I have been playing World of Warcraft again in preparation for the forthcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion (two words: panda monks!). For years I played in European servers the same character, an Alliance Human mage who then switched sides and joined the Horde as a Blood Elf, and finally settled Read more
A science fiction author has sued games company Ubisoft for copyright infringement in its wildly popular game series Assassin’s Creed. The plaintiff, one Mr John L Beiswenger, is asking for either $1,050,000.00 USD for infringement, or up to $5 million USD for wilful infringement of his novel Link. It would Read more
(Via Greg Lastowka) The Criminal Division of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands has delivered a ground-breaking ruling which declares that virtual goods from the popular online player game Runescape are to be considered goods in accordance to Dutch law, and therefore are subject of theft and criminal enforcement (Google Read more
The use of the loaded question may imply that I believe they should. I shall be frank and admit that this is precisely the intention of this post, but please allow me to explain my reasoning before you dismiss such a ludicrous notion. What inspired me to write this post Read more
Sony has been in the news recently quite a lot in the IP front. First, they have been served with a serious injunction in Europe regarding a patent dispute with electronics giant LG involving the PS3 (Jas Purewal at Gamer/Law and Florian Mueller have been following the issue). Then Sony Read more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circle has decided on the interesting and important case of MDY v Blizzard. First some background information. In December 2006, Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, sent a cease-and-desist letter to MDY, the makers of a cheat program called Glider. This Read more
I do not have much to talk about this morning, but I have been unhealthily amused by the game Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock. Here is Sheldon explaining the game to us: Scissors cuts Paper. Paper covers Rock. Rock crushes Lizard. Lizard poisons Spock. Spock smashes Scissors. Scissors decapitates Lizard. Read more
A mage contemplates his doom in Ulduar I have been reading about a bizarre occurrence that took place in World of Warcraft back in April that has got me thinking about morality, contractual terms, open data, and regulation (whoever said that you could not have serious discussions about games? ) Read more
Old-time favourite game City of Heroes has made a giant innovative leap by being the first massively multiplayer online game to implement user-generated gaming. While other games and virtual worlds offer user-generated content, what makes City of Heroes unique is that it has created a system that allows players to Read more
An interesting development in the latest cybercrime trends has been a marked increase in attacks against online games and virtual worlds, as I have posted previously. One element that I have missed in the discussion about game hacking has been the methods with which cyber-criminals obtain login details and passwords Read more