Garry’s Mod creator Garry Newman has just released a patch for his sandbox game, which includes an interesting way of handling pirates. Specifically, a pirated version of the game will return an error named “Unable to shade polygon normals”, and if you search Google for this string, you’ll see that quite a lot of folks are experiencing this error. Furthermore, if posted on the Steam forums, the error code also includes the user’s Steam ID, which gives Valve an easy task of finding out who the pirates are.
Newman acknowledges that it’s fairly simple to crack the new patch, but it wasn’t his intention to create uncrackable DRM, it was, as he put it: “Making it uncrackable isn’t the motive here – laughing at [pirates] is”. Indeed, Garry, and well done.
If you’ve tuned in to pretty much any video game publication in recent memory you’ll probably know of the fuss going down between acclaimed hacker George Hotz (otherwise known as Geohot) and Sony. If you’re not aware of the debacle, Geohot went on to hack the security measures Sony used to gain root access to their PlayStation 3 and then released the information for all. In other words, Geohot was the first who managed to jailbreak the PlayStation 3. Sony, of course, was none too happy about this and took Geohot to court despite jailbreaking devices like the iPhone remaining perfectly legal. Well, the legal battle is finally over and Geohot has been banned from ever spreading the jailbreaking information again. But, while things seem to be going quite well for Geohot and his legal team feelings seem to be a bit sour. Geohot recently took to his blog to let us know that he is boycotting Sony products and encourages us not to buy anymore or, if we’ve bought one recently, to give it back.
What do you think of the matter? Should Sony have ever used Geohot? Let us know what you think.
The Nintendo Wii has long been one of the most popular consoles on the market. Much of the consoles success has been attributed to the fact that its motion controller is extremely easy to pick up and play for just about everyone. However, now that Microsoft and Sony have debuted their own motion controllers with the Kinect and PlayStation Move, respectively, Wii sales are beginning to taper. So, what is Nintendo supposed to do when sales for the once extremely popular console begin to drop? According to reports, drop the price.
These reports suggest that Nintendo may be dropping the price tag of the Wii to a paltry $150 on May 15th. Why May 15th? We aren’t exactly sure but from the time of this writing it’s only about a month away so stay tuned and we’ll be able to confirm if this is true or not.
On the Xbox 360 one of the biggest exclusives is Epic Games’ Gears of War franchise. This franchise has put up high sales numbers just about every time a new title has been released and the studio is gearing up to launch the third addition appropriately dubbed Gears of War 3. If you’re a follower of the series you’ll know that a multiplayer beta for the game is set to launch later this month. What you may not have known, however, is that a new multiplayer design video has just hit the web today focusing on none other than Gears of War 3.
We’ve included the video for you to check out above so do so and let us know what you think. Gears of War 3 will be out exclusively for the Xbox 360 on September 20th, 2011. Wil you be getting it?
The Nintendo 3DS is out and just about everyone is loving it. Of the titles that have made their way onto the market, one that’s being talked about quite a bit is Super Street Fighter IV. If you’re a console gamer you’ll probably know that this game has been out for quite some time on platforms like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. However, seeing how the Nintendo 3DS features a 3D display, Super Street Fighter IV 3D obviously features integration with the 3D display. Well, it seems that this formula is a proven success as it was just announced today that Super Street Fighter IV 3D shipments have passed 1 million units.
If you’ve got a Nintendo 3DS do you have Super Street Fighter IV 3D? If not, why?
While many gamers are still flocking to their local retailers to get down on the latest titles, digital distribution outlets are becoming quite popular. On the PC, the most popular digital distribution service is none other than Valve’s Steam. The beauty of services like this is that it’s so easy for developers to cut us gamers a deal on some of their hottest titles. In fact, it seems that just about every week Valve is temporarily dropping the price tag of some of the hottest games. This week seems to be no different.
The reason I say this is because it was just made known that for a limited time both BioShock and BioShock 2 are priced at just $4.99 a piece. Unfortunately it seems that the deal is today only so if you’re considering doing it, I’d suggest doing it now. I mean, it’s only $10 for both of them, right?
One of the interesting FPS games to be released this year is the multiplayer shooter Brink, developed by Splash Damage and published by Bethesda. It’s not common for publishers to announced that games will be out earlier than they were originally scheduled, usually any announcement of shipping dates includes the word “delayed”, but not with Brink. Bethesda has announced that the game will be arriving one week earlier, and will be released on May 10 in North America and May 13 in Europe.
Of course, it could also have something to do with Rockstar’s heavyweight LA Noire, which is scheduled for release on May 17. If we were Bethesda, we wouldn’t wanna launch on the same day as any Rockstar game, let along a highly anticipated one like LA Noire.
As you’re sure to know the Nintendo 3DS has been out for quite some time with consumers everywhere applauding the device for its glasses-free 3D display and other interesting features. However, while the console itself shipped with a decent line up of games there aren’t any really hard hitting first party titles straight out of Nintendo. Luckily, we’ve known for quite some time that Nintendo would be going to release Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D for the Nintendo 3DS at some point in the future. If you couldn’t already tell, the game is a 3D remake of the N64 Zelda title with the same name which makes it easy to see why consumers are getting so excited over the title.
Well, it was announced today that Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D will be made available in the US on June 19th.
Tony Hawk is without a doubt the biggest name in skateboarding despite being retired for quite some time. However, when it comes to the video game world the Tony Hawk video games haven’t been doing so hot as of late. They lived harmoniously with one another for quite some time before EA came forth to debut their skate video game. Following that Tony Hawk took his video games in another direction with Tony Hawk: Ride which features a skateboard peripheral but unfortunately failed to take off receiving negative reception across the board.
Well, it seems that Hawk isn’t out of the game just yet as rumors have surfaced today that say a new Tony Hawk game is set to hit store shelves next year. News apparently comes from an interview with Tony Hawk who says that his new game will “probably” be out sometime next year. Unfortunately we don’t have any more information
Hacker George Hotz, who famously cracked the PS3 encryption and jailbroke the console (which resulted in a lot of games hacked and exploited, particularly Modern Warfare 2), has settled with Sony out of court. After Sony found out that Hotz hacked the PS3, they promptly sued him and released their lawyer hounds after him. Sony also got the court to reveal the identities of those people who followed Hotz on Twitter, who commented on his blog and watched his videos. Which gave a lot of bad rep to Sony, enough to attract the attention of hacker group Anonymous, who declared virtual war on Sony.
Now Sony has announced that it and Hotz have settled the deal out of court, with Hotz promising he won’t jailbreak the PS3 again. The deal included other terms of course, but those were not disclosed. Hotz released a statement, staying, “It was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier. I’m happy to have the litigation behind me“.
