Online Gaming Tidbits for March 26th, 2010

A few of the latest online gaming related stories in the news:

• Valve Software are now taking applicants for a Mac Steam beta program. Valve’s muscle and polished product promises to be a huge boon for both indie developers seeking Mac distribution and major studios looking at the surging Mac platform for additional customers.
• Publisher’s clever used game sales combating strategy of bundling one time use DLC codes at launch is offered a challenge by a new class-action lawsuit against GameStop, alleging deceptive advertising, because the content is supposedly still advertised on used copies.
• FilePlanet cites this PS3 dedicated server release of Section 8 as a world first, allowing players to host their own PS3 server for the first time. Such a thing would be unheard of on Xbox Live, but publicly releasing a dedicated server app is an affordable alternative to otherwise paying for enough server infrastructure out of your own pocket. Dedicated servers level the playing field by giving nobody a latency advantage, and give server admins greater control over game settings. The challenge is preventing abuse when a server allows stats tracked games.
• Players who weren’t able to play Assassin’s Creed II on the PC recently when their DRM authentication server was disable by a denial of service attack, can now chose one of four Ubisoft titles as an apology by the publisher from the inconvenience.
• Two GamaSutra expert blogs discuss ‘Why People Pay for Virtual Goods‘ by Nicholas Lovell and ‘DRM: My Love/Hate Relationship‘ by Benjamin Quintero.
• StarCraft 2 beta expansion resets… pretty much everything. Blizzard’s expanding beta test of the new Battle.net and StarCraft 2 caused a reset of not only leader-board ranks, but also of characters, profile data and even friend lists. An extreme measure that was not doubt not taken lightly by the developer. It’s a stark reminder of what it means to play a ‘real’ beta (as opposed to a ‘Gmail beta’).
• A GamesIndustry.com/TNS study shows that the average social gamer, both in the US and Europe is just under 30, with 45 million social gamers in the US and only 10 million in key European markets. Germany in particular leads in under 20 year olds, with a 39% share compared to 29% in the US.
• New job posting hints at an expanding Amazon digital games store. Currently limited to casual game content, Amazon is currently seeking software engineers to ‘lead the design and construction of next generation, breakthrough online video game and software distribution technology’.

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