Twelve-year-old runs up £900 debt on FarmVille

by Darren Allan

Facebook is in the press again, and for the wrong reasons. Again.

This time the furore is over a twelve-year-old lad who played FarmVille, the “free” Facebook game that’s been appealing to a lot of casual gaming fans on the social networking site.

In fact FarmVille has become so popular, it now has almost 83 million players, in other words, one in five Facebookers across the world.

While the real-time farming simulation is outwardly free, it involves making virtual money from crops and livestock, which can be ploughed (ahem) back into your farm to produce more stuff, get a bigger farm and so on.

However, if you want to get ahead quickly, you can purchase the game’s virtual currency with real money, and that’s where the trouble started for this enterprising young virtual farmer.

He reportedly blew almost £300 of his own savings on the game, then found mummy’s credit card, and ran that until it smoked to the tune of £600.

Unfortunately, her bank refused to refund the money from the credit card unless she was willing to report her son to the police for the incident.

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, she said that “he would be cautioned and I have been told that this caution would stay with him. Obviously the idea of a stupid farm simulation jeopardising his future earnings is not something that I want to consider.”

However, the mother apparently doesn’t blame Facebook or Zynga, the makers of FarmVille, or indeed the bank.

She accepts her son did a daft thing, but did comment that perhaps Facebook should have some form of system to check if a credit card name differs from a Facebook account name.

this is brilliant, really makes me laugh, a good point made by the mother as well, shouldnt this be implemented?

Apple iPad Having Issues With Non-Mac USB Charging

05 April, 2010, by ITProPortal Staff

With Apple's iPad finally being released, the device has received mixed reactions from customers, who have also reported an issue which arises when they try to charge the iPad via USB.

Upon further investigation it was found that USB ports in old PCs and laptops are not powerful enough to charge the almighty iPad.

Whenever users tried to charge their new iPads via USB, the words 'Not Charging' appeared on the device's menu bar, indicating that the device was not being charged.

However, it was later revealed that Apple's new toy comes with massive charging requirements and cannot be charged with USB ports in old PCs when in use. 

An article on popular Mac website Macworld suggested that in order to charge the iPad, it will be advisable to use the 10-watt USB power charger that has been provided with the device.

However, when the device is charged with a high-power USB port, which comes with recent Mac devices, the iPad will take a longer time to be fully charged if it is being used at the same time.

Interestingly, when questioned about the device's inability to charge with common USB ports, Apple told MacWorld that users will have to put the iPad to 'sleep' before charging it with old USB ports.

Apple to redesign iPad for Europe

Complex European safety regulations have forced Apple to redesign its new handheld device for the UK market

April Phurst

First image of the iPad as it will appear in Europe

Apple has been forced into a last-minute redesign of its ground-breaking iPad for the UK market, after European health and safety tsars claimed that the device posed a risk to young children.

A source at the little known Federation Of Online LED Safety told The Times that early versions of the touch-screen device “were too sharp” and might damage young fingers.

Apple has already delayed the device's launch in the UK, though first deliveries will take place in the United States this weekend.

The delay, it is now clear, has been used by Apple for a hasty redesign into a shape that is considered acceptable on safety grounds within the EU.

European spokeswoman Ima Durak confirmed that, after consultation with the authorities, the European version of the iPad will be spherical.

The touch-screen will function in the same way as on the American sharp iPad, with the connection ports located on the rear of the device.

"After discussions with the Federation, it was clear that we needed to reconfigure the iPad to avoid any sharp edges," Ms Durak confirmed.

The new shape, Apple believes, will appeal to the European love of football, and the company plans to launch in time for the World Cup in June.

The new shape will allow the device to be rolled from one user to another, though the fragility of the screen means that bouncing is out of the question.

In accordance with European accessibility legislation, the Euro-Pad will also feature a specially redesigned interface that responds to the human foot as well as fingers. This, Apple claims, will open up a whole new market for applications developers, and a virtual footrub app is already available on the app store.

A different kind of company name

4/01/2010 12:01:00 AM

Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.

We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name. But the more we surfed around (the former) Topeka’s municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains.

In fact, Topeka Google Mayor Bill Bunten expressed it best: “Don’t be fooled. Even Google recognizes that all roads lead to Kansas, not just yellow brick ones.”

For 150 years, its fortuitous location at the confluence of the Kansas River and the Oregon Trail has made the city formerly known as Topeka a key jumping-off point to the new world of the West, just as for 150 months the company formerly known as Google has been a key jumping-off point to the new world of the web. When in 1858 a crucial bridge built across the Kansas River was destroyed by flooding mere months later, it was promptly rebuilt — and we too are accustomed to releasing 2.0 versions of software after stormy feedback on our ‘beta’ releases. And just as the town's nickname is "Top City," and the word “topeka” itself derives from a term used by the Kansa and Ioway tribes to refer to “a good place to dig for potatoes,” we’d like to think that our website is one of the web's top places to dig for information.

In the early 20th century, the former Topeka enjoyed a remarkable run of political prominence, gracing the nation with Margaret Hill McCarter, the first woman to address a national political convention (1920, Republican); Charles Curtis, the only Native American ever to serve as vice president (’29 to ‘33, under Herbert Hoover); Carrie Nation, leader of the old temperance movement (and wielder of American history’s most famous hatchet); and, most important, Alfred E. Neuman, arguably the most influential figure to an entire generation of Americans. We couldn’t be happier to add our own chapter to this storied history.

A change this dramatic won’t happen without consequences, perhaps even some disruptions. Here are a few of the thorny issues that we hope everyone in the broader Topeka community will bear in mind as we begin one of the most important transitions in our company’s history:

• Correspondence to both our corporate headquarters and offices around the world should now be addressed to Topeka Inc., but otherwise can be addressed normally.
• Google employees once known as “Googlers” should now be referred to as either “Topekers” or “Topekans,” depending on the result of a board meeting that’s ongoing at this hour. Whatever the outcome, the conclusion is clear: we aren’t in Google anymore.
• Our new product names will take some getting used to. For instance, we’ll have to assure users of Topeka News and Topeka Maps that these services will continue to offer news and local information from across the globe. Topeka Talk, similarly, is an instant messaging product, not, say, a folksy midwestern morning show. And Project Virgle, our co-venture with Richard Branson and Virgin to launch the first permanent human colony on Mars, will henceforth be known as Project Vireka.
• We don’t really know what to tell Oliver Google Kai’s parents, except that, if you ask us, Oliver Topeka Kai would be a charming name for their little boy.
• As our lawyers remind us, branded product names can achieve such popularity as to risk losing their trademark status (see cellophane, zippers, trampolines, et al). So we hope all of you will do your best to remember our new name’s proper usage:

Finally, we want to be clear that this initiative is a one-shot deal that will have no bearing on which municipalities are chosen to participate in our experimental ultra-high-speed broadband project, to which Google, Kansas has been just one of many communities to apply.

Posted by Eric Schmidt, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Topeka Inc.

brilliant little april fools by google, what a name that would be and imagine saying that to someone "Topeka it" that does sound weird. lol. what other april fools has any one else seen out there today?

Apple To Charge iPad Users For OS Updates

31 March, 2010, by ITProPortal Staff

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Apple has given away more details regarding operating system upgrades for the iPad in the future, under which the company will reportedly charge the iPad users for major OS upgrades after providing them with the first such upgrade for free, it has been reported.

The electronics titan on Monday kicked off seeding the Golden Master iteration of its iPhone OS 3.2 software development kit (SDK) to developers, which will incidentally be the iteration of the OS that powers the iPad.

Additionally, the company also issued iPad licensing agreement on its server, in which it asserted that the iPad owners would receive a major OS upgrade after the one that comes shipped with the device, and after that, all such upgrades would have a fee.

Indicating the same, the licensing agreement mentioned: “Apple will provide you any iPad OS software updates that it may release from time to time, up to and including the next major iPad OS software release following the version of iPad OS software that originally shipped from Apple on your iPad, for free.”

Such an upgrade policy in fact falls in between that for the iPod Touch and the iPhone, as the iPod Touch users were required to pay a $10 charge in order to upgrade iPhone OS 2.0 to iPhone OS 3.0, while the iPhone users received these upgrades for free.

London's High Court of Justice has ruled against popular online forum site Newzbin in a lawsuit filed by top Hollywood studios including Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox, Universal and Disney, holding it liable for the copyright infringement done by its members when they used it for downloading movies and music.

The ruling is being hailed as a new precedent for helping music and film companies in defending the copyright of their properties. Judge Justice Kitchin found that Newzbin allowed its members to keep on downloading copyright infringing material even after being warned about it.

However, Newzbin argued that it was not responsible for the activities of its members and claimed that all it did was to let users create forums so that they could share information and knowledge, somewhat similar to what Google does.

Legal representatives of the Hollywood studios said that the ruling made by the London court will call for ISPs to monitor their online traffic and aid creative arts companies in protecting their copyrighted material on the internet.

Commenting on the ruling, Simon Baggs, partner at the law firm which represented the Hollywood studios, said in a statement that “I don’t think ISPs need to be proactive [in policing content on their networks] but the judgment supports the view that ISPs can be required to block websites.”

not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing if im totally honest, i mean as they say their website is basically a forum that allows members to share information and surely thats what the internet is all about the sharing of information, how are they meant to control what the users do with that information.

A new approach to China: an update

3/22/2010 12:03:00 PM

On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn.

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.

In terms of Google's wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk. Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

Well done Google, its about time that they had full access to the web and all the information contained within, its a shame they have already blocked youtube according to the web page that Google created.

I spent a year living in china and I came across this issue a few times not being able to get to certain content which was very frustrating. im glad they have done this and lets hope the chinese dont block the search engine any time soon.

More choice for users: browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way

Thursday, March 18, 2010 | 11:22 AM

As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy. Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks.

Posted by Amy Chang, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics

is this a good thing or bad thing? im not sure i think this could be seen as a bad thing for all you stats junkies out there, im guessing it would mean that your stats would never really be consistent, but i guess it all comes down to how many people are going to install this plug in, and how many people are concerned with their data being tracked in Google analytics.

it will be interesting to see when this is released how many people adopt this plugin and use it.

Looking for a good time? New scheduling tool in Calendar

3/18/2010 12:35:00 PM

Scheduling meetings is tough, but rescheduling is even harder. We all know how frustrating it can be to try to find just the right time that accommodates everyone's availability and preferred working hours. Throw in different time zones and conference rooms and it goes from painful to excruciating. We'd rather schedule dental appointments.

On the Google Calendar team, we've noticed that when people talk about scheduling they say things like "I'm trying to find a time" or "let's search for a new date." We wondered what would happen if we treated calendaring more like a search problem. Just as Google search applies ranking algorithms to return the most relevant results from the web, we hoped we could rank meeting times based on criteria important to the person scheduling the meeting.

Today we're launching the result of that experiment, a gadget called Smart Rescheduler, in Google Calendar Labs. Once you enable the Lab, you can find a new time for an event simply by clicking on a link. Our schedule search algorithm will return a ranked set of the best candidate dates and times based on the calendars others have shared with you. You can read more about it on the Gmail Blog.

So next time your boss says "We need to reschedule," just smile and say "I'm feeling lucky."

Posted by Ken Norton, Product Manager

its the simple things that they do so well isnt it. this seems like a great idea, and one that will definitely come in handy, i guess im going to head over to calendars now and enable it and try it out.

Oh Microsoft, you were doing so much right...

After wooing the World with Windows Phone 7 Series and Internet Explorer 9 it turns out that there are some particularly worrying small print for each product.

Firstly 7 Series and after yesterday's revelations that the potentially exciting OS will not support multi-tasking at launch and the news all handset makers would not be allowed to make phones with expandable memory, we now learn the platform will be missing... wait for it... cut and paste.

Yes, Microsoft suddenly seems to be doing its best generation one iPhone impression: no multi-tasking, no expandable storage, no cut and paste and it has already confirmed Flash support is unlikely before 2011. What is even more galling is not only have many of its rivals either fixed or known to be working on solutions to these problems, but that the lambasted previous generations of Windows Mobile can already do most of this!

Tread carefully Microsoft or you risk swinging from an ugly yet powerful OS that disappointed consumers to a superficial, handicapped OS that is useless for business. And cut and paste... really?!

As for Internet Explorer 9, its issue is far more straightforward: it doesn't support Windows XP!

"Building a modern browser requires a modern operating system," said Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch in some of the most ridiculous bits of reasoning I've heard for some time. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera all work just fine on XP.

We're awaiting clarification about whether this will translate to the final version, but I wouldn't put it past the Redmond giant who is desperate to get users off the nine year old OS. Putting XP users at risk by stopping them running its latest and therefore, inevitably, most secure browser would be taking things to a new ruthless extreme though. Then again, this could backfire and simply encourage the hundreds of millions of XP users to move to the likes of Firefox, Chrome or Opera which would be a stunning own goal.

It has been all sunshine and rainbows over Microsoft for quite some time now, but are those returning clouds I see on the horizon?

Links:
IE9 via CNet
Cut & paste via Dailytech

well what can i say this is well weird, i mean they are trying to compete with the other mobile phone OS on the market and yet they limit the ability.

not allowing multitasking is a major flaw and something that has been missed on the iphone. no Flash support on launch, makes me wonder why i would even want to go with this OS in the first place. the phone in the video looks nice but with all these flaws i wont be looking at getting a windows 7 series phone anytime soon.

by Craig Buckler

another warning, what next i do hope the people out there using these browsers especially IE6 are listening and do finally go for that upgrade. its a browser thats 9 years old and needs to move on people need to upgrade.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 embraces - yes - HTML5

Browser preview powers web standards with GPU

By Tim Anderson in Las Vegas %u2022 Get more from this author

Posted in Software & Security, 16th March 2010 16:31 GMT

well what can i say this is good news all round surely, at last they are making the changes that we want, HTML 5, i cant wait to be able to use this on a more day to day basis in some of the work that im currently doing, some of the features are outstanding, also CSS 3 cant wait until this has been fully embraced and available through all browsers it will make the world of web development a much nicer place to work in.

Vodafone 360 pollutes pristine HTC Legend

By Flora Graham on 15 March 2010, 2:54pm

We're already drooling over the HTC Legend, the Android smart phone sensation that's coming exclusively to Vodafone when it launches. But we're not so hungry for Voda's special sauce of Vodafone 360, which is going to be poured all over the Legend's deliciousness.

Vodafone 360 is a cloud-based service that offers to sync your contacts and photos from your phone to the Web. It also has a music store, an app store, and a browser home page portal that you can customise with links and widgets.

The Legend already has the HTC Sense user interface, which includes a single inbox for your Gmail and Facebook contacts, and a friend stream app that brings your tweets and status updates together in one widget. Android's App Market is second only to the Apple App Store for choice. So what's the point of adding Vodafone 360, another social-netwoking aggregator that's differentiated only by the lack of interest anyone has in using it?

Vodafone 360 was launched on two flagship phones -- the Samsung H1 and the Samsung M1 -- and various other phones support apps that give access to some parts of the service. But, like Nokia's Ovi thingumajig, it's failed to make much of an impression because of its lack of features compared to other social networks and its inability to share data outside of its own walled garden.

It's unclear whether Vodafone 360 on the HTC Legend will be just pre-installed apps, or whether it will be embedded in the operating system at a deeper level -- or whether users can remove the service if they don't want it.

"The Legend will come pre-loaded with a range of Vodafone 360 services, including Vodafone Music and MyWeb, sitting on top of the HTC Sense user interface," said Vodafone in a press release. The phone will still have full access to the Android App Market.

Vodafone demonstated an app for the Android operating system, which only connects the address book part of Vodafone 360, in February at Mobile World Congress.

We're waiting to hear from Vodafone about the extent of Vodafone 360's infiltration on our current smart phone crush, and we'll update this story as soon as we have more information. The phone will be available in April.

lets hope this isnt true as i was seriously considering moving over to vodafone and getting either the legend or the desire, but if they are going to overlay their own 360 then ill seriously re consider it, one of the main reasons for me wanting the desire apart from it being a well specd phone was the sense UI that i wanted to use.

I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens when its released wont we

Google ready for China pull-out over censorship

Posted by Chris Smith on Mon 15 Mar 2010

Google unlikely to scale China's great firewall of internet censorship

Search engine giant Google looks certain to cease operations in China as talks between the two parties over censorship issues appear to have broken down.

The relationship between Google and the world's biggest web market has been frosty since the turn of the year, with Google's unwilting desire to run an unfiltered Google.cn met with strong opposition by the Chinese government.

Just this weekend, the country's leading IT minister Li Yizhong issued a strong threat to Google if it fails to comply with China's strict laws on internet censorship, saying: "I hope that Google will abide and respect the Chinese government's laws and regulations. But, if you betray Chinese laws and regulations it means that you are unfriendly, irresponsible, and you will have to pay the consequences."

While Google itself insists that talks are still ongoing, reports over the weekend suggest that it is "99.9 percent certain" to shut down the Chinese arm of its search engine. The company is said to have no plans to offer a watered-down version of its service and has detailed pull-out plans already in place.

Relations between the two superpowers became frosty in January, when the webmail accounts of senior internet censorship campaigners were hit by a "sophisticated cyber-attack", following Google's refusal to abide by the government's demands.

Link: Google (via BBC and FT)

interesting do we think that this is really going to happen, its a huge market to pull from if they do, what kind of effects would that have? how many of the chinese people currently use google as their default search engine.

Better controls for buzz in your inbox

Saturday, March 13, 2010 1:44 PM

Posted by Bruce DiBello, Software Engineer

When you participate in a conversation in Google Buzz, we bring that post to your inbox so it's easy to keep up with the discussion. But we’ve heard loud and clear that buzz in your inbox can get noisy — we feel it too, so today we're launching two features to help with this:

1) Settings to control what gets sent to your inbox
From the Buzz tab of Gmail Settings, you’ll be able to choose whether the following buzz items get sent to your inbox:

• Comments on your posts
• Comments on posts after you comment on them
• Comments on posts after you are @replied on them

2) Explanations for why posts get sent to your inbox and an easy-to-find “Mute” link
You'll see a new message at the top of each post in your inbox that explains why it’s there: someone commented on your post, you were @replied, etc. We’ve also added an easy-to-find “mute” link that will stop subsequent comments from bringing the conversation back to your inbox.

These are just the first in series of features designed to help control the noise level in Google Buzz, so stay tuned for more. If you have ideas for Google Buzz you'd like to share with the team, you can post your ideas and vote for others on our official product ideas page.

Microsoft sends flowers to IE6 funeral

'Thanks for the good times...'

By Cade Metz in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Applications, 5th March 2010 19:13 GMT

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Microsoft sent flowers to last night's IE6 funeral, thanking the browser for "all the good times."

The nine-year-old IE6 was laid to rest yesterday in Denver, Colorado, after suffering a "workplace injury" at the offices of a certain search giant in Mountain View, California. Mourners unable to attend were asked to send flowers, and Redmond's Internet Explorer team was among those who did so.

“Thanks for the good times IE6, see you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven," read the card, a reference to this month's MIX tradeshow in Las Vegas, where the company is expected to announce the arrival of a new browser, Internet Explorer 9.

“We want to give thanks to Internet Explorer 6 for its service for nearly a decade," one of Microsoft's IE6 mourners tells The Reg. "Internet Explorer 6 was built for a different world, a different time. While some customers may grieve the loss of Internet Explorer 6, we will continue to support it in its afterlife as we promised to do."

As funeral organizers put it, Internet Explorer 6 is survived "by son Internet Explorer Seven, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer Eight," with IE9 on the way.

"We understand the loss our customers feel when moving away from such a familiar aspect of their lives. With time’s passing, comes new life, and we encourage people to turn to Internet Explorer 8. Internet Explorer 8 is the modern browser for today’s online world – with rich built-in security and surfing tools that make it easy, fast and safe for customers everywhere."

It should be noted that Internet Explorer 6 continues to drive nearly 20 per cent of all web access from beyond the grave. ®

just gotta love it, but when is this really gonna happen.

In a series of swiftly developing events, it appears that the Chief Technical Officer of Infinity Ward, the studio behind the record-breaking blockbuster game Modern Warfare 2, has been fired by parent company Activision. Though the lucrative series will no doubt continue at Activision's behest, Infinity Ward's contributions have always been of a higher quality and so the series' reputation is now at stake.

According to a report published by Activision on March 1, 2010, the company was "concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward," which would "involve the departure of key personnel and litigation."

The absence of those key personnel will be a concern to those who have been following the Call of Duty games, and in particular Infinity Ward's contributions which have provided the backbone for the seies.

Since coming up with 2003's Call of Duty, Infinity Ward developed three further associated titles: Call of Duty 2 (2005), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009). The rest, including 2010's expected iteration, were handled by other developers.

Review aggregation sites such as Metacritic or Game Rankings show that Infinity Ward's games routinely scored higher than their franchise counterparts. Though other games in the series sold well, they were unable to emulate the stratospheric success so far enjoyed by Infinity Ward.

Modern Warfare 2 was the best-selling game in both North America and Europe for 2009, despite its November release, and the fastest grossing video game of all time after making $310 million in one day, $550 million in five days, and $1 billion by January 2010.

Jason West, the company's now ex-CTO, was said to have met with Activision on Monday morning accompanied by fellow studio head and Chief Creative Officer Vincent Zampella. However, neither returned to the company's offices in Encino, California.

Instead, Jason updated personal profiles on social and business networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn respectively, both confirming that he was no longer holding a position at Infinity Ward. Zampella later did the same with his own LinkedIn profile.

Meanwhile, employees reported that several minders from a security firm had turned up at the offices, but were refusing to explain their presence outside the building.

It is thought that over the last few months, a good number of studio employees had become agitated by the prospect of solely developing for the Call of Duty series.

Though it's not known what lies ahead for West or his colleague, he is no stranger to forming breakaway companies. Infinity Ward itself was set up after his previous company were taken over by Electronic Arts, another publisher known for its emphasis on franchise development.

wow now that a blow, internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination, mmmmmm i wonder what happened there then.