Today on Headline
RePLAY: The producer of Street Fighter IV
is back in action, Diablo III
prepares for the Real-Money Auction House and League of Legends EU is the latest to be hit with a security breach.
Yoshinori Ono’s
dedication to Capcom’s Street Fighter series is so legendary that it was instrumental
in revving the franchise in 2008 with the release of Street Fighter IV—but was it the same devotion that arguably lead
to his sudden illness and collapse in April?
In an interview with
Eurogamer’s Simon Parkin, Ono recounts his journey from composer to producer, and
his dogged persistence in proposing the fourth entry to Street Fighter to a
reluctant company since the release of Street
Fighter 3: Third Strike in 1999.
“I was working on Onimusha 4 and during that time I
repeatedly submitted my proposal for a new Street Fighter,” Ono recalled. “The
company kept telling me: ‘It’s a dead franchise. It doesn’t make any money. We
have series that make money like Resident Evil and Onimusha. Why bother with a dead franchise?”
Ultimately, Ono’s
persistence paid off and he was given a small budget to create a prototype. Ono’s
strategy was simple: “I had been asking all of the journalists to make noise
about the series when out and about. I would always tell them that it was their
responsibility to tell Capcom, not me as I don’t have the power. Journalists
and fans have the power to move Capcom—not producers. With so many voices
crying out for a Street Fighter game Capcom could no longer ignore it any more
and so they gave the green light for a prototype and they asked me to create
it.
“It’s a miracle that
happened after a decade…”
Capcom was still not
sold on the project, however. Fan demands may have forced the company’s hand,
but Ono was constantly asked, “Ono-san, seriously why are you persisting with
this? You are using so much money, budget and resources. Why don’t we use it on
something else, something that will make money?”
“No one had the
intention of selling it,” Ono concluded, “so I had virtually no help from other
departments—they were reluctant, right up to the day of release.”
Ono’s dedication and
his faith in the fans paid off in spades: Street
Fighter IV was a huge success, single-handedly resurrecting the franchise.
And it probably
overworked him into a hospital bed, but the producer vows that’s not enough to
stop him.
“There have been
rumors saying Ono is dead or retiring. None of that’s true. I want to support the
next generation of fighting games. It’s my job. It’s my calling.”
|Source: Eurogamer
Diablo III’s long-disputed Real-Money Auction House is launching
tomorrow, and in the wake of hacking reports that plagued the game’s release, Blizzard
is requiring that players have an authenticator attached to their account in
order to access the feature.
More specifically,
players must have a physical or mobile Battle.net authenticator attached to
their Battle.net accounts in order to use the RMAH. Players who already
attached their account to Battle.net Balance, a feature that provides the
option to buy and sell items on the RMAH, without an authenticator will
continue to be able to do so—on the caveat that it is required to add to the
balance in the future.
|Source: Blizzard
League of Legends EU is the latest to be hit by hackers, Riot Games
reports that only personal player data in EU West and EU Nordic and East
databases were accessed and “absolutely” no payment or billing information was
compromised.
According to Riot, any
personal data that was breached included e-mail addresses, encrypted account
passwords, summoner [game ID] name and date of birth. The studio does note that
for a “small number of players” first and last name might’ve been compromised
along with encrypted security question and answer.
Riot does assure players
that the security issue that hackers exploited was resolved, all EU West, EU
Nordic and East players were notified via e-mail and that the investigation is
still ongoing. Additionally, Riot has redirected teams to “quickly implement
new security measures” to improve the safety of player data and will continue
to “invest in security measures” like password hashing, data encryption, state
of the art firewalls, SSL and security ninjas.
And lastly the company
asks users to change their account passwords and offers steps on how to do so.
|Source: League of Legends
