Link for the Canadians.

Via reddit.

This is Sony’s blatant attempt to remove any responsibility on their part if or when their servers are hacked again. Considering the fact that not only were user names and passwords compromised, but so were credit cards and personal information of its PSN members, Sony should not be allowed to modify its user agreement to get out of paying any legal damages. Unfortunately, it appears that the Supreme Court might side with Sony on this one as they have ruled that a company could force you into, at the very least, arbitration. Note that Canada may already have a law on the books making Section 15 of the new EULA from Sony illegal.

What most users don’t know is that there may be an option to opt out.

It is, however, possible to opt out of the agreement within the next 30 days.

Gamers will now have to try to resolve any legal issues with an arbitrator picked by Sony, before being able to file a lawsuit.

Section 15 of the new EULA describes how this can happen.

RIGHT TO OPT OUT OF BINDING ARBITRATION AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER WITHIN 30 DAYS. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE BOUND BY THE BINDING ARBITRATION AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER IN THIS SECTION 15, YOU MUST NOTIFY SNEI IN WRITING WITHIN 30 DAYS OF THE DATE THAT YOU ACCEPT THIS AGREEMENT. YOUR WRITTEN NOTIFICATION MUST BE MAILED TO 6080 CENTER DRIVE, 10 TH FLOOR, LOS ANGELES, CA 90045, ATTN: LEGAL DEPARTMENT/ARBITRATION AND MUST INCLUDE: (1) YOUR NAME, (2) YOUR ADDRESS, (3) YOUR PSN ACCOUNT NUMBER, IF YOU HAVE ONE, AND (4) A CLEAR STATEMENT THAT YOU DO NOT WISH TO RESOLVE DISPUTES WITH ANY SONY ENTITY THROUGH ARBITRATION.

Make sure you remember to write to them via snail mail and keep a copy of your tracking number and receipt for the letter. You can view Section 15 here [pdf] . You can fill out a form letter here.

It’s been confirmed that Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS is a game that once finished, cannot be reset for complete replay. According to both the U.S. and U.K. game’s instruction manual “saved data on this software cannot be reset.”

Basically what Capcom has done is make Mercenaries 3D a one-time play affair. Once you’ve unlocked all the goodies and played the entire game, you will not be able to erase the game’s save data and start fresh as if it were a new copy.

By doing this, Capcom has made it so that you cannot even loan the game to a friend or a relative as well as making the game useless to yourself should you want to play it again. How many times have you played a game through more than once? Now, think about the fact that, with Capcom’s strategy, you have to pay for the game again each time you want to replay it.

By acting the way they are, Capcom is losing sales and preventing gamers from playing games that they should own. Any sort of DRM prevents full functionality of a game. This results in either gamers never purchasing a game or heading down the piracy route so they can make their game fully functional. If this is the future of gaming, there are going to be a lot less sales of games in the future.

Anyone who has been to my house has seen my game collection. Yes, I replay many of them. As a matter of fact, I’m on my third time round of the original Tomb Raider. In Metal Gear Solid there is a scenario that, if you submit to Revolver Ocelot’s torture, Otacon will give you his stealth camouflage at the end of the game and you could then replay it while invisible. If I can’t replay them, I’m not buying them.

The most disgusting part of all this is that Sony stored the passwords of its users in plain text. It’s absolutely pathetic that a corporation as big as Sony can’t even get the basics of security right.

the latest hack was performed using SQL injection: a rudimentary technique that depends on improper handling of website URLs. Being susceptible to SQL injection is embarrassing enough—techniques to prevent it are well-known, and easy to apply to any database-driven website—but what makes this hack even worse is the data that has been compromised.

The fact that anyone who can read a database can read the plain text passwords is just the tip of the iceberg. Sony has no excuse for not fixing or patching their systems to prevent well-known SQL injections.

Sony customers are also going to suffer. Many reuse passwords on other sites and many of Sony’s compromised accounts included real name, address, and phone number. Until people take security seriously on the individual and corporate sides, things will only get worse.

It also gives another reason for me to stay away from online gaming and to continue to use multiple passwords online.

“Provincial departments of information and communication will inspect on-line games activities nationwide and deal with organisations that violate regulations by cancelling their services,” said the ministry’s Deputy Minister Le Nam Thang.

Some on-line game service providers like VTC Intercom and Asiasoft said that the (internet access block) measure reduced entertainment access to adults who have paid a lot for internet access.

They also said it created difficulties for the maintenance of on-line games.

Officials at the Department of Education also complain that students’ education is affected by spending too much time online.

The department’s random checks on 370,390 students from over 1,120 schools showed that more than 82 per cent go to internet gaming shops from one to six times per week to play online games. Of these, nearly 14 per cent can not help entering internet gaming shops eight times per week and 3.4 per cent admit to going more than ten times per week.

Most players spend two or three hours in the shops each time. Some 22,110 students, or 5.9 per cent of the total, spend between four and seven hours each time and 1,745 players, counting for 0.5 per cent, admit they can play non-stop for eight to ten hours on each occasion, the survey said.

Young players prefer playing online games during school time, especially during the noon break time. About 7.9 per cent of players usually play after 10pm.

“Online games and their harmful effects are considered social evil at schools,” Prof Van Nhu Cuong, headmaster of Luong The Vinh Private High School said.

“It’s hard to ban students from playing while internet gaming shops are booming. It’s high time we banned all games with violent or sexual content,” Cuong said.

As in America, instead of parents doing the job of parenting, it’s just easier to censor everything instead. If parents were actually paying attention to their children, a ban from 10pm would not be necessary as the students would be home studying or in bed.

According to the city schools’ estimates, 566 of the 3,874 gaming shops located within 200 metres of schools were still operating despite the recent ban.

Duong Van Ba, deputy director of the ministry’s Student Affairs Department, said the control of online games was not easy, especially in big cities as there were no regulations stipulating which kinds of games were allowed to be published.

While it might be a good idea to regulate the amount of time that children spend on the internet, this blanket rule affects everyone. If you work twelve hours and have the next day off, too bad. You can no longer play your games online because the ban covers a huge swath of the population without taking into account why people are playing.

What if you work the night shift and have the night off? You can’t play games either because the Vietnamese government is convinced that people who play during these hours are addicts and they must be stopped. What if you’re retired and your hobby is online gaming?

Make all the justifications you want, this isn’t about concern over people being addicted to online gaming, students spending time gaming instead of studying or any other excuse the government comes up with, it’s about control. The problem is that people can only be controlled for so long and the internet can’t be controlled. If the Vietnamese government stopped to think for a moment, they would realize that a citizenry who would rather spend all their time online playing games rather than being outside is one that is more likely to be compliant to what the government chooses to do. If you’d rather be gaming, you don’t really care what the government does.

Proxies and VPNs will, as usual, provide the means around any such government blocks. The rest of the population will simply play their games first, then, at 10pm, do their homework.

The announcement was made in their forums.

Hello everyone,

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It’s important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it’s clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you’ll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters (http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/about/mission.html), and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard’s success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment

Read more about it here.

Several players have balked at the idea because Blizzard has warned people many times that sharing their email, account information and login information is dangerous and should never be done. That is, until now as it is the requirement if you wish to continue using their servers. After you have done this and “friended” your friends, anyone that is their friend can see your real information as well. Naturally, there are serious privacy concerns with this. Blizzard had told users that RealID is option and they don’t need use it if they fear for their privacy. The problem is, Blizzard has now announced that all forum posts must be made with your RealID. While, for the moment, your RealID on the forums won’t be connected to your in-game character, you can do this as an option.

Blizzard is standing by its statement that RealID is optional, however, technical support and some customer service is handled through the forums. While there is an email, web form and phone number option for tech support your best chances of getting help are actually in the forums. Their customer service forums are quite good. While some players can have their problems solved with an in-game ticket, most others are referred to the forums. Blizzard is also actively encouraging players to “first utilize the forums and the website to pursue information about their respective issues at www.worldofwarcraft.com.”

One solution is to create individual forums as several groups have done, but that poses problems as well. Communities are split into realms, making communication through anything but the official forums extremely difficult. Without the official forums, the community is likely to fall apart. If the forums are further split into more individual forums, it will be impossible to disseminate important information.

Several players have suggested that they can use fake names as their RealID. If they are serious about keeping their accounts, they won’t do this. Blizzard has announced that they will have moderators in the forums whose sole job is to root out fake account names and force them to list their real information. This may include providing proof of identity as well.

Privacy concerns over RealID are valid. Players are worried about stalking, creepy people, and harassment. Women typically play as male characters to avoid all three. This will no longer be possible.

Employers run background checks on potential employees. Your online gaming can, potentially, be linked to your professional life. Some view online gaming as a weakness and that gamers won’t fit into a company because they are lazy. Some believe that all gamers are creepy stalker type people. All it takes is one HR person to find out you post on Blizzard’s forums for you to lose a chance at that great job. Good luck proving it though.

Many players are also minors who don’t fully understand the implications of giving up your real information and how it could affect them later in life when looking for work. These minors have also set up accounts with their parents’ permission. These accounts are now tied to their parents’ identities. Account security and privacy matters do not appear to be major considerations for Blizzard. These features began, as usual, as opt-in, but the rules keep changes and more and more parts of Blizzard’s servers and forums have become mandatory.

Eventually, online play, forums, and battle.net will seamlessly blend together. Then, there will be no choice but to have your real information spread across their networks. Blizzard, over time, has shifted from thinking of their fans as an online community and more towards consumers who spend money. Blizzard knows there are more consumers than gamers and have moved towards that business model.

I can honestly say that, if RealID is placed into Diablo III, I won’t even consider purchasing the game. I suspect many others will wait for a pirated version that has all of this stripped out, making Diablo III a standalone game. Blizzard may not care. They may have enough players that pay for a service such as RealID. I just won’t be one of them.

If you still don’t understand the privacy issues at stake, ask Blizzard employee, Micah Whipple (aka Bashiok), who posted his real name to assure everyone it was safe how that worked out for him.

Info-film explaining the origin of the UK’s nationwide Curfew.

The Curfew, a new adventure webgame from Channel 4 and Littleloud, written by Kieron Gillen, released Summer 2010.

As of right now, you need to be online all the time to play C&C 4. This is primarily due to our “player progression” feature so everything can be tracked. C&C 4 is not an MMO in the sense of World of Warcraft, but conceptually it has similar principles for being online all the time. While some may be taken aback by this, we’ve been testing this feature internally with all of our world-wide markets. We wanted to make sure it wouldn’t take away any significant market or territory from playing the game. We have not found or seen any results that have made us think otherwise. You won’t need a fast connection, in fact, you could be on age-old dial-up, and have the same single player experience as everyone else. Online all the time won’t cause lag for single-player. We’ve also heavily worked on the online infrastructure such that people with slower connections will not lag other players with faster connections in Multiplayer.

So, first I have to pay for the game.  Then I have to pay for an internet connection.  There will probably also end up being some sort of subscription as well.  To top that all off, if I have a dial up account, I can’t use the telephone while I’m playing in single player mode because I have to be connected to play the game.

I play most of my games while traveling, where internet connections aren’t available.  I also play all my games as a single player.  I also hate having my information tracked.  There is no need to for any of this to happen, but EA insists on it.

Many ISPs are also limiting bandwidth.  How much are you going to be required to use while in single player mode?  If it’s a lot, many players will walk away from the game and never buy it.

EA also hasn’t said what will happen when someone’s internet connection goes out.  If your internet is out for two weeks, then you won’t be playing any C&C 4.  EA hasn’t learned from the Spore DRM issues.  They’re only making things worse and losing customers while they continue to screw with their games.

EA is not selling Command and Conquer 4.  They are merely renting it to you.  You will pay $60 to “purchase” the game and, whenever they decide to pull the plug, you haven’t got a game to play anymore.  What’s going to happen then?  I know what I would do; go right to the pirates because they’ll sort out a way for me to still play the game.  Of course, in real life, I’ll never buy this game.  You’ve lost me as a customer because you’ve taken away the ability for me to play it how I want, when I want.

If you want something a little more challenging, you can visit sporcle and try to name all the countries in the world in under 15 minutes.  Sporcle also has many other challenging and fun games to play.