Hackers swipe nearly $600 million from a ‘play to earn’ crypto game

Digital thieves just pulled off another major crypto heist. Motherboard has learned hackers stole 173,600 Ethereum (about $591.2 million) from the Ronin blockchain that powers Axie Infinity, a popular “play to earn” game where players can receive crypto in exchange for playing and paying some starting costs. The perpetrators reportedly exploited a backdoor in a Remote Procedure Call node from Axie creator Sky Mavis to get a signature, letting them “forge fake withdrawals” using compromised private keys.

Sky blamed the flaw on a holdover from the fall. The firm asked for help from the Axie DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to handle free transactions and help cope with an “immense user load” in November. The move let Sky sign transactions on the DAO’s behalf until December, but the access wasn’t revoked after that point.

The company has responded by ‘pausing’ the Ronin bridge to close off avenues of attack, and has temporarily disabled the Katana decentralized exchange. It hoped to minimize near-term damage by increasing the threshold necessary for validation, but also said it was in the middle of a node migration that would leave the old system behind. Sky intends to track the stolen Ethereum with help from Chainalysis, and is contacting security teams at “major” crypto exchanges.

The theft compounds existing worries for Sky. Motherboard notes Axie Infinity has suffered from plummeting values for its NFTs and tokens in recent months, prompting reforms in a bid to keep the game afloat. An incident like could easily make things worse by not only starving the game of much-needed funds, but rattling the confidence of players.

GTA Online’s upcoming monthly subscription gives perks to frequent players

Now that GTA Online is available on the latest consoles, Rockstar wants to spice up the service for its most dedicated players. The developer is launching a $6 per month GTA+ subscription that provides regular perks for GTAO players on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. You’ll get $500,000 in virtual cash each month, unlocks for past game updates, vehicle upgrades and other bonuses. You can also buy improved Shark Cards with real money to get more bonus in-game cash. 

In the first month, you’ll receive a supercar with an early-access upgrade, three wardrobe items, waived LS Car Meet Membership fees and multiplied bonuses for two race series, among other extras. You’ll need to claim benefits before they expire.

Rockstar said events will carry on “as normal” for all players, so you won’t find yourself locked out of key content if you’d rather play for free. Whether or not GTA+ is a good thing isn’t clear, though. While it may represent a better value than spending real money every time you want a boost for in-game currency, it might also leave you at a disadvantage if you can’t justify the monthly fee or a hardware upgrade.

Sony halts PlayStation hardware and software sales in Russia

Sony is joining Microsoft in stopping Russian sales following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. CNBCreports Sony has halted all PlayStation hardware and software sales in Russia, and has cut access to the digital PlayStation Store. The company called for “peace in Ukraine” and said it would donate $2 million to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as well as Save the Children.

The decision comes a week after Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called on Microsoft and Sony to block Russian players, and a few days after Microsoft stopped all sales in the country. Nintendo put its Russian eShop in “maintenance mode,” but that may have been due to a payment service freezing processing for purchases made using rubles.

Numerous Western game developers have stopped selling their work in Russia, including Ubisoft, Take-Two, CD Projekt Red, EA, Activision Blizzard and Epic. However, Sony’s move might be the most damaging yet. Russian gamers will have a much harder time expanding their game libraries, and they can forget about buying the already-elusive PlayStation 5. Sony may feel the sting when it dominates Russian console sales (according to IDC data), but there might not be much practical choice when there’s so much industry pressure to take a stand on the Ukraine war.