Over a thousand Natural Selection 2 keys have been deactivated on Steam as part of a move on a massive credit card scam that has cost developers Unknown World over $30,000.

Using stolen credit cards, a group of thieves purchased keys through Steam and the Natural Selection 2 site, then onsold those keys to regular consumers at significant discounts. After the transactions were completed, they then initiated a charge-back on their initial purchases — forcing Valve and Unknown Worlds to not only hand back the money but pay a $22 charge-back fee each time.

“This episode is a prime example of why all gamers need to beware discount steam keys and those offering them,” write Unknown Worlds in their blog post about the incident. “Right now there are only two official places to buy Natural Selection 2; through Steam or through our website via the Humble Store (The Humble Store option is temporarily disabled due to this issue).”

“If you see Natural Selection 2 available anywhere else — like the many sites out there that sell Steam keys at a discount — then you are not buying it from us and there is no way to know if that key is legitimate. As as result, we strongly discourage purchasing from these sites.”

Affected customers are urged to contact the site from which they purchased the keys.

Source: Unknown World

Unknown Worlds have released their internal development tool Decoda to the public. The Decoda program, which in the past has been sold as a tool to other companies, has been so integral to the development of the game (it’s still used, every day) that the company now feel the best way to improve it is to allow the public to use it.

“After the successful launch of Natural Selection 2, we have the opportunity to re-evaluate our business strategy,” reads the Unknown Worlds Blog. “As a tool, Decoda is just as important for us as it was when we wrote the first line of code — our programmers use it every day in the continuing development of the game. In fact, it’s so important to us that we want it to improve faster than ever.”

“We intend to keep on developing Decoda, but we are most excited about what *you* can do to help make it the best IDE out there!”

If you’re a Natural Selection 2 modder, it seems like now is the time to get yourself in on the ground floor and start using the tools from the developers themselves. The latest version of the source can be found at GitHub and the latest download from their download page.

Here at games.on.net we’re proud fans of Natural Selection 2 — in fact we called it “one of PC gaming’s best” — and we’re very happy to see the developers pushing out patches.

The following patch has now been rolled out to Steam, and features performance overhauls in the lighting engine, as well as a huge slew of changes to the editor and the SDK.

Also included are nearly 20 bug-fixes, including a crash when users alt-tab (at last!). Check out the details below.

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Natural Selection is back, and Unknown Worlds have used their six years of development time to make a game that perfectly recaptures the brilliant asymmetrical gameplay of the original. We sent James Pinnell and Alex Walker along to play game after game on games.on.net’s own dedicated servers — and they came back grinning from ear to ear.

The sequel to the competitive shooter-strategy hybrid is a big hit locally, with Australians accounting for the fifth most pre-orders of any country per capita and the third most pre-orders of any nation overall.

Developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment unveiled the figures early this morning on their website and via Twitter, with only the United Kingdom and the United States having more pre-orders overall. North Americans and Western Europeans, as expected, are the largest fans of the game, having 44% and 37% of all pre-orders.

Interestingly, Australia and New Zealand make up 9% of all pre-orders, which is almost the same amount as Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, the Russian territories and other countries combined. And when you consider the fact that Australians pre-ordered more copies of the game than Canada or Germany, it’s not a bad effort at all.

With the game set to launch in just eight days, it’s a great marketing tool. There’s nothing worse than a new multiplayer game catching your eye, only to realise you’ll only ever be able to get a game in Sweden or North America. At least with Natural Selection 2, Aussies know that won’t be the case.

The game is available for pre-order via Steam or through UWE’s website for US$24.99.

If you weren’t already excited about Natural Selection 2 for some bizarre reason, you’ve got exactly 21 days to see a doctor and get that sorted. Natural Selection 2 has just announced a release date of October 31, and the game is now locked into a bugfix-and-polish cycle ahead of the launch date.

So, why October 31? Because it’s the exact same date that the original Natural Selection released, in 2002. “Creating Natural Selection 2 was a risk, and an immense challenge,” writes the team on their site. “Combining two genres, Real Time Strategy and First Person Shooter, is difficult. Not only that, but creating an entirely new engine, Spark, for it all to run on added layers of complexity to the development.”

“Ten years ago a game tried something different. Exactly one decade later it will be back. We hope you will join us in welcoming it into the gaming world.”

If you’ve been waiting for Natural Selection 2 to show up on Steam, wait no further: the game is now available to pre-purchase for $24.99 USD, or a four-pack for $74.99 (a delightful 25% saving). All Steam pre-orders will automatically be upgraded to the digital deluxe edition, which gives you access to the soundtrack, art book, wallpapers, avatars, and exclusive in-game marine armour.

But that’s not all — if you’re one of the faithful who pre-ordered the game before it showed up on Steam, you’ll not only automatically get a free upgrade to the Steam digital deluxe edition, but a free copy of the standard edition to give away (or “stroke lovingly,” according to the developer) and continued private beta access right up to the October launch.

Source: Unknown Worlds (via Blue’s News)

If you’re not looking forward to Natural Selection 2, then not only is there probably something wrong with you, but we’ve got just the video to change your mind: the Exosuit was revealed overnight in a smashingly-good new trailer that really shows what you can achieve with a dozen or so dedicated people. Take a look for yourself:

Source: NS2 (thanks, Spawneh)