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.

The trade group which represents game developers in the UK and Europe has slammed a British proposal to tax all users of broadband Internet services.

The measure, submitted by Communications Minister Lord Carter, is designed to compensate media companies for losses due to online piracy.

However, MCV UK reports that Richard Wilson, CEO of game developers organization Tiga, ridiculed the idea as, "the tax policy of Alice in Wonderland."

Here are more of Wilson's comments:

The idea that a universal tax on broadband bills should be imposed in order to compensate entertainment companies for losses incurred from piracy and illegal downloads is wrong in principle. Innocent people should not be required to pay heavier broadband bills because of the activities of criminals...

Government policy should aim to provide broadband... at the lowest possible price to consumers and businesses. The last thing that UK businesses need in the current economic climate is another tax... A Broadband tax makes no sense. It is the tax policy of Alice in Wonderland.

There will be no hiding behind a screen name for Chinese gamers, apparently.

According to brief report in People's Daily Online, China's notoriously Internet-repressive government will begin requiring online gamers to register using their real names.

A government official, Zhang Yijun, director of the General Administration of Press and Publication's Technology and Digital Publication Department, is cited as PDO's source.

Zhang also indicated that the operations of four online game companies have been suspended after Chinese government inspectors discovered that their software did not contain the required anti-addiction system.

UPDATE: IncGamers has more info:

...the real name registration system does not mean that gamers cannot use screen-names, but rather that their online gaming accounts must be linked to their real world identification number, which is issued by the government.

[A Chinese gamer] went on to explain that linking a gamer's online account to their ID number means the government can keep track of how long underage gamers are playing. Minors are limited to playing for three hours per day...

A six-year-old Virginia boy who tried to drive his family car to school told police that he learned to drive from playing Grand Theft Auto and Monster Truck Jam.

As reported by the Associated Press, the boy missed his school bus and took the keys to the family ride, a 2005 Ford Taurus. His mother was sleeping at the time. From the AP report:

He made at least two 90-degree turns, passed several cars and ran off the rural two-lane road several times before hitting an embankment and utility pole about a mile and a half from school.

 

"He was very intent on getting to school," said Northumberland County Sheriff Chuck Wilkins. "When he got out of the car, he started walking to school. He did not want to miss breakfast and PE."

The boy's parents were subsequently charged with child endangerment by police. The boy and his four-year-old brother were placed in protective custody.

GP: Giving GTA to a six-year-old? Unbelievable...

A 17-year-old Ohio gamer found himself in hot water after he allegedly threatened to commit suicide while talking to a Blizzard rep about an online game (presumably, World of Warcraft).

The Middletown Journal reports:

The teen was having an online conversation with a representative of Blizzard Entertainment, an online video game company, when he typed that "he was suicidal and that the game is the only thing he has to live for," according to the report.

The company representative called 911.

The juvenile told police it was a joke "to try to get what he wanted for the game," according to the report. He was then handcuffed and placed in a patrol car.

If you feel the urge to download Spore or any other game from publisher Electronic Arts, it's probably best to do so via Steam, rather than EA's online store.

That's because, as Ars Technica reports, EA offers consumers their choice of:

      a.) lousy purchase protection or

      b.) slightly less lousy, but needlessly expensive protection

At issue is the right to re-download your purchased game, in the event of, say a hard drive meltdown or switching over to a new PC. When buying through EA's online store, such rights are limited:

• re-download rights are offered for only six months after purchase, or...
• paying an additional $6.99 extends re-download rights to 24 months

As Ars Technica's  Michael Thompson writes:

Why, exactly, would something like the Extended Download Service even be in existence? Keeping records of who buys what and when they bought it seems like standard business practice and would appear to be one major advantage to buying digitally. Allowing customers to access these records and re-download what they've already paid for seems like a no-brainer; charging people for that option just seems slimy...

In this brave new world, could it be that having to keep track of a physical game disc is actually a better long-term prospect than purchasing something from the cloud?
 

Thompson notes that EA subcontracts its online game distribution chores out to Digital River. But that's of little consequence to the consumer, since EA is ultimately responsible for interactions with its customers.

Atari is no longer chasing file-sharers in the UK.

In August GamePolitics reported that five British publishers, most notaby Codemasters and Atari, were filing lawsuits against suspected P2P game uploaders. In one case, an unemployed immigrant mother of two, Isabella Barwinska, was ordered to pay £16,086 (roughly $30,000) for sharing a pinball game.

But a little sleuthing by gamesindustry.biz showed that the law firm employed by the publishers was a sleazy outfit, indeed. The story got even uglier when a pair of older, non-gaming couples were wrongly targeted for sharing games and, more recently, a Nazi porn movie.

Now, P2P advocacy site ZeroPaid reports that Atari has decided that waging war on consumers is bad business:

The lawsuit [against the older couple] was quickly dropped without comment by Atari, but the bad publicity still lingered and called into question the effectiveness of [law firm] Davenport Lyons' tactics.

Now it seems that Atari has decided to part ways with Davenport Lyons altogether, though it hasn't sworn off targeting file-sharers altogether.

Atari's legal department penned an email to UK website The Register, saying, "In relation to file-sharing, our position is that we always retain and reserve the right to protect our intellectual property from illegal copying and piracy. Whilst we are no longer working with Davenport Lyons, we continue to work with legal advisers to protect our rights."

GP: It's good to see that Phil Harrison has Atari focused on its future and not this kind of anti-consumer nonsense.

A pair of University of Minnesota roommates tracked down their stolen Xbox 360 following a recent break-in, reports MyFox Twin Cities.

Isaac Pacheco and Bobby Harris found their console missing after leaving a door unlocked. Fortunately, the thief wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. A police investigator subpoenaed Microsoft for the IP address from which their 360 was connecting. It turned out to be the same as that of Pacheco and Harris, indicating that the crook was someone who shared their Internet connection.

The students monitored their account's Xbox Live activity and eventually recognized a name, which led police to recover the stolen console from a neighbor's room. Harris told Fox: 

[We] just felt violated and mad at whoever did it...

 

I don't think we could have figured it out without [the suspect's] stupidity. I think that's safe to say. Because,  if you had taken even the smart enough precautions, I really don't think we would have been able to track it down...

 

It's really nice to know they didn't get away with it.

Say it ain't so, Houser Bros.

IGN reports that the upcoming PC flavor of Grand Theft Auto IV will install the dreaded SecuROM 7 copy protection on gamers' computers.

On an up note, however, the number of times that the game can be installed will not be subject to a limit. GamePolitics readers will recall that EA's much-awaited Spore came with a three-install limit. At least, it did until a gamer revolt prompted EA to relax the resrtiction.

Regarding GTA IV's SecuROM, an unnamed Rockstar spokesperson told IGN:

Having copy protection allows us to protect the integrity or our titles and future investments, but at the same time we have worked very hard to ensure that our solutions do not persecute the legitimate players of our games. Implemented correctly, SecuROM is the most effective form of disc based copy protection and allows us to manage authenticity on a global level for Grand Theft Auto IV...

 

GTA IV PC uses SecuROM for protecting our EXE until street date has passed, to ensure the retail disk is in the computer drive... Product Activation is a one time only online authentication when installing the game. GTA IV has no install limits for the retail disc version... and that version can be installed on an unlimited number of PCs by the retail disk owner... All versions of the game will use SecuROM for Product Activation. Downloadable versions of the game will have additional code if the vendor requires it, such as Valve's Steam program.

Rockstar also warned that pirated versions would not function properly:

Aside from the fact that warez are a great place to pick up a Trojan or key logger, using a cracked copy of GTA IV PC will result in varying changes to the game experience. These can range from comical to game-progress-halting changes.

It may be Turkey Day here in the United States, but the sister of a prominent German video game violence critic has termed Electronic Arts "that pig of a company" at a conference in Munich.

As reported by gamer.tm, Regina Pfeiffer made the remarks at the Computer Game and Violence conference late last week. Ms. Pfeiffer is the sister of Christian Pfeiffer, the head of Lower Saxony’s Criminological Research Institute (KFN). Regina Pfeiffer also works at KFN. According to the report, she was frustrated in her efforts to sue EA over a violent game (Dead Space?) because the publisher is not headquartered in Germany.

EA exec Martin Lorber fired back at Pfeiffer, saying:

Should Mrs. Regina Pfeiffer have actually lost her composure to the point of describing Electronic Arts as being a ‘a pig of a company’, then I can only recommend that she apologises in full – at least, [she should] if she wishes to be taken seriously again in the future...

The [conference] organisers had no interest in holding discussions with the people who manufacture the games that were being criticised there. Initially, I found this very regrettable, because I had told the conference that I would be willing to hold a question and answer session. But now that I see how low the level of discussion obviously was, I’m glad that I didn’t waste my time.
 

European GamePolitics reader Soldat Louis offers more insights into the controversial gathering:

There was a conference held in Munich about "computer games and violence", that reunited many researchers on the effects of violent games. Most were German, to the exception of [Iowa State's] Douglas Gentile. I created a thread [in GP Forums] and tried to translate the first reports on this conference as best as I could...

One longitudinal study presented at the conference (and published in the Journal of Media Psychology) claimed that "violent games" are the #1 risk factor in violent criminality... Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann took advantage of this conference to call for a ban on "extremely violent video games". And fourth, because despite all that, there were voices of the reason, such as Douglas Gentile and, to some extent, [journalist] Rainer Fromm.

For Soldat Louis' fascinating, full write-up, hit the jump...

When last we looked in on Eidos, it was over a little episode that came to be known as GerstmannGate.

The UK game publisher's ham-handed attempt to manipulate GameSpot's Kane & Lynch review scores unfairly cost long time journo Jeff Gerstmann his editor position and nearly brought the site down as outraged veteran staffers bailed one after another.

Recent reports indicate that Eidos is up to its old tricks, this time in regard to Tomb Raider: Underworld. Naturally, the Penny Arcade crew can't resist making Eidos the star of its latest cartoon.

Hit the link for the full version of The Truth is the New Lie...

Over at kombo, Nick Michetti has penned a thoughtful article titled How Barack Obama Can Bring the Change the Video Game Industry Needs.

While some of his ideas have merit, a suggestion that Obama regulate the used game market marred the piece for me. Michetti writes:

We also need to rein in the used games market and not with DRM. It is fundamentally unfair that developers are being robbed of profits for work that they've done. If the ESA will not offer a mandate, then we'll need the government to do so. Publishers and developers should be entitled to at least half of the price from the sale of every used game.

 

However, we need for there to be caps on used game prices and a Blue Book system for video games to prevent price gouging. We also need for developers to respect our tradition of the second hand market and have part of the mandate state that developers cannot use DRM to inhibit used sales.

Ignoring the fact that the ESA, which represents game publishers, has no wherewithal to issue any type of mandate to game retailers, I just don't get Michetti's point. Actually, I don't get the point of anyone who is whining about used game sales (like Epic's Michael Capps).

The reason is simple. Industry types - capitalists, all - who seek to restrict used game sales would interfere with the way markets work. And they want to interfere in a way that is purely for their own benefit and decidely anti-consumer. In this case, anti-gamer.

By way of example, let's say that a carpenter builds a table under contract from a furniture manufacturer. The carpenter gets paid and the manufacturer in turn wholesales the table to a furniture store. The furniture store adds their markup and sells the table to a homeowner. Later, the homeowner remodels and picks up a few bucks by peddling the table through an ad on Craigslist.

Now, replace "table" with "video game." The game developer is the carpenter. The game publisher is the furniture manufacturer. The game retailer is the furniture store. The gamer is the homeowner.

In both cases, there was an economic chain. Everyone got paid for the services. Are we now going to allow the carpenter and the furniture manufacturer to say to the homeowner, "Hey, you can't sell that table. We want everyone to be forced to buy a new table."

Of course not.

Along this line, I was impressed with a recent blog post by veteran game developer Soren Johnson (Spore, Civ series), who writes:

Many factors come into play when a consumer decides if a specific game purchase is worth the money, and one of those factors is the perceived value from selling it back as a used game. In other words, people will pay more for a new game because they know they can get some of that money back when they trade it in at the local Gamestop.

 

Importantly, this perceived value exists whether the consumer actually sells the game or keeps it. Wizards of the Coast has long admitted that the existence of the secondary market for Magic cards has long helped buoy the primary market because buyers perceive that the cards have monetary value.

UPDATE: Kudos to Nick Michetti, who dropped by to discuss his article in comments. I see that Kotaku also picked up the story.