For those unaware, LMAOBOX was a program designed to let players cheat at Valve’s popular shooter game Team Fortress, including among other things automatic aim and the removal of weapon recoil. Somehow for years it’s by passed Steam’s VAC banning system, but now the use of it has caught up with a lot of users both current and previous – a wave of bans have just gone out despite the website for LMAOBOX claiming it was VAC-proof.

The full list can be found here, and includes a ‘roster list’ of professional players who have been caught. Yikes.

The author of LMAOBOX apparently stated that they were about to quit the project and would make the source code public, although some dispute the validity of that and say that the proved public (and fake) code was riddled with malware. Others say that the bans weren’t as far reaching as Valve made out, only catching those who used it in the last two weeks as opposed to the last two years.

However, since cheaters tend to be the scourge of any multiplayer gaming community, I doubt many people are crying at the loss of the number of cheats who’ve been caught out.

With the debacle that has so-far been the release of Oculus’ second Rift headset and pre-order shipping dates being pushed back as far as June and July in some cases, it’s interesting to find out that Oculus are shipping a small number of these headsets to stores for purchase already.

Teaming up with Best Buy, Oculus will be putting on demonstrations at 48 locations as part of the Intel Experience from May 7th. Additional stores will also be added later on down the line, and you can experience Dreamdeck (basically a bunch of VR tech demos) and Crytek’s The Climb. In the near future, they’ll be adding Farlands, a free game for the Rift to the roster too. To help manage it, Oculus Live allows you to schedule a Rift demo up to a month in advance.

However, as mentioned at the beginning there will also be some headsets available for purchase: “A small number of Rifts will be available for purchase at select Best Buy stores starting May 7 and online from Microsoft and Amazon, starting May 6 at 9am PST. Quantities will be extremely limited while we catch up on Rift pre-orders.” If you manage to buy one at retail having pre-ordered a headset, you’ll be able to update your order status afterwards, cancelling the pre-order but essentially keeping the benefits.

So maybe there’s a little hope for those who feel they can’t wait much longer for their pre-orders.

In a bid to get more people paying attention to adverts run on their site, Google are now implementing a new ad option for videos on Youtube – six-second bumper ads.

The ads, which are made to compliment the shorter videos people watch through smartphones, are meant to be unskippable. However as they’re so short, it’s not as if this is going to annoy a lot of people, even those who use Adblockers to block all adverts online.

“We like to think of Bumper ads as little haikus of video ads — and we’re excited to see what the creative community will do with them,” YouTube’s Zach Lupei wrote in a blog post.

The move is made because research is pointing to the fact that an awful lot of people are now watching their videos primarily on their phones – 50 percent of 18 to 49-year-olds in fact. Since a lot of those are music videos too, they’re perfect for music companies to use to push new releases to the right audiences.

The new ads will be enabled from the beginning of next month, and will be an additional advertising option alongside the ones already available on the video-sharing site.

After a few weeks in which The Division seemed to be spawning new and interesting bugs as fast as they could be fixed, Ubisoft have decided to implement not only new methods of detection against cheating but also slightly harsher penalities for those caught at it.

“We have already caught more cheaters in the last few days than we had in total during the previous weeks. As a result, we will be handing out the biggest wave of suspensions and bans to date over the course of the next few days.” Ubisoft wrote in an update on the subject.

Previously first time offenses would gain cheaters a three day suspension from the game, but now Ubisoft have decided to up that to fourteen days – possibly due to the Falcon Lost exploit that led to cheaters purposefully bypassing parts of the mission to repeatedly gain access to high-end loot that was supposed to be available only once a week. Second offenses remain unchanged though, with the cheater than being permanently banned from the game.

Ubisoft also took time to address concerns from the community that they could be caught out if they happened to stumble into a cheat rather than aiming to exploit it, by clarifying what they considered a “bug exploit”.

“Should new bugs be discovered, we will quickly confirm if these are considered exploits. All known exploits will be clearly listed in a public forum thread and across our various communication platforms. We want all players to be informed. This will ensure that those caught after an exploit was confirmed are aware of the consequences and actions that can be taken against them. Sanctions will be implemented for players who repeatedly abuse exploits and will vary depending on the severity of the abuse, as well as the history of the player. Possible sanctions include character rollbacks, account suspensions and permanent bans. Those who encounter bugs during the normal course of play have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

Apparently two waves of bans have already hit the game, and no doubt as time goes on more people will find themselves separated from loot they might have gotten through means they knew weren’t legit. Let’s just hope that the processes don’t catch anyone innocent in the net, if a new bug comes along.

Over a year since it was first teased, we still don’t know what it looks like, plays like, or even what its final name will be – and Nintendo don’t plan to spill the beans until later this year. But now, thanks to a Tweet by Nintendo of America (based on information discreetly hidden in Nintendo of Japan’s annual financial report), we DO finally have one piece of concrete information about the upcoming Nintendo “NX” console – it’s launch date:

The next generation of #Nintendo is coming March 2017! #NX pic.twitter.com/u4KFIRJedw

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) 27 April 2016

March 2017. Just under a year away from the date of this article’s publication. For Nintendo, however, the launch likely can’t come soon enough. The Wii U has failed to resonate with players, with the GamePad being seen as a gimmick and games such as Splatoon and Bayonetta not doing enough to pull people on side; and the console’s lack of power compared to the XBox One and PS4 has seen its third-party support dwindle into near-nothingness. That Nintendo has taken a hit for the console’s failure was apparent in the annual fiscal report, revealing that Nintendo as a whole made 45.3 billion yen less in the last 12 months than the previous financial year, though this still equates to 504.5 billion yen or roughly £3.116 billion British Pounds.

Importantly, however, Nintendo’s operating income came in at 32.8 billion yen last year, an increase of 8 billion yen. The company predicts that its move towards smartphones, combined with the launch of the NX, will pay off in the next year and aim to hit 45 billion yen in operating income by the end of the 2016/17 financial year.

Of course, Nintendo may also have another ace in the sleeve to get people back on-side – a dynamite launch title. Nintendo also announced today, in a separate announcement to the fans, that the long-awaited Zelda Wii U title has once again been delayed to 2017, for “further quality testing”; and that the game will now launch simultaneously for both the Wii U and the NX – meaning that a new Zelda title may well be a launch title for the next console as well as a swansong for the current generation, paralleling the launch of Twilight Princess for Wii and GameCube ten years ago. 2017 may well be an interesting year for Nintendo fans.