In an interesting move, ShopTo has pulled all future Activision games from sale, after a dispute arose between them and Activision over Activisions policy of not allowing "e-tailers" to dispatch any games until 1 day before the release date. ShopTo's boss, Igor Cipolletta, spoke to Eurogamer over the matter:
Quote:
"Activision's policy of only allowing e-tailers to despatch one day before release date effectively destroys an e-tailer's pre-order campaign, as many deliveries inevitably arrive post-release date. This has the undesired effect of previously loyal and satisfied customers thinking that, if we can't 'get it right' for one of the biggest games of the year, why should they trust us with any future orders? Their friends and acquaintances, by word of mouth and social media, (despite possibly not having ever ordered from us), would see us (and possibly e-tailers as a whole) as unreliable. This despite all the time and hard work my team and the myriad of other publishers put into other titles during the year.
Of course this Activision policy is not for every title, but due to the volume and fever pitch Call of Duty seems to generate (both positive and negative), it causes the most damage to us."
At the time of writing, future Activision releases Call Of Duty: Ghosts, Deadpool and Swap Force are not listed on the ShopTo website.
The practice of purchasing games in their alpha state and having a small amount of influence upon the games development, eventually receiving the final game upon its release, has been proving very popular over recent years, with Steams rivals, such as Desura, benefiting from said popularity. It seems as though Valve has finally decided that it wants a piece of the pie and this can only be seen as a good thing for indie game developers looking for all the exposure they can get.
The inaugural list of games available through early access are as follows:
The lovely chaps behind the Humble Bundle have just announced a new way to buy indie games every week, with the Humble Weekly Sale! It works much like the Humble Bundle where you can pay what you like, however instead of purchasing a bundle, you purchase a single game. The existing rule of a $1 minimum payment is required to redeem your purchase on Steam.
This weeks deal is the excellent Bastion and you can get it HERE
Sony has announced that the EU Planetside 2 Servers have been hacked and it is possible that player account data has been stolen.
“Your account data is encrypted with us for your security,” wrote the ProSiebenSat.1 games team in a blog post. “Nevertheless, we have decided to take preventative measures in order to ensure the highest degree of security.”
If your account is among the potentially hacked, you should of received an email in the last day to request a change in password. Furthermore, some players will find they are unable to log in due to account suspension, “for security reasons”. If that’s you, you’ll want to reactivate your account with a new password here.