Piranha Games, the people behind MechWarrior Online, have in the last few days put up a site with a countdown feature that is supposed to be teasing a new game project the team have been working on.

The timer will run down on September 9th at around 12:00pm PDT. As of yet no big details are known but the aesthetic makes it seem like the game is going to be sci-fi or at least set in space. The community has also managed to access a hidden message by typing in a specific phrase (“I AM HUMAN”) into the provided phrase field that also lends weight to this theory:

Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Bryan Ekman, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Piranha Games. 14 years ago I founded Piranha Games with my business partner Russ Bullock to build exciting and engaging games that we love to play. Piranha is best known for our latest endeavor — MechWarrior Online, an online free-to-play giant robot combat game. MechWarrior Online’s incredibly successful Founder’s Program proved that we can work directly with our backers to help build a game for the community.

 

On Sep 9th, 2014 at 12:00PM PDT we invite you to join us for the reveal of our next project. It’s a big one, it’s going to be the largest production ever undertaken here at Piranha, and we want YOU to be part of it.

 

It’s epic, it’s online, it’s sci-fi.

 

Just below you will find a registration form. Filling out this form will register you for our new game and grant you an exclusive in-game item when the finished product goes live. By registering now, you can also name your Pilot – yes that’s right, pilot. Ok, no more spoilers…

 

I look forward to the future, and our journey to the stars.

 

Sounds interesting doesn’t it?

A Universe to Explore: [x]

The Sims 4 has only barely come out but already fans are thinking ahead to the next game, trying to guess what’ll be in it. However at the moment Maxis are more worried about the recent game.

“We’re not working on Sims 5. We’re not thinking about Sims 5. If Sims 4 isn’t successful, there won’t be a Sims 5.” producer Grant Rodiek wrote on the official Sims forum to fans suggesting things for Sims 5.

He later explained that his statement wasn’t meant to be taken as an ‘all or nothing’ situation for the series, but that “something has to pay for 5”. Makes sense really, but having been around since the beginning of the new millenium it’d be strange to think of a gaming landscape without the people and life simulator, even for those of us who don’t actually play it.

The latest Sims game has already been somewhat criticised for releasing with around 89 features present in previous games taken out, but at the same time the new ‘multitasking’ and ‘moods’ features are drawing some fans into buying the game.

Back in May when Gamespy was on its way out and the developers scrambling to give their older library some way to continue with multiplayer support beyond that, Relic the makers of Dawn of War began their work to allow their games to escape the shackles of that other platform supposedly destined for the chop, Games for Windows Live. They managed to untangle the first Dawn of War game back then, placing it into the support of Steamworks instead.

Now they’ve managed to release the patch that frees Dawn of War 2 with a patch today. Relic have had to remove a number of things from the game though to enable support to continue. Players of the game have lost access to the LAN multiplayer, Referee mode, and the option to pause during multiplayer but at least the multiplayer still works.

Meanwhile Games for Windows Live is still alive. The time when Microsoft will elect to finally terminate it is currently not known, as supposedly the platform was supposed to cease existing a few months back.

As an MMO The Elder Scrolls Online was quite hyped up. It was a multiplayer experience set in the world of the Elder Scrolls, a chance to finally go questing with your friends, gather supplies and do what many of us had dreamt of since we played our first game in the franchise. However since the game has had a somewhat lukewarm performance. Now the publisher Zenimax Online are trimming down their number of staff.

Bethesda’s Pete Hines has said though that the layoffs are not down to how ESO has performed though, and are rather the type of layoffs that happen around this time of the game’s life. Simply: they hired more staff to help with the launch and first few months of its life, and now they were parring down the team to only what was truly needed.

“As is the norm for games of this type, we had ramped up a large workforce to develop a game of vast scale, and ramped up our customer service to handle the expected questions and community needs of The Elder Scrolls Online at launch. Now that we are nearly 6 months post launch, we have a thriving online community in a game that runs smoothly.”

There have been steps since launch to improve the quest-freezing bugs that plagued the open beta of ESO’s life and recently a new area for long-time high-level players was introduced called Craglorn; an area that’s set to expand again as Upper Craglorn gets added to the map.

Well, after the minor drama-hiccup of Bukkit’s abortive shutdown, in which it emerged that Mojang own Bukkit much to the surprise of many people; it seems that all is still not well between Mojang and all the people who made up the Bukkit project. One of the main coders has filed a DMCA notice that has resulted in CraftBukkit being taken down from the site it was available at.

The coder, who goes by the name of Wolvereness is responsible for a great many lines of code that make up the backbone of the Bukkit API that enables mods to work for clients and for servers. The DMCA, which has also been filed against fellow API client Spigot, alleges that the code that Wolvereness added to the project is being used without fair authorisation or credit under the terms of which the code is licenced. Also because of Mojang’s recent enforcement of the EULA, the DMCA also says that Bukkit itself is in violation of its own original GPL/LGPL licence. It’s actually somewhat more complicated (and confusing) than that, but this seems to be the basic gist of what is taking place.

As of the time of writing there has been no comment from Mojang, any of its prominent employees, or EvilSeph, the former lead of the Bukkit project on the situation publicly about what is happening behind the scenes or to reassure people that things can or will be resolved. The lead of Spigot has posted a news post about the DMCA and has since filed a counter notice.

We will be keeping an eye on events as they play out and will hopefully be able to update you as soon as something happens that will tell us whether or not this is indeed the end of Bukkit as we know it now.

Bukkit forum – “It’s time to say …”: [x]
Spigot Forum – “DMCA’d”: [x]
Reddit – “CraftBukkit, a hugely popular Minecraft server plugin, is taken down due to a DMCA claim. (xpost /r/minecraft)”: [x]