A Tottenham police officer has claimed that the London riots that saw buildings burn across the capital over the weekend were inspired by Grand Theft Auto.
That's according to UK trade bible MCV, which reports that the officer suggested to media this morning that the game had acted as a "catalyst" for the events.

A member of the Evening Standard newspaper confirmed that the GTA quotes were to be included in an article in tonight's edition of the free paper. The source would not rule out, however, the possibility of alterations being made before the paper hits presses.

In the same report, an Enfield resident is also credited with saying that GTA contributed to the civil unrest.

The Rockstar gangster series has, of course, been dragged to centre stage by the UK press following violent outbreaks in the past.

While the Daily Star didn't blame the killing spree that Raoul Moat embarked upon last July on GTA but it did claim that a GTA edition based on the horrific events was planned.http://www.computerandvideogames.com/314617/gta-inspired-tottenham-brixton-riots-suggests-police-officer/ ...

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says consumer excitement surrounding Modern Warfare 3 is on a scale he hasn't witnessed before.
The executive told Reuters he couldn't disclose the number of pre-orders the publisher has taken for the game, but that it is "meaningfully different" to those for last year's Call of Duty: Black Ops.

"It's sort of surprising because you always go into the launch of a new Call of Duty game with an expectation that ... it's a hard number to beat, but if you look at the player enthusiasm for Modern Warfare 3, I don't know if we've really seen anything like it in our 21-year history."

Retailer GAME said last month it expects MW3 to break all UK pre-order records and become the firm's bestselling title ever.

Check out the most recent Modern Warfare 3 screenshots here.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...sions-history/ ...

Pirates may be dirty, pillaging fiends, but they have high standards, according to a study from Copenhagen Business School and University of Waterloo. The study tracked 173 new games on BitTorrent over a three-month release period, finding 127 of these were downloaded by 12.7 million unique peers, and that a torrent's popularity was directly correlated to its review scores. The 10 most-downloaded games comprised over 5.3 million downloads, or 42 percent of the 127 pirated games.

Fallout: New Vegas had the most downloads (962,793) and an average review score of 83.7, followed by Darksiders (656,296) with a review score of 82.7. Tron: Evolutionhad the lowest score of the top 10 at 59.5, yet came in fifth place (496,349).StarCraft 2 had the highest review score at 89.5 and landed in seventh place (420,138). Review scores can't trump a title's notoriety, reputation or core fanbase, but researchers found "Metacritic Scores explain 10% of the variance in the unique peers per game on BitTorrent." In other words, the only vessel that these pirates are sailing on is a statistically positive relationship.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/06/st...-review-score/ ...

Independent development can be a long and laborious road, but Capsized creator Lee Vermeulen is hoping to make it a little smoother with Indievania, a new open platform where developers can sell and promote their indie darlings. Indievania is a direct-to-fan, DRM-free platform, where developers will interact directly with potential players, eliminating any middle-men and their exorbitant fees. In beta, Indievania is currently offering four games, BEEP, Steel Storm, and two of Vermeulen's Alientrapcreations, Capsized and Nexuiz Classic.

Indievania will host alpha, beta and prototype game versions for developers to raise title awareness, and asks only 9 percent for hosting a game, much lower than theindustry-standard 30 percent. Payments are only accepted through PayPal now, but Vermeulen plans to add Google Checkout and Amazon Payments later. Developers can submit a game and have it selling within one day, with complete control over their store page and price. Games will be featured, front-page style, according to popularity or overall quality.

Indievania sounds like a wonderful opportunity for independent developers -- at least, unlike Dracula's -vania, we don't think it will completely suck.http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/06/indievania-makes-a-comfy-home-for-indie-developers-and-their-gam/ ...

It's been a rough Black Hat conference for Google. First, FusionX used the company's homepage to pry into a host of SCADA systems, and now, a pair of experts have discovered a way to hack into Chrome OS. According to WhiteHat security researchers Matt Johansen and Kyle Osborn, one major issue is Google's vet-free app approval process, which leaves its Chrome Web Store susceptible to malicious extensions. But there are also vulnerabilities within native extensions, like ScratchPad -- a note-taking extension that stores data in Google Docs. Using a cross-site scripting injection, Johansen and Osborn were able to steal a user's contacts and cookies, which could give hackers access to other accounts, including Gmail. Big G quickly patched the hole after WhiteHat uncovered it earlier this year, but researchers told Black Hat's attendees that they've discovered similar vulnerabilities in other extensions, as well. In a statement, a Google spokesperson said, "This conversation is about the Web, not Chrome OS. Chromebooks raise security protections on computing hardware to new levels." The company went on to say that its laptops can ward off attacks better than most, thanks to "a carefully designed extensions model and the advanced security available through Chrome that many users and experts have embraced."

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/06/whitehat-security-hacks-into-chrome-os-exposes-extension-vulner/ ...

Blizzard has raised $2 million for the Japanese tsunami relief effort with a World Of Warcraft virtual pet.
The Cenarion Hatchling went on sale for $10 in May, with Blizzard pledging 100 per cent of revenue generated before July 31 to the Red Cross provide assistance to victims of the disaster.
"Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of World of Warcraft players around the world," the company said in a statement. "We've raised a total of more than $1.9 million to support the ongoing earthquake and tsunami relief efforts in Japan."
"The community responded by opening up their hearts and wallets wide. Thanks again for your support and for helping to make an impact on the lives of those affected by these events."
The tsunami that struck Japan earlier this year had a considerable impact on the country's games industry, with Sega, Tecmo Koei, Konami, Sony, Nintendo, Namco Bandai and Square Enix all reporting a sharp decline in share prices in its aftermath.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...th-virtual-pet
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via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-17360.html

A new version of OpenTTD has been released.
OpenTTD is a clone of the Microprose game "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", a popular game originally written by Chris Sawyer. It attempts to mimic the original game as closely as possible while extending it with new features.


Quote:
1.1.2-RC2 (2011-07-30)

Fix: Cost of adding an extra road type to a bridge or tunnel was undercalculated [FS#4680, FS#4681] (r22700, r22699)

Fix: Only insert cleared object tiles into _cleared_object_areas if clearing actually succeeds, else subsequential tests of the same tile will be skipped and considered successful [FS#4694] (r22698)

Fix: When building a house it could be built at the wrong place if multitile houses failed some tests (r22697)

Fix: [Network] Failed network address resolving could trigger temporary freezes [FS#4697] (r22696, r22695)

Fix: [NewGRF] The override managers were not reset in some cases like creating a new scenario [FS#4691] (r22693)

Fix: [NewGRF] Aircrafts defined with IDs above the default aircrafts always defaulted to passenger cargo (r22690)

http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-17360.html ...

If you play multiple games via Valve's Steam service, you'll have probably noticed it repeatedly installing what would appear to be the same version of DirectX over and over again. Annoying, right? Blame Microsoft.

Valve has pointed the finger in a lengthy explanation of why Steam is required to perform these repeated installs, pissing off PC users obsessed with running a streamlined OS in the processes.

"There are over 40 different versions of the D3DX library for D3D9 alone, and many more for D3D10 and 11 as well. Each game that uses the D3DX helper library is linked to a specific version," said Valve (thanks Destructoid).

"We can't stop, it's required due to a bad versioning/packaging scheme as well as bad redistribution licensing terms on the D3DX libraries," they added, but said there are small changes Steam can make to improve the situation.

"Steam could be smart enough to know if an exactly matching version of the dx installer is already downloaded and share that content so you don't download it with each game," they said, but went on to admit that "any improvement to avoid duplicates isn't an immediate priority, but we may be able to improve it slightly in the future".

Here's the full statement for those of you who want the nitty gritty details:

"Running [the DX installer] is not a matter of making sure your overall DirectX install being up-to-date. Microsoft has a helper library with D3D called D3DX. You'll find binaries for this like d3dx9_43.dll in your Windows\system32 folder. There are over 40 different versions of the D3DX library for D3D9 alone, and many more for D3D10 and 11 as well. Each game that uses the D3DX helper library is linked to a specific version. As such the game must run the correct D3D installer version that it was specifically compiled with to ensure the binaries exist. Even if a later version of the binary is already installed, that version cannot be used, and even if your DirectX install is up-to-date because you've run a more recent version of the installer that is not guaranteed to have installed all previous versions. Even worse, if a version is installed for x86 it doesn't guarantee the same version is installed for x64, so 64 bit and 32 bit games may need to run the same exact installer version but targeting different platforms when run.

"Furthermore, Microsoft's licensing terms prevent anyone from distributing the files directly, the only way to distribute them is to run the installer, that's also the only supported method from Microsoft to check that the correct version installed. Trying to manually check for the correct versions is extremely complicated because there are numerous files that must all be present and individual system configuration options like dll search paths complicate the situation.

"In addition, the dependencies and required checks may change in each new version of the D3DX runtime. The code to check correctly and repair broken installs all exists in the installer and running it is a guarantee that the correct binaries will exist when you run the game and prevents lots of bad cases where a game would fail to launch with an obscure error if a windows install was either missing the correct version or somehow corrupted in the past.

"Games which don't use the D3DX helpers (such as Source engine games) don't require running the annoying installer on first launch as they only depend on major d3d9/10/11 versions being installed. However, games that do use D3DX must run it as it's the only way Microsoft has allowed for distributing and checking the version info on the files.

"So that's why we do it for lots of game installs. We can't stop, it's required due to a bad versioning/packaging scheme as well as bad redistribution licensing terms on the D3DX libraries.

"The one thing that could be made better on our side is that Steam could be smart enough to know if an exactly matching version of the dx installer is already downloaded and share that content so you don't download it with each game. Since the installer is relatively small compared to most game installs that wouldn't be a huge win though and requires a good deal of new complexity for partners in how they package up their games and manage installation dependencies.

"You'd also still end up with lots of different versions of the installer, since as discussed above they are often targeting different D3DX versions and as such are all required. As such any improvement to avoid duplicates isn't an immediate priority, but we may be able to improve it slightly in the future."

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...t-dx-installs/ ...