Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Update: LulzSec have released what they claim to be everything they took from Bethesda, including source code and admin passwords, except for the 200,000 user details which they say they’re leaving out because, “We actually like this company.” (They also claim to have broken into senate.gov, and paste this as proof. That should bring them some dark-glassed attention.)

LulzSec, who have claimed responsibility for many of the gaming hacks of late, have announced they’ve had access to Bethesda/Zenimax’s data for a couple of months, and are planning on releasing details today. They’ve been winding up BethSoft all day, threatening to release details of a number of games, including Brink. However, in their usual way, they are suggesting they’ll go easy on them because “we love Call of Cthulhu.” They rather spuriously suggest this is motivated by a lack of details on Skyrim, but even if they received some, plan “to embarrass you anyway.”

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Hack hack hack. The crackers of the world are going after the gaming internet like an axe murderer at a Spring Break bikini party. The most recent victims, after Codemasters last week, are Nintendo, and more pertinently for our crowd, Epic.

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Last week, open source hardware company Adafruit announced a $3,000 bounty for the first individual or group to hack Kinect, Microsoft’s hands-free controller extra for the Xbox 360. Kinect contains a depth sensor, RGB camera, multi-array microphones and a motorised pivot, so it can track you around a room.

Yesterday, Slashdot reported that Adafruit reported that they HAVE A WINNER! Some very “hacky” open source Kinect drivers were released by a guy called Hector a meagre 3 hours after the European Kinect launch, and can be acquired here if you’re technically minded. Hector says he intends to invest the $3,000 bounty into further hacking. Isn’t that sweet? Watch Hector’s video of Kinect running on a PC below.
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As we reported last week, Blizzard have taken the extremely peculiar decision to ban players from playing StarCraft II for using cheats in the single-player game. This meant that, despite cheating no one but themselves, they were locked out of playing the single-player game. Which is clearly bonkers. But it’s not enough for the developer. Blizzard’s lawyers are now setting out to sue those who create cheats.

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Yes, we know we’re horribly behind most of the rest of the internet in this (and in fact didn’t bother to mention it previously for just that reason), but hell, if we ever want to be the biggest PC gaming website in the world we should probably make the effort. I’ve compensated for our tardiness by adding several hundred words of bonus ranting to it.

Skip to the end if you can’t be bothered with me waffling on about Microsoft conspiracy theories and just want to find out how to make the Crysis demo look way better under hoary old Windows XP. Otherwise, don your finest head-fitting tinfoil and read on.

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