The testing of Beta updates by players is a long standing thing among the PC gaming community, with a lot of games offering an opt-in beta program so players can try out the new versions before they officially release and also point out bugs that the developers might have missed. It’s a good practice overall and now Bioware are looking to bring such testing to Dragon Age Inquisition in order to “foster better communication between our players and developers.”

The program will give access to patch 5, which will be the largest update to the RPG since it released. This is mainly down to introducing an entire new area known as the Black Emporium described as “a mysterious underground shop run by an immortal proprietor”, and will sell powerful items as well as something called the Mirror of Transformation that lets you change the voice and facial appearance of your character in case you’ve grown tired of the one you chose in selection. You can also use crafting materials to change the colour tint of your attire.

As well as this, new controls have been added with shader quality now available in the graphics menu and also the ability to bind an auto-attack key to the mouse has been added. The other changes Bioware are keeping quiet about though.

Signups for the program will be available via the Keep program and will open sometime “in the near future”. It’s not yet known if Bioware plan to continue the program past this one update or spread it out to other games. Nor do we know just when patch 5 will release, as it needs to undergo the certification processes on the console versions.

If you’re a mobile gamer, you know all about the ‘freemium’ game model. You get a game for free and the in-game purchases are really cheap… but then they start to add up and before you know it you’ve sunk more money into the game than you’d have spent buying it in the first place. Freemium games have been designed to be addictive and while some companies do it well and treat the gamer as a customer, the problems of the ones that treat the game as a money mine are clear.

Today however it seems that Apple have decided to take a stand, adding a new section to the front page of the App Store called ‘Pay Once & Play’. In other words, it promotes only games that you pay for once and that do not contain any in-app purchases or extra content that needs paying for to unlock. The section is further arranged into sub-sections of Recent Releases, Blockbuster Games and App Store Originals. This includes games such as Thomas Was Alone and Minecraft alongside the likes of Threes, Leo’s Fortune and many others. It’s already in the UK App Store and should be rolled out to the US Store soon if it hasn’t been already.

Apple has taken other steps to combat misleading freemium games that advertised themselves as ‘free to play!’ despite hiding major features of gameplay behind in-app purchases. It added a label that was added to indicate a game contained the purchases, and then changed the text of the button for Freemium games from ‘Free’ to ‘Get’ to save more misleading of customers.

Paranautical Activity was available on Steam until an incident in late October of last year led to it being removed from Steam after one of the people involved in making it tweeted out a threat to murder Valve bosss Gave Newell. It was claimed to be a joke but Valve decided such actions would not be tolerated which sucked for fans of the game. Well, good news – it’s back on Steam now under new management.

Mike Maulbeck had been the responsible party for the tweet and following it, he left the company of Code Avarice in an attempt to take the bad reputation with him and maybe try to get Paranautical Activity back on Steam. However its taken a sale of the game’s rights to Digerati Distribution to get Valve to reverse the decision and re-allow the game back onto Steam.

The game has been a little bit updated too, adding a new level type, a new weapon and an item called the “Digerati Defibrillator”, on which the game’s press release remarks “well, someone had to bring this game back to life, right?” It’s also now debuting on both the Humble Store and GOG as well, so it’s a win all around for the game and fans of it. Not so much Code Avarice though.

Earlier this week a rather bizarre and worrying event in competitive League of Legends eSport came to light as a recorded conversation between a pro player and the manager of the team he was a part of turned into one of blackmail and threats against the living arrangements of the player’s mother. Riot have now responded by indefinitely banning the manager involved from the LCS and levying a fine of €5,000 against the team in question, but at the same time saying that the investigation had “found fault on behalf of both player and management.”

The player was midlaner Marcin “Kori” Wolski and the team MeetYourMakers. Kori was owed some backpay from a previous LCS season by his old team, Supa Hot Crew, whom MYM had been a successor of sorts. MYM however had said that the debt wasn’t theirs to fill however and when Kori decided that he would instead leave the team before the start of the 2015 LCS season manager Sebastian “Falli” Rotterdam told him that if he did he’d be in breach of contract and because Kori’s mother signed his contract she’d lose her house because of his actions. Kori had been recorded the conversation though and took it to the press and Riot themselves.

MYM fired Falli themselves before the decision was made and now Riot’s investigation has led to them banning him from ever taking part in LCS in any role ever again. In a statement they released Riot said that while team contracts are their own business they will do everything they are able to do to ” discourage and work against unacceptable environments” and that there is zero tolerance for the intimidation of players within any part of the LCS. However despite having the tape as evidence Riot did not request it as there were “legal concerns regarding the recording which was obtained without all parties’ knowledge”.

Riot also say that they “found fault on behalf of both player and management.” Kori’s own claims of not being paid were the result of “Wolski’s own failure to provide requested tax documentation” Riot say, as MYM could provide the LCS with proof that while the player was with them and not Supa Hot Crew that he had always been paid exactly when he should have been. Therefore leaving the team would have meant that Kori was actually breaking his contract with the team. They do say that this didn’t justify Falli’s words or actions though – “Rotterdam’s actions in conversation with Wolski when addressing this contract break were both unprofessional and unjustifiable.”

The fine against the team was down to the fact that Riot believes that the team could be held partially responsible for the actions of Falli and their failure to “protect their team members from his unacceptable and bullying behavior.” To those calling for the team itself to be kicked from the league Riot have said that they feel that MYM has already taken satisfactory steps to remove toxic influences from the team and that the fine itself should be punishment enough; to remove them from the league would only “unnecessarily penalize players and interrupt their pro careers through no fault of their own.” However, “any further violations can and will put them on a path to suspension from the LCS.”

Many people game to do something that for a little while doesn’t involve real-life. It’s understandable, we all need to put aside our worries and just have fun for a few hours. It’s healthy. However, recently there’s been a spate of a real-life issue spilling over into a game, namely as the conflict in Eastern Ukraine heats up players who have chosen to adorn their plane’s wings with either the Ukrainian or Russian flags have often found themselves as victims of being shot down by their own teammates.

This spate of politically motivated team-killing has become such an issue that the developers, Gaijin Entertainment have made the decision to place the flag decals behind a paywall to stop it being so widespread.

“We know many of you love your flags as decals. Unfortunately, we are seeing too many players using them in ways that instigate national argument […]  we decided to implement a procedure that will require more responsibility from a player who wants to make use of them. From today, the 10th February, all National Flags listed in the flags directory of your decals will be re-set and removed from your inventory in game, they will be available from now on in a similar way as the rest of the decals via purchasing using GE.” they wrote in an announcement covering the decision and the reasons behind it. They also said that some players had protested about historical accuracy given that some flags didn’t even exist during the time the game was set.

Each flag decal now costs 500 GE (Golden Eagles, the in-game currency) to purchase, which is the equivalent of about €3.