Today on their site’s blog Mojang announced that something Minecraft players have been waiting for is soon about to make its way to the game!

… No, it’s not the Mod API. It’s the ability to change your in-game name!

The change is due to be rolled out on February 4th and as long as you already have a Mojang account it’s free to do. The option to change the name will be a little link on the Mojang account page with the ‘change’ option next to your current in-game name.

You can only grab unused names though, and once you change your name you can’t do it again for another 30 days. But no worries if you want to change back, names previously in use are held for 37 days before they become up for grabs so as long as you’re on the ball you won’t lose your username if you regret the change. Mojang are also freeing up old unpaid account names for use, so if you have one now’s the time to go and buy it!

The system gives each account an identifier that’s separate from the display name so if a user’s been banned for a server they’ll stay banned, as well as accounts retaining inventories and other things across name changes. Mojang hope that the system will be simple enough for mod users to encode with for their own mods.

Mojang blog “Announcing Minecraft name changes”: [x]

I’ve written about Glorious Leader! before now. No, I don’t mean our Glorious Leader (for those of you who don’t tune into the shows (why not?) it’s a term we jokingly apply to the station owner), rather a sidescroller game featuring North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Yes, really.

The game was in development by Moneyhorse Games, and they had a Kickstarter going to fund it. I say ‘had’ because… well, it’s been cancelled after a hack meant someone gained access to the files related to the game and “destroyed data pertaining to Glorious Leader! and other projects we had in development” according to Moneyhorse. They have said though that no user information was compromised.

“As many of you know, over the holidays we were victims of a hack inspired by the attack on Sony,” a statement posted to the Kickstarter page read. “The hackers destroyed data pertaining to Glorious Leader! and other projects we had in development and locked us out of our own computers and website… It is now evident that our funding goals will not be met, so we are cancelling our Kickstarter campaign.”

Moneyhorse also said that it wasn’t the first time they’d received threats because of the game and so were reevaluating their commitment to it. They thanked all the fans and backers for their commitment, saying they were sorry to have let them down.

At close Glorious Leader! had attracted $16,816 of its $55,000 Kickstarter goal.

Seems Blizzard have hit a little snag with their plans for new IP Overwatch. Seems someone already has a predated trademark on the name, and now Blizzard’s let it lapse over into a suspension for the game.

Blizzard filed the application for Overwatch back in April and then revealed the game in a very complete form at last year’s Blizzcon. However the USPTO suspended the two applications put in when it discovered a filing by Innovis Labs, Inc., a smartphone app company. The mobile app in question is used for real-life paintball, laser tag and airsoft matches to enhance play.

Blizzard have not responded to the notice of suspension and so the USPTO has sent a Statement of Allowance to Innovis Labs, Inc. – basically if within six months they file a Statement of Use Innovis Labs can use the trademark commercially and Blizzard cannot.

There are many different ways this could turn out, and the most likely seems to be that Blizzard will have to change the name of their game to avoid legal action. However that’s not to say that is what will happen, as similar cases have turned out differently in the past. We can only wait and see.

The Awesome Games Done Quick 2015 speedrun marathon has come to an end for now, having been playing many games at top speed all in the name of raising money for charity. This time round it was Prevent Cancer and the total was brilliant: around $1,180,000.

The event director, Andrew Schroeder, has said though that there appears to have been a bug in the donation tracker the event used, which means the actual total could be closer to around $1.5 million. Wow.

Speaking at the end of the event Schroeder revealed the total as well as the news of the bug: “Several people have contacted us since Thursday, letting us know that their donations haven’t been showing up… we can confirm that there was indeed one that caused donations not to show up.”

They’ll be adding them manually over the course of this next week, holding off awarded prizes until then as well but hope to find that the total is $1.5 million, including the money made off the special Humble Bundle offered which brought in around $192,547 by itself.

Go to their Twitch channel if you missed anything you wanted to see, the broadcasts are still up right now.

Just over a month ago Valve had to step in to help users who were becoming the victim of trades gone wrong when dodgy payments used to buy a game sometimes left one side of the trade with nothing after the game was revoked by Steam. Now they’re stepping in again to tackle another trade related issue, this time to do with malware clearing out accounts.

A new Captcha system is being put into place for all trade offers that go through Steam now, in an attempt to stop malicious programs that are designed to access users’ accounts and make trades on their behalf, thereby clearing out the account in question.

“We’re updating trading to include a captcha as part of confirmation process.” said Valve in an announcement about the change. “This is to prevent malware on users’ machines making trades on their behalf. We know it’s a bit of a hassle, and we don’t like making trading harder for users, but we do expect it to significantly help customers who are tricked into downloading and running malware from losing their items.”

It’s a nice step towards a more secure process, but unfortunately it seems its implementation has reset the trade system – cancelling all current and pending trade offers which has angered some users. Valve is looking for input on the system over on the Steam forums though so feel free to hop over there to have your say.