Payday went Overkill - A Note on Payday 2's 'Crimefest' Microtransactions

So Payday has microtransactions now. And people are pissed the f*** off.

I have to be honest here, Payday 2 is an amazing game that was all about breaking the bank. In-game and in real life.

On the PC version of Payday, there were more than just a few DLC to choose from, there were a LOT. And this became a problem for me, as this very easily translated to a few updates per week, which took somewhere around 30 mins to an hour depending on the update. Apparently this is because it downloads the files to a containing folder, then copies the files afterward.

I could very easily stop the downloads to get more FPS in another game, but the process is a very buggy one, especially on my 8-year old laptop, where sometimes the installation of updates fail several times if I don't baby it through.

If that was the only thing I had a problem with, I would have been fine with the game overall. But the constant flow of DLC that Overkill pushes out every one or two weeks just irks me. Not just because they were coming out every week, but because they often had lots of gimmicks that basically had no use, and one item that was often the reason I wanted to spend five bucks. It was not the cool gimmicks, it was the pay-to-win items, that could have been just a few bucks cheaper in my opinion(At the time I'm writing this, during the Crimefest sale, all DLC got slashed down 75%, so I'm a little pissed).

But now, I just feel utterly betrayed. None of the DLC could even amount to how much Overkill has stabbed me in the back with this Blackmarket Update. As I'm told, you can now be dropped safes that contain various weapon skins. Counter-Strike players know what this is about. But this isn't just skins like Counter-Strike, it combines player buffs and status effects like in Team Fortress. AND IT NEEDS TO BE LIKE NONE OF THESE GAMES.

Overkill has said time and time again that these microtransactions would never be a reality, and they have said it over and over again, now they give out one of the most pay-to-win features disregarding any DLC. I would have never thought that weapon skins would be implemented into this game, it would just go against everything I thought about while playing Payday: professional, simple, deadly robbery. Now all the focus is going to the community market, where selling and buying useful and often goofy-looking skins is the real game. Hat Simulator 2.

--GameKiller

A Look Back at Uberstrike

So this post's going to be a bit different, as it's going to be about a game I played a long time ago. That game is called Uberstrike. It was released in Steam sometime in June via Steam Greenlight, and it's now one of the worst games in Steam today.

But I wanted to talk about it, it's condition and what it used to be, since it was a pretty big chunk of my childhood.

To sum it up, Uberstrike is a futuristic PC FPS that was released in November 2008 under a different name, called Paradise Paintball for the Mac app store.

Back when I was around 8-9 years old, when I was gaming with a 2007 Macbook(u wot m8), I had found this game in the widget store, and it quickly became my obsession for the next three years.

The gameplay at that time was pretty simple. You had a machinegun and a rocket launcher, and those were your weapons in an 8-player deathmatch(I think). Eventually it got updated with new maps, weapons, gamemodes, and other goodies. I actually got really good at the game, despite playing with a trackpad for most of my time playing it.(Yeah, I was good at an FPS game using the trackpad on a 2007 Macbook)

Some time later, a few updates changed the Avatar models, weapons, added maps, removed paintballs entirely, changed the name to Uberstrike and added a store to buy better weapons with more damage, range, etc. This however, quickly made the game extremely Pay-to-Win, as you can only rent most weapons for a limited time, mostly only one day, for a hefty price. Buying weapons permanently is extremely expensive, as it probably took around a month's worth of outstanding performance to be able to afford a permanent weapon.

The community didn't seem to be able to notice this absurd amount of P2W in this game as much as I did, when I tried to assess this in a forum post I made a long time ago. Only two or three people who replied seem to be in the same boat as I was, and one not too bright person seemed to try and defend the game by saying I just needed to save up.

I have tried Cmune's form of earning credits(pay-to-win points) to try saving up enough to buy something useful. These were doing tasks like watching ads or playing sponsored games, taking surveys and such. Unfortunately, most of these methods were extremely shady and unreliable, and the only safe ones don't even earn you enough credits to rent a weapon for one day.

Admittedly, I also have resorted to cheating credits, right before I quit entirely. Now that I look back on it, it was a good idea considering the stories in the Steam reviews where their account was worth over $5000. This is also mostly because Cmune also wanted in on the Pay-to-Look-Good bandwagon.

The game slowly diminished from my life, to the point I quit entirely. I've heard that it was going to be on Steam Greenlight, and I checked it out a bit to see that it was in the exact same condition that it was in since I left, just with two new maps. Okay, maybe worse given the amount of hackers that have been in the game since it was released on Steam in June.

The hacker issue has been a big one since the release, and only one "major" update has been released since.

It's current state is terrible, and one that may force Uberstrike out of Steam. Sad to think that one of my favorite games in the past has now become such a travesty of a game. It is insulting, to players and people who actually spent money on this game. Quitting was ultimately the best decision I ever made.

So that's my story on this whole Uberstrike thing. So whoever knows someone who comes across this game, tell them it's not worth it. At all. Crap servers, hackers and such will make this game well worth the uninstall.

--GameKiller

iPhone Glitch: Remote Shutoff

So if you have had your iPhone shut off for no reason while you are using it, or being constantly spammed with messages with meaningless text and Unicode text, it's because people have found a way to remotely shut off your iPhone.

The instructions are to send a text message using any kind of phone, to an iMessage user with the following contents:

"effective.
Power
لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ
冗"

This should cause the recipient's device to restart, however effects may vary depending on small edits to the code, and may not even work at all.

Apple's response was that they "are aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update."

Until that happens, the only thing that could possibly defend against this glitch is to disable banners, iMessage, or jailbreak your iPhone.

Though this prank only went viral a few days ago, this isn't anything new. A few years ago, there was a video game called Tony Hawk's Underground 2. This game was pretty much one of the most innovative games of that time, being able to private message, add friends, stuff that we now have in modern-era gaming. But there was one infamous glitch that ruined the game forever.

When you sent a message to somebody in this game, it limits the number of characters that you can use, much like any other message in console gaming. However, if you plugged a usb keyboard in your Playstation 2, you can bypass the character limit. If you send a message with a long line of brackets to someone, their Playstation 2 will freeze, and be forced to restart. They didn't even have to open the message, only receive it.

It's actually funny how this prank had migrated from a game 11 years old, to common smartphones which almost everybody uses.

Anyways, that's all I have for this post, I know I've been on hiatus for a while, will hopefully start to update this thing again!

-GameKiller