News Blips: Gamer For Governor, Blizzard Bans, Final Fight Connection Woes, and More

Calfironia has already elected a couple of actors to be governor, so why not a gamer?

News Blips:

MMO company GamesFirst's CEO Joshua Hong plans to run for California governor. Although he initially announced his campaign on April Fool's Day, he is indeed running as part of the Free2Play Party. Hong's platform involves better education through technology integration in schools, accountability for state officials, and giving more power to the people. I can't wait to see what type of anti-gamer mud his opponents might throw. [GamePro]

Blizzard announced yesterday that they banned over 320,000 Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2 accounts. In their post on Battle.net, the company reminds fans that abusing "unintended mechanics" and/or using third-party cheating programs violates their terms of use. Blizzard plans to allow first-time perpetrators to come back after 30 days, but they intend to ban repeat offenders permanently. I wonder if they caught a couple of cheating, stoner gamers off guard with this move (considering it happened on 4/20 and all).

Capcom requires players to be logged on to the PlayStation Network just to simply launch Final Fight: Double Impact. According to a few disappointed members of Sony's PlayStation forum (via Joystiq), attempting to run the downloadable title without being logged on to PSN results in "error(80029516)." Xbox 360 gamers aren't required to be logged on to Xbox Live to play the game, so it's hard to see why Capcom would require PS3 gamers to jump through hoops. Well, we actually require you to be connected to the Internet just to launch Bitmob.com, so are we any better?

GameStop is giving away StarCraft 2 beta codes to fans who preorder the title. Make sure you're big on the game though (and not just trying to illegally profit from selling your beta key) since they warn that "once you receive your Beta Code your order cannot be canceled." But what happens if you decide not to buy the game -- are they going to send hired goons in suits to your house?

Got any hot news tips? Send 'em over to tips@bitmob.com.