Rahul Shirke

50 Cent sues ad company for “promoting violence” in his name

50 Cent with the Press

It appears to lawsuit week. 50 Cent, the annoying guy infamous for songs like “In da Club”, “Candy Shop” and “Disco Inferno” has reportedly sued the internet advertisement company Traffix Inc. The allegations include “promoting violence”, threatening his safety and that the advertisement just “quite literally calls for violence against” him. The lawsuit will bring in $1 Million in damages. C’mon, Curtis. Weren’t you filthy rich already?

The advertisement in question involved a cartoon head of 50 Cent, which was used without his permission. The user is tasked with shooting the head, which is done using the mouse. If successful, the user will “WIN $5,000 or 5 RINGTONES GUARANTEED”. All that is according to the lawsuit, mind you. Still, I’d love to see and play the advertisement. Must be an excellent stress-buster.

Traffix’s lawyer Ezio Scaldaferri refused to comment and claimed that he had not even seen the lawsuit. And on the other hand, 50 Cent’s top-notch lawyers are raving about “completely unauthorized” use of 50 Cent’s image and it being used in a “vile, tasteless and despicable” method.

The inspiration for the ad could have possibly come from the 2000 event, where 50 Cent was shot nine time with a pistol near his grandma’s house.

[Via Yahoo! News]

Bioware to use Perpetual’s Online Platform in upcoming MMO

Perpetual Entertainment

Bioware has reportedly licensed Perpetual Entertainment’s Online Platform for use in their new MMO. The untitled MMO in question is currently unnamed and no information has been given out. It is under development at Bioware’s Austin Studio and its team includes veterans from Neverwinter Nights and Ultima Online, which is enough to hint that it has kickass potential.

According to Gordon Walton, Co-Studio Director of BioWare Austin:

“We evaluated numerous technology solutions to serve as the service backbone of our first MMO title and feel Perpetual’s online platform is the best fit. The Perpetual team has years of experience building infrastructure and tools for online games and we are thrilled to be working with them.”

Meanwhile, Joseph Keene, Co-Chairman and CEO of the Perpetual camp said:

“BioWare is one of the leading developers of AAA games in the world and we know they will find the Perpetual platform provides both the functionality and ease-of-use they are looking for to support their upcoming title.

With the Perpetual platform, BioWare’s Austin studio can focus on making great games while minimizing the time and effort required to deploy and support their titles.”

This Online Platform will include all the tools necessary to make a MMO game, like managing a game’s online operations, billing, customer support and so on. If you want one for yourself, head here.

[Via Game Informer]

Fatal Inertia team facing troubles with Unreal Engine 3 for PS3 too!

Fatal Inertia Screenshot

We brought you news of Silicon Knights throwing a lawsuit at Epic Games not long ago. To summarize, they claim that Epic gave them faulty versions of the Unreal Engine 3, that it does not do what it is said to do, that it has problems working on the PS3, that Epic did not help them figure out how to use the Unreal Engine 3 and that Epic stole their lunch money.

Using Silicon Knights’ lawsuit as cover, Fatal Inertia developers Koei have gone public with the statement that they are having problems with the Unreal Engine 3 as well. Koei announced that the Unreal Engine 3 is not functioning well under the PS3’s highly-acclaimed hardware. The game is “not running well enough” to be released for the PS3 yet.

This means that Fatal Inertia for the PS3 has officially been delayed. Since they find it silly to hold up the Xbox 360 version because of troubles with the PS3, Koei has decided to release the Xbox 360 version without a delay.

[Via Games Radar]

Far Cry 2 announced, teaser site launched

Farcry 2 Logo

Far Cry was one of those games that ushered in the new era of video gaming, which encompassed everything with glossy graphics, overused bloom, hackneyed plots and large corporations. Of course, there were lots of good things too, like advanced AI, realistic graphics and so on. While Crytek, the prodigal developers are busy working on Crysis, Ubisoft has announced the sequel to Far Cry.

There was already info and some screenies floating around the internet about this game, but yesterday, Ubisoft laid it down and hard. Apart from the game’s title, Far Cry 2, we know nothing more about the game. Well, not much at least. It is being developed by the Ubisoft Montreal studio and is scheduled for a Spring 2008 release, but we know how that goes. It will be coming out for the PC only, as of now.

Ubisoft has also released a teaser site for the game. The site, being a trailer, doesn’t show much. What it does show is an awesome Savannah backdrop, which hints at the game’s next exotic setting. The next explosive screen shows the game’s logo, as well as lots of jungle music in the background.

It should be noted, that during the transition of screens, a presumably African man can be heard saying “Dawa ya moto ni moto!” According to “Claws_The_One” from the game’s official forums, it means “The remedy to fire is fire”. As you can guess, it is a proverb from the language Kiswahili, spoken in some parts of Africa. If you didn’t get it, replace it with “An eye for an eye.”

And to finish off, we’ll give you something from the press release:

“Far Cry marked the beginning of a new era for shooters. An era of gorgeous graphics and of advanced artificial intelligence,” declared John Parkes, EMEA marketing director at Ubisoft. “We are confident that Far Cry 2 will have the same impact again on the FPS genre landscape.”

While I would have preferred Crytek handle it, this looks great!

World of Warcraft: The Comic Book.

Right, if you really want to, you can click the image above to get a jumbo-sized version of the same.

Now then, it appears that the guys at Blizzplanet were intrigued by Jim Lee’s name being listed at the San Diego Comic Con 2007 schedule. After some thorough digging, they foundthecomicforums.com, where a user (under the name ‘thefreakytiki’) posted that he found a free comic sampler at a local comic store. The credits for the sampler included Jim Lee as a cover artist.

Further digging found the scan you see above. This is going to spur thousands of webcomic jokes, I’m sure. That cover looks awesome to me, and I’m guessing it is for real. Lee will be making an appearance at the upcoming Blizzcon on August 3rd, 2007. So whatever happens next, happens there.

[Via Blizzplanet]

Your kids will now know the power of the Dark Side with Lord Vader himself

Darth Vader Laptop for the kiddies

This is why you shouldn’t hand the product design over to Star Wars geeks. The horrific contraption above is a laptop for kids, in the shape of Darth Vader’s infamous helmet. Your kids will be able to play a selection of 50 different games with it, by using the handy lightsaber-shaped pointer attached to it. ‘Themed marketing’ indeed.

Here are its (rather scary) features, straight from the product page:

Darth Vader laptop is the ultimate learning toy for your children. Enter Sith’s realm and let Darth Vader challenge young children’s skills in mind-blowing games in logic, music, and other breathtaking activities.

“Breathtaking”? With Lord Vader? I have a bad feeling about this. It comes with other silly features like a headphone jack and the lightsaber-thingie actually makes a sound as it is waved around.

As cool as it looks to a Star Wars Geek like myself, I’m not quite sure if it is… well, okay to let my kid learn under a menacing Sith Lord who took up choking people and slicing hands as a hobby. I mean, Yoda or some Jedi could have been reasonable. But Lord Vader?!

[Via Gizmodo]