It’s the kind of run Nintendo’s been on lately, that even the company’s one piece of good news – the growing success of the 3DS – has to get a little gloomier.

With the Wii U a disaster, it’s 3DS sales that are making Nintendo’s money right now, but from here on in the Japanese company is going to have to give up a percentage of every wholesale sale of the handheld to another company.

That company is Tomita. A US judge declared last month that Nintendo has been using Tomita’s patented camera technology without permission, so from now until the end of the handheld’s life, “Nintendo must pay Tomita 1.82 percent of the wholesale price” on every 3DS sold.

That may not sound like much, but if the 3DS goes on to sell 100 million units, it all adds up. To a lot of lost money.

Original article here

Blizzard has announced that they are planning to roll out changes to Battle.net accounts that have parental controls switched on: all purchases made using real-life money will be prevented.

In a forum post Support Forum Agent Vrakthris gives notice of the upcoming change, laying out what the e-mails Blizzard is sending out in the next few days to the parent and child accounts will say. He says that “We wanted to let everyone know this was coming and, considering how many phishing emails are out there, that it is indeed from us.”

The text of the e-mail sets out what the change will mean to the accounts in question, preventing any purchases in World of Warcraft, Hearthstone and Diablo III’s soon-to-close auction house as a default setting. It also lists how to change this option (a process that requires an e-mail to be sent to the parent account) and that Blizzard is “making this change to ensure that Parental Controls users will have more control over real-money purchases in Blizzard games.”

Although surprised that this wasn’t already a process that was in place, this is a good move on Blizzard’s part to support parents and alleviate any worries they might have of companies taking advantage of their children in a grab for more profits. Safeguards like this can only be a positive thing.

Mentioned forum post is here

The planned second test season for Blizzard’s card game Hearthstone has been delayed after maintenance revealed some sprite issues that prevented a transition between the seasons.

“Due to these issues, we are extending the duration of Test Season 1 until we can ensure a smooth transition.” Community manager Zeriyah told members of the forum on the 2^nd.

This follows on from Blizzard’s decision to delay Open Beta of the popular game until 2014 when originally it was scheduled for December 2013, when they also sent out invites to all who had opted-in for the Closed Beta before the 20^th of December. It also follows Blizzard’s line at that time about giving priority to putting out working and polished games rather than attempting to meet deadlines with a game that might be a little broken in places. Even if the hype for the game has settled down a little bit from its initial fever pitch, another small delay isn’t likely to turn many off from wanting to play the game if they can’t already.

The new test season would have reset player ranks, but for now the first test season continues for the foreseeable future. Future season ends will see rewards of alternate card backs and golden heroes based on the player’s performance.

A lot of Steam users today will have been met with a frustrating sight if they tried to access the Store or Community through their Steam launcher – that of a grey screen with only an error code upon it.

This is the second time in recent days that Steam has been hit with problems, apparently caused by a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the system by two people, both of who have taken to their Twitter accounts (@chFtheCat and @LARCENY_) to boast of their ‘feat’. The reasons behind the attacks, the first one which took place over the 1^st and 2^nd of the month (depending on whereabouts in the world you live), are still unclear at this point but for lack of a better reason e-fame seems to the goal of the pair.

As of writing both Store and Community can still be accessed through the Steam website 90% of the time, so this attack has been nothing more than a minor irritation and won’t really make much difference to Valve, except possibly a negligible hit in the sales of the days these attacks have happened. Twitter has also acted by suspending the account of @LARCENY_ although his friend is still active, tweeting in a manner you’d expect from someone who does this sort of thing for kicks.

Valve still hasn’t commented upon the attacks, but the Launcher being taken down twice in so few days is somewhat concerning even if the site still works. It’s currently unclear how long everything will be down this time.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning closed down this Wednesday (18th Dec 2013), when the licensing agreement Electronic Arts had with Games Workshop ended. A developer who worked on the game says there is a way to preserve its world in a kind of museum-exhibit way, should EA choose to release it.

Andrew Meggs, who was the lead client engineer for Warhammer Online when he was at Mythic Entertainment, says there was an option to run the game without a server in an unreleased, developer-only build of the Warhammer Online client. If EA released this, then fans could run around in the virtual world, explore it and remember the good times.

“There were no login or character selection screens,” Meggs wrote on his blog. “There were no NPCs or other players. There was no gameplay of any kind. It was just you and the entire world spread out before you. You could fly around like Superman, or teleport anywhere at will.”

An MMO without other players or quests is not an MMO, and Meggs isn’t pretending this would be one. He’s more suggesting it as a memorial to Warhammer Online’s five year run. “It’s a double-clickable museum exhibiting much of what WAR was, so it won’t be forgotten completely. It’s an effort by all of us, as developers, to preserve a living record as our transient medium is created and destroyed. I can’t do this; I left behind the code when I left EA. But there are people inside EA who can easily make this happen.”

It’s a nice thought but it leaves me feeling like the mere suggestion creates a no-win situation to crap all over EA, as if that’s not a forum pastime already. First, they’d have to release it for free, because otherwise, the story becomes “EA Wants Warhammer Fans to Pay for an MMO with No Quests or NPCs.” Secondly, this is a licensed game, which means the licensor would have to consent to all of this, and the agreement has expired. I’m guessing that contract is pretty absolute on proscribing EA from continuing this game in any form past the expiration date.

Closing an MMO is always painful to those who played it. Sometimes it’s best to just say goodbye and move on, rather than dredge up another reason to be disappointed by the company shutting things down.

WAR in a Bottle [Shiny Toys/Andrew Meggs, via Polygon]