Gamer’s Ides of March

By the time you read this, it’ll already have passed…. but it’s happenings will be felt for a long, long time. Maybe even a week! The Ides of March, as you may or may not know, is the supposed day Julius Caesar was stabbed to death. And yeah, that’s pretty much what it feels like.

Early this morning, reports came in across various forums and blogs that many, many PS3 systems were suffering a sickness of sorts– the date was being reset to December 31, 1999. You thought Y2K was over with, didn’t you? It only escalated from there, though, as reports came in of trophies being erased, save files being deleted, even so far as older, at-launch consoles bricking. PS3 Slim models seem to be unaffected. This freak technological occurrence has caused Sony to literally tell it’s user base to not turn on their systems, and that a patch would be available in 24 hours.

In the late afternoon, and I noticed this on my own Steam account, Portal got an update. You know how Valve like to be extra cryptic with their game updates? The trend continues! The update brings in the weirdest of the weird– radio chatter, an achievement based off of the radios in the game, hidden morse code, and references to dinosaurs. That wasn’t a typo. Dinosaurs. As of this post, I’ve not seen any progress in terms of deciphering the confusion.

That is, in part, because there is another, much more powerful story at hand. Just before midnight EST, an article was posted on G4TV.com, which you can see here. The offices of Infinity Ward, developers of the massively popular shooter Modern Warfare 2, were surprised with an unannounced bumrush of security personnel. IW studio heads had apparently met with Activision that morning, and the staff hadn’t seen them since.

The mood around the Infinity Ward offices is currently described as “freaked out” and “confused.”

Read more: http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/702911/Security-Appears-Unannounced-At-Infinity-Ward-Studio-Heads-Missing-Staff-Freaked-Out-.html#ixzz0h07p1Mms

In their position, yeah, I’d be a little freaked too. It gets worse, gamerverse. Jason West, one of the head staff at IW, posted this on his Facebook page as a status update:

Jason West is drinking. Also, unemployed.

Not only that, but his Linkedin profile, which shows current and past occupations, has also been changed to show that Infinity Ward is now a former place of employment. Confirmation of all of this IW hoopla came from MTV Multiplayer’s Patrick Klepek, through one of his tweets.

This is an ugly day, to say the least. To lose use of one’s PS3, especially this soon after Heavy Rain’s release, must surely feel like a knife in the back.

EDIT: Breaking news concerning the IW fiasco! It seems earlier today, Activision cited a human resources investigation into “breaches of contract by two senior employees at Infinity Ward”. Jason West was one of those people, apparently. What I’d truly like to know is the specific details of this. What breach of contract? They made a game that made billions and on schedule, no less.

EDIT 2: Our own Dillon has informed me of this site, where the internet is going psycho over deciphering the Portal updates. It’s surprising how deep and cryptic it gets.

EDIT 3: As of this morning, another Infinity Ward senior staff member, Vince Zampella, has updated his Linkedin profile to show that IW is now a former job.