An unnamed Latvian firm has been fined £50,000 for malicious Android apps based on the Angry Birds, Assassin's Creed and Cut The Rope franchises.
The BBC reports that the apps, which showed up last November on the then Google Android Market, looked like the popular games but were actually designed to cheat consumers with expensive SMS charges.
People who downloaded the app couldn't open the game, and then received three text messages, each costing £5. The firm has also been ordered to refund users £28,000.
Unlike Apple and Blackberry, apps submitted to the Google Play store do not go through an approvals process.
"There is a wider issue here. There is malware out there which can gain total access to your phone," Nitin Lachani of PhonepayPlus said.
"A cyber criminal could then deliver apps to your phone which could tap into your phone calls, your messages"

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...p-fined-50-000 ...

Another year, another cramped convention centre in Los Angeles playing host to the console business and its hangers on. It's loud, it's over-the-top, but does it still speak for the games industry as we know it in 2012? Is it a stubborn throwback to the days when consoles ruled the Earth, a show that reluctantly acknowledges the growth in mobile, tablet and online gaming but makes no bones about the preference for a publisher pissing contest? Or is it a show slowly changing with the times, like the creaking console businesses gradually facing a digital, portable future?
The E3 spectacle reverberates through the games business in June every year, but is it still representative and relevant to an industry that has changed almost entirely since the start of the current console cycle? Here, in our latest roundtable, GamesIndustry International's writers drape press passes over their shoulders and wade through the halls of the LA Convention Centre…
James Brightman
"E3 is beginning to feel a bit like a dinosaur, a relic of a past golden age"
James Brightman

The games industry has changed dramatically since the first E3 Expo in 1995, put together by the Interactive Digital Software Association (now the Entertainment Software Association). Why, then, hasn't the annual trade fair evolved with it? The world of consoles isn't the only game in town in 2012, and yet only a handful of exhibitors at E3 are purely social/mobile focused. Truth be told, E3 is beginning to feel a bit like a dinosaur, a relic of a past golden age.
That's not to say that consoles are dead, and that E3 is fundamentally useless. E3 still serves its purpose as the grand spectacle that it is, drawing huge attention to the industry for a few days each year, and preparing journalists, retailers and retail buyers for the upcoming holiday season. But the fact is that it's misrepresenting what the games industry actually is today. Whereas GDC appears to be broadening its scope and shining a spotlight on social and mobile companies, E3 almost seems to be doing the opposite. Like an ostrich with its head plunged into the sand, the ESA seems oblivious to this.
David Radd
The painful on-stage scripted banter is enough to make you cringe yourself inside out.

E3 is still a very important event to the AAA gaming industry. When it was running in a diminished form for a couple of years, it left a hole where a lot of positive mainstream media coverage usually emerged from. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft benefit hugely from the attention on their press conferences and it's still the best place for people in the games industry to meet and hash out business.
However, E3 has not done a good job of representing the entirety of what gaming is these days. Indie, mobile and social titles are hugely underrepresented. Also, the importance of the event has been diminished by major publishers making announcements at other times of the year. Since they no longer have to represent themselves to a large number of buyers (the true reason E3 was created) they show off games on their own timetable and often at their own events. Finally, other major industry events, sort of "mini-E3s" have stolen some of the thunder of E3 (like Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show, PAX and the Eurogamer Expo) allowing publishers to have multiple touchpoints with consumers and not try to cram all their major announcements in one week in June.
E3 still represents a part of the gaming market worth billions of dollars, and it's value in the intangibles for that part of the industry is such that it will likely still occur for the rest of the decade. However, the event faces obsolescence if it doesn't include much more than the largest, most expensive titles in an industry about so much more than retail these days.
Ben Strauss
I'm still iffy on why there seems to be continued discussion on the 'end of E3' as we know it. The lineup this year from all three big publishers, all three manufacturers and a goodly amount of PC and mobile developers look pretty darn impressive. I mean sure, the landscape is continuing to change, but for companies to blow off E3? That's for Valve and Blizzard to do. For everyone else, this is the Super Bowl (and Valve and Blizzard only show up when they intend to steal the show).
E3 is just going to see old hands leave and new talent come in, and on different platforms. More attention will eventually be paid to mobile titles, less (if any) attention to an utterly useless middle-market. This isn't about a drastic change - this is about ebb and flow. This talk comes up at the end of each generation it seems, and I don't see this being another early '80s scenario for gaming. Next year will more than likely kill any of this discussion.
Steve Peterson
The answer is contained within the question; once you find it necessary to ask if E3 is still relevant, it is apparent that it's not as relevant as it was. More precisely, E3 is both more relevant and less relevant than it once was.
E3 is more relevant to publishers of console games, who are facing the fourth year of a declining market and the most perilous hardware transition in 20+ years. E3 is their best chance to draw attention to their products and boost their company image to the mainstream media; it's ...

The financial guidance offered by Take-Two means that Grand Theft Auto V will be released by April 13^th at the latest.
That’s the predictions of Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz.
“Full year FY13 guidance for net revenues is $1.75bn-$1.85bn,” Creutz observed. "We believe management could not provide this level of guidance with any degree of confidence if it did not anticipate shipping Grand Theft Auto V during FY13.
"Take-Two's announced line up of titles for FY13 was largely unchanged, including continuing to resist announcing a release date for Grand Theft Auto V. We are modelling a ship date for Grand Theft Auto V in the last two weeks of March 2013."
Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter agrees, adding: "Guidance strongly implies the release of Grand Theft Auto V in FY13. Although management did not provide a release date or window for GTA V, its FY13 revenue guidance is unattainable without a huge seller from Rockstar.
"Management disclosed that the FY13 revenue mix by label is estimated to be 60 per cent Rockstar Games and 40 per cent 2K Games. Rockstar is expected to contribute $1.1bn, with $300m from Max Payne (including DLC) and $150m from catalogue.
“The remaining $650m is simply not possible without the release of GTA V well before FY end.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/take-...ly-2013/096595 ...

Sony will strike a deal with OnLive or Gaikai at E3 next month for PlayStation cloud gaming, according to reports.
The platform-holder will announce a new game streaming service for 'PlayStation hardware' at the annual trade show in Los Angeles, according to VG247.
It's not clear whether this service could be for PS3 or PS Vita, both, or the next PlayStation home console.
Both OnLive and Gaikai offer cloud gaming streaming services. These allow users to stream full games or demos instantly online without the need for discs or hardware installations. Gamers can currently use devices such as PCs, TVs, smartphones, laptops and tablets to stream games online.
Last year OnLive said it had talked with Sony and Microsoft regarding a potential console collaboration.
Sony's E3 2012 press conference takes place on June 4th.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/plays...-for-e3/096603 ...

Randy Pitchford, president of Aliens: Colonial Marines andBorderlands developer Gearbox Software, told the audience at Nordic Game 2012 this morning how he turned Valve’s Half-Lifefrom a single PC game into a franchise.
Founded in 1999, Gearbox’s first project was the Half-Lifeexpansion Opposing Force, and the studio would go on to produce another add-on in Blue Shift, as well as porting the original to PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast – the latter of which was never released, despite being finished and put through certification. Gearbox was also involved in development of Counter-Strike and its follow-up, Condition Zero.
After explaining that he felt like a fish out of water in Malmo, as a resident of Dallas, Texas – “the oldest thing in a 50 mile radius of my house is where they filmed Dallas; it was built in the ‘70s” – and enthusing about the Swedish Kroner (“I love the coins especially, I used to be a magician”), Pitchford explained how a brand new studio got its hands on such a respected licence.
“Valve was a new company, it had just shipped Half-Life,” Pitchford explained. “They wanted to be like Id Software, and wanted an expansion pack but had no capacity to do it themselves, and no-one to give it to either. So I flew up to Seattle and sat with Gabe Newell, and told him my idea.
“The pitch was simple: ‘Half-Life was awesome. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could play the same timeline from the perspective of one of the soldiers? Oh, and we can do it for you’.
“I wanted to spark Gabe’s imagination. Any time you get a creator thinking about something, they get excited about it too.”
With Newell won over, Pitchford’s next task was convincing Sierra, Valve’s publisher, that his new studio could be trusted. He, and several of his team, had experience in the field after working onDuke Nukem 3D at 3D Realms, but Sierra’s main concern was how much money he needed.
“I asked for $2 million, which was an insane amount of money,” he explained. “But I said, give me a day and I’ll do you a proper proposal. It came to $900,000 – the guy thought, ‘Shit, this is [more] than half off!’
“Even that was $250,000 above our projections, there was a float in there. These are cheap tricks you can use on anyone. I used to be a magician, did I mention that?”
Working for Valve, Pitchford said, “was key in estabilishing credibility in working on other people’s stuff. It was five, six years before Valve put out a sequel; we helped them turn a game into a franchise.”
With its reputation as a safe pair of hands established, Gearbox went on to make PC versions of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 forActivision, 007 Nightfire for EA, and Halo for Microsoft. The studio then moved into IP creation, with Brothers In Arms and Borderlands – and Pitchford says Gearbox is hard at work on other new IP as well.
Gearbox has struck a fine balance, then: able to work on other people’s properties as well as create its own, the latter affording it creative freedom and the former able to secure licences like Aliens. Colonial Marines - a game that was delayed last week, slipping from its vague autumn slot to next February. Gamers might be disappointed, but Pitchford is adamant on making the best game he can, and his staff won’t mind either: 40 per cent of company profit is shared among the staff, based not on performance but on time spent at the studio or on the project that brought in the cash.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/how-...life-franchise ...

Namco Bandai's My Little Sister Can't Possibly Be This Cute Portable Can't Possibly Continue debuted at number one in this week's Japanese charts.
My Little Sister knocks last weeks chart topper, Mario Party 9, to number two, while Atlus' Persona 2 Eternal Punishment enters at number three.
Brothers Conflict Passion Pink was the only other new entry in the top ten, setting up stall at number five.
01. My Little Sister Can't Possibly Be This Cute Portable Can't Possibly Continue (Namco Bandai)
02. Mario Party 9 (Nintendo)
03. Persona 2 Eternal Punishment (Atlus)
04. Fire Emblem Awakening (Nintendo)
05. Brothers Conflict Passion Pink (Idea Factory)
06. Super Mario 3D Land (Nintendo)
07. Mario Kart 7 (Nintendo)
08. Monster Hunter 3G (Capcom)
09. Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City (Capcom)
10. Kid Icarus Uprising (Nintendo)

http://www.edge-online.com/news/my-l...s-japan-charts ...

VIA Technologies, ostensibly in an attempt to compete with the Raspberry Pi (if you can believe all those bloggers out there), is releasing a tiny single board computercalled the APC Android PC. The VIA website for the APC is down, so just searchGoogle News for all the details.
The specs are somewhat similar to the Raspberry Pi – HDMI out, Ethernet, SD card, and a few USB ports – but that’s about where the similarities end. The APC runs a version of Android 2.3 customized for mouse and keyboard input where the RasPi runs Linux. The APC can only display 720p video (compared to the RasPi’s 1080p), and doesn’t have GPIO pins that can be used with Arduino shields.
We’re pretty sure VIA is going after the media center PC market here with a low-power board that can easily stream movies or a season of TV shows over a network. At $50, we’re sure the APC will find a home in a few homebrew devices, MAME machines, and carputers.
If anything, this only portends a whole bunch of single-board ARM/Linux computers riding on the coat tails of the RasPi. That’s awesome no matter how you look at it.
If a $50 Android board doesn’t whet your whistle, VIA also released a Mini-ITX board with 12 hardware serial ports. Hardware serial ports are getting rare nowadays despite how useful they are for embedded applications. 12 (with riser cards, natch) serial ports seems overkill, but we’re sure some Hackaday reader has been looking for this board for a while now.

http://hackaday.com/2012/05/23/apc-a...-raspberry-pi/ ...

The Vtech InnoTab is a child-sized tablet computer built for kids. Apart from being the ideal solution to keeping the grubby, sticky hands of nieces and nephews away from proper ‘adult sized’ tablets, it can also serve as a Linux tablet perfect for a few homebrew apps. [Mick] picked up an InnoTab for his son, but , we’re thinking it has become a toy for the father and not the son.
[Mick] cracked open the InnoTab and soldered a few wires to a pair of pins that connect to a TTL level converter and then to a TV. There’s a full Linux shell running on [Mick]‘s new tablet, encouragement enough for him to start porting ScummVM, the engine behind famous LucasArts point-and-click adventure games of the early 90s.
Right now, it’s still very much a work in progress, but [Mick] has full screen support and a virtual keyboard working; more than enough to enjoy [video=youtube;4yWnnk9fyJE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HaYZsc66Bk"]Day of the Tentacle[/URL] andPutt Putt Goes to the Moon,something we’re sure his son will love.

http://hackaday.com/2012/05/24/putti...vtech-innotab/ ...

Yahoo on Wednesday launched a new browser called Axis and researchers immediately discovered that the company had mistakenly included its private signing key in the source file, a serious error that would allow an attacker to create a malicious, signed extension for a browser that the browser will then treat as authentic. The mistake was discovered on Wednesday, soon after Yahoo had launched Axis, which is both a standalone browser for mobile devices as well as an extension for Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. ... Within hours of the Axis launch, a writer and hacker named Nik Cubrilovic had noticed that the source file for the Axis Chrome extension included the private PGP key that Yahoo used to sign the file. That key is what the Chrome browser would look for in order to ensure that the extension is legitimate and authentic, and so it should never be disclosed publicly.

http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/05/2...rome-extension ...