A 24-year-old man from Kentucky, Anthony Scott O’Shea (a.k.a. “Thunder-kid”) was charged with persuading an 11-year-old girl to send him naked pictures via the PS3.
The two met through Warhawk online and over some weeks O’Shea successfully convinced the young girl to send him nude photos of herself. In addition to photos, there’s evidence that the man also convinced the girl to “perform” for him over a webcam.
The girl finally went to her parents who pressed charges. O’Shea admitted that he’d been in contact with the girl and had received her photos. It was also discovered that the man sent the …read more

Looks like Fable 2 fans will have to hang on a little longer to get their highly anticipated expansion. According to to Xbox.com’s Fable 2 expansion page the new content won’t be available until the end of January. It was supposed to hit anxious hands next week but “unexpected technical difficulties” have pushed the date into the new year.
Sorry to those that were looking forward to this next week. On the plus side, there should be plenty of other things to do around this time, so hopefully this unexpected delay won’t throw too much of a wrench in your plans.
 
Via …read more

Twenty-nine year old Robert Delaware did something that few would dare to even contemplate…he broke a non-disclosure agreement with Microsoft, because “[i]t was the moral thing to do.”
The Xbox 360 tester spoke candidly in a piece for interview with VentureBeat, saying that he felt that the issue was known by Microsoft at the time of the console’s launch As a result, he was not only fired from his position, but now also faces potential civil litigation from the sue-happy Microsoft legal team.
Although Delaware’s accusations are interesting, some of the figures quotes in the rest of the article, such as a …read more

We love Spore. Everyone loves Spore. From Will Wright fanatics to Sporenographers…it is the game to watch for at the moment. It’s like the golden child of the gaming industry, that coming beacon that shall light the path out of the old, tired paradigms and into….you get the picture.
All is not rosy in the Spore community at the moment, despite its usually god-like positioning. Apparently someone got wind of a chunk of digital rights management (DRM) software that does a little more than many gamers are comfortable with. Called SecuROM, the code blocks people from installing the game more than …read more

Speaking of yawns, I love a good psychological thriller as much as the next person but when its been over three years in development now, updated sporadically with the occasional appearance at major conventions and the almost pleading reassurances of the developers that they are actually still working on the game….the anticipation has less to do with the game and more to see if Remedy can get their act together and make it to the shelf. I remember it being touted as one of the coolest games coming…when the 360 was originally announced. It wasn’t ever going to be a …read more

See mouth? Insert foot.
Not that Majestic Studios could’ve have foreseen the amount of poo being flung at them as a result of accusations of “borrowing” environments from other games for their Limbo of the Lost ( Oblivion and Thief predominantly), but looking back as some of the interviews and press materials that preceded this kerfuffle, it’s apparent that they were quite content to claim the work as their own.
In an interview on May 2nd, one of the three Majestic Studios devs was quoted as saying “Between the three of us we researched, wrote, designed, animated, scripted and developed the whole …read more

Nothing like being called out for short-cutting and thieving your way to a game release..
Limbo of the Lost developer Majestic Studios is under a bit of scrutiny at the moment after gamers started to point out painfully obvious similarities between some environments in their games, and ones in Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The crazy thing? That’s not the only game that Limbo has apparently “borrowed” from. Eidos’ Thief: Deadly Shadows is also being looked at as a possible source of material. Gaming site GamePlasma has a side by side comparison of screenshots, and the similarities are…well, startling, right …read more

The roundabout bashing of the video game industry, which repeatedly and exhaustingly harps on the same topics over and over and over again, can be a wee bit mind-numbing to follow. It’s easy to loose track of whether this is the eighth or ninth time that Jack Thompson has made a fool out of himself that month, or what Fox News has said this time that has everyone in an uproar.
Thankfully, Billy Kirk at Video Game Media Watch found a Top 10 video at WeGame.com that will help you out. Find out how video games cause epilepsy, murder, quote unquote …read more

It’s not exactly the type of rumour that Microsoft would like spread, especially not by a generally reputable games analyst on the world stage at the Nordic Game Conference in Malmo, Sweden. Sometimes it’s at these smaller (ie. not E3) conferences that the true glory bits are dropped, intentionally or no, for the slavering journalist hounds to revel in.
Nick Parker, former VP of strategic planning at Sony Eurpoe predicts that the future of the Xbox 360 may not be so rosy. Aside from coming in third in console quantities out of the current generation machines, he cites a lack of …read more

There’s throwing a temper tantrum when you don’t get what you want, and then there’s pulling a knife on your teacher at school and demanding money to fulfill your wants and needs. That’s exactly what a 13-year old boy in Framingham, Mass. did when his mother refused to buy him a Grand Theft Auto video game.
The Associated Press reports the incident as follows:

“…the male student stayed behind after the other students had left the classroom, pulled the 11-inch knife and asked for $20. After she refused, he lowered his demand to $1.

The teacher took the knife from the student.”

Odd thing …read more