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Games

8-Year Fan-Made Game Project Shut Down By Activision 265

An anonymous reader writes "Activision, after acquiring Vivendi, became the new copyright holder of the classic King's Quest series of adventure game. They have now issued a cease and desist order to a team which has worked for eight years on a fan-made project initially dubbed a sequel to the last official installment, King's Quest 8. This stands against the fact that Vivendi granted a non-commercial license to the team, subject to Vivendi's approval of the game after submission. After the acquisition, key team members had indicated on the game's forums (now stripped of their original content by order of Activision) that Activision had given the indication that it intended to keep its current fan-game licenses, but was not interested in issuing new ones."
PC Games (Games)

Valve's Battle Against Cheaters 336

wjousts writes "IEEE Spectrum takes a look behind the scenes at Valve's on-going efforts to battle cheaters in online games: 'Cheating is a superserious threat,' says [Steam's lead engineer, John] Cook. 'Cheating is more of a serious threat than piracy.' The company combats this with its own Valve Anti-Cheat System, which a user consents to install in the Steam subscriber agreement. Cook says the software gets around anti-virus programs by handling all the operations that require administrator access to the user's machine. So, how important is preventing cheating? How much privacy are you willing to sacrifice in the interests of a level playing field? 'Valve also looks for changes within the player's computer processor's memory, which might indicate that cheat code is running.'"
Open Source

Myst Online: Uru Live Returns As Free-To-Play 58

agrif writes "Shorah b'shemtee! Uru Live has been released for free, as a first step towards opening its source. This game, an MMO released by the makers of Myst and Riven in 2003, has been canceled, zombified, resurrected, canceled again, and is now about to be released as open source to its dedicated fan base. Massively has written a brief newbie guide if you're unfamiliar with the game."

Comment Re:Teamviewer (Score 1) 454

I also use LogMeIn and Teamviewer. If I have an "active" party at the other end, Teamviewer is easier to get going. If I need to do remote support without someone at the other end, LogMeIn works better. But I've had enough times that I struggled getting someone to install LogMeIn (create account, download, etc) that Teamviewer wins out when possible.
The Matrix

How The Matrix Online Went Wrong 144

As the July 31st deadline for The Matrix Online's closure looms, Gamer Limit is running a story discussing the game's shortcomings, as well as some of the decisions that led to its failure. Quoting: "I honestly thought the writers must have absolutely hated the remaining cast of The Matrix Trilogy or something, because they constantly seemed to go out of their way to phase out existing characters in favor of newer ones. The cast overall basically made me, as a player, feel distant from the main storyline and made the entire game feel like a Matrix side story instead of the continuation it was meant to be. ... When MxO first launched there was an entire team dedicated to playing the game as Agents and other key characters as a means to further in-game events and directly interact with players, giving players the feeling that they truly were making a difference. After the SOE buyout of the game the LESIG team was reduced to playing minor characters before eventually being phased out and replaced with a Live Event Team (LET) comprised purely of volunteers."

Comment Playing for 6 weeks so far... (Score 1) 43

I have been playing the closed beta for about 6 weeks. They have had some struggles, but that is to be expected with any beta. I find the game fun so far. It is certainly enjoyable for a "free" game. It's clear they want to explore the new micro-transactions market and see what they can do. I don't know how that will play out - you *CAN* play just fine without any of the "paid" items. What you can buy are items to change your appearance and XP and VP boosts which give you like 1.5x earning power for each of those as you play for the period of time that the item is valid. While the servers have been up, they have been remarkably stable for me. I still have some questions about game balance, but that seems to come with just about any game in this genre...

Comment Govt. Official claims less ticket revenue is ok (Score 1) 859

Of course, there's this quote here from a govt. official: If the device is successful the Government stands to lose more than $80 million in revenue collected from speeding fines, but Mr Daley says that is not a concern. "The incidence of speed-related fatalities and injuries costs our community billions of dollars each year. If speeding revenues were to fall dramatically, I'd be the happiest roads minister in Australia," he said. Yeah, right, I say. There is a local radio personality who always plays a quotation from our area water service. They say that since people have been conserving water and there is less usage, they now have to charge more for the water that the people *do* use. (boggle!) They'll find something else to ticket/fine/tax people over on this....
Social Networks

The Sims 3 To Mesh With Social Networks 25

Electronic Arts has released a good bit of information about the online aspects of The Sims 3, which is due for release in early June. The game will have downloadable content available on launch day that includes a second, separate town called Riverview. They'll also be revamping the game's website to allow the sharing of content and integration with social media. In addition, EA mentioned that the game will make use of micro-transactions, which players can use to buy things like furniture, clothing, and other items.

Comment Re:Yeah, it would be cool in an ideal world... (Score 1) 585

What about the license plate covers for defeating photo radar? They prevent clear pictures being taken from either side or above the license plate. Yet, the plate can be seen clearly from directly behind the vehicle. So unless they set up chase cars (unlikely) they could have a lot of people avoiding the tolls that way. And what about people who have invalid, incorrect, or outdated addresses on their registration?

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