GAMES
- Star Control: Origins pulled from sale following DMCA takedown notice
- Star Control creators block Origins release: Stardock denied injunction against Ford and Reiche’s DMCA notice, title removed from GOG and Steam
- Original Star Control creators deploy nuclear option against Stardock [Updated]
- China issues 80 new game licenses, Tencent not included
- China lifts a freeze on new video games but excludes its biggest player: It allows 80 new titles to be released but none from Tencent
- Tencent and Netease absent in first wave of China game approvals: 80 titles given the green light in December, but none from nation’s market leaders
- Creators Of Dance Moves Suing Creators Of Fortnite Over Copyright Infringement That Can’t Possibly Have Happened
- Moments of 2018: When Fortnite stopped everything for a butterfly
- Fortnite Dance, Potato Roll Recipe Clip Are BuzzFeed’s Most Viral Videos Of 2018
- BioWare co-founders inducted into the Order of Canada
- Rebellion’s Chris Kingsley receives OBE
- Rebellion co-founder Chris Kingsley to receive OBE
- Game Workers Unite working with devs from a dozen studios towards unionization
- Steel Division dev Eugen Systems fires six employees involved in pay dispute
- CIS region game devs hit with 7.4% decline in median salary last year: Women lost 10% of their salary as gender pay gap increased to $6,000
- Blizzard hopes linked Battle.net accounts will solve toxic Twitch chats
- Fired Activision Blizzard CFO picked up by Netflix as chief financial officer
- Activision Blizzard terminates CFO Spencer Neumann: Previous CFO Denis Durkin returns to position effective immediately
- Killing in the name of: The US Army and video games
- Video: Astronaut Scott Kelly teaches orbital mechanics with Kerbal Space Program
- Caltech scientists use DNA tiles to play tic-tac-toe at the nanoscale
- A bewildered, far-from-conclusive look at the state of public gaming in Tokyo
- Twitch Star DrLupo Raised $1.3 Million For St. Jude Children’s Hospital This Year
- PlayStation Classic Gets Huge Price Cut, Which Says A Lot
- Sony: Home of the Whopper – 10 Years Ago This Month – Kaz Hirai discovers heretofore unexplored levels of spin in promoting the PS3 as the global economic meltdown ripples through the industry
- Gumi Inc. acquires stake in blockchain game developer Double Jump.Tokyo: Investment follows launch of publisher’s $30 million blockchain fund in May last year
- Rami Ismail launches game-a-day collection Meditations: Free downloadable launcher will offer a different five-minute experience every day
- A game studio with zero hardware experience is building a VR-ready console
- Project Cars dev Slightly Mad Studios is working on a VR-friendly game console
- Valve Reveals Top Selling VR Games on Steam in 2018
- Valve shares data on Steam’s most popular game/controller pairings
- Steam rounds up 2018’s best sellers, top new releases, and more
- Ninja To Stream ‘Fortnite’ For 12 Hours On New Year’s Eve In Times Square
- Twitch Viewers Watched 226.85 Million Hours’ Worth Of Ninja’s Content This Year
- Pro-PewDiePie Printer Hacker Returns, Making 5,500+ Smart TVs, Google Devices Urge Users To Subscribe
- UK boxed software sales slip in 2018, but hardware is up: PS4 dominates the market, as Switch rises sharply
- Best of 2018: How Baldi’s Basics taps into the real horror of ’90s edutainment
- Best of 2018: The Heartbeat Symposium – Exploring love, sex, and intimacy in games
- Eurogamer’s game of the year 2018 is Tetris Effect
- Gamasutra’s Best of 2018: The top 10 game developers of the year
- Gamasutra’s Best of 2018: The top 10 games of the year
- Best of 2018: Gamasutra’s top games, devs, events and trends
- What is the industry looking forward to in 2019?: Most anticipated games, sporting victories, disruption, innovation and more on leaders’ wishlists
- What lies ahead? Analysts make 2019 predictions: Industry watchers assess the likelihood of new console hardware, the growth potential of streaming, AR or esports breakthroughs, and more
DIGITAL
- Ninth Lawsuit Against Social Media Providers for “Materially Supporting Terrorists” Fails–Clayborn v. Twitter (Eric Goldman)
- Jake Paul, RiceGum Called Out For Promoting Mystery Box ‘Gambling’ Site To Kids
- Antipiracy Outfits Routinely Claim Copyright Infringement Against Sites That Simply Report When Torrents Are Released
- Jack Black’s YouTube Channel Nabs 2.5 Million Subscribers In Less Than Two Weeks
- Jack Black Launches YouTube Channel, Nabbing 600,000 Subscribers In 5 Days
- Pentatonix, Mariah Carey, ‘Frozen’ Top YouTube’s Top 10 Christmas Songs Of 2018
- Famebit, YouTube’s Influencer Marketing Platform, Says It Can Measure Organic Views Like They’re Ads
- MrBeast Has Given Away $1 Million On His Ascent To Digital Stardom: “YouTube Pays Better Than You Think”
- YouTube Science Star Mark Rober Apologizes After Unwittingly Including Fake Footage In Viral Glitter Bomb Video
- YouTube Apologizes For Repurposing Creator’s Video Without Credit In Corporate Tweet
- Facebook’s worst year ever is now over. Here’s how its scandals affected the stock: After a year of scandals, Facebook’s stock ended the year lower than the previous one for the first time since its debut on the public market in 2012 – The stock tanked 25
- Trump may ban U.S. companies from buying Huawei tech: report
- UK defense minister admits ‘grave concerns’ over Huawei 5G equipment
- China releases Canadian teacher but others still held in Huawei row
- An App That Does Your Homework For You Is Now Worth $3 Billion
- Disney World Fans Demand Justice for Animatronic Robot Robbed of His Hands and Clothes
- LinkedIn Co-Founder Apologizes for the Mess He’s Made
- Big Tech’s net loss: How governments can turn anger into action (Taylor Owen)
- UK Cops Have Decided Impolite Online Speech Is Worth A Visit From An Officer
- It Is Both Ridiculous And Dangerous To Make Domain Registrars Liable For Content On Domains
- Iranian Government To Ban Instagram, Citing National Security Concerns
- Oh God What Did They Just Do to Instagram [Updated]
- Instagram Swipes Back On Horizontal Test After It Deploys To More Users Than Expected
- Instagram Network Doing Things Acquires Three New Accounts, Boosting Follower Base To 33 Million
- FTC Warns of Sketchy Netflix Phishing Scam Asking for Payment Details
- Netflix Pulls American TV Episode in Saudi Arabia That Criticizes Khashoggi Murder and Silicon Valley Investment
- Saudi Arabia Discovers The Streisand Effect; Gets Netflix To Take Down Hasan Minhaj’s Show About MBS’s Atrocities
- Black Mirror creators broke Netflix’s script writing tool with Bandersnatch
- Netflix’s Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Film ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’ Has More Than 1 Trillion Potential Story Arrangements
- Netflix’s Bandersnatch Teases The Future Of Entertainment
- The Hidden Beauty of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’s Best Ending
- That New Black Mirror Interactive Film From Netflix Doesn’t Work on Apple TV
- Netflix is curbing a $256 million revenue stream for Apple by circumventing iTunes billing
- Netflix delivers a blow to Apple’s services story by ending in-app subscriptions
- Apple Reveals It Underestimated Challenges in China, Revises Guidance for Holiday Quarter
- The Silver Lining In Apple’s Very Bad iPhone News
- Apple’s Stock Decline Is Bringing Out All of the Opinions
- Judge Approves $20.4 Million Attorneys’ Fee Award in Continuing Dish Network Saga
- Millions Upon Millions Of ‘Takedown’ Notices To Google… For Links That Aren’t Even In Google
- Google is Reportedly Rolling Out a Feature to Fight Spam in Your Texts
- Microsoft closes out 2018 as the top public company
- Why Copyright Will Be The Biggest Issue For Youtube In 2019
- How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.
- There’s Something Sinister Afoot In Macaulay Culkin’s Yule Log Video
- The Unlikely Origins of the First Quantum Computer
- The hype around driverless cars came crashing down in 2018
- How Chip Makers Are Circumventing Moore’s Law to Build Super-Fast CPUs of Tomorrow
- The Ongoing Saga of the Florida Bar’s Angst About Competitive Keyword Advertising (Eric Goldman)
- CanLII Top Ten Accessed Cases from 2018
- Looking Back at 2018: My Top Ten Posts (Michael Geist)
- 35 years ago, Isaac Asimov was asked by the Star to predict the world of 2019. Here is what he wrote
- Technology, Ranked
CREATIVITY
- Mickey Mouse will be public domain soon—here’s what that means
- Announcing The Public Domain Game Jam: Gaming Like It’s 1923
- ‘Fake News’ Results In Real Jail Time For Ohio Woman
- Why does flat Earth belief still exist?: Our latest video looks at what can motivate people to believe the impossible.
- People adopt made-up social rules to be part of a group: It happens when the rule is useless and nobody will ever meet anyone affected by it.
- When a $1M+ Publicity Rights Damages Award Isn’t a Win–Olive v. GNC
- Students Make A Video Depicting A School Shooting; Sheriff Decides Everyone Needs To Have Their Rights Violated
- Thanks to higher resolution image, American Airlines has eventually managed to register its logo with the US Copyright Office
- 100 Year Old Trademarks In 2019
- Hopepunk, the latest storytelling trend, is all about weaponized optimism: In the era of Trump and apocalyptic change, Hopepunk is a storytelling template for #resistance – and hanging onto your humanity at all costs.
MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- CRTC Issues Guidance for Avoiding Indirect Liability for CASL Violations
- Minnesota AG Just The Latest To Ding Comcast For Shady Fees
- Ajit Pai thanks Congress for helping him kill net neutrality rules
- The FCC Is Closing, So Hold Your Cell Phone Service Gripes
- CBS Eyes Ditching Nielsen As Streaming, Cord Cutting Change The Game
- AT&T Attempts A Head Fake With ‘Fake 5G’
- Who is leading the 5G patent race?
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Google Photos Defeats Privacy Lawsuit Over Face Scans–Rivera v. Google (Eric Goldman)
- Foreign Cyberattack Cripples Major U.S. Newspapers
- EFF Wins FOIA Lawsuit Against DEA, Forces The Release Of More Info About Its Hemisphere Program
- Personal Data of Nearly 1,000 North Korean Defectors Reportedly Stolen in Hack
- Indian Government Wants Tech Companies To Give Law Enforcement 24-Hour Access To User Data And Broken Encryption
- Once Again, GDPR Is A Potential Privacy Nightmare: Amazon Sends 1,700 Voice Recordings To The Wrong User In GDPR Request
Jon