The Incarna update for Eve-Online is not going especially well for the game's developers, CCP. First, there's the $70 monocle that players can buy and equip to their new avatars. Then there's the threat of pay-to-win items entering the game system via microtransactions. A significant proportion of Eve's playerbase are upset. Significant enough to organise a vast in-game protest at Jita, Eve's trade-hub. The video above comes from that protest, with around a 1000 pilots firing upon the trade-station. This isn't the only protest ongoing; similar protests have taken place across Tranquility this evening.

To be fair, there are also anti-protest protests taking place. And they've got lasers, too. Because that's the kind of game Eve is. More, including CCP's response, below.


The CCP developers have explained some of the thinking behind Incarna and their micro-transaction store in an extraordinary blog-post, titled 'Fearless'.

Here's the killer quote. It's pretty special.

"People have been shocked by the price range in the NeX store, but you should remember that we are talking about clothes. Look at the clothes you are currently wearing in real life. Do you have any specific brands? Did you choose it because it was better quality than a no-name brand? Assume for a short while that you are wearing a pair of $1,000 jeans from some exclusive Japanese boutique shop. Why would you want to wear a pair of $1,000 jeans when you can get perfectly similar jeans for under $50? What do other people think about you when they see you wearing them? For some you will look like the sad culmination of vainness while others will admire you and think you are the coolest thing since sliced bread. Whichever it is, it is clear that by wearing clothes you are expressing yourself and that the price is one of the many dimensions that clothes possess to do that in addition to style and fit. You don't need to buy expensive clothes. In fact you don't need to buy any clothes. Whatever you choose to do reflects what you are and what you want others to think you are."


/facepalm

This is also funny.

Eve Online's Incarna update launched yesterday. In addition to the ability to walk around outside your ship, you can also buy micro-transacted items to spruce up your avatar. The problem? The cost of these items is far, far beyond most DLC prices, and it's affecting the delicate Eve economy.

Things can get a little complicated here as there's three different virtual currencies involved, so here's a breakdown:


Customisation items, including clothes and the ocular monocle pictured above, are purchased using a new currency called Aurum. Most clothes cost 3,200 to 4,400 Aurum. The monocle costs 12,000.
Aurum is gained by trading in a PLEX at the game store. A PLEX is essentially 30 days of subscription as an in game item. One PLEX gets you 3,500 Aurum.
You can get PLEX by buying it from the Eve store. $35.00 will get you two PLEX...
...or you can trade for it in game with ISK, the main Eve currency.

 
If you've followed that, you'll have realised that in real money terms the clothes cost around $17.50 each and the implant costs more than $70.00 (or four months subscription). An astonishing amount for an item with no in game functionality. For comparison, Bethesda's often mocked Horse Armour DLC cost $2.50 on release, some 28 times less.

Of course you could trade for it in game, but the new demand caused by these items has driven the cost of PLEX up. It now costs 400 million ISK, up from around 370 million before the update.

Would you pay $70.00 for a monocle? No matter how classy?

The suspected ringleader of Lulzsec has been arrested in a joint operation between Scotland Yard and the FBI. The 19 year old Brit is accused of masterminding the recent spate of cyber-attacks on CIA.gov and a number of games company sites, including Nintendo, Minecraft and Eve Online.

The teenager was apprehended at his home in Wickford, Essex, in a joint operation that could see the suspect extradited to America to face charges, reports Sky News.

Update: Lulzsec have tweeted in response to the arrest, saying "seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now... wait... we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?" The suspect has been named by the press as Ryan Cleary, and is thought to be an ex-member of notorious hacking organisation, Anonymous.

Lulzsec have claimed responsibility for a number of recent denial of service attacks on a number of gaming sites, including Minecraft, Eve Online, League of Legends, and The Escapist. Lulzsec took requests for targets on Twitter. Shortly after the Central Intelligence Agency site went down, they tweeted "Tango down - CIA.gov - for the lulz".

The hacker group are one of the key players in a recent storm of cyber-crime that has damaged companies as big as Sony and Nintendo. Anonymous and Gnosis have also been implicated in attacks on Sony Online Entertainment and Eidos respectively.

A Scotland Yard statement says that searching the teenage suspect's home led to "the examination of a significant amount of material."

"The arrest follows an investigation into network intrusions and distributed denial of service attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group," the spokesperson confirmed. The suspect is currently being held in London while evidence is examined.

Update:
CVG are reporting that the suspect has been named by British national press as Ryan Cleary, who earlier this year turned on Anonymous, stealing passwords and attacking the AnonOps messageboard servers. Lulzsec have also responded to Cleary's arrest on Twitter, saying "Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now... wait... we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?"

The Telegraph report that Cleary is being held under the Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act, and suggest that the arrest was triggered by suspicions that Lulzsec were behind the theft of the 2011 British Census data. Lulzsec have denied this, saying "not sure we claimed to hack the UK census or where that rumour started, but we assume it's because people are stupider than you and I."

"Oh well, just because we want to waste government and local authority investigation time: we hacked every website in the world. Enjoy!"

The long-awaited Incarna update for Eve Online is set to arrive tomorrow. Incarna 1.0 will add the Captain's Quarters that will let every pilot wander around their own personal quarters on board any space station they dock in.

The Captain's Quarters will replace the old hanger view with a series of rooms explorable rooms, and will be the first thing new players see when they start up the game. From these quarters you'll be able to perform all of the same actions that you could in the previous menu view, including contacting agents, refitting your ship and buying new goods. You'll also be able to wander into the hangar and see your space ship in full scale. Tutorials have also been revamped to smoothen out Eve's famously steep learning curve even further.

CCP say they plan many more updates to Incarna, that will eventually add more new rooms to the captain's quarters complex. CCP even say that "by the end of this year you could be trading contraband goods in seedy bars. Or running seedy bars."

The new update will also add the Noble Exchange, a store where virtual money can be exchanged for character accessories and even new paint jobs for ships. CCP say they're planning to release the patch notes soon. Until then, check out the developer walkthrough video above for an advanced look at the new quarters. Swanky, no?

Hello and welcome to our regular round up of this week's newly released games in Europe and North America. Wallets at the ready for the shiny new games within.

Dungeon Siege 3
21st June (EU)
Price: £29.99/$49.99
Obsidian's latest outing came out last week in Europe, but lands in North America this Tuesday. You can check out the newly released demo. Get it on steam here.

F.E.A.R. 3
21st June (NA), 24th June (EU)
Price: £29.99/$49.99
The latest in the horror FPS series lands this week, pick it up on steam here.

Gods and Heroes
21st June
Price: £24.99/$49.99
The Roman themed MMO gets a global release on the 21st, you can pick up a copy from direct2drive here.

Eve: Icarna
21st June
Price: Free
Incarna is the latest Eve expansion, giving players the much anticipated ability to walk around outside their ships. Like all Eve updates this will be completely free to subscribers. If you don't yet have Eve you can get it from Steam here or download the client for free here (though you will have to pay a subscription once your 14 day trial has run out).

Last week some of you asked for more indie releases, unfortunately they can sometimes be hard to track down, so if you have any info on an upcoming indie game then please feel free to tip us off in the comments or contact us as pcgamer@futurenet.com.

Minecraft, Eve Online, League of Legends, and The Escapist are the most recent high-profile games industry targets to get hit by hackers. All three of the sites went down at some point yesterday. At the time of writing, all are back online.

LulzSec has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The hacking group started taking requests for targets via Twitter, but the exact criteria for the choices are unclear.

Aside from the game devs and website, LulSec also claim to have targeted IT security company Finfisher saying "apparently they sell monitoring software to the government or some shit like that." The group claim to have received over 3500 calls and over 1500 voicemails pointing out potential victims. They proclaimed yesterday TitanicTakeoverTuesday.

The developers and website join Codemasters, Epic, Bethesda, Nintendo, Square Enix and Sony on the list of industry figureheads to get hacked this year.

LulzSec's most recent tweet implies that the group are taking a break from the criminal activity, saying: "The Lulz Boat must sail off and organise itself."

Are you having a lul with LulzSec, or are they just making you sad? PC gamers got to play less games than usual last night - that's not cool.

EVE Online devleopers CCP announced that their persistent shooter Dust 514 would be a PS3 exclusive yesterday. That seemed very odd to us, given that Dust is designed to closely interact with EVE, a PC-only game, and given that it's touted as a "thinking man's shooter," with more in common with Planetside and Tribes than typical console fare. So when I went along to meet with CCP, I asked: "yo, dudes, what's the deal?"

Or rather, another journalist was called on first and asked the same question. This was part of an open conference Q&A, so I'll include part of the answer here.
Dust 514 is a PS3 exclusive. Why isn't it coming to PC?
Thomas Farrer, Dust 514 producer: We're looking at trying to expand the players that occupy New Eden, so for now we're focusing on PlayStation.
Halldor Fannar, CCP's Chief Technical Officer We wanted to find an audience that was kind of diagonally opposite of what we already have, instead of trying to cannibalize what we already have. So that's initially what we're trying to do. If you look at all the people that actually tried EVE, it's a really large number, so it also tells us that there is interest out there for people to experience this world, but the gameplay style, whether it's being on PC or whether it's how you play, it doesn't suit them. So we wanted to create something that's very different. So we understand that the EVE players are thinking, 'Oh man, I want to play this game but I need a PS3,' but they have to understand that we're also trying to build this game for a slightly different audience. So that's the difference.
For those of you who have tried EVE, you've probably seen that we don't do a terribly good job in trying to explain it. We're not going to get away with that in Dust, whereas if we were publishing it on PC, we would. Sony wouldn't come over and say, 'Guys, this is sensory overload, this is too much information...'. So that's another reason why we're doing it. We're trying to cater to an audience and get them to... These games are always going to end up being pretty complex, but there's a way to introduce people to them.
The thing about this answer is that it doesn't quite make sense. Wanting to create an accessible experience is great, but there's nothing actively stopping them from doing that on PC, and for all the motions towards making it easy to understand, Dust 514 is still complex. The audience for this kind of game - persistent, with classes people construct themselves, with huge battles, with micropayments - is traditionally a PC audience.

There's also the casual use of the word "initially." They wanted to find an audience that was different from EVE's, so that's "initially what we're trying to do." I followed up on that, asking them whether it meant there was a chance that Dust 514 would come to PC further down the line. Every CCP developer in the room smirked and looked off toward the middle distance, and the audience of journalists laughed.

Halldor gave the non-answer:
"We're exclusive on the PlayStation 3 right now and we're focusing on making a really great game there. You know, I can't speak to what's going to happen in the future, so."
If they've signed an exclusivity deal with Sony, then they wouldn't be able to say anything else. But it seems inevitable that Dust 514 will arrive on PC eventually. It simply doesn't make sense that it wouldn't. Until we hear a hard confirmation that it's never going to happen, we're assuming that Dust 514 is a PC game.

Here is a picture of Tim hugging CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson.

UPDATE: Dust 514 looks like it's going to be a microtransaction supported game.

At the Sony press conference at E3, Sony have just announced that Dust 514, the shooter that connects to Eve Online to influence the outcome of a planetary takeover, is a PS3 exclusive. Or, to look at it the other way: PC gamers will not be able to order Xbox players to their death.

The game will also support Sony's handheld, the NGP, and Sony's waggle-wand, the Move. In the short on-stage demo, the movie implied that players would be able to hire mercenaries and buy new armour and weapons using ISK, Eve's in-game currency.

The game will digitally distributed via the Playstation Network, and CCP say that the game will be supported by "by revenues from the in-game sale of virtual goods, allowing players to purchase advanced weaponry, battle gear and vehicles using both earned virtual currency and real money from their Playstation wallet." And that brings with it some unusual design problems.

Although the press release doesn't say so, I'm wondering if Dust will be free-to-play. It's also a dangerous step; the quote above says that players can buy advanced weapons using real money. It also says that "a single bullet fired on the planet below can pivot the balance of power in EVE Online. Every action has consequences, and every reaction has the potential to topple empires."

I don't think you can marry the two facts and expect the EVE community to react positively. The implication is that players will be able to buy their way to victory in Dust, and flip planets in EVE.

We're seeing CCP tomorrow, to see Dust in action, and to understand how the game connects to Eve, and whether PC players will ever get to try it. We'll put some hard questions to the devs.

A new post on the Eve Online dev blog has turned up some fascinating new screenshots of the upcoming Incarna update. The next free expansion will players step out of their space ships and roam the universe's space stations on foot.

The latest version of the Captain's Quarters update are live now on the Eve Online Duality test servers, giving beta players access to the new Incarna areas with up to date animations and extra features. One of the most spectacular additions is the ship dock, where you can stand and admire your ship at its full scale. It's hard to tell when piloting them how enormous they are.

The Incarna Update won't just make aesthetic changes, the UI is set to be streamlined and the entire starting experience for new players will be refined to include new tutorials. You can find out more on the Eve Online site. If fancy giving the space MMO a go, there's a free trial available.

Are you prepared for the coming apocolypse? Is your kitchen full of canned food and non-perishables, just in case the Rapture is happening tomorrow? What about a first aid kit and water? Are you planning on spending your last hours on street corners shouting angrily at stangers passing by? Maybe you can still save their--Ah, forget it. Let's just stay inside and play EVE Online instead.

The guys and gals at CCP in Iceland have always had a special way of making gamers laugh--whether through a NSFW rap video or an epic chess-boxing match at this year's FanFest. And now, they're making light of the cult proclaiming that Jesus is returning tomorrow, which will inevitably trigger a massive apocalypse to destroy the world as we know it.

However, we still have some hours left to play videogames, and EVE players logging in today will be greeted with a friendly jab at the dire predictions on the login screen. It's good to see the developers can maintain a sense of humor in the face of impending doom.