Tech Olive

Over the past two weeks, Valve’s anti-cheat (VAC) system interpreted around 12,000 gamers as having a hacked copy of Modern Warfare 2 when, in fact, their copies of the game were completely legitimate. Valve has acknowledged their error and more than made up for it by reactivating the banned Modern Warfare 2 games, as well as giving the affected gamers two free copies of Left 4 Dead 2 (one for them, and one guest pass for a friend) as an apology.

“The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version. Steam allows us to manage and reverse these erroneous bans (about 12,000 erroneous bans over two weeks). This was our mistake, and I apologize for any frustration or angst it may have caused you.” — Gabe Newell, Valve’s President

via [Shack News & Steam Forums]

With the legendary launch of Modern Warfare 2 back in November, it’s no surprise that the award-winning game spawned many themed products, gaming related and otherwise. Recently, we reviewed the MW2-themed peripherals from Mad Catz, but now it’s time to go a bit more visual.

When we first stumbled across these Ghost-themed balaclavas, we decided it was time to retire our ninja masks and pirate eye-patches (yes, we wore them under our ninja masks, wanna fight about it?) for a more theme-appropriate, facially-obscuring item. A few emails later, we’ve got our faces in one of these awesome masks and we’re here to tell all.

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When Mad Catz shipped out their Modern Warfare 2 Xbox controller, they were nice enough to include the second piece of the set with their Modern Warfare 2 Throat Communicator. Now, we don’t focus on console gaming here at the Olive, so we’ll be testing this device from the perspective of a PC gamer.

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While we don’t focus on consoles here at the Olive, there are many PC games that we still use a controller for, and the Xbox 360 controller is always our weapon of choice. As any gamer that’s laid hands on it will know, the Xbox 360 controller is a true piece of art when it comes to comfort. So, when Mad Catz announced their plans for an upgraded version of the controller that would be themed towards Modern Warfare 2, we honestly couldn’t wait. We finally managed to get our hands on a review sample from Mad Catz and here’s what we think…

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With the blinding success of MW2‘s first map pack, Activision has quickly announced their plans for map pack #2. The “Resurgence Pack” will bring five new maps to the MW2 online experience. The pack will be hitting Xbox Live on June 3rd and it’s safe to assume it will later hit PC, costing the same $14.99 as The Stimulus Package.

[Press Release]

In celebration of The Stimulus Package PC release, Modern Warfare 2 is hosting another free weekend, as well as offering gamers double XP. You can start pre-loading now for the free weekend and the double XP actually started last night, so get playing! Now, here’s hoping that Activision will do something about the massive community of hackers in the game.

[Press Release]

In a move that hardly surprises us, Activision has officially announced that PC gamers will have to pay for Modern Warfare 2 DLC, starting with the May 4th release of the Stimulus Package. The good news, however, is that by pre-ordering through Steam, you can save 10%.

The Stimulus Package DLC for Modern Warfare 2 on PC is 10% off on Steam if you pre-order before the May 4th release! — Robert Bowling on Twitter.

[Store Page]

Last month, Activision fired long-time Infinity Ward veterans of the CoD series Vince Zampella (CEO of Infinity Ward) and Ethan West (COO of Infinity Ward). The pair just recently announced the opening of their new studio, Respawn Entertainment, which will be backed by Electronic Arts, a fierce rival of Activision.

Now, it seems Activision is feeling the sting of this move as programmer Jon Shiring, senior animator Bruce Ferriz and MW2 lead designer Mackey McCandlish have announced their resignation and Todd Alderman and Francesco Gigliotti announced earlier this month that they had left the studio.

It’s hard to see a developer like Infinity Ward fall apart and it makes you wonder about the future of the Call of Duty series. Perhaps Treyarch will take a much larger role in the future.

via [IGN]

Last night’s new episode of Family Guy brought in an awesome sight. Peter Griffin buys an Xbox 360 for his kids as an apology for saying that he hated being around them. He ends up hogging the controller and the rest is history. While we would’ve preferred him playing MW2 on the PC, it still doesn’t hurt to see a great game on a great TV show. Robert Bowling (Infinity Ward’s community strategist) also makes a cameo appearance in the game as his infamous gamer tag FourZeroTwo. Watch the clip after the break.

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Robert Bowling confirmed today that MW2‘s Stimulus Package DLC is coming to PC and it will release worldwide on May 4th. Unfortunately, there are still no details as to whether the DLC will cost anything for PC gamers or not. Though, I think it’s safe to assume that we’ll get it free of charge.

“The Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package DLC will hit PS3 in North America on May 4th, everywhere else May 5th. PC gets it worldwide on May 4th” -Robert Bowling via Twitter