Australia is still burning, but over the last couple of days they’ve actually had some rain! While this is a big help to certain areas, there are still 83 fires blazing around the country, and there’s a lot of people and wildlife still in trouble. It’s good job then that there are even more game devs, companies, and communities banding together to help out our friends down under.

A new Humble Bundle, a donation from the makers of Warframe, and a charity initiative run by Eve Online players are just three more ways the games industry is raising money, and you can get involved to show your support too.

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Many years ago, when I traipsed the streets of Belfast city with the menacing incisors of a 15-year-old who did not get braces when he should have done so, I often met with a pal and mentor in sub-criminal activities. Let s call him “Firebastard”. Firebastard was a good friend, and a knower of various clandestine arts. We all have that mate who downloaded The Anarchist s Cookbook. That glorious walking disorder who taught us the value of smashing bottles under the flyover in an idle fugue. Firebastard was that friend. One day, he gave my brother and I another book, a real book. Steal This Computer Book Vol 3. It can teach you to be a hacker, he said. It s full of viruses.

Hacknet is a game that lets me pretend I understood that book.

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This is the hAcKeR collective {{Synonymous Bosch}}. We have taken control of this aRt1cLe. Three years ago it was written by the untalented and scurrilous journalist Brendan Caldwell, a man lacking in both knowledge and substance. But we have gained access in order to correct his egregious errors. It s a hack of a hack! Ha ha ha. We had our best joke cell work on that for three nights. Please laugh. Our detractors may say Mr Caldwell got it mostly right, and that may be the case, yes. But the order is aLL Wr0nG. And he has neglected to update it with a recent hit. We cannot let this stand. Here is an updated list which, actually, looking at it now, is still mostly Mr Caldwell s words and I guess they re okay. Sorry we said those nasty things. We are {{Synonymous Bosch}}. We sometimes forgive. We often forget.

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When Hacknet‘s tutorial told me I needed to kill its process in order to progress, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not out of sympathy for a sentient piece of software – this isn’t Hackmud. I’m reasonably confident the tutorial was just a lifeless bit of code, I just couldn’t do it because I’m a terrible hacker who can’t tell a firewall from a floppy.

Maybe you’re fare better. If you download Hacknet before 6pm BST on Saturday, you’ll get to keep one of the ten best hacking games for free. No nethacking required. (more…)

As anyone who watches their feeds knows, we live in a constantly evolving cyberpunk dystopia. They’re connecting toilets to the internet, for heavens sake. If this Gibsonist world is just too REAL for you, we have put together the ten best videogames about hacking, programming and computing so you can escape into meta-dystopia. Which I’m sure is a much better place.

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Fab computer hacking game Hacknet [official site] has launched its mod tools, letting players create their own missions, campaigns, music and more. Or if you don’t fancy making things yourself, hey, you’ll still get to play the ‘extensions’ other people make. I’ll be sorely disappointed if someone isn’t already making a campaign recreating the great movie of our cybertime, Hackers. I’ll make it myself if I have to. I’ll get some friends in to help me type. The Gibson must fall.

If you’re not already hacking the planet yourself, hey, Hacknet is on sale right now too. … [visit site to read more]

It’s a good day for fans of crashing through firewalls with their password crackers blazing. Hacknet Labyrinths [official site], a big expansion for one of the top ten hacking games, has just been released. It’s a new 3-4 hour storyline that takes place near the end of the main story, a sizeable chunk of new stuff for a game that wasn’t very long itself. As part of an elite crew of hackers, you’ll be chatting over IRC, planning and performing “data heists” with new tools and clandestine programs, and generally hacking the planet. … [visit site to read more]

The Labyrinths expansion for command line hacking sim Hacknet will finally launch next Friday, a few months later than initially planned. RPS resident l33t d00d Brendan has declared Hacknet to be the second-best computerating game so more of that sounds grand. Labyrinths will add a big new chunk of campaign, with such fun as collaborating with other l33t (NPC) hackers through IRC and using new tools to hack the planet. Have a peek in this trailer: … [visit site to read more]

Multiplayer hacking sim Hackmud [official site] launched on Friday, catching us by surprise. We tasked our most elite hacker with entering its digital realms to crack the mainframe and report back. Sadly, Alice couldn t make it. So we sent Brendan instead, who quickly found himself in over his head, lost in a world of player-made malware, intrigue, deception and guilt.

I played Hackmud all weekend. Almost all my free time time for the past two days that wasn t spent eating, peeing, or sleeping my way through the necessities of meatspace, has been spent exploring the murky chat channels and malicious scripts of this game, which appeared, seemingly out of the ether, on Friday. To give you some background: it is an MMO hacking sim in which you must earn GC a digital currency by breaching NPCs or other players and stealing their money. The more money you have, the more upgrades you can buy, the better you can hack, and the more money you can get next time. Levelling up through tiers like this is the standard of MMOs. But I want to tell you that, despite some issues, this game is far from standard.

… [visit site to read more]

One of the silly hidden features of Hacknet was the ability to open your own CD tray with a typed command. The creator said this was a hangover from an unfinished multiplayer mode, whereby players could freak each other out by opening their opponents CD trays. That vision of multiplayer digital trespass sadly did not come to pass, but perhaps this can scratch that cyperpunk itch. Hackmud [official site] is a massively-multiplayer hacking sim and it has just been released. Go put on your best hacker sunglasses and come back to watch the trailer.

… [visit site to read more]