Valve Combats Workshop Scams With New Update


When it comes to updating the quality of life of its store, Valve is like a particularly slow iceberg. That said, they do tend to get to their destination. Eventually.

If you pay attention to the drama of the Steam community, you’re probably well aware of an issue plaguing specifically Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. The workshop for both games, and others, has been the target of an onslaught of scams. The scams generally come in the form of ads for free skins, free items, rare skins, giveaways, promotional content, etc. The actual guides lead to phishing websites, infect the user’s computer with malware, keyloggers, etc, and ultimately all you’re left with is a VAC-banned Steam account and an empty inventory. Generally these guides were posted by accounts stolen from other similar scams.

With this week’s update, Steam will now send an email to the account owner when a new item is posted for the first time, asking them to review and confirm the item that was posted. The goal is twofold, to plug the endless stream of scam guides without creating unnecessary hassle for frequent workshop creators, and to inform a user that their account has been compromised without their knowledge. The effectiveness of the new system will have to be seen.

Source: Steam

TERA Reloaded Hits Xbox One and Playstation 4


En Masse Entertainment has finally launched the biggest update ever for TERA on consoles. Tera: Reloaded introduces the Elin Gunner class and brings with her intense firepower. Whether or not you’re interested in the high-caliber cutie, you’ll be able to indulge in the new enchanting system, Guardian Legion Missions offering daily quests, and new endgame dungeons with a hot new gear system.

Twitch Prime members will also find a number of promotional goodies coming to Twitch Prime April 2. The package includes cosmetics, codes, and more for all of En Masse Entertainment games. TERA players can check out the trailer at the link below or just boot up your console and start playing.

[NM] Kotaku Investigates Bioware, Bioware Makes It Worse


The only constants in life are death and taxes. The only constants in the gaming industry are EA (or a subsidiary) creating its own PR nightmare and then making the situation worse in response.

If you’ve been following the tale of Anthem and its alleged six year development cycle, today’s investigative piece by Kotaku’s Jason Schreier may not be that surprising to you. Titled “How Bioware’s Anthem Went Wrong,” Schreier talks to no less than 19 ex-Bioware employees who had been involved in the development of the game. The story is a tale of ineffective leadership, understaffed teams, and various departments either unwilling or unable to work together to put a cohesive and thought out plan together. While EA may tout that the game has been in the works for six years, according to employees the majority of the game was built in the last 12-16 months.

Bioware responded with a very stern letter to the public addressing the article. The response is quite baffling as the developer hides behind its declared passion for its customers, concluding with a thinly veiled attack at Kotaku that the article exposing Bioware’s poor working conditions and indifferent management is somehow a detriment to the industry and craft.

“People in this industry put so much passion and energy into making something fun. We don’t see the value in tearing down one another, or one another’s work. We don’t believe articles that do that are making our industry and craft better.”

And here’s the kicker; You may notice that the letter from Bioware doesn’t actually address any of the specific statements made in Kotaku’s article. That’s because Bioware’s response went up mere minutes after Kotaku published their piece. The folks responding to the article didn’t even bother to read it, and it also means that they had this pre-written and ready to go.

How fitting that a company accused of being tone deaf would be so tone deaf as to so blatantly not read the article that they are dismissively responding to. The management at Bioware either naively thinks that this response is going to pull the public to their side, or they are so deep in denial that they don’t see how bizarre the response comes off as.

Source: Kotaku

IPE: MMO Fallout Hit With DMCA Takedown


Hello folks,

I initially grappled with whether to publish this piece, and just decided to go with it. It came to my attention over the weekend that MMO Fallout, specifically our domain host, has been hit with a DMCA takedown notice. The notice was sent to us in regards to an In Plain English article that was published last year, and it appears that someone is unhappy enough with our coverage and publicization of the events that they’ve decided to claim that our usage of their name in coverage and the court dockets infringes on copyright and trademarks.

Now MMO Fallout knows its legal rights and will not be voluntarily taking down this article. I have nearly full confidence in our hosting provider that they will see the takedown for what it is and will ignore it. That said, I fully understand that it is in their best interest under US Copyright law to act now and make me defend myself later, so I decided to publish this notice as a warning that, on the off chance this website suddenly goes dark over the next few days, you know what happened.

With that, I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Sony’s Digital Refund Offers Crumb Of Refund Rights


Sony’s refund policy just got a fair bit better.

As noted by Push Square, the Playstation terms of service have been updated to note that you can refund a digital purchase within 14 days of purchase assuming that the product has not been downloaded. It also includes a notation making allowances for cases of faulty content.

After purchasing this type of content through PlayStation™Store, you have 14 days from purchase to request a refund to your wallet on PlayStation™Network. If you started to download or stream the purchased content you are not eligible for a refund unless the content is faulty.

In addition, subscription services can be cancelled within 14 days of auto-renewal, with the pro-rated refund depending on how much you have used the service. The money from the refund will go to your Playstation wallet.

Source: Push Square

Bad Press: The Internet Falls For Another Con Artist [Fortnite Edition]


The internet has a such a vibrant imagination.

For those of you healthy adults who don’t follow Fortnite news, Epic yesterday was accused of stealing artwork and using it as a cosmetic costume in their battle royale shooter. The tweet highlighting the claim showcased a Deviant Art user’s creation submitted September 2018 compared to the Fortnite model released in November of the same year. Taken at face value, the models look very similar, almost too similar to not be a coincidence.

Here at MMO Fallout, I pride myself very highly on my BS detector. It came at a very high price, my eternal soul which upon my death will be stored in a garage in Buffalo. Not all too different from my living soul. This gift has come in very handy as in MMO Fallout’s nine years of existence, I have had to correct perhaps one or two pieces in total while breaking some stories that were later confirmed by third parties as genuine and preliminarily offering my doubts to numerous other stories that turned out to be fake.

So when yesterday’s story started hitting that Epic Games was being accused of plagiarism of a Deviant Art…artist, my detector shattered six coffee mugs and bolted down the street singing Queen. Maybe it’s the difficult task of taking seriously a person whose username comes from a television show for toddlers. Maybe it’s because Deviant Art is a bastion of plagiarism under the guise of “this is my OC character, plz donut steal.” Perhaps I just found it very hard to believe that an Epic Games artist would look at this drawing and think “I need to rush this into production yesterday,” funneling the skin from original post to seeing it to designing a knockoff to modeling to testing to release all within two months. That’s an artist with pull.

That could be it. It could also be that I’m aware of Deviant Art allowing people to change photos without altering the “user submitted” date. Such as with this 2009 creation.

The story didn’t fool many people outside of the reactionary Youtube news vlogger circuit, but it did manage to snag the attention and coverage of none other than Forbes Magazine. And why not? Their coverage of the faux-controversy has gathered nearly 140,000 views as of this publishing, far more than discussion of The Walking Dead, Fear The Walking Dead, and the Epic Chinese Avengers poster. Web hosting doesn’t come cheap, folks, and clickbait doesn’t have time for verifying your facts. If you think about it, the fact that the accusation happened is news in and of itself. Basic investigative skills are for nerds like Twitter user Ding Dong who decided to check the website’s cached version and found that the art was swapped. Maybe Forbes should hire Ding Dong instead.

Perhaps the other side of this coin is the general habit of the public to immediately believe anything bad about an individual/entity that they don’t personally like. This claim was instantly believed by large swaths of the internet because Epic did a thing and made a game they wanted exclusive, so why wouldn’t this no-good scumbag literally-Hitler company steal artwork from an innocent 13 year old? It boggles the mind to think that a company you don’t personally care for wouldn’t be guilty of every half-baked accusation that gets laid out over Twitter.

But of course that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.

[NM] Deep Silver Disables Stolen Steam Keys


Metro: Exodus publisher Deep Silver released a statement earlier this week that they will be disabling Steam keys that were flagged as stolen and resold by an unauthorized reseller. The keys were allegedly taken from the factory where the physical keys were printed.

These keys have been obtained illegally from the factory where physical key printing had taken place prior to the announcement of exclusivity with Epic Games, due to the criminal nature of these keys, all unlicensed keys have been deactivated and activation / download of Metro Exodus without the executable file is no longer possible. In addition, the software will be removed from the Steam library of any players using an unauthorised code. The keys being sold on this platform are stolen goods, and are therefore illegal.

The announcement notes that the only authorized key sellers were Humble Store and Razer. Those affected are recommended to contact the seller for a refund, or possibly the cardholder to reverse the transaction.

Source: Steam

Gamefly You Fools: Luigi’s Mansion on 3DS


I recently revived my subscription to Gamefly (no, this isn’t sponsored) because I don’t have enough going on in my life outside of law school and these MMOs that I am allegedly playing. Essentially I wanted a cheap way to play some games that I have had my eye on but never really wanted to buy or more specifically put a down payment on at Gamestop and return within the seven day return period because the policy is great and no matter how annoyed the employees get there’s nothing they can do to turn me down. Is this justification for me writing off my Gamefly subscription as a business expense? If only I knew a lawyer.

The first game I’m going to talk about is one that is near and dear to my heart. I bought Luigi’s Mansion back on the Gamecube when it originally came out and I have to say the game creeped me out as a tween. It made me ask a lot of questions, like how in this timeline apparently Bowser is legitimately dead. The Mario series has always tiptoed around the idea of death, it’s a kid’s game after all, and Bowser has been “killed” and reanimated by Koopa and other figures numerous times through the series.

Porting Luigi’s Mansion to the 3DS instead of the Switch makes sense in a twisted sort of way. Way back before consoles could do much online, Nintendo had the plans to make the Gamecube a 3D capable system, they even went as far as creating a couple of prototype games that could take advantage of this technology including none other than Luigi’s Mansion. The technology for a 3D overlay on televisions was ultimately too expensive, but Nintendo basically had everything ready to go. They just needed seventeen years and a new system to accomplish it. I like to think that the folks at Nintendo had a serious discussion about whether to port this to the aging 3DS or the exploding Switch, and some guy who was on the original team threw a fit about not wanting his work to completely go to waste.

Luigi’s Mansion also happens to be one of those titles that kids like me would make fun of other gamers for spending their meager allowance on. I love Luigi’s Mansion, but I refuse to pay full price for it at the age of thirty as much as I did at the age of twelve. The full game, assuming you’re stopping to take in the sights, can be beaten in less than seven hours. In my days we called that a half-Blockbuster. You rent it on Friday/Saturday and you’ve done everything by Sunday afternoon with enough time left to still neglect your homework due Monday. It’s a great game, no doubt, but something that short needs to have some level of replayability otherwise why keep it in your collection?

This marriage of gameplay and technology doesn’t show up empty handed, and Luigi’s Mansion offers something old, something new, something borrowed, and something Boo. We have our basic story; Luigi wins a scary mansion in a contest and he heads over to meet up with Mario to give it a once-over before he presumably torches the place for the insurance money. Mario enters the mansion before Luigi gets there and goes missing. Luigi follows and gets attacked by ghosts, only to be saved by Professor E. Gadd, who looks like an infant and equips Luigi with a powerful vacuum capable of sucking up ghosts.

In a sense, Luigi’s Mansion is an early game in the Boss Rush genre with some Metroidvania thrown in for good measure. You control Luigi in what is a mostly linear path throughout the mansion, unlocking doors, clearing rooms of various ghosts, and finding keys and gems and completing puzzles. What difficulty there is comes from the “portrait ghosts,” the unique looking ghosts that Luigi eventually turns into fancy portraits. These bosses generally have their own mechanics on how they fight, how to expose their hearts and vacuum them up, and how to even activate them to begin with. Again, I use the term “difficulty” with some leeway. Luigi’s Mansion isn’t exactly difficult, certainly not Nintendo difficult.

But Luigi’s Mansion has a metric ton of charm to it, like how Luigi will start humming in sync with various parts of the game’s soundtrack and if you are in a room that hasn’t been cleared of its ghosts or Boo, you’ll hear them mockingly singing right along. Replacing Luigi’s Game Boy Horror from the original game is the…Game Boy Horror in this game. It’s a spruced up version that is constantly on display on the bottom screen with a minimap letting you know where you can go and what your progress is at any given time.

Luigi’s Mansion features a new co-op mode where a second person can take on the role of Luigi’s gooey clone Gooigi and you can tackle the mansion together. I don’t have any friends, so I did not test out this feature. One thing completionists will like is that the game now allows you to re-fight bosses in order to get a better rank (sucking them with less falls) without playing through the whole game over again or save scumming. If you want the best portraits, it’s a lot easier than the last time around.

Luigi’s Mansion is a wonderfully charming game. If you played the Gamecube version and want to revisit it on a modern console, go right ahead. If you didn’t play the game the first time around, I wholly recommend at least renting it.

PSA: Starting April 1, UPlay’s Club Units Will Expire After 2 Years


Club Units are those fancy golden coins you get for completing challenges in various Ubisoft games. They are the points you remember you have because Far Cry has club-specific weapon unlocks and they can also be used to unlock discounts on the Ubisoft store. If you’ve been sitting on a pile of these points, you’ll want to pay attention to this post.

Starting April 1, and I do mean on April 1, Club Units are going to start to expire after two years and everything from March 31, 2017 and before is going to be gone. You can log in here to see how many (if any) points are going to be gone in a few days.

Source: FAQ

Tyler Barriss Officially Sentenced to 20 Years In Prison


Californian Tyler Barriss has been officially sentenced to 20 years in prison for making fraudulent 911 calls, including one that lead to the shooting death of 28 year old Wichita resident Andrew Thomas Finch.

Barriss, 26, was arrested following his admission of placing a phone call alerting authorities to a hostage situation in Wichita, Kansas. When police arrived, the ordeal ended with one officer shooting the aforementioned Andrew Finch. The call was a hoax, sent in by Barriss on the belief that the address belonged to another person. According to admissions by parties involved, Barriss was tasked with calling in the fake hostage situation by another individual who had lost a bet over Call of Duty.

The total wager that cost Mr. Finch his life; Approximately $2. Federal authorities are also pressing charges against Casey Viner and Shane Gaskill, the two individuals responsible for requesting the swat call and providing the fake address to Barriss.

In December, Barriss entered a plea deal that would see him serve at least 20 years, possibly the longest sentence imposed for “swatting.” In addition to the death of Andrew Finch, Barriss has also pleaded guilty to 51 federal charges regarding fake 911 calls and bomb threats. Barriss was also arrested several years ago after calling bomb threats to ABC Studios. Despite his earlier demeanor refusing to take responsibility for the results of his actions, the Barriss that appeared before the court was more apologetic to Finch’s family.

“If I could take it back, I would, but there is nothing I can do,” Barriss told the court. “I am so sorry for that.”

Viner and Gaskill are still awaiting trial.

Source: AP News