An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: After three weeks, 12 straight draws and a day of tiebreakers, Norway's Magnus Carlsen finally retained the world chess championship in London on Wednesday with a victory against Fabiano Caruana (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), his American challenger. Carlsen's victory came in what amounted to sudden-death chess: a scheduled series of four so-called rapid games in which the players started with 25 minutes to make their moves. The speedier pace of the games, after the far more deliberate matchups of the previous three weeks, meant players were more likely to make blunders. And that increased the chance of a victory by one player. Carlsen won the first two games, then closed out Caruana in Game 3.

Caruana, 26, was bidding to become the first American champion since Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky to win the world title in 1972. The famously cantankerous Fischer forfeited his title in 1975 amid a dispute with the world chess federation, and the sport has been dominated by Russians and Eastern Europeans in the decades since then. The tiebreaker result was not a shock. While Carlsen, 27, and Caruana, 26, are closely matched in longer conventional chess games, known as classical chess, Carlsen had been considered the favorite in the tiebreaker because he has had better rapid chess results than Caruana. "It was the first time in the history of the world championship, which dates to the 1800s, that regulation play ended with every game a draw," the report notes.

The Federal Trade Commission this week agreed to investigate video game loot boxes, accepting an official request by Senator Maggie Hassan. In a Congressional oversight committee hearing yesterday, FTC chairman Joe Simons affirmed Sen. Hassan's request that loot boxes be investigated. From a report: During her turn to ask questions at the hearing, Hassan cited a recent report by Great Britain's Gambling Commission that found 31% of children in the country had at one point or another paid money to open a loot box, a well as moves by Belgium (which prompted Square Enix to pull three mobile games from the country), Japan, and other countries to limit how loot boxes can be used in games. "Given the seriousness of this issue, I think it is in fact time for the FTC to investigate these mechanisms to ensure that children are being adequately protected and to educate parents about potential addiction or other negative impacts of these games," Hassan said. "Would you commit to undertaking this project and keeping this committee informed about it?" In response, Simons said "yes," but declined to go into any more detail about the FTC's current position on loot boxes and whether they constitute a form of gambling. Despite vocal criticism from Hassan and a few others on the topic, regulators have not been jumping to get involved in the debate.

An algorithm that remembers previous explorations in Montezuma's Revenge and Pitfall! could make computers and robots better at learning how to succeed in the real world. From a report: A new kind of machine-learning algorithm just mastered a couple of throwback video games that have proved to be a big headache for AI. Those following along will know that AI algorithms have bested the world's top human players at the ancient, elegant strategy game Go, one of the most difficult games imaginable. But two pixelated classics from the era of 8-bit computer games -- Montezuma's Revenge and Pitfall! -- have stymied AI researchers. There's a reason for this seeming contradiction. Although deceptively simple, both Montezuma's Revenge and Pitfall! have been immune to mastery via reinforcement learning, a technique that's otherwise adept at learning to conquer video games.

DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet focused on artificial intelligence, famously used it to develop algorithms capable of learning how to play several classic video games at an expert level. Reinforcement-learning algorithms mesh well with most games, because they tweak their behavior in response to positive feedback -- the score going up. The success of the approach has generated hope that AI algorithms could teach themselves to do all sorts of useful things that are currently impossible for machines. The problem with both Montezuma's Revenge and Pitfall! is that there are few reliable reward signals. Both titles involve typical scenarios: protagonists explore blockish worlds filled with deadly creatures and traps. But in each case, lots of behaviors that are necessary to advance within the game do not help increase the score until much later. Ordinary reinforcement-learning algorithms usually fail to get out of the first room in Montezuma's Revenge, and in Pitfall! they score exactly zero.

How and why a 1,500-year-old game has conquered the internet. From a report: Two years ago, the world chess championship match drew about 10 million online viewers, while this year's competition between Magnus Carlsen and Fabio Caruana, currently underway in London, is expected to draw more attention yet. Worldwide, chess claims about 600 million fans, which makes it one of the most popular games or sports.

It is noteworthy that China, one of the two most important countries in the world, has decided to invest heavily in chess. This year Chinese teams won both the men's and women's divisions at the Chess Olympiad, a first. That would not have happened without the active support of the Chinese Communist Party. The U.S. is stepping up too, with the aid of chess patron Rex Sinquefield. In recent times America has placed three players in the world's top 10, including Caruana, currently No. 2.

It turns out that chess is oddly well-suited for a high-tech world. Chess does not make for gripping television, but the option of live viewing online, supplemented by computer analysis or personal commentary, has driven a renaissance of the game. For one thing, computer evaluations have made watching more intelligible. Even if you barely understand chess, you can quickly get a sense of the state of play with the frequently changing numerical evaluations ("+ 2.00," for instance, means white has a decisive advantage, whereas "0.00" signals an even position). You also can see, with each move, whether the player will choose what the computer finds best.

The games publisher Square Enix is pulling three mobile games from Belgium following the introduction of a law in the European nation that bans "loot boxes" as a form of gambling. From a report: The games -- "Mobius Final Fantasy", "Kingdom Hearts Union X" and "Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia" -- are some of largest titles in the publisher's mobile roster, although it is better known for its console games such as "Tomb Raider", "Final Fantasy" and "Hitman." In statements posted in the games, Square Enix confirmed that the new law was to blame for their removal, citing "the present uncertain legal status of 'loot boxes' under Belgian law". Belgium first took action against "loot boxes", digital reward packs which can be bought with real or virtual money and contain a semi-random array of in-game items, back in April. The country's gaming commission ruled that the mechanics, as implemented in three popular games -- "Overwatch", "Fifa 18" and "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" -- were in violation of gambling legislation.

Epic Games' Fortnite has reached 8.3 million concurrent players worldwide (or about 0.1 percent of the human population) after finally making its debut in South Korea earlier this month. From a report: Because Internet cafes still play a large role in Asian countries, VG247 reports that players were encouraged to play Fortnite at PC bang cafes to complete special challenges, which were created in order to launch the Battle Royale mode in South Korea. After Fortnite's Battle Royale mode launched in South Korea this week, Epic Games Korea CEO Sung Chul Park stated in an interview that the game now has 8.3 million concurrent players worldwide. A spokesperson from Epic confirmed the numbers to VG247 as well.

October was a huge month for both software and hardware, and -- once again -- Sony is benefiting from that excitement. PlayStation 4 outperformed the Xbox One and Nintendo Switch both in terms of dollars and units sold in October. That's according to industry-tracking firm The NPD Group. From a report: And as is usual for PlayStation 4, it is still seeing year-over-year growth, according to NPD analyst Mat Piscatella. "PlayStation 4 hardware unit sales achieved an all-time October high for the platform," Piscatella said. "While PlayStation 4 hardware dollar sales reached its highest point for an October month since October 2014." This was actually one of the best Octobers for any PlayStation console ever. "October 2018 unit sales of PlayStation 4 reached the highest mark for any PlayStation hardware platform in an October month since the PlayStation 2 in October 2002," said Piscatella.

On Monday, developer Crowbar Collective released the first trailer for Black Mesa: Xen, the final act of its long running remake of Valve's 1998 game Half-Life, which marked its 20-year anniversary on the same day. "The finale of Half-Life put hero Gordon Freeman in an alien world, and Black Mesa: Xen's upgraded graphics and redesign makes the original's muddy palette look vibrant and strange," reports Motherboard. "It looks just as exciting as it did at the time of the original game's release." From the report: When Valve unleashed Half-Life, it changed video games forever. The first person shooter from what was then a relatively unknown company starred a silent scientist beating down alien headcrabs and shooting human Marines in a novel sci-fi adventure. It was a triumph. Shortly after, in 2003, the Crowbar Collective began work on a remake that would come to be known as Black Mesa. Fan communities routinely reimagine their favorite video games, often as modifications, or mods, of the originals. Black Mesa began life as a free mod for Half-Life 2, but grew into a proper remake. Crowbar Collective added new voice work, changed animations, and tweaked the original game in hundreds of ways big and small. Black Mesa: Xen has a target release date of early 2019.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The relatively new blockchain gaming industry is about to take a massive step forward as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are making their way onto the PlayStation 4. Arcade Distillery, a game developer that creates titles for PS Vita, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, is gearing up to launch a new game for the PS4 built around the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. Plague Hunters is a single-player-focused, turn-based strategy RPG with some PvP elements and the sequel to the successful Plague Road.

The game, which will be free-to-play and feature a marketplace for P2P transactions, has passed the Sony review process, passing all of PlayStation's terms and conditions, despite containing numerous elements of blockchain tech. This marks the first time any blockchain game has been able to accomplish this feat. Similar to other blockchain games, it looks like Plague Hunter's in-game assets, including units, weapons and other items, will be pegged to NFTs.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft is planning to release a disc-free version of the Xbox One as early as next spring, according to an unsourced report from author Brad Sams of Thurrott.com (who has been reliable with early Xbox-related information in the past). The report suggests the disc-free version of the system would not replace the existing Xbox One hardware, and it would instead represent "the lowest possible price for the Xbox One S console." Sams says that price could come in at $199 "or lower," a significant reduction from the system's current $299 starting price (but not as compelling compared to $199 deals for the Xbox One and PS4 planned for Black Friday this year). Buyers will also be able to add a subscription to the Xbox Games Pass program for as little as $1, according to Sams. For players who already have games on disc, Sams says Microsoft will offer a "disc to digital" program in association with participating publishers. Players will be able to take their discs into participating retailers (including Microsoft Stores) and trade them in for a "digital entitlement" that can be applied to their Xbox Live account.

schwit1 writes: PlayStation users in Chicago on Wednesday began paying a 9 percent tax on streaming content as the gaming company starts complying with a city levy. The Sony-owned company joins other streaming services including Spotify, Netflix and Hulu in complying with the charge, which took effect three years ago. The city's amusement tax, which used to apply mostly to concert and sporting event tickets, was extended to include streaming services in 2015. That includes charges paid for playing games, according to Chicago's Finance Department. Some tech companies have fought the additional 9 percent charge. Apple filed a lawsuit against the city in August alleging the tax on its music streaming services was illegal and discriminatory. That suit is pending in Cook County Circuit Court. Meanwhile, Apple is not collecting the tax. In 2015, a group of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, XBox Live and Hulu users sued Chicago in Cook County, alleging the tax violates federal law. The judge ruled in the city's favor in May, and the streaming service users appealed the decision. The case is pending in state Appellate Court.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Nintendo has won a lawsuit seeking to take two large retro-game ROM sites offline, on charges of copyright infringement. The judgement, made public today, ruled in Nintendo's favor and states that the owners of the sites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co, will have to pay a total settlement of $12 million to Nintendo. The complaint was originally filed by the company in an Arizona federal court in July, and has since lead to a swift purge of self-censorship by popular retro and emulator ROM sites, who have feared they may be sued by Nintendo as well.

LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co were the joint property of couple Jacob and Cristian Mathias, before Nintendo sued them for what they have called "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo's intellectual property rights." The suit never went to court; instead, the couple sought to settle after accepting the charge of direct and indirect copyright infringement. TorrentFreak reports that a permanent injunction, prohibiting them from using, sharing, or distributing Nintendo ROMs or other materials again in the future, has been included in the settlement. Additionally all games, game files, and emulators previously on the site and in their custody must be handed over to the Japanese game developer, along with a $12.23 million settlement figure. It is unlikely, as TorrentFreak have reported, that the couple will be obligated to pay the full figure; a smaller settlement has likely been negotiated in private.

thegarbz writes: Denuvo, the darling of the DRM industry was once considered by publishers to be the final solution to piracy. Slashdot has documented the slow decline of Denuvo from stories in 2014, and 2016 where publishers were praising Denuvo's success at mitigating piracy for weeks, to its slow decline last year where games were being cracked within "hours" of release. The popular wisdom of publishers in the past considered DRM worth while as it thwarts piracy during the critical sales spike when games are first released. Last week saw Hitman 2, the latest Denuvo protected game get cracked in a short time. The kicker, the game isn't officially released until this Thursday.

Publishers are now eroding the potential sale day advantage of DRM through the latest practice of offering games for early release in an attempt to secure an ever larger number of pre-orders for popular titles. This leads to the obvious question: Does DRM make financial sense to include in titles if they risk being cracked before release date? Conversely, does releasing games early to selected customers make financial sense if it results in the DRM being cracked before release?

Doxing rivals, stealing each other's files, and poking around Nintendo's servers are all a normal part of the ballooning Nintendo Switch hacking and piracy scenes. Joseph Cox, reports for Motherboard: The Switch piracy community -- much of which operates on the gamer-focused chat app Discord -- is full of ingenuity, technical breakthroughs, and evolving cat-and-mouse games between the multi-billion dollar Nintendo and the passionate hackers who love the company but nonetheless illegally steal its games. Pirates deploy malware to steal each other's files so they can download more games themselves. Groups deliberately plant code into others' Switches so they no longer work. And some people in the scene have been doxed, meaning they've had their personal information published online.

Pirating games for the Switch is not technically straightforward. Instead, there's a complex supply chain constantly grinding away that helps people source and play unreleased games. There are reverse engineers who figure out how Nintendo's own tools work, so hackers can then use them for their own advantage. There are coders who make programs to streamline the process of downloading or running games. Reviewers, developers, or YouTubers with access to games before general Switch users often leak unlock codes or other information to small groups, which then may trickle out to the wider community.

[...] To release a game, pirates may dump a copy from the physical cartridge; they can do this before the game releases in the United States by sourcing the cartridge from an Australian store, which releases earlier because of the time difference. But this only gets a game out one or two days before official release. For the more sought-after and early dumps, pirates often manage to grab a copy from Nintendo's eShop, the company's digital download game store that is built into the Switch. Here, pirates will likely use a piece of hacker-made software on their computers to talk to Nintendo's servers, one pirate who uploads large archives of games explained to Motherboard in an online chat. The files can sometimes be downloaded early by anyone (by design), and are encrypted and need a so-called "titlekey" to unlock them and make the game playable. Further reading: Nintendo 'Wins' $12 Million From Pirate ROM Site Operators.

Question: what is entertainment's highest-grossing weekend debut of all time? Hint: It only took place two weeks ago. From a report: It was claimed by a Western-themed video game called Red Dead Redemption 2 -- the second in a series dubbed 'Grand Theft Auto on horseback' -- which generated over $725m in just three days. The wording above ('highest-grossing weekend debut') has been carefully chosen. Because the highest-grossing entertainment launch of all time actually kicked off on a Tuesday, in September, 2013. That launch was Grand Theft Auto V, another video game, which grossed more than $1bn during its opening 72 hours on sale. Both Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto are made by Rockstar Games -- a New York-HQ'd interactive entertainment company famed for its ability to bring filmic sophistication to the world of PlayStations and Xboxes, and for its ability to generate billions upon billions of dollars by doing so.

Ready for this? The Grand Theft Auto franchise, and the core team behind Rockstar's success, were, unbelievably, both once part of the music business. They were allowed to leave 20 years ago. For an absolute pittance. Let's rewind. Back in 1990, London-born Sam Houser, aged 19, landed a dream first job -- working in the post-room at BMG's UK HQ. Houser then supplemented his university studies by continuing to work at BMG for the next four years, focusing on pop music videos and VHS releases. By 1994, he'd graduated, and took a full-time role within BMG's new interactive entertainment division. Houser, it turned out, had a natural talent for 'A&R'ing' video games -- spotting titles that would sell big and signing them up as a label would an artist -- and, by 1996, he was named Head of Development at BMG Interactive in the UK. Got your palm located somewhere roughly near your forehead? Good. Prepare for the two to forcibly meet.

Interactive released Grand Theft Auto, a 2D action-adventure game, which saw players fulfilling the objectives of criminal overlords across three cities. The title was a commercial smash in the US and Europe -- yet it emerged amid serious corporate turbulence. In March 1998, convinced that its foray into video games had been a waste of time and money, BMG -- under the instruction of owner Bertelsmann -- agreed to sell off BMG Interactive. According to Sam Houser, BMG let the company go, to New York-based Take Two Interactive, for a total consideration of $9m. (For those who can see where this narrative is going: Red Dead Redemption 2 generated that $9m back within an hour of going on sale last month.) The story doesn't end there.

The Chinese government doesn't want children playing games for several hours every day. It said as much in a public notice from August. Now, Tencent is going along with that recommendation. The world's biggest gaming company started pushing out its new "real name identity system" (RNIS) across China on November 1, according to market intelligence firm Niko Partners. From a report: This program aims to mitigate concerns about addiction and myopia in children. It limits people 12 and younger to an hour of gaming per day. And it forces every player to register themselves in the game with their real name and government ID. Of course, this program isn't new. Tencent introduced a version of its RNIS in May 2017. That also required players to register their age, but it was easy to fool. In September, however, the publisher revised and strengthened the program. And the government also stepped in to help. Regulators are providing Tencent with access to a massive list of every person who lives in China.

Microsoft will add mouse and keyboard support to the Xbox One next week, the company announced during its X018 gaming event. From a report: In a surprising twist, Fortnite will be one of the first games to take advantage of the new feature. This update has been discussed for years, but the feature was given a concrete launch window back in September of this year, when Microsoft claimed that Warframe would be playable with a mouse and keyboard in October. The free-to-play first-person shooter will still be among the earliest games to enable this control option. Here's a roundup of everything else Microsoft announced at the gaming conference.

"It's the biggest chess event of the year as World Champion Magnus Carlsen will try to defend his title against the American challenger Fabiano Caruana," reports Chess.com -- which is webcasting game two right now (7 a.m. PST, 3 p.m. London/GMT).

After seven grueling hours and 115 moves on Friday, the first game of their 12-game competition ended in a draw -- though challenger Caruana acknowledged that "I was quite fortunate to end up with a draw... I was outplayed after the opening... I think I was clearly losing, for a long time I was losing." This was not the most pleasant experience to defend this extremely long game with white. I think I was quite fortunate to end up with a draw... There was definitely a lot of nerves. It is a very different feeling playing the first game of a world championship match.... Normally with white you shouldn't be too happy with a draw, but considering my position I am very happy. I am relieved to have escaped."
Slate reports Caruana has spent $50,000 on chess coaching just in 2018 in hopes of claiming the 1 million euro prize. Ironically, the match's "ceremonial starter", actor Woody Harrelson, bungled Caruana's first move by knocking over his king -- and then by moving the wrong pawn. "Caruana was ready to accept the mistake and continue with the match before officials gave Harrelson a third chance and he finally moved the correct piece."

Defending champion Magnus Carlsen later admitted that "I couldn't quite find the knockout before the time trouble.... I tried to find a way to exchange in order to play for a win, but I couldn't find it. Then I just moved around hoping to force a blunder, but I didn't succeed."

Prima Games, the publishing company that has printed video game strategy guides since it was founded in 1990, is shutting down. "The label will no longer publish new guides starting now, and it will officially shutter in the spring," reports Kotaku. From the report: Thanks to the rise of sites like GameFAQs -- and major gaming publications like IGN commissioning their own online guides, which bring in monstrous amounts of traffic -- print strategy guides have struggled for years now. In 2015, Prima purchased and swallowed its biggest competitor, BradyGames, and has been consistently churning out guides for both print and the web, but it wasn't enough to survive what the company called "a significant decline" in the world of print video game guides.

Ukrainian vulnerability researcher has found a bug that would have allowed him to download all the activation keys (also known as CD keys) made available through the Steam gaming platform, for any game, ever. From a report: Discovered by Artem Moskowsky, the bug resided in Steamworks, a platform that Valve runs to help developers with building and publishing games via its Steam gaming client. Moskowsky found the bug in a Steam web API located at partner.steamgames.com/partnercdkeys/assignkeys/. This is the API that lets game developers or affiliates retrieve CD keys made available to Steam users so their customers can activate a game installed via the Steam client. This API is accessible using a regular Steam account and takes several parameters, but the ones most relevant are appid (representing the game), keyid (representing the identifier of a set of CD keys), and keycount (representing the number of CD keys that Steam needs to return inside a CD key set).