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Out of all the ‘rules of the Internet’ it’s probably safe to say that Rule 34 is the one most people have heard of – “If it exists, there is porn of it.” Overwatch despite having only just released is no exception, having spawned from a failed MMO project called Titan and since then it’s been majorly hyped by Blizzard and gained a lot of traction during the free Open Beta it had a few weeks back. Now it seems that Blizzard has decided that some of that porn isn’t a-okay, because quite a few people are getting takedown notices.
Of course, during the aforementioned beta, the searches for said porn jumped over 800% according to a release from Pornhub with Tracer being the most popularly searched for character. The problem is, as I said when I actually covered this jump earlier on, most of this porn is being made through Valve’s Source Filmmaker kit. This means that a lot of it is nothing more than assets ripped straight from the game, having genitalia added and then… well, you know. In many cases it’s Blizzard’s right to protest when really its their full game assets that they made, as opposed to rigs and models made by someone else as is the case for a number of other video game characters in Source.
One porn creator has already taken to Reddit to talk about the takedowns and see if they can’t get a community effort together to make Blizzard stop. I’m not sure it’ll go down well really, but you have to give them credit for trying.
Based on screencaps of the notices posted to the topic, it seems that its not Blizzard themselves filing the takedowns but a digital platform security company called Irdeto. Most likely they’ve been hired by Blizzard to clean up the mess, as the leap in Overwatch porn searches was fairly well covered by a lot of media outlets online that deal with gaming primarily – Blizzard probably doesn’t want that sort of reputation especially not with young fans around and really… you can’t blame them for that no matter how sex positive you are. Like it or not, some people would rather not see or hear about it and that’s perfectly fine.
Okay, as much as I am a fan of Mega Man games, when it comes to Keiji Inafune’s spiritual successor, Mighty No. 9 – a game that I was super-hyped about when it was first announced, and was devastated its Kickstarter was at a time I was financially unstable – in more recent months, I have simply stopped caring.
When you look at the track record, it’s hard not to see why. The project has been delayed three separate times for varying periods of length, which have led to its launch being delayed by almost two years in total. For its promise that it would arrive on all “current and next-gen consoles and PC”, it has really missed the boat to be relevant on consoles such as PS3 or Wii any more; and with Nintendo’s NX expected next year, it’s also rather late even for the Wii U. The fact it finally even HAS a launch date (June 21st) is the only saving grace.
So, after the long wait, you’d think Deep Silver – the development team working on the game alongside Inafune’s company, Comcept – would at least have a clue how to market Mighty No. 9 properly, right?
Well, no. The latest trailer for the game, while visually impressive and packed with action, is embarrassing fans and non-fans alike for its cheesy voice-over. Not only does it refer to the game using the sort of lines that should have probably stayed in the 80s – “Do you like awesome things that are awesome?” as an example – but it even borders on offensive to both Mega Man fans and Anime addicts – anyone who thinks “and make the bad guys cry like an anime fan on prom night” is a good line should be summarily fired. Unless you’re highly lactose-intolerant, take a look at the video below and make sure you keep the sound on:
Let’s be honest here. Mighty No. 9 is the kind of game that is most likely to appeal to people with a love of old-school platforming action games – I should know, I am one, and I still plan to get this game despite everything. Considering Keiji Inafune is well-known for such titles, Deep Silver should have been well-aware of this and marketed the game accordingly. Instead, they seem to be aiming for a ’90s Teenager vibe – excuse me while I look at a calendar. Keiji Inafune himself is already facing fan scepticism for his antics with the Kickstarter for another Comcept title, Red Ash, so this marketing disaster is unlikely to restore confidence in him or his company.
The update verified that the games were legitimately purchased, which is fair enough, but the sticking point for many had been that it also verified that you were using an approved Oculus device. This after the founder of the company once publicly said on Reddit: “If customers buy a game from us, I don’t care if they mod it to run on whatever they want.”
This admittedly was before someone actually managed to make such a thing a reality with a patch called Revive letting you play Oculus exclusive games on other headsets. The same creator who made that patch has now cracked open this latest update by simply disabling DRM in Oculus titles completely. However, this does also mean that there is no longer any checks on whether the game is a legitimate copy anymore either, something that the creator Libre VR was quick to say they didn’t support.
“I still do not support piracy – do not use this library for pirated copies.”
Founder of news website TorrentFreak, Ernesto Van der Sar, told the BBC “DRM as a means to prevent piracy is rather futile. If there’s a demand to use a product or access a service, people will often find a way around DRM and other technological blockades. History has shown many examples of how it mostly inconveniences legitimate customers.”
He also said that Oculus ought to learn from the movie and music industry and try to provide “great legal options” rather than trying anti-piracy measures.
“Oculus should focus on providing a superior platform and the best games instead of focusing on piracy at this point. It’s impossible to defeat piracy completely, but lessons from the movie and music industry show that providing great legal options work better than anti-piracy measures.”
A few weeks after the existence of a new and upcoming FNAF game was announced, Scott Cawthon has released the trailer for the game, giving us a glance at not only a good deal of the animatronics in action and a release date… but also a chilling little voiceover that seeks to remind us seemingly of the origin of the killer animatronics’ life.
From what we can gather from the trailer, there seems to be some element of things hidden away ‘underground’ although the animatronics we see look far from abandoned or broken. What they do look is quite disturbing, especially the clown-looking one in front – commonly speculated to be named “Baby” which is a known name for one of the new animatronics.
The voice pleads with us over and over, “please don’t hold it against us… you don’t know what we’re been through”. Previously it was speculated then all but confirmed in previous games that the original four of FNAF 1 were possessed by the souls of murdered children, so one has to wonder if something similar is making “Baby” and their fellows dance and menace the player this time.
Rather worryingly the first time we ever heard of “Baby” in a FNAF context was towards the end of FNAF World’s Update 2, in which (without spoiling anything) we were warned that something terrible was coming and that it was too late to turn ‘her’ off. That game’s ties to the FNAF series are a little bit up in the air, but there are signs that certain previous endings were very much linked and the entire world seems to be some ‘other side’ that feeds back to the horror games.
Once again, the series throws up some more mysteries in the form of killer robots in child-friendly shells. Who knows just what we’ll discover this time in the sister Location…?
