The Week in Review

This week we learn that Minecraft is going to stay Steam free, Ubisoft is turning to the teens and a twitter terrorism isn’t terrorism.

When Mad Finger Games first released their new mobile game Dead Trigger, it hoped to reach as many people as possible. What it didn’t expect was to achieve that goal through piracy. Despite the game’s low price point of a single dollar, piracy figures for the Android version went through the roof while official installs were practically non-existent. In a last-ditch effort to save the game, the developer switched out the paid Android version for a free-to-play model that has since shown tremendous success, bringing to light some of the difficulties in publishing for the mobile platform. (Link)

Gamigo is a German online game company that tends to hang out in the more casual side of town, so you’d be forgiven for not noticing, or not remembering, the March intrusion into its user database. But it was a big one, and four months down the road more than 8.2 million unique email addresses and 11 million encrypted passwords taken in the attack have turned up on hacking site Inside Pro. “It’s the largest leak I’ve ever actually seen,” PwnedList founder Steve Thomas told Forbes. “When this breach originally happened, the data wasn’t released, so it wasn’t a big concern. Now eight million email addresses and passwords have been online, live data for any hacker to see.” (Link)

The biggest indie PC game of all time, the most popular PC digital distribution platform on the planet – it’s a natural fit, right? And yet if you go poking around on Steam, you’ll eventually notice that Minecraft isn’t there. Why not? A year ago, Notch explained on his blog that while he’s a big fan of Steam as a gamer, the platform limits a lot of what he can do as a developer, particularly with regard to user interactions and DLC sales. Those limitations have since been pretty much eliminated and yet Notch remains wary, saying that Mojang is still reluctant to submit Minecraft to Steam “without knowing more about what we want to do.” (Link)

Breaking into a creative industry, like games, can be tough under normal circumstances, but what do you do if your background – educational, financial, or otherwise – is making things even more difficult? A new initiative called Commercial Break aims to address that very question by helping under-privileged youths get into advertising, and international publishing heavyweight Ubisoft is the initiative’s first client. Speaking about the new partnership, Head of Brand Marketing Mark Slaughter stated that Ubisoft is “committed to making a contribution to helping young, creative individuals get onto a career path that makes use of their talent.” (Link)

Paul Chambers, the man who Tweeted about blowing up Robin Hood Airport in Sheffield and was convicted of sending menacing threats under Communications Act legislation, has had his appeal against conviction granted by the UK High Court. Lord Chief Justice Judge and his fellow Justices agreed that the Tweet – “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” – could not, on its face, constitute a credible threat. Chambers, who lost two jobs and was heavily fined as a result of his previous convictions, said he was “relieved and vindicated” by the result. (Link)