Leonard Nimoy, Rest in Peace

Yesterday, we lost an acting legend. Leonard Nimoy, best known for playing the role of the original Spock, has passed away on the 27th of February, 2015.

His career started in 1951 with Queen for a Day and Rhubarb, ending in 2013 with Star Trek: Into Darkness; taking the role of Spock Prime.

Leonard did a lot of work, after his role as Spock ended, he went to do more acting jobs and most prominently, a director. After his character's death in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, he went on to direct the third Star Trek movie. Followed by the second most successful Star Trek film (critically and financially) after the 2009 Star Trek film; Star Trek: The Voyage Home. Other films that he directed included Three Men and a Baby, the highest grossing film of 1987. Collectively these directing successes lead him to not only become a star actor, but also a star director. Overall he directed 6 films and appeared on numerous TV shows and additional movies.

Come the new Star Trek, a new actor had appeared to play the role of Spock; Zachary Quinto. Soon after, Leonard decided to officially retire the character of Spock so that Zachary could fully bathe in the glory that is Spock.

Leonard maintained an active Twitter account. With his final tweet reading:

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP (Live Long and Prosper".

- Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimey, Twitter)

Farewell Leonard, the world is a worse place without you. May you rest in peace.

Leonard Nimoy, 1931 - 2015.

Victory for Net Neutrality

Net neutrality has been a popular topic as of late. It will dictate whether the internet will be restricted or free as we currently know it. As it currently stands the internet is a limitless bank of information and entertainment. It is unhindered by greedy companies thus far and everyone who uses the internet frequently seeks for it to stay so. 

Yesterday was a special day for the internet and most importantly of all Net Neutrality. On February 26th, 2015, the FCC voted 3 to 2 in favor of making the internet classified as a utility. What does this mean? This means that the internet is recognized just like electricity and water. In effect this blocks ISPs from giving  preferential treatment to companies that pay an additional fee. This preferential treatment is usually known as "Internet Fast-Laning" in which a company would pay the ISP to make their website load faster. However, as of today's ruling; this is now illegal. 

Commissioner Chairman Tom Wheeler originally proposed regulations that allowed for such fast lanes. But, after a huge outcry from citizens and companies like Netflix, the rules were revised to fall more in-line with pure net neutrality. Of the decision today, he said:

"The action that we take today is an irrefutable reflection of the principle that no one, whether government or corporate, should control free and open access to the internet."

- Tom Wheeler, FCC

Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel agreed stating:

"We cannot have gatekeepers who tell us what we can and cannot do and where we can and cannot go online. And we do not need blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization schemes that undermine the internet as we know it."

- Jessica Rosenworcel, FCC

One of the best aspects of yesterday is the inclusion of mobile networks for the first time. This means no more throttling by telecommunication corporations such as AT&T for watching lots of videos on your phone.

What you can expect however, is that some ISPs will attempt to hack apart the commissions ruling to pieces in court. For now, this is a solid victory for Net Neutrality.

NVIDIA Lawsuit Controversy

With the release of NVIDIA's GTX 970, a lawsuit has followed regarding the 4GB version of the GTX 970.

The GTX 970 comes with 4GB of VRAM, however, the performance of the 970 becomes drastically reduced once more than 3.5GB of VRAM is used. This is because the memory is segmented; the upper 512MB of the additional 1GB is segmented and has reduced bandwidth, which results in a performance drop.

This has lead to NVIDIA receiving a class action lawsuit after users discovered this problem; claiming that the card was falsely advertised due to the VRAM problems. Users are seeking refunds and a judge will decide whether or not the lawsuit will continue. What kind of excuse will the business give I wonder? NVIDIA gave an official statement in response to the lawsuit:

"GTX 970 is a 4GB card. However, the upper 512MB of the additional 1GB is segmented and has reduced bandwidth. This is a good design because we were able to add an additional 1GB for GTX 970 and our software engineers can keep less frequently used data in the 512MB segment. Unfortunately, we failed to communicate this internally to our marketing team, and externally to reviewers at launch."

- Jen-Hsun, NVIDIA

I am an NVIDIA fan-boy myself, I think they make great hardware products and have delivered solid performance and driver support for the last decade. And the performance of their GTX 980M (Which is what I have) is stellar and nothing below impressive. However, this event has shaken my faith a bit in NVIDIA, and I simply cannot buy the excuse that they failed to communicate such an important piece of information. It would make far more sense from a marketing stand-point that they would not mention it, as who would want to buy a top-of-line graphics card with "fake RAM"?

It's just a shame that they tried to sweep a crap part of their product under the mat and hope that no one notices. Personally I hope that NVIDIA learns their lesson from this and tries to be honest with their loyal customers from here on.

Grand Theft Auto 5 Has Been Delayed Yet Again

The PC port for Grand Theft Auto 5 has been delayed, yet again. Today on the official Grand Theft Auto Facebook page, 25th of February 2015, the PC port of the game was announced as being released on April 14th, yet another delay. These series of delays have become infamous within the gaming community as thousands eagerly await the PC release of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 5.

Why is it that the PC port of Grand Theft Auto is so hyped? Because it promises to bring vastly improved graphics, new game-play features such as Heist and best of all; allows mods to be made for the game.

I've already covered in an earlier blog post as to why I think mods are a great thing for any game to have, they just add so much content and increase the game's popularity so much. Both the developer and users benefit hugely. The users are able to make the game however they want it and add limitless replay-ability.

The reason for the delay, is quite boring. Here it is:

"A bit more time is needed to ensure that the game is as polished as possible."

- Rockstar Games

Very vague reason as to why it is needed to be delayed. However, players who have pre-ordered the game will receive an extra $200,000 in-game cash bonus to be used in GTA Online which I guess is a decent incentive not to cancel your pre-order. This is so far the 3rd delay for GTA 5, you would think that the delays would be related to finding lots of in-game bugs. However, that means each time they have gotten close to releasing, they have found more bugs and as a result have delayed again. It is not like Rockstar to announce a release date and not achieve it; let alone delay the game for the 3rd time in a row.

Could possibly be business related issues, as there is currently a port strike in LA/West which could be causing issues. We'll never know the real reason as to why they keep delaying the release date.

However, they have finally announced the Heist DLC with a scheduled release date of March 10th. Note the word "scheduled" as they could change it at any time. At the very least, we do know that when GTA 5 hits the shelves for PC, it will be as a game should be; perfectly polished.

Darkest Dungeon Scam on Windows Store

Darkest Dungeon, a game developed by Red Hook Studios is a rogue-like dungeon crawler currently being sold on Steam, the Humble Store and recently the Windows Store. However, the game is not meant to be sold on the Windows Store.

The game is listed on Steam and Humble for $19.99 by developer Red Hook Studios whereas on the Windows Stores it has been listed for $3.99 by Balaji Chowdary, who is a somewhat notorious seller of video-game software that he does not own.

If you have purchased Darkest Dungeon from the Windows Store, then you've technically just acquired pirated software; as the game listed is a pirated version. But it's not your fault; it's Microsoft's fault for not policing their own store to an acceptable standard. However, your copies of Darkest Dungeon are likely to be revoked once this issue has been resolved.

Tyler Sigman, co-president of Red Hook Studios took the Twitter in response to the fraud and tweeted:

"If anyone has a contact at Windows Game Store, please share. Somebody is scamming DD by selling it (illegally) on there."

- Red Hook Tyler (@tylersigman - Twitter)

As well as:

"On a related note, if you didn't buy Darkest Dungeon on Steam or Humble store right now, you got scammed."

- Red Hook Tyler (@tylersigman - Twitter)

It seems a resolution has been achieved as Tyler told Polygon:

"We have had several kind Microsoft employees from various departments reach out and offer to shepherd/escalate the issue to the store team. It's been really great of them to do so. The issue is not resolved yet, but we expect it will be soon."

- Tyler Sigman, Red Hook Studios

There is no confirmation that users who bought the game from the Windows Store will have their keys revoked for sure, but it will most likely happen.

Check the game out on Steam or the Humble Store and support the developers by buying through any of these two retailers. Darkest Dungeon used Kickstarter to fund development for their game. After just two days they had reached their goal of $75,000 and released the game on Feb 3rd, 2015. Graphically unique and appealing, I'd recommend checking this Aliens and Band of Brothers inspired game out.

The Square Enix Collection - How It Works

Square Enix has asked developers to pitch ideas based on the Fear Effect, Anachronox and Gex properties.

News comes from The Square Enix Collection; a platform started in 2013 to help developers find an audience for their current projects. As of today, developers can not only pitch original works but also neglected Square properties. Quoted from Phill Elliott, Collective Project Lead:

"I'm excited to see what talented teams might do with any one of Fear Effect, Gex or Anachronox IPs. We'll monitor the response carefully before deciding which IPs to release next. And it goes without saying that we're delighted for the whole Goetia team, as they become the latest member of the Collective family alongside Moon Hunters and Black the Fall in hitting their funding targets." 

- Phill Elliot, Collective Project Lead

The Goetia that Elliot is speaking about is the recently funded point & click game from the french developers Sushee. Goetia took to the famed Kickstarter with the intention of raising $30,000 to fund development.

To explain how the pitching process works, the Collective says that Square Enix will need to pre-approve anything published to Square's feedback platform internally. That said, if something isn't approved, the developer will be notified and an explanation will be given; so that changes can be made. The reason for the internal vetting comes down to "making sure ideas are relevant to the franchise.", thus ensuring brand quality and relevancy.

The Collective is not looking for sequels to their existing IPs; they want to see what ideas developers can come up with that are relevant to the properties.

Once it has been approved, the idea will then go public to the Square Enix community where users vote and offer feedback on the idea. After 28 days, voting closes and The Collective then makes a decision regarding whether to move forward with the project or cancel it.

"If the response is good, then it's into crowd-funding, which no doubt begs an important question; why ask gamers to pay for a game to be made if it's using our IP? Well, because it will still be the responsibility of the independent developer to build the game - and the developer will still be the key beneficiary of it's success."

- The Collective

It may not come as a surprise that Square will take a decent cut of varying things. First of all, Square will take five percent (5%) provided that the crowd-funding goal has been met. Square also possesses the rights to distribute said project. Square takes a fee of ten percent (10%) of the net sales revenue, and if you've used a Square IP, the company will also charge another 10 percent (10%) license fee. To put it in short and make it easy to read, if a developer created and released a new Anachronox game, for example, they'd receive eighty percent (80%) of the net revenue.

So basically, Square will publish the game and help find an audience to build the game too; whilst a developer gets the funding from crowd-funding and develops the game. In return, Square takes a cut for it's services. However they own the games that are developed like this.

New Rock Band Game Potentially in the Works

A new Rock Band game could be on its way, evidence coming from apparently poorly kept secrets that can be considered as evidence of a new game.

A quote from Bloomberg News:

"Rock Band, the video-game series where players jam along to recorded music, is developing a new title, the first since 2012, according to a person familiar with the plan." - Bloomberg News

Other evidence includes many tweets, one from Gunnar CEO Dave Oshry reads:

"Nick Chester just told me not to throw out all my old Rock Band peripherals OH SNAP." - Dave Oshry (@DaveOshry - Twitter)

Nick Chester is a publicist from Harmonix and the official Rock Band twitter account responded to Dave Oshry with:

"DAMN IT NICK" - Rock Band (@RockBand - Twitter)

On top of this, Harmonix posted a survey asking fans what they would like to see in a current-gen sequel back in January, just after they made new tracks available to players for the first time in over two years. Polygon reached out to developer Harmonix for an official response of which Harmonix replied with:

"While we don't have anything to announce, hundreds of thousands of unique users are still actively playing Rock Band games each month. This passion our fans have shown for Rock Band over the years suggests that rock truly hasn't died and we have always been clear that we'd love to return to the franchise when the time is right." - Harmonix

Only time will tell - will old Rock Band players be dusting off their clunky drum sets soon?