NEWS | Week beginning Janurary 11th | Activison sued, Homefront finally gets a release date & Sony trademark fail

Good morning/afternoon/evening all! Welcome back to another video games new round-up! Let's get staright into it shall we?!

Activision sued

First up, Activision has been sued by the family of Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi after their portrayal of the character in Black Ops 2.

Three of Savimbi's children filed a €1 million lawsuit after Activision's use of their father in the campaign mode of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Activison portrayed Savimbi as a 'barbarian' and a 'big halfwit'. 

"[He's portrayed as] a big halfwit who wants to kill everybody," prosecution lawyer Carole Enfert explained. In reality, she continued, Savimbi had actually been a political leader and strategist".

That's a big grenade launcher
you have there...

Savimbi was the leader of a rebel movement against Angola's communist-backed goverenment during the country's civil war, which lasted over 26 years and left over 500,000 civilians dead.

Savimbi appears in the campaign level 'Pyhrric Victory' where he appears as a friend of the player on the assualt of the government opposition. He encourages his troops to, and I quote "FIGHT, MY BROTHERS! FIGHT!" At least he know what he wants...

As expected, Activision have disagreed with the claims and claimed that Savimbi was portrayed as a 'good guy'. 

Activision have been sued for their portrayal of a character before. Again, in Black Ops 2, ex-Panama dictator Manuel Noriega himself complained that he was depicted as the "culprit of numerous fictional heinous crimes". He obviously wanted damages, and the lawsuit was dismissed. 

If you think about it, using a real life person in a video game without their permission is always going to cause problems, especially if you portray this character as a 'big halfwit'. Use your heads Activision!

Homefront finally gets a release date

Next up, Homefront: The Revolution finally has release date, and they are a little late to say the least...

Do you remember waaayyyyyyy back last year, specifically last March, where I listed the games I was most excited for in 2015? No? Well I'll leave a link here. 

Anyway, Homefront: The Revolution was one of them. The first Homefront was a fantastic game, with a great campaign mode and multiplayer mode that easily rivalled the Call of Duty and Battlefield games that were out at the time. Based on what the first Homefront gave us, the second is looking to impress...

...until it fell off of the face of the Earth, with no news being heard about the game for months.

Finally, yes finally, we have a release date! Developer Deep Silver came out earlier this week with a release date set for the 20th May for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Must be hot on that burning
car?

They also announced that Xbox users will be able to take part in an exclusive multiplayer beta, which launches in February. To gain access to the beta, you will need to secure a 'Xbox One Beta Token', which are to be given out via promotions closer to the time.

Along with the announcement of the release date and beta, a new trailer was released. Titled 'This is Philadelphia', the trailer shows off some of the new open-world FPS shooters Philadelphia setting, and I must say, it looks epic! 

The use of the open-world will definitely be a huge factor in conquering the 'Yellow Zone' as it is called in the trailer. You can see the use of phone bombs, explosive RC cars, as well as a hacking mini-game by the looks of it. All I'm saying is, I'm ready for May!

Here's the trailer if you haven't already seen it:

Sony trademark fail

Finally, it turns out Sony tried to trademark a very familiar term last October, and they failed miserably.

Many of who you are fans of video games, whether it be reading about them, playing them or watching them online, you have probably heard of the term 'Let's Play'. Yes, I know this sounds ridiculous, but Sony to trademark the term 'Let's Play'. 

Now this was never going to go down well with anyone. The term Let's Play is no longer just a term, it has turned into a whole new category of entertainment. Gaming YouTubers, small (like myself) or large (PewDiePie, Achievement Hunter, etc) all create gaming videos in the 'Let's Play' format. Record the gameplay alongside the commentary, mash it all together, and behold, you have a Let's Play vdieo. Sony didn't try and trademark a term, they tried to trademark a whole category.

It still remains unclear why Sony tried to trademark the term, could it be for a new service for the PS4? Or could it be a service that could rival Twitch in the near future? Who knows. Who really cares

Come on Sony, what are
you playing at?

for that matter. All I'm happy about is that Sony failed... for now.

Now the trademark attempt didn't fail due to the fact that Let's Play is such a widely used and common term. The attempt was turned down because there is a trademark already out there, the trademarking(??) the term Let's Play +could be confused with the already existing trademark. 

Let'z Play of America, a company based in Georgia filed to trademark the term 'Let'z Play' in 2013. The attempt was obviously successful, and because of that, Sony's attempt was dismissed because 'Let's Play' is too similar to 'Let'z Play'. I mean, there's only one letter different between the two.

Although Sony's attempt was rejected, they still have six months to appeal the decision, Whether they will or not is another matter. But for now, we are safe. For now...

Anyyyway, that's it for this week! What story stood out for you this week? Are you surprised that Activision were sued again? Will you be pre-ordering Homefront? Do you care that Sony tried to trademark Let's Play? Let me know in the comments down below!

As always, thanks for reading!

Connor :)

NEWS | Week beginning Janurary 4th | Oculus Rift Price Revealed, PS5 On The Horizon? & The End Of Video Game Piracy?

Good evening all! It's time again for another news update! Let's get straight into it!

Oculus Rift Price Revealed

First up, the Oculus Rift will finally soon be made available to the public! However, there is a catch, and that catch being the price...

The prices went live on Wednesday, and needless to say, many were surprised by the steep £500 price tag which by the way, does not include the shipping costs. Ridiculous, I know!

For the steep £500 price tag you get the Oculus headset, sensor, cables, Oculus Remote, Xbox One Controller and Eve: Valkyrie and Lucky's Tale; both of which are bundled games.

The Rift will start shipping on the 28th March this year, with only one bundle being available to each

You want? Cough up the cash!!

customer. The rift will also be made available in 'limited locations' at 'select retailers' in April. Fortunately you won't be charged until the bundle ships, meaning a pre-order will be required in order to retrieve the headset. Oh, expect a shipping charge of around £30 too!

Another 'Oh', I forgot to mention the recommended specs to be able to run the bundle well! Quite simply, you'll need a decent PC!

Here are the specs in full:

• Graphics card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
• Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
• Memory: 8GB+ RAM
• Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
• Input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
• Operating system: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey headed to Twitter to explain why the Rift costs so much...

@PalmerLuckey All the international prices are essentially the converted US price+required taxes, customs fees, etc.

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) January 6, 2016

Do you agree with the cost? Is it too much are is the price right?

 PS5 On The Horizon?

Next up, can we expect to see the PS5 soon? An analyst reckons we just might!

Playstation consoles have always been huge successes, the PS2 for example is one of the best selling consoles of all time, and the PS4 is soon expected to hit the 100 million units sold milestone. Things are most certainly looking up for the PS4.

Do you want to see a new
Sony console soon?

However, as a business, Sony will soon have to look to the future, and well, you guessed it, the PS5 will probably be their answer! 

Now don't get your hopes up just yet, the PS5 is most definitely years away. The PS4 only came out a few years ago, and while people are still buying and using the console, there is no need to replace it. Though eventually, a time will come were technology will overtake the PS4, and it will be time for Sony to upgrade.

Michael Pachter, the analyst I mentioned earlier, thinks we may be seeing a new Sony console sooner than we think.

"I would be surprised if we had a next-gen console in 2018; we might have one in 2019. We will have one by 2020, so I think 7 years (for the PS4) is a lock. It will last longer than 5 years."

That may sound slightly confusing, but what he saying is that we will probably be seeing the PS5 by 2020. He thinks that the PS4 will last around 7 years in total before it is replaced with the PS5 and he is expecting the PS5 to last longer than 5 years.

Whether or not we do see the PS5 soon will remain to be seen. I still think that the PS4 has a lot left to offer, so it wouldn't make sense to replace it already. Releasing new consoles is extremelty expensive, so Sony will want to wait as long as possible before doing anything drastic!

The End Of Video Game Piracy?

Finally, could we soon be seeing the end of video game piracy?

In all honestly, I always thought that video game piracy was inevitable, however, the founder of a Chinese hacking forum '3DM' who goes by the name of 'Phoenix' thinks that video game piracy could soon be coming to an end.

"I BE STEALIN' YE GAMEZ"

Only two AAA titles have so far managed to withstand any attempts at cracking them. Those being FIFA 16 and Just Cause 3. How you ask? Well I shall tell, whether you understand or not is another matter, because I certainly don't!

Basically, both games use two layers of encyrption, both of which are called Denuvo. Denuvo protects the DRM within the game, meaning it is a hell of a lot harder for hackers to breach the games' code.

Phoenix recentely said:

"Recently, many people have asked about cracks for Just Cause 3," Phoenix writes. "The last stage is too difficult and Jun nearly gave up, but last Wednesday I encouraged him to continue.

"I still believe that this game can be compromised. But according to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years time I’m afraid there will be no free games to play in the world."

So the big hacker dude has said it himself, video game piracy is dying. It was bound to happen eventually, right?

So that's it for this week! What did you think of this week's news? Will you be purchasing the Oculus? Do you want the PS5 soon? Do you pirate video games? Let me know in the comments down below!

As always, thanks for reading!

Connor :)

NEWS | Week beginning December 28th | Steam Security Blunder, Star Wars Sells Big & Dedication Or What?

Hello all! Welcome back! It's been a while, hasn't it? Well I am back with another news update! Oh how I've missed this!

Steam Security Blunder

First up, do you remember my last news update, when I reported on how Steam had stepped up their security in a number of different ways to help counter hackers and the likes? Well it looks like they've done the hackers job for them...

Early last Friday, Steam accidentally leaked account details on over 34,000 users. Yes, somebody at Valve seriously goofed.

So here's how it all went down. On high traffic sites or services, such as Steam, it is common that the site or service will 'cache' the most visited pages on the site, such as the Home page or Store page. This is so that the site doesn't have to recreate the same page hundreds of thousands of time per minute, meaning the page will load much quicker as a result. Some sites also cache account information too, but you are the only one who will receive the information back. 

Apparently the Steam store came under attack by hackers trying to DDOS the service. This then meant

Were you affected by
the blunder?

that Steam's counter-DDOS measures swung into affect, and somehow changed the caching process behind-the-scenes. meaning that instead of users only seeing the Home page or their own personal details, they saw the private details of other users instead. Oops. However, as it was only a cached page, no changes could be made to the information by other users, they could only view the account information. Now this might not seem as bad, but the Accounts page on Steam shows your Card details, Home address, Phone number, Email, etc, meaning if you were one of the unlucky 34,000 who had their account information leaked, it is possible that someone now knows some of your personal details.

Valve recently released a statement explaining the whole incident:

• "Early Christmas morning (Pacific Standard Time), the Steam Store was the target of a DoS attack which prevented the serving of store pages to users. Attacks against the Steam Store, and Steam in general, are a regular occurrence that Valve handles both directly and with the help of partner companies, and typically do not impact Steam users. During the Christmas attack, traffic to the Steam store increased 2000 per cent over the average traffic during the Steam Sale.
• "In response to this specific attack, caching rules managed by a Steam web caching partner were deployed in order to both minimise the impact on Steam Store servers and continue to route legitimate user traffic. During the second wave of this attack, a second caching configuration was deployed that incorrectly cached web traffic for authenticated users. This configuration error resulted in some users seeing Steam Store responses which were generated for other users. Incorrect Store responses varied from users seeing the front page of the Store displayed in the wrong language, to seeing the account page of another user.
• "Once this error was identified, the Steam Store was shut down and a new caching configuration was deployed. The Steam Store remained down until we had reviewed all caching configurations, and we received confirmation that the latest configurations had been deployed to all partner servers and that all cached data on edge servers had been purged.
• "We will continue to work with our web caching partner to identify affected users and to improve the process used to set caching rules going forward. We apologise to everyone whose personal information was exposed by this error, and for interruption of Steam Store service."

The store is now back up and running, but people are now feeling uneasy when using Steam and the store, and honestly, who can blame them!

Star Wars Sells Big

Next up, that big new Star Wars game you ma have heard about, yes, I'm talking about Battlefront! Well apparently, the sales figures have come in for it's first two months, and by the looks of it, it did pretty well.

According to the figures, Star Wars: Battlefront sold a whopping 12 million copies in it's first two months. Battlefront sold around 6 million copies seperately in the month of November and December and as each copy cost around £40/$55, that means Star Wars: Battlefront made around £450 million/$660 million in total. Good job EA!

Don't mess with the Trooper...

Now, unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know that Star Wars: The Force Awakens' came out in late December. Putting two and two together, it's easy to see that the new movie definitely had a part to play in generating sales for the game, as well as Christmas and such.

According to sales figures, Battlefront was third in the overall sales for November, behind Fallout 4 and Black Ops 3. So it's safe to say that Battlefront has done well for itself, especially as the game was targeted to reach 13 million copies sold by March 2016!

Battlefront is a great game, and I would definitely reccomend purchasing it! As you may remember, I did post my Top 3 games of 2015 a couple of weeks ago. Before I wrote that post, I hadn't played Battlefront. Now after playing it, I most definitely believe that Battlefront would give both Rainbow Six: Siege and Rocket League a run for their money! What do you think? Let me know in the comments down below!

Dedication Or What?

Finally, one Japanese gamer may have just won the award for most dedication (if there is one) after leaving his SNES turned on for twenty years to ensure he didn't lose his save game data!

The unamed gamer, who goes only by his Twitter handle @UMIHARAKawase insisted on leaving his SNES on after realising that if he turned it off, he would probably lose his save data that he had worked so hard on getting.

The SNES plugged in and ready
to go...

The game in question, Umihara Kawase (so that's where he got his Twitter handle from!!) is a platforming game that was released way back in 1994. He recently tweeted a picture (right) of his SNES still running with the Umihara Kawase game cartrdige still plugged into the console, with the console running.

Siliconera explains why the fan needed to keep his console running to ensure he does not lose his save data.

"The reason he has had the game running this long is that he doesn’t want to lose his save data. To explain, some old game cartridges used Static RAM (SRAM) with lithium-ion batteries. This meant that the cartridge could hold your saved data with the SRAM as long as the battery stayed charged. "

So it turns out that Umihara Kawase is one of those older cartridges that will eventually lose all of your data if the battery loses it charge, therefore, the fan had to ensure his console remained turned on to keep the cartridge fully charged so he loses none of his save data.

He does also mention that he had to switch off the console once when he moved, but managed to plug the console in again before the cartridge lost it's charge!

So that's all for this week! What do you think of this week's news? Were you affected by the Steam security blunder? Have you played Battlefront yet?? Do you think you'll ever be as dedicated as that fan was? Let me know in the comments down below!

As always, thanks for reading!

Connor :)