It is with regret that we announce today that games.on.net forum regular and passionate gamer MrMoilT passed away last Tuesday night after a long battle with leukemia.

Our admin brimlad describes MrMoilT as “an avid gamer, passionate and dedicated to all the games that he played,” and that “even in hospital in Melbourne he managed to continue playing games on his laptop and would join us on ts for a chat about his treatment and his passion, gaming”.

I’d like to ask anybody wishing to convey their sympathies to head over to this forum thread. I’ll be closing the comments on this article.

Our sympathies to MrMoilT’s family and loved ones.

Troubled zombie MMO The War Z has apparently figured that a good way to leave all those controversies behind and to stop people confusing them with DayZ or perhaps World War Z is to change their name to Infestation: Survivor Stories.

As explained on the official forums, “Effective today, The War Z has changed its name to Infestation: Survivor Stories. This change has come about primarily as a result of some confusion and trademark issues with a similarly titled property.”

“While we were reluctant to rename the game so long after launch, especially with nearly 1 million registered players, it was ultimately decided to be in the best interest of our existing community as well as future players in order to eliminate confusion. Please rest assured that this will in NO WAY affect you as players. The only difference you will see is the change in logo and website. There will be no interruption of service or change in content.”

Source: Infestion Forums

A brief leak that publicly exposed Valve’s internal project tracking software has resulted in a number of mailing lists used within the company being released.

Notable mailing lists inside Valve include a Half-Life 3 group with 42 employees attached, a Left 4 Dead 3 group with around 70 people attached, and other smaller groups such as “Cries Unheard”, “Microbe Wars” and “The Grange”. Some joke groups also clearly exist such as “WUBWUBWUB”, “gayben” and “yo dawg”.

The list of lists was uncovered by Valvetime.net and has been copied into Pastebin. You can see it here.

Source: Valvetime (Thanks, Stefan)

Australians woke up this morning to the bewildering news that Microsoft had performed a complete about-face on the hotly controversial issue of its Xbox One always-online DRM and game-locking strategies.

The latest Steam beta has been discovered to contain some interesting text strings hinting at the possibility of game-borrowing appearing in the future.

If you update to the latest beta (Steam > Settings > Beta Participation) and then look in Steam/Public/steamui_english you’ll find the following UI strings:

“SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicense_Title” “Shared game library”
“SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_OwnerText” “Just so you know, your games are currently in use by %borrower%. Playing now will send %borrower% a notice that it’s time to quit.”
“SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_BorrowerText” “This shared game is currently unavailable. Please try again later or buy this game for your own library.”

Exciting times ahead! Hopefully an official announcement isn’t far off.

Source: Facepunch (thanks Stefan, JaMbO)

I’ll always remember Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara as a beeping, flashing arcade cabinet, sitting forgotten in the lobby of Valhalla, one of Perth’s only two Nerd Stores. Nobody ever seemed to play it, but every so often I would drop a coin or two in as I went past on my way to thumb greasily through sourcebooks for games that I, on my pathetic 13-year-old pocket money, could not possibly afford.

Fast forward to 2013: I have no less than 50 Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks on my living room shelf, and Shadow Over Mystara has been bundled together with Tower of Doom and re-released in HD for just $15.

The times, they are a-changin’.

The battlegrounds of ancient Rome are reminiscent of Westeros. Yet while the real-time combat may not be quite as up-close-and-brutal as a Game of Thrones style throat-slitting, it’s in the courts of political intrigue — the wheeling, dealing and figurative backstabbing — that the wars of Rome II are won and lost.

Bethesda’s Pete Hines has reaffirmed the company’s decision from April last year to put a halt on Prey 2 development, saying that there’s no new information because it’s “simply not good enough”.

“What we said the last time we said anything was that it’s not up to our quality standards,” said Hines to IGN. “It’s simply not good enough. We’re not going to just proceed blindly with something that isn’t good enough. We’ve been very specific about why, and we’ve been very specific about the whats. When that gets addressed and changed or whatever, at that point we can give an update.”

Hines took the chance to comment somewhat on recent rumours that his company had been strong-arming Human Head into losing control of the game.

“Nobody’s disappointment is greater than ours,” he continued. “We spent a lot of time and money and effort trying to make this thing happen and support folks, but at the same time, you just can’t keep throwing money at it. You have to have the discipline to say, ‘it’s not good enough. It’s not hitting the quality bar’.”

“As we said in our last update, it’s not good enough. It’s not where it needs to be. When we have more info than that, we’ll let you know. What is the chance that we have some amazing, unbelievable game and we’re just not talking about it for no reason? Zero.”

“Again, when we have more info on it, we’ll be happy to talk about it. That’s what I can say for now.”

Source: IGN

If you’re feeling cynical about the upcoming Batman: Arkham Origins game, then don’t worry: developers Warner Bros. understand.

“I would say that people have the right to be cynical; they have the option to be cynical,” said WB’s creative director Eric Holmes to Gamespot.

“Come and play the game at one of these events where we bring the game. And I think as soon as you’ve got the pad in your hand, you’re going to see that this game is authentic and uses the same underpinnings and core mechanics of the previous Arkham games.”

Indeed, this was basically exactly what we found when we went hands-on at E3 last week.

Holmes emphasised that the story behind Origins was what would really show players they weren’t just phoning it in.

“I think we have a great story. I can’t tell you too much about, but I can tell you I’m really excited about our story,” Holmes said. “I think it’s a very important Batman story and I think fans are going to love that probably more than any other thing in the game.”

Source: Gamespot

A source inside EA claims that the company has made its entire analysis and review team redundant, according to reports published today.

Around 20 employees formed part of the team, which conducted internal reviews of games from the perspective of outsiders such as games media, analysed Metacritic trends, and generally made sure EA’s games were as presentable as possible before journalists and players got their hands on them.

A former employee took to Twitter to vent her frustrations, but the initial tweet about the entire department being cut has been deleted.

The news follows April’s reveal that EA had cut a massive 10% of its workforce by winding up its Partners program.

Source: Polygon

Gunpoint, the delightful 2D stealth-puzzler-platformer (read our review here) has revealed that its sales figures were enough to recover the development costs in just a few hours.

Creator Tom Francis has revealed that technically it only took 64 seconds to recover the cost of Game Maker, the software used to create the title, but within a few hours his investment costs of time and expertise from others were completely paid off.

Francis has now left writing for PC Gamer to work full time on development, saying “So, I quit my job. In fact, I think I have quit jobs, as a concept.”

“I started Gunpoint as an audition piece to get myself a position at a developer, but designing it has been so creatively satisfying that I no longer want one, and so commercially successful that I’ll never need one.”

Bravo. If you still haven’t played this delightfully clever little game, you can buy it direct from the developer at http://www.gunpointgame.com/. You’ll get a Steam key out of it too, which is nice.

You are upside down.

Your vision is blurry, and the dim light around you isn’t helping. But as your eyes begin to adjust, you see them: bodies. Just like you. Hanging upside down, the blood obviously drained from them like sponges.

This already grim situation is made worse by the clanking buzz of a chainsaw breaking through a human spine. You can’t see it, but blood, muscle and tissue are splattering on the floor.

Soon, a massive brute passes by you to a nearby room, carrying the top off a human body. He begins to mutilate it with a machete.

This is The Evil Within. It’s disgusting, it’s brutal, and survival horror fans are going to love it.