Other People's Misfortune

It looks like MMO developer Funcom isn't going to be making any more huge games for a while. The company announced it will concentrate on "more focused, systems-driven games that have a high degree of community and player interaction as "these games require less time and development cost to bring to market."  In other words: Smaller games.

The sales of The Secret World, the company's latest product, were not as high as the company would have liked. The game has sold "only" 200,000 copies, below the company's expectations. 

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The top two League of Legends teams were disqualified at the MLG Summer Championship for collusion. Team Curse NA and Team Dignitas had already secured the top spots going in to the grand final but instead of choosing to play out the games in a standard manner they made two very bad decisions.

The two teams first raised eyebrows when they chose to play in the unconventional format of All Random, All Middle, to "entertain fans" rather than play in a traditional format that is normally seen in tournament play. What made matters worse was that the teams allegedly agreed to split the prize money of $32,000 regardless of who won the match.

According to Major League Gaming, this clearly violated MLG’s Official Pro Circuit Conduct Rules which state, "competitors may not intentionally Forfeit a Game or conspire to manipulate Rankings or Brackets." Riot Games, developer of League of Legends, agreed with MLG's ruling and as a result, MLG disqualified both teams, denied them all of their prize money, and announced that both teams will not be receiving any Circuit Points towards the North American Regionals.

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According to his twitter feed, developer Peter Molyneux can't call his game/project "Curiosity" because of NASA. Molyneux's twitter post reads:

"Humm there is a problem the the name curiosity, we can't use it because of NASA. I wonder what one word would sum up curiosity:the cube."

It's not a case of the space agency coming down on Molyneux's company, 22 Cans, and demanding a name change, though. The actual explanation is much more mundane. According to Molyneux:

"The name change is prompted by the need to have something simple to search for in Google. This worked well for 'Curiosity' but since NASA: Curiosity is now obviously generating a lot of interest we need to change the name."

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As I'm sure you've noticed, the current "go-to" way to release PC video games is free-to-play. According to Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot, this is because the piracy rate on pay-to-play PC games is between 93 and 95 percent. This makes every PC game released for money essentially a free-to-play game anyway.

"On PC it's only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway; the rest is pirated." Guillemot said. "It's around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content."

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Bad news, gamers: If reports from Ars Technica turn out to be correct, Nintendo Power magazine is shutting down soon.

According to the source, Nintendo pulled the plug. The company, described as "difficult to work with," was uninterested in renewing its contract with Future Publishing, the group who published the magazine. According to the source, Nintendo is not interested in taking over direct control of Nintendo Power either.

Reportedly, Nintendo Power editors and staffers were told of the magazine's impending closure last weekend are being transitioned to work on other Future magazines and publications like GamesRadar and MacLife magazine.

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According to Sony head of worldwide studios Shuhei Yoshida the PlayStation 3 is in "prime time" in terms of games, service and pricing, and there is no price-cut for the PS3 coming this year.

"There’s no plan for any change we can talk about," Yoshida said.

Gamers shouldn’t expect a new PS3 model this year either, Yoshida said rumors of a new form factor, the super-slim PS3-4000, are only rumors.

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Onlive's mysterious buyer is a mystery no longer. The streaming-game company was purchased by venture capitalist group Lauder Partners, LLC – helmed by tech investor Gary Lauder.

A new company has been formed that will run OnLive. Although the The asset acquisition is described as a "heartbreaking transition for everyone involved with OnLive," the service itself will continue, with the company reporting that users will notice no interruption in OnLive's service. In fact, consumers are "not expected to notice any change whatsoever."

• NEWS: Is OnLive Shutting Its Doors?

Some people who will notice a change: OnLive's employees. According to the company, almost half of OnLive's staff were offered employment at their current salaries in the new company immediately upon the transfer, and the non-hired staff "will be given offers to do consulting in return for options in the new company."

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Germany's GamesCom is rife with thievery! Well... maybe not rife... but there's at least one crook there, and he/she has made off with PCs containing builds of developer Larian's Divinity: Dragon Commander and Divinity: Original Sin, forcing the team to rely on backup PCs.

Larian wants their computers back enough to be offering a $5,000 reward for their return, so if you need 5K, head to Germany and start playing sleuth. Seriously, though, if you have any information on the theft, head over to Business Hall 4.2, Booth A-16 to let Larian know.

Source: VG247

A teenager in Columbus, Ohio was hospitalized this week after playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for four days straight. Tyler Rigby was rushed to the hospital for dehydration after his gaming binge.

“It’s like he was looking at me but he wasn’t there. It was like he was looking through me,” Jennifer Thompson, Tyler’s aunt, told news station WCMH. “We were talking and I heard a thump and I looked over and he just fell.”

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Fans of Silent Hill put up with a lot -- lackluster games, lame Hollywood movies, glitchy re-releases, and now, a patch that won't be coming for the Xbox 360 version of the game. Konami announced it is patching the sometimes buggy Silent Hill HD Collection for the PlayStation 3, but if you're a Xbox 360 user, no patch for you.

• VIDEO: Silent Hill HD Collection Trailer

According to Konami, "Plans for an Xbox 360 title update have been cancelled due to technical issues and resources."

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UPDATE 2:05 PM: According to Irrational Games' head Ken Levine, Scott Sinclair, art director of the first Bioshock, will be finishing up Bioshock Infinite.

Original Story:

Two of the main developers of Bioshock Infinite have left developer Irrational Games. Tim Gerritsen, director of product development, and Nate Wells, Infinite's art director, have both announced their departure from the company.

•  NEWS: BioShock Infinite Behind-The-Scenes Interview With Nate Wells

Both men revealed their career changes on social media sites; Wells on his LinkeIn profile and twitter feed, with a post reading, "New Job … Details to follow," and Gerritsen on his LinkedIn profile where he lists his employment at Irrational as having ended this month.

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The issue of sexual harassment (and sexism in general) in games has been an issue for a long time, but over the last few months, the pot's been boiling over a bit. So much so that The New York Times, has taken notice and posted an article on the subject.

Here are some of the incidents that have led to the issue being "picked up" by the mainstream press:

• A few months ago, gamer Miranda Pakozdi, in a game tournament, is so badly harassed by her own coach that she walks from the tournament. Check out the video for a look at how decent people never behave. (Seriously, watch it. It's incredibly creepy and embarrassing.) Bakhtanians goes on to defend his actions, describing sexual harassment as "part of the fighting game community."

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Ubisoft says it has corrected the security flaws discovered this morning in the Uplay DRM system.

The company issued a statement saying: 

“We have made a forced patch to correct the flaw in the browser plug-in for the Uplay PC application that was brought to our attention earlier today. We recommend that all Uplay users update their Uplay PC application without a Web browser open. This will allow the plug-in to update correctly”.

Hear that, PC gamers? Hit that update button on Uplay and make sure your situation is secure. Or, you could disable the Uplay add-on in your browser, too.

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A Diablo 3 God mode exploit for the Barbarian class has been discovered. The bug's been found only a day after users found and abused a similar bug that made Wizards completely invulnerable. The Wizard God-mode exploit took Blizzard almost an entire day to fix, and players were even live streaming their experiences of taking out some of the hardest content the game had to offer without even breaking a sweat, or the bank, for once.

• NEWS: Blizzard CEO Addresses The Diablo 3 Fan Community

The Diablo 3 Barbarian bug isn't as godly as the Wizard bug, since it doesn't render the Barb invincible. Instead, it allows him to get 8 percent of his HP back with every hit. The effect continues until the Barb dies or until he uses Furious Charge, according to YouTube user MetaSerge. Check a video out of him farming with the bug below.

If you want to try the bug out for yourself, you can find the (extremely simple) steps on the official Blizzard forums. However, keep in mind that users on there are commenting that the bug only works in Act 3 and for some people it isn't even working at all. As of this posting, Blizzard have not commented on the bug and they have not deployed a hot fix for the issue yet either. We've reached out to them and will let you know when we've heard back. 

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The Kingdoms of Amalur MMO, also known as Project Copernicus, was being developed by 38 Studios before the studio went bankrupt earlier this year. In a recent interview with Boston Magazine, 38 Studios head Curt Schilling voiced his concerns about Project Copernicus, explaining how the game "wasn't fun," even after years of development.

• NEWS: 38 Studios Files For Bankruptcy

Here's a snippet from the editorial:

'“The game wasn’t fun,” he says, unprompted, beside the softball field. “It was my biggest gripe for probably the past eight to 12 months.” Visually, Copernicus was stunning, but the actual things you could do in the game weren’t engaging enough. The combat aspects especially lagged. Schilling — who never wavered in his belief that the game would be great — says the MMO was improving, but after six years, it still wasn’t there. When Schilling walked around during lunch hour, he says, nobody was playing Copernicus’s internal demos. They were all on some other game."'

The Boston Magazine editorial also outed the mysterious publisher who wanted the rights to a Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sequel. Schilling says the deal with Take-Two Interactive was near the  "final sign-off" when Rhode Island's Governor made statements about 38 Studios' financial problems. However, Take-Two had something entirely different to say on the matter. 

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