GAMES
- THQ Nordic inexplicably hosts AMA in a notorious internet cesspool
- Three hours after allying with 8chan, THQ Nordic goes into full apology mode
- FTC to begin loot box investigation with public workshop
- FTC to hold a public workshop on loot box concerns this year: It will bring industry groups and advocates together
- FTC plans to examine loot boxes with public workshop later this year
- ZeniMax hit with trademark dispute over its application for ‘Redfall’
- The duo behind the Running Man challenge are suing Epic over a Fortnite dance
- Epic Games accused of exploiting African American talent in latest dance move lawsuit: Jared Nickens and Jaylen Brantley file for $20 million in damages over Running Man emote, despite questionable ownership of dance
- Epic pulls YouTube ads after predatory videos discovered: Fortnite pre-roll ads removed as YouTube continues to struggle with recommendation algorithm
- Fortnite’s Marshmello concert beats game’s concurrent player record: 10.6 million players showed up to event, breaking past record by around 2.5 million
- Fortnite Players Sue for Alleged Exposure of Payment Information for Vbucks
- PUBG’s dev team has turned to machine learning to fight off cheaters
- EA and Activision Blizzard CEOs featured in ‘The 100 Most Overpaid CEOs’ report
- Activision’s Bobby Kotick and EA’s Andrew Wilson among most overpaid CEOs in US: Latest study shows the two chief execs earn more than 300 times the average wage of their employees
- ESA’s acting CEO stays neutral on unionization, opposes ‘gaming disorder’
- A New Player Joins the Battle – The AFL-CIO Throws Its Support Behind Game Development Employees And Urges Them To Form A Union
- Devs pull Devotion from Steam following review bombing spree
- Taiwanese developer under fire for mocking Chinese president: Red Candle Games’ Devotion removed from Steam for QA check after in-game art calls Xi Jinping “Winnie the Pooh moron”
- Starbreeze applies for extended reconstruction period as it looks to regroup
- Starbreeze applies for extension on reconstruction period: Troubled publisher wants until June to “focus on its core business of internal game development and publishing”
- Report: Amazon, Comcast, and EA now among potential Nexon buyers
- EA, Amazon, Comcast reportedly bidding for Nexon: Companies join Netmarble, Kakao in pursuing founder’s controlling stake
- Report: EA makes layoffs at Australian mobile studio FireMonkeys
- Massive layoffs at EA’s Australian studio: FireMonkeys will refocus on live services as up to 50 staff prepare for redundancy
- Anthem: Critical Consensus – Exhilarating flight and stylish combat dazzle the critics, but they can’t hide a lack of substance in BioWare’s latest title
- Wave of layoffs expected at Guild Wars 2 dev ArenaNet
- ArenaNet bracing for layoffs: Owner NCSoft CEO says current situation not sustainable, plans for cuts across the board and merging of publishing divisions
- Overkill’s The Walking Dead postponed, not cancelled on console: 505 Games confirms this is the same delay announced last month, despite confusion over PS4 pre-order refunds
- Capcom COO calls out the growing value of PC as a platform
- The Future of Gaming Is Subscription
- Psychonauts and surviving the publisher shuffle: Tim Schafer says the studio’s experiences with partners aren’t that unusual, addresses struggles of Psychonauts 2 publisher Starbreeze
- Superdata: Digital revenue down in January as major console franchises underperform – Premium PC games see largest decline, leaving Fortnite near the top on both console and PC
- Rising development costs forced Square Enix to find its soul | Opinion: When Final Fantasy was no longer enough, the venerable publisher dug deeper
- Brexit has fostered a culture of fear among British game devs
- No Deal Brexit will mean “dark, dystopian UK” | Opinion: Andy Payne discusses the potential impact of a No Deal Brexit on the UK games industry
- Twitch’s fight against EU copyright laws continues with MEPs playing Mario Kart: Two members of the European Parliament will discuss how to combat the divisive Article 13 on Twitch’s official channel
- Nintendo of America head Reggie Fils-Aime retires, Bowser taking over
- How Reggie Fils-Aime Became A Nintendo Legend
- Nintendo Announces Pokémon Sword And ShieldFor Switch
- Pokémon Sword and Shield will hit Switch in “late 2019”
- $100K Mario seller: “It’s probably the wrong move, long term, to sell”
- Mattel’s video game division eyes original IP: The joint venture between Mattel and NetEase plots three to four new games a year
- Report: Microsoft plans to announce two next-gen Xbox consoles at E3
- Microsoft to reveal new Xbox hardware at E3 2019 – Report: Code-named Lockhart and Anaconda to be shown, but not available until fall of 2020
- Microsoft takes a big step towards putting Xbox games on Windows
- Report: Xbox Game Pass headed to the Nintendo Switch
- Game Pass, Xbox-exclusive games reportedly heading to Switch: Ori and the Blind Forest, others may be streamable to Nintendo’s console sometime this year
- Why putting Xbox games on Switch isn’t as ridiculous as it might sound
- Crackdown 3 shows a vision of the future | Opinion: The new Xbox title points toward the radical changes that Game Pass will bring to the industry’s commercial and cultural landscape
- Fallout: Wasteland Warfare: A “rad” miniatures game full of Nuka-Cola flavor
- Halo Infinite now linked to next Xbox’s launch, rumor suggests RPG elements
- Report: Microsoft plans to announce two next-gen Xbox consoles at E3
- Microsoft puts mixed reality, high-speed 3D rendering, and Kinect vision into cloud
- Microsoft unveils HoloLens 2, promises greater mixed reality immersion
- Microsoft unveils HoloLens 2: twice the field of view, eye tracking
- Microsoft adds eye-tracking, doubles field of view for HoloLens 2: Will launch later this year for $3,500, Unreal Engine support on the way
- Microsoft Significantly Misrepresented HoloLens 2’s Field of View at Reveal
- Employees demand Microsoft cancels $479m HoloLens military contract: Engineers on the project believed it would “push the boundaries of gaming”, not “turn warfare into a simulated video game
- Razer lays off 30 from shut down projects: Organization’s “realignment” plans result in cut of 2% of workforce
- GOG lays off a dozen employees over reported financial strain
- Funcom enters partnership with Legendary to create Dune games
- Skybound cuts ties with Overkill’s The Walking Dead devs mid-release
- GOG lays off “around a dozen,” reportedly due to financial trouble: Estimated 10% of total staff may have been affected due to revenue share competition from other storefronts
- GOG drops Fair Price Package program, blames rising dev revenue shares
- Ebba Ljungerud’s grand strategy: A chat with Paradox’s CEO
- THQ Nordic issues new shares to raise $225 million for future acquisitions
- THQ Nordic raises $225m for further acquisitions: “Substantially oversubscribed” share issue brings on a range of new investors for growing publisher
- Media Molecule to launch Dreams in paid Early Access this spring: Long-awaited game is among the first to introduce Early Access concept to PlayStation 4
- NetEase maintains revenue growth despite Chinese approvals freeze: Online games revenue was up 11% in 2018, with ten new games still waiting for approval in China
- Tencent and NetEase’s combined non-China mobile revenues leap 505% to $472m: IHS Markit says Chinese publishers’s efforts overseas helped weather game freeze, let by NetEase’s battle royale Knives Out
- Tencent partners with Intel on its streaming service, Instant Play
- Snail Games launches indie publishing label: Chinese outfit establishes Wandering Wizard to bring Western indie titles to the market, starting with Virtual Basement’s Outlaws of the Old West
- Paratopic haunts the walking sim with verbs and violence
- Blog: Why 2018 was a landmark year for accessibility
- Kabam founder forms blockchain gaming startup Forte: Kevin Chou hopes to encourage adoption of blockchain in the gaming industry by building, supporting new projects
- Embark Studios grows to over 50 people, working on first title: Patrick Söderlund’s new studio larger than anticipated as it starts work on co-op, free-to-play action game
- Technical deep dive: The wild and windy aerodynamics ofJust Cause 4
- FIFA announces eNations Cup tournament: Latest series is one of three officially hosted by the football association in partnership with EA Sports
- Overwatch League Boston Uprising, New England Patriots owner charged with soliciting prostitution: Robert Kraft, 24 others charged after eight-month-long investigation in southern Florida
- “China is saying is that esports is cool, and more healthy than gaming itself”: What role can “offline” esports events like summer camps play in repairing the industry’s relationship with the Chinese government?
- Female viewership of esports increasing: Interpret finds girls and women account for 30% of esports watchers, up more than 6% in just two years
- Hi-Rez Studios: Turning battle royale into an entertaining esport – Esports BAR Cannes speaker Alex Grimonpont explains why “we still haven’t seen a significant success” from battle royale in terms entertaining spectators
- Use of excerpts of videogames and eSports competitions without the right holder’s consent: is it fair use (or the Princess is in another castle)?
- HTC is launching the Vive Focus Plus this year, complete with 6DoF controllers
- US Future staff to unionize with Writers Guild of America: PC Gamer, GamesRadar, others join growing industry push for unionization
- U.S. Patent No. 9,138,648: System and method for dynamically loading game software for smooth game play
- U.S. Patent No. 9,266,022: System to pause a game console whenever an object enters an exclusion zone
- U.S. Patent No. 8,882,594: Control scheme for real time strategy game
- 5 Ways Black Panther’s Success Could Inspire Video Games
- How Black Women Made The Sims 4 Their Own
- 5 Awesome Black Video Game Characters: In honor of Black History Month, we celebrate some of the best black characters in video games.
- Jerry Lawson: The Black Man Who Revolutionized Gaming As We Know It – Meet Gerald “Jerry” Lawson, the man who pioneered the video game cartridge.
- Games Developed By Black Developers You Should Look Out For: In celebration of Black History Month, here are some indie games that should be on your radar.
- No Doubt v. Activision Publishing, Inc.
- Resident Evil 2 Remake: The Tofu Survivor Challenge- Hot Keys
- Resident Evil 2 remake ships 4 million copies in first month
- The Interactivity of Reading
- Amy Hennig calls single-player games ‘just a harder and harder proposition’
- Opinion: Civilization VI’s (Green) New Deal
- Blog: A student game postmortem (or how not to make a game)
DIGITAL
- Digital rights are *all* human rights, not just civil and political: The UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights consults with the field
- Report: US Cyber Command took Russian trolls offline during midterms
- Does Twitter Have An Anti-Conservative Bias, Or Just An Anti-Nazi Bias?
- Latest Garbage Twitter/Terrorism Lawsuit Is The Stupidest Twitter/Terrorism Lawsuit
- Twitter co-founder Ev Williams has stepped down from the $24 billion company’s board
- Facebook Reportedly Let Marketers Advertise to Nazis: Advertisers can pay to make sure their messages reach neo-Nazis.
- Facebook decided which users are interested in Nazis – and let advertisers target them directly
- These Apps Reportedly Shared Sensitive Personal Information With Facebook
- Facebook Ups Surveillance Of Users To Keep Tabs On People Who Don’t Like Facebook
- Facebook VPN that snoops on users is pulled from Android store
- Facebook pulls the plug on its data snooping Onavo VPN service: Its research programs will also gain more clarity
- The Trauma Floor: The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America
- Facebook’s promised Clear History privacy tool to launch later this year following delay
- Facebook Orders Animated Comedy Series Starring Anna Kendrick and Zac Efron, Sets ‘Real World’ Reboot Fan Voting
- Beware The Rise Of Censorship Under The Guise Of Stopping Fake News: UK Regulators Push For Dangerous Plan
- Open Letter From New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon
- How a coat on Amazon took over a neighborhood – and then the internet: A case study of a trend that maybe wasn’t one.
- Amazon Is Now Ditching on Seattle Plans, Too
- When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online
- YouTube loses advertisers over “wormhole into pedophilia ring”
- After Child Video Scandal, YouTube Says Ad-Friendly Videos Can Be Demonetized For Inappropriate Comments
- YouTube And Demonetization: The Hammer And Nail Of Content Moderation
- YouTube recommendations for ‘alt-right’ videos have dropped dramatically, study shows: But YouTube denies demoting content based on “specific political perspectives”.
- When the Alt-right Loves Your App
- Suicide instructions spliced into kids’ cartoons on YouTube and YouTube Kids
- YouTube Demonetizes Anti-Vaccination Channels Following Advertiser Outcry
- YouTube Music Launches New Mini-Series Format, Beginning With Billie Eilish
- Michelle Obama Joins YouTube’s Book Panel Discussion Special
- T-Series Surpassed PewDiePie For 10 Minutes Following Routine YouTube Audit
- “Despacito” Becomes First Video In YouTube History To Pass 6 Billion Views
- Legal Update: Influencing The Influencers
- Lilly Singh Comes Out As Bisexual, Urging Fans To Embrace Their Differences As “Superpowers”
- Crunchyroll, Portal A To Shine Light On Diverse Anime Fandom In New Docuseries
- Amid 1 Billion Downloads, TikTok Launches Video Series To Protect Its Young Users
- Police: Uber Data Helped Prove Jussie Smollett Faked Hate Crime
- Apple closes two Dallas stores in apparent bid to ward off patent trolls
- Apple Shutting Down Stores In East Texas To Avoid Patent Trolling Cases In The Troll’s Favorite Docket
- Report: Apple is working on a new SDK for painless porting from iOS to Mac
- Apple Car: Apple’s vehicle project, focused on building an autonomous driving system.
- How Apple and app developers will try to entice you to subscribe, not just pay once
- Investigating the Higbee & Associates Copyright Trolling Operation
- One Person’s Unsettling Experience With A $20k Higbee Copyright Troll Demand Letter
- Teen Musician Turns Down $3 Million Record Deal: No Need For A Label Thanks To The Internet
- European governments approve controversial new copyright law
- European Journalists Point Out That Article 11 Will Enrich Publishers At The Expense Of Journalists
- New EU Directive threatens the Internet as we know it (Andres Guadamuz)
- Europe Against the Net
- Who Needs Article 13: Italian Court Finds Facebook Liable For Hosting Links
- Japanese Academics Issue The Tamest ‘Emergency’ Statement Over Proposed Copyright Amendment
- Inside the Rise and Fall of a Multimillion-Dollar Airbnb Scheme: Multiple misleading identities, more than 100 host accounts and 18 corporations were created to run an illegal hotel business in Manhattan, according to a lawsuit filed by the city.
- After Child Video Scandal, YouTube Says Ad-Friendly Videos Can Be Demonetized For Inappropriate Comments
- YouTube’s Commenter Controversy Is Putting Creators in a Tricky Position
- Major Companies Are Pulling Ads From YouTube Over Pedophile Concerns
- One Month After Returning To YouTube, AT&T Once Again Yanks Ad Spending Following Discovery Of Pedophilic Comments
- Disney reportedly in talks to buy AT&T’s stake in Hulu
- Disney Pulls YouTube Ads Amid Child Video Scandal, As Platform Disables Comments On Tens Of Millions Of Videos
- Anti-Vaccination Videos May Be YouTube’s Latest Front In Battle Against Conspiracies
- YouTube Says No Ads on Anti-Vaccine Videos
- Influencing the Influencer – how to be #CMAcompliant
- Who Won The PewDiePie And T-Series YouTube Subscriber Battle? The Two Canadian Teens Behind FlareTV.
- Jimmy Fallon Becomes First Late-Night Host To Hit 20 Million YouTube Subscribers
- Netflix Is the Most Intoxicating Portal to Planet Earth: Instead of trying to sell American ideas to a foreign audience, it’s aiming to sell international ideas to a global audience.
- Netflix Spent As Much As $60 Million Trying (And Failing) To Win ‘Roma’ The Best Picture Oscar
- Netflix and the Economics of Bundling
- ‘Bon Appétit’ Launches Free OTT Channel With Slate Of 3 New Series
- Older Adults Are Especially Prone to Social Media Bubbles
- Insights: Doing A Better Job Counting What Counts In Social Media
- Surprise: Uganda’s New Social Media Tax Seems To Have Led To Fewer People Using The Internet, And Total Value Of Mobile Transactions To Drop
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Demanding Platforms Delete Disinformation May Make It Harder To Understand What Happened
- Court Refuses To Allow Defendant In Copyright Trolling Case To Proceed, But Hints At Reform
- DoorDash Is a Bunch of Snakes
- Beyond HoloLens: Microsoft expands its augmented-reality vision with iOS, Android apps
- Hands-on: HoloLens 2 is a More Than Just a Larger Field of View
- Microsoft Significantly Misrepresented HoloLens 2’s Field of View at Reveal
- Employees urge Microsoft to pull HoloLens military contract
- Microsoft CEO defends ‘principled and democratic’ HoloLens military contract
- Nadella: Microsoft will sell war tech to democracies to “protect freedoms”
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella defends HoloLens military contract: “We’re not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy”
- Why IBM’s “Dear Tech” Ad Is So Enraging
- A New AI Draws Cats, and They’re Utterly Grotesque: No cats were harmed in the making of this creepy website.
- AI Writes Article About AI: Does The Newspaper Hold The Copyright?
- An NYU professor explains why it’s so dangerous that Silicon Valley is building AI to make decisions without human values
- Humanity + AI: Better Together
- When Algorithms Think You Want To Die
- Twenty minutes into the future with OpenAI’s Deep Fake Text AI
- How Google, Microsoft, and Big Tech Are Automating the Climate Crisis
- Google ends forced arbitration for all employees
- Google Fesses Up To Hidden Microphone In Nest Home Security Platform
- Samsung Galaxy S10, S10+, and S10e hands-on: Samsung is slowly getting better
- Guidemaster: The least-awful Android phones
- Oppo’s foldable smartphone is another futuristic wraparound display device
- LG’s V50 answers the foldable phone craze with a detachable second screen
- Forget Face ID, the LG G8 comes with palm-reading “Hand ID” biometrics
- USB 3.2 is going to make the current USB branding even worse: People already get the names wrong, so the USB group has doubled down on bad naming.
- Nike’s self-lacing sneakers turn into bricks after faulty firmware update
- Blockchain based smart contracts equal to written documents in Italy
- Surge In Cryptocurrency Exchange Hacking Activity
- Perhaps the QuadragaCX Story Will Have a Happy Ending
- Upcoming Tech IPOs Will Mint Hundreds of Overnight Millionaires and Silicon Valley Vultures Are Licking Their Chops
- Why Big Cap Tech is So Big
- New FTC task force will take on tech monopolies: And they’re going to look at previous mergers
- The FTC Probably Doesn’t Need A New ‘Big Tech’ Task Force. It Just Needs To Do Its Job
- FTC’s first case over fake paid Amazon reviews targets dodgy diet pills
- FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Independent Retail Website
- FTC Announces Settlement Involving Fake Amazon Reviews
- For the First Time, FTC Fines Company for Fake Amazon Reviews: “When a company buys fake reviews to inflate its Amazon ratings, it hurts both shoppers and companies that play by the rules.”
- String of ions may out-compute best quantum computers
- Ariana Grande Becomes Most-Followed Female Creator On Instagram
- Canada’s Internet Music Success Story: SOCAN’s Canadian Internet Streaming Revenues Surpass Radio Royalties (Michael Geist)
- Here’s why we’re entering the Golden Age of Podcasts, in 10 graphs
- Why Musicians Are Starting Their Own Podcasts – and Why the Podcast Industry Should Pay Attention: In sidestepping media middlemen, artists are creating their own DIY music-media economy
- Spotify launches in India amidst legal battle with Warner
- Why Did Music Visualizers Disappear?
- Providing Software Source Code Key to Powering Future Software Development (UNESCO)
- Back to the Stratosphere: How the Rarest Music in the World Comes Back – Duster was a small, largely forgotten band from the late ’90s. Then their legend began to grow on sites like Discogs. Now, they’re the subject of a major reissue.
- Unmasking the internet’s favourite novelist: Todd Noy was said to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a towering figure in the online fan-fiction community. His books were delivered around the world. But he may have never existed.
- Kickstarter to Remove That Rat From the End of The Departed Whacked By DMCA Takedown
- 2H 2018 Quick Links, Part 7: Content Moderation, Section 230, & More (Eric Goldman)
- Top Internet Law Developments of 2018 (Eric Goldman)
CREATIVITY
- China Extends Its Censorship To Australian Books, Written By Australian Authors For Australian Readers
- Clarence Thomas Has a Point About Free-Speech Law: The constitutional foundations of New York Times v. Sullivan are not looking all that firm.
- Catholic School Teen’s Lawyers File $250M Defamation Suit Against The Washington Post; Fail To List Any Actual Defamation
- Be warned – you can be held liable for the defamatory comments of another!
- ASA publishes new guidance to protect children from irresponsible gambling ads
- Wherein The Copia Institute, Engine, And Reddit Tell The DC Circuit That FOSTA Is Unconstitutional
- No Apologies: Nirvana v. Marc Jacobs
- The company that commissioned “Fearless Girl” is suing its creator.
- Ad Standards Announces New Dispute Procedure
- EU, Chile, Singapore and Spain IP offices named most innovative in the world
MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- Enough is Enough: Bains Proposes CRTC Policy Direction Grounded in Competition, Affordability, and Consumer Interests (Michael Geist)
- Proposed Order Issuing a Direction to the CRTC on Implementing the Canadian Telecommunications Policy Objectives to Promote Competition, Affordability, Consumer Interests and Innovation
- The CRTC Opens a Penske File: Chair Ian Scott Commits to Little Action Despite Finding Misleading Telecom Sales Tactics (Michael Geist)
- A CRTC More Interested in Protecting Incumbent Companies Than Consumers: My Appearance on the Broadcast Dialogue Podcast (Michael Geist)
- Appeals court rejects government bid to reverse AT&T/Time Warner deal
- Judge Ruling In AT&T Merger Again Highlights Broken Antitrust Enforcement, Court Myopia
- AT&T Throwing FundRaiser For Senate Chair Ahead Of Privacy Hearings
- FCC Uses Cherry-Picked Stats To Justify Giving Consumers A Giant Middle Finger
- Super Bowl Commercial for “Us” Generates FCC Complaints
- Frontier demands $4,300 cancellation fee despite horribly slow Internet
- Trump Administration’s ‘National Broadband Plan’ Comically Refuses To Acknowledge A Lack Of Competition
- Trump Calls For “6G,” Which Doesn’t Exist: Let’s focus on actually setting up 5G first.
- Trump demands quick rollout of “6G” wireless tech, which doesn’t exist
- Is 5G Being Weaponized?
- 5G Is Going to Be an Incredibly Tough Sell in 2019
- HTC Did the Unthinkable and Made a Hotspot That’s Cool
- There’s No End in Sight to Our Robocall Hell
- Industry Claims That Cord Cutting Would Be A Fad Aren’t Looking So Hot
- Investigators, Reporters Close In On The Origins Of Those Fake Net Neutrality Comments
- Verizon says phone-sale fraud is up, wants to lock new phones to fight it
- Windstream, ISP with 1 million customers, files for bankruptcy
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- ICO prosecutes Cambridge Analytica parent company
- 9 Years After: From Operation Aurora to Zero Trust – How the first documented nation-state cyberattack is changing security today.
- Piracy v. Privacy – The Federal Court Significantly Restores the Balance in Canadian Mass Copyright Litigation by Insisting on “Best Available Evidence”
- Consent: Is It Meaningful?
- Yahoo! Data Breach Settlement Increases Risk for Companies’ Directors and Officers
- Plain wrong: Millions of utility customers’ passwords stored in plain text – “It’s ridiculous vendors are replying to researchers via general counsel, not bug bounty.”
- Court Says DOJ’s Attempt To Force Facebook To Break Encryption Can Remain Under Seal
- Amazon Echo and Google Home should be able to snitch on owners, says professor: Marija Slavkovik at the University of Bergen, Norway wonders whether your digital assistant needs a moral, ethical dimension. But of course.
- EU Law Enforcement Preps To Start Sharing Sensitive Data With A Number Of Human Rights Abusers
- 8 GDPR compliance tips explained by Queen songs
- How criminals are using the low-interest credit card scam to steal your identity
- Many websites threatened by highly critical code-execution bug in Drupal
- Google: Software is never going to be able to fix Spectre-type bugs
- Love (or hate) Data?
- Five UK Privacy and Data Protection Predictions for 2019
Jon