Ubisoft have brought forward the beta for their upcoming game The Crew on PC by two days. This means that it is now due to start on July 21st, in just two days time. This beta will then run through to July 25th after which it will close. Interested players should register on the website for The Crew and also have a uPlay account to allow them access.
 
Ubisoft have also outlined what parts of the game will be available for play in the Beta:
 

The Map: Explore the entire United States with no loading screen and complete a variety of exciting challenges:

• Midwest: all missions and skill challenges.
• East Coast: all skill challenges.
• Rest of the country (The South, Mountain State, West Coast): free roaming at will!

 
 
The Cars: Expect to discover new vehicles that, in order to drive across a variety of terrains, you’ll be able to customize in the following specs:

• The Street Spec: You’ll get this one in Detroit!
• The Dirt Spec: This spec will be available in New York!
• There are three other specs – Perf, Raid and Circuit – and you’ll have a glimpse of those during the beta

 
 
Playing with your friends:

• The Crew was built from the ground up as a breathing, living world, meaning that in this Closed Beta you will be able to play with your friends at any time – or challenge rivals from all around the world. You will also have access to two PvP lobbies, one in the Midwest and the other on the East Coast, where several races will be waiting for you to prove your skills against other players

 
The Crew will release on PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4 on November 11th.

Beta access can be gained here: [x]

As fans of Blizzard’s popular card game, Hearthstone are aware the single-player adventure expansion Curse of Naxxramas is due to be released within 4 days. With the expansion comes a five-part campaign to play including bosses to fight. There will also be new cards added to the game, more than 30. Some of them have actually been revealed ahead of the beginning of the month-long release event. Here they are:
 
   Undertaker
Minion, 1 mana cost, 1 attack and 2 health. Gains +1/+1 for every summoned minion with Deathrattle.
 
 
   Dancing Swords
Minion, 3 mana cost, 4 attack and 4 health. Deathrattle: Upon death allows your opponent to draw a card.
 
 
   Nerubian Egg
Minion, 2 mana cost, 0 attack and 2 health. Deathrattle: Summons a Nerubian with four attack and four health.
 
 
   Baron Rivendare
Legendary minion, 4 mana cost, 1 attack and 7 health. Allows all minions to trigger Deathrattle abilities twice.
 
 
   Shade of Naxxramas
Minion,  3 mana cost, 2 attack and 2 health. Stealth, gains +1/+1 at the start of your turn.
 
 
   Loatheb
Minion, 5 mana cost, 5 attack and 5 health. Battlecry: Enemy spells cost 5 mana more next turn.
 
 
   Poison Seeds
Spell, 4 mana cost. Destroys all minions and summons 2/2 Treants to replace them.
 
 
   Death’s Bite
Weapon, 4 mana cost, 4 attack and 2 durability. Deathrattle: Deals 1 damage to all minions.
 
 
   Avenge
Secret, 1 mana cost. When a minion dies, give another friendly minion +3/+2.
 
 
    Anub’ar Ambusher
Minion, 4 mana cost, 5 attack and 5 health. Deathrattle: Return a friendly minion to your hand.
 
 
   Rebirth
Spell, 2 mana cost. Destroy a minion then return it to life with full health.
 
 
   Duplicate
Secret, 3 mana cost. When a friendly minion dies, you can put two copies of it in your hand.
 
 
  Dark Cultist
Minion, 3 mana cost, 3 attack and 4 health. Deathrattle: Gives a friendly minion +3 health.
 
 
   Voidcaller
Demon minion, 3 mana cost, 3 attack and 4 health. Deathrattle: Put a Demon from your hand onto the Battlefield.
 
 
   Webspinner
Beast minion, 1 mana cost, 1 attack and 1 health. Deathrattle: Draw a random Beast card.

Google have decided that they will stop listing free-to-play titles with in-app purchases as ‘free’ in the EU after a press release release by the European Commission appealed for companies to make it clearer when a game could potentially involve spending real money despite being touted as ‘free-to-play’.

The press release targeted a number of companies, including Google, Apple and other software entities and asked that they help make sure that games listed as ‘free’ on devices did “not mislead consumers about the true costs involved”. They made a list of recommendations including that games should adequately inform consumers about payment arrangements, that consumers shouldn’t be debited by defualt with their consent, games should not encourage children to make real-money purchases or to persuade guardians to make them on their behalf and that traders should provide an active e-mail to be contacted in the situation of queries or complaints about the games.

Google’s response has been to announce that they plan to change how these games are listed on Google Play, which provides for their Android devices. They hope to have made the changes based on the recommendations by the end of September.

An open letter to Valve has been published, signed by many leading security specialists and game developers, calling out Valve on what they see as a disorganised and woeful approach to security regarding the reporting of bugs, the fixing of them and the rewarding of those people who make the bugs known to Valve.

The three main cores of the letter are addressed one by one, with the letter questioning Valve’s lack of a ‘bug bounty’ program that made sense. While they did note of some reportees receiving rewards of virtual items, the events were not frequent enough to give them hope and in some cases they note that reportees might even have come off worse for making the bugs known. They pointed out the worry that gamers could fabricate bugs in hope of reward and also pointed towards the bug bounty programs of other websites and media such as Google’s which offer rewards from $100 to $2000 for the reporting of a bug. The idea of being rewarded in virtual items was not considered to be enough of a draw for those security experts that could be trusted to seek out harmful coding bugs, as they wouldn’t see it as worth looking for little to no reward.

The lack of a clear space to report bugs to was also questioned, as well as Valve’s speed in tackling them and closing exploits. They used the well-known Heartbleed bug as an example, citing that it took up to 24 hours for Valve to patch and even then they didn’t put out a mass password change request to users or provide much information to gamers using their products. The letter says that there was evidence of data being leaked from Valve while the patching was going on, so they find Valve’s fixing of the exploit to be unsatisfactory.

Valve responded quickly, acknowledging the problems outlined in the open letter and saying that it has made them do a review of their security procedures. They pointed to a recently created site (http://www.valvesoftware.com/security) as the place to report bugs to and said that they believed their security measures were “robust but we understand that we haven’t been completely transparent about the process and that has created some confusion”.

They did say that there were no plans to put in place any formal bug bounty program, although separate Valve teams such as the Team Fortress 2 one can and often will offer in-game items as an incentive for players to report bugs to them. They also denied ‘punishing’ those people who reported bugs to them, only taking measures to prevent such bug reveals becoming damaging to the community.

Blizzard are looking to introduce a new map to their latest venture, Heroes of the Storm the company confirmed in its latest blog post.

The map is called Garden Of Terror and it is a three lane battleground that features a very distinctive day and night cycle; when night falls monsters replace the usual mob camps. They are planning

to make full use of their dynamic lighting system, saying:

“Garden of Terror provides us with the opportunity to feature our dynamic lighting. During the night, we turn down the brightness of your hero’s vision, so the map becomes much darker. We recommend players to stay alert and keep your allies close, night is the perfect time for enemies to strike and take advantage of your reduced visibility.”

It would seem that the day and night cycles will also be controlled by player actions, changing only when all creeps are killed during a particular cycle.

Heroes of the Storm is presently still in alpha and it is a strong contender within the MOBA markets. Wondering what Blizzard will come out with next to keep you rooted to the game? Keep your browser tuned to Sanitarium.fm to find out!