Let’s talk about gaming for a little bit. In the last couple of weeks we have watched the launch of the third installment in both the Battlefield and Modern Warfare franchises.  These two games have been long awaited and have already spawned more than a few comments, arguments and in some cases violence. In addition to the happy news of these two game launches we heard that Steam’s servers were hacked and some user information was accessed. Each of these has been a significant event and deserves a little time.

The first item up in our gaming recap is the incident with Steam’s servers. One of the things that has attracted users to Steam has been its perceived safety. Consumers can enter their information (credit card and billing etc) and purchase new items with relative ease. Many have also begun to enjoy the simplicity of being able to have  their games installed on more than one computer without the need to tote DVDs or CD-ROMs around from machine to machine. Steam also hosts a large number of game servers and an online forum.

In one attack much of the safety and security that people felt using Steam has been crushed. When the news of this broke, before I had even read the whole article I found myself checking my credit card balance and then my account information. I am sure that more than a few people will discontinue using the service for purchases at least for the present.

Once the initial reaction passed I dug into it and found that user information was compromised. The attackers were able to gather user names, hashed and salted passwords. User purchase histories and encrypted credit card numbers were also accessible. So far Steam is saying that they do not think the encryption for the credit card numbers has been broken, but they do urge people to check their balances. This will affect Steam and now puts them into same category as the PSN and Xbox networks. Both of these have been hacked in the past with the loss of user information; looks like it is true that nothing that can be connected to via the internet is safe.

The next big gaming event was the launch of Battlefield 3. This long awaited game hit the internet to rave reviews which seemed to falter after a few people began to actually play the game. As it stands right now there are still complaints that there are areas of the game that simply cannot be gotten around unless have help. We have also heard that the game is relatively linear, but still a lot of fun. We have a copy and will be checking it out on our new gaming platform next week.

The final bit of information is the launch of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 3. This game has had some very mixed reactions. These differing opinions have not stopped it from racking up about $400 million in sales so far. This is another one that we have in house and will be trying out in the coming week (we have a pressing project going right now). So far the complaints are; the single player game is too short, the graphics are still DX9 (meaning it is a console port again), some buildings and many of the textures have been reused for this game.

Still is has been an exciting couple of weeks for the gamers out there. We will bring you more information about the Steam hack as well as our thoughts on both Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 soon.

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