A recent source code leak for the rhythm game Osu! has unveiled some rather damning evidence on how the program used to monitor for cheating. According to details revealed in the leak, and shown in the photo above, administrators are able to snapshot a user suspected of running cheat programs. The snapshot, as you can see above, contains not just the game but a shot of the user’s entire desktop.
Osu! developer (Reddit username Pepppppy) confirmed that while the code is outdated and as such the program is no longer present, that intrusive anti-cheat tools were at one point in use.
it has already been removed since the last time this discussion came up, actually. the code that was leaked is verydated (pulled from the master branch, which is not our active development branch). things are in a very different state currently, and we haven’t relied on any intrusive anti-cheat for a while now.
Citing “serious internal debate,” Tree of Savior developer IMC Games revealed that they have requested that Valve temporarily shut off the ability to access the game. The decision comes in response to server stability, lag, and major issues regarding gold farming and in-game chat spam.
These restrictions will be put in place as soon as they are implemented by Valve and will be lifted as soon as the issues have been resolved. There will be another announcement as soon as the restrictions are implemented.
Tree of Savior previously had issues with fraud regarding Steam refunds, where certain malicious people were purchasing founder packs and then refunding them via the Steam store to keep the items.
Shadow of the Eternals was meant to be the successor to Eternal Darkness, the latter having been developed by defunct game studio Silicon Knights and the former by Precursor Games, a new company molded out of the core team of Silicon Knights. The first Kickstarter campaign was a failure, gathering $128,000 of the $1.35 million requested. Lowering their target to $750,000, the second campaign also failed.
You can’t find Silicon Knights games on store shelves anymore, unless you find stores selling them pre-owned, and there’s a very good reason for that. A court ordered them to be destroyed. Back in 2007, Silicon Knights decided to sue Epic Games under the allegation that the company wasn’t developing the Unreal Engine up to the standards that they agreed upon, forcing them to develop their own engine. Epic counter-sued and revealed that Silicon Knights had stolen the Unreal Engine code.
Evidence shown in court proved that the Silicon Knights engine was using 20% of the Unreal Engine. Embarrassingly, SK not only copy and pasted the code but included all of the developer notes with associated typographical errors. They did, however, make sure to remove any notes of Epic’s copyright and fill in their own. In the end, Silicon Knights was convicted on all counts, given a hefty $4.45 million judgement, and ordered to recall and destroy all copies of their games using the engine.
Since then, Precursor Games has pretty much gone dark.
Until now. Denis Dyack has reappeared on Youtube on a channel called The Quantum Tunnel. Yesterday the channel uploaded a trailer for Shadow of the Eternals, noting involvement from two companies: Quantum Entanglement Entertainment and Fast Motion Studios.
Dyack posted a podcast a couple of days ago where he calls out unethical press over what he perceived to be unfair coverage of the earlier Kickstarter. Dyack refers to his company as the “karmic revenants that are going to continue to be here and not go away.”
Webzen has marked the end of open beta for ASTA and official commercial release of the MMO. ASTA is built on CRYENGINE 3 and boasts a broad crafting system, dungeons that change their difficulty based on player skill, a player-driven economy, and more.
Set to launch on May 31st is ASTA’s first expansion, Myth I: Wrath of the Berserkers. The expansion introduces a new race, the Raksa, as well as their race-specific class the Berserker. The berserker is a DPS class that uses dual-wielded weapons and is capable of buffing its own stats to make for a formidable foe.
Berserkers inflict damage by swinging their double weapons, such as swords or axes, with great power and speed. They exploit any gap left by a defeated enemy to mount their next attack. Using continuous attacks such as “Bloodstain”, rather than powerful single blows, Berserkers are well capable of turning a situation in their favour. Berserkers can also use Combat Art Skills to enhance their own strength, and Soul Skills to improve the strength of the summoned creature “Cursed Doll”.
Wrath of the Berserkers also introduces new quests, new rewards, a new dungeon, and raises the level cap to 55.
Blade & Soul is about to get more expensive for European users, as NCSoft has announced price hikes coming to those who pay via Euro and British Pound. Beginning June 1st, prices for premium membership will increase for parity with the in-game Hongmoon store, according to NCSoft.
New prices will start out at €11.99 and £9.59 for 30 days of premium. Roughly translated to USD, this means European players will be paying $13.43 and $13.87 for the same service that Americans currently pay $11.99 for. Any subscription prior to June 1st will be locked in at the current price.
Daybreak Game Company have released the official trailer for H1Z1: King of the Kill’s newest game mode, Ingition.
Ignition is a high-intensity, frenzied game mode where the clock is always ticking. Players are outfitted with an explosive device that’s set to blow unless they gear up fast, jump on their ATV, and gun it to the safe zone. Every second matters in this turbo-charged battle to the death as players race from safe zone to safe zone before their time runs out.
It’s been ten years since Valve announced Half Life 2: Episode 3 and the internet is pretty much convinced that the game will never be made. Originally conceived back when episodic gaming was nowhere near as prevalent as it is in this post-Telltale world, Valve hoped that splitting one giant game (Half Life 3) into three parts and releasing them episodically would shorten the wait between releases.
The idea worked, at the start. Half Life 2 launched November 2004 with Lost Coast bridging the gap in October 2005, Episode 1 in June 2006 and Episode 2 in October 2007. It was a big change from the wait between Half Life 1 and 2, a problematic development cycle that saw a six year wait.
But even the wait between Half Life and Half Life 2 seems like small beans compared to the ten year wait that players have endured just for the small confirmation that Valve is even working on the title. In that time, Steam has grown to become a platform more profitable than Google. We’ve seen Valve launch several titles, a lucrative skin market for multiple games, mold their games for eSports, run numerous high profile tournaments, launch a hardware brand, VR, and more.
And yet, despite this massive success, the company refuses to comment on Half Life.
The lack of information coming from Valve has only fueled the speculation on why Half Life 3 hasn’t been fully announced. Is it because they are making too much money elsewhere? Because they waited too long and believe that the game missed its mark? Or because they are waiting for major engine updates to Source? Or because they’re figuring out a way to add microtransactions to a single player game?
Either way, we’re looking at the tenth anniversary since Valve announced the next Half Life 2 game with just as much information as we had ten years ago.
If you were looking at picking up anything in Lord of the Rings Online this week, you’re out of luck. In a post on the official forums, Turbine announced that sales for the nine year old MMO will be halted for a week on Tubine’s store as well as through Steam and Amazon. The announcement comes with a rather ominous “plan” to turn the features back on in June.
We want to announce that at 12:00pm EDT 5/20/2016, we’ll be temporarily interrupting our DLC/Offer sales on Steam, store.turbine.com, and Amazon. We plan to turn these back on June 1st, 2016.
Speculation is rampant on why sales would need to be suspended for a full week, with all likelihood pointing to an overhaul to mirror the company’s shift in focus from big expansions to smaller content packs.
Stomping down toxic behavior is all the rage these days, between Riot Games putting the kibosh and permanently banning certain players for life, to Blizzard pledging to tackle racism after the latest Dreamhack conference, Jagex taking on streamer harassment and KKK cosplay (a phrase that shouldn’t exist), and now Trion Worlds with ArcheAge. The game has become a lot less friendly and Trion’s customer service isn’t happy.
In a news post published yesterday, Trion Worlds has committed to taking a more hands on approach with toxic behavior.
We are going to be much more conscious about what we allow to be said in public chat channels. We know that some will do their best to test boundaries and try to skirt our intent and then appeal the action with a technicality. Ultimately if our determination is that your chat is contributing nothing except grief to a player or community we will take actions to prevent that.
So what does this mean? Well, you can call a boss a bitch but you can’t call another player a bitch. Personal attacks, using alternate accounts to harass a player who has put you on ignore, spamming the chat channel, physical threats, and more will result in action taken against offenders. Trion also reminds players that this only extends to in-game chat, and that the company can’t extend its reach to outside platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc).
Beginning yesterday (May 19th) and going through June 2nd, heroes in Champions Online will be able to group up and take on otherworldly invaders in the Nightmare Invasion event. In order to participate, players must be over level 10 and in a group of at least three.
Strange otherworldly creatures have started invading Millennium City, and you need to stop them! A mysterious stranger called Golden Seraph has appeared in Renaissance Center, pleading for assistance in stopping this invasion. Who is behind this new invasion, and what does it ultimately mean?
There are exclusive rewards for heroes who participate in the event.
MMO Fallout 