"Epic Games gave bans to more than 1,200 Fortnite accounts and revoked cash prizes that more than 200 players had won following Epic's investigations of cheating in the first week of Fortnite's World Cup Online Open," reports Polygon: That cheater (whom Epic did not name) used the cheat software during the tournament's semifinals. The account involved had played "for less than five minutes" before being discovered and banned, Epic said.

The great majority of the other accounts sanctioned received two-week bans for their misconduct. Of them, 196 players forfeited their winnings after they were caught circumventing region locks to play in several regions. Epic said that will change the prize payouts for others in the tournament, but their improved finishes won't be reflected on Fortnite's in-game leaderboard. Nine prize winners lost their money for sharing accounts, and one winner's earnings were vacated for teaming.

Epic Games said it has added a "real-time teaming detection algorithm" to its competitive play. Teaming, in which players in a solo mode work cooperatively and create a competitive disadvantage for others, can get players banned even in competitive non-tournament play.

eatmorekix quotes Vice: In 2012, Paragon Studios announced it was shutting down City of Heroes, a massively multiplayer online game where a community of players created their own superheroes, went on adventures together, and formed lasting friendships.

The news was crushing to the game's devoted community because they could no longer play and hang out in the virtual space they loved, and today, years after the game's shutdown, the community is in an uproar again. As Massivelyop first reported, a group of City of Heroes players called the Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers (SCORE) had created their own, private server where they could continue to play the game for the last six years, but kept it relatively secret.

"I like the rest of you have been lied to," Reddit user avoca wrote in a thread titled "BE ANGRY" on the City of Heroes subreddit. "I have been told City of Heroes has been shutdown. Today, I learn I have been mistaken. For all of these years, City of Heroes has lived on. In secret. For every passing day and every withdrawal symptom, a person is playing on this secret server, and they are gaining xp, leveling up, performing task forces and forming supergroups."
In 2004 the game's lead designer answered questions from Slashdot's reader.

15 years, a member of the emulator team tells Massivelyop that they'd tried to keep their City of Heroes server a secret for over six years because they were worried about getting a cease and desist notice from the game's publishers.

Classic video games are getting a makeover. But it's not big-name game developers making the improvements: it's independent modders. From a report: The technique being used is known as "AI upscaling." In essence, you feed an algorithm a low-resolution image, and, based on training data it's seen, it spits out a version that looks the same but has more pixels in it. Upscaling, as a general technique, has been around for a long time, but the use of AI has drastically improved the speed and quality of results. "It was like witchcraft," says Daniel Trolie, a teacher and student from Norway who used AI to update the visuals of 2002 RPG classic The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. "[It] looked like I just downloaded a hi-res texture pack from [game developers] Bethesda themselves."

Trolie is a moderator at the r/GameUpscale subreddit where, along with specialist forums and chat apps like Discord, fans share tips and tricks on how to best use these AI tools. Browsing these forums, it's apparent that the modding process is a lot like restoring old furniture or works of art. It's a job for skilled craftspeople, requiring patience and knowledge. Not every game is a good fit for upscaling, and not every upscaling algorithm produces similar results. Modders have to pick the right tool for the job before putting in hundreds of hours of work to polish the final results. It's a labor of love, not a quick fix.

You can now download the source code of every Infocom text adventure game, thanks to archivist Jason Scott who uploaded the code to GitHub. "There are numerous repositories under the name historicalsource, each for a different game," reports Ars Technica. "Titles include, but are not limited to, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Planetfall, Shogun, and several Zork games -- plus some more unusual inclusions like an incomplete version of Hitchhiker's sequel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Infocom samplers, and an unreleased adaptation of James Cameron's The Abyss." From the report: The code was uploaded by Jason Scott, an archivist who is the proprietor of textfiles.com. His website describes itself as "a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them" -- in particular those of the 1980s. He announced the GitHub uploads on Twitter earlier this week. The games were written in the LISP-esque "Zork Implementation Language," or ZIL, which you could be forgiven for not being intimately familiar with already. Fortunately, Scott also tweeted a link to a helpful manual for the language on archive.org. Gamasutra, which first reported the news, notes that Activision still owns the rights to Infocom games and could request a takedown if it wanted.

Slashdot reader xavdeman writes: Hot on the heels of its announcement of the specifications of the next PlayStation, Sony has revealed a new crackdown on explicit content. Citing "the rise of the #MeToo movement" and a concern of "legal and social action" in the USA, Sony has said it wants to address concerns about the depiction of women in video games playable on its platform as well as protect children's "sound growth and development." The new rules were reportedly already responsible for puritan cutscene alterations in the Western PS4 release of the multi-platform title Devil May Cry 5, where lens flares were used to cover up partial nudity.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Gamers of a certain age probably remember being wowed by the quick, smooth scaling and rotation effects of the Super Nintendo's much-ballyhooed "Mode 7" graphics. Looking back, though, those gamers might also notice how chunky and pixelated those background transformations could end up looking, especially when viewed on today's high-end screens. Emulation to the rescue. A modder going by the handle DerKoun has released an "HD Mode 7" patch for the accuracy-focused SNES emulator bsnes. In their own words, the patch "performs Mode 7 transformations... at up to 4 times the horizontal and vertical resolution" of the original hardware.

The results, as you can see in the above gallery and the below YouTube video, are practically miraculous. Pieces of Mode 7 maps that used to be boxy smears of color far in the distance are now sharp, straight lines with distinct borders and distinguishable features. It's like looking at a brand-new game. Perhaps the most impressive thing about these effects is that they take place on original SNES ROM and graphics files; DerKoun has said that "no artwork has been modified" in the games since the project was just a proof of concept a month ago. That makes this project different from upscaling emulation efforts for the N64 and other retro consoles, which often require hand-drawn HD texture packs to make old art look good at higher resolutions.

Daetrin writes: Sony is unwilling to confirm "Playstation 5" as the name, but their next console is "no mere upgrade" according to a report from Wired, which cites Sony executives -- who spoke on the record:

"PlayStation's next-generation console ticks all those boxes, starting with an AMD chip at the heart of the device. (Warning: some alphabet soup follows.) The CPU is based on the third generation of AMD's Ryzen line and contains eight cores of the company's new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. The GPU, a custom variant of Radeon's Navi family, will support ray tracing, a technique that models the travel of light to simulate complex interactions in 3D environments. While ray tracing is a staple of Hollywood visual effects and is beginning to worm its way into $10,000 high-end processors, no game console has been able to manage it. Yet."

The console will also have a solid-state drive and is currently planned to be backward-compatible with both PS4 games and PSVR.

Microsoft is about to launch an even cheaper Xbox One S. In order to cut costs, the company is removing the Blu-ray disc drive altogether. According to leaked marketing images spotted by WinFuture, the console could launch on May 7th for $258 in Germany. From a report: Given that the launch is just a few weeks away and that those marketing images line up perfectly with previous rumors, chances are this is the real deal. As you can see on WinFuture's images, it looks exactly like an Xbox One S without the disc slot. The console is called Xbox One S All Digital and comes with a 1TB hard drive -- most standard Xbox One S consoles currently also feature a 1TB hard drive. Microsoft states clearly that this console is only for digital games. If you already have physical Xbox One games, you wonâ(TM)t be able to insert them in the console.

"No Man's Sky is getting another large-scale update, and this one is different," writes GameSpot.

An anonymous reader quotes their report: A "No Man's Sky VR" update is scheduled for this summer, which will add free support for PlayStation VR and Steam VR. Hello Games boasts that this is the entire game brought into VR rather than a separate mode. According to the announcement, this is the second major pillar to the Beyond expansion that Hello Games previously announced. The first pillar is a major overhaul to its online play, and a third pillar is yet to be announced...

Last year, No Man's Sky issued a large-scale update called Next, which overhauled many of the game's systems. It was such a major update that we named it one of the best expansions of 2018. Hello has subsequently been issuing regular updates, like the underwater Abyss expansion and tons of new biomes in the Visions expansion.
Watch the "official VR reveal trailer" on YouTube.

An anonymous reader quotes Variety: The United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is launching a consumer law investigation into video game companies Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo over some of their business practices, it announced on Friday.

The CMA is concerned about whether or not some of the companies' practices are legal, including their use of auto-renewals for subscription services like Xbox Live, PlayStation Plus, and Nintendo Switch Online. It's also looking into their cancellation and refund policies and their terms and conditions. It said it's written to Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft requesting information on their online gaming contracts and it's calling on people who use these services to tell the CMA about their experiences.

An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: Griffin Spikoski spends as much as 18 hours a day glued to his computer screen playing the wildly popular, multiplayer video game "Fortnite." His YouTube channel -- where he regularly uploads videos of himself playing the online game -- has nearly 1.2 million subscribers and more than 71 million views; figures that have netted him advertisers, sponsorships and a steady stream of income. Last year, that income totaled nearly $200,000... "It's kind of like my job," Griffin told ABC affiliate WABC-TV, noting he plays about eight hours a day in his Long Island home...

His big break came last year when Spikoski beat a well-known Fortnite player and uploaded a video of the battle to YouTube, quickly resulting in 7.5 million views, according to WABC-TV. It didn't take long, the station reported, for the teenager to make his first $100 from Twitch. Not long after, his father, Chris said, everything changed. "Two months went by and we were like, 'Alright, we're going to need to get an accountant and get a financial adviser,'" he said.

Spikoski's parents told filmmakers that they decided to remove their son from high school as his dedication to gaming deepened... Spikoski's parents said their son had been pushing them to allow him to pursue online schooling. With his success growing, they eventually relented. "It's been his dream to be a gamer, to be in e-sports, just to be in this field since he was a kid," Spikoski said, noting that his son began playing video games at age three. "We don't really see that you need a 9-to-5 job to get by in life and you can actually have fun with a career and enjoy your love and do what you love and make a living out of it," he added.

Microsoft is planning on launching a new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription that combines Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass into a single monthly charge. From a report: Twitter user h0x0d first revealed the new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, and it claims the service will be priced at $14.99 per month. The Verge understands that Microsoft will likely unveil this service alongside the company's new disc-less Xbox One S All-Digital edition later this month. The combination of Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live subscriptions into a single monthly charge means Xbox owners will save around $5 per month compared to the $19.98 monthly subscription price for an existing combination of the two. It's not a massive savings, but the new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate offering will make a lot of sense for Microsoft's new disc-less Xbox One S since this console won't include a Blu-ray drive and will rely heavily on digital downloads and Xbox subscription services.

The video game industry is richer than it has ever been. Its revenue in 2018 was $43.8 billion, a recent report estimated, thanks in large part to hugely popular games like Fortnite and Call of Duty. These record-breaking profits could have led one to think that the people who develop video games had it made. But then the blood bath began. From a story, shared by an anonymous reader: In February, Call of Duty's publisher, Activision Blizzard, laid off 8 percent of its staff, or nearly 800 workers, in a cost-cutting massacre. A few weeks later, the game studio ArenaNet cut dozens of positions, while smaller layoffs hit companies like Valve and the digital store operator GOG. And just last week, the video game giant Electronic Arts announced that it was laying off 350 people across the globe.

This brutal start to 2019 followed the closures of major game companies like Telltale, the makers of games based on The Walking Dead, and Capcom Vancouver, the large studio behind the popular action series Dead Rising in 2018. All in all, thousands of video game workers have lost their jobs in the past 12 months. In many of these cases, laid-off employees had no idea what was coming. One developer at a major studio told me in February that he and his colleagues had been crunching -- putting in long hours, including nights and weekends -- for a video game release, only to be suddenly told that security was waiting to escort them off the premises.

Worker exploitation has always been part of the video game industry's DNA. Executives with multimillion-dollar stock packages often treat their employees like Tetris pieces, to be put into place as efficiently as possible, then promptly disposed of. For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand. Some people who make video games receive decent salaries and benefits (experienced programmers at the richest studios can make six figures), but many do not.

Video games are the next entertainment industry undergoing a major disruption, all the way down to the consoles and controllers. From a report: Details: "In the past, you plunked down $60 at GameStop for a copy of Grand Theft Auto or Madden NFL and played it out -- after which you could trade it in or let it gather dust," the AP reports. "Now, you'll increasingly have the choice of subscribing to games, playing for free or possibly just streaming them over the internet to your phone or TV."

New subscription streaming services represent a massive shift from gaming into the cloud, which will make it easier to access games on any device, including mobile. [...] Gamers wouldn't necessarily have to buy individual games anymore -- they could buy them as part of a larger and potentially cheaper package -- and it means that they wouldn't be limited to expensive hardware devices that only work for certain games.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, is calling for the ban of popular battle royale game "Fortnite." The prominent member of the British royal family visited a YMCA in West London and spoke to mental health experts about addictive games and social media, saying that the latter is more addictive than drugs or alcohol. From a report: "[Fortnite] shouldn't be allowed," he said. "Where is the benefit of having it in your household? It's created to addict, an addiction to keep you in front of a computer for as long as possible. It's so irresponsible. It's like waiting for the damage to be done and kids turning up on your doorsteps and families being broken down." He also suggested that social media is "more addictive than alcohol and drugs." Further reading: Fortnite Creator Sees Epic Games Becoming as Big as Facebook, Google; and 'Fortnite' May be a Virtual Game, But It's Having Real-life, Dangerous Effects.

An anonymous reader shares a report: "They are not sleeping. They are not going to school. They are dropping out of social activities. A lot of kids have stopped playing sports so they can do this." Michael Rich, a pediatrician and director of the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children's Hospital, was talking about the impact "Fortnite: Battle Royale" -- a cartoonish multiplayer shooter game -- is having on kids, mainly boys, some still in grade school. "We have one kid who destroyed the family car because he thought his parents had locked his device inside," Rich said. "He took a hammer to the windshield."

A year and a half since the game's release, Rich's account is just one of many that describe an obsession so intense that kids are seeing doctors and therapists to break the game's grip, in some cases losing so much weight -- because they refuse to stop playing to eat -- that doctors initially think they're wasting away from a physical disease. The stress on families has become so severe that parents are going to couples' counselors, fighting over who's to blame for allowing "Fortnite" into the house in the first place and how to rein in a situation that's grown out of control. Further reading: 'Fortnite' Creator Sees Epic Games Becoming as Big as Facebook, Google.

After partnering with HTC to launch the Vive in 2016, Valve has moved ahead with plans to launch its own headset, called the Valve Index, in May 2019. Ars Technica reports: The news came on Friday in the form of a single teaser image, shown above, of a headset with the phrase "Valve Index" written on its front. The front of the headset is flanked by at least two sensors. This shadow-covered hardware matches the leaked headset reported by UploadVR in November of last year. That report hinted to Valve's headset supporting a wider, 135-degree field-of-view (FOV), as opposed to the roughly 110-degree FOV of the original HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

Valve's dedicated website for the new device includes no other information than the above image and the date "May 2019." It does not include any mention of the new SteamVR Knuckles controllers, which Valve has advertised pretty heavily via developer outreach since their 2016 reveal and a later series of improved prototypes in 2018. This page also doesn't mention a series of three Valve-produced VR games that have been repeatedly advertised by Valve co-founder Gabe Newell since 2017. There's very little information about the headset, but after cranking up the brightness and contrast of the teaser image, Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech was able to find "a series of six dots on one of the headset's surfaces, [...] which may hint to this headset's use of an outside tracking sensor, a la the HTC Vive's infrared trackers." He adds: "Even so, those two giant lenses imply that 'inside-out' tracking, managed entirely by the headset without any extra webcams or sensors, may also be in the cards. Additionally, we can see a giant physical slider, which is likely linked to interpupillary distance (IPD), a precise measurement needed to ensure maximum VR comfort."

slipped_bit writes: Tyler R. Barriss, 26, who pleaded guilty to multiple counts of "swatting" attempts, including the case that caused an innocent man to be killed by police in 2017, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. The case in 2017 was all because of a dispute between two online players over a $1.50 bet in the "Call of Duty: WWII" video game. A total of 51 federal charges related to fake calls and threats were made against Barriss. "Barriss' prosecution in Wichita consolidated other federal cases that had initially been filed against him in California and the District of Columbia involving similar calls and threats he made," reports FOX 4 Kansas City. "Prosecutors had asked for a 25-year sentence, while the defense had sought a 20-year term."

"The intended target in Wichita, Shane Gaskill, 20, and the man who allegedly recruited Barriss, Casey Viner, 19, of North College Hill, Ohio, are charged as co-conspirators," the report adds. "Authorities say Viner provided Barriss with an address for Gaskill that Gaskill had previously given to Viner. Authorities also say that when Gaskill noticed Barriss was following him on Twitter, he gave Barriss that old address and taunted him to 'try something.'"

The company behind "Fortnite" wants to become the next Facebook or Google, said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. The idea isn't much of a stretch. From a report: While "Fortnite" began life as a relatively mundane game it continues to evolve, first by adding a battle royale mode, and then by leaning on the game's massive install base to turn the title into something more akin to a social platform that can host concerts, tell stories, and inspire creativity. Sweeney points to the game's popularity as a "mass-market streaming phenomenon," the moment when "Fortnite" player teamed up with musician Drake in-game, and when the game played host to about 10 million people in a live, in-game Marshmello concert. "We feel the game industry is changing in some major ways," he said. "'Fortnite' is a harbinger of things to come. It's a massive number of people all playing together, interacting together, not just playing but socializing."

"In many ways 'Fortnite' is like a social network. People are just in the game with strangers, they're playing with friends and using 'Fortnite' as a foundation to communicate." Flush with a relatively recent $1.25 billion investment from a half-dozen investment firms and the steady flow of cash from both "Fortnite" and Epic Game's Unreal game engine, Sweeney has big plans for the company.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft has removed a trio of references to Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of Minecraft, from the game's opening menu screen. Random messages known as "splash text" are printed in yellow on this screen, and they used to include "Made by Notch!", "The Work of Notch", and "110813!" (a reference to the day Persson got married), but now all three mentions are gone. Notch is still included in the game's credits, but the change means that Minecraft players will no longer be randomly referenced.

Persson first released the blocky building game in 2009. Five years later, after the game had become a global smash hit, he sold his company Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion, giving Redmond ownership of Minecraft. The references to Notch have remained a feature until their removal in this latest patch. They're reported to have been removed both from the original Java edition played on PCs and the legacy console edition used on PlayStation 4. No official rationale has been offered for the change, but Persson has become something of a polarizing figure on Twitter...