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All weekend, BBC’s catch-up TV service iPlayer has been suffering major outages across the UK.
Fans of the UK’s licence-fee-paid TV provider first started complaining that they were unable to access television shows via the BBC’s iPlayer service on Saturday morning. BBC is still “working to restore normal service”, with many people being offered only a “simplified” experience via the website; and dedicated iPlayer apps such as those seen on YouView boxes and games consoles, or on smart phones, remain down for many viewers.
BBC did not respond to complaints about the outage until Sunday morning, when Twitter account @AboutTheBBC posted the following:
At one point, the BBC News website and radio service were also affected by the outage.
Despite continuing complaints to the BBC, the corporation has chosen not to reply to individual tweets posted to them and merely continue to deliver pre-prepared tweets about the status of their services. The last update was over 12 hours ago however; and BBC have not offered any explanations yet as to the cause of the downtimes.
Good news for fanartists of properties owned by Hasbro! The company has teamed up with Shapeways, a 3D printing company, to launch a new site called SuperFanArt. This site enables independent artists to make 3D printed models of fan-art based on the characters of Hasbro-owned licences and then sell them to people who want one.
Currently the catalogue is just dealing in the My little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom, but there is a hope that more franchises will be available for sale in the coming months. There is also a process that an artist has to go through before they can start getting works listed onto the site, so it’s probably safe to assume we’re not going to get anything that the show’s typical audience really shouldn’t see depicted until they’re a little bit older.
If you’re looking for a desk ornament based off your favourite pony, this could be just the trick. Be prepared to pay a sum for one though.
One of the big things that made The Elder Scrolls Online feel so different from the previous single-player games of the series was the lack of any sort of justice system. NPCs were not killable, you couldn’t steal from them and those things often made an Elder Scrolls game feel more fun. When planning for gameplay antics in TESO with a friend we were originally going to become a duo, she a vampire, me a werewolf, and we’d steal and assassinate our way across the map together. It was literally the first thing we thought of – killing all those we happened across.
Zenimax Online Studios covered implementing a justice system in their “Future of Elder Scrolls Online” panel at Quakecon, demonstrating how they see the system working in their MMO. To put it simply? They’ll code in laws and NPC law officials, but leave it mostly up to players to decide how it works.
This means that you can choose to kill and steal from the NPCs, but you will gain bounties on your head similar to the single-player games. Capture by the NPC officials means paying a fine or fighting and fleeing for your life. Escape sin’t the end of it though, as the bounty will remain which will make you a target for any bounty-hunter minded players out there looking to collect. As a system it could be a clever way to balance those who wish to commit crimes with those who would hunt them down; or it could need a little more control implemented to balance out either side.
I guess we’ll find out which when Zenimax implement the new system into the game. Tell us how you think this’ll turn out in the comments below!
The people at Comcept have released a new gameplay video for their crowdfunded game Mighty No. 9, which shows off some of what we’re to expect from it.
Although recently another crowdfunder has gone up for the game to receive english voiceacting as well as the Japanese original, fans of the Megaman franchise will probably be interested in the game. Like those games the hero Beck can defeat and absorb powers of his enemies, and the video demonstrates a few of the transformations. It also gives us a look at Call, the other playable hero who wears pink armour and is equipped with a jetpack.
Microsoft are making some major jobs cuts in the European teams reportedly, with some claiming up to 75 percent of the jobs in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) team are being gotten rid of, with the other positions having to be re-applied for by staff. The UK Xbox team has also lost around 10 percent of the jobs. However, Microsoft have said that all jobs lost were in marketing and PR not development.
“We eliminated a number of EMEA roles in the UK to gain efficiencies… We believe that the UK has exceptional games industry talent and we’ll continue to focus on game creation through Microsoft Studios like Rare, Lionhead Studios, Lift London and Soho Productions.”
They continued onto to say that Europe is still a market they are interested in and that the job losses haven’t hindered the plans to launch the Xbox One in 13 mainland European markets this September.
The news follows the announcement on Thursday of Microsoft’s plans to lay off seven percent of their staff in the next year, an estimated 18,000 jobs. The news also came later of the intention to close down Xbox Entertainment Studios which was responsible for original TV programming that was shown on the Xbox platforms.
