Forbin

From reading his twitter feed it sounds like his attempt to contact them included posting on the steam community forums, and PM'ing a forum moderator. If you've used the Steam forums, you could understand why that's not the best way to share important information.

No, my basis is that the claim is that he was ignored for 4 months by Valve over a security concern. Which i consider highly unlikely when you look at how connected they are to the community.Claiming you're being ignored by Valve is like saying you've been turned down by a prostitute. It's possible, but there's probably more to the story.

It's not only steam client though, it challenges new browsers accessing the steam site as well.

Not sure how it was related. And as CaptainFish points out, Steam guard essentially does this whenever you try to use steam from a new device.Also, I give Valve a lot more credit than simply being the best of the worst. They're one of the only companies that not only believes that treating customers well generates business, but it drives their business decisions as well. I still believe that this guy was more concerned with getting credit for his 1337 skillz than actually addressing any security problem. What is the real risk here anyways? If someone managed to brute force your session id, and you failed to protect your account with Steam Guard, they'd be able to go to purchase a game as a gift and see your billing address. They wouldn't see your credit card, just the last 4 digits. The most damage they could do is get you VAC banned or purchase games on your account. Which would suck, but could also be fixed by the Steam billing department. They do need to make it more convenient to clear out your credit card information. If not for this reason, then at least for all the mom's out there that want to buy things for their kids without giving them a blank cheque. I'm still not on the bandwagon with full transparency for everything. I am grateful for white hat hackers that spend their free time helping make services I use more secure, but I don't feel like everything is better when it's exposed. And I believe that people have the right to do anything with hardware they purchase, and that the laws should re-enforce those ownership rights. But I can thank GeoHot for having Sony remove Linux support from my PS3. Then later having it bricked by a mandatory firmware update meant to plug holes exposed by hackers. Yeah Sony is mostly responsible, but I was an innocent bystander in a fight between entitled teenagers and out of touch executives. And if people didn't feel the need to hack everything publicly, legitimate consumers would have way less bullshit to put up with. And we can thank entitled hackers for scaring publishers from the PC onto DRM ridden consoles. As much as people can assert(rightly) that 1 pirated game does not equal 1 lost sale, it doesn't matter because the hacking community poisoned the well. So if someone goes public with some hacking they've done, it's an uphill battle for me. I'm more impressed when someone makes something with their time instead of breaking someone else's work. I see QA people break shit all day.

We're talking about a company who's executives frequently respond to user spam directed to their publicly published email addresses. I just don't see the zero feedback for white hat activity claim. I also don't think that publishing a weakness like this solves anything, other than gets him credit for what he's discovered. What's the difference between leaking it now, or waiting for someone malicious to come along and start exploiting it?And I'm defending Valve because they're probably the most ethical company in this industry, and one of the only ones that believes in consumer rights. Hackers have a pretty bad track record of just tightening the restrictions companies put on legitimate customers.

It's extremely unlikely that they'll be able to get your password just by having your session id, there's not much point changing your password unless it's just to brute force a new session id. Though I imagine you could accomplish the same thing just by signing out of the system. I'm not sure if you can use the session id without spoofing some other headers to simulate the exact machine you're accessing steam from either. If you have a verified email, steam won't let you log in without responding to a token challenge when you use a new machine. Not storing your CC on the site is a good idea though, as the most damage someone could probably do with this information is buy games via gifts. Fuck everything about this. I seriously doubt this guy contacted them in a meaningful way and they ignored him. I could see it getting lost in the bureaucracy of a massive publisher like EA, Activision or Ubisoft, but not Valve. If he did his part and actually reached out to them, it's most likely something they're actually working on. Back room hackers may not understand this concept, but 4 months is not exactly a long time to turn around on major enterprise architecture overhaul, especially when you're spending most of that time crunching on releasing a game on 4 platforms.There's a difference between a gaping security hole, and weak security decisions. This guy may think it's something worth hot fixing immediately, but it's probably not something they can fix overnight, and it's not likely the most important thing in their queue. disclaimer: i have not read that guys site, as I wouldn't touch a hackers personal site with a 10-foot clown pole

Especially when it could be "The Last Express". It's a shame really, I'm in the mood for another Groundhog Day style movie.

hmm, it's not working on my MBP.

It doesn't have to be, but they definitely made one out of whatever caused the delay. LA Noire is a game worth running from though. They'll want Duke Nukem to have top billing the week of it's release or the buzz will spread before people buy in to satisfy their curiosity.

Watching that Doom post-mortem, i couldn't help thinking it would be way better with Carmack. It felt like Ringo taking credit for the Beatles success.

true.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/24/duke-nukem-forever-release-date/#more-55133 Delayed for a little over a month? Seems like a PR stunt.

On my second playthrough, and I'm still pre-deep roads but here's my experience with the replayability.

This looks less polished than a half-life mod, which it started out as.

Well until they leave you. And in fact that happens more in DA2 than it did in DA:O TBH I miss the gift system as it would allow you to offset mistakes.

'bargo buster: The Riddler ty for wasting press time during GDC for 10 seconds of exclusive footage nobody cares about.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html Presumably upset after seeing the Spitter in Left 4 Dead 2, Ebert rehashed old argument.

Those helicopters should be blimps. This is a fatal mistake.

That's because the game really fucks up it's opening. After an abilitease, and tutorial phase, the first thing you're supposed to do is earn 50 gold to get onto an expedition. Which requires you to do any quest you want to get the money you need. Which the majority of people I know have taken to mean, do every side quest and bitch about how the game is really easy and stupid without ever playing passed the first act.It's Bioware's fault, they should have found a way to pace those early quests better, but to be fair, if you push on you're into a more traditional structure. Their other problem is that they wanted the overarching story to be a mystery, but they didn't give you enough information to care what they were looking for. So they save everything for the last hour of the game, and if you you get an honest surprise. But it wasn't needed then, they should have opened the game with a cinematic with . The map was also a poor choice. If it were more of a traditional graphic of fantasy world/city it might have hidden the way the levels were stitched together by a system of nodes. But people had that complaint about the first game even with it's larger scale world and fantasy map. The downsides do highlight the fact that the game may be based off the concepts you're talking about. But you can be reductive about anything. What are 90% of games out there but go from point A to point B killing all dudes in between?

Speaking about armor, the game fixes two messed up things from the first game: 1) shoulder blades don't constantly clip through characters, and in general are more appropriately sized. 2) you can hide your players hat. The headgear seems to be mostly made by the ministry of silly hats still, but at least you can it off. The item sets are weird though. They tell you that there is a bonus for the full set, but not what the bonus is or what pieces are in the set.

I guess my point on WoW was a bit of a leap in the post. In my head I was getting from mathematics, to architecture and other artistics feats of engineering. Pretty much every art game that's held up as an example severely lacks that aspect of game design. And while they can be interesting, they're like artistic dollhouses compared to the skyscrapers that make up some modern games. Small scale and stylized, but easily accomplished by small teams of people who are new to the industry. But since they're so small, there's a more direct relationship between the author and the audience. There's very little altering what could be considered artistic vision. It's impressive to see what people Eskil Steenberg and Jason Rohr can accomplish on their own, I just don't think you're going to ever overwhelm a skeptic with something so small scale. To me a game like WoW is a skyscraper like Burj Khalifa. It's design is impressive, but so is it's function. And unlike an indie game it's almost impossible to drawn an analogue to some classical work in a way that you can say it's better or worse than. Saying a game like Flower is an example of game art, is showcasing the spandrel, not the arch.

Brian Moriarty apologizes for Ebert There's something about GDC that ensures this debate will be a more reliable annual franchise than Call of Duty. I find that he really starts getting off topic in the bottom half, but in general I think his point can be summed up as: Game's aren't art, because: 1) Games have been around for centuries. There's nothing special about video games. (except they are) 2) Games are pop-art or "kitsch". And while that's a fair assessment of the industry, I fail to see why movies are able to escape the realities of corporate investment and politics to create art, but games are doomed. In the end it's just another meaningless sub-classification that shouldn't exempt something from being "art". 3) This 19th century philosopher/professional dick would patronize you if you asked him if games were art. There's a lot of hair splitting and labeling going on, that's really not that interesting. Who cares what one person declares meaningful or beautiful. But I think I've come to an understanding where some of the disdain for mechanics and choice comes from the Ebert camp: This small paragraph sums up some left-brain right-brain bullshit that only people who were bad at high-school math believe. The idea that there are two diverging paths of human excellence. Either you're talented with mechanics and figures, or you're an artist with a critical eye and insight. Bullshit. Anybody who's made it through a few semesters of university in a math or science degree can tell you that it requires critical thinking, insight and creativity. Even the most basic formulas taught in high school math classes were once inspired leaps of logic. To say there's nothing artful about mathematics shows ignorance of mathematics. Math is about questions, problems, solutions and unknowns. If you don't know anything about history, religion or artistic periods, you don't really appreciate the depth of a lot of classic art. But if you don't know the history of Chaos Theory, the mandelbrot set is just a pretty picture. To me code is art. Even without a graphical component, or user interface, the code behind almost every game out there is artistic to me. There are extremely clever people finding ingenious solutions to unique problems, and some of it is just awe inspiring. And while that may be covered by the art + art + art = not art debate, I still think that coding is the driving force in any software project. If you don't understand programming and the technical challenges behind a game, you're missing out on a huge piece of the picture. One other argument that Ebert and others have repeated, is that while people may offer up token indie games as artistically credible, they are not able to give an example of a game that could rival the classics in any other medium. And it's easy to shy away from that, and claim we've only had a few decades to get the technology to a point that it's possible. But screw it, I think there are a ton of examples. So here's my champion: World of Warcraft. It's a game that is literally interpreted a million different ways by millions of different people. It's formed friendships, inspired murder, saved and broken marriages. It's brilliant social engineering, and elegant technological design. It may be difficult to come up with an example of a game that directly competes with Shakespere, Bach or Monet, but can you honestly tell me any movie, book or painting that compares directly to WoW? I'm sorry for bumping this again :/

Yeah the branching out has started, I guess it was more of a lull during a tutorial phase.I get the feeling that the combat would be more fun it I could resist hitting the spacebar every 2 seconds, but it's hard to tell when a fight is going to be hard enough to need pausing.

I've been playing for about an hour now, and first impressions are that it's still basically Dragon Age. Some things have been up-res'ed, the UI and story telling are very cool, but I'd be surprised if this was a different engine from the first game. It feels like they've iterated on a few graphical components, but the core game mechanics are prettymuch identical. Friendly fire doesn't seem to happen, and you can't zoom out as far as before, but the changes seem minor. Story wise, you're no longer a mute protagonist, which is great. But it's not the DA/ME hybrid I was expecting yet. Maybe I need to make it further to see how my choices can effect my path, but I haven't felt the diverging paths that permeated Origins. Within the first few minutes the selection of your player class seems to alter the story in a meaningful way, but I feel like they've streamlined the decision tree and are going for something different. Time will tell.

My commute just isn't long enough to go through my podcast subscriptions each week. So I'll spend a lot of my PC time playing through 'casts while playing a game. The problem is most games are too involved dramatically to allow me to split my focus. Either I'll end up missing out on the experience of the game, or more often a few minutes of the show I'm listening too. I've found that a lot of puzzle games like Freecell and Tetris are good games to zone out to, and World of Warcraft has been alright when I'm PvPing, farming or doing daily quests. Does anybody else have any games they find as a good backdrop for dialogue?