Update: The BBC is reporting that Ubisoft has rushed to patch the exploit unearthed by a Google engineer in its Uplay DRM. The company also issued instructions for Uplay users:

"We recommend that all Uplay users update their Uplay PC application without a Web browser open," Ubisoft said. "This will allow the plug-in to update correctly. An updated version of the Uplay PC installer with the patch also is available from Uplay.com."

EA has decided to yank both Rock Band and Rock Band Reloaded from the Apple App Store next week, the company revealed. The games and the songs that users have downloaded for it will be unavailable after July 31, though local play will still be available. Electronic Arts said that it was pulling the apps because its licensing agreement with game developer Harmonix was coming to an end.

Update: Blizzard strongly denies that it banned players using Linux in conjunction with WINE to play Diablo III. Here's what they told Ars Technica:

According to a report in the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph video game retailer GAME has announced that its Australian division was going into "voluntary administration." The company has chosen Pricewaterhouse Coopers to deal with its current financial complications, though the accounting firm said that the 92 stores in the country would continue to run while things were sorted out. The company employs about 500 people in Australia.

According to this Kotaku report Microsoft is refusing to give some customers a refund for the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft. Why would people want a refund? Well, yesterday Kotaku uncovered the fact that if you don't own a high definition television set then the game won't allow you to play split-screen multiplayer with friends.

Users of the iOS version of Rock Band were surprised to receive a notice from the game warning them that it was going to expire on May 31. First noted by this Reddit thread and pictured to your left, the notice warned users that the $4.99 app was going to expire at the end of the month, but iTunes is still selling the app without such a warning and EA is incommunicado on the story as of this writing.

A California woman has filed a complaint in state court (Los Angeles) against Verizon, claiming that an upgrade to her DSL service she was talked into did not provide her with the speeds and service she was promised. Patricia Allen of Santa Monica filed the lawsuit on behalf of herself and other DSL customers "in California who are located a certain distance from a Verizon office." What does being a certain distance from a Verizon office have to do with it? When you are a DSL customer it's the difference between night and day.

According to a CNET UK report, Sony's Xperia S phone has a serious issue with heat that can turn the handset's screen yellow if it gets too hot. In a statement issued to CNET UK, Sony confirmed that it knows about the issue, but also said that the problem only affects a small number of Xperia S handsets.

This morning Eurogamer ran a report on a number of users complaining that their Xbox 360 Achievements and Gamerscores were mysteriously being wiped. As you can imagine users were emailing them and other outlets franticly detailing their losses and how they had contacted Xbox Live support.

 The Angry Joe show is pretty angry and anyone with basic English skills should note the tone of his show with the use of an adverb as his first name. Still Joe has a lot to be angry about with Street Fighter X Tekken, because, as he notes in his latest video, it's not like Capcom hasn’t faced the outrage of fans over the practice he is ranting and raving about ("DLC" on the disc) in the past...

Update: Capcom issued the following statement to MCV concerning the locked DLC content found on the retail disc for Street Fighter X Tekken (thanks Andrew Eisen):

Online file-sharing company RapidShare has apparently slowed down the connection of users who are not registered members. These free users have been complaining about reduced download speeds during transfers. Some users have reported speeds as slow as 30/kbs. RapidShare says that the reason for this is simple enough: Throttling these users drive pirates away from their service. They claim that, since the close of MegaUpload, they have seen a major uptick in traffic, and some of it is only interested in sharing and downloading illegal software.

There's nothing quite so joyous as winning a much coveted prize from a contest, so it was with much glee that some customers who entered into Taco Bell's PS Vita contest received an email saying that they had won. But, as it turns out, they didn't win, and Taco Bell is now apologizing for what happened. They claim that someone "tampered" with the competition, in turn causing a bunch of notifications to be sent out to contest participants. The company later sent them an email saying that they had not won the contest.

Sony says that it won't make the same mistakes again with the PS Vita, but in the same breath it says that it won't support legacy software from the PSP on its new platform. With the launch of the PSP Go, the company simply decided that its UMD format was no longer going to be supported on new hardware and so the PS Vita continues that tired old trend. The sad part is it is doing this in the U.S. and European markets - the markets where the new system will ultimately shine brighter than in Japan.

According to an admin on the game's official forums (as reported by Joystiq), there is a glitch in Gotham City Imposters that resets earned stats and unlocked content. The thread already has 63 pages of angry Gotham City Imposters owners complaining at length about the problem.

Ubisoft has issued an apology to customers who were affected by server moves this week that affected games requiring "always connected" DRM - even when they tried to play single player games. Because Ubisoft uses a DRM scheme on some games that require a constant connection, shutting the servers down that these games require made them unplayable.

It looks like those UMDs you bought for your PlayStation Portable will be completely useless if you decide to upgrade to a PS Vita.

Destructoid points out in this story that Ubisoft's plan to take down servers next week shows why "always on" DRM is a bad idea. During the maintenance the publisher has planned next week, any game that has "always online" DRM will not be playable. That means that legitimate copies of games won't work. Which games will be broken next week?

Ubisoft has found itself on the defensive yet again after customers in Europe who bought the latest Anno strategy game complained about its digital rights management software. Reports surfaced last week that the DRM, which offers a limited number of activations, were being used up if users changed their hardware configurations.

Online retailer Amazon has risen slightly among the top companies for customer satisfaction while Netflix takes a significant nose dive, according to an annual holiday online retail satisfaction report released today from analytics firm ForeSee.

This Penny Arcade post details one of the worst public relations train wrecks in history. It all starts with a customer enquiring about a controller he paid for well in advance, but quickly escalates into the kind of conversation you don't want to be a part of. Honestly I’ve seen better customer service from people at the DMV..

Sony is apologizing this week to Japanese consumers who have bought its new PlayStation Vita hand-held, after some found that their systems were having a host of serious technical problems.

There's a nasty bug in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for Wii that can utterly break the game for owners if they are not careful. Nintendo has acknowledged the bug and has released some methods for avoiding it altogether. The glitch occurs when players complete a very specific sequence of events late in the game. The solution of course contains spoilers about the game, so if you are sensitive about that then you should probably stop reading now.

***Spoiler Alert***


 

Activision's social network that launched with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 continues to have problems. Call of Duty Elite, the much vaunted social and stat tracking service is still experiencing problems and continues to prevent players from logging in. The service has been operational sporadically since launch, which Activision has blamed on what it is calling "over subscription to the servers." The service's level of operation is often listed as 'intermittent,' much to the chagrin of players who are paying for it.

A Shanghai activist is accusing Apple's Beijing store of passing old iPhones as brand new. According to a story in the Shanghai Daily, activist Wang Hai - who is representing two citizens - filed a lawsuit against Apple in a Chinese court accusing the firm of selling refurbished iPhones. Both purchases were made at the company's store in Beijing, China.

While many customers would have pre-ordered the PlayStation 3 version anyway, back in June of this year EA promised that it would include a full version of Battlefield 1943 on the disc as an added incentive to buy it. Yesterday early adopters of the PS3 version figured out that EA broke its promise because the game was not actually on the disc. To add insult to injury EA made no excuses about the fact, nor did they offer an apology to customers.

RAGE may represent the first original IP for id Software since 1996, but the PC version of the game has been marred with so many technical issues that many critics are saying that the game could have used months of additional development and play testing. Those comments are not isolated to the PC version either (long load times are a serious issue with the PS3 version from what I've been told). The game launched earlier this week on various platforms including the PC. Out of the gate PC users noticed some serious issue with the game such as screen tearing and texture issues.

A fake Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for iOS has managed to piss off a lot of consumers and many are wondering how Apple allowed a game that has been in the App Store system for nearly six weeks to get past its approval process. The bogus game app claims to be an official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game and is the work of a Vietnamese developer known as Dang Van Phuong. The license for the popular franchise is currently held by Nickelodeon, who are working on a brand new animated property to be released in 2013.

According to Game, Set, Watch, online retailer Amazon has stopped taking orders for the Atlus game, Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Apparently customer complaints over damaged product reached a point where Amazon took notice. The company said that it would halt its offering of the game "because customers have told us there may be something wrong with our inventory of the item, the way we are shipping it, or the way it's described here."

At a press conference in Tokyo, Japan yesterday, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada said that the entire Final Fantasy brand has been damaged by its latest MMO title. Final Fantasy XIV, which launched in September of 2010 on PC, did not do as well as anticipated due mostly to serious technical issues, connectivity issues, and bugs at launch. This caused the PS3 version of the MMO to be delayed as the development team put its focus on fixing problems and generally improving the game to make customers happy.