Mark Kern, CEO of Firefall developer Red 5 Studios, has formed a gamer-focused pressure group, League For Gamers, in response to the Entertainment Software Association's backing of SOPA and PIPA.
Speaking to VentureBeat, Kern criticised the ESA, which represents over 30 of the biggest US videogame companies and staunchly backed, and lobbied in support, of SOPA despite widespread opposition to the controversial anti-piracy bill.
Indie Fund, the group put together by several independent developers to give fellow indies an alternative to traditional publisher funding, has recouped the $90,000 it invested in Toxic Games' firstperson puzzler Q.U.B.E.
In a post on the Indie Fund website the team reveals that it has recouped its entire investment in just four days, after 12,000 copies were sold on Steam.
Picture the scene. It's 1982 – a pre-school summer camp in rural East Anglia, England. The sun is going down, the toys are put away, and the kids have been reclaimed from local parks and sports grounds. Getting them back out into their parents' waiting cars, though, is proving a bit tricky. The problem, specifically, is a monitor sat between coat hooks and door, upon which a small turtle is doodling around a big black space, leaving little white pixels in its wake. This is Logo, an educational programming language born in the world of robotics.
Demos of upcoming 3DS games will be available on the eShop download service from tomorrow.
The first games to take advantage of the feature introduced in a December firmware update will be Capcom's upcoming survival horror Resident Evil Revelations, and 505 Games' Cooking Mama 4.
Canadian import website Videogamesplus.ca has been hacked, with the personal information of 21,000 users leaked onto the internet.
Spotted by random_dave on our forums, customer details including names, phone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords were uploaded to the Pastebin website. A link to the entire database has since been removed by download site Rapidshare.
We've sought confirmation from Videogamesplus, but in the meantime advise account holders to change their passwords as a precaution.
Cloud gaming service Gaikai is ready to launch on Facebook, founder David Perry has confirmed.
Perry revealed the news at yesterday's Cloud Gaming Europe conference in London, reported by gamesindustry.biz, and showed World Of Warcraft running on the social network.
The number of people using entertainment apps on Xbox 360 rose 50 per cent last month, Microsoft has revealed.
Xbox Live mouthpiece Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb confirms in a blog post that app usage rose significantly in December compared to the month before. The Metro dashboard update, which brought renewed focus on external video content, was released on December 6.
Ubisoft has announced the closure of its Vancouver development studio, which worked on various sports titles after being acquired by the French publisher in 2009.
Formed in 2006 and known as Action Pants prior to the buyout, Ubisoft Vancouver was responsible for games including Pure Futbol for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, Academy Of Champions: Soccer for Wii, and Motionsports Adrenaline for Kinect and PlayStation Move.
Bomberman maker Hudson will officially cease to exist as a company after being absorbed into Konami Digital Entertainment on March 1.
The developer behind series like Bonk, Adventure Island and Mario Party issued notice of the impending change today in compliance with Japanese law, Andriasang reports.
Battlefield 3 has started the new year as it ended 2011, at number one on the Nordic software chart, which collates sales data from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.
The top five games on the chart were unchanged from the previous week, with EA’s shooter placing ahead of FIFA 12, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Need For Speed: The Run.
Like most PC games, Ubisoft titles carry a limit on the number of machines on which they can be installed. However, Guru3D has found that the limit also applies to hardware components.
The Stop Online Piracy act now resides somewhere in a Washington drawer, its author admitting it needs further study, the Obama administration refusing to support it, and a hearing set for this week postponed. One senior Republican claims to have been given assurances the House Of Representatives will not vote on the bill until a consensus has been reached on its contents.
The Rockstar-developed Max Payne 3 has been delayed until May, publisher Take-Two has announced.
The game was supposed to hit shelves in March, but Take-Two has confirmed that it will now be released for Xbox 360 and PS3 on May 15 in North America, and May 18 in other territories. The PC version will be released on May 29 in North America, and June 1 elsewhere.
The Rockstar-developed Max Payne 3 has been delayed until May, publisher Take-Two has announced.
The game was supposed to hit shelves in March, but Take-Two has confirmed that it will now be released for Xbox 360 and PS3 on May 15 in North America, and May 18 in other territories. The PC version will be released on May 29 in North America, and June 1 elsewhere.
RocketCat initially seems like the wrong outfit to handle an action RPG. Its previous platforming games, such as Hook Worlds and Super QuickHook, may have boasted the same over-sized 16-bit art styles as The Secret Of Mana and A Link To The Past, but they also had an all-conquering sense of forward momentum. They didn't dawdle, as RPGs often need to, they created landscapes you wanted to race through rather than territories you'd like to explore.
5th Cell's latest has the same generosity of spirit as its most famous creation, and a similar way with misleading numbers. 420 levels sounds a lot for an iOS platformer, but, as with Scribblenauts' 20,000 nouns, the differences between one and the next aren't necessarily as meaningful as you might hope.
Facts rarely measure up to hype, and hype often results in disappointment and broken promises. It's a process we have seen time after time in the game industry with respect to supposedly game-changing trends and technologies. Sometimes, though, hype tapers down rather than crashes, and is replaced by results that, while still requiring an adjustment in public expectation and being subject to a more realistic growth curve, prove to be real enough to provoke a shift in how people play games.
Apple has released the results of an annual audit of working conditions at the 156 suppliers involved in the manufacture of its products.
The full list includes the controversial Foxconn, Chinese manufacturer of iPhone, iPad and Mac, as well as the likes of Samsung, Toshiba, Sony and Panasonic. As AppStorm notes, it's an unusual move from a company which had previously been known for keeping a tight lid on details of its suppliers.
2K Marin's FPS reboot of the revered XCOM has been delayed until next year, according to reports.
Mario Kart 7 was the best-selling videogame in Japan last year, according to Media Create, with its host platform 3DS topping the 2011 hardware chart.
Andriasang reports that 4,282,143 3DS systems were sold over the course of the year, and it's little surprise to see it top the hardware chart given that it has been the best-selling hardware in Japan every single week since last August's price cut.
UK retailer Game Group has denied reports that its game.co.uk website has been hacked.
Earlier today Softpedia reported that attackers had breached Game's website security by exploiting a shell injection vulnerability, and posted email addresses and passwords in plain text of 200 users on the Pastebin website. In a statement, however, the retailer has denied any such breach had taken place.
The issues, listed below in full, are available to download from the Edge app at a reduced price of £1.99 each until February 1, after which point they will return to £2.99.
Newsstand allows you to buy single issues as well as take out three, six and twelve-month subscriptions, and browse our pages as they appear in print.
This article was written with patent lawyers Greg Boyd and Andrew Keisner of New York-based Davis & Gilbert LLP.
US patent law is about to receive its biggest shakeup since the Patent Act of 1952. And it's likely to affect all game publishers and developers. The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, or AIA for short, which was signed into law last September and gradually phases into effect in March 2013, will significantly change the way companies will apply for and defend their patents.
This article was written with patent lawyers Greg Boyd and Andrew Keisner of New York-based Davis & Gilbert LLP.
US patent law is about to receive its biggest shakeup since the Patent Act of 1952. And it's likely to affect all game publishers and developers. The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, or AIA for short, which was signed into law last September and gradually phases into effect in March 2013, will significantly change the way companies will apply for and defend their patents.
Zach Gage is the conceptual artist, and now videogame designer, behind games such as SpellTower, BitPilot and SynthPond. While initially self-contained art projects, his work has veered ever closer to traditional videogames to the point that now a distinction is harder to make. Here, we continue the conversation started in our profile of Gage in issue 237 of Edge.