The Highlight Reel: July 30, 2008

Today The Game Trust tackles Soulcalibur IV, the importance of cooperative play, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and the latest releases on the Wii Shop Channel.

First up is Gus Mastrapa’s feature Bring a Friend, which talks about what upcoming games are offering cooperative play, why it is important and which game developers have made the mistake of omitting this popular style of play. Feature - Bring a Friend

Next is Harold Goldberg’s review of Soulcalibur IV. Despite some grumblings about Star Wars sullying the game’s cast, Harold gives the game a ringing endorsement.  Reviews - Soulcalibur IV (Xbox 360),  Soulcalibur IV (PS3)

Kyle Orland puts Enemy Territory: Quake Wars through 60 minutes of scrutiny in the latest Games For Lunch. Column - Games for Lunch: Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Finally, the latest edition of Virtual Player takes a closer look at Fatal Fury 2, Donkey Kong 3, Ninja Commando and more on the Wii Shop Channel.  Column - Virtual Player

Valve, Activision Hacker: The Big Takedown

The hacker known as MaddoxX won’t be surfing the interwebs sifting through data and finding weaknesses in servers around the world anymore. According to reports over the weekend, the hacker that lifted credit card numbers and other private information from Valve software has been apprehended by Dutch authorities according to published reports.

On Tuesday, June 24, in the small Dutch town of Maastricht, MaddoxX was picked up by the Team High Tech Crime special unit of the police and charged with several interweb heists including theft of an unfinished version of Activision’s Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, a third-party site used to handle Valve’s cyber cafe licensing business activities (Steam Cyber Cafe), and stealing the credit card data of 50,000 customers from an ticket site.

Before being apprehended MaddoxX allegedly spent 13 million Euros (using said stolen credit card data) playing online poker and shopping online for electronics. If convicted you can expect he won’t be tenderly tapping the keys of any kind of computerized device for a very, very long time.

Source: IT Examiner by way of Shacknews

Splash Damage Head Hunting

Splash Damage announced plans to double the size of its London-based studio. The company is currently seeking to fill key positions across all development disciplines, according to a press release issued today. The studio is best known for its work on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and the upcoming Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

More information on all current open positions can be found at www.splashdamage.com/jobs. Splash Damage will also be present at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Feb. 18-22. Paul Wedgwood will also be giving a one-hour talk at GDC titled From Amateur to Triple-A in Five Years, detailing the lessons Splash Damage learned during its first five years in business. The talk is scheduled to take place on Wednesday (Feb. 20) at 4 p.m. in West Hall room 2018.