Software & Gaming

The recent power outages in Ukraine which saw upwards of 80,000 people left without electricity, are now said to have been caused by hackers. The BlackEnergy malware is thought to have been used in the attack, with a coordinated effort made to shut down the power, hinder its repair and …

One of my favourite games ever is Micro Machines '96: Tournament Edition, because despite being a 20 year old game, you can have up to eight players racing at once. It's difficult, because you need to share controllers, but it's doable. That's just a simple racing game though. It's nothing …

Earlier on in the week, people became largely aware of a fake Minecraft sequel doing the rounds on iOS. This app claimed to be Minecraft: Pocket Edition 2 and actually managed to hit the top ten on the App Store's top-selling chart. However, after awareness of this scam app was …

We are all pretty familiar with the concept of a Let's Play at this point, YouTubers and streamers use the phrase often to describe their playthrough of a game. However, it looks like Sony is trying to claim the phrase, according to a recent trademark listing at the US Patent …

Rainbow Six: Siege is out and many people are actually quite impressed with it. However, the game does have its issues, mainly poor hit detection and networking errors. Fortunately, Ubisoft is working on these things and Patch 1.2 is set to hit this week. Matchmaking errors seem to be affecting …

The Half-Life series has earned itself a great deal of praise from PC gamers since its inception. However, at this point, it has been so long since we last heard anything official about a sequel that many have took to believing that it may never happen. One rumour popped up …

Edward Snowden has made an appearance at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Not, as you might expect, in person, but on a display with its own locomotion, looking rather like the meeting room in Demolition Man. The technology was really important, Snowden said, because it allowed him to talk at …

Although virtual reality and future games like Star Citizen are really going to push our gaming systems to their limits when released, other AAA titles are carrying the torch through much more reasonable steps. They are still climbing ever higher though and Far Cry: Primal is no different, requiring anyone …

Last year saw the launch of the Blackphone, a smartphone designed and built for the super security/privacy conscious. However, even a device built to be secure can run into problems as independent researchers revealed that the device had a pretty severe vulnerability that could allow hackers to send and receive …

There are quite a few examples of bad apps on Apple's App Store. However, once in a while, we come across an outright scam, which is the case here with Minecraft: Pocket Edition 2, a fake sequel to Minecraft being sold for £4.99 and topping the App Store charts. The …

After its brief stint as a Xbox exclusive title, Rise of the Tomb Raider is officially making its way over to the PC in a couple of weeks time. In order to celebrate, Nvidia will be bundling a free copy of the game with purchases of its GTX 900-series graphics …

This year, Ubisoft will be spinning off the Far Cry franchise with a more survival-focussed game- Far Cry Primal. When it comes to survival games, most studios tend to focus on the multiplayer experience but Ubisoft is going about things a bit differently and has revealed that Far Cry Primal …

The second largest TV and broadband provider in the U.S., Time Warner Cable, has released a statement saying that around a third of a million of its customers may have had their email and passwords copied away by hackers. At this early stage in the investigation however, it was keen …

Despite talking up its cloud gaming service just six months ago, Square Enix has made the decision to close down Shinra Technologies. Shinra was set to be a cloud gaming service, that would render graphics through ‘the cloud' and create a “groundbreaking experience not possible with today's current gaming technology”. …

Over the last year, there has been quite a bit of drama in the professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive scene, particularly when it comes to match-fixing after several teams were found to have intentionally staged games in order to profit off of illegal bets. At the time, Valve ‘indefinitely suspended' 21 …

It has been a long time coming but Microsoft is finally pulling the plug on several older versions of its browser, Internet Explorer. IE versions 8, 9 and 10 all reach end of life next Tuesday, which means there will be no more fixes, patches or security improvements. There is …

Although stopping game-pirates has seen developers get creative with their methods, it often seems about as futile as copyright protections on movies and music. That may not be the case for much longer though, as a Chinese cracking group has warned that if DRM protections continue to increase in complexity, …

According to one firm, the Nintendo NX may be much closer to release than we all expected. Japanese finance company, Nomura Securities, has stated publicly that it believes Nintendo will announce the next-generation console by May, reveal it by June and will get it on shelves and into the hands …

A week or two ago, Square Enix went ahead and listed Rise of the Tomb Raider on Steam, though it didn't have an exact release date, nor were there many details surrounding the PC version. Now, things have been elaborated on a bit, revealing a 28th/29th of January release date for …

It looks like Ubisoft might be giving Assassin's Creed a break this year, with reports suggesting that there won't be a new game in the franchise until 2017. This once again seems to be partially in response to the backlash against Assassin's Creed Unity, which has had a lasting effect …

Although competitive gaming is far bigger today than it once was, it's not just about League of Legends, Counter Strike and Call of Duty. There are still some classics kicking around the competitive scene and while there are a few popular ones among them, none are quite like the original …

We might make jokes about Steam baiting us into spending cash around the holidays, or talk about all the games we own and never play, but the actual stats about Steam sales are rather hard to come by. That is unless you look to Steam Spy, which looks at statistically …

Rainbow Six: Siege launched around a month ago and while the game hasn't been flying off of store shelves, it has actually been quite well received by those who bought it. The game is also doing some interesting things with DLC, allowing Season Pass owners to access new characters a …

Our first game delay of the year has arrived and unfortunately, it affects a game that shows a lot of promise- Scalebound, from Platinum Games. This title was announced back in 2013 and was due to come out later this year, unfortunately, the studio needs more time, so we won't …

This past week has been quite interesting in the console hacking community. Not only have some tinkerers managed to get a build of Linux running on the PlayStation 4 but a user on the GBATemp forum has managed to successfully get Windows 95 running on the new Nintendo 3DS, which …

HTC's Viveport online store for virtual reality games, experiences and applications was learned about in mid-December through some investigative digging from fans, but it now looks to be available. Although there are no apps listed of yet, the system itself appears to be up and running, with libraries for purchased …

Major League Gaming, one of the longest standing pro-Esports organisations, is now owned almost entirely by Activison, after the board of directors agreed to sell the publishing giant most of the company's assets for $46 million. This has annoyed some share-holders, as the move was approved – legally – without …

Microsoft had big ambitions for Windows 10 and so far, adoption seems to be going pretty strong. Back in October, it was reported that Windows 10 had surpassed the 110 million installs milestone and now, it seems that the company has closed out the year with just over 200 million …

We recently heard that EA had set up its own eSports division internally to break into the pro gaming scene and get more involved with tournaments. Now, it looks like Activision is doing a similar thing, as the publisher has apparently bought Major League Gaming for $46 million. Activision has …

While Just Cause 3 did launch to fairly positive reception this year, there was one major thing missing from the game that we were all hoping to see- multiplayer. Fortunately, though, modders have come to the rescue and are already working on creating a multiplayer mode for the game. This …