News of the Week; May 20, 2015

GAMES

1. Duke Nukem rights suit settled

+ Duke Nukem lawsuit ends with settlement, possible license transfer: Screenshot confirms that embroiled Mass Destruction game reborn as Bombshell.

2. ASA spanks Sony and GAME over 20th Anniversary Edition PS4 competition

3. Daybreak Game Company bans nearly 25K ‘H1Z1’ players for cheating and hacking

+ Daybreak Game Company on H1Z1 banning blitz

4. Microsoft severely punishes testers who leaked ‘Gears of War’ remake info, video

+ Microsoft disables online capabilities for Gears leakers

+ Xbox One still suffers from Microsoft’s need for control

5. YouTube Reinstates Metal Gear Video Konami Took Down, Warns Konami Not To Be Jerks

6. AMD says Nvidia’s GameWorks “completely sabotaged” Witcher 3 performance: There are plenty of performance issues in The Witcher 3, but who’s to blame?

7. Keen offers $100k for Space Engineers mods: Czech studio also makes source code available to the public as an incentive to modders

8. ‘World of Warcraft’ bot maker admits defeat

9. 100,000 WoW players banned for using bots – report

10. Bethesda clarifies: ‘The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited ‘ does not use one-time activation code

11. The Witcher 3 Downgrade Controversy Sucks

12. Del Toro reacts to Silent Hills cancellation

13. GamerGate critic posts death threat voicemail, requests subpoena: Wu complains about “radio silence,” wants “to get anyone to bring a case to trial.”

14. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo: ‘Boys risk becoming addicted to porn, video games and Ritalin’

15. Inside The Research That Could Change The Perception Of Kids, Gaming And Gender

16. Why Indie Video Games Can Be Great For Kids

17. Gaming cooperatively makes you more sociable, say scientists

18. Let Your Children Play Video Games, Mark Zuckerberg Says: “I definitely wouldn’t have gotten into programming if I hadn’t played games.”

19. How Violence is Perceived in Game Design

20. Barriers breaking down for disabled videogamers

21. When Art Targets Marginalized People

22. Games poised to outstrip broadcast TV revenues, SuperData finds

23. Global games market at $74.2 billion annually – Superdata

24. Nevada approves Call of Duty-for-cash concept

25. Analysis: GTA V Live Viewership on Twitch

26. E-Sports, Real Sports?

27. Here’s the insane training schedule of a 20-something professional gamer

28. eSports an advertising goldmine

29. eSports is now a $612 million business – Superdata

30. Why Blizzard is committed to Heroes of the Storm’s esports future

31. Toy Story: Another Fad or Future of Videogames?: ‘Skylanders’ and ‘Infinity’ transport figurines into virtual worlds; now Lego wants to cash in

+ Toys-to-life category primed for more growth – NPD

32. Analysts turn against Candy Crush maker King Digital: ‘3 out of 5 launches will be a commercial failure’

+ Candy Crush Saga maker King reports strong Q1 with $569M in adjusted revenue and 61 cents-a-share profit

33. Unity chief John Riccitiello on clash of big ideas: ‘Sony nailed it, and they deserve the victory’

34. Zynga cuts 18% of staff

35. Xbox One gets a price cut in China and Japan

36. Tencent clears $1.1bn profit for Q1

37. CD Projekt accused of freezing out rival retailers on The Witcher 3

38. GTA V ships 52m as Take-Two’s annual revenue dips to $1.1 billion

39. Where in the world did blockbuster educational games go?

40. Xbox One Over-The-Air TV Tuner Now Available

41. The Hopes And Fears Of Using A Videogame As An Online Confession Booth

42. “The old publishing model has died”

43. The Horrible World Of Video Game Crunch

44. ‘GameSpot Game Guide’ and ‘Delta Force Extreme 2 Videogame Guide’ found in Osama bin Laden’s Compound

45. A Red Flag for Greenlight: Valve was laudably quick to deal with homophobia, but Greenlight is still failing devs and consumers alike

46. Microsoft celebrates 25 years of wasting time at work with Solitaire tournament

47. Reality Check: The real origin of GamerGate — a different GamerGate

48. Eve Online: how a virtual world went to the edge of apocalypse and back – The video game Eve Online is one of Iceland’s biggest exports and has become the world’s largest living work of science fiction. While rival games have come and gone, it has survived – thanks to a unique experiment in democracy

49. Behind the indie video game sensation that caught NASA’s attention

50. World Without End: Creating a full-scale digital cosmos.

51. Deconstructing Videogames For The Purpose Of Art

DIGITAL

52. The info moralist: Persecuted little guy, or powerful revolutionary – what sort of wunderkind was Aaron Swartz?

53. Did judge who ruled NSA phone dragnet illegal call Snowden a whistleblower?: “Secretive bureaucratic agencies… benefit from a breath of fresh air,” judge says.

54. The Anxiety of Being Watched by Machines: There’s an App for That

55. Why Google and other tech giants are creating tools for political dissidents: After taking fire for caving to repressive regimes on data privacy, can the tech industry rehabilitate its reputation?

56. Who The Smartphone Revolution Left Behind

57. Verizon-AOL, Facebook Instant Articles, And The Future Of Digital Advertising

58. Counterpoint: Bring telecom into the Internet age (Timothy Denton)

59. Order restored—copyright claim to individual performance in “Innocence of Muslims” fails 

+ Appeals Court Gets It Right The Second Time: Actress Had No Copyright Interest In ‘Innocence Of Muslims’

+ I didn’t say that – the ability of actors to control their performances under Canadian copyright law (Bob Tarantino)

+ 9th Circuit Judge Slams His Colleagues For First Amendment Failings In Waiting So Long To Fix Cindy Garcia Ruling

+ Actor did not have copyright interest in Mohammed film, Ninth Circuit rules 

+ Full 9th Circuit nixes controversial copyright decision 

+ Google v Garcia 9th Circuit en banc decision

60. Another copyright absurdity: using film screenshots

61. CMRRA Confirms Denial of Licences for Public Domain Recordings (Michael Geist)

62. Appeals Court chops Apple’s 2012 $930 million patent case award nearly in half

63. Rightscorp loses more cash than ever, tells investors all is well: Sending thousands of alleged pirates a bill for $20 per song isn’t working out.

64. Canadian Piracy Rates Plummet as Industry Points to Effectiveness of Copyright Notice-and-Notice System (Michael Geist)

65. While Other Countries Debate Copyright Terms, Canada Just Takes Record Labels’ Word That It Needs To Increase

66. Open Letter to Google From 80 Internet Scholars: Release RTBF Compliance Data

+ Call For Google To Show Its Right To Be Forgotten Workings

67. The philosophy of privacy: why surveillance reduces us to objects

68. South Korea’s New Law Mandates Installation Of Government-Approved Spyware On Teens’ Smartphones

69. Keurig didn’t learn a damned thing about DRM: You just don’t know what’s best for you

70. Why Patents And Innovation No Longer Mix

71. ISPs really don’t want to follow new customer data privacy rules: Lawsuit to overturn net neutrality also complains about privacy requirements.

72. Secret Information Undermines the Legitimacy of CRTC Decisions

73. RIP AOL: Where the Net Was Born for Many

74. To Take On HBO And Netflix, YouTube Had To Rewire Itself

75. Periscope ushers in wild-west era for sports broadcasting

76. Why publishers had to partner with Facebook

77. More media companies need to think of themselves the way Quartz does

78. The New York Times And Its Faustian Facebook Pact

79. Inside ViralNova, the Most Cynical, Amazing, Horrific, and Ingenious Media Company in New York

80. Facebook and the Illusion of Safety: After the massive earthquake in Nepal, the social network implemented a post-disaster check-in button. It may be reassuring, but it isn’t necessarily accurate.

81. Spotify Inks Deal With Starbucks Tasking Customers With Picking In-Store Music

82. After years of false starts, Apple is finally poised to kill Spotify and take over streaming music. There’s just one catch…

83. Snapchat is going to be huge in 2016 — and regulators have no idea how to handle it

84. Read the NDA a Comcast customer was told to sign to get a $600 refund: Comcast: Here’s your money—please don’t tell anyone.

85. How Bots Seized Control of My Pricing Strategy

86. The Ultimate Interface: Your Brain

87. How Old Do I Look Microsoft website raises privacy concerns: Microsoft says it won’t keep your photos, even though users agree to allow that

88. How Blockchain Tech is Inspiring the Art World

89. Truth in Digital Advertising: As we consume more and more of our media on mobile devices, advertisers are finding sneakier ways to deliver their messages

90. “Rachel” robocaller victims to get $1.7 million in refunds: Consumers lost money to credit card debt reduction scam

91. Did this cybersecurity firm use a data breach for extortion?: A whistleblower claims his company fabricated evidence in retaliation for a lost contract

92. The Computers Are Listening: How The NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text

93. Listicles, aggregation, and content gone viral: How 1800s newspapers prefigured today’s Internet – “Many 19th-century newspapers are comprised primarily of content from other newspapers.”

94. Clinkle Implodes As Employees Quit In Protest Of CEO

95. Inside Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s radical management experiment that prompted 14% of employees to quit

96. Sorry Milan, only one fashion week boasts drone models and fiber optic dresses

97. Copyright for Literate Robots (James Grimmelmann)

98. When Bots Collude

99. Why you should confront bigots and racists on Facebook

100. Bob Bowman, CEO Of MLB Advanced Media, On Deciding To Build A Streaming Video Service In 2002

101. The Debacle of Google Glass

CREATIVITY

102. Appeals Court Rightly Overturns NAACP’s Successful Attempt To Censor Speech Via Trademark Law

103. “Copyright trolling” movie studio gets hit with Godzilla-sized lawsuit: Voltage Pictures sued thousands for torrenting. Now, it’s the alleged infringer.

104. Is the Long War Between American Radio and the Record Business About to End?

105. When metrics drive newsroom culture

106. How Hollywood stays white and male

107. How the cable industry became a monopoly

108. The TV Industry’s Lack of Imagination

109. How the biggest hit in TV history predicted the death of TV

110. Why the Comic Book Store Just Won’t Die

111. Blood, sweat and DVDs: owning a video store in the age of Netflix

112. The First Kiss in Cinema: How Thomas Edison Scandalized the World in 1896

113. The State of Music Distribution in China

114. J.J. Abrams on the Secret Movie References He Snuck into Star Wars: The Force Awakens

jon