Several thousand bots banned from Hearthstone till 2015; "Fair play is the core of the Hearthstone experience"
Blizzard have just banned “several thousand” bot accounts from Hearthstone that were found to be using “third party software” to play Hearthstone. The bans come as the popularity of bots have been on the rise after Blizzard seemingly did nothing about it. That ends today, after a flurry of bans have occurred in an effort to halt the bots in their place.
DICE open up Battlefield 4 PC test servers to premium console players
The amateur QA team for one of the best PC games of 2013 just got an awful lot bigger. DICE have granted premium Battlefield 4 players from all platforms access to the game’s community test environment - whether or not they own a copy of the game on PC.
Making it in Unreal: How Yager are reinventing the open world in Dead Island 2
Dead Island 2 doesn’t cheat. You can see it in the views: long sweeping eyelines of zombie infested Los Angeles, the seamless strolls from the Hollywood sign in the hills, all the way to Santa Monica beach.
It’s a showstopper.
Gynophobia is a horror shooter about a man with a fear of women
Horror games have subsisted on the common phobias of humanity since Alone in the Dark, but - unless you count F.E.A.R. - have never before made a thing of the rather rare fear of women. That’s where the indie shooter now soliciting your votes on Steam Greenlight, Gynophobia, takes its name from.
Spacebase DF-9 trailer marks launch. Free copy of Hack’n’Slash for owners
Double Fine fired the Spacebase DF-9 launch trailer across our bow this morning. It’s postively teeming with space bugs, raider attacks, and aliens doing weights in their space gym. Bundled into the trailer torpedo was the announcement that owners of the space station management sim will also get a copy of Hack ’n’ Slash.
Twitch ban broadcasters from wearing "sexually suggestive" clothing on air
It’s not that your Sims shower skit isn’t totally on-the-nose, or that there’s anything wrong with Leisure Suit Larry cosplay in principle. It’s just that you’re going to have to find somewhere else to perform them.
Dress appropriately,” write Twitch in their new guidelines. “Nerds are sexy, and you’re all magnificent, beautiful creatures, but let’s try and keep this about the games, shall we?”
Valve to tackle "transparently unfair" distribution of Team Fortress 2 Halloween gifts
Scream Fortress 6 is coming, and with it the flurry of presents Team Fortress 2 players have come to expect over the last four spooky seasons. But Valve have revised the gift system for this year’s event, in the hope of ending the iffy practices of Halloweens past.
“The Halloween experience for many players now consists of sitting idle in a custom server while a plugin teleports them from gift spawn point to gift spawn point,” write the dev team.
“We feel comfortable characterizing the current system as blatantly and transparently unfair.”
Returning GTA V players to be rewarded with Dodo seaplane on PC
If years of poor port treatment at the hands of Rockstar hadn’t already quelled your indignant rage over the year-long delay of GTA V on PC, a Dodo might do it.
The “classic bird of flight” is just one of a number of measures Rockstar have taken to placate players good enough to have bought the latest Grand Theft Auto for console, and then again for PC.
Democracy 3 hurtles into the future with the Clones and Drones expansion
Democracy 3 is jumping into the near future and turbulent times with the Clones and Drones expansion, which dropped today. Future techs and new social issues rear their heads, adding more to the charts and numbers that spin grim political yarns. At least, the yarns are grim when I’m playing, and ruining the country.
The future doesn’t seem too bright.
Update for Minecraft will let you control the fanciness of clouds
When you look up at the clouds, especially if you are a character in some romantic fiction, lying on the bonnet of a car, you might find that they look like celebrities or vegetables or maybe a foot. But have you ever looked up at the sky and thought, “Gosh, those are some fancy clouds”?
Maybe you hate fancy clouds, though. Perhaps you think they are putting on airs. If only there was a way to take them down a peg or two. You might not have such god-like control over the real world, but in Minecraft, you are not so shackled.
Dear everyone: it's time to stop buying season passes at launch
Season passes are becoming ubiquitous in AAA games. That’s not in the least bit surprising. Publishers love them. They print money. And gamers, despite every possible reason not to, seem to be lapping them up.
And that’s driving us bananas.
Battlefield Hardline is now sporting a new release date: March 17th
Battlefield Hardline’s launch date was pushed back from October, after a very iffy beta, earlier this year, and today EA has revealed the new date: it’s March 17th, almost half a year after later. Better that than releasing it in the state it was in, of course.
Apparently we can expect some significant changes, including heavy weapons now being secondary objectives, and tying them to car boots instead of player inventories.
Get Crusader: No Remorse free on Origin; you won't regret it
It looks like EA’s On the House deals on Origin are here to stay, as yet another game has been reduced to zero pounds, dollars and space bucks. It’s Crusader: No Remorse, and this is excellent news, as Crusader is filled to the brim with ‘90s isometric badassery.
Elite: Dangerous' beta 3.00 update is cosmically massive
Elite: Dangerous’ beta 3.00 update is a big ‘un, tossing brand new ships, the Imperial Clipper and Federal Dropshop, asteroid mining and philanthropy missions into the already meaty galactic sandbox, while also expanding the galaxy itself. It’s 350 light years long, which is mind bogglingly large.
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