At a press conference in Tokyo, Japan yesterday, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada said that the entire Final Fantasy brand has been damaged by its latest MMO title. Final Fantasy XIV, which launched in September of 2010 on PC, did not do as well as anticipated due mostly to serious technical issues, connectivity issues, and bugs at launch. This caused the PS3 version of the MMO to be delayed as the development team put its focus on fixing problems and generally improving the game to make customers happy.

When you have an account for a service that keeps your credit card information on file, you hope that the company in question would provide you with some security, and when security fails, you pray that they will do what's right for the customer, but that doesn't always happen. In fact, sometimes companies do nothing at all to help you.

This morning Kotaku pointed out a video from Germany's RTL Television in which commentators took great delight in mocking what they characterized as the "computer freaks" that they filmed at last week's Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. Today the show, apparently embarrassed (and likely humbled by fans that were pissed off at their mean-spirited characterizations) is now apologizing for their bad judgment in airing the report.

Yesterday it was revealed that cloud-gaming service OnLive and Square Enix had teamed up for a special promotion that would give consumers that bought a retail copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution for PC a free OnLive version of the game. Well, apparently retailer GameStop was not interested in participating in the promotion. The retailer took steps to make sure its customers did not get an OnLive version of the game - and they did it without telling them.

Electronic Arts announced today that it plans on shutting down around 17 online servers for various games - and some of these games are still pretty popular.

As of August 11, EA plans to shut down servers for Army of Two for PS3 and Xbox 360, the Army of Two Demo for Xbox 360, Battlefield 2142 Demo for PC, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat for Xbox 360, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat Demo for Xbox 360, Medal of Honor Airborne for PlayStation Portable, Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for PlayStation Portable and Wii, NASCAR 09 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (North America), NCAA Basketball 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, NCAA Football 10 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Need for Speed Most Wanted for PC and Xbox 360, Need for Speed Undercover for PlayStation Portable, SKATE for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 10 (PSP, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii) and Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 11 Demo for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

UK Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said that Sony must make security a priority going forward, but wouldn't say if the government would consider fining the company for its massive security breach that has seen around 100 million PSN users with compromised accounts an without online play for three weeks.

While his words were firm against Sony, the Culture Minister insisted that the government would not interfere with the Information Commissioner’s Office on whether to fine Sony.

"Clearly, as more and more companies move their products online – with more and more customers handing over their details – data protection is going to have to be a number one priority," Vaizey said. "The Information Commission has been given new powers to issue fines where necessary. I know the ICO has been in touch with Sony and clearly this is a huge issue, Sony getting hacked and people’s data being stolen."

Today AT&T begins controlling how much broadband users consume with a new cap. The new cap limits users to 150 GB for DSL and 250 Gigabytes for its UVerse service. This could prove to be a challenge to AT&T subscribers that want to use services such as Netflix and Hulu due to the massive amounts of data being transferred during streaming. AT&T joins Comcast and some smaller ISPs in limiting the amount of broadband users consume - and the penalty for going over is additional charges.

AT&T will charge an additional $10 per month for going over the cap. That charge is not a onetime thing either: users will be charged $10 for every 50GB of additional data over the cap. If you have children or additional internet users in your care, the new capping scheme could prove to be an expensive challenge.

Last year, a few video game publishers (Notably EA and THQ) started charging a fee for online multiplayer from used video game buyers for $10. Sony Computer Entertainment America goes beyond the pale this week by charging gamers who dare buy SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals used extra. Those who buy SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals used will miss out on special guns, game types, and other perks that will be added to the game at a later date. To get these features as a used game buyer, you'll have to pay a $15 fee.

Sony is marketing all this as "SOCOM Pro," an suite of enhancement for new game buyers. While some might argue that these extra enhancements are rewards for buying new, it is also hard to deny that they feel like punishment to anyone who can't afford to buy the full game. Basically if you are a used game buyer, you start out at a disadvantage online. Further, that $15 activation fee nullifies the savings of buying used.

Although the horror of not being able to play the single player versions of BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins is now apparently over (see this Blue's News story), for four days gamers were greeted with all kinds of problems every time they fired up a game because of DRM server problems. This is not the way to curry favor among consumers, but it is a good way to get a class action lawsuit or (at the very least) an online petition. The problem, which began over this past weekend, was called an "unidentified failure" of the game's servers rendered players unable to use their downloaded content.

BioWare explained the problem on its forums: "Over the April 9, 2011 weekend, some of our Dragon Age: Origins content servers experienced an as yet unidentified failure."

While EA is saying that it is not stopping people who might be naughty on its forums (and catch a ban) from playing single player games, it has done just that to a couple of users over the last few days. The company has said that this is all some kind of weird glitch or mistake in its system and promises to rectify the situation soon. In a statement to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, EA Senior Director of Customer Services, Boyd Beasley said the following:

We are happy to report that an earlier story about a user being banned from the BioWare forums who was then barred from playing his freshly purchased copy of Dragon Age II, is being called a "mistake" by BioWare. BioWare Community Coordinator Chris Priestly said in a statement that this is not the way BioWare handles a situation like this:

"EA strictly enforces the code of conduct at Social.BioWare.com. If a player violates the rules by using profanity, they will be temporarily banned," he wrote. "Unfortunately, there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended a user's entire account. Immediately upon learning of the glitch, EA restored the user's macro account and apologized for the inconvenience."

According to this Ars Technica report, citing a report from advocacy group Reclaim Your Game, the dreaded SecuRom DRM has made its way into PC version of Dragon Age II, despite BioWare (and EA) saying in its forums that it "does not use SecuROM." Surprise! Not only does the game use SecuRom, but all involved have failed to mention this fact to users in any way. There is no warning in the EULA, during the install, on the game's packaging, or on its official web site.

Back in 2008, EA was sued for failing to inform consumers about the DRM scheme in free trial versions of some of its games. Now EA could face similar legal action for its secret implementation of SecuRom in Dragon Age II.

Could this have been some sort of odd mistake or was EA trying to sneak the DRM past consumers? We will have to wait and see what they say.

One BioWare fan who might have said the wrong thing on an official forum found himself in an awkward situation. After saying what some might deem a derogatory statement in an official BioWare forum, user v_ware found that he couldn't play Dragon Age II. What is odd about this is that Dragon Age II is not a multiplayer game. One of the reasons this may have happened is because forum accounts are connected to game registrations, and v_ware tried to register the game after he was suspended.

Still, it seems like a very odd situation to everyone; why would BioWare stop someone from playing a game they just bought even if that individual received a temporary ban on one of their forums? It's plain silliness. The ban made it so that v_ware couldn't play Dragon Age II for 72 hours. So what did he say that was so horrible?

I am sure that Blizzard (and other MMO companies) is delighted with today's press release from World of Wacraft gold reseller outfit BYGamer. While the press release isn't particularly thrilling one could imagine that the China-based gold farmers are not well liked on this side of the world.

The company issued a press release to announce changes to its web site - BYGAMER.com - which now offers visitors a plethora of fancy colors, improved navigation and lovely new frames. Are they mocking Blizzard? It sure seems that way.

The company tops off its wonderful announcement with customer testimonials:

"It’s amazing! What a beautiful site and Buy WOW Gold here is absolutely a good choice!, said new customer Monica to one of BYGAMER’s call center operators.

The company says that this new design is already proving to help "increase traffic and sales."

Full release below:

If you have already read our story about Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward blaming Sony for the rash of hacks and exploits, then you get a good sense of how the PS3 Call of Duty community feels. They are pissed off, frustrated and feel like no one wants to help them. No doubt, Infinity Ward and Treyarch are equally frustrated with the problems they have encountered on the PS3 related to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops.

According to a VooDoo Extreme report, Riot Games, makers of the online strategy game League of Legends, has fired a customer service representative who live-streamed his misuse of administrative powers during a League of Legends bout. According to the report, the Riot Games employee "verbally abused a player and inappropriately banned him."

Riot Games' community relations director Steve Mescon announced that the employee has been fired. He added that the company will do a thorough review of its internal policy and training procedures to "prevent such incidents from happening in the future."

When more than half of what you're manufacturing fails, that's not a good way to win friends and influence customers.

But that appears to be the case with Microsoft's Xbox 360. A survey of 5,000 Game Informer readers indicates that the Xbox 360 dies at a 54.2% rate, compared to 10.6% for the PlayStation 3 and 6.8% for the Wii.

Game Informer also rated MS poorly on customer service, with turnarounds on repairs taking several weeks longer than for Sony and Nintendo.

GP: While those numbers may seem shocking, I actually find them surprisingly low. I've had three Xbox 360s go on me; two were Red Rings failures and the third was the very common disc-read failure. So, my failure rate is... 100%.

Via: The Consumerist