Assassin's Creed, a video game franchise set in huge worlds where each one can take hundreds of hours to complete, is getting even bigger. From a report: A new project, which is known inside Ubisoft Entertainment by the code name Assassin's Creed Infinity, sets out to create a massive online platform that evolves over time, according to people familiar with its development. Whereas previous Assassin's Creed games each unfolded in specific historical settings such as ancient Greece or Ptolemaic Egypt, Infinity will contain multiple settings with room to expand to others in the months and years following its debut, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing a project under development. Individual games on the platform might look and feel different, but they will all be connected. Details surrounding the project, which hasn't been previously reported, are in flux, and it's still years away from release. The teams have also been affected by the #MeToo allegations that have swept through the company over the last year.

Nintendo is announcing a new Switch model today with a larger 7-inch 720p OLED display. While rumors had suggested this new Switch would ship with a new Nvidia chip inside, it doesn't look like that's the case. From a report: Nintendo lists this Switch OLED model as only supporting 1080p via TV mode, and rumors had suggested 4K support, thanks to a rumored Nvidia chip upgrade. The Switch OLED model will go on sale for $350 starting on October 8th. Other than the new screen, this revised model includes an adjustable stand for tabletop play, 64GB of built-in storage (up from 32GB), a new dock with a wired ethernet port built in, and improved audio for handheld or tabletop play. Nintendo only mentions "up to 1080p via HDMI in TV mode" for the TV dock, so the rumored 4K mode isn't part of this OLED Switch.

League of Legends developer Riot Games released a 37-track album of ambient tunes (now on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music) "that will let gamers stream their sessions accompanied by music that doesn't infringe copyright protections," reports Bloomberg.

And that's just one response to aggressive copyright enforcement: For example, a new Guardians of the Galaxy game to be released later this year will be loaded with a soundtrack with songs by Iron Maiden, KISS, Wham!, Blondie and more. To stay on the good side of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the studio behind the game, Eidos Montreal, has created a toggle switch that will allow gamers to turn off the soundtrack when live streaming, Venturebeat has reported. Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt SA also created an option for players to turn off certain songs that could cause trouble and replace them with an alternative.

After largely ignoring streaming platforms for years, last spring the music industry suddenly bore down on Twitch, owned by Amazon.com Inc. and started sending users thousands of DMCA takedowns for copyright violations. Twitch responded by telling users they could no longer use copyrighted material and also had to remove old posts that violated the rules. Some games are still struggling to adapt. Earlier this month, a number of music publishers, including those that represent Ed Sheeran and Ariana Grande, sued Roblox Corp. for copyright infringement, saying the company hasn't licensed the music many of its creators have used in their games. The lawsuit is seeking at least $200 million in damages, the Wall Street Journal reported...

The collection is just the beginning and Riot said it's committed to creating more projects like Sessions in the future.

As Axios reports, a company called playerWON (kill me), described as "a first-of-its-kind in-game advertising platform" (bring me back then kill me again), has signed deals with companies like EA and Hi-Rez (Smite) to try to bring TV-style commercials to their console games. Kotaku reports: Having tested this tech for over a year, they feel like it's now ready to be implemented, the idea being rather than just beaming videos to them in the middle of a game, players would be able to view an ad then, when servers detected the commercial had been viewed in its entirety, "release rewards to the player." This tech would be licensed out to developers so it could be implemented in the game itself (unlike the ads we already see on consoles, in places like system menu screens), and they're trying to justify it by saying that because young people are "cord-cutters," they're unreachable via traditional, cheaper marketing, and are only being reached by branded content deals (like the sneakers and clothes in NBA 2K, or cup noodles in Final Fantasy).

Testing has been taking place inside Smite for around a year, and the findings are as awful as you're probably expecting: "Data from one of Simulmedia's pilot campaigns with Smite, a F2P multiplayer battle arena game from Tencent's Hi-Rez Studios, shows that players were much more likely (22%) to play a game and spend money within the game (11%), if they watched in-game ads that gave them access to more gaming perks." As a result, playerWON "plans to launch in-game ads in roughly a dozen more games by the year's end."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since the first Humble Indie Bundle launched to much acclaim in 2010, users have been able to allocate up to 100 percent of a bundle's pay-what-you-want purchase price to Humble's partner charities. That option will be going away in mid-July as the company institutes a new 15 to 30 percent minimum cut that will go to the storefront itself. If that new policy sounds familiar, it's probably because of a test Humble Bundle in April that hid the charity sliders from some customers as a form of early user testing. In light of negative feedback, Humble Bundle apologized for not being "more proactive in communicating the test." But at the time, the company also said it was planning to limit total charity donations to 15 percent of the user-set purchase price in the near future. By May, though, Humble Bundle backtracked and said it was leaving the charity sliders intact and turning them back on for all customers "while we take more time to review feedback and consider sliders and the importance of customization for purchases on bundle pages in the long term."

Today, that review seems to be over, and Humble Bundle has once again decided to set limits on the proportion of payments users can allocate to charity (though at a higher level than it publicly mulled back in April). In a blog post Thursday, the Humble Bundle team attributed the 15 to 30 percent minimum store cut (which will vary from bundle to bundle) to the fact that "the PC storefront landscape has changed significantly since we first launched bundles in 2010, and we have to continue to evolve with it to stay on mission." Humble Bundle says customers can still adjust their specific charitable giving within these new limits, and on-screen sliders will make any minimums clear. The team also argues that ensuring Humble Bundle itself makes some money from every bundle sale will "[let] us continue to invest in more exciting content so we can keep growing the Humble community, which will ultimately drive more donations for charitable causes."

After yesterday's industry-wide discussion of the cost of being visible on Sony's PlayStation Store, Kotaku has heard from multiple independent developers and publishers expressing similar frustrations and fury. From a report: There were two main responses to our article yesterday highlighting one independent developer's frustrations with working with Sony to sell games on the PlayStation store. The first was a confusing number of people convinced that this was somehow part of an underground conspiracy to destroy Sony. The second was many indie game developers and publishers getting in touch to say that, yes, wow, Sony are far harder to work with and sell games through than anywhere else.

It's not possible to rationalize with the former group. We had confirmed hard figures on Sony's fees for getting any visibility on the PlayStation's in-built store, so we reported them. The conspiracy, disappointingly, ends there. However, the information about just how much worse it is for indies to work with Sony than Microsoft or Nintendo keeps piling in. "Oh yeah, so there's Nintendo who supports you," one such response begins. "[Then] Microsoft who supports you and [then] there is Sony who supports its own AAA machine and gives a fuck about everyone else."

As Bloomberg reported in April, Sony shows extraordinary caution even with the games it makes itself, with an obsessive focus on blockbuster success. According to that article, the Japanese corporation is moving away from developing smaller in-house games, so fixated are they on only the largest games. It seems this lack of interest in smaller titles extends to third-party developers attempting to sell their games on the system. "Sony does not understand what indie means," an independent publisher tells me under the condition of anonymity, via Twitter DMs. "Not at all. For them indie is something in the lower million budgets."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Gamer: An oversight in accounts used to test Microsoft's payment systems let one engineer swindle his way into over $10 million after selling Xbox Gift Cards for Bitcoin over two years, a new report from Bloomberg revealed this week. In order to make sure its payment systems work, Microsoft employs engineers to "simulate" purchases on its stores. But soon after joining the company in 2017, Volodymyr Kvashuk discovered that there was a flaw in the accounts used to test purchases. See, these simulated accounts are usually flagged as such by the system, and won't send you physical goods if you tried to buy, say, a new gamepad from its site. But if you tested a purchase of Xbox Gift Cards, you'd still receive a completely valid 25-digit code. Kvashuk could've easily reported this to his bosses. But with unlimited free codes at his fingertips, he chose a different option instead.

At first, Kvashuk generated himself a handful of codes -- a cheeky $5 or $10 here or there. But there was the opportunity to make massive, life-changing sums of money off this exploit. He began cycling through mock profiles belonging to his colleagues to hide his tracks, automating the process with a bespoke piece of software prosecutors would later describe as "created for one purpose, and one purpose only: to automate embezzlement and allow fraud and theft on a massive scale." After acquiring these codes, Kvashuk would head to crypto marketplaces like Paxful to find prospective sellers. He'd sell them in bulk at a relative discount, which buyers would then go on to sell to folks who wanted to use the codes. Money laundering sites like ChipMixer would let him hide his trail, and the proceeds went towards facilitating an increasingly lavish lifestyle. [...] Microsoft was eventually clued in to Kvashuk's antics after noticing a sharp spike in gift card transactions, with federal agents eventually raiding his home in July 2019. In court, Kvashuk tried to argue that the mass theft was simply an experiment to increase store spending. Obviously, it didn't fly. Kvashuk was sentenced to 9 years in prison, likely deported back to his home country of Ukraine, and will be charged restitution of $8.3 million.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from PC Gamer: Near, also known by their username Byuu, the creator of several groundbreaking videogame emulators and a recent celebrated translation of JRPG Bahamut Lagoon, has died by suicide. Near posted a thread on Twitter explaining how they were affected by a campaign of harassment organized against them on the Kiwi Farms forum. Subsequently, Hector Martin, an IT consultant and Linux hacker, posted a message about Near from a mutual friend (CW: contains explicit details of Near's method of suicide) and said that they had confirmed Near's death with police in a follow-up tweet. The linked document also focuses on the Kiwi Farms forum and the doxing and harassing of Near and their friends.

Near's bsnes was the first Super Nintendo emulator with 100% compatibility, and higan is a multi-system emulator supporting 26 different devices including the NES, SNES, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, Sega Master System and Genesis/Mega Drive, and PC Engine. If you've played any of the indie games influenced by EarthBound, aka Mother 2, then odds are good that game's designer had a copy of EarthBound open in higan for reference. Parts of the emulator created to keep Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer working in the final years of the famous physicist's life were even borrowed from higan's open source code.

Browser-based Xbox Cloud Gaming leaves the limited beta it's been in since the end of April and formally rolls out an open beta for iPhone, iPad and Windows 10 (or Windows 11!) PCs. CNET reports: In conjunction, the Backbone One mobile gaming controller for the iPhone [...] joins the Designed for Xbox program, with specific features designed to make you feel more like you're playing on an Xbox or standalone device. Xbox Cloud Gaming, nee Project xCloud, lets you play a subset of Xbox Game Pass games on a device other than a console by streaming them from the cloud, a la Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now. It, like others, follows Amazon Luna's lead of using a web app to circumvent Apple's App Store policies which effectively shut out cloud gaming apps. For Windows PCs, it lets you play games your system might not otherwise have the power or space to run locally via Game Pass for PC.

"Every Sony PlayStation 3 ID out there was compromised, provoking bans of legit players on the network," Threatpost is reporting, calling it "just the latest in a shocking spike in attacks on unsuspecting gamers."

tlhIngan (Slashdot user #30,335) shares Threatpost's report: Sony reportedly left a folder with every PS3 console ID online unsecured, and it was discovered and reported by a Spanish YouTuber with the handle "The WizWiki" in mid-April... Now, several weeks later, players on PlayStation Network message boards are complaining that they can't sign on and are receiving the error message 8071006. After enabling two-factor authentication (2FA), one player was able to sign back in without issue, according to posts on the PS3 subreddit, which includes a link to instructions on how to opt into 2FA on the PS3.

It appears threat actors have started using the stolen PS3 console IDs for malicious purposes, causing the legitimate players to get banned... Sony has not responded to Threatpost's request for comment or confirmed a connection between the PS3 ID breach and player reports of being locked out of the platform...

Sony is hardly the only gaming company leaking data like a sieve. A report from January found a half a million credentials stolen from the Top 25 gaming companies on caches of breached data for sale in criminal marketplaces. In June, the "Battle of the Galaxy" mobile game leaked 6 million gamer profiles, and attackers are working out how to use gaming platforms like Steam to host or deliver malware.

Patrick Klepek writes via Motherboard: Few role-playing experiences are as beloved as the original Final Fantasy games, which is why Square Enix announcing a new brand it's calling Pixel Remasters for the first six games was greeted with equal parts shock and horror. For every brilliant reinvention, like last year's Final Fantasy 7 Remake, you have these nightmarish updates to classics like Final Fantasy 6 that are so abjectly awful to look at that fans created mods to try and replace the visuals. It's not really clear what Square Enix wants to accomplish with these Pixel Remasters, but what's abundantly clear is that Square Enix intends to revisit the visuals across each 2D game. The new sprites aren't massive departures from the originals, but they're different, and it's led to speculation about whether the company is going to address a longstanding issue with older games being released on fancy new televisions and computer monitors.

I've always loved the way video games looked -- fuzzy and crunchy -- on those humorously heavy and bulky older cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs that used to populate family rooms. What I didn't know until earlier this year, however, was the science behind it all. It's not just that high-definition displays provide a crisper look at art made in earlier eras of video games, but that art was specifically drawn knowing it would ultimately pipe through a CRT, and when that art is viewed on a modern, non-CRT display, you're actually losing some intended detail. [...] The problem is many people will never experience it in real-life, and so filters and similar technologies are essentially forms of emulation for television tech. More than 705 million CRT TVs have been sold in the United States since 1980, and the vast majority of these environmentally unfriendly devices are in the process of being broken down and recycled. That process will take years. But more practically, nobody is making CRT TVs anymore, and as the existing supply naturally breaks down, it falls to hobbyists to keep them ticking. No great shock to learn that Starkweather isn't a huge fan of Square Enix's approach for the Pixel Remasters, partially because it risks erasing the work of the original artists. One solution that Starkweather proposes is Square Enix spending time on a refined CRT filter.

"Filters are simply filters and they change visuals without having any artistic intention behind," said renowned pixel artist Thomas Feichtmeir. "I have not yet seen any CRT filter implemented in a game which truly simulated a realistic CRT experience." While naive folks like myself learned about CRT through a Twitter account, Feichtmeir had a similar realization years ago. At home, Feichtmeir had a CRT monitor next to an LCD laptop, and as he transferred his dawn pixels from one to the other, it dawned upon him that they looked different. He noticed a similar issue playing games re-released on modern displays. "If you make a piece of pixel art on a LCD and you put it on a CRT," he said, "it's the equivalent of taking one of your articles, putting it through Google Translate and to expect that the other language it comes out [with] will have perfect meaning and grammar. A whole field of 'localization' exists for writing and in the game industry to address those issues." Though Feichtmeir has no specific insight into what Square Enix is or isn't planning for its Pixel Remasters series, watching what's been released gave him pause on the CRT theory. "Considering the couple of screenshots and snippets we saw in the presentation, I would not say any of it really accounts for the gap between CRT and LCDs," he said. "We still can see a lot of techniques which theoretically should stay on a CRT -- like overly dithered textures or just color optimized battle backgrounds. The biggest change are the characters, where they basically removed the volumetric shading in exchange for a dark outlined flat style. In my eyes this just changes the style to something which does not feel close to the original. And I think what a remaster should deliver on is to recreate the feeling how the original game felt."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCGamesN: Microsoft has finally debuted Windows 11, and it's not just packing auto HDR and native Android apps. The long-teased DirectStorage API that's meant to cut down loading times on gaming PCs much in the same way the Xbox Velocity Architecture speeds things up on Microsoft's consoles is on its way, and it won't be coming to Windows 10 like we originally thought. The Windows 11 exclusive feature improves communication between your storage device and graphics card, allowing assets to load quicker without having to pass through the CPU first. Naturally, this means more time spent gaming and less time reading the same hints as you move from area to area.

It'll work best with systems that are dubbed 'DirectStorage Optimized', containing the right hardware and drivers for the job. If you're more of the DIY type that prefers to build the best gaming PC yourself, requirements demand an NVMe SSD with 1TB of storage or more. PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs and the latest GPUs from Nvidia and AMD will offer a better experience, but DirectStorage will still work with older standards like the third generation PCIe 3.0 -- you won't have much luck with 2.5-inch SATA drives, though. DirectStorage will only work with games built using DirectX 12, so there's no telling how many titles will support the feature when you upgrade to Windows 11 for free later this year.

Video game giant Electronic Arts has struck a deal with AT&T and its WarnerMedia unit to acquire Warner Bros. Games' mobile games studio Playdemic for $1.4 billion in cash. From a report: "Playdemic is a premier mobile gaming company founded in 2010 and known for its popular, award-winning game Golf Clash," EA said on Wednesday. "Golf Clash is one of the leading mobile games in the U.S. and U.K. and has more than 80 million downloads globally to date."

"We have enjoyed working with the talented team at Playdemic as they have grown Golf Clash beyond all expectations into a hit mobile game with tremendous longevity," said David Haddad, president of Warner Bros. Games. "While we have great respect for the Playdemic team, our decision to divest is a part of our overall strategy to build games based on Warner Bros. storied franchises." EA said the acquisition is part of its mobile growth strategy focused on delivering new experiences for EA's network of nearly half a billion players around the world.

The annual video game convention E3 is normally full of teasers for splashy, graphic-rich games from big-name studios and surprise announcements about new titles. But this year's online-only event was much quieter, with many hot releases delayed as a result of the pandemic. That gave games from independent studios a chance to steal the show. From a report: Some of the most impressive reveals this year were small-scale, indie games that may not have the wow factor of something like Ubisoft Entertainment SA's Assassin's Creed but appealed to fans with interesting story lines, quirky graphics or unusual gameplay. Highlights included Replaced, a gorgeous cyberpunk-themed action game and debut title from Sad Cat Studios, and Twelve Minutes, in which players must break a time loop full of betrayal and murder. The game, from a division of film company Annapurna Pictures, stars Daisy Ridley and Willem Dafoe. Entries like these delighted fans and showcased the breadth of possibilities of video games.

Most years, E3 takes place in Los Angeles, where fans and industry professionals convene at the convention center to play demos and watch trailers for the hottest new games. Commercials and giant posters from expensive series like Call of Duty compete for attendees' eyeballs, and fans come away excited about what's coming in the fall. This year, while there will be Microsoft's Halo Infinite, promised in time for the holidays after a year's delay, Nintendo's highly anticipated next game in the Zelda series won't come until next year. Same with Elden Ring, a much-hyped dark fantasy based on the book that inspired Game of Thrones. Fans didn't seem to mind, and left the show raving instead about Tunic, a Zelda-inspired action-adventure game starring a small fox developed by Canadian creator Andrew Shouldice, and Neko Ghost, Jump, a platforming game from Burgos Games, in which you can shift between 2D and 3D perspectives.

This explosion of independent games, which are usually made by small teams that aren't funded by multi-billion-dollar corporations like Electronic Arts, or Activision Blizzard, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the late 2000s, developers mostly had to partner with big publishers to get their games to audiences. The rise of digital distribution on PCs and consoles combined with the increased accessibility of game-making tools such as the Unity Engine have made it easy for solo developers, or two or three people working in a garage, to release successful games on their own. Some companies, such as Annapurna Interactive and Devolver Digital, have thrived as independent publishers, partnering with developers to release exclusively small, creative games.

Microsoft will let Xbox One owners play next-gen Xbox games through its xCloud service. The news was buried in a blog post recapping Microsoft's Xbox + Bethesda showcase, with the company confirming plans to leverage Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) for Xbox One consoles. That means the 2013 hardware will be able to play Xbox Series X exclusive games from 2021 -- extending the lifecycle of what would normally soon be obsolete boxes. From a report: "For the millions of people who play on Xbox One consoles today, we are looking forward to sharing more about how we will bring many of these next-gen games, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, to your console through Xbox Cloud Gaming, just like we do with mobile devices, tablets, and browsers," says Will Tuttle, editor in chief of Microsoft's Xbox Wire. Until now, Microsoft had only described xCloud on consoles as a way for players to "try [games] before you download," but it's clear the company sees the service as offering much more. Microsoft originally announced Microsoft Flight Simulator as an Xbox One title, before quietly removing references to the Xbox One launch in December. Microsoft recently confirmed Flight Simulator will now launch on Xbox Series X / S consoles on July 27th.

Sony will allow "Cyberpunk 2077" to be sold on its online PlayStation store starting June 21, the game's creators at CD Projekt Red said today. From a report: Sales of the buggy would-be blockbuster have been hit hard since Sony delisted the game shortly after its launch. Many fans had high hopes that the game would meet the level of quality of CDPR's last adventure, "The Witcher 3." A reappearance may signal the game is in a viable condition to play.

Amazon's new Luna game streaming service is offering no-invite access on Prime Day, June 21 and 22. From a report: During that time, Prime subscribers in most of the US will be able to start a 7-day Luna trial, and can now get discounts on a Luna controller and Fire TV bundle. To access Luna currently, you must request an invitation or own a supported Fire TV device. It's available on Windows and Mac PCs, Fire TV, iPhone and iPad (via the web) and on supported Android phones. It costs $5.99 a month to access games including Resident Evil 7, Control, Tacoma, Rez Infinite and Metro Exodus. Amazon is discounting the dedicated Luna controller by 30 percent from today until June 22, reducing it to $49 from the list price $70 for Prime members. On top of that, it's offering the Fire TV stick 4K and Luna Controller in the Fire TV Gaming Bundle for $74, a discount of around $45.

Long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool summarizes a report from Polygon: Photographer Judy Jurasek has sued Capcom for copyright infringement of at least 80 of her photographs in their recent game, Resident Evil: Devil May Cry and other games. Jurasek claims the textures in the video game where copied from her 1996 book Surfaces which contained 1,200 images of surfaces and textures. The book was sold with a CD-ROM with digital copies of the images. Jurasek's damages could total $12M from Devil May Cry alone.

Jurasek claims that Capcom never licensed the images for use in their video games. The initial filing is over 100 pages with many detailed photographic examples of her claims. Part of her evidence comes from Capcom's 2020 data breach. The data breach leaked among other things files and filenames of images used by Capcom. At least one filename appears to match those found in the CD-ROM from Surfaces.
Jurasek is also seeking additional damages of $2,500 to $25,000 for each used photograph for "false copyright management and removal of copyright management," according to Polygon's report, which says she's alleging her photos were used for "everything from marbled textures to ornate sculptural details that are recognizable and abundant in Capcom games," and even the shattered glass texture used in the Resident Evil 4 logo.

A Capcom representative told Polygon that the company is "aware of the lawsuit" and has "no further comment."

Internal company data leaked during a February security breach is now being circulated on the internet, Polish video games maker CD Projekt said in a statement published on Thursday. From a report: The attack, which compromised some of its internal systems including the source code to its much-hyped game Cyberpunk 2077, dealt another blow to the Warsaw-based business after the game's launch was beset by glitches. read more "We are not yet able to confirm the exact contents of the data in question, though we believe it may include current/former employee and contractor details in addition to data related to our games," the statement said. It added that the company couldn't confirm whether or not the data has been manipulated or tampered with since the breach. Not a good day for game developers.

Microsoft on Thursday announced plans to expand its Xbox Game Pass subscription service to many more screens, including third-party smart TVs and also streaming devices the company is currently building itself. From a report: Microsoft intends to deliver its subscription platform on less powerful hardware via the cloud, as it does now with Android and iOS smartphones using a beta version of its Xbox Cloud Gaming service. "We believe that Microsoft can play a leading role in democratizing gaming and defining the future of interactive entertainment," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a prerecorded interview with Xbox chief Phil Spencer. "There are really three key areas where we believe we have an incredible competitive advantage: First, our leadership in cloud computing. Second, the resources we have to build our subscription service, Xbox Game Pass. And third, our overall focus on empowering creators." Microsoft says it's in the process of "working with global TV manufacturers to embed the Xbox experience directly into internet-connected televisions," adding that no extra hardware will be required, save a controller. The company is also "building its own streaming devices for cloud gaming to reach gamers on any TV or monitor without the need for a console at all."

On Tuesday, Playdate, the portable, one-bit gaming system with an analog crank as a primary control option, took one more step toward being a bonafide thing you can buy and crank to your heart's content. From a report: The diminutive portable system's creators at Panic (publishers of games like Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game) hosted their first-ever Playdate Update video today, and they confirmed that the hardware will launch to paying customers "later this year," with preorders beginning "in July" starting at $179. That price will include the system's complete "first season" of Playdate-exclusive games, and Panic had originally pledged to include 12 games in all with the purchase price. Today's presentation included a welcome surprise: double the included games. Now, Playdate owners can expect to get two games a week as free downloads over a span of 12 weeks (which, if my calculator is correct, means 24 games in all). Panic remains committed to its plan to "surprise" system owners with free downloads of entirely new games, so today's video didn't include lengthy game reveals. In the meantime, we've been given 21 of the Season One games' titles, along with a list of participating developers (embedded at the article's end). The indie-heavy developer list includes Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy), Nels Anderson (Firewatch), Giles Goddard (1080 Snowboarding), Bennett Foddy (Getting Over It), and Zach Gage (Spelltower), along with tons of lesser-known devs whose work has impressed us over the years at various cons and events.

Google's Stadia is heading to new devices. On Monday the search giant announced that it will begin rolling out the cloud-based video game service to its Chromecast with Google TV streaming stick as well as a handful of other Android TV-powered televisions and devices on June 23. From a report: Those devices include: Hisense U7G, U8G and U9G Android TVs, Nvidia Shield TV and Shield TV Pro, Walmart's Onn FHD Streaming Stick and UHD Streaming Device, Philips 8215, 8505 and OLED 935/805 Android TVs, and Xiaomi Mi Box 3 and Mi Box 4.

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica: The now-unemployed owner of a shuttered ROM distribution site has been ordered to pay $2.1 million in damages to Nintendo after trying and failing to defend himself in the case.

In September 2019, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles resident Matthew Storman over his operation of RomUniverse.com, which offered prominent downloads of "Nintendo Switch Scene Roms" and other copyrighted game files. At the time, Nintendo said that the site had been "among the most visited and notorious online hubs for pirated Nintendo video games" for "over a decade." Storman has admitted that, in 2019, the site made up the bulk of his $30,000 to $36,000 a year in income. This included direct revenue from the sale of "premium unlimited accounts" for $30 per year that provided users with faster downloads and no limits.

By the time Storman signed a September 2020 agreement with Nintendo to shut the site down, he said he was deriving $800 a month from the site. According to court documents, Storman's income is now derived primarily from "unemployment and food stamps."

In a motion for dismissal, Storman invoked the "safe harbor" protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), arguing that he was just a neutral service provider for users sharing files. He also pointed out that he had agreed to Nintendo's DMCA takedown requests in the past. During a deposition, though, Nintendo got Storman to admit that he had uploaded Nintendo's copyrighted ROM files himself, obliterating any attempts at a "safe harbor" claim...

While Nintendo originally claimed that RomUniverse was responsible for "hundreds of thousands" of copyrighted downloads, that number was lowered to 50,000 based on evidence gleaned from screenshots of the site. Nintendo argued that each download cost it between $20 and $60 (the average cost of new games it sells) and that it had therefore lost between $1 and $3 million in revenue.

After being announced in 2017, the Atari VCS game console finally has a launch date: June 15th. HotHardware reports: However, pricing for the Atari VCS might leave many scratching their heads, especially considering that it is retro-centric and uses seriously underpowered hardware compared to modern gaming consoles from Sony and Microsoft. The base Onyx system is priced at $299, while an Onyx or Black Walnut All-in Bundle includes a wireless Classic Joystick and a wireless Modern Controller. Unfortunately, that bundle will set you back an eye-popping $399.

The Atari VCS [...] uses a rather pokey AMD Ryzen R1606G embedded APU. [...] However, Atari says that the VCS can also function as a full-fledged PC. You can even install Windows 10 or Linux on it, turning it into a versatile multimedia computer. The hardware is reportedly capable of running 4K videos and includes a built-in "Vault" containing 100 retro Atari 2600 and arcade games. That's all well and good for those with a penchant for retro gaming, but remember that we're talking about games that debuted roughly 40 years ago. That nostalgia could run a bit thin when you're talking about a device that costs $299 and up. Atari says over 11,000 of its original Indiegogo campaign backers have already received their consoles. Everyone else will have to purchase directly from Atari or a third party.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The now-unemployed owner of a shuttered ROM distribution site has been ordered to pay $2.1 million in damages to Nintendo after trying and failing to defend himself in the case. In September 2019, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles resident Matthew Storman over his operation of RomUniverse.com, which offered prominent downloads of "Nintendo Switch Scene Roms" and other copyrighted game files. At the time, Nintendo said that the site had been "among the most visited and notorious online hubs for pirated Nintendo video games" for "over a decade."
[...]
In providing summary judgment for Nintendo (as noted by Torrent Freak), the judge suggested that this was a clear case of infringement, one in which "there is no genuine issue of material fact that Plaintiff owns the copyrighted works and Defendant copied the works." While Nintendo sought $4.41 million in copyright damages -- or $90,000 each for 49 games -- the judge lowered the amount to $1.715 million ($35,000 per work). That amount should be sufficient to "compensate Plaintiff for its lost revenue and deter Defendant who is currently unemployed and has already shut down the website," the judge wrote. The judge also awarded an additional $400,000 for RomUniverse's use of Nintendo's trademarked box art, down from a massive $11.2 million ask. But Storman avoided a permanent injunction on "future infringement," with the judge suggesting that there was no "irreparable harm" given the monetary damages and the fact that the site had already been shuttered. Storman invoked the "safe harbor" protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but Nintendo got him to admit that he had uploaded Nintendo's copyrighted ROM files himself. "Another attempted Storman defense based on the 'first sale doctrine' also failed to go anywhere, since the site was distributing copies rather than Storman's personal property," adds Ars.

Big games beget big leaks, especially this time of year when the gaming industry's porous promotional machinery is revving up for the E3 trade show. From a report: It happened again Thursday when eight minutes of Ubisoft's upcoming "Far Cry 6" leaked online, a day before it was supposed to appear. It was deleted in minutes, but thousands still saw it. Big video game leaks are nearly impossible to stop. Companies have tried many things to tighten the pipes, including blacklisting press outlets and suing leakers. But the more prominent the upcoming game, the more people involved, and the higher the public curiosity, the more likely the leak.

"There's just too many opportunities for a mid level employee to have their laptop open on a plane in games," former Ubisoft creative director Alex Hutchinson told Axios, citing the notorious way the name of a previously-secretive mega-game leaked in 2013. (Sometimes those open laptops are on a subway.) The "Far Cry 6" incident appears to involve confusion over a coverage embargo date. The footage was posted to YouTube by Polish YouTuber Patryk "Rojson" Rojewski, who told Axios that he had been provided the clips by Ubisoft under an agreement that said they could run on May 27. Rojewski said he had not been told that Ubisoft changed the date. "I approach my work professionally," he said. Several minutes of video of another upcoming Ubisoft game, "The Division: Heartland," leaked two weeks ago.

After years of work, Epic Games is launching early access for game developers for Unreal Engine 5, the latest version of the company's tools for making games with highly realistic 3D animations. VentureBeat reports: Unreal Engine 5, which will officially ship in 2022, is the company's crowning technical achievement. The early access build will let game developers start testing features and prototyping their upcoming games. Epic isn't saying how long this took or how many employees are working on it, but it's a safe bet that a large chunk of those devs are involved in Unreal Engine 5. It's been seven years since the last engine shipped. Unreal Engine 5 will deliver the freedom, fidelity, and flexibility to create next-generation games that will blow players' minds, said Nick Penwarden, the vice president of engineering, in an interview with GamesBeat. He said it will be effortless for game developers to use groundbreaking new features such as Nanite and Lumen, which provide a generational leap in visual fidelity. The new World Partition system enables the creation of expansive worlds with scalable content.

Developers can also download the new sample project, Valley of the Ancient, to start exploring the new features of UE5. Captured on an Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, Valley of the Ancient is a rich and practical example of how the new features included with Unreal Engine 5 early access can be used, and is the result of internal stress-testing. The demo features a woman named Echo in a deserted mountain area. The team from Quixel, which Epic acquired in 2019, went out to Moab in Utah to scan tons of rock formations, using drones and cameras. And the artists who created the demo populated the scene with Megascans assets, as opposed to using anything procedural or traditional animation tools. "We are targeting 30FPS on next-generation console hardware" at 4K output with the demo, said Penwarden. "We expect people to be targeting 60 frames per second. It's really a choice of the the gaming content itself, what you want to target, and UE5 is absolutely capable of powering 60 frames per second experiences. We chose to, in this case, absolutely maximize visual quality. And so we targeted 30fps. But we're absolutely going to support 60 frames per second experiences."

You can view a demo of Unreal Engine 5 running on both the PS5 and Xbox Series X here on YouTube.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Video game and hardware studio Valve has been secretly building a Switch-like portable PC designed to run a large number of games on the Steam PC platform via Linux -- and it could launch, supply chain willing, by year's end. Multiple sources familiar with the matter have confirmed that the hardware has been in development for some time, and this week, Valve itself pointed to the device by slipping new hardware-related code into the latest version of Steam, the company's popular PC gaming storefront and ecosystem.

On Tuesday, SteamDB operator Pavel Djundik spotted the change in Steam's code, which pointed to a new device named "SteamPal." The name is a derivative of a previously discovered code term, "Neptune," which began appearing in September of last year and came with a "Neptune Optimized Games" string. At the time, curious code crawlers thought this discovery referred to some type of controller. Technically, that's true. The "SteamPal," whose name we're putting in scare quotes because we do not have confirmation of the device's final name, is an all-in-one PC with gamepad controls and a touchscreen. In other words, it looks and functions like a Nintendo Switch (albeit without removable "Joy-Con" controller functionality).

The SteamPal will [feature] a system on a chip likely coming from either Intel or AMD, not Nvidia. (The aforementioned Switch-like PC manufacturers have leaned on both AMD and Intel for their products.) It's unclear whether Valve will release multiple SKUs to offer customers a choice of power level, battery life, and other specs, as other Switch-like PCs have offered over the past year. At least one SteamPal prototype version is quite wide compared to the Nintendo Switch. This extra width accommodates a slew of control options. No, Valve is likely not slapping an entire QWERTY keyboard onto its system, but the company has packed in a standard array of gamepad buttons and triggers, along with a pair of joysticks and at least one thumb-sized touchpad (in addition to the device's touch-sensitive screen). The SteamPal's touchpad is likely smaller than the pair of touchpads that came standard on every Steam Controller. The SteamPal's Switch-like properties will include the option to "dock" to larger monitors via its USB Type-C port, but I don't have firm details on exactly how that connection will work or whether Valve has any plans for an eventual SteamPal dock.

It seems that Microsoft's digital rights management decisions for the Xbox Series X are a serious cause for concern. From a report: According to a video from YouTuber and game developer Modern Vintage Gamer, the Xbox Series X is unable to play games without connecting to Microsoft's servers. He tried games off a disc like Rise of the Tomb Raider as well as Hitman 3 and both refused to work offline. While Microsoft recommends keeping your Xbox Series X as your 'Home Console' in its settings, it's a solution that's described as a 'band-aid' as it doesn't seem to work with every game as it should.

Native Xbox Series X physical games like Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition work fine. It installed off the disc and ran as it should offline. This should in theory mean that games that are solely for the Xbox Series X should work both offline and online. However with Microsoft's focus on Smart Delivery, it means that the current crop of Xbox Series X discs that run on Xbox One as well are essentially coasters. All of this essentially means that you won't be able to play your Xbox games when Microsoft decides to take its servers offline.

Microsoft is updating its Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) app for Android, and it includes dual-screen support for the Surface Duo. The Verge reports: The app update allows Surface Duo owners to use a virtual gamepad on one screen of their device and games on the other. It makes the Surface Duo look more like a Nintendo 3DS than a mobile phone, with touch controls for a variety of games. Microsoft has been steadily adding Xbox Touch Controls to more than 50 games in recent months, including titles like Sea of Thieves, Gears 5, and Minecraft Dungeons. The full list of touch-compatible games is available here, and you can of course just use a regular Bluetooth or Xbox controller to stream games to the Surface Duo.

The benefits of a dual-screen device for this type of mobile experience are obvious. You no longer have touch controls over the top of the game, and your thumbs don't get in the way of seeing important action on-screen. If dual-screen or foldable devices ever catch on, this is a far superior way to play Xbox games without a dedicated controller.

CalMatters writes: At least six Cal State campuses and nearly all of the University of California campuses have created esports programs since 2015, in which students host and compete in live tournaments, sometimes funded by corporate sponsors. Both Cal State Dominguez Hills and UC Irvine offer certificates in esports, which means students can earn credit for, yes, playing video games.

Educators who support the trend point to the jobs available in gaming and other forms of digital media, while students say esports clubs and classes have given them another way to connect virtually during the pandemic. "Higher ed needs to evolve or die," said Dina Ibrahim, the academic advisor of the SF State esports athletic club and a professor of broadcast journalism. "We need to be teaching students relevant skills, that's going to get them jobs in a rapidly changing landscape...." Ibrahim shared the syllabus for her live stream broadcasting class, which she created after she noticed the effects esports and gaming were having on the field of digital media. In the course, students learn how to market a brand, monetize it, and develop live streamed events using Twitch — an entertainment site mainly aimed at gamers — and other platforms. For their final project, they help organize and market a live-streamed tournament featuring games like Overwatch, Valorant and League of Legends. "What I wanted to do was just provide a venue for students who are doing it anyway, to get credit," said Ibrahim. "And also not just focusing on the gaming community; it's really gaming, plus content creation."

Those skills could help students land their first media jobs, said Mark "Garvey" Candella, director of student and education programs for Twitch... "All the skills that you're learning and using while you participate in gaming and esports are highly transferable and valuable skills in emerging new and digital media," said Candella, who has helped universities establish esports curriculum that uses gaming as a vehicle to teach branding, management and hardware and software knowledge. At Cal State Dominguez Hills, esports academic advisor Ruben Caputo says he's seen 37 students obtain internships based on their work in the program this past year alone... Like other collegiate esports programs, the one at Dominguez Hills started as an informal student club and is now a thriving organization that has obtained sponsorships with companies such as Microsoft and Level Up Esports Apparel. The university is building a new $750,000 esports lab in the campus library, according to the student-run newspaper, The Bulletin. It will be divided into three sections: a classroom, an incubator and a competition area with rows of PCs...

More than 170 schools across the country have varsity esports teams, according to the National Association of Collegiate Esports, but the number with academic programs is much smaller — and students and professors involved in them say they still encounter skepticism from colleagues who see gaming as just a mind-numbing hobby. At UC Irvine, the first California college to pioneer an esports program, students can earn a continuing education certificate but there are no plans to develop a major in the field, said assistant director Kathy Chiang.

"We don't think that there's enough content for that," she said...
Ibrahim argues that gaming "is a huge, profit-churning component of the entertainment industry that can no longer be ignored," adding that gaming students "are getting skills that are going to prime you to work in a very significant industry that's only growing post pandemic."

Netflix is looking to hire an executive to oversee its expansion into videogames, The Information reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Reuters: The company has approached veteran game industry executives in recent weeks, the report said. The move comes at a time when the video-streaming pioneer is stepping up efforts to grow beyond its traditional business as competition heats up and subscriber growth slows. The gaming industry has been a big pandemic winner thanks to a surge in demand from customers staying at home during the crisis.

Do gamers need a dedicated browser? Opera sure thinks so. Two years after launching Opera GX, a browser aimed at gamers, on desktop, the company has started to beta test Opera GX on iOS and Android. From a report: So what sets it apart from regular browsers? For starters, Opera GX features a control panel that lets you set limits on CPU, RAM and network bandwidth. Mobile users can also utilize the fast action button to quickly access functions like search and to open and close tabs. Exporting elements from the world of gaming, the button also uses vibrations and haptic feedback. You can also sync the mobile browser with the desktop version by scanning a QR code. Doing this will allow you to transfer across files of up to 10MB, links, YouTube videos, photos and various ephemera. The company says it expects Opera GX for iOS and Android to leave beta in a few weeks.

A newspaper in Austin, Texas shares the story behind a cult-classic videogame, the 1985 Macintosh shareware game "Cap'n Magneto."

It was the work of Al Evans, who'd "decided to live life to the fullest after suffering severe burn injuries in 1963" at the age of 17. Beneath the surface, "Cap'n Magneto" is a product of its creator's own quest to overcome adversity after a terrible car crash — an amalgamation of hard-earned lessons on the value of relationships, being an active participant in shaping the world and knowing how to move on... "Whether I was going to survive at all was very iffy," Evans said. "The chance of me living to the age of 28 or 30 was below 30% or something like that." Regardless of how much time he had left, Evans said he refused to let his injuries hold him back from living his life to the fullest. He would live his life with honesty, he decided, and do his best to always communicate with others truthfully. "I wasn't going to spend the next two years of my life dorking around different hospitals. So I said what's the alternative?" Evans said...

To float his many hobbies and interests, however, Evans knew he had to make money. In addition to doing work as a graphic designer and a translator, he picked up computer programming, which opened his eyes to a digital frontier that allowed for the creation of new worlds with the stroke of a keyboard. When he realized the technical capabilities of the Macintosh — the first personal computer that had a graphics-driven user interface and a built-in mouse function — Evans said he set out to build a world that could marry storytelling and graphics. With the help of his wife Cea, Evans created his one and only computer game: "Cap'n Magneto."

"I really wanted to write a good game, and I definitely think it was that," Evans said...

Australia-based gaming historian, author and journalist Richard Moss says, "What really marked it as different, though, was that the alien speech, once ungarbled by a tricorder item that players had to find, would be spoken aloud through the Mac's built-in speech synthesizer and written on-screen in comic-style speech bubbles," Moss said. "And unlike most role playing games of the time, every character you'd meet in the game could be friendly and helpful or cold and dismissive or aggressive and hostile — depending on a mix of random chance and player choice...."

With "Cap'n Magneto," Evans said he wanted to make sure that players could befriend the non-playable alien characters that the hero encounters. Though the game is beatable without their help, it is significantly easier with the help of allies. A reality in which everyone was an enemy, to Evans, was simply dishonest.

"That doesn't reflect the game of life, you know? Some people, well, most people actually, are probably pretty friendly," he said.
35 years after its release, Evans — now 75 years old — received a message on Facebook informing him that the game was still being played — but no one could finish it because the built-in "nagware" required payments that couldn't be completed.

That problem has finally been fixed, and long-time Slashdot reader shanen now shares the web site where the full game can finally be downloaded.

The iconic spacefaring adventure "Mass Effect" is back today with "Mass Effect: Legendary Edition," a single, remastered version of all three games. From a report: There is no series like "Mass Effect" -- even when it comes to BioWare's other choice-driven RPGs like "Dragon Age." "Mass Effect" is a big ol' space adventure first and foremost, but it's also about loyalty, love, and tough calls. "Mass Effect" follows Commander Shepard -- a hero players can customize for looks and gender -- across three games as they wage war against a galactic threat known as the Reapers. Key choices carry through all three games, whether it's who survives, or who you ally yourself with.

"Mass Effect" (2007) is a classic sci-fi thriller, where Shepard races to stop a turncoat operative hungry for power.
"Mass Effect 2" (2010) is a miscreant adventure centered on building a ragtag squad, culminating in a final "suicide" mission where everyone's survival is on the line.
"Mass Effect 3" (2012) brings the trilogy to a close through a more somber, war-focused story about loss and consequence.

Researchers at Intel Labs have applied machine learning techniques to GTA 5 to make it look incredibly realistic. Gizmodo reports: [I]nstead of training a neural network on famous masterpieces, the researchers at Intel Labs relied on the Cityscapes Dataset, a collection of images of a German city's urban center captured by a car's built-in camera, for training. When a different artistic style is applied to footage using machine learning techniques, the results are often temporally unstable, which means that frame by frame there are weird artifacts jumping around, appearing and reappearing, that diminish how real the results look. With this new approach, the rendered effects exhibit none of those telltale artifacts, because in addition to processing the footage rendered by Grand Theft Auto V's game engine, the neural network also uses other rendered data the game's engine has access to, like the depth of objects in a scene, and information about how the lighting is being processed and rendered.

That's a gross simplification -- you can read a more in-depth explanation of the research here -- but the results are remarkably photorealistic. The surface of the road is smoothed out, highlights on vehicles look more pronounced, and the surrounding hills in several clips look more lush and alive with vegetation. What's even more impressive is that the researchers think, with the right hardware and further optimization, the gameplay footage could be enhanced by their convolutional network at "interactive rates" -- another way to say in real-time -- when baked into a video game's rendering engine.

Gabe Newell, the co-founder and president of Valve, has hinted that the company could bring Steam games to consoles during a recent question and answer session. TechRadar reports: The session took place at Sancta Maria College in Auckland, New Zealand, and a student's question and Newell's answer were recorded and uploaded to Reddit by user Odysseic (via VGC). When asked "will Steam be porting any games to console, or will it just stay on PC?", Newell somewhat hesitantly replies "You will get a better idea of that by the end of this year," adding, "and it won't be the answer you expect. You'll say, "Ah-ha! Now I get what he was talking about.'" Newell's comments are, of course, pretty vague and have caused a great deal of speculation. The most common interpretation of his words is that Valve could be planning to bring its own games, currently available on Steam, to consoles in the future. Valve games have previously been ported to consoles so this is perfectly possible.

Developers are sharing their salaries on Twitter under the hashtag #GameDevPaidMe to encourage pay transparency in their industry. Axios reports: The hashtag started circulating last year, but has returned periodically as developers fight for better working conditions. Salary sharing is a way to equalize the field. By removing the secrecy, as well as the stigma, around discussing pay, workers have more power to advocate for themselves when negotiating salaries and raises. In 2020, Blizzard employees shared their salaries anonymously via a spreadsheet to compare compensation. The pay gap between people at the top, and workers on the ground is measurable in hundreds of thousands of dollars -- even when those CEOs take pay cuts.

What they're saying:
A lead designer on "Hearthstone" working for Blizzard Entertainment: "I started getting paid fairly once I started asking questions. I only started asking questions once I better understood what I was worth. Understanding what your worth can be a difficult question, but this helps."

A lead designer at Blackbird Interactive: "Every single person who plays games should take a good look at #GameDevPaidMe and get a sense for what the people who make your art actually make."

A senior game designer at Reflector Entertainment: "Don't wait for your employer to give you the raise you deserve, be open to talking to other companies even if you feel you are at a 'great' spot."

Sony Group warned a group of analysts the PlayStation 5 will remain in short supply through 2022, suggesting the company will be constrained in its ability to boost sales targets for its latest games console. From a report: While reporting financial results in late April, the Japanese conglomerate said it had sold 7.8 million units of the console through March 31, and it is aiming to sell at least 14.8 million units in the current fiscal year. That would keep it on pace to match the trajectory of the popular PlayStation 4, which has sold in excess of 115.9 million units to date. In a briefing after those results, Sony told analysts it is challenging to keep up with strong demand. The PS5 has been difficult to find in stock since its release in November, in part because of shortages in components such as semiconductors, and the company hasn't given an official estimate for when it expects supply to normalize. "I don't think demand is calming down this year and even if we secure a lot more devices and produce many more units of the PlayStation 5 next year, our supply wouldn't be able to catch up with demand," Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki said at the briefing, according to several people who attended and asked not to be named as it wasn't public.

Nintendo's worst-selling home console, the Wii U, continues to be the source for some of its biggest hits on the record-setting Nintendo Switch. From a report: With the Switch, Nintendo is putting on a clinic about how to turn prior failure into fortune as it repurposes games from the disastrous Wii U and tries selling them again on its newer hit device. The latest example of this salvaged success is the Switch's "Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury," which sold 5.6 million copies in its first seven weeks of release this year, according to new Nintendo financial data. Compare that seven week total to the just over seven-year total of 5.9 million copies sold of 2013's "Super Mario 3D World" for Wii U. The newer Switch game is basically the old game with a fun bonus adventure. The Wii U was a disaster even by Nintendo's usual cycles of occasional struggle and phenomenal fortunes. The 2012 successor to the popular Wii (remember swinging that controller?) bombed, with just 13.6 million units sold lifetime. Its big innovation: a home console with a controller that contained a screen, allowing players to keep playing their games using that screen when others needed the TV. But people didn't care and it was discontinued by early 2017.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The director of Witcher 3, the most successful video game by Polish publisher CD Projekt SA, resigned after he was accused of bullying colleagues, sending its shares to their steepest decline since March. CD Projekt conducted a months-long investigation into the allegations against Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, according to an email to staff reviewed by Bloomberg. In the message, Tomaszkiewicz wrote that a commission had investigated the allegations and found him not guilty. "Nonetheless, a lot of people are feeling fear, stress or discomfort when working with me," he wrote. He apologized to staff "for all the bad blood I have caused."

Tomaszkiewicz's work on Witcher 3 inspired the creation of a popular Netflix series, both based on novels by the author Andrzej Sapkowski, and at one point turned CD Projekt into Poland's most valuable company. [...] Tomaszkiewicz was expected to play a significant role in the company's next game in the Witcher series. When reached for comment, Tomaszkiewicz confirmed his departure and said he was "sad, a bit disappointed and resigned." A representative for CD Projekt declined to comment. In the email to employees, Tomaszkiewicz said the decision was agreed upon with the company's board. "I am going to continue working on myself," he wrote. "Changing behavior is a long and arduous process, but I'm not giving up, and I hope to change."

Fans of Fortnite aren't happy that Apple pulled the game app off the iPhone last year -- and some aren't shy about appealing to the federal judge who has the power to make things right. From a report: "Can we please have Fortnite mobile back?" a voice was heard saying Tuesday as a clerk was testing dial-in access for the public to monitor Epic Games' trial against Apple in federal court in Oakland, California. Yesterday, as the three-week trial opened, there were enough hecklers who'd figured out how to unmute themselves -- against the court's rules -- that the phone system was briefly shut down, prompting some online commentators to refer to the situation as a hijacking. Further reading: The Apple vs. Epic Games trial airs private emails.

Sony Interactive Entertainment and Discord will connect the communication service to PlayStation Network early next year, now that Sony has taken an ownership stake in Discord's latest round of capital-raising. Polygon reports: SIE president and CEO Jim Ryan didn't list specifics for how PlayStation and Discord will work together. "Our goal is to bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile starting early next year," Ryan said, "allowing friends, groups, and communities to hang out, have fun, and communicate more easily while playing games together." Sony's investment in Discord was made "to bring these experiences to life for our players," he said. Ryan said both companies are already at work on Discord/PSN integration. "Empowering players to create communities and enjoy shared gaming experiences is at the heart of what we do," Ryan said.

It's no secret that Sony held back PS4 cross-platform play for years, but new confidential documents and emails reveal just how much Sony was against letting people play the same games with their friends on other platforms. From a report: Sony initially blocked cross-platform play for both Rocket League and Minecraft, despite Nintendo and Microsoft both enabling players to play across Xbox and Switch. The issue really blew up when Sony blocked Fortnite crossplay in 2018, and players were angry. It now appears that Sony may have been holding out to offset potential revenue losses. In the months leading up to Sony's decision to block Fortnite crossplay in 2018, Epic Games had pleaded with Sony to enable crossplay, emails in the Epic Games v. Apple case reveal. "I can't think of a scenario where Epic doesn't get what we want -- that possibility went out the door when Fortnite became the biggest game on PlayStation," said Joe Kreiner, Epic's vice president of business development.

Kreiner proposed, "We announce crossplay in conjunction with Sony. Epic goes out of its way to make Sony look like heroes." Epic even offered to brand its E3 presence with PlayStation or add unique characters, exclusive to PS Plus subscribers, to sweeten the deal. "Let's make this a huge win for us all. Epic's not changing it's mind on the issue, so let's just agree on it now," said Kreiner. Sony didn't agree. Gio Corsi, Sony's senior director of developer relations at the time, dismissed the idea of crossplay, noting that "cross-platform play is not a slam dunk no matter the size of the title" -- a clear reference to Epic's flex about Fortnite's dominance on PlayStation. "As you know, many companies are exploring this idea and not a single one can explain how cross-console play improves the PlayStation business," said Corsi. But as of August 2019, it appears that Sony may have found a worthy argument: a way to potentially siphon off money from its competitors in exchange for access to PlayStation players.

Vice reports: The AI-powered story generator AI Dungeon has come under fire from fans recently for changes to how the development team moderates content. Notably, the player base is worried that the AI Dungeon developers will be reading their porn stories in the game. Separately, a hacker recently revealed vulnerabilities in the game that show that roughly half of the game's content is porn.

AI Dungeon is a text based adventure game where, instead of playing through a scenario entirely designed by someone else, the responses to the prompts you type are generated by an AI... This week, AI Dungeon players noticed that more of their stories were being flagged by the content moderation system, and flagged more frequently. Latitude, the developers of AI Dungeon, released a blog post explaining that it had implemented a new algorithm for content moderation specifically to look for content that involves "sexual content involving minors... We did not communicate this test to the Community in advance, which created an environment where users and other members of our larger community, including platform moderators, were caught off guard... Latitude reviews content flagged by the model for the purposes of improving the model, to enforce our policies, and to comply with law."

Latitude later clarified in its Discord at what point a human moderator would read private stories on AI Dungeon. It said that if a story appears to be incorrectly flagged, human moderators would stop reading the inputs, but that if a story appeared to be correctly flagged then they "may look at the user's other stories for signs that the user may be using AI Dungeon for prohibited purposes." Latitude CEO Nick Walton told Motherboard that human moderators only look at stories in the "very few cases" that they violate the terms of service...

All of this has been compounded by the fact that a security researcher named AetherDevSecOpsjust published a lengthy report on security issues with AI Dungeon on GitHub, which included one that allowed them to look at all the user input data stored in AI Dungeon. About a solid third of stories on AI Dungeon are sexually explicit, and about half are marked as NSFW, AetherDevSecOpsjust estimated.

Microsoft is shaking up the world of PC gaming today with a big cut to the amount of revenue it takes from games on Windows. From a report: The software giant is reducing its cut from 30 percent to just 12 percent from August 1st, in a clear bid to compete with Steam and entice developers and studios to bring more PC games to its Microsoft Store. "Game developers are at the heart of bringing great games to our players, and we want them to find success on our platforms," says Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios at Microsoft. "A clear, no-strings-attached revenue share means developers can bring more games to more players and find greater commercial success from doing so."

These changes will only affect PC games and not Xbox console games in Microsoft's store. While Microsoft hasn't explained why it's not reducing the 30 percent it takes on Xbox game sales, it's likely because the console business model is entirely different to PC. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo subsidize hardware to make consoles more affordable, and offer marketing deals in return for a 30 percent cut on software sales. Microsoft's new reduction on the PC side is significant, and it matches the same revenue split that Epic Games offers PC game developers while also putting more pressure on Valve to reduce its Steam store cut. Valve still takes a 30 percent cut on sales in its Steam store, which is reduced to 25 percent when sales hit $10 million, and then 20 percent for every sale after $50 million.

Epic Games is holding back Fortnite from being available on Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service, according to a new deposition made public as part of the Epic case against Apple. From a report: The Fortnite developer views Microsoft's xCloud service as competition to its PC offerings, and the company is deliberately not offering Fortnite on xCloud as a result. Joe Kreiner, Epic's vice president of business development, was questioned over why Fortnite isn't available on xCloud, and confirmed it was a deliberate choice. "We viewed Microsoft's efforts with xCloud to be competitive with our PC offerings," says Kreiner in the deposition. The court document makes it appear like Kreiner may go on to explain why, but the next part of the questioning has been redacted.

More game developers have had projects delayed than in past years due to COVID-19, according to a recent state of the industry survey from Game Developer Conference organizers. From a report: Delays are an inevitable part of development, but there's been a noticeable jump since pandemic's arrival. According to GDC's findings, 44 percent of the over 3,000 respondents polled said their games have been subject to delays. Compare that to last year's responses at 33 percent. The impact of working from home ranges from lost collaboration opportunities, to the added pressures of childcare.

An anonymous reader writes: Some weeks ago, in a shady move, Humble Bundle silently removed the ability for customers to define the breakdown of their payments to charity -- a key aspect of Humble Bundle since its inception. Since that time, they refused to explain to customers why their sliders weren't appearing, and investigation by some users, who reenabled the sliders client-side, showed they were also being ignored server-side even if reenabled, such that for a $14 donation only a pathetic $0.72 was going to be split in half between two charities.

Humble Bundle has now finally admitted what everyone feared -- that they're formally and significantly reducing the amount of the purchase value that can go to charity, from a default value of 5% to a maximum of 15%. Given it was previously possible to contribute as much as 100% to charity, this is a significant reduction in the amount that Humble Bundle will allow to go to charity going forward, changing it from a humble effort to do good, to a cynical for-profit cash grab off the backs of the reputation of the charities whose names they use.

Sony looks set to roll out movie and television content into PlayStation Plus subscriptions, according to images briefly uploaded to its website on Wednesday. From a report: A logo for 'PlayStation Plus Video Pass' was published on Sony's official website today, along with its description on its Polish website (now removed). From the report: "A new benefit available for a limited time on PlayStation Plus... PS Plus Video Pass is a trial service active 22.04.21 - 22.04.22. The subscription benefit is available to PS Plus users in Poland." It's not clear if the listing is describing a global or local service, but weâ(TM)ve requested clarification from Sony Interactive Entertainment.