Incoming White House Chief of Staff William Daley's history in the telecom industry has some supporters of the FCC’s net neutrality rules concerned, according to a report in The Hill. Dailey served as president of SBC Communications before it acquired AT&T and took the “smaller” company's name. Saying that AT&T was a smaller company tells you just how big SBC really was.

One of those supporters is Free Press:

"With Daley at his side, how long will it be before Obama caves?" Tim Karr, Free Press campaign director, wrote in the Huffington Post on Saturday.

Opponents of net neutrality, including Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), think that Dailey’s influence in the White House on this particular issue is a good thing:

Correction: The U.S. Commerce Department contacted us to let us know that the national I.D. program is completely voluntary. In our earlier report we erroneously reported that it was not a voluntary program. Our original wording was "The Internet I.D. would give every American a unique online identity overseen by the Commerce Department."

According to the public affairs officer for the Commerce Department, "Every American will not need an ID and private organizations or others that conduct online transactions would opt in to a system that is led by private industry in partnership with federal agencies like DOC."

Details on what the program consist of can be found at www.nist.gov/nstic.

The East Valley Education Center, an Oakdale private school for special needs children, has been making an effort to help its students come out of their shells and be more social by allowing them to play video games.

Pretty groovy, no?

Well, according to a CBS Sacramento report, some of these games are M-rated titles such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Yeah, probably not the best pick and to the surprise of no one, there has been a complaint.  The parents of one autistic boy told CBS that their son had been acting angrily and even violent towards his sister.

While Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino’s iPhone app has been making the news this week due to its appearance in Apple’s top 10-grossing application list, the Jersey Shore star may soon be facing a lawsuit over a game included in the app.

The app features a game called “Grenade Dodger,” in which users attempt to dodge unattractive women, or “grenades” in Jersey Shore-speak. The problem, according to Radar Online, is that photographers were dispatched by the game’s developer to clubs in order to snatch pictures of women in the “3 or 4” category for inclusion in the Situation’s application. One of the girls featured in “Grenade Dodger” is reportedly horrified over her insertion in the game and is considering taking legal action.

Good Old Games sure pulled a fast one on journalists and all of its members. While the publicity stunt - that they were shutting gog.com down because it couldn’t go on the way it was - was clever and generated a lot buzz, I wonder if there will be some ill feelings from subscribers who were saddened and scared at the prospect of losing all their games.. You can watch the awkward video the site's owners posted today.

The silver lining - if there is one here - is that when the site re-launches on Thursday it will be vastly improved, and Baldur's Gate will soon be available for sale DRM-free. That's something.

While the turnaround time of Flash games based on popular news events is generally rather amazing, one such game based on the recent hostage tragedy that occurred on a bus in the Philippines earlier this week is drawing criticism.

A disgruntled ex-policeman named Rolando Mendoza boarded a bus of tourists in Manila in a misguided attempt to win his job back. After a long standoff, which the consensus says was mismanaged, police finally stormed the bus and killed Mendoza, but not before he murdered eight of the tourists, all of whom were from Hong Kong.

The game based on this event is named Bus Hostage by Policeman and appears on the Newgrounds site, where it has received scathing reviews (0.95 out of 5.00) and comments, for both its subject matter and buggy, awful gameplay. The game itself has players attempting to shoot Mendoza through the windows of the bus, asking participants “Can you stop him and blow his brain?”

Among the comments:

In case you missed it, World of Warcraft developer Blizzard recently scored a whopping $88,594,539 judgment against a company that was operating and charging players to access World of Warcraft emulator servers.

The ruling was handed down on August 10 by the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California and targeted Alyson Reeves, who was operating under the business name of ScapeGaming. The huge dollar figure was calculated by combining the $3,052,339 the defendant received from users of her service via Paypal, statutory damages of $85,478,600 (calculated by multiplying ScapeGaming’s 427,393 users times the statutory minimum of $200 per “act of circumvention and/or performance of service”) and another $63,600 in attorney’s fees.

Additionally, if Reeves has trouble paying, she will see post-judgment interest accumulate at the “rate provided by law” until the entire sum is recovered.

Court documents reveal that up to 32,000 players were using the organization’s servers each day.

A statement from Blizzard on its victory read:

Former Apple global supply manager Paul Shin Devine plead not guilty Monday in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. A bail hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. Devine was indicted by a federal grand jury last week on 23 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and accepting kickbacks, according to court documents obtained by C|Net.

Devine also faces the wrath of Steve Jobs; Apple has filed a civil suit against him for allegedly accepting more than $1 million in bribes from suppliers over the past few years in return for inside information that was then used to give those companies a better position in bargaining lucrative contracts.

Six Asian companies were named in the indictment including Kaedar Electronics - a division of Asus owned Pegatron (Taiwan), Singapore-based JLJ Holdings's Jin Li Mold Manufacturing, Singapore-based Glocom/Lateral Solutions and Fastening Technologies, Taiwanese company Nishoku Technology and earphone and headset maker Cresyn.

Just as China attempts to clean up the image and operations of its online game operators, one online game appears to be offering an inflatable doll as a grand prize.

Via SooToo.com (translated) we learn about the bizarre offering (pictured) being dangled in front of players of the game called War Hero Online (or perhaps it’s called God of War Undefeated). No amount of searching or translation could offer any clues on what the player would have to accomplish in order to win such a prize.

If you were interested in the history of inflatable dolls, the SooToo article kindly provides some background on that subject as well.


Via MicGadget

Those excited about RealID, Blizzard's plan to connect users' real names to their in-game characters, may be a little upset with a policy change to the company's official forums. Judging by the response in the forum thread announcing the changes users are pissed off. Blizzard announced that forum posts in various official game forums will now use the RealID of the user instead of forum names or gamer names.

While this may be a good way to deter over-the-top flame wars and spam (because they'll know who everyone is by name), some users are concerned about having their gaming and forum activities out there for the world to see. Here's the official announcement from Blizzard from this forum thread (thanks to Mendror via the GP shoutbox):

The Melbourne Youth Justice Centre in Melbourne, Australia is under fire this morning for allowing juvenile offenders access to violent video games and DVDs. Community Services Minister Lisa Neville is certainly listening to complaints from crime victims groups and child experts; she has called for an investigation and ordered that such material being immediately confiscated.

The fervor over this came after a Sun Herald report that youths in the facility were playing games like Grand Theft Auto and watching "real life crime shows" on "Pay TV." So how did they get access to this content? Apparently the staff at the facility were using games, DVDs and Pay TV as bribes to encourage "good behavior."

File under bad ideas: one component of a Danish anti-violence campaign features an online game that allows players to virtually beat up a woman.

“Hit The Bitch” is the work of The NGO for Children Exposed to Violence at Home and lets players smack around a girl in a bid to elevate scores from the level of “pussy” to “gangsta.”  Users who possess a webcam also have the ability to go interactive, as physical swings and slaps will be translated to on screen violence against the girl.

The site is currently only offered to Danish Internet users due to a high amount of traffic to the site, though the game’s makers note that “domestic violence is a global problem, so please support the fight against it in your local country.”

By all accounts, the game ends with the girl on the ground bleeding and crying. One user reported that the game calls the player an idiot for participating.


|Via Adverblog|

This week's controversy over President Obama's speech to America's school children has morphed into a rather unfortunate online game.

Obama's School Camp comes from Scottish firm T-Enterprise, which often mocks political issues with their Friday game offerings. Today's game challenges players to press letters on their keyboards which correspond to paper airplanes floating toward an animation of the President. Press the right letter quickly enough and the paper airplane disappears. Otherwise, it strikes the Obama character.

The paper airplane imagery seems to be an especially poor choice for a game published today, September 11th. It seems an even worse decision given that the game comes from T-Enterprise, which was the firm behind the now-canceled Rendition: Guantanamo project. A consultant to that game was alleged to have ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

UGO reports that Playlogic's upcoming Fairytale Fights has an achievement to kill 1,000 kid characters.

Sounds like a public relations nightmare in the making. It's hard to believe that anyone smart enough to design video games could be that dumb.

From the UGO story:

Fairytale Fights may be the first game that not only features the innocent murder of children, but also an achievement to reward it.

After speaking with Playlogic last week, it sounds like the achievement's on the chopping block waiting for the axe to fall, but the children and the you killing them parts, those will definitely be served in the final dish...

Playlogic producer Poria Torkan told UGO that the company does have some concerns about the achievement. The game is scheduled to release on PS3 and Xbox 360. We wonder if Sony and MS will have concerns about licensing it with the dead kids achievement.

The video game industry continues to find new and creative ways to stick it to PC gamers.

In the latest example, EA has announced that the much-anticipated Command & Conquer 4 will require players to constantly be connected to the Internet, even for single-player campaigns.

That requirement, however, violates one of the basic tenets of the Gamer's Bill of Rights, a document released at PAX 08 by Stardock CEO Brad Wardell and Gas Powered Games CEO Chris Taylor. EA, however, is not a signatory to the Bill of Rights. No surprise there.

Specifically, the C&C4 requirement violates this point:

Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.

Ars Technica reports comments on the connection requirement made by EA Community Leader "APOC":

As of right now, you need to be online all the time to play C&C 4. This is primarily due to our 'player progression' feature so everything can be tracked. C&C 4 is not an MMO in the sense of World of Warcraft, but conceptually it has similar principles for being online all the time.

 

While some may be taken aback by this, we've been testing this feature internally with all of our world-wide markets. We wanted to make sure it wouldn't take away any significant market or territory from playing the game. We have not found or seen any results that have made us think otherwise...

GP: This smells like backdoor DRM from here. Even if it's not, what if you're on a laptop? What if you're on an airplane? What if your Internet connection is down?

As a longtime PC gamer who has owned every version of the C&C and Red Alert games, this just sucks.

There is perhaps a glimmer of hope in APOC's comments. We note that he starts off with "As of right now..." Does that mean that this gamer-unfriendly policy is subject to change? 

It's time for PC gamers to make some noise about this nonsense.

The Chinese government has ordered a controversial video game addiction clinic to stop subjecting alleged teenage game addicts to electric shock treatments.

China Daily reports that the Ministry of Health issued the directive yesterday to the clinic in Linyi, Shandong province:

More than 3,000 young people were tricked or forced into in to the four-month long course. To enroll their children, parents or guardians had to sign a contract acknowledging that they would be given electric shocks of up to 200 milliamperes. The treatment cost 6,000 yuan ($878) per month...

 

Shocks were given if patients broke any of the center’s 86 rules, which included prohibitions on eating chocolate, locking the bathroom door, taking pills before a meal, and sitting in Dr. Yang's chair without permission.

Details of the treatment first became public when former patients wrote about their experiences online...

Kong Lingzhong, who edits a Chinese Internet addiction-themed portal commented on the clinic's methods:

We have no clue whether this freaky treatment has side-effects.

Evony, a browser-based MMO which debuted recently, has angered some bloggers by using a comment spam campaign.

Popehat writes:

Online pharmacies and questionable purveyors of herbal remedies advertise by comment spam... Porn sites advertise by comment spam... Fraudulent financial services advertise by comment spam...

Legitimate business, and legitimate sites, do not advertise by comment spam. I associate comment spam with the underbelly of the web, with fraud and crime and child porn... Maybe Evony’s site won’t inflict malware on my computer. But I won’t take that chance. Given the company Evony has chosen to keep, you shouldn’t either.

Bruce on Games expresses similar concerns in a post titled simply, "Don't Play Evony."

Australia's federal government said yesterday that it plans to block access to websites which host and sell games with content edgier than what is allowable under an MA-15+ rating. The unprecedented censorship policy will apply to Australians of all ages.

As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, a spokesman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy (left) said that the filtering scheme willl apply to downloadable games, Flash games and websites which sell boxed copies of MA-15+ games via mail order.

Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia, an online users' lobbying group, criticized the plan:

This is confirmation that the scope of the mandatory censorship scheme will keep on creeping. Far from being the ultimate weapon against child abuse, it now will officially censor content deemed too controversial for a 15-year-old. In a free country like ours, do we really need the government to step in and save us from racy web games?

Mark Newton, described by the SMH as an ISP engineer, told the newspaper that the plan could affect online-only games like World of Warcraft and Second Life as well:

That [online games] exemption [on content ratings] is the only reason why multi-player games with user-generated environments are possible in this country; without it, it'd only take one game user anywhere in the world to produce objectionable content in the game environment to make the Australian Government ban the game for everyone.

Take-Two Interactive Chairman Strauss Zelnick seems like a pretty smart guy, so we were surprised to learn that he was actually considering buying a newspaper. In the end, he wised up, however.

Reuters reports that Zelnick decided to pass on acquiring the Austin American-Statesman. The Texas paper had a daily circulation of 152,691 as of March.

Zelnick's private equity firm ZelnickMedia Corp. never made a formal bid and decided to pull out of negotiations as the sorry state of the newspaper business continued to worsen.

We've got DRM in our games, the RIAA continues to sue small-fry, individual file sharers, the consumer-unfriendly Digital Millenium Copyright Act is the law of the land, the IP industry is trying to push DMCA-like legislation in Canada, and the secret ACTA copyright negotiations are ongoing.

But the copyright lobby would like to be in your kid's school, too.

The Copyright Alliance, a lobbying group which includes game publishers trade association the Entertainment Software Association among its members, has just launched the Copyright Alliance Education Foundation, which it bills as a non-profit, charitable organization:

Its mission as of now is K-12 schools, and... we are already working with many schools across the country... The focus of our curricula is student empowerment; communicating how the U.S. Constitution gives each and every one of us rights and ownership over our creations.

Taking classroom time away from the 3R's is not a new idea for those in the IP protection business, however. As GamePolitics reported in 2007, the ESA's top enforcement exec, Ric Hirsch, told attendees at an anti-piracy conference:

In the 15- to 24-year-old (range), reaching that demographic with morality-based messages is an impossible proposition... which is why we have really focused our efforts on elementary school children. At those ages, children are open to receiving messages, guidelines, rules of the road, if you will, with respect to intellectual property.

After a hurricane passes through, you might think that video games would be the last thing on the minds of people in the affected area.

You'd be wrong.

medpage TODAY reports that carbon monoxide poisoning caused by gasoline-fueled portable generators is a fairly common occurence following hurricanes. A surprising number of such incidents involve generators used to power video game systems:

Of 12 separate poisoning incidents in the Houston area in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which left two million people without power in September 2008, five resulted from the use of generators for video games, Caroline Fife, M.D., of the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, and colleagues reported.

Overall, 21 children and 17 adults were poisoned. A three-year-old died, and the others had symptoms ranging from nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and headache to chest pain, loss of consciousness, and coma, the researchers reported in the June issue of Pediatrics.

"This is the first study to suggest that generators are commonly used immediately after a large-scale power outage to power entertainment electronics for children," they said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission told medpage TODAY:

Operating a generator inside your home produces poisonous levels of carbon monoxide equal to that of hundreds of cars running inside your home.

Pirating games is one thing and those who engage in the practice assume all of the risks involved, legal and otherwise.

But The Guardian's Keith Stuart reports that, earlier this month, Square Enix sicced its lawyers on a small band of rabid Chrono Trigger fans, serving them with a menacing cease and desist order.

It seems that a group of homebrew types spent four years (!) modding a sequel which they dubbed Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes. Talk about a labor of love. As Stuart reports, the group use a ROM hack to mod the original source code:

If Square Enix had allowed the game to be released, the commercial impact would have been infinitesimal. It's being released as an IPS patch, not a complete Rom image; and if you're not sure what I'm talking about, that's the point – getting these things to run is for the homebrew community only.

As Stuart points out, some fan projects (Counter-Strike, for example) have turned into actual commercial games. And the video game industry is increasingly touting the idea of user-generated content to market certain games. But the message inherent in Square Enix's slap at its adoring, hardcore fans is of an entirely different nature. Stuart writes:

Think of the marketing benefits of embracing this passion, of inviting the creators to port the project over to the DS or on to WiiWare. It would be a radical departure from standard tactics but it would surely be more useful and forward-thinking than kicking the lawyers into action. How about a new mantra: embrace and assist?

An iPhone/iPod Touch game in which the player attempts to stop a baby from crying by violently shaking the motion-sensitive handheld device is understandably causing a stir.

Although iTunes has apparently removed Baby Shaker from its AppStore offerings, the controversy over the game lingers.

Cnet reports that Baby Shaker drew criticism from, among others, Jennipher Dickens, whose son Christopher was injured after being shaken by his father. Dickens, the founder of the nonprofit group Stop Shaken Baby Syndrome, commented on the iPhone app:

As a mother of a child who was violently shaken at 7 weeks old, causing a severe brain injury, and the founder of a national organization for Shaken Baby Syndrome prevention... I don't have to tell you how much this horrifies me!

But Saul Hansell, writing for the New York Times's Bits blog, has criticized Apple for pulling the game:

I’m troubled by the way Apple caved into pressure here. Of course this application is deeply offensive, with no redeeming value except to people who like to play gross games or have twisted senses of humor.

But as I wrote in February, the App Store is coming to resemble a bookstore. The applications available there can have political, social or literary content. And we know that one person’s manifesto is another’s heresy, and that your masterpiece may well be trash to me.

Meanwhile, The Consumerist reports that Baby Shaker was pulled from iTunes, made available and pulled again.

Late last week Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) indicated that seceding from the United States was an option for his state, albeit an unlikely one.

The Guv, rumored to have presidential aspirations of his own, is upset about the economic policies of the Obama administration.

It would appear that Perry, who delivered the keynote at last year's E3 (that's him along with ESA boss Mike Gallagher at left), has forgotten what happened the last time secession was attempted in 1861: There was a bit of a disgreement that is commonly known as the Civil War.

But wouldn't a Texas secession make a great real-time strategy game? Call it Six Days in Austin. Konami could publish it.

From a video game industry perspective, establishing a new, independent nation of Texas would certainly impact publishers' lobbying group the Entertainment Software Association, which is chartered to represent the interests of video game publishers in the United States.

Canada has its own ESA and there are plenty of game industry firms based in Texas. If the Lone Star state gains independence, perhaps there will be a need for an ESA Texas as well.

Or perhaps Gov. Perry is just going off the deep end.

Recently, GamePolitics broke the news that a press kit for Electronic Arts' The Godfather II included, among other items, a set of brass knuckles.

As we pointed out, possession of brass knuckles is illegal in Pennsylvania where GP HQ is located. Kotaku subsequently noted that they are illegal in its Colorado home base, as well. As it turns out, brass knuckles are considered a prohibited weapon in a number of states.

A few days later, in a carefully-worded phone call, an EA rep advised us that the publisher would send a pre-paid shipping envelope in which we could return the brass knuckles. Not long after, a FedEx mailer arrived with an unsigned note on plain white paper:

Hello,

 

Pursuant to EA's phone call to you, please use the enclosed mailer for return of the brass curio item.

 

Thank you.

FedEx picked up the "brass curio item" from GP HQ on Friday, thus bringing to a close what has to rank as one of the biggest public relations gaffes in the history of the video game biz.

Seems like a bad trade from here.

Activision Blizzard has bailed from the PC Gaming Alliance, the trade group devoted to promoting the PC side of the video game biz.

Joining the organization, however, is Sony DADC. You might know them better by their widely-reviled SecuROM software, the DRM that famously sullied last year's Spore launch.

GP: As a longtime PC gamer who has been frustrated by the game industry's shabby treatment of computer players in recent years, I've been enthused by the concept of the PCGA. But the decidely consumer-unfriendly SecuROM is a major part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Via: Blue's News

UPDATE: Game Biz Blog spoke with PCGA Program Manager John Ehrig, who offered the organization's view on SecuROM's Sony DADC's participation:

PCGA doesn’t have any ability at all to limit its membership. Anyone that’s in the PC gaming arena who’s willing to pay their dues and sign a member agreement can become members. We’re not in a position to prevent people from joining our group.

 

We get [complaints] a lot, people saying ‘oh why are they a member, they shouldn’t be a member, they don’t really believe in PC gaming’. It’s not unusual at all... The impression that somebody in the general public might have in [a member’s] commitment to PC gaming can be completely biased by some rumour or false impressions they’ve picked up.

A Florida woman is understandably upset after someone posted a message on Xbox Live advertising that her two-year-old daughter was for sale - and included her home phone number. The offer included free shipping.

As reported by the Charlotte Sun, Christa Manos of Punta Gorda began receiving angry phone calls from Xbox Live users on Saturday night.:

The [first caller] was furious Manos would consider putting a price tag on her child.

At first, it sounded like a prank. But the phone kept ringing, with more and more angry voices from across the United States. Some just cursed at Manos. Others called her a bad mother. She didn't know what they were talking about.

"By the 18th or 19th call, I knew something wasn't right," Manos said.

The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office is investigating.

Could Australian police soon be rounding up retailers who sell World of Warcraft and other massively multiplayer online games?

That's one possible scenario.

As reported by the Syndey Morning Herald, a controversy has arisen Down Under as to whether MMOs need to be rated for content under Australian law.

Government officials believe that - like all other video games - they do. Meanwhile, the Aussie game industry has taken the opposite view. Ron Curry, who heads the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia told the newspaper that MMOs do not fall under content classification requirement because they are hosted outside of Australian territory:

There are different classification requirements for games depending on how they are accessed by consumers. For instance, for a game sold off the shelf, where the media material is stored on a disk in the package, the classification requirements are straight forward and you will see the classification label on the box.

However, in some instances the box sold in a retail outlet contains an access key to the game which can only be accessed online. If such a game is hosted locally it falls under the jurisdiction of the Broadcasting Services Act, but if it is hosted internationally, it’s classified in the country that hosts the game, rather than in Australia.

However, a spokesman for New South Wales Attorney-General John Hatzistergos (left) disagreed:

The NSW [game rating] legislation covers computer games bought online as well as those bought in stores, and treats single, multi-player and online games the same way... If there is any suggestion that any business is trading illegally, police need to know, and it should be reported.

Ditto, said a representative of Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland:

The National Classification Scheme does not distinguish between games based on whether or not they contain a single player component. Online games are computer games within the meaning of the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 and are covered under the existing legislation.

In the North American market, MMOs are rated by the ESRB just as are single-player games. Time and money are involved in that process. Those factors are likely behind the stance adopted by the Australian game publishers.

Here at GamePolitics, we love to see game consumer activism. But police in Japan accuse a local gamer of taking the concept way too far.

29-year-old Takao Ike apparently became disenchanted with game offerings from Hudson Entertainment. Ike sent nearly a dozen threatening messages to the Japanese publisher. In one he said that a bomb would kill everyone at the firm. In another he attempted to extort money.

In a confession to police, Ike said:

I did it because I posted my demands concerning the games, but the games didn't improve.

Ironically, Hudson publishes the Bomberman series.

Via: Kotaku

It's only January, but Illinois Rep. Robert Pritchard (R) already seems like a lock for Clueless Politician of the Year.

Pritchard, who absolved guns and instead blamed violent video games for last February's shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University, has outdone himself by attempting to amend a video game content law which was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge more than three years ago (i.e. - it no longer exists).

For an ironic humor bonus, the defunct law which Pritchard seeks to amend was originally pushed through by ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D), who was ousted today by the Illinois State Senate for corruption in office.

Longtime GamePolitics readers will recall that Blagojevich spearheaded his state's ill-fated attempt to legislate video game content. The big-haired Guv signed the game bill into law in July, 2005, only to have it ruled unconstitutional by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly in December of that year.

No one has given much thought to the Illinois game law since then - except, apparently, for Rep. Pritchard, who inexplicably sought to amend the Blago bill yesterday. Pritchard submitted language designed to shield minors from sexually explicit video games. From Pritchard's amendment:

Provides that the exhibition to or depiction to a minor of a sexually explicit video game is a petty offense in which a $1,000 fine may be imposed.

Nice sentiment, but embarrassingly bad execution.