Perfect World and Cryptic had to deal with a critical economic issue in the Neverwinter MMO over the weekend that allowed exploiters to make off with millions of Astral Diamonds. These diamonds function as the in-game currency for the game. Rather than allow the perpetrators to benefit from their ill-gotten gains and completely upend the economy, the developers chose to shut down the servers and reset time. Seven hours of server progress were turned back and rendered invalid.

Thanks in no small part to the efforts of our continually amazing Beta community, we were able to quickly identify the exploit and the perpetrators. Once identified, we took immediate action, calling in the entire development and publishing teams to lock down the Neverwinter OBT as we sought out a solution.

Rest assured, the issue has been corrected and we have taken appropriate action against all players who took advantage of the bug, including but not limited to enforcing permanent bans.

Sadly, the damage to the economy was done.

Rather than let the malicious efforts of a few unsavory players linger and continually impact the game’s economy and balance as we progress through these later stages of Open Beta, we have made the extremely difficult decision to rollback Neverwinter to a time shortly before the abuse and exploitation began.

It’s a drastic step, but as we saw with Diablo III, correcting a monetary exploit is paramount to any game that balances gameplay with its economy. An imbalance in the auction house can have a ripple effect throughout the game even if it’s not a free-to-play title. All it takes is an exploit that inflates pricing to ruin the balance.

Neverwinter is currently in beta and should officially launch later this year.

Microsoft is holding their Xbox event tomorrow at 10AM Pacfic time. The event venue (pictured) is in the Redmond, Washington campus of Microsoft. During a recent Major Nelson podcast, Microsoft’s interactive entertainment chief of staff Aaron Greenberg, confirmed that that the May 21st event would be “about revealing the next Xbox platform and our vision for the future of games.” For months, we’ve been hearing rumors about the console, internally codenamed Durango, that have set people buzzing.

Let’s recap the rumors, after the break! Continue reading →

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is the add-on that makes the game that made Elemental better even better. That might sound convoluted. For good reason. But if you want meatier tactical combat and more character development in your Fallen Enchantress, Legendary Heroes will deliver. This is the strongest leg in the three-legged renaissance of fantasy strategy gaming consisting of Fallen Enchantress, Warlock, and Eador.

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is an action RPG from Neocore, the Hungarian developer who made the King Arthur RTS/RPGs. King Arthur featured some clever gameplay in what was mostly a Total War-a-like, so it’s entirely possible this Diablo-a-like might have a few tricks up its sleeve. For instance, this on-the-fly skill tweaking looks promising. Van Helsing is out this week for the PC, with an Xbox 360 version to follow later this year.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is ported to the Nintendo 3DS from the Wii. Resident Evil Revelations is ported from the 3DS to the Xbox 360 and WiiU. It looks a bit, well, chintzy on the 360, but it’s a good game. Here’s my review of the 3DS version which I presume will mostly apply to these latest gen versions. But you should probably keep in mind this was a far more relevant description of my experience with the game.

Ubisoft goes back to the basics — or at least the Old West — with Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, in which a cowboy shoots stuff. I don’t have any inside information on whether it’s any good, but I have a mental image of two interns in a back room making this game to fulfill Techland’s obligation to Ubisoft while everyone else was working on Dead Island stuff.

Activision is publishing a Fast and Furious branded racing game. Paul Walker isn’t in it. I bet you didn’t know there have already been a whole mess of Fast and Furious games. I hadn’t heard of a single one of them. Paul Walker wasn’t in those either. Quod erat demonstratum.

Denis Dyack posted the above video in response to a Kotaku article that accused Silicon Knights of mismanagement during the development of X-Men: Destiny. In the video, Dyack refutes the charge that Activision was kept in the dark on the budget expenditures and progress of the project. He does admit that “there were some mistakes made” but offers no explanation beyond that for the dire reviews of the game.

Dyack is currently working on Shadow of the Eternals with his new company, Precursor Games.

Nintendo’s Wii U may not be getting any EA games in the near future, but they will be getting exclusive dibs on Sonic! Nintendo and SEGA announced a partnership for three exclusive Sonic games for the Wii U and 3DS systems.

“The onetime rivalry between Mario and Sonic has grown into a friendship that has never been closer,” said Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. “These announcements in conjunction with SEGA demonstrate the commitment we have to bringing great games to the Wii U platform, and set the stage for our upcoming announcements at E3.”

Two of the exclusive SEGA games announced for the Wii U are Sonic Lost World (pictured) and Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games. More SEGA Game Gear games will be coming to the Virtual Console service for Nintendo 3DS.

Additionally, Nintendo announced during their Nintendo Direct video stream that in lieu of holding an E3 press event this year, they will be showcasing some upcoming Wii U titles at participating Best Buy stores for the public to try out. Details about which games will be shown and which store locations will have hands-on demos are forthcoming.

Dracogen. You’ve probably never heard of it, but you should remember that name if you’re interested in indie games. Dracogen is the company started by Steven Dengler “committed to helping fun and awesome things happen.” Dengler’s funding helped Hidden Path Entertainment meet their Defense Grid 2 goal when it fell short on Kickstarter. Dracogen has invested money in The Banner Saga, Double Fine Adventure, Torment: Tides of Numenara, the Child’s Play charity, various fan films, and many other independent projects.

GamesBeat profiled Steven Dengler and Dracogen, revealing the mystery donor for the first time. Dengler spoke about why he took an interest in Defense Grid 2 and other indie efforts.

“I don’t have rights, and I am not a publisher,” Dengler told GamesBeat. “I did smaller financings for fun. But I see that the thing that is broken in the industry is that publishers want your soul. Self-publishing has to become a better option. Jeff didn’t have to twist my arm.”

“I’m not in this to make my fortune,” he said. “This gets a game out there that people want to play. I don’t want to own part of the company. I want to help make a game.”

Defense Grid 2 is scheduled to launch in 2014.

We’ve known for quite some time that Electronic Arts wasn’t going to port their upcoming Frostbite engine games to Nintendo’s Wii U console, but this is a different beast altogether. EA has officially confirmed to Kotaku that they have absolutely nothing in development for the Wii U.

That means no casual games, no family games, and no licensed games using any engine at all from EA. Nada. Zip. Zilch. While EA didn’t rule out future development, they’ve obviously cooled on the console since E3 2011 when then-CEO John Riccitiello said “We look forward to seeing great EA content on this new platform.” Insert sad trombone sound here.

Happy Birthday Diablo III! Blizzard’s hack & slash economic simulator has turned a year old! Blizzard is celebrating by giving all players a 25% boost to their Magic Find and +EXP stats until May 21st. Get in there and start grinding for loot to sell on the Auction House before it goes down again!

Diablo III is also on sale until the the 21st for 33% off, so you’ll only have to sell a few Legendary items to make your money back.

The battle between YouTube, video game creators, and content uploaders took an interesting turn with Nintendo. GameFront reports that Nintendo has begun issuing “Content ID Match” claims to YouTube for users’ Let’s Play videos. The filing allows Nintendo to essentially take over the ad revenue of the video, denying the user any income for that upload. Nintendo issued the following statement regarding the claims.

“As part of our on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a YouTube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the YouTube database. For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on YouTube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property.”

As the statement points out, other companies like Activision/Blizzard and EA, have issued copyright claims to YouTube for Let’s Play uploads that resulted in the videos being completely taken down.

Prolific YouTube Let’s Play producers have protested the move saying that Nintendo’s actions denies them the ad revenue they deserve for their creations. They claim that they add commentary, reviews, and even help to sell the games they showcase. The YouTube FAQ points out that purchasing or hosting media content does not give the user the right to upload it.

Electronic Arts is discontinuing the Online Pass program. GamesBeat reports that EA is doing away with the program entirely due to negative feedback.

“Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass,” EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed to GamesBeat in an e-mail. “None of our new EA titles will include that feature.”

“Initially launched as an effort to package a full menu of online content and services, many players didn’t respond to the format,” Reseburg said. “We’ve listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward.”

The Online Pass system was controversial because it required gamers pay an extra fee to access multiplayer features of games previously owned by another consumer.

In their neverending quest to destroy gamers’ lives and wallets, Valve has introduced Steam Trading Cards. Cards are gained by playing games, or trading with fellow players. Once earned, cards can be crafted into badges. Badges can earn XP, contributing to your overall Steam Level, and be turned in for in-game rewards.

The end is nigh.

You want cars? We got cars! Sony announced that Gran Turismo 6 will be available for the PS3 by the holidays. All the stuff from GT5 will return with additional cars and tracks putting the automobile count over 1200! That’s a lot of car collecting.

New features include an include course-maker function, GPS data, and a new physics engine. A new user interface will allow players to extend some of the gameplay and community features to smartphones, tablets, and PCs.

“It is amazing to think that it is 15 years since we first released Gran Turismo,” said Kazunori Yamauchi, during the announcement at Silverstone Circuit. “Things have changed a lot since then and now Gran Turismo 6 is a further evolution of my dream. We’re pleased to deliver GT 6 to PlayStation 3 as we have a very loyal community on that platform. However, we have refactored the game to make it very flexible and expandable, with a view to making many future developments.”

A demo release on PS3 is planned for July.