Videogames can be good for children, encouraging creativity and cooperation, a European Union report concluded Wednesday which ran counter to the violent reputation of some titles.
In conclusions that may either surprise or reassure parents of game addicts, the study by the European Parliament Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection found a number of benefits and no definitive link to violent behavior.
The bug in Gears of Warthat locked out players starting last Thursday was caused by flaws in the game's anti-cheating software, not anti-piracy technology, said an executive at maker Epic Games.
The bug had only locked out players with legitimate versions of Gears, not the many users with pirated copies of the popular game, say multiple reports.
China announced a radical new measure to keep citizens’ MMO addictions in check: mandatory real-name registration with the government for all newly-created accounts.
Plans for the system have existed since at least 2006, and according to the state-run newspaper People’s Daily, four online game companies have so far had their operations “suspended” for not linking their products to the government database.
If the video below turns out to be real, then it looks like the PSP 3000's recent run of 87 days without being hacked has come to an end. A team of French hackers have succeeded in booting custom firmware and running homebrew software on a PSP 3000 unit by exploiting a buffer overflow bug in the game GripShift. The team used a European copy of the game to achieve the result, however the same hack could also work with the American version of the game (currently selling for more than $100 on ebay).
Government venture firm Malaysia Ventures (MDV) has agreed to fund a locally-developed contemporary rally racing game to the tune of US$10 million (RM36 million). MDV managing director and chief executive officer Md Zubir Ansori Yahaya said the agreement with software firm Codemasters Studios is part of MDV’s efforts to nurture and develop local talent.
Gamestop employees were probably feeling perplexed all around the country this weekend as would-be hackers descended on their stores looking for copies of an old PSP game called GripShift. The auto-racing puzzle-platformer developed exclusively for the PSP won acclaim for its creative mash-up of different genres, but never sold in large quantities. Now, a hacker by the name of MaTiAz has discovered that the game can be exploited to potentially hack the PSP 3000.
Jeff Rosen of Wolfire Games has an intriguing post up about why developers of videogames like himself should go out of their way to support the OS X and Linux markets. Their game, Lugaru, is available on Windows, OS X and Linux, and the upcoming sequel, Overgrowth, is also being developed for OS X.
People not into video games and outside the industry may think of the video gamer as a younger teen or tween living at home with mom and dad. The reality is that the modern average gamer is a 35-year-old person with a significant disposable income who has played games since youth.
Home prices have dropped, credit cards are tanking, but despite the failing industries and the poor economy, the video game industry has marched on unfazed. Much of the continued growth and sales in the video game industry have been on the backs of some top-tier sequel titles that have launched in 2008.
Blizzard Entertainment has revealed that the Wrath of the Lich King expansion has helped its lucrative MMO World of Warcraft hit the 11.5 million subscriber level.
The expansion itself sold more then 2.8 million copies in the first 24 hours on sale, the all-time PC sales record, and has now notched up over 4 million copies in total.
Starting Monday, Electronics Arts will sell its popular video game Spore free of any digital rights management restrictions.
It's part of a slew of titles which EA will offer on Valve's Steam distribution platform, according to a report by Ars Technica. Besides Spore, the collection will include Warhammer Online, Need for Speed Undercover, Mass Effect, and FIFA Manager 09. Crysis, Crysis: Warhead, and SiN Episodes: Emergence are already available on the service, and there are more on the way.
