People were mad when they found out that Street Fighter X Tekken had 12 finished characters on the disc for the game that could only be accessed as paid DLC. They were furious when a spokesperson for the company said that “there is effectively no distinction” between DLC being on the disc and DLC being downloaded from the internet. Now it appears that Capcom is backpedaling as fast as they can, saying that they are “re-evaluating” on-disc DLC.

Now, you might be thinking “Why is on-disc DLC bad? Don’t many games have day one DLC anyway?” Well, it’s true that many games have day one DLC, but it has to come down to the delivery system for it. When Mass Effect 3 came out, it had the “From The Ashes” DLC on day one. EA and Bioware defended the DLC by saying that the content was developed after the game code had been submitted to the ESRB for review. Thus, there was no way for them to put it on the disc unless they re-sent the entire code, which would have probably delayed the game for another few months.

By having on-disc DLC, that code for those characters would have had to have been on the disc when the game was submitted to the ESRB for review. Had the code been added into the game after receiving its rating, the rating that Street Fighter X Tekken would have been void, and the game would have had to be re-reviewed by the ESRB to gain a rating. With this damning evidence, it’s no wonder people were pissed off at Capcom. Here is a blatant example of withholding content and releasing it to earn more money, essentially double-charging the players. However, though the company is “re-evaluating” it’s on-disc DLC policy, don’t expect it to change anytime soon. Senior VP Christian Svensson admitted that titles already in development, like Dragon’s Dogma, are still going to include on-disc DLC, because the decision “was made at the beginning of the game’s development” to include it. Despicable.

When Battlefield 3 was released, people were perhaps a bit upset when they found out that there were no options to customize a server for the console versions of the game. That all changed in March when EA unveiled the Rent-a-Server option, allowing for anybody on any system the ability to rent out one of the official DICE servers and customize it how they see fit. This was a good option, as it allowed people to custom-tailor the game to the way they wanted to play it.

That is, it was a good option until DICE and EA started to back away from the official servers all together. It seems that once they saw how many people were willing to pay for servers, EA and DICE made a decision to just go ahead and just let the custom servers be the only servers available. Now, while that might seem like it’s no big deal, consider the people you’ve played with from time to time. Remember that guy you killed, who started PM’ing you threats about what he’s going to do to your mother, and how you “f***ed with the wrong guy”? He’s got admin powers now. Looks like you’re back in the server list. What about your friend who just likes killing hordes and hordes of people for hours on end? Now he has a server with a 1000 kill limit on it. Have fun finishing that game up any time soon!

EA and DICE saw that people were willing to pay and reacted accordingly, but because of their shortsightedness, they might very well have shortened the games lifespan by months or even years. By not having enough standard match servers around, they’re alienating the fans of the game who don’t want to spend match after match on the same map, or with some insane weapon restrictions such as “Knife-Only”. Allowing custom servers is one thing, but to feature custom servers and take away the regular vanilla servers is just pure greed. What else can you expect from EA, though?

Quick, what do you do when the guy you hired to act as your PR firm decides to insult your customers and jeopardize your entire company? If you’re a sane person, you’d have answered “Fire him immediately”, and that is exactly what N-Control CEO David Kotkin did. However, despite firing the man who caused the PR gaffes of PR gaffes in 2011, Mr. Kotkin can’t seem to shake off the water on his head, as Ocean Marketing’s Paul Christoforo is now suing David Kotkin and N-Control.

Let me repeat that. Paul Christoforo, the man who destroyed his own company, Ocean Marketing, and nearly destroyed another, is suing David Kotkin, the man who had to clean up the mess and play his own PR director to keep people from wiping N-Control off of the face of the earth. What’s even more hilarious is the fact that Christoforo is suing N-Control for “defamation of Character” and a breach of contract. In an email that Christoforo sent to Kotaku, he said “The grounds are defamation of Character telling lies about me my company and preventing me from making a living by lying about things that never happened and I plan on going after other people too esp .coms who printed the lies and did not retract after i asked nicely. Breach of contract for them not paying me an undisclosed sum of money Due to me at the time we parted ways and a few other things named in the lawsuit.”

This guy is too much. Does he seriously think he can win a lawsuit of “defamation of Character” after ruining a reputation like he did? Apparently he thinks so, because in another email he sent to Kotaku a couple of weeks ago, he said “David can talk all the talk he wants to, the filing is public record so all the dirty laundry and shenanigan’s he pulled will be exposed to the public. I have remained quiet and just fooling around on the internet building up to this law suit and now it’s only a matter of time before his text messages and emails to me are released to the public.” Somehow, I have a feeling that those text messages and emails are a lot like your buddy’s girlfriend from Canada: they don’t exist.

In the competitive world of video games, companies have to work hard to stand out from the crowd. It’s innovate or die. While most companies are looking at ways to make games better and more appealing, one is trying to truly revolutionize the industry. They want to bring gamers together, in the real world.

It seems that Sony has filed a patent application that outlines a way to get gamers together in real world events. Essentially a place would be designated where you could come, bring your own hardware, and play with fellow gamers in the same room. Of course, the main purpose will be for marketing reasons, no doubt. But still, I can’t help but think that this patent reminds me of something. Oh, I know. LAN parties.

Coordinating real-world gatherings to promote an online community, the method including: encouraging participants of the online community to participate in a real-world gathering by providing incentives for the participants

I’ve spent the last two weekends going to events that would fit the above description. This is not a new invention. All around the world people from online communities are banding together in person to play games and socialize. The big thing they talk about is that they will “provide online benefits/rewards for participating in the real-world gathering.” At IU’s LAN War two weekends ago, people won special League of Legends skins for winning a tournament. These skins can only be obtained by winning a tournament at a LAN. Tell me Sony, how do you justify patenting an idea that’s been around longer than you’ve been making video games?

Citing “numerous similarities” between Assassin’s Creed and his novel “Link”, science fiction author John L. Beiswenger has sued Ubisoft on the grounds of copyright infringement. The basis of the claim lies in the fact that in Assassin’s Creed the main character lives the memories of his ancestors through his DNA through the aid of the “animus” device. Beiswenger says that it’s an infringement on his novel, in which the main character can access ancestral memories in a similar fashion.

The lawsuit also claims that because the game mentions assassins, uses the first person perspective, contains a battle between good and evil, and references Jesus, Adam and Eve, and the Garden of Eden,  it’s infringing on his copyright. He’s seeking anywhere from $1.05 million up to $5.25 if the court were to find Ubisoft intentionally infringed on his copyright.

I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a ploy by an author who didn’t make it big like he wanted to, and is now trying something, anything to get rich. While there’s a possibility that he has a case with the ancestral memories, I can’t see how the fact that Ubisoft mentioned such broad themes like assassins, good and evil, and Jesus makes them copyright infringers. I guess we’ll see how this lawsuit plays out, if it even makes it to court in the first place.

Last week you may have noticed how certain tanks in the new Command and Conquer game, TIberium Alliances, had more than a passing resemblance to some Warhammer 40k tanks. Well, EA decided to explain what was going on with that. I’ll let you be the judge if you take what they say at face value.

According to EA, “(t)he artwork was internal EA concept art that was unintentionally released publicly. No Warhammer 40,000 tanks have ever made an appearance in Command and Conquer, Tiberium Alliances, and never will. Games Workshop and EA continue to have a strong relationship working together on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and the new free to play game Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes which just entered open beta.”

I don’t know if I can quite buy all that. Why bother designing a tank that’s modeled off of a Warhammer 40k tank at all if you know you can’t put it in the game? It wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that somebody at EA was being a bit lazy, and loved Warhammer 40k and decided to just use some of the more slightly obscure tanks in an effort to save time. EA would have gone through with it, I’d bet, until somebody else raised the red flag that they were essentially plagiarizing Games Workshop’s work.

EA is looking like it wants to retain that “Worst Company in America” award it won last week. Thanks to some eagle-eyed fans of the popular Warhammer 40k tabletop game, it’s been revealed that a some of the tanks in EA’s new Command and Conquer, Tiberium Alliances game have more than a passing resemblance to the tabletop game.

Now, taking inspiration from a world isn’t always a bad thing. After all, Warhammer 40k did it itself with the Tyranids, which are modeled off of the aliens from the Aliens films. But, if you look at the actual units in C&C and compare them to their Warhammer 40k counterparts, you’re not going to see any mere similarities, but rather, you’re going to see what looks like a near-perfect copy of the original.

Seeing that THQ owns the actual video game rights to the Warhammer 40k universe, I just can’t see them letting EA rip them off like this. If EA doesn’t change this by release, I wouldn’t be too surprised to hear about a lawsuit by THQ. That is, if THQ has the money to pursue a lawsuit…

For those of you who use iTunes app store, you might have noticed in the top three paid apps this weekend an old Nintendo favorite, Pokémon Yellow. It’s too bad that this is a scam by the “House of Anime”, and Daniel Burford.

As of this time, Apple has not removed the game from their app store, and the app currently has a star rating of 1 and a half. Most of the reviews for the game come from people who have realized they’d been duped, and report that the game crashes after the main screen.

House of Anime is also selling a Digimon and YuGiOh app, which also seems to be experiencing similar “problems”. It would not surprise me to see this Daniel Burford receiving some sort of lawsuit from Nintendo and GameFreak in the near future. Hopefully, Apple will see this problem and remove the apps in the near future. Until then, though, make sure to avoid this app!

Most of you already know that Ubisoft has some incredibly draconian DRM, since a lot of their games require that you keep a connection going with their servers at all times as you play the game. Well, what happens when those servers go offline?

On Tuesday, February 7th, Ubisoft will be moving its servers, and have not specified how long it will take. For those of you who have legitimately purchased your Ubisoft games, you will just be out of luck if you want to play them while the server move is taking place. That includes single player games, as well.

While Ubisoft recently announced that Rayman: Origin will have bare DRM (requiring a single activation), the glaring problems of their “always-on” DRM will be highlighted on Tuesday. Of course, if you have a pirated version, then you won’t have anything to worry about, at least when it comes to playing the game.

There are certain gaming companies that I’m not fond of. Two of the things that usually put me off to a company is excessive use of DRM, and the act of buying up companies, just to run the franchises into the ground with constant releases with little innovation. However, when you compare these to the copycat tactics of gaming giant Zynga.

A couple of weeks ago there was an image released  by Nimblebit, creators of the iPhone game Tiny Tower. It was a very sarcastic congratulatory message, which showed off the close similarities between their game and Zynga’s. Now, it would be easy to dismiss this as a simple coincidence, if Zynga didn’t have a track record for this sort of behavior. Ever heard of Farm Town? No? Well, it came out in early 2009, and was later crushed by Farmville, which was nearly identical. You could also look at Mob Wars and Mafia Wars. The list goes on.

Again, some people could say that it’s all just a series of coincidences. However, Forbes got their hands on a leaked memo that Forbes from CEO Mark Pincus didn’t show that this is exactly how they build games. “We don’t need to be first to market. We need to be the best in market.” is one of my favorite lines. The whole memo talks about how they “innovate” by improving on other people’s ideas. I’m sorry Mark, but you aren’t innovating. You’re taking someone else’s idea, and throwing money at it. Then you advertise the shit out of it until the competition is crushed. There is a special place in hell for people that prey on independent game developers.