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The people obsessed with uncovering gaming’s deepest, darkest secrets For some, playing a video game to completion isn’t enough. They want to reveal the secrets behind its creation.
This article was originally published March 2016. For some, playing a video game to completion isn’t enough. They want to reveal the secrets behind its creation. Turning their fevered gaze towards cut content and cancelled games, these individuals assemble in online communities, their goal being to uncover fresh information about our favourite games and the abandoned titles we never got to play. Unseen64 is one such community. Started by a group of Italian friends in 2001, the website has grown into an international venture, staffed by volunteers from all around the globe. These volunteers are responsible for scouring the web for news about unfinished and rejected games, to archive for…
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ESA doxes over 2,000 journalists and content creators attending E3 The accidentally released excel sheet contains names, e-mails, phone numbers, and addresses.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has doxxed over 2,000 E3 media attendees by accidentally posting a list containing their sensitive personal data. The excel sheet, first revealed by independent game journalist Sophia Narwitz, contains the names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and private residences of media attendees ranging from journalists to content creators. It has been available online and linked to on a publicly viewable page on ESA’s website since the most recent E3 in June, and only 404’d after Narwitz contacted the ESA to inform them of the privacy breach. We can confirm that at the time of posting, the list remains publicly available on archive websites. According to a…
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Diablo creator David Brevik spills the beans on Blizzard A noticeably drunk Brevik joins increasing number of former employees speaking out about the issues at Blizzard.
There’s no one else in the world who would know more about the company than the executives who used to work there, and they are now speaking out about the issues at Blizzard. The studio has come under fire for its treatment of its fans following the announcement of Diablo Immortal — a mobile game that no one in the Diablo community asked for. As I described in my previous video, the studio has come into the habit of burning its bridges with the community by focusing on making money and less on delivering quality products. Blizzard appears to have lost its way, and the reason why has been elaborated…
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Inside the troubled development of Star Citizen After five years, more than $124 million in fan funding and nothing close to a finished game, Star Citizen has become a lightning-rod for controversy. What’s really been going on?
For the past seven months, I’ve been talking to the people who have been making Star Citizen. This includes its directors, a number of anonymous sources who’ve worked on it, and the man who drives the whole project: Chris Roberts. From the outside, Star Citizen appears to have been wildly successful; to date, it has raised more than $124 million from passionate fans. The money has allowed its developer, Cloud Imperium Games, to open studios around the world and employ more than 325 talented developers. Behind the closed doors of CIG’s studios, however, it’s been far from an easy ride, according to staff. They have all faced a unique challenge:…
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How an activist subverted the Mega Man franchise Leaked chat logs vindicate Mighty No. 9 fans.
Gamers are right to temper their expectations for new games. Given how disappointing some of the most overhyped titles, like the recent No Man’s Sky, have been, the cynicism is warranted. But no one expects a game they’re looking forward to playing to become subverted with notions of “social justice.” Action games like Mega Man have never imparted any sort of political message apart from overly simplistic notions of good versus evil—standard video game stuff. Fans enjoyed these games not just for their gameplay, but for their simplicity in storytelling and straightforward design. When Mighty No. 9 was announced in mid-2013 as a spiritual sequel to the Mega Man series…
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The No Man’s Sky leak is a darkly amusing outragefest A leaker’s early review dashed hopes for those who expected No Man’s Sky to be the gaming messiah.
No Man’s Sky fans, to put it lightly, have been quite spirited surrounding the release of the innovative space explorer. When the game’s creator, Sean Murray, previously announced delays, he was bombarded with death threats along with a Kotaku reporter who wrote about it. No Man’s Sky fans have projected ungodly levels of hype onto a game they knew little about, as the game appears to offer a completely unique procedurally generated gameplay experience, something extremely rare for major releases. And now with a little over a week before the game will finally be available to the hordes of rabid fans, leaked copies are creating all sorts of drama. More death threats, denial, a whole…
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Mortal Kombat has kept a secret for 24 years That's... a long time to keep a secret. Huh.
Mortal Kombat, the game from 1992, had hidden a secret menu from us all until late in 2015. Now that’s some pretty subtle secret-keeping skills for a series so utterly lacking in subtlety. It’s a developer menu present on Mortal Kombat, as well as its sequels Mortal Kombat 2, 3 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, accessed on the arcade versions by inputting a sequence of button presses. The long-hidden dev menus allows such fun things as checking the arcade machine is running all nice and funky-like, a ‘hello’ shout-out screen and the ability to watch each and every character’s ending at the push of a button. I likely would have…
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A conspiracy of silence: How NDAs are harming the games industry Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) have long been a fact of doing business in video games - but their enforcement can have wide-ranging, negative effects.
Big business likes to talk on its own terms, in video games as elsewhere. Announcements about upcoming games are delivered according to strict marketing schedules, while the biggest publishers only allow their developers to discuss their work with both the press and the public within very specific timeframes. To prevent information leaks outside of approved timeslots, most big developers require their employees to sign non-disclosure agreements, usually referred to as NDAs. These legal contracts prohibit developers from external discussion of a project without prior permission. Giving an unsolicited interview, letting slip information on social media, or even discussing a project with friends over drinks, can potentially result in punitive action against the…
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Ubisoft security fail: up to 58 million email addresses and passwords stolen No credit card details, however.
Ubisoft are the latest victims in a string of hacking attempts over the last six months or so. This one was successful in stealing the usernames and passwords of possibly all 58 million customers. The good news is that credit card details and other similar sensitive information is not stored on the server that was hacked, so private information remains safe. From Ubisoft support: Security update regarding your Ubisoft account – please create a new password We recently found that one of our Web sites was exploited to gain unauthorised access to some of our online systems. We instantly took steps to close off this access, to begin a thorough…
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Catacombs: the inside story of Square Enix’ canceled shooter It’s always a great shame when a game is cancelled, but much more so when a genuine original is lost.
It’s always a great shame when a game is cancelled, but much more so when a genuine original is lost. Catacombs, the Square Enix shooter that was revealed by Siliconera in April of this year, fell firmly into that category: its fast-paced, team-based shooting owed a debt to Valve’s Left 4 Dead, but its narrative was distinctive, dealing with themes of perception, existence, and social and cultural disharmony in an uncommonly bold manner. What began as a simple story of four treasure hunters exploring a mansion became something much more interesting. The Siliconera leak was satisfying for the man behind the transformation, narrative director Brandon Sheffield, who had worked on…