Activist group denies link with theft of up to 100m personal and credit card details, saying its aims are political• The Anonymous statement in full

The online activism group Anonymous has denied insinuations by Sony that it was involved in the hacker breaches of the PlayStation Network (PSN) and Online Entertainment (SOE) systems in which between 77m and 100m personal details were stolen, and potentially as many credit card details.

The riposte was delivered in a letter published online soon after the corporation delivered a letter to US politicians in which it claimed that private investigators called in to examine the break-in had discovered a file entitled “Anonymous” and containing the words “We are Legion” – part of Anonymous’s slogan.

The group issued a 900-word statement in which it insisted that it does not steal credit card data and that its aims are purely political – in marked contrast, it said, to its adversaries, who include Sony because of the action the company took against a number of users who had found ways around some protections built into the PlayStation 3 console.

“Anonymous has never been known to have engaged in credit card theft,” the statement said. “Many of our corporate and governmental adversaries, on the other hand. have been known to have lied to the public about Anonymous and about their own activities.”

It said that the credit card theft – which Sony said came about after four servers on its network spontaneously rebooted and began behaving “oddly” – did not fit Anonymous’s “modus operandi”: “Whoever did perform the credit card theft did so contrary to the ‘modus operandi’ and intentions of Anonymous. Public support is not gained by stealing credit card info and personal identities, we are trying to fight criminal activities by corporations and governments, not steal credit cards.”

Anonymous is a loosely organised group of hackers of various levels of expertise with an onion-like structure, where the most experienced and skilled hackers work in the centre, widening to the less experienced but sympathetic “members” at the fringes. They organise themselves through online chatrooms; few members know each others’ real-life identities. Membership is international and probably includes a couple of thousand people at any time.

In the past the group has targeted the Church of Scientology, Visa and Mastercard, and various middle Eastern governments in the pursuit of what it sees as transparency and individual liberty.

Sony has also blamed Anonymous for carrying out a denial-of-service attack which made it difficult or impossible to spot the break-in because Sony’s engineers were trying to cope with the online attack that was knocking out their servers. The statement from Anonymous – which appears to have been authored by a number of people, but uses American spelling and grammar throughout – does not deal with the ramifications of the attack, and Sony’s assertion that it enabled the theft by distracting the security team.

The timing of the break-in to Sony’s systems is unlikely to have been an accident; a malicious hacker could have used the attack by Anonymous as cover when the first break-in on 17 April was made. Anonymous had announced on 4 APril that it would attack Sony because the Japanese corporation decided to pursue legal action against George Hotz, who had discovered and then shared the “root key” of the PS3, which would mean that anyone could potentially play any game on it – including pirated ones.

Anonymous insisted: “If a legitimate and honest investigation into the credit card is conducted, Anonymous will not be found liable. While we are a distributed and decentralized group, our ‘leadership’ does not condone credit card theft. We are concerned with erosion of privacy and fair use, the spread of corporate feudalism, the abuse of power and the justifications of executives and leaders who believe themselves immune personally and financially for the actions they undertake in the name of corporations and public office.”

The fact that Sony has said that the people who hacked its servers erased log files to cover their steps makes it look extremely unlikely that they would also have left a text file linking them back to Anonymous if that were their origin.

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Charles Arthur

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It has sparked controversy but the reality is it’s a terribly boring, mostly broken mini-game collection

It almost made sense. After Heavy Rain was a hit last year, and its quick-time event sex scene wasn’t a humiliation for everyone involved, there was a feeling that games could do adult content now. Maybe that was what inspired Ubisoft to get behind (fnarr) “adult-oriented party game” We Dare – one of the shonkiest, most ill-advised products to be offered to gamers … well, ever.

For most of us, it started with the trailer, which appeared on YouTube on 24 February. (The original link is now marked as private.) Four blandly pretty 20-something models – two men, two women – cavort awkwardly to a clunking sex-funk soundtrack. In just over a minute, every joke you’ve ever heard about motion controllers looking like sex toys was realised, as the cast pulled their most strained smiles to convey the enjoyment they experienced as they took part in We Dare’s cartoon swingers’ game. The girls mashed their faces against either side of a dangling controller, almost as if – ooh! – they might accidentally kiss. A boy spanked a girl in order to propel a cherub flying on screen. Then another girl stepped in. It was horrifyingly awkward and deeply unsexy.

Not unsexy enough to avoid the inevitable act two, of course, in which outraged moral guardians demanded to know why a spanking game was being marketed to children. The Mail even found a red-faced father to say, “This sort of computer game will only serve to fuel sexual tensions and, in a worse-case scenario, sexual touching or assault.” Normally, Gamesblog would be dead against the moral guardians, but in this case they sort of had a point.

Not about We Dare fuelling sexual tensions, of course. I’ve played the game, and I’ve had saucier romps in Green Hill Zone. It’s a terribly boring, mostly broken mini-game collection, squeezed into a leopard-print thong and told to look sexy. By the time you’ve been through the tedious menus (you can’t search for individual games, but have to navigate through mysterious categories such as “Adventurous”) and tolerated the drab bits of smut-related trivia (did you know the first bra was made of hankies and ribbon? Phwoar!), you’ll be seriously looking into celibacy. The bobble-headed cartoon characters who guide you through the awkward gyrations of miming dancing or stripping might as well have your mum’s face on them, for all the encouragement to eroticism they are.

But the marketing was clearly disastrous. Because We Dare’s content is as tame as a neutered puppy, it received child-friendly ratings – PEGI 12 in Europe, and PG in Australia. Which left it in a thoroughly non-erotic bind. People looking for console-based sexytimes (even people who like disgracefully feeble mini-games) aren’t likely to be impressed with a 12 rating, while publishers (even publishers of disgracefully feeble mini-games) would probably rather not be seen to push erotica onto the kid market.

Within weeks, the game’s release was cancelled in the UK (it was never intended for release in the US, according to Ubisoft). After all, this was shortly after Fox News had accused Bulletstorm of inciting rape with sexually suggestive kill names – it’s no surprise if a publisher would rather not be the next target for outrage. Does that and the fiasco of We Dare mean that games should keep their hands clean of the sex stuff from now on? No – and with Rockstar’s grown-up crime drama L.A. Noire and Mass Effect 3 on their way, there’s no likelihood of games putting on a promise ring anytime soon. But hopefully it’ll be a long, long time before anyone tries to foist another tarted up box of Just Dance knock-offs and weak Buzz!-alike quizzes on to easily aroused console owners.

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Puzzle games

Sarah Ditum

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Is the world getting bored of Angry Birds? Obviously not. The game’s developer Rovio Mobile says the latest version, Angry Birds Rio, flew past the 10 million downloads milestone just 10 days after being released for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

Fittingly, the news came in a tweet late last week. “10 in 10 Angry Birds Rio breaking all records. A massive thanks to all our fans!!!!” tweeted the official @RovioMobile account. The company then confirmed that this related to 10 million downloads of the game in all its forms.

Which are? Well, this isn’t 10 million paid downloads. On the iPhone and iPad, Angry Birds Rio is sold for £1.79, but on Android it’s free on Google’s Android Market and Amazon’s Appstore for Android — although the latter is only live in the US at the moment. We’re guessing Android accounted for the lion’s share of the downloads in that first 10 days.

It shows the appetite for Angry Birds remains undimmed, despite there now being three versions of the game on the go: the original version, the new Rio edition, and the Angry Birds Seasons game that was recently updated with new St Patrick’s Day levels.

Angry Birds Rio ties into a new animated movie, Rio, which is being released this month. The gameplay follows the pattern of previous games in the series, except with one big difference: no pigs.

Instead, for the first half of the game you’re trying to bust other colourful birds free of their cages, including two of the film’s characters, Blu and Jewel. Later in the game, you get a new animal enemy to dive-bomb, in the form of nefarious monkeys.

Angry Birds Rio’s release came alongside another movie-themed update of a much-loved iPhone game: Doodle Jump. It’s got a new version based on another family flick, Hop, and is available for free on the App Store. What next? Cut The Rope: Spider-man Edition? Now that might just work…

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Xbox 360, PS3, PC; age: 18; £39.99; Kaos Studios/THQ

Generating a new military first-person shooter franchise from scratch these days is either extremely brave or very foolhardy – it’s hardly as if there aren’t enough of them. And the ones we already have are generally pretty amazing. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t describe Homefront as an amazing game – although neither is it bad. It’s based on a ludicrous premise: North Korea has invaded America (how that came about is explained, unconvincingly, before and during the game), and you join a rag-tag band of resistance fighters questing from Colorado to San Francisco with crucial fuel-tankers for the remaining US military.

Homefront does have some standout aspects: the story is told without recourse to cut-scenes, but rather by conversations with your fellow resistance fighters, which can annoy, as you wait for the next dose of action, but does at least create an ambience not unlike Half-Life. Homefront works hard to vary the gameplay, with sequences involving sniping, helicopter flying, stealth-lite and fixed-gun shooting, and there’s a great remote-control vehicle called the Goliath, which moves automatically but lets you control its rockets and machine-gun. Despite being written by John Milius, the characters lack any hint of personality, though, and ultimately the single-player campaign is short and disappointing.

However, Homefront’s multiplayer side redeems it considerably. Kaos Studios was once the New York outpost of DICE, of Battlefield fame, and Homefront’s multiplayer modes successfully marry the large-scale appeal of Battlefield with the intensity of Call of Duty. A clever currency system (called Battle Points) gives you access to goodies like armed drones from the start, and the flexibility to pursue your favoured play-style is there from the off. And a clever mechanism called Battle Commander encourages ganging up on the most dangerous enemies, encouraging your team to operate in a more coherent manner, which you may find helps compensate for some of the skill deficiencies which can render multiplayer first-person shooters less fun than they ought to be.

If you’re a keen online player of games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, Homefront is well worth checking out. And, while its single-player element is pretty lacklustre, one hopes it will make enough of a sales impact for THQ to commission future iterations.

Homefront was reviewed on Xbox 360

Games

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Steve Boxer

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The
iPad 2 is going to be a monster device for gaming, thanks to its A5 processor which, according to Apple, is twice as fast for CPU performance and nine times more powerful for graphics. Games developers are already taking advantage, with Infinity Blade and Real Racing 2 HD muscling up for today’s US iPad 2 launch.

Epic Games’ Chair Entertainment is releasing the Infinity Blade update with what it carefully describes as “new optimisations specifically for iPad 2″. What are they? The company’s statement refers vaguely to the game looking and playing better than ever, but its App Store listing refers specifically to “high-resolution graphics”.

“The iPad 2 is a huge leap up in processing power from the first iPad, and is more powerful than the impressive iPhone 4,” says Chair technical director Geremy Mustard, who has presumably been sweating over a workstation ever since the device was unveiled last week.

“The whole operating system will feel even more responsive and smooth,” reckons Mustard. “For developers like us who are always pushing the hardware to its limits, the iPad 2 will allow us to do things people won’t believe can be done on a tablet device.” Like reining in the hyperbole? Nah, it’ll never happen.

The update follows a big content update to Infinity Blade last week, which included new levels, enemies and items.

We have to admit to being excited about the debut of Real Racing 2 HD from Australian developer Firemint. Released to tie in with the iPad 2 launch today, it runs on the original iPad, but if you’ve got an iPad 2, it’s been tuned “to take full advantage” of the hardware. More high-resolution visuals ahoy.

You might wonder — as we do — how big a deal better graphics is on the iPad 2, given that the screen is the same resolution as the original iPad. What’s more interesting is how developers will make use of the A5 processor in other ways — for example, sticking more cars on the track at once in racing games. Is this worth upgrading from the original iPad? Let us know if you think in the comments below.

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The pristine polygonal Virtua Fighter series remains beloved by hardcore beat ‘em up fans, but will their ardour extend to a buttonless version for iPhone? Sega hopes so: Virtua Fighter 2 has just gone live on the App Store.

It’s the first Virtua Fighter game to be released for iOS devices, although a version of the original Virtua Fighter did come out for non-smart phones a few years ago. iPhone owners are certainly getting a good deal: the new game costs just £1.19 on the App Store, and with a filesize of 6.3MB, you don’t need to be on a Wi-Fi connection to download it.

As that filesize and name indicates, this isn’t about PS3-quality visuals — or, indeed, Sega Saturn. Disappointingly, Virtua Fighter 2 is a straight port of the 2D game originally released for the Mega Drive (or ‘Genesis’, its name in the US, which is used in this iPhone version), itself a 2D-isation of the classic 3D Saturn game.

That makes it more of an exercise in nostalgia than a truly modern reworking in the vein of rival iPhone beat ‘em up Street Fighter IV.

Still, there are eight playable characters — Akira, Pai, Lau, Wolf, Jeffry, Kage, Sarah and Jacky — with the solo mode structured around a World Fighting Tournament. You battle the other characters before taking on “the perfect fighter”, Dural. He can be unlocked as a playable character too.

The controls take the form of a virtual D-pad and three buttons for punching, kicking and grabbing. More modern is the inclusion of a Bluetooth battle mode, enabling you to duff up a friend. Alas, there’s no use of Apple’s Game Center for achievements — something that would have suited the game.

If you have happy Mega Drive memories of the original game, slip on your rose-tinted specs and download Virtua Fighter 2 right now, just be aware it’s not the better-known Saturn version.

We found our attention wandering after a few minutes, however, specifically to the potential for a whizzier, 3D, connected Virtua Fighter game for iPhone, making more use of multi-touch gestures. Perhaps if this basic retro port does well, Sega will consider it.

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Playstation root constitutes piracy, argues company – letting slip it has sold 41m consoles – but law precedent set last summer may be on the hackers’ side

Photo by artwork_rebel on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Sony is suing a group of hackers who worked out how to break the Playstation 3′s firmware system so that it could be made to run any applications.

The hack could have allowed any sort of program or game – including pirated ones – to run on the console. Sony argues in its lawsuit that that constitutes computer fraud and copyright infringement – and accuses those involved of “distributing software, tools and instructions … that circumvent the technological protection measures in the PS3 system and facilitate the counterfeiting of video games.”

But one of the hackers caught up in the controversy, George Hotz, told the BBC that he was “comfortable” that Sony’s action would fail. “I’m a firm believer in digital rights,” he said. “I would expect a company that prides itself on intellectual property to be well-versed in the provisions of the law, so I am disappointed in Sony’s current action.”

Hotz, 21, said he had consulted a lawyer and that he felt confident that the action had no basis.

Hotz’s role was to figure out how to break the firmware and, apparently, to demonstrate it on YouTube and discuss it on Twitter.

His defence will probably rest on recent cases which have shown that “jailbreaking” items for “fair use” is legitimate under US law. A landmark case last July allowed such jailbreaking – which gives people full access to the file system of the device – under “fair use”, for personal use, criticism or satire. That, for instance, allows people to jailbreak Apple’s iPhone and use it on other networks.

Hotz has previously “jailbroken” – broken the security on – Apple’s iPhone. He is named along with more than 100 people who belong to a hacking group called Fail0verflow (of which he is not himself a member). That group demonstrated last December that they had worked out how to break through the PS3′s security system, using what they called “simple algebra”.

Legitimate games and movies will only play on the PS3 because the discs provide a password or signature “key” to the encryption system, which recognises them as authorised products. But with the key – essentially a long sequence of numbers – Fail0verflow coders would be able to compile their own custom firmware and then build applications that could run on any system.

However, they did not actually reveal the key at the presentation, at the Chaos Communications hackers conference in Berlin.

Even so, Sony is going after them. The court filing, in the Northern District of California, seeks restitution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Sony says it has sold “over 41m PS3 systems worldwide since its launch” – a data point that may be found useful.

For an action to succeed under the DMCA, any protection system doesn’t have to be uncrackable, or state-of-the-art; all that’s required is for the company employing it to show that they have made an effort, and that it is non-trivial to crack.

It will be interesting to see how Hotz’s defence and that for the Fail0verflow team plays out: Hotz, being in the US, might have a trickier time of it if he did distribute tools that are shown to break the DMCA. By contrast the Fail0verflow team may have it easier, since they demonstrated the existence of a weakness, but did not actively pursue it. But DMCA lawsuits are notoriously complex.

A couple of areas look less solid for Sony: its claims that the Hotz and the rest broke the Playstation Network’s terms of service agreement, that they interfered with the experience of other PSN members, and that they were trespassing on Sony’s “right” to own the PS3.

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PlayStation

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Games

Charles Arthur

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It looks like a Sony Russia rep messed up big time. A Tweet on the SCEE Russia Twitter feed pretty much confirmed Mass Effect 3, according to internet translations.

Speculation has been rife since BioWare revealed that teaser trailer for its as-yet-unnamed new game – which is set to be officially revealed via the SpikeTV Awards in the US on Dec 11 at 8pm PST. But it seems Sony Russia has beat them to it.

According to Ripten, the crazy Russian symbols in the post (pictured) translated to: “Company #BioWare Award for #VideoGameAwards showed a teaser, in which we can see the first footage #MassEffect 3″.

The snapshot on this page is of the post before the whole account was snappily killed off, which does nothing but raise even more eyebrows. It must have been important for such a critical response.

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Sony made good on last week’s promise to bring the Hulu Plus video streaming service to all PS3 owners in the US. Unlike the previously offered Hulu Plus service this summer, users no longer need to wait for invites or be PlayStation Plus members. The monthly subscription does cost $10 per month for regular users, but grants users access to full seasons of TV shows from ABC, NBC and Fox, as well as movies from major Hollywood studios.

Users need to download the Hulu Plus app from the PlayStation Store and create an account. Their PS3s need to be linked to their Hulu Plus subscription by typing in a referral code. Current Hulu Plus subscribers can sign in without needing a special transition.

Besides the PS3, Sony supports Blu-ray players, Blu-ray home theater systems, Network Media Players, Dash devices, and connected Bravia TVs.

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Latest game in Activision’s Call of Duty franchise poised to become biggest-selling title of all

As premieres go, it was unconventional. Held in a cavernous temporary structure in London’s Battersea Power Station, rather than the cosy confines of Leicester Square, the assembled celebrities – along with the likes of Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Alex Reid, Duncan James from Blue, Goldie, Calum Best, Gail Porter plus, ahem, the girls from The Only Way Is Essex – for once happily mixed with the non-VIPs.

But that was because rather than celebrating the launch of a film, they were participating in the video game industry’s annual moment in the pop-culture limelight – the launch of a new Call of Duty game, this time subtitled Black Ops.

It would be easy to scoff at the lack of mega-celebrities, but the attraction of the event was obvious – Call of Duty: Black Ops has a good chance of being crowned the most successful entertainment launch of all time. Its predecessor, last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, is the current holder of the Guinness World Record for most successful entertainment launch of all time, with day-one global sales of £242.4m, comfortably beating any previous movie, as well as previous game holders Grand Theft Auto IV and Halo 3.

But instead of posing, the celebrities got stuck into demonstrating their credentials as gamers – an online match-up between European celebs saw Manchester City and England footballer Wayne Bridge come a close second to his Dutch counterpart, beating the rest of Europe in the process.

George Lamb compered proceedings, which included a tantalising glimpse of the game’s early stages (games are too long to play in full at such an event) and culminated with a live set from Tinie Tempah.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold more than 20m copies worldwide, staggeringly grossing over $1bn (£618m), and Activision hopes that Black Ops will do even better than that. Few would accuse it of over-optimism. Analyst Nick Parker, director at Parker Consulting Ltd, says: “With a growing installed base of consoles in homes, especially after the recent price drops, Black Ops could very well become the best selling Call of Duty iteration.”

The glitzy premiere was backed up by the midnight opening of more than 400 stores around the UK – including 70 branches of HMV – at which fanatical gamers queued to be among the first to get their hands on the game, which casts players as various US military black operatives during the Cold War era, in locations such as Russia, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam.

Many retailers enticed gamers to their stores at midnight with discounts if they either bought or traded in games from the current charts. Cheekily, HMV, for example, is offering CoD: Black Ops for £7.99 if you trade in a copy of the recently released Medal Of Honor, published by Activision’s arch-rival Electronic Arts.

On paper, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that Black Ops would achieve the success enjoyed by Modern Warfare 2. Activision employs two developers, Infinity Ward and Treyarch, to ensure that a new version of Call of Duty arrives every year, and Black Ops is made by Treyarch, previously the less favoured of the two. But Treyarch has upped its game, concentrating solely on Black Ops and employing a massive team of more than 200 people, and previews of the game have been overwhelmingly positive.

The games industry could use the boost provided by Black Ops, as well as this week’s high-profile launch of Microsoft’s innovative body-sensing controller, Kinect. Retailers have reported games sales as being down on 2009 so far, although we have yet to move into the crucial Christmas sales period.

But Andy Payne, chairman of UKIE, the UK’s trade body for games publishers bullishly argues that games consoles have greater penetration in UK homes than last year. “Black Ops, Football Manager 2011, Fallout New Vegas, FIFA 11, Fable 3 and others have boosted the market for AAA boxed games releases, for sure, and Kinect and Sony’s Move will refresh everyone’s hardware,” he says.

“But, given the huge audiences for games on all formats, 2010 has been a year of unprecedented activity and focus. The industry has widened beyond all expectations and will continue to expand exponentially in 2011.”

If Black Ops does out-gross Modern Warfare 2, it will suggest that the argument that video games are relatively immune to recession holds up, because people still buy products which offer long periods of entertainment. In terms of quality, the games industry certainly isn’t slacking, with the titles Payne mentioned – plus the hotly anticipated Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, followed by the likes of Gran Turismo 5, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Dead Space 2 early next year – all deserving to sell well.

But Call of Duty: Black Ops looks nailed on for the coveted Christmas number one slot, which was snaffled so comfortably by Modern Warfare 2 last year that bookmaker Paddy Power paid out early.

Although the all-format FIFA 11, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit could well be worth each-way bets. Things, at least, are looking rosy for gamers this Christmas.

Games

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Steve Boxer

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