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!

For those of you who were gaming around the time of the PS2 and the first Xbox you will remember a game called Fatal Frame, or for those in Europe Project Zero. It was a nifty little game about the supernatural where you played a character who could sense ghosts and used a special camera to… rid herself of them. Well they are bringing Fatal Frame back, this time for the Wii U.

Known in Japan as Zero: Nuregarasu no Miko, roughly translating to Fatal Frame: The Black Haired Shrine Maiden, the game will launch in Japan on Sept. 27. No word on a release date for other regions yet but keep your hopes high.

In this new series installment, players take control of Kozukata Yuuri, a girl who can see spirits of those taken to the other side.  Yuuri also discovers she has the ability to bring the spirits back into the real world by reaching Mount Hikamiyama better known as the mountain of death.

As is standard in the series, players will find and capture ghosts using an in-game camera. In this Wii U iteration, players can use their Wii U GamePad to control the camera. Check out the trailer below to see how that works.

The studio states that this will be the biggest installment of the Fatal Frame/Project Zero series yet and we can only hope that unlike some of the series it reaches us here in the EU and NA regions. There is also talk of a Fatal Frame live action movie which could be amazing.

Here is the trailer which looks gorgeous;

Blizzard have put out a release date for the single-player adventure secton of their popular free-to-play card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. The release date across all platforms (that is PC, Mac and iPad) will be July the 23rd with a month-long launch event running.

The blog post reveals that there will be five ‘wings’ of the extension to come, released across five weeks. The first chapter, the Arachnid Quarter, will be free permanently for all those who start the adventure during the launch event. The other four will be priced at 700 coins a wing or about 5.99 EUR/ 4.99 GBP in real money. Blizzard are also planning to sell the other wings in bundles packages.

The rewards include special cards to be unlocked by progressing through the five wings of the adventure, including those gained by beating certain ‘bosses’.

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