NEWS | Week beginning March 28th | Steam, Call of Duty& Sony

Good Sunday all! How you all doing?

Steam

First up, it looks like Steam had again been breached this week, but instead of things being stolen, it turns out something was added to the Steam Store!

Steam user 'rubiimeow' was aware of a loophole in Steam's coding, which allowed users to upload their own games straight to the Steam Store, skipping the whole Greenlight process! For those of you who are unaware of what Steam Greenlight is, Greenlight is a a system that allows Steam users to pick the independent games that are released on Steam. If you like the look of a game that is in Greenlight, give it a vote and you might find it on Steam!

Anyway, rubiimeow wanted to raise awareness to the weakness, so, he went and created a game and abused the weakness, which allows users to skip the Greenlight process, and upload his AAA game. 'Watch Paint Dry'.

Upon seeing the game on the front of the

A screenshot from the game, definitely a
Game Of The Year contender!

Store page, many Steam users were frustrated and wanted Steam to up their quality control, even though the game had not passed inspection.

User rubiimeow left a detailed description online (you can find it here) showing how he did it, and it involved a lot of fiddling behind the scenes, which included changing values for the game in Steam's database and edit the coding within Steam.

rubiimeow wrote:
"I decided to use the 'untitled app' for an April Fools prank to try and get Valve's attention about the issues. I have been in contact with Valve who have now fixed the vulnerability."

"Something I've definitely learned from doing this is when working with user-generated content that first needs to be approved, do not have 'Review Ready' and 'Reviewed' as two states of existence for the content. Or just don't allow users to set the item to 'Released'."

Watch paint dry has been removed from Steam and the coding error has been resolved.

Definitely a unique way of raising awareness of an issue! Fair play to rubiimeow for not abusing the flaw and getting Valve to fix the issue!

Call of Duty

Next up, there are rumours surrounding the next Call of Duty game in the franchise will be set, and wait for it..... SPPPPACCCEEEE!

Yeah, so apparently, the next Call of Duty game, being developed and produced by Infinity Ward this year, will be set in 'The Final Frontier'.

Space Station LOKI in CoD Ghosts...

First details have been revealed by video game source shinobi602, who claims the game will be set in the 'Very far future' with 'Space combat' and 'Full on sci-fi'. Whether you can trust this source or not, many on the world wide web believe these rumours to be true.

Previous Call of Duty titles have touched upon the future, biggest example being Ghosts, where campaign mission 'Loki' starts in space and allows users to shoot people up, IN SPACE! Whether you liked Ghosts or not, the space mission was pretty cool, and a whole game set in space could also be very cool.

As always, expect to see the next Call of Duty game in November, with it being released on all the major consoles and PC.

Sony

Finally, it appears that Sony's video game branch, 'Sony Computer Entertainment' has finally got their paperwork signed and have officially re-branded to 'Sony Interactive Entertainment'.

 Sony Computer Entertainment, which has been in control of the Playstation franchise since the 90's, is now no more. The re-brand doesn't really mean much honestly. By the looks of things, the re-brand is really just a way for Sony to integrate other Playstation Services, like Vue and Now into the mix. There has also been some behind the scenes boardroom shuffling. Nothing too bad!

President Shawn Lyden wrote on the Playstation Blog:

"Our full integration won't happen overnight, but the work is well underway and I'm delighted to report that we are tracking ahead of schedule."

"I have enormous respect, and limitless devotion, for the creators, artists, and engineers within our

Sony's new logo...

Worldwide Studios, and I'm eager to be back in the business of helping developers realise their dreams," he continued. "And to our faithful and discerning PlayStation community, I thank you for your dedication, your enthusiasm, and your trust as we embark on a new journey as Sony Interactive Entertainment."

This is all happening just in time for Sony, with big Playstation only releases coming out soon, with the likes of Ratchet and Clank and Uncharted 4. Will we see any other major changes come from this re-branding, or is this it? 

And that's it for this week! What did you think of this weeks video game news round-up? Will Steam ever be 100% safe? Is a Call of Duty in space something you'd like to see? Will we see anything else come from Sony after their re-branding? Let me know in the comments down below!

As always, thanks for reading!

Connor :)