An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is closing its Mixer service on July 22nd and plans to move existing partners over to Facebook Gaming. The surprise announcement means Mixer partners and streamers will be transitioned to Facebook Gaming starting today, and Microsoft will no longer operate Mixer as a service in a month's time. Microsoft is partnering with Facebook to transition existing Mixer viewers and streamers over to Facebook Gaming in the coming weeks. On July 22nd, all Mixer sites and apps will automatically redirect to Facebook Gaming. Existing Mixer Partners will be granted partner status with Facebook Gaming, and any streamers using the Mixer monetization program will be granted eligibility for Facebook's Level Up program. Mixer viewers with outstanding Ember balances, channel subscriptions, or Mixer Pro subscriptions will receive Xbox gift card credit.

Microsoft's choice to partner with Facebook is clearly a strategic one that's also related to broadening the appeal of its upcoming xCloud game streaming service and its overall gaming efforts. Microsoft will work closely with Facebook to bring xCloud to Facebook Gaming, allowing viewers to click and immediately play games that people are streaming. It's a vision that's very similar to Google's ambitions with Stadia, but Mixer has lacked the scale and viewership to truly deliver this more broadly. Microsoft recruited exclusive streamers like Ninja and Shroud with big deals, but they haven't been enough to get more people using the service over rivals. Ninja, Shroud, and other top streamers are now free to rejoin Twitch or stream on Facebook Gaming.

Nintendo is retreating from the $77 billion mobile gaming arena after disappointing results deflated once-lofty ambitions, ending a multiyear effort just as the market goes through an unprecedented Covid-era boom. From a report: President Shuntaro Furukawa proclaimed two years ago that smartphone games would be a $1 billion business with growth potential, building on his predecessor's promise that Nintendo would release two to three mobile titles each year. That spurred hopes among investors that the gaming powerhouse could carve out a substantial slice of the market. In May, however, the president adopted a markedly different tune, saying "We are not necessarily looking to continue releasing many new applications for the mobile market." Nintendo's shares slid 4% the day after that remark. Close observers might have sensed Nintendo was growing disillusioned with the mobile realm even earlier. Its smartphone games project was born out of necessity to shore up the bottom line amid the Wii U's failure. Now, riding a surge in Switch popularity and investor confidence, the Kyoto-based company appears to have reassessed the mobile business and narrowed its focus to its own console ecosystem.

Epic Games is apparently trying to navigate some difficult cultural waters, reports Engadget: Gamers report that Epic has removed all police cars from Fortnite as of the shooter's latest update, and the Wall Street Journal understands that it was in response to Black Lives Matter protests over police violence. The developer wasn't trying to make a "political statement," according to a WSJ source — rather, it was trying to be "sensitive about the issues" players are dealing with...

The broader game industry has endorsed the Black Lives Matter cause, including a message in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and temporary shutdowns of GTA Online and Red Dead Online. Epic appears to be taking a milder approach with Fortnite, acknowledging the outrage without explicitly advocating for a cause. The company previously stressed that it wouldn't ban players for political speech.

After a few weeks of consideration, Apple denied Facebook's new Gaming app. "Since February, Apple has rejected at least five versions of Facebook Gaming," reports The New York Times. "Each time, Apple cited its rules that prohibit apps with the 'main purpose' of distributing casual games." From the report: Facebook Gaming may also have been hurt by appearing to compete with Apple's own sales of games, two of the people said. Games are by far the most lucrative category of mobile apps worldwide. Apple's App Store, the only officially approved place for iPhone and iPad users to find new games and other programs, generated about $15 billion in revenue last year. Apple's rejections of the app from Facebook, a fellow Silicon Valley powerhouse, illustrate the control it exerts over the mobile software and entertainment ecosystem -- clout that regulators are increasingly examining.

The Facebook Gaming app on Android shows a catalog of simple games presented by category and with colorful icons. Facebook initially submitted its Gaming app to Apple for approval in late February, said the people with knowledge of the situation. Apple rejected that version, they said, citing Section 4.7 of its app rules, which state that HTML5 games are allowed "as long as code distribution isn't the main purpose of the app" and "the code is not offered in a store or store-like interface," among other restrictions. But the initial version of the Gaming app that Facebook showed to Apple was similar to the Android version, listing games by category in a manner that could be interpreted as "store-like." Trying to get the Gaming app through Apple's review process, Facebook then changed the design of the presentation of games in several ways, the people said. The colorful icons were removed in favor of a bland listing. The different games categories were removed to list all games at once. The ability to sort games was also taken away.

Facebook also included a version that looked almost exactly like how such games are presented already within the main Facebook app on Apple devices, which is a single unalphabetized, unsortable list, the people said. Apple said no to each of them, pointing to the same rule, they said. In Facebook's most recent submission, the Gaming app did not include a separate tab for playable games and included no way for the user to choose from a wide selection of games to play, the people said. Instead, that version suggested certain games within the user's news and activity feed. Apple denied it. For what it's worth, Google quickly approved the app and began offering it worldwide on April 20.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Guinness World Records has reinstated a number of classic video game world records held by Billy Mitchell. The move comes just over two years after Mitchell's records were expunged following an investigation by Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard, which partners with Guinness to adjudicate video game records. That investigation found that recordings of some of Mitchell's record performances on Donkey Kong were not achieved on legitimate arcade hardware, based on extensive video analysis that showed signs of emulator use. Twin Galaxies has not changed its position on Mitchell's records, resulting in a split between the two record-tracking organizations. Guinness now once again recognizes Mitchell as the first player to achieve a perfect Pac-Man score of 3,333,360 points in 1999 and the first player to reach 1 million points in Donkey Kong in 2005. "It's been a long time coming," Mitchell said in an interview with Ars Technica. Twin Galaxies owner and CEO Jace Hall sent this meme as an image, which he said could serve as his quote on the matter.

Mitchell has since released a fuller video statement, "where he says he first got in touch with Guinness last September," adds Ars. "Mitchell uses the opportunity to praise Guinness' reputation and says it was 'very refreshing dealing with them' as they conducted their own investigation."

shirappu writes: Nick Walton created AI Dungeon as an experiment to build an AI dungeon master for D&D games. Since then, it's grown into a text adventure game in which players can type in anything they want, with the game's AI responding dynamically [and with over 1.5 million players and multiplayer adventures.]

In this interview about the year since its release, Nick talks about how it works and what they're working on now: quest systems, world persistence, and longer-term memory. He also opens up about where he thinks AI systems can support game development.

"One of our visions for AI is not as a tool to replace game designers, but a tool for augmenting their work. We want to make it easier to create awesome games. If it only takes one or two people to build an awesome game because AI fills in the details, it opens up doors for a lot of people.

"We really want to enable people to build cool things with this tech. Deploying this kind of AI training and these massive models is really hard for the average person, so our hope is that we build out the infrastructure and platform, and then let people build cool things on top of that."
Walton says they've recently added a modding feature that "basically allows for people to create custom modifications for their worlds."

In a test run I was a cyberpunk "living in the the futuristic city of Zail. You have a bag of drugs and a holoband. You wake up in a dark alley with bruises all over your body. You have no idea what happened. You stand up and see three men pointing guns at you..."

"It looks like Twitch streamers are the latest targets for coordinated DMCA attacks," writes Slashdot reader stikves. "What is more concerning is that these could potentially cripple their accounts." Engadget reports: The company has acknowledged (via Evening Standard) a "sudden influx" of DMCA takedown requests against streamers for allegedly violating music copyright in clips captured by viewers between 2017 and 2019. As each request potentially represents a strike against an account, this raises the threat of permanent bans for streamers who might get three strikes with relatively little warning -- and for clips they didn't even choose to create.

The Amazon-owned service is recommending that broadcasters delete any affected clips. However, it's a very slow process. You can only delete a handful at a time, and popular streamers may have thousands of clips. Twitch said it was working to "make this [process] easier," but didn't elaborate how.

On Wednesday, Magic: The Gathering publisher Wizards of the Coast took unprecedented measures to remove racist cards from its game. Seven cards in all, dating back to 1994, are now banned from play. Their images will also being removed from the game's official online database. Polygon reports: "The events of the past weeks and the ongoing conversation about how we can better support people of color have caused us to examine ourselves, our actions, and our inactions," Wizards said in a statement. "We appreciate everyone helping us to recognize when we fall short. We should have been better, we can be better, and we will be better." The list of now-banned cards is: Invoke Prejudice, Cleanse, Stone-Throwing Devils, Pradesh Gypsies, Jihad, Imprison, and Crusade.

One card in particular, Invoke Prejudice, was singled out. It shows a hooded executioner with a black axe. "If opponent casts a Summon spell that does not match the color of one of the creatures under your control, that spell is countered," says the card. It effectively kills off creatures that don't look like the creatures already on the table. Gatherer, the official online database of every Magic card ever published, displays the card at a web URL ending in "1488," numbers that are synonymous with white supremacy. All cards will be replaced online with a note that calls out their racist depictions, text, or a combination thereof.

At a live event today, Sony officially unveiled its PlayStation 5 console. Eurogamer reports: The sleek and curved box will come in two flavors -- one with a disc drive, and one without. Meet the PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition. No pricing or launch date details were announced today. The white-colored console can be orientated horizontally or vertically. Both versions have a USB and USB-C port in the front. Also shown: a controller charging station which docks two DualSense pads, a headset featuring 3D audio support and noise-cancelling microphones and a media remote with built-in microphone. You can watch the PS5 hardware reveal trailer here. Sony also offered a first extended look at actual games running on the upcoming hardware.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nearly three months after laying out some of the PlayStation 5's technological underpinnings, Sony today offered a first extended look at actual games running on the upcoming hardware during a live event. The event started off with a glimpse of an "expanded and enhcanced" version of Grand Theft Auto V, which is coming to the PlayStation 5 in 2021, in case you need an excuse to buy the game again. PlayStation 5 owners will also get GTA Online free at launch in 2021, while PS4 owners of GTAV will get $1 million in monthly online GTA Cash every month until the PS5 version launches.

A follow-up to last year's Spider-Man featuring Miles Morales will be hitting the PS5 in Holiday 2020. "A hero is just someone who doesn't give up," an unseen narrator says over the footage. "Your dad said that. He was right. Now it's your turn. Go be a hero Miles." Though the footage shown is tagged with a "captured on PS5," (and a ""Be greater, be yourself" slogan), it's unclear if it will also be available on older PS4 systems. Ratchet and Clank are back for more madcap run and gun mayhem in Rift Apart, a game that seems focused on warping quickly between dimensions that are randomly collapsing in on one another. The trailer shows the duo riding dragons, facing pirates, sliding down futuristic buildings, and more. And one dimension even features a female member of Ratchet's species, which is sure to satisfy a particular type of fan. Other games mentioned in the report that are coming to Sony's next-gen console include: Square Enix and Luminous Productions' Project Athia, Annapurna's Stray, Housemarque and PlayStation Studios' Returnal, LittleBigPlanet's A Big Adventure, Destruction Allstars, Ember Lab's Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Goodbye Volcano High, Soulstorm, Ghostwire Tokyo, Superbrothers' The Far Shore, Gearbox and Counterplay Games' Godfall, Solar Ash, Hitman 3, Astro's Playroom, and Little Devil Inside.

Developing...

Nintendo has almost doubled the number of user accounts compromised by hackers in the past few months. From a report: The Japanese gaming giant originally said that 160,000 Nintendo accounts were compromised, exposing personal information like the account owner's name, email address, date-of-birth and their country of residence. In an updated statement, the company said another 140,000 Nintendo accounts had been compromised. Nintendo said the number increased as a result of its continuing investigation. The company said it reset those passwords and contacted customers. The statement reiterated that fewer than 1% of all accounts were impacted by the breach. News of account compromises came as early as March when users complained that their accounts were charged for digital items without their permission. Nintendo said in a tweet in April that users should enable two-factor authentication on their accounts but without saying why.

With the Xbox Series X on the horizon, Microsoft's head of videogame hardware sees a future where consoles may no longer be front and center. Wired reports: Despite its massive push for the Xbox Series X, Microsoft is hedging its bets that a decade from now more and more gamers will be taking a "no gods, no masters" approach to where and how they play. Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, thinks whether consoles will exist in 10 years is the wrong question to ask. "In the long run, to me, it's a question about the viability of the television," said Spencer last week in an interview with WIRED. "There's this calculus, this chess match we're playing," says Spencer. "It's no longer checkers." Spencer's chess match isn't against Sony or Nintendo; it's against the ever-changing trends in how two billion gamers worldwide consume media. When the Xbox Series X arrives in stores later this year, it will become a part of Xbox's chimera approach -- alongside its cloud gaming service, Project xCloud, and Xbox Play Anywhere -- to capture gamers wherever they are. With xCloud, you'll pay a currently undefined subscription to stream AAA games onto your mobile phone and tablet. With Xbox Play Anywhere, you can buy, say, Forza Horizon 4 and play it on both Xbox One and Windows 10 on PC.
[...]
Spencer paints the Xbox Series X and the "game anywhere on stuff you have" pitches as complementary rather than cannibalistic. "I don't think it's 'hardware agnostic' as much as it's 'where you want to play," he says. Which makes sense: The more ways to play, and the more services Microsoft provides, the more repeatable revenue flowing into Microsoft's coffers. After the hype around the Xbox Series X cools down and the hardware-content singularity approaches, it's possible that many of the people opting to play Xbox games will do so on everything except the Xbox. It seems fair to ask whether this generation of dedicated consoles will be the last. "I like watching TV. I like playing games on TV. It's where I play most of the time," says Spencer. "I think there will be -- for a long time -- a world where people want to play on a television, and we're committed to that and we will deliver great console experiences. I don't think Xbox series X is our last console. I think we will do more consoles to make that great television play experience work and be delightful."

And if not, well, the company still has options. "The nice thing about being in a company the scale of Microsoft is we're able to make bets across a lot of those fronts and we're not really dependent upon any one of those individual kinds of businesses or relationships to succeed," says Spencer.

EA Games has just released The Command & Conquer Remastered Collection on Steam, described by Hot Hardware as two of the '90s-era real-time strategy games that "were incredibly popular in their day and are still popular with retro gamers today..."

"Gamers can change between legacy and remastered 4K graphics in real-time when playing solo mode," they note, adding that "deep support for mods via the Steam Workshop is baked in."

But UnknownSoldier (Slashdot user #67,820) also writes EA has released the source code for two of their classic real-time strategy games in the Command and Conquer series: CnC: Red Alert and CnC: Tiberian Dawn on GitHub. Interesting trivia:

- Source code is around 5 MB.

- There are no art of sound assets.

- Filenames are all in capitals. This makes it easy to tell what was added for the Remaster.

- The path finding is NOT using the usual A* algorithm but the "Crash and Turn" algorithm.

- Searching the source for PETROGLYPH_EXAMPLE_MOD shows an example of how to add a mod.
And 25 years after the release of Tiberian Dawn, the remastering team even tracked down the original voice for its in-game computer system EVA -- to create new high-definition recordings.

One of the issues with the NBA's plan to restart its season in July is playing games without fans in the arena. According to a report from The Athletic, there's a proposal to pipe in crowd noise from the NBA 2K video game. Engadget reports: NBA 2K also serves as the platform for the league's official esports series and has already simulated its own end to the 2019-2020 regular season, and its attention to details of the basketball experience may help fill in the blanks. Some leagues that have returned to action during the coronavirus pandemic already use piped-in sound, including Bundesliga soccer, and Sky Sports is planning to use EA's FIFA 20 game to a similar effect on Premier League broadcasts.

Razer has launched a new initiative that lets gamers donate to COVID-19 initiatives just by playing games. Now when a gamer running its Razer Cortex software earns the company's Razer Silver currency they can pledge it towards the purchase of masks for frontline healthcare workers. From a report: Razer Silver is virtual currency gamers earn when they run the Cortex game optimization software and play eligible games. Silver can normally be exchanged for hardware, gift cards, or games. It's basically a loyalty program that encourages gamers to use Cortex and earn discounted or free Razer hardware. Cortex is available on both PC and Android and supports major titles including World of Warcraft and Borderlands.

Rockstar Games, 2K games, and their parent company Take-Two Interactive announced on Thursday that they will shut down the servers for games such as Grand Theft Auto Online, Red Dead Online, and NBA 2K for two hours on Thursday afternoon "to honor the legacy of George Floyd." Polygon reports: "Black Lives Matter," said Rockstar Games on its official Twitter account. "To honor the legacy of George Floyd, today, 6/4/20, from 2:00-4:00 p.m. ET, we will be shutting down access to our online games, Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online." "Following the memorial," Rockstar added in a follow-up tweet, "we hope you will join us in further honoring the many victims of America's racial injustices by supporting their families, black-owned businesses, those marching on the streets, and coalitions." Rockstar ended its thread with a link to Charity Navigator, a nonprofit organization that maintains a vetted list of civil rights-focused charities.

In addition to Rockstar's titles, additional games from 2K Games and Social Point will go offline as well from 2-4 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Take-Two Interactive said in a statement to Polygon. The list includes NBA 2K, Dragon City, and Monster Legend. Private Division, whose portfolio includes The Outer Worlds and Kerbal Space Program, will also "suspend" its activities during the window. "George Floyd's memory will serve as a reminder that racism and the violence it incites cannot be tolerated," Take-Two Interactive said. "We are committed to supporting efforts to eradicate racial injustice and stand in solidarity with the Black community against this systemic issue that causes conflict and division in our society."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Thanks to some Japanese-language news sources, we now know the nature of the big Sega reveal that was teased for this week's Famitsu. The publisher is working on some kind of initiative that it's dubbed "fog gaming." While it's not exactly clear what that is -- or if it's comparable to cloud gaming services like Google Stadia -- according to analyst Serkan Toto, it will likely involve using the guts of arcade machines during off-hours.

Three months after losing a deal with Take-Two, Star Theory Games was out of business. From a report: One Friday evening last December, employees of game designer Star Theory Games each received the same unusual recruitment message over LinkedIn. It struck them as bizarre for two reasons. One, it came from an executive producer at the publishing company funding their next video game. Two, it said the game -- in the works for the previous two years -- was being pulled from their studio. "This was an incredibly difficult decision for us to make, but it became necessary when we felt business circumstances might compromise the development, execution and integrity of the game," Michael Cook, an executive producer at Private Division, a publishing label within Take-Two Interactive Software, wrote in the message, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. "To that end, we encourage you to apply for a position with us."

It was strange and disconcerting news to Star Theory's employees. Normally, an announcement like this would be delivered in a companywide meeting or an email from Star Theory's leadership team. The contract with Take-Two was the studio's only source of revenue at the time. Without it, the independent studio was in serious trouble. The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Take-Two was looking to hire all of Star Theory's development staff to make that happen. "We are offering a compensation package that includes a cash sign-on bonus, an excellent salary, bonus eligibility and other benefits," Cook wrote. When employees returned to the office on Monday, Star Theory founders Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor convened an all-hands meeting. The two men had been in discussions about selling their company to Take-Two but were dissatisfied with the terms, they explained.

The game's cancellation was a shock, but the founders assured staff that Star Theory still had money in the bank and could try to sign other deals, according to five people who attended the meeting and asked not to be identified, citing the risk of litigation. Berry and Mavor encouraged employees to stick together and stay at the company. The next few weeks were chaos, employees said. Take-Two hired more than a third of Star Theory's staff, including the studio head and creative director. By March, as the coronavirus pandemic choked the global economy, any hope of saving the business appeared to be lost, and Star Theory closed its doors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A year ago, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said he was "pretty optimistic" about Google's Stadia game-streaming service. The concept of "being able to play our games on any device whatsoever around the world, and to do it with low latency, well that's very compelling if that can be delivered," he offered in May of 2019. Now, though, Zelnick has changed his tune a bit. In an interview given during the Bernstein Annual Strategic Decisions Conference late last week, Zelnick acknowledges what has been apparent to industry watchers for a while: "The launch of Stadia has been slow," he said. "I think there was some overpromising on what the technology could deliver and some consumer disappointment as a result."

While major publishers like EA and Activision stayed away from Stadia's "Founders" launch last November, Take-Two provided three of the service's highest-profile games in its early months -- Red Dead Redemption 2, NBA 2K20, and Borderlands 3. And Zelnick said such Stadia support will continue in the future "as long as the business model makes sense." (Take-Two's PGA Tour 2K21, WWE2K Battlegrounds, and the Mafia series are currently planned for future Stadia release.) That said, Zelnick was pretty bearish on how much of an impact the streaming business model will really have on Take-Two's bottom-line sales. "It's not a game changer," Zelnick said. "People who want our games now can get our games now. The fact that you could stream them and not have to have a console interface is really not that big of a deal."

Sony is postponing its PlayStation 5 event that was scheduled for June 4th due to ongoing protests. From a report: "While we understand gamers worldwide are excited to see PS5 games, we do not feel that right now is a time for celebration," says Sony in a Twitter message. "And for now, we want to stand back and allow more important voices to be heard."