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Recently Dota 2 has got an item called the 2015 International Compendium, which is purchasable from the Dota 2 store. Also recently Valve have put in place a set of gift restrictions on Dota 2 items so they can’t be traded, gifted or put into the game’s community market for a week after purchase. This has led to a lot of players who wanted to gift the compendium being forced to wait to do it.
Valve’s Daniel.J took the the Dota 2 subreddit to explain why though, and the answer makes sense: they’re fighting against credit card fraud. The week long period is in place to give Steam and the credit card companies enough time to stem the flow.
Daniel states that Valve are not a fan of having to restrict the gifting of items, but say that as of the moment they don’t have “a better solution” although they’re continuing to think of methods to hinder the problem without having an effect on legitimate buyers and users.
The fraudsters use stolen credit cards to buy the items, then resell them to other players at a discount. By the time the cards are discovered stolen, the items are in the market, the fraudster’s moved onto another account which can be new or stolen off another legitimate user and Valve are left picking up the pieces. It started in 2013 and ballooned during the last year, also leading to an increase in scam-related support requests where players had accounts stolen from them or never received their item. If too much credit card fraud occurs then Valve would be forced to not accept that method of payment anymore either.
It’s a sticky problem, one that Valve seem to be wrestling with. Hopefully the majority understand why this has happened and a better solution can be found soon to allow the gifting to re-commence.
Seems that I underestimated just how much we’ve wanted a proper Banjo-Kazooie Threeie, or some equivalent when I wrote about Yooka-Laylee’s funding in just 40 minutes yesterday. Six hours after the launch of the Kickstarter Yooka-Laylee became the fastest video game project ever to reach $1 million, beating out the seven hours previously reached by Tormer: Tides of Numenera. Today, shortly before I began to write this article, they just hit £1 million which was the threshold of the stretch goals set out.
The game will now have a simultaneous Day One release on all platforms (PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Wii U), some weird and unusual transformations, local co-op games, boss battles, exclusive character designs from other ex-Rare artists and professionally translated French, German, Italian and Spanish language options; along with much, much more because the stretch goals have all been met. That’s just amazing.
Posting in an update on the Kickstarter Playtonic expressed their gratitude by jokingly saying “We can’t take our eyes off you for a minute, can we?” regarding the quick funding. They then offered “sincere thanks” to everyone who has backed the game so far, stating that as always the Kickstarter was just to help them improve a game that they always were going to make and that because of the support “you’ve helped us shape it into one fine specimen”.
However they haven’t run out of ideas yet, and have now announced a further two stretch goals, one at £1,100,000 and then other at £1,200,000. The £1.1 mil is for an N64 shader mode option as well as a credits ‘GK rap and video’ from Grant Kirkhope who is responsible for the music for this game as well as many previous Rare games; and the £1.2 mil will get a series of the developers giving a walkthrough and commentary.
The speed that this game has funded is staggering, even for someone like me who completely understands how much everyone wanted a new and good Banjo-Kazooie game (I backed Y-L in the first hour after all). I truly hope that it turns out to be the one that we’ve wanted for so long and that Yooka and Laylee can truly carry the torch and carry on the tradition of buddy-duo platforming that Banjo and Kazooie made so popular.
Yooka-Laylee KS: “1 Million & More Stretch Goals!”: [x]
So, those of you who’ve been with us for a bit might remember this article I did for Playtonic Games’ presentation at EGX Rezzed. They said that they were hoping to bring back the 3D platformer similar to how Rare once did with Donkey Kong and Banjo-Kazooie back in the 90s. Now the game has its official name: Yooka-Laylee and more besides.
The game is very similar to Banjo-Kazookie’s set-up; two animal friends of differing species travel and work together to traverse a colourful landscape full of enemies and collectables. Yooka is a green chameleon with a tongue that can be used as a grapple and Laylee is the purple bat who can carry Yooka short distances through the air and uses sonar as a weapon. The main collectable are the Pagies and Playtonic have already said that there’ll be a lot of inanimate objects with eyes and the same artist is doing the music in the same style as the original Banjo-Kazooie games. This game really is being set up as a spiritual successor to those games.
And it’s working. The Kickstarter has only been up for less than a day and it already has over 3,900 backers and has made more than £170,000 of its £175,000 target. It’s increasing even further as I write. There’s a range of stretch goals that go all the way up to £1 million and they involve such things as releases onto consoles being timed with each other and the computer releases and boss and level design extras and all sorts. Not sure if they’ll make it all the way to the 1 million marker but I expect to see some of the stretch goals being met at this rate.
Say what you will about it being a ‘copy’ of Banjo-Kazooie, but so far it seems that Playtonic are using the nostalgic love for their old games as a sure-fire marketing strategy to ensure that the next generation of buddy-duo platformers are off to a strong start.
The new Avengers movie Age of Ultron has its official release in North America today. Blizzard seem to be excited, they’ve only gone and tweeted out a rather cool little artpiece to celebrate.
The piece features a number of characters from Hearthstone re-imagined as the Avengers as well as Ultron in the background and is a mock-up similar to an actual poster for the movie.
I especially love the abundance of Annoy-O-Tron (seriously, does anyone not like that card in some way?), the green Sludge Belcher Hulk and the use of the Haunted Creeper as a stand in for Black Widow.
Robot Entertainment’s new spin on the MOBA is in closed beta, and we were lucky enough to get our hands on a key. Here are Digmbot’s first impressions of the new game.
