Welcome back, boys and girls! We’re back at work and getting ready for CES 2016 in just a few days time. Thing is, while we were enjoying the holidays, news kept rolling in – Steam had themselves a Big Winter Fail, Oculus hit a stumbling block and there was good news for Final Fantasy fans. Hit the jump and get all caught up.
Steam’s Winter Fail
Valve’s Steam platform suffered a major security issue on Christmas Day when customer details and account information, including purchase histories and the last four digits of credit card numbers, were exposed for literally anyone to see. Valve pulled Steam offline around 90 minutes after the issue was first reported and it stayed down for another few hours before reappearing without warning or, worryingly, any comment from Valve. Valve then kept quiet about the issue for a full five days, leaving many users in the dark about how much of their information had been accessed and whether they needed to take any action.
Valve finally addressed the issue on December 30, claiming that a Denial of Service attack and a configuration error were to blame. “The content of these requests varied by page, but some pages included a Steam user’s billing address, the last four digits of their Steam Guard phone number, their purchase history, the last two digits of their credit card number, and/or their email address,” read Valve’s statement on the matter. “These cached requests did not include full credit card numbers, user passwords, or enough data to allow logging in as or completing a transaction as another user.
Valve stressed that it was working to identify which Steam users had been affected by the issue, saying that “no unauthorised actions were allowed on accounts beyond the viewing of cached page information (and) no additional action is required by users.”
Final Fantasy 9 is coming to PC and smartphones
Square Enix have announced that Final Fantasy 9 is headed to Android, iOS and Windows PC. While they didn’t set a release date for the port, they did drop a new trailer and you can check that out below.
Got me right in the feels bladder, it did. Also good news, it looks very much like it did on the PSOne all those years ago which, in light of the recent Final Fantasy 6 revamp debacle, is probably for the best. Final Fantasy 9 was originally released in 2000 and has been since released as a classic on the PlayStation Store. This will be its first time on a non-Sony platform.
Oculus says its Touch controller won’t ship with the device, but it does come with a free game
While Oculus says that its Oculus Rift headset is still on target for a Q1 2016 release, its much-touted Oculus Touch controller has slipped to a Q3 or Q4 release date. Oculus’ explanation for the delay is that it still needs time to fine-tune the Touch controller, stating “significant advances in ergonomics, and we’re implementing many changes that make Touch even more comfortable, reliable and natural. We’re also implementing changes that improve hand pose recognition.”
So, a bit of a bummer for those hoping to get to grips with the Touch right away but hopefully the wait won’t be too long. It’s not all bad news though, with Oculus also announcing that the retail version of the headset will ship with a free game. Lucky’s Tale has been touted as a prime example of how you can build a third-person adventure game like Super Mario 64 specifically for play in VR. You can check out the trailer above.
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