"Gamestop is a Bag of Salty Dicks" [UPDATE: GameStop Pulling Deus Ex From Sale, Returns?]

UPDATE: GameStop has just decided to pull all PC copies of Deus Ex from sale.  Employees have been informed to accept all returns, and will still fulfill pre-orders.  Official message here. 

UPDATE 2: I have heard from a few people that even with that message, some GameStops have been ordered to refuse any returns. One of them called GameStop again and was then told that you should be able to return all copies and that the word must have not gotten to that gamestop yet, if you plan to return your copy, I would advise you to call ahead and make sure they are aware that they can take all returns.

Incase you haven't heard, GameStop "higher-ups" sent an email (viewable here) which instructed all GameStop employees to remove OnLive coupon codes from all PC copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution which gave the purchasers a free copy of the game on OnLive. Their official statement was: 

Regarding the Deus Ex: Human Revolution OnLive Codes: We don’t make a habit of promoting competitive services without a formal partnership. Square Enix packed the competitor’s coupon with our DXHR product without our prior knowledge and we did pull these coupons. While the new products may be opened, we fully guarantee the condition of the discs to be new. If you find this to not be the case, please contact the store where the game was purchased and they will further assist.

So essentially GameStop not only removed $50 of free content from the games, they also sold opened games with missing materials as "new", sounds pretty shady, if not illegal, and I will keep you update when we hear a statement from OnLive, lawsuit anyone?

PS: Thanks to Drilian for the great title of this article

Deus Ex and Eidos Websites Have Been Breached

Looks like the innocent aren't catching a break, especially with recent hackers. Now it seems like anyone could be a target in the game industry for whatever reason. Eidos's site and Deus Ex's official site have been hacked and leaving the message, as pictured above, with the statment "Owned by Chippy1337". Joystiq reports that a former Washington Post reporter, Brian Krebs, has gotten his hands from IRC Chat logs from the hacker group who have compromised users' information.

Square-Enix, owner of Eidos Interactive, has released a statement for the unfortunate event.

Square Enix can confirm a group of hackers gained access to parts of our Eidosmontreal.com website as well as two of our product sites. We immediately took the sites offline to assess how this had happened and what had been accessed, then took further measures to increase the security of these and all of our websites, before allowing the sites to go live again. Eidosmontreal.com does not hold any credit card information or code data, however there are resumes which are submitted to the website by people interested in jobs at the studio. Regrettably up to 350 of these resumes may have been accessed, and we are in the process of writing to each of the individuals who may have been affected to offer our sincere apologies for this situation. In addition, we have also discovered that up to 25,000 email addresses were obtained as a result of this breach. These email addresses are not linked to any additional personal information. They were site registration email addresses provided to us for users to receive product information updates. No dissemination or misappropriation of any other personal information has been identified at this point. We take the security of our websites extremely seriously and employ strict measures, which we test regularly, to guard against this sort of incident.

It's rather unfortunate with all of these hacker events going on, but we're just going to have to move on and change every little piece of our personal information.

Image courtesy of Joystiq

Doug Church Joins Valve

PC game designer legend Doug Church has joined Valve software. Church whose works include Deus Ex, System Shock, Tomb Raider: Legend, Thief, and most recently the cancelled Spielberg game LMNO, now has a position designing games for Valve. Gamasutra confirmed Church's hiring but Valve isn't speaking yet on which game/games he's working on.

Half Life 3 perhaps? Only time will tell, regardless of what Church is working on it's sure to great.