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Rumor: Developers claim to be uncredited for LA Noire work
For the past seven years, Team Bondi and Rockstar Games have been toiling away on LA Noire -- an effort that, at least from a critical standpoint so far, has been totally worth it. But some developers who supposedly had a hand in solving the case of how to launch a game have gone uncredited and taken to the internet for justice by ... launching a website and Facebook page. T.K. Rose, an alias of one such member (why hide your name?) of the group looking for recognition, told Destructoid that unless individuals were involved during "the final month or two of production" were left out of the game's credits, affecting about 100 individuals who apparently worked on the game. "A significant portion of these people did not leave Team Bondi by choice," Rose detailed, "they were made redundant as the art production wound down, and as Quality Assurance was shifted off-shore to Rockstar's studios." Rockstar has yet to comment on the claims of these individuals. We've reached out for comment and will update accordingly.
Bungie resets credits on 15K Halo: Reach cheaters
On top of announcing an earlier than expected playlist update (coming this Tuesday), Bungie revealed last night that it has reset the credits and ranks of "approximately" 15,000 Halo: Reach accounts. The studio also applied a one day credit earning ban on affected players, less for punishment than to "ensure that recipients receive an in-game notification of the action taken." The resets were handled last evening and specifically targeted folks who employed "an exploit that allowed players to complete a Challenge 20+ times via itentional network manipulation (i.e., disconnects.)." Bungie will also be completing a "more comprehensive pass" later this week, after the studio is confident enough in its automated banning system. We're taking this move as further proof of the age old adage -- cheaters never win.
Earth Eternal hits open beta
You ever want to play an MMO in your browser? Well now you can! Sparkplay Media's Earth Eternal has finally made the leap into open beta, and joining is as easy as a few button clicks.All you have to do to check out the free-to-play MMO with 22 races is go to their website and sign up for an account. That's it. It's really, really just that easy. After your account is made, you can play Earth Eternal in your browser, or you can grab the actual client and run it separate from your browser.If you like the game and want to throw some money its way, you might want to consider doing it during the open beta. For the month of October, any game credit purchases will have an extra 20% credits thrown in for your purchase. So if you grab 1,000 credits, you'll get 1,200 instead.So, what are you waiting for? Jump on over to the EE website and sign up. It's easy!
Chinese WoW wraps up closed beta, to start charging soon
It looks like the long saga of World of Warcraft's transfer of operatorship in China is almost finally over -- NetEase has announced that the closed beta period is done with, and that they're just about ready to open up normal registration and bring the game back to for-pay status. They're still pending government approval there, so they're not quite online and running yet, but they have closed off registration to new players, and will only bring it back online when they're ready to start charging yet again. Of course, their pay scheme there is different from here in the US and EU -- they often charge per hour to play rather than a constant monthly subscription. But however they decide to charge, NetEase seems sure that by the end of the month, things will finally be back to normal in China's version of Azeroth.Meanwhile, the former operator of the game, The9, has announced that they are extending by a month the option for former players to get refunds for their prepaid game cards. That option was originally planned to end on September 7th, but players of the game who have unused cards will have another 30 days to redeem them back for cash. All of this back-and-forth originally started back in April of this year, but it seems like, five months later, the game might finally be getting back to normal.
YouPlayorWePay opens up a new month, plans to add EU realms soon
We haven't heard much from the folks at You Play or We Pay lately, but maybe that's a good thing for them -- after all the noise from their initial launch, it seems like things have calmed down over there. They're giving out "Compensation Credits," it looks like they've started running a few ads, and it seems like they've finally settled on a model that works for everyone -- both the founders of the site and the people who sign up for compensation. While we heard the first month of slots filled up pretty fast, the second month seems to be going a little slower -- they've still got about half the slots for March still available as of this writing. But as you can see from the picture, they're promising some real items in exchange for those Compensation Credits. With 150 slots in March and about 100 credits given out last month, you may be waiting over a year to save up the credits to buy a 30-day game card, but the site is working the way they planned: you can sign up for free and eventually get something back for your realm's downtime.And they're planning on expanding soon -- the site reports that by the 15th of March, English EU players will be able to sign up for compensation on their realms' downtime as well. This site caused a lot of controversy when it first opened up, but we have to give it to them: it looks like they've worked out a way to do what they want to do.
YouPlayorWePay goes free with a new plan
As promised, YouPlayorWePay has returned, and they've got a whole new plan in place. Originally, as we reported earlier, they wanted to create a site where players would pay a fee for the opportunity to get reimbursed for lost playtime in World of Warcraft, but after outcries from the community, they have outlined a whole slew of changes on the site.And the biggest of these is that the service is now free. Instead of charging users, they plan to support a limited number of registrants (for March, when they begin, they're opening up 150 spots), and when downtime or queues occur for those registrants, they'll be given "YPOWP credits," which apparently will be used either towards compensation or towards "contest prizes," which will update every month. They've got some new stats on the front page, too, including the realms with the most calculated downtime, and how many compensation and contest prizes they've given out every month.Very interesting. From the beginning, the founders have made it clear that they didn't want to scam anyone (they told us as much in our interview), and they now say that not one person has been charged a cent for compensation. This new model, however, seems much more fair -- there's no cost up front for people who register, even if the "compensation" might not be worth as much as the cash they originally promised. What do you think of the new plan?
Wrath manual hidden in latest WoW files
If you just can't wait to read the Wrath of the Lich King manual, Maeglin of Khadgar made an interesting discovery -- it's already on your computer. Inside your World of Warcraft folder, if you go to the Data folder, and then "enUS" and Documentation, you'll see a PDF file called Manual_WLK. It's the Wrath manual in black and white -- there are good writeups in there (spoiler-free, as far as I could tell) on the story so far and Northrend, and some cool concept art for weapons and other sights of the next expansion. The credits are in there, too, and make sure to go to the very end to read all the thanks from Blizzard -- some of them are pretty funny.This likely isn't the final manual -- there's something in the Death Knight description that still says runes can be customized, and while we heard that earlier in development, it's since been removed from the class. And it's in black and white, while we'd expect the full manual to have color when it's finally printed. But it's a cool find, and something to tide you over until you can get the real thing on release day (which, as you can see from our countdown, is growing ever closer).Thanks, Wes R.!
Mythic releases trio of WAR launch day videos
As busy as the Mythic folks have been gearing up for launch this week, they still took the time to have some fun and meet some fans. All of their antics have been recorded for your viewing pleasure, with the credits posing as a particularly entertaining -- if not lengthy -- video. Also, our hope is that Josh and everyone exposed to too much radio-frequency energy at least gain some kind of superpowers. There's a lot to watch between the three separate videos, but it's all fairly entertaining for any fan of the Warhammer Online guys. We hope they're starting to recover from launch day at least a little bit, but if these videos are any indication then they've only just begun.
The Tao of iTunes credits
Apple has a support article up today discussing how and in which order your iTunes Store credits get redeemed. Here's the run-down in a nutshell: If you have a free song credit from, for example, a Coke or Pepsi promotion and you're buying a song, that credit gets used first. It doesn't matter what other credits or allowances you have in your account. Buy a song, use the song credit. Gift certificates, prepaid cards and allowances form the second line of use. If you're buying an album (can't apply free song credits to albums), or if you've used up all your free song credits, these credits get used. If the cost of your items is less than your credits, you're done and dandy. If not, the balance moves up to your credit card. Your credit card only gets charged after you've exhausted all these other kinds of credits, and only for the remaining balance after applying the free songs, certificates, cards and allowances to your purchase. The credit card is basically the last line of defense, picking up any extra billing at the end of the purchase.
