Hey guys, today is October 4. 2010 and here is your gaming headlines for today. We will start off with a big news for Valve + Mac lovers, Valve announces its hit zombie shooter will be available for Apple OS tomorrow; owners of PC version get Mac edition gratis, We also got a little bit of Liars and Cheaters Bungie style with the developers erasing credit totals of thousands who "egregiously" exploited system; "more comprehensive" cheater search coming soon and with our little bit of business news, Onlive after initially proposing $15/month and $5/month surcharge, the game-streaming service does away with subscription payments altogether. (That's not good.) 



Just under five months after Valve began its Mac initiative, the suburban Seattle developer is bringing one of its biggest hits to Apple's operating system. Starting tomorrow, Left 4 Dead 2 will be available for Macs via the Steam download service, where the PC edition currently sells for $20. As with all titles bought on Steam, gamers who own the PC version of Left 4 Dead 2 can download the Mac edition for free.

Soon Mac owners will know the joys of the zombie apocalypse.

As with many of its PC games, Valve is offering all previously released Left 4 Dead 2 downloadable content for free with purchase of the PC or (starting tomorrow) the Mac edition of the game, including the add-ons The Passing, The Sacrifice, and No Mercy. A similar deal will be offered with the Mac version of the original Left 4 Dead, which Valve hopes to have ready by Halloween.


The double-platinum Left 4 Dead 2 expands upon the frenetic survival horror shooter formula established in the 2008 original. Gamers again find themselves making due with a variety of found weapons, ranging from rifles to chainsaws, and are tasked with surviving the indomitable infected mob. The game features five new campaign maps that can be played in five different modes, as well as extensive co-op support.



In late August, Microsoft permanently banned a number of individuals who procured illegitimate copies of Halo: Reach and ill-advisedly played them on Xbox Live. Now, the Washington developer has slammed 15,000 players for exploiting the game's credit system.

According to a Bungie employee post on Bungie.net, the developer has reset credit tallies for 15,000 players who have "egregiously" exploited a credit rip-off. The post reads, "Specifically, we targeted an exploit that allowed players to complete a Challenge 20+ times via itentional [sic] network manipulation (i.e., disconnects)."

Bungie did not specify any further details, but the instance spoken of highly resembles a credit hack that surfaced following the game’s release last month. This cheat allowed players to rack up huge credit bonuses by manipulating the game via the means listed above.

In addition to having their credit total nullified, players found to be cheating must sit through a one-day ban from amassing any additional credits.

The resets and bans were detected by Bungie's automated banning mechanism, which, Bungie admits, didn't grab every cheater. That 15,000 figure is likely to rise soon, because Bungie will conduct a "more comprehensive pass" in the coming weeks to seek out and deal with additional cheaters.

"If you are thinking about getting an easy 50k credits by using this exploit, I would strongly advise you to reconsider," reads the statement, penned by Bungie designer Tyson Green.


Halo: Reach is the final Halo title developed by Bungie Studios. It raked in over $200 million in its first 24 hours of availability and was critically lauded across the board. Bungie's next project will be a 10-year franchise published by Activision, will be set in a new universe, and will run on an entirely new game engine.

In other online Halo: Reach news, Bungie has bifurcated its planned October matchmaking update and has decided to drop the first patch this Tuesday. The update adds a myriad of alterations to the online component of Halo: Reach, chief among them being what Bungie calls the eradication of "a metric ton of small, but annoying bugs and gameplay issues."





Following months of hype about how its game-streaming technology would change the industry landscape, OnLive unveiled a $15 per month pricing model when it launched during March's Game Developer's Conference. At June's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the company retreated, offering instead a Founding Members Program that allowed subscribers to use the service for free until 2011, when it would charge $5 per month in fees.

Today, in an interview with Gamasutra, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman said that his company had decided to do away with monthly fees altogether. "The key thing for us is keeping it free simplifies our pricing structure so it is entirely based on games rather than on access," he told the industry trade site. "It gives us much more flexibility and it is easier to understand than a two-tiered structure. And, now we know the business model works."

"We actually got the first indication that the business could be supported without a monthly fee when we let beta testers start purchasing games before we launched the service," he continued. "But, because it was beta, we weren't certain what usage patterns would be at scale."

However, just because there is no monthly subscription doesn't mean that OnLive is completely free. Currently, OnLive offers three different ways for players to access games themselves. The Full PlayPass gives players unfettered access to a game for the duration of its presence on OnLive (minimum three years) for a price similar to that of retail. Amongst the several dozen games on the site, Mafia II sells for $50, with Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction and Batman: Arkham Asylum selling for $40. Five-day and three-day passes are also available, with prices ranging between $6 and $9.

OnLive's appeal is that it allows gamers to play graphics-intensive games in high definition on virtually any PC or Mac without the need for a high-end graphics card. It does so by streaming the games from various server farms all over the nation which do the heavy lifting in terms of graphics. A small, Roku-like Microconsole is also planned for release that will give the same functionality to any television it is hooked up to--provided the owner has a internet connection over 3Mbps (5 Mbps is recommended). The service has also recently entered a Wi-Fi beta, with a smartphone version also in development.

More information on OnLive can be found on the service's Web site.