Cricket 22 developer mocks pirates with fake bugs and thinks that hackers are not the same these days

Some developers like to create for pirates, so to speak, exclusive content: for example, in hacked Alan Wake on the main character wore a pirate armband, and in Serious Sam 3 invulnerable scorpions attacked freeloaders.
Now the mockery of pirates decided the creators of cricket sim Cricket 22 - and they even dared to question the pirates' skills! It was told by the head of the studio-developer Big Ant Studios Ross Symons.
First he quoted a user comment, \"Does anyone have a white screen error between matches in Cricket 22? How do I fix it?\" I know: buy the game, and all your white screen problems will magically disappear.We're aware that many people are wondering why pirates can play.
We've been tracking them for months now, and we just want them to go farther in their careers before we run the cross-play and slam the door in front of the pirates.
Three days later, Simons continued to talk about piracy and this time began responding in the comments:Turned on anti-piracy protection in Cricket 22 - Steam sales went up 300%.
Thanks to those who switched to the licensed version.
For those who are still thinking about it, I say: if you buy the game now, you will automatically save your progress.Next week there will be more pain for pirates.- What exactly does the anti-piracy protection do? - It gives a white screen.
We have other things in store where throws end in a guaranteed loss, there is a field with endless rain at the first bat, the controller dies and notifies you that the batteries are dead.
We can turn a lot of little things on and off :)I figured since people would steal the game anyway, we could at least have some fun at their expense.
They're all pretty toothless this time around and don't give much of a fight back.
The quality of engineering in the cracks realm is disappointing at this point.
The comments recalled that games are expensive for users in a number of regions - hence the high level of piracy.
Simons doesn't agree with this argument:We had a special price for Cricket 19 in India, we wanted to see if piracy would go down.
It didn't.
Even now, when Cricket 19 is asking about $5, piracy is still very high.
The experiment failed.
So for Cricket 22 in India, we only reduced the price by 30%.I want to add that if a person can run the game, that means they have spent a substantial amount on a PC or console.
Under those circumstances, I don't accept the \"I can't afford the game\" argument.
As of this writing, Simons' latest post about piracy goes like this:These constant battles with pirates have been one of my favorite pastimes in life.
Eventually the pirates will win, but I must say, the current generation of pirates is not as tough as it used to be.
They have no spirit, they have literally given up in a few days.
What a sad state of affairs! So, the pirates are challenged! But will there be anyone to answer it?

Metal Gear Rising has multiplied online - it seems that it's all about memes

Home / NewsYesterday 54 11K Share Metal Gear Rising has multiplied online - it seems that it's all about memes Gennady VorobievThe Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance game has no obvious reason for high online: it is nine years old, there is no multiplayer, and the average playthrough is about seven hours.
But online has grown in recent weeks anyway.
And it seems that we have memes to thank for this.The situation around MGR attracted the attention of the PlayTracker platform - it collects activity from different platforms in one place.
PlayTracker writes the following:The number of concurrent players in MGR is up 1,000% over the full month average in April 2021.The rapid growth in online began in January 2022.MGR has the highest achievement activity on all platforms since 2018.
Online claims can be double-checked on SteamDB - there is indeed an increase in the number of players over the past six months.
The last discount for MGR was in January 2022, and the surge was in February, March, and April.
In general, the increased activity is clearly not related to the sales.As PlayTracker believes, people have once again paid attention to MGR because of the memes - the game is indeed popular among online sharers.
The thesis is confirmed by Google Trends data: for example, in recent months the requests for Metal Gear Rising and Jetstream Sam have had the highest activity since January 2015.
There are a number of famous memes associated with MGR: for example, Senator Armstrong saying Nanomachines, son!; the characters Sandowner and Jetstream Sam with their specific smirks; the song Rules of Nature, which is superimposed over epic (and not so epic) moments from movies, anime, life, and other things.
It remains to be seen why the interest in MGR memes increased in 2022.
The game proved its memetic nature a few years ago, closer to the release: an article in the online encyclopedia Know Your Meme, dedicated to MGR, appeared in 2015.Anyway, our comments for Metal Gear Rising memes are open.
Feel free to do so!

The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War mobile trailer

Actually, The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War has been released some time ago, but the developers for some reason have prepared another pathos-filled trailer, conveying the mood of the game to potential users.
And everything would be fine, if not for a unique feature: the trailer degrades right before your eyes! At first, everything is usual beautiful: the voice-over tells us about the war for the Ring, and the audience is spilling out the CGI.
Then the CGI gets closer to the rank-and-file graphics from AAA games, then the animated illustrations are shown, then the working illustrations, and the cherry on the cake are the 3D models in T-pose with no textures.
No joke! As for The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War itself, it's a mobile freethinking strategy game from China's NetEase - judging by the screenshots, with a \"wait and see\" gameplay.
Just don't confuse it with The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth, the upcoming mobile freestyle RPG from American EA.
It's completely different!

Homer's divine battle against Flanders - The Simpsons with the right voiceover was added to God of War

God of War is out on PC, which means that the game can now be tormented with endless mods.
Among the latest fan fiction is the Simpsons, and with a very authentic voiceover! Kratos became Homer (and not with an axe, but with a baseball bat), Atrey - Bart, and the stranger at the beginning - Flanders.
Apparently, the models were taken from Simpsons: Hit & Run.
The characters' speeches were rewritten and re-voiced with the voices of the parody actors.
Now Homer shines with life wisdom: Don't forget to eat your broccoli, Bart! Use the snow, boy! But not yellow.Well, you tried something and failed miserably.
That's a valuable lesson: never try to do anything! The mod even has a slightly altered plot, tweaked for Simpsons realities: Flanders wants to drag Homer to a church service (or at least get Bart to pray).
Because of this, the battle with the boss takes on a particularly Homeric tone! The mod was made by user Omega Fantasy: he has already added Jack Sparrow, Dumgai, Sidjay with Bigsmoke, and so on to God of War.
It seems that you can't download the Simpsons yet: Omega Fantasy primarily releases mods for their Patreon subscribers and only puts their creations into the public domain some time later.

Now you can buy a gold Wii made for the Queen of Great Britain

There used to be such a company - THQ (not to be confused with THQ Nordic, that's different).
In 2009 they released BIG Family Games and tried to pull a publicity stunt with a gold Wii.
The trick failed, and the golden Wii disappeared to nowhere and reappeared 13 years later.
THQ tried to present a golden Wii containing a copy of BIG Family Games to the British Royal Family.
The publisher motivated its move as follows:BIG Family Games is an ultimative Wii game that brings together all members of the family, from grandparents to children.
The royal family is the most important family in the UK, so we felt they needed a copy of the new game.
But we thought Her Royal Majesty wouldn't want to play on an old console, so we ordered a special gold one.
We hope the queen and her family like the game! Product manager Danielle Robinson This is no joke: the console and its controller are covered in real 24-carat gold.As the Goldin site writes, Buckingham Palace has rather strict rules for correspondence regarding gifts.
But in this case, the gold Wii didn't reach the queen or even the palace.
The console was returned to THQ's offices several times and stayed there until the publisher went bankrupt in 2012.
The publisher was modestly silent about the fact that the gift had not reached its addressee, after which the golden Wii disappeared from the radar.
Five years later it was discovered by a collector who specializes in developer equipment.
He got the console thanks to his contacts with the former THQ.
However, the Wii didn't stay with the collector either - he sold it to a partner site Goldin.And now Goldin has put the gold Wii up for auction.
The console shows signs of wear and tear, but seems to work overall - it comes with a sensor, all the necessary cables, and even a copy of that BIG Family Games game (which, they say, turned out to be a very poor game).At the time of writing, bids start at $2,000 (or $2,400 if you immediately count the deductions to Goldin).
Along with the gold Wii comes a letter verifying the authenticity of the product and telling its story.

An early version of Star Wars: Battlefront 3 for PSP has appeared on the web (even though the game is actually long out)

The Star Wars: Battlefront dilation from the '0s was supposed to have a third part - development was in full swing, builds were gathered, but the game was eventually canceled.
Now this story has a funny twist: someone found an early version of Battlefront 3 for PlayStation Portable, and then we found out that this game has already been released.The basis of the case is a post on Reddit.
Someone called Miss Feepit says: Once upon a time, a relative of her fiancé worked for LucasArts and tested games.
One of them was Star Wars: Battlefront 3.
When the game was canceled, all things related to the project were sent to Skywalker Ranch.But one test disc for the PSP was forgotten, so Miss Feepit's fiancé kept it.
The build worked well: you could play AI battles, Capture the Flag, and Conquest, the main Battlefront mode.The groom dabbled with the build and abandoned it.
The couple stumbled across the disc again years later, began searching for information on the web and found that no one seems to have copies of this game specifically for the PSP.
This is why Miss Feepit turned to Reddit: I wonder how valuable such a find is, especially considering that it is still in working condition? Attached to Miss Feepit's post are photos of the disc and the build running on the PSP.
There is indeed the title Star Wars: Battlefront 3, but commenters identified in the pictures another game - Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron.
It was not cancelled - it was released in November 2009 on PSP and Nintendo DS.Here starts the second part of the story.
Elite Squadron was indeed once supposed to be called Battlefront 3, but the PSP version was prepared separately from the home version.
It successfully went through all the stages of production and managed to survive the death of the main Battlefront 3, which passed away sometime around 2008.It is believed that the work of handheld Battlefront 3 was passed on to the Rebellion studio.
In 2007 it released a spin-off Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron for PSP - apparently LucasArts was happy with this cooperation.
With Rebellion's help the handheld version of Battlefront 3 was renamed Elite Squadron and a lot of models and systems from Renegade Squadron were dragged into it and sent to be released as such.On Reddit they say that Battlefront 3 in Elite Squadron left some assets, game features, characters and story.
It turns out that Miss Feepit got her hands on a build of a live-action game, not a dead one.
However, this is such an early version, that back then Elite Squadron was still called Battlefront 3.The comments strongly advise Miss Feepit to create a disc image and put it on the web - both for the sake of the build to be seen by everyone, and for the sake of preserving the game history.
Who knows, maybe there are some more curious things lurking in this version, shedding light on the fate of Battlefront 3? Elite Squadron gameplay on PSP.

How a random elevator ride changed the ending of Half-Life: Alyx

The same podcast where writer Erik Wolpaw dreamed up Portal 3 touched on another topic, Half-Life: Alyx.
The developer told about the creation of the game's ending, that stirred up the fan community.
If you haven't understood yet, the end of Half-Life: Alyx game is in bunker, where we found out that G-Man is locked.
Alyx frees him, and then a \"retcon\" occurs: G-Man reverses the events from the Half-Life 2: Episode Two finale.
Whereas in the original Eli, Alyx's father, died there, in Alyx Eli remains alive, but Alyx goes missing - players are shown a new cliffhanger for the continuation of Half-Life (and it may even happen someday).According to Volpo, the outline of the plot has almost always been like this, but the \"retcon\" ending was born almost by accident when the writing team hit a dead end.
The chain of events was as follows: In 2017, Eric Volpo and his colleague Jay Pinkerton left Valve.
After the project began to gain momentum, Valve \"hired a screenwriter\"-perhaps Volpo is referring to Sean Vanaman and his studio Campo Santo, which Valve bought back in 2018.In general terms, the Alyx story was marked out in the early stages.
It was immediately known that the setting would be City-17, the player would be given the role of Alyx, G-Man was captured in a bunker, and Alyx would have to free him.Then came the playtests within Valve.
People liked the game itself, but the story somehow didn't stick together - the reviews showed that the story didn't work.
It lacked a good climax.
What happens when G-Man is released? \"It's like letting a god or devil out of jail, you're doing him a huge favor.
What does he have to give in return? Probably something grand,\" Volpo reasoned.It wasn't possible to rewrite the whole thing - budget constraints were a factor.
At about this point, Volpo (as a freelancer) and Pinkerton (as a full-time employee) got involved in Alyx again.
They were asked to build a story that roughly coincides with the developments that have already been at Valve.Above the edits to the story the writers thought about two weeks: how to reshape the story and what should be the climax? During this period, the iconic elevator ride happened.The problem was a big one.
\u003C...> One day I was riding in an elevator with one of the artists, Jim Murray, and I briefly laid out the problem in front of him.
And he replied: what if G-Man saves Eli? At first I thought that was idiotic.
But then I started to think about it, and it began to dawn on me that it wasn't such a bad idea.
\u003C...> That same morning I mentioned it to Jay and Sean.
Everyone who heard it resisted for about 30 seconds at first, and then realized: It solves the scripted problems, it's something big that [the main character should fight for].\u003C...> It was our best idea.
If [in discussions with other Valve employees] hated it, we didn't have a backup plan.
Maybe if everyone didn't like the idea, it would have killed the project.
Okay, I don't know what would have happened.
Luckily, everything worked out fine.Eric VolpoAccording to Volpo, of all the plot changes, \"retcon\" required the most new content and time.
For example, we had to rethink Episode Two's end scene, bring it to VR and recreate the robot Dog model - he doesn't appear in other Alyx episodes.
The Dog ended up being remade by Jim Murray.
\"It was punishment for Jim for his own idea,\" jokes Volpo.That's how the fate of the Alyx ending was decided in one elevator ride.
As Volpo adds, it's an example of the benefits of working in an office - people are constantly seeing each other, talking about all sorts of things and sharing perspectives.
This is much less likely to happen remotely.Kiwi Talkz podcast, where Volpo recalls the development of Half-Life: Alyx.