of the woodwork to get their overdue money. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy case has been filed in California courts against Gazillion from three parties claiming a total of $695,123 in unpaid debt. The majority of the claim comes from Playchemy Inc claiming $684,186 in unpaid debt. The rest is spread evenly between Secret 6 and one Caitlin Capes.

Gazillion is scheduled to meet in front of a judge with said creditors on February 23 in the afternoon at the San Francisco Courtroom to discus trial dates.

Gazillion Entertainment launched Marvel Heroes in 2013. At the end of 2017, Marvel pulled its license in part due to under-performance, resulting in Marvel Heroes shutting down and Gazillion going bankrupt.

(Source: Court Dockets)

Another Epic Games Lawsuit Settled With Permanent Injunction


Another Epic Games Fortnite lawsuit has been settled this month. Back in October, Epic Games filed lawsuits against a number of people creating and disseminating cheats for Fortnite in California and North Carolina state courts. A couple of those cases have already been settled and it looks like most of these cases will end with the defendants permanently barred from (possibly) playing and definitely from creating, using, or distributing cheats for Fortnite or any of Epic’s other titles.

Epic alleges that Yakovenko created, developed, and/or wrote a purported software cheat for Fortnite’s Battle Royale game mode; Yakovenko then created and posted several videos on YouTube to advertise, demonstrate, and distribute his cheat; Yakovenko’s videos feature Epic’s FORTNITE mark and full screen gameplay using the purported cheat; and while Yakovenko’s “cheat” does not appear to be a functional Fortnite cheat, it functions as a bitcoin miner that infects the user’s computer with a virus that causes the user’s computer to mine bitcoin for the benefit of an unknown third party.

The terms of the judgement permanently bar Yakovenko from creating or using cheat software in any current or future game owned by Epic Games, or even assisting anyone with creating or using a cheat for one of Epic’s games. Both parties will be paying their own legal fees, and it looks like no monetary penalty will be taken against Yakovenko.

In other news, it looks like Epic Games may have sued another minor. Last year we talked about the lawsuit against 14 year old Caleb Rogers, whose case has not seen any progression since we last discussed it. Epic’s lawsuit in North Carolina court mirrors that of its lawsuit against Rogers, noting that the minor was posting videos on Youtube showing how to cheat and where to get said cheats, with the lawsuit essentially following up on a DMCA takedown notice that Epic had filed. The defendant, M.F., filed a counter-notice under the penalty of perjury that his videos were fair use. In cases where counter-claims are issued, the only option going forward for a copyright holder is to file a lawsuit.

As in the case of Rogers, it looks like Epic was not aware of the age of Moret before filing and as such a number of files have been sealed to the public regarding this case. As with the other cases, Epic appears to be pursuing a permanent injunction on cheating.

Perfect World Entertainment To Shutter War of the Immortals/Battle of the Immortals


War is immortal, unless of course you’re referring to Perfect World Entertainment’s War of the Immortals which is one hundred percent mortal. Perfect World today announced that two titles in its library will be shutting down next week, those being War of the Immortals and Battle of the Immortals. Both titles have been in operation for six years and will close down as of January 9 when the servers go down for good.

All payments from September 1 through December 14 will be credited back to your Arc account.

All WOI payments from September 1st, 2017 through December 14th, 2017 @ 11 AM PT will be converted into Arc credit and allocated to your account. These credits can be used in any of the other PWE games. Arc Points between this same time period will also be refunded to your account.

There was no official reason given for the shutdown, however activity on the forum would seem to indicate that this may be a standard case of low traffic/revenue.

(Source: Battle, War)

Old School RuneScape Launches Dragon Slayer II


Old School RuneScape is celebrating its fifth year with the revival of a classic in the form of Dragon Slayer II. The long awaited sequel to one of the first quests released for RuneScape, Dragon Slayer II is only for high level players that have completed a long list of requirements and are ready to go up against some challenging enemies. The quest also sees the launch of the Myths Guild, a questing guild only accessible to players with 200 quest points who complete the new Dragon Slayer quest.

While Dragon Quest II is for members only, free to play content related to the release is also out today in the form of a novice quest, the Corsair Curse, and the settlement Corsair Cove.

“More than 16 years after the original Dragon Slayer quest launched and gave players their toughest challenge, we’re giving them an even grander challenge to overcome with Dragon Slayer II, one of our most memorable adventures yet!” said Mathew Kemp, Senior Product Manager, Old School RuneScape. “2018 is a real milestone year for Old School RuneScape; in addition to celebrating our fifth anniversary next month, we’re of course looking forward to the launch of Old School on mobile platforms soon!”

(Source: Jagex Press Release)

Nexon Announces Biggest Third Quarter Ever In Earnings Release


Nexon has released its third quarter revenue results and the times are looking pretty good for the developer/publisher. Driven by strong performance of its top titles including Dungeon & Fighter, Fifa Online 3, and the Maplestory 2 test in China, Nexon enjoyed a 36% increase in revenue over last year with net income up 157% over the same period.

Q3 was a great quarter for Nexon, with revenues, operating income and net income well above our expectations. It was also the biggest Q3 ever. These strong results reflect continued growth in our key existing titles in China and Korea, as well as strong starts in new games both PC and mobile.

Over in North America, Nexon placed blame for lower than expected revenues squarely on the shoulders of Lawbreakers, which launched in August and never managed to develop a following. The earnings call indicates that Nexon is writing off Lawbreakers as a loss, as its impairment made up a majority of the losses for North America for this quarter, meaning that development will either be ceasing or there are plans to divest Nexon from Boss Key Productions.

Our results in North America in the third quarter were below our outlook, mainly due to the sales from LawBreakers being below our expectations. LawBreakers is a unique FPS developed for core users. We had very high expectations for its launch; however, the timing of its launch turned out to be unfortunate, specifically the blockbuster PC online game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds came out right about the same time, making the market environment very tough for first-person shooters in general and for LawBreakers.

Nexon expects these fortunes to turn around in Q4 with the acquisition of Pixelberry Studios.

Nexon’s good fortunes are expected to continue into the fourth quarter and beyond with a strong schedule of games launching worldwide.

(Source: Report, Earnings Call)

Fake News: VAC Ban Wave Has Reason Muddied


There is no massive conspiracy to Valve’s recent ban wave of Team Fortress 2 bots, but cheaters would like you to think there is. Valve recently banned a large number of accounts taking part in catbot, a hacker who has been terrorizing Team Fortress 2 servers by flooding them with a large number of bots. News websites picked up on rumors and reports that Valve was simply banning anyone with “catbot” in their Linux username as an attempt to quickly get rid of the bots.

MMO Fallout can confirm that those reports are fake. A confirmed Valve employee has posted on Reddit to deny the claims, noting that these rumors are likely being circulated by the cheating community, and that Valve has not instituted a policy of banning by username.

The bug report–and I suspect many of the posts in this thread–are a tactic employed by cheaters to try and sow discord and distrust among anticheat systems. VAC has many different types of detections and we cannot discuss what they do publicly because doing so makes them less effective. However, one thing I can disclose is that all detections require that the detection occur while a user is actively cheating and connected to a VAC-secured server.

Those of you with Catbottom as your Linux username can breath easy, and log back into Team Fortress 2.

(Source: Reddit)

Police Arrest 25 Year Old Tyler Barriss Over Deadly Swatting Prank


Via NY Daily News

The Los Angeles Police Department has taken 25 year old Tyler Barriss into custody in connection with a deadly prank that culminated in the loss of a life earlier this week. Barriss, of Los Angeles, is being charged with a prank called “swatting,” in this case Barriss told the police that a man had been killed and his family held hostage.

Barriss had allegedly called in the false threat over a lost bet while playing Call of Duty. Finch was not involved in the game, the intended victim gave Barriss a fake address. The total sum of the wager was $2.

When 28 year old Andrew Thomas Finch answered the door, he was shot and killed by one police officer. The officer in question has been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation. Finch was the father of two, and his children were not in the house at the time of the incident.

Barriss was arrested two years ago after sending bomb threats to ABC Studios. Police may find prosecution an easy task as Barriss appeared in an interview with Youtube personality Keemstar which appears to be a full confession of him calling in the prank.

A Gofundme for Finch’s funeral bills has gained nearly eight thousand dollars as of this publishing.

(Source: KWCH12)