Just thought you might like to know, you can launch Vendetta without running the update. Cd into .vendetta, and then ./vendetta. Fortunately it doesn't let you connect to the server.

huh is that new? ... I tried that like a month ago and it didn't work. I got a X or GL error, can't remember exactly what it was.

i get an X error - unable to create window. It's quite annoying really, when th update server goes down, but the gameserver's still up :(

Yes you are able to run vendetta that way but it's not recommended. We try to change the protocol version with every update to force everyone to update but sometimes we forget.

hmm, my updater only says 3.4.4 in the ChangeLog section.
methinks having a badly symlinked/messy install is causing problems

nah ... it says that for me too ... IIRC the "Changelog" comes from the updateserver, it just hasn't been updated for a while.:)