A new controversy is brewing in the gaming world centered around DRM (“digital rights management”) and the rights of gamers once they make a purchase.
Gamers want free and easy access to games they buy, while gaming companies are working to prevent piracy from hackers. Not to mention, companies would like to limit the sharing of games online to increase profit margins by selling more legitimate games.
A MICROSOFT executive promises the company would permanently ban users who play pirated copies of Halo: Reach from doing so on Xbox Live. Hackers stole Halo: Reach earlier this week through the Xbox LIVE marketplace by bypassing a security system that allowed journalists early access to the game for review purposes.
Writing on Twitter, Stephen Toulouse, Xbox director of policy and enforcement, said “as with all unauthorized play on Xbox LIVE, anyone playing any unauthorized title runs the risk of account permaban”.
Halo: Reach has been leaked ahead of release.
Microsoft had recently posted the game on the Xbox Live Marketplace for reviewers to download, however a group of hackers have managed to bypass security and acquire the title.
Microsoft has released a statement saying it is investigating the matter, although the hackers have said there are no plans to release the code publicly. "We are aware of claims being made regarding a security exploit related to Halo: Reach and are aggressively investigating the matter," a spokesperson told IGN.
The whole concept of console-exclusives will go to the wall as the games business moves towards cloud computing, according to the original founder of EA, Trip Hawkins.
Interviewed on the latest episode of Game Theory (below), Hawkins explained that the games industry previously adopted a "winner takes all, single platform model," but says now it's "clearly never going to be that way again."
When World of Goo came to the PC with no DRM, it eventually turned out that 90 percent of the people who played the game did so by pirating it. Now it looks like Machinarium—an excellent point-and-click adventure game from Czech developer Amanita Design—is sadly suffering the same fate.
A student using MIT's Scratch programming language (a language created to help young people create their own games) was served a DMCA notice for creating his own version of Pac-Man, asking him to remove the offending game.
The notice said that user 124scratch's game "infringes Namco's rights by offering visitors the unauthorized use of infringing copies of the Pac-Man game product which is protected by copyright and trademark law."
One of the most anticipated games in years, Starcraft II is so hot that it can burn up your graphics card. Literally.
The blockbuster has a strange bug that can make your card render the menus over and over again until it overheats. The issue is that the menu’s frame rate is unlocked, which could send your graphics board into a tizzy when it has nothing to do but keep rendering the menu.
StarCraft II has been circulating in beta since February 2010. A preload version's been downloadable for the past week. Boxed copies of the game went on sale last night at midnight. The game code's been hypothetically available, more or less in full, to software pirates for some time now.
All that, and still not a (successfully) cracked copy in sight. That's not a little surprising, given StarCraft II's PC pedigree and offline play options.
Nintendo's forthcoming 3DS console is to feature new technology designed to prevent software piracy, according to a leading publisher.
Ian Curran, executive vice-president of global publishing for THQ, told CVG that he has received assurance from Nintendo that the unit will include "sophisticated" anti-piracy measures which go beyond those seen on the DSi.
If Microsoft has its way, we all will be playing video games by moving our bodies instead of holding remotes starting November 4.
That's when Kinect, the company's new motion-controlled video gaming add-on for the Xbox 360, will go on sale in North America. Kinect will hit stores worldwide by the December holidays. The new system uses cameras to read a player's body movements and then translates those actions onto the TV screen and into the game -- all without the aid of remote controls or buttons.
