Tag: offline

International Sanctions Shut Down World of Warcraft in Iran


Iranian gamers may be waking up to find that access to a number of games will be going away in the coming weeks. According to the BBC, while the Iran government would like you to believe that the games are being banned as “western propaganda” used to “poison the minds of the youth population in Iran,” the real culprit appears to be international sanctions against the country. While many publishers already have no intention of releasing their games in Iran, this does mean that gamers in Iran will find their IP addresses blocked from accessing previously available services.

Blizzard responded to recent comments of Battle.net being blocked in Iran with the following:

We can’t speak to reports surrounding the Iranian government restricting games from its citizens. What we do know is that United States trade restrictions and economic sanction laws prohibit Blizzard from doing business with residents of certain nations, including Iran. We’ve recently tightened up our procedures to ensure compliance with those laws, which means we must restrict access to our games by players in those nations.

Iranian youth may want to consider a proxy if they intend on continuing to poison their minds with western propaganda.

(Source: BBC)

Craft of Gods Disappeared: No Idea Where It Went


Craft of Gods is gone. Dead. Kaput. Gamestop’s Impulse Driven digital distributor is still selling the software, but the website is offline, the servers are apparently not working, and Kalicanthus Entertainment’s website is gone with a shutdown notice. The Craft of Gods Twitter account has not been updated since December 20th, and the Craft of Gods Facebook page has users complaining that the service has been offline and keys nonredeemable since March.

I have reached out to Gamestop to see if the title will be pulled, but as of this publishing the game is still for sale even though there is nowhere to redeem the keys and the game is apparently unplayable as the servers are offline and the game has been abandoned.

Until then, I recommend that you do not purchase Craft of Gods, unless you really like wasting your money.

T3Fun's Services Appear To Be Offline


Update 2: Everything is back to normal, as far as I’m aware. Games are back online and so are the websites.

Update: The T3Fun website is operational, but there seems to beinconsistent access to their games. Still no announcement on the outage.

News coming in from the Google bots and Twitter feeders is that T3Fun (better known as Hanbitsoft) is experiencing unknown technical difficulties resulting in players unable to access their website and game services. My sources believe the outage began around nine hours ago, around the time that Hanbitsoft’s multiple games were announced to be back online following server maintenance.

There has been no comment by T3Fun yet. I will keep this post updated when an official comment is released.


T3Fun’s Services Appear To Be Offline


Update 2: Everything is back to normal, as far as I’m aware. Games are back online and so are the websites.

Update: The T3Fun website is operational, but there seems to beinconsistent access to their games. Still no announcement on the outage.

News coming in from the Google bots and Twitter feeders is that T3Fun (better known as Hanbitsoft) is experiencing unknown technical difficulties resulting in players unable to access their website and game services. My sources believe the outage began around nine hours ago, around the time that Hanbitsoft’s multiple games were announced to be back online following server maintenance.

There has been no comment by T3Fun yet. I will keep this post updated when an official comment is released.


[DEVELOPING] The "Sony Hacked" Mega Article


I’ve decided to sticky this article and use this instead of creating more articles on the same issue. The most recent news will be up top, and to stop clutter, any previous news will be below the “read more” link.

[5/8/11]: PSN services remain offline due to a planned attack for this past weekend.

[5/7/11]: Sony Europe “Welcome Back” includes free games.

[5/4/11]: Sony has posted their response to the United States House of Representatives.

What we know so far:

  • Playstation Network: Offline until further notice.
  • Sony Online Entertainment: Offline until further notice.
  • PSN users will be compensated 30 days free game time, and nonspecific free downloads.
  • SOE users will be compensated 30 days free game time, plus various other items.
  • There are multiple class action lawsuits in the works.
  • The attack was carried out by Anonymous.
  • There have been no reports of credit card fraud as a result of this attack.

Continue reading “[DEVELOPING] The "Sony Hacked" Mega Article”

[DEVELOPING] The “Sony Hacked” Mega Article


I’ve decided to sticky this article and use this instead of creating more articles on the same issue. The most recent news will be up top, and to stop clutter, any previous news will be below the “read more” link.

[5/8/11]: PSN services remain offline due to a planned attack for this past weekend.

[5/7/11]: Sony Europe “Welcome Back” includes free games.

[5/4/11]: Sony has posted their response to the United States House of Representatives.

What we know so far:

  • Playstation Network: Offline until further notice.
  • Sony Online Entertainment: Offline until further notice.
  • PSN users will be compensated 30 days free game time, and nonspecific free downloads.
  • SOE users will be compensated 30 days free game time, plus various other items.
  • There are multiple class action lawsuits in the works.
  • The attack was carried out by Anonymous.
  • There have been no reports of credit card fraud as a result of this attack.

Continue reading “[DEVELOPING] The “Sony Hacked” Mega Article”

Sony Station Offline Today Pending Investigation


Good morning, folks. Those of you attempting to log into any of Sony Online Entertainment’s games may be asking yourself, “why can’t I log into my favorite SOE game?” or “why am I asking a non-Sony blog why their services are offline?” Of course those of you who came here before checking Sony’s website will have missed the following announcement:

We have had to take the SOE service down temporarily. In the course of our investigation into the intrusion into our systems we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern for us to take the service down effective immediately. We will provide an update later today (Monday).

I call the joke on Sony Offline Entertainment, it’s mine. I’ll be watching for further announcements later today.

DC: Universe/MAG PS3 Service Still Offline


[Update: This story has been updated. Read up here ]

That’s actually a picture of what’s going on inside the PSN servers. First off, some backstory for those of you who don’t own a Playstation 3, or don’t read Kotaku (or a number of other websites). The Playstation Network is offline after a few days of sporadic service, and Sony has no idea what is causing it (at least if they do, they aren’t publicizing it). Going by recent events, however, it isn’t exactly a far reach to assume that hackers are behind the service outage, either from Anonymous or some other group.

Of course, this means that DC: Universe is temporarily shuttered on the PS3, as players have to sign in via the Playstation Network, and thus you see the problem. The DC:U team has been strangely silent, last I checked the PS3 forums, there a quick check of the developer tracker will show no posts since the 16th, well before the service went offline on the 20th. So far, the team has only offered the following, on the DCU Facebook page:

Just a small update: We are aware that PS3 players are unable to access the game due to PSN downtime.

According to Sony (SCEA, not SOE), the service could be off for another day or two. Hopefully we’ll have some better information before then.

Earth Not-So-Eternal: 1 Week Later


Where did you go? My Darling...

I’ve been sitting on this for a week now, so I think it’s as good of a time as any to start talking. Back in August I wrote about Earth Eternal facing potential shut down due to Sparkplay Media running out of cash. In the ensuing week, the company put the game up for auction, where the title was sold to another, then unnamed company. Things were looking up.

On August 31st, the Earth Eternal website and game shut down with no explanation whatsoever. After a week of patiently waiting, any attempt to log into the Earth Eternal website or game is met with a “cannot find eartheternal.com” and the game servers are providing no response.

I want to be optimistic on this, so I’m going to bring back what Sparkplay CEO Matt Mihaly said about EE riding on the servers until the host shuts them down for nonpayment. Vaulting off of that optimism, I’m still crossing my fingers for who the purchaser may turn out to be. My top choices are Jagex, Quest Online, or Acclaim (maybe not the last one). We’ll all know that we’ve woken up in hell if the purchaser is NCsoft.

More on Earth Eternal as it appears, and speaking of investing, when is All Points Bulletin getting saved?