GAMES
- FTC agrees to investigate loot box monetization schemes in games
- FTC pledges loot crate investigation: Gaming monetization tactic compared to gambling
- Federal Trade Commission will investigate video game loot boxes: Chairman Joseph Simons promises Congress to investigate potential for child susceptibility to addiction, problem gambling
- ESA claims loot boxes aren’t gambling as FTC prepares to investigate
- UK Gambling Commission: No link between loot boxes and exposure to gambling: Commission tells GamesIndustry.biz it did not find loot boxes are gateway to gambling, despite what media reports claim
- Australian government advised to review loot boxes after five-month inquiry: Environment and Communications Reference Committee releases 90-page report dissecting the issue
- A hot PlayStation mic captures sounds of apparent rape, leads to arrest
- Square Looks To Block Trademark App Of Indie Game Over Game Franchise It Acquired A Decade Ago And Did Nothing With
- Two weeks in, Fallout 76 is a lonely, glitchy, flawed mess
- Law firm investigates Bethesda over Fallout 76 refund policy: Consumers left with an “unplayable experience”, says Migliaccio & Rathod
- Bethesda Responds To Fallout 76 Complaints, Reveals Upcoming Changes And Bug Fixes
- $200 Fallout 76 Edition Promised Fancy Bag, Delivers Nylon Trash Instead
- Chinese Game Site Censors Winnie The Pooh inKingdom Hearts III
- When does an homage become a rip-off?: Legal or not, Epic Games’ uncompensated copying of other creators’ dances in Fortnite has called the company’s morality into question
- Don’t Miss: Designing morality in games
- Unity offers guidelines for what it considers ethical AI design
- Top Twitch Star Ninja Faces Backlash After Reporting Fellow ‘Fortnite’ Player For Stream-Sniping
- Blog: Building a community through Twitch
- Concern growing about Activision’s influence at Blizzard – Report: Recently departed employees point to executive personnel changes and pressure to keep costs down
- Putting Nintendo Switch’s 8.2 million US Switch sales in context
- Switch stars as Nintendo hits big holiday milestones in the U.S.
- Nintendo on track to miss two-year sales targets for Switch, say analysts: Platform holder’s share price down 33% from January peak
- Nintendo brings in $250 million in US over Black Friday weekend: Switch hardware sales were more than double last year’s total for the Thanksgiving-to-Cyber-Monday stretch; US installed base tops 8.2 million
- Reggie Fils-Aime: Nintendo US makes 60% of revenue during the holidays – Company still eyeing 20 million Switch sales for the year as it enters busiest sales period
- Nintendo struggles to contain massive Smash Bros. Ultimateleaks
- Nintendo joins the limited-mobility club with Xbox Adaptive Controller (unofficially)
- The Past, Present, And Future Of Diablo
- Opinion: ‘Winter is coming’ for the video game biz
- Google Play removes games for installing malware: 13 apparent racing games all from same developer taken down after over 560,000 downloads
- Fallout 76: Critical Consensus – Reviewers say post-apocalyptic role-playing franchise’s foray into multiplayer is a boring, broken, buggy bomb
- Battlefield V struggles as Black Friday transforms UK Charts: PS4 dominates hardware sales, just ahead of Xbox One
- How Hell Let Loose hopes to set itself apart from other WWII shooters: Team17 partners with Aussie dev Black Matter to bring Kickstarter-funded game to market
- Red Dead Online Goes Live This Week
- Blog: A historian discusses Red Dead Redemption 2
- Rockstar abandons Agent trademark: Almost ten years after announcement, GTA developer’s spy thriller seems to be officially dead
- Releasing Attentat 1942 in Germany, a game scrutinizing Nazi occupation
- Video: Playing with Pride — When game culture & LGBTQ culture collide
- Pokemon: Let’s Go has sold over 3 million units worldwide
- Fortnite just passed 200 million registered users
- Fortnite passes 200m registered users: Battle royale’s playerbase now just shy of Brazil’s entire population
- Free-to-play console revenue triples over holiday period to reach $64m: Black Friday and Cyber Monday digital games revenue up 14.5% year-on-year, according to SuperData
- Total War: Arena shutting down after failing to meet expectations
- Starbreeze cutting costs after Overkill’s The Walking Deadfalls short
- Starbreeze management ordered to cut costs after poor sales of Overkill’s The Walking Dead: Board of directors mandates review to cost of operations, calls for publisher to “sharpen focus on core business”
- Sniper Elite dev Rebellion drops $100M on new film studio
- PlayStation Classic Review
- The PlayStation Classic Is Minimum Effort Nostalgia
- PlayStation Classic review: A far-from-classic experience
- Here’s December 2018’s PlayStation Plus Lineup
- Promethean AI promises to unlock experimentation in AAA development: Founder and CEO Andrew Maximov discusses how AI can reshape the games industry
- Humans Teamed up With a New Kind of AI to Crush a Notoriously Difficult Video Game
- New Game From Ingress Recruits Players Using Artificial Intelligence
- The future of 2D gaming: YoYo Games’ CTO Russell Kay speaks to developers about the benefits and burdens of building your game in two dimensions
- Orpheus sees a blue ocean in VR games for well-being: Ex-Rockstar and Telltale staffer Job Stauffer explains why he left mainstream development to co-found self-care entertainment outfit
- Zen and the art of development: Designing games for meditation: Alto’s Odyssey, ABZÛ, and Shape of the World developers on how to develop a meditative experience
- Jam City opens new Toronto studio for Bingo Pop acquisition: Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery developer acquires Bingo Pop IP and team from Uken Games
- Xbox Adaptive Controller Christmas ad furthers Microsoft’s push for accessibility
- $1,550 Vive Pro McLaren Edition Further Confuses Headset’s Positioning
- Shenmue 3 dev ends crowdfunding efforts with over $7.1M raised
- Shenmue III crowdfunding totals $7.18 million `
- Wargaming UK acquires Edge Case Games: Fractured Space developer will be folded into World of Tanks firm to work on new free-to-play MMO
- Dev survey: 38% of game developers broke even or better on last game
- Keywords Studios: “We are going to keep acquiring new companies” – The video games outsourcing giant on expanding its services, fixing crunch and how it will avoid competing with its clients
- Observations and lessons from two decades of writing about video games
- International mobile games revenue from Tencent and NetEase rose 382% in 2018: Chinese mobile giants see importance of international markets during Chinese game license freeze
- GameStop to sell Spring Mobile division for $700 million
- State of Gaming and Esports
- Major League Gaming co-founder launches Electronic Sports Group: Mike Sepso unveils global esports advisory firm with Nielsen partnership
- New publisher Nifty Games wants to “get back to the core spirit of sports games”: Will specialise in mobile and digital titles for fans “accustomed to enjoying ongoing touch points with their favourite sports”
- How to Get Your Console Games Streaming to Windows, Mac, Android, or iOS
- Leadership shuffle sees IGDA board name new chair and vice-chair
- IGDA appoints new board leadership: Vesa Raudasoja steps up as chairman; Kongregate CEO Emily Greer takes over as vice-chair
- Devs label Brexit ‘a dire threat’ to UK game industry in open letter
- UK games industry leaders reject Brexit deal: Peter Molyneux, Rhianna Pratchett, Ian Livingstone, Charles Ceil and more call for People’s Vote to overcome “dire threat” of leaving EU
- National Videogame Museum: Bringing the past, present, and future of games to the wider public
- Observations and lessons from two decades of writing about video games
- Don’t Miss: A look back at the rise and fall of the Sega Dreamcast
- SpaceWar! devs to receive Pioneer Awards from The AIAS
DIGITAL
- Should the Supreme Court Knock the First Brick Out of Apple’s Walled Garden?
- How Apple hopes to stop a customer lawsuit over its App Store monopoly
- Gambling App Fails to Create Binding Terms of Service–Wilson v. Huuuge
- Failure-to-Warn Claim Against Match.com Fails–Beckman v. Match.com (Eric Goldman)
- Facebook’s Blueprint Needs a Blueprint: Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for an independent council to review controversial content moderation decisions leaves some important questions unanswered.
- Facebook pondered, for a time, selling access to user data
- To Obtain Documents About Facebook Data-Sharing, UK Gov’t Seizes And Detains A US Executive Working For A Different Company
- UK Parliament seized internal documents related to Facebook’s privacy and data decisions
- UK Hosts Theatrical Facebook Hearings On ‘Fake News’… Undermined By Creating Fake News Itself
- Facebook Expands ‘Watch Party’ Video Co-Viewing to Users and Pages Worldwide
- Six4Three exec “panicked” in UK MP’s office, gave up Facebook internal files
- “You’ll never know how evil a technology can be until the engineers deploying it fear for their jobs”
- Platform Accountability and Contemporary Competition Law: Practical Considerations
- We are Google employees. Google must drop Dragonfly.
- Google employees demand that Google stop work on censored Chinese search
- Google Employees Demand Company Kill Censored Chinese Search Product
- Google, Village Roadshow Weigh In On New Search Blocking Amendments To Australian Copyright Law
- Update on Ohio’s online harassment statute
- Voter Suppression Has Gone Digital: The public should be able to tell where these messages are coming from and how they are being targeted
- Dear Silicon Valley Tech Companies: Stop Treating Your Structural Challenges As Political Challenges
- Newly elected Republican senator could be Google’s fiercest critic
- Disney and Google Ink Broad, Multiyear Digital Advertising Deal
- In Seismic Shift, YouTube To Make All Of Its Original Programming Available For Free
- Bring in the ads—YouTube may let everyone watch Original shows, films
- YouTube reportedly making future exclusive content free with ads from 2020: You’ll no longer need YouTube Premium to see its original movies and shows.
- Woody Woodpecker Is Back: New Series to Launch on YouTube
- Ninth Circuit Easily Dismisses YouTube Remove-and-Relocate Case–Darnaa v. Google (Eric Goldman)
- Former YouTube Engineer Says ‘Flat Earthers’ Indicate Danger Of YouTube’s Recommendation Algorithm
- YouTube Is Testing ‘Ad Pods’, In Which Two Spots Are Served Back-To-Back
- YouTube Offers College Students Half Off YouTube Premium, YouTube Music Premium
- YouTube To Delete ‘Creator Credits,’ Says It’s Working On New Crediting Features
- YouTube Will Completely Phase Out Annotations As Of January 15
- YouTube Builds Up To ‘Lego Movie’ Sequel By Streaming First Film For Free On Black Friday
- Ariana Grande Concert Tour Documentary Series Launch Set on YouTube
- Ariana Grande To Debut Four-Part YouTube Docuseries Tomorrow
- Victoria Beckham has launched a YouTube channel for beauty tutorials and styling tips
- UK Court of Appeal goes live on YouTube – a win or loss for access to justice?
- To Prosecute A Single Bombing Suspect, FBI Demands Identifying Info On Thousands Of YouTube Viewers
- Mr. Beast Launches Last-Ditch Stunt To Keep PewDiePie Ahead Of T-Series, As Gap Temporarily Widens
- Ariana Grande Taps Colleen Ballinger, Gabi DeMartino For ‘Mean Girls’-Themed Music Video
- Logan Paul Headlines ‘Flat Earth’ Convention In What Appears To Be Hilarious Troll
- Logan Paul Dives Into Frank Sex Chat In Debut Episode Of ‘Impaulsive’ Podcast
- Do Your Social Media Influencer Contracts Miss the Mark?
- Court Blasts “Copyright Troll” for Treating Courts “as an ATM”–Strike 3 v. Doe (Eric Goldman)
- Restricting Competitive Keyword Ads Is Anti-Competitive–FTC v. 1-800 Contacts (Eric Goldman)
- Spotify to Launch in India Within Six Months: The Swedish streaming service plans to offer an extended free trial.
- Fox News Launches Streaming Service Fox Nation
- Netflix, Mexico’s Cinepolis Face Off Over Release of ‘Roma’
- Netflix will create a ‘story universe’ based on the work of Roald Dahl
- Is Netflix avoiding UK tax?
- Netflix’s anime announcement frenzy, capped off by live-action Cowboy Bebop
- Learning to Love Robots: With advances in A.I. and engineering, robots are galumphing, rolling, and being U.P.S.-delivered into our homes.
- The Malware of the Future Will Have AI Superpowers
- AI thinks like a corporation – and that’s worrying: Artificial intelligence was born of organisational decision-making and state power; it needs human ethics, says Jonnie Penn of the University of Cambridge
- AI Mistakes Bus-Side Ad for Famous CEO, Charges Her With Jaywalking
- When 3D-printing challenges IP rights
- Counterfeits in the Digital Marketplace
- Widely used open source software contained bitcoin-stealing backdoor
- How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request
- Amazon says it had its biggest shopping day ever on Cyber Monday
- Black Friday hits $6.2B in US online sales, smartphones accounted for $2.1B
- New wearable tech lets users listen to live music through their skin
- How I went from testing a fancy new graphics card to shouting at Windows 10
- Microsoft deepens LinkedIn-Office 365 ties with ability to co-author docs through social network
- Microsoft (briefly) passed Apple to become the most valuable US company today
- When the Internet Archive Forgets
- America Needs to Align Technology with a Public Purpose: Disruptive innovations won’t produce a better society unless we work to contain their harms and spread their benefits.
- The Digital Maginot Line
- Audiovisual Media Services: Council approval upgrades the EU framework for a digital age
- New wearable tech lets users listen to live music through their skin
- Cloud Contracting – Pandora’s Box?
- Canadian Government Commits $50 Million to Creative Commons Licensed Open News Content (Michael Geist)
- Pompous ‘International Grand Committee’ Signs Useless But Equally Pompous ‘Declaration On Principles Of Law Governing The Internet’
- First encounter: COMPUTE! magazine and its glorious, tedious type-in code
CREATIVITY
- My speaking notes for the CHPC Committee Hearing of November 27, 2018 about Remuneration Models for Artists and Creative Industries (Howard Knopf)
- How a Polish Holocaust Story Became the Basis of a Controversial Copyright Case in Canada’s Federal Court (Howard Knopf)
- Banksy works worth £12m impounded in Belgium after legal row: Brussels exhibition was closed by bailiffs after a dispute over ownership of the street art
- But is it Art? Copyright, Auction and AI
- “Does that TV program or film copy that book?” The Limits of ‘Colourable Imitation’ in Canada
- Another Upset in College Football—Indiana Supreme Court Deems College Athletes’ Names, Images, and Statistics “Newsworthy”
- Lawyers For Kobe Bryant Tout His Uselessness In Potential Trademark Opposition Fight
- Court Tells Former NRA President The First Amendment Protects Far More Than Polite Speech
- Our Bipolar Free-Speech Disorder And How To Fix It (Part 1)
- TV News Allowed Republicans to Spew Unchecked Denial About Major New Climate Report
- The Importance of Assessing the Safety and Security of Broadcast Stations and Their Personnel
- The Best of a Bad Situation?: Why Tax Incentives Are Better Than Regulation and Cross-Subsidization to Support Canadian Journalism (Michael Geist)
- We Asked a Researcher to Judge the Historically Inaccurate Junk in Robin Hood
- IP Protection Post-Brexit: A Right-by-Right Analysis
- Misleading on Fair Dealing, Part 4: The Shift from Coursepacks to Digital Course Management Systems (Michael Geist)
- Misleading on Fair Dealing, Part 5: The Multi-Million Dollar Educational Investment in E-Book Licensing (Michael Geist)
- Misleading on Fair Dealing, Part 6: Why Site Licences Offer Education More than the Access Copyright Licence (Michael Geist)
- Misleading on Fair Dealing, Part 7: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage (Michael Geist)
MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- Trump proposes a government-run TV news network to counter CNN
- Comcast raises cable TV bills again—even if you’re under contract
- From $1.50 To $10 Per Month: How Comcast’s Bogus Fees Are False Advertising
- Mobile Internet Beats Wifi Speeds In These 33 Countries
- The FCC Steps Up Efforts to Restrict “Robocalls”
- Consumer Groups Say FCC Weakening Oversight Of Cell Carriers Under Pretense Of Battling Text Message Spam
- Activists Make One Last Push To Restore Net Neutrality Via Congressional Review Act
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Trump Administration Discussed Illegally Sharing Census Data with Law Enforcement: Justice Department email raises concerns that the administration doesn’t understand census confidentiality
- DOJ made secret arguments to break crypto, now ACLU wants to make them public
- Facial Recognition Flags Woman on Bus Ad for ‘Jaywalking’ in China
- Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients
- French Tax Officials To Start Digging Through Social Media Posts For Expensive Cars It Thinks You Can’t Afford
- Surveillance Kills Freedom By Killing Experimentation
- Social media and marketing: back to privacy basics
- Where is the ePrivacy Regulation?
- New GDPR Ruling In France Could Dramatically Re-shape Online Advertising
- Mexican Journalists Investigating Cartels Targeted with NSO Spyware Following Assassination of Colleague
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