Games

A GROUP reminiscent of the good old fashioned type of hackers who would break into your system for the fun of it and then warn you of the security holes rather than turn your homepage into a porno site has struck at EA and the apparently insecure Battlefield 2 stats tracking system.

The game tracks players on certain official servers and racks up each kill, death and achievement to a central statistics tracking server on which players can see how they’re doing. It also unlocks more weapons for players to use as they rise through the ranks in each individual class of soldier.

Master Chiefs have battled Elites, Brutes, and even the parasitic Flood, but none of these enemies have been as deadly as some of the foes encountered in Halo 2's online play. These opponents can seemingly jump over Covenant dropships in a single bound, pass flags through walls, and even become invisible. These undefeatable foes aren't some new alien species that have invaded the ruckus created by Bungie. These are the work of hackers and modders, gamers who spend time improving their stats with cheats at the expense of others.

A ratings group said Wednesday it has slapped an “Adults Only” rating on the latest version of Grand Theft Auto after finding the video game’s maker, Take-Two, was responsible for inserting sexually explicit material in the game that could be seen with a simple software modification.

Computer games can aid children's health and do not deserve a wholly negative reputation, an expert says.

Mark Griffiths, professor of gambling studies at Nottingham Trent University, says they can be a distraction for children undergoing painful treatment.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, he added that games can also help children with attention deficit disorders gain social skills.

But he said violent games, like violent films, might fuel aggression in some.

Hackers are responsible for a downloadable modification that enables sexually explicit minigames to be played in the blockbuster criminal adventure video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," the game's maker said on Wednesday.

The modification, which allows simulated sex in the personal computer version of one of the most popular and controversial video games in history, has led to an investigation by the industry ratings board. It also has intensified criticism of the industry that pulled in $7.3 billion in U.S.software sales in 2004.

Graphic sexual content that appears in a popular video game is giving family advocates a new reason to be offended. In the sex-and-violence-themed game ``Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,'' the main character tries to avenge the murder of his mother in the gang-ridden streets of his hometown -- and picks up women along the way.

The sexual content, which fills in what publisher RockStar Games left to the imagination in the versions sold in stores -- was either ``unlocked'' by game enthusiasts who discovered it in Rockstar's code, or introduced by inventive third-party hackers.

According to Korean media reports, authorities in the country arrested a gang of hackers today suspected of stealing from online game players and hacking popular websites to seed password stealers.

A 37-year-old man named Lee is said to have hired eight Chinese hackers who installed Trojan horses on popular Korean websites and are said to have stolen 50,000 usernames and passwords in May.

Hackers have cracked piracy protections on Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Portable in the United States, the latest chapter in the company's battle to block unauthorized game use on its new hand-held device.

Hackers have succeeded in making the PlayStation Portable play pirated copies of four commercial games from the Memory Stick slot, in a worrying development that could lead to widespread piracy on the platform.

Amateur programming teams working on the PSP had already succeeded in making the machine run unauthorised code, and a large number of "homebrew" games and emulators for older systems are being circulated on the Internet.

In what can only be making Nintendo grit their teeth in anger, the free reign of information on the internet has led to the creation of DS ripping and pirating software and hardware.
With a worryingly simple process of copying from your PC onto a cartridge that goes straight into your DS, would-be do-badders are now raring to go for the chance to get their games gratis.

With hacking circles already successfully cloning software and running NDS games on their PCs this was hardly unexpected, but a worry for Nintendo nonetheless.