News of the Week; November 25, 2020

By Jon Festinger on November 29, 2020

GAMES

  1. Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Gareth Bale question use of likeness in FIFA
  2. Mine, Mine, Mine! Nintendo Neuters The Cool Ways People, Groups Are Using ‘Animal Crossing’
  3. Nintendo axes fan-run Smash tournament over online play mod
  4. Nintendo orders cancellation of Smash Bros tournament over mod use: The Big House’s first online competition scrapped due to modified Melee that enables smoother online play
  5. Nintendo lawsuit takes aim at yet another Nintendo Switch hack seller
  6. Nintendo suing yet another Switch hack reseller: Amazon seller taken to court in platform holder’s ongoing fight against “serious, worsening international problem” of piracy
  7. Super Mario Maker Wii U to be delisted, lose some online features in early 2021
  8. Nintendo issues new Animal Crossing guidelines to keep politics out of the game
  9. Nintendo publishes Animal Crossing guidelines for businesses: The platform holder asked organisations to “refrain from bringing politics” into New Horizons
  10. Next-gen consoles have few answers to Argentina’s longstanding reliance on piracy: Argentina’s gamers approach next-gen with uncertainty, due to rising prices and the difficulty of turning to the black market
  11. Bossa Studios confirms layoffs amid complaints against management
  12. Game Workers Unite UK rebrands to IWGB Game Workers
  13. Can game studios radically transform how they hire?
  14. Does Apple’s 15% platform cut change the game?
  15. Tim Sweeney on Apple’s 15% cut: “We’re not fighting for a lower commission” – Epic Games CEO says 30% commission “is not wrongful, it’s just a bad deal”
  16. Epic adds a subscription service to Fortnite
  17. Epic Games launches ‘Fortnite Crew’ monthly subscription plan
  18. Epic Games’ MegaGrants program surpasses $60m in financial support
  19. 100 Thieves Becomes First Brand To Take Over Fortnite’s Creative Hub
  20. Twitch’s No Good, Very Bad Time Continues: Part 2
  21. Twitch Co-Founder Kevin Lin Departs Company After 12 Years: “I Will Build Again”
  22. The New York Times Is Broadcasting Collaborative Crosswords On Twitch
  23. This Streamer Took The Sims’ Lack Of Diversity Into Her Own Hands — And Then Became An Advisor To EA
  24. EA publishes first annual Impact Report: Report includes company demographic breakdown; 50% of EA Studios leadership is female
  25. GamesIndustry.biz writer Rebekah Valentine wins Journalist of the Year at GameHERs Awards: First year of the GameHERs recognises “women in all aspects of gaming”
  26. Harassment costs this industry too much | Opinion: From dollars to basic human decency, the status quo of online multiplayer gaming is taking a heavy toll
  27. Square Enix confirms Avengers missed expectations
  28. Square Enix to implement permanent work-from-home program in December
  29. Square Enix shifts all eligible staff to permanent remote working
  30. Pokémon Go restores social distancing benefits to the game
  31. The $70 AAA price point — it’s about time | Opinion: No consumer is going to be enthused about a price rise, but 15 years of $60 has done no favours to either gamers or creators
  32. Bandai Namco invests $3m in avatars creator Genies
  33. The ultimate guide to selling your indie game: Network N’s James Binns laid out the strategy and tactics indies should follow to sell more games
  34. 5 years below minimum wage: the financial history of Awesomenauts dev Ronimo 
  35. Roblox files for IPO: Kid-focused, user-generated content platform has not yet turned a profit despite skyrocketing DAUs, bookings
  36. Lightfox Games raises $3.3m: March Gaming leads seed round to fund more accessible midcore games
  37. Seattle mobile studio Lightfox nets $3.3 million to bring debut title to market
  38. Report: Activision Blizzard laying off staff at Asia-Pacific offices
  39. More layoffs expected at Activision-Blizzard, this time at APAC offices: Company confirms around 30 employees face redundancy following announcement it needed to hire over 2,000
  40. Netease Q3 strengthened by multiple mobile game releases in China
  41. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was the real No.1 last week | UK Digital Charts: Assassin’s Creed enjoyed one of its biggest weeks to-date
  42. Hitman developer IO Interactive teases Project 007: James Bond licence emerges from stealth and will be used to tell a brand new origin story
  43. Red Dead Online gets a stand-alone release
  44. Rockstar is turning Red Dead Online into a standalone game
  45. Crowded field of racers drives Codemasters revenues up
  46. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity ships 3 million
  47. Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin tops 500,000 digital sales and shipments
  48. Genshin Impact leads October digital game spending
  49. Piranha Games acquired by Enad Global 7
  50. Learning platform Kahoot acquires language game dev Drops for $50 million
  51. Keywords Studios acquires marketing agency G-Net Media
  52. Supercell invests $2.8m in 2UP Games
  53. As World of Warcraft enters the Shadowlands: “Why should it ever end?”: John Hight and Morgan Day share how the World of Warcraft team is still building on its MMORPG 16 years after launch
  54. Yakuza: Like a Dragon’s turn-based combat came from an April Fools joke that went too well
  55. Aiming to curb DMCAs, CDPR builds copyrighted music toggle into Cyberpunk 2077
  56. ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Has A Built-In Mode For Content Creators That Disables Copyrighted Music
  57. Ridiculous: ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Will Ship With A Mode Just To Help Streamers Avoid DMCA Notices
  58. The bulk of CD Projekt’s $27.9 million in Q3 revenue came from The Witcher 3
  59. Nvidia developed a radically different way to compress video calls
  60. Nvidia sidesteps the App Store to bring GeForce Now game streaming to iOS
  61. Analysis: Nvidia GeForce Now cloud gaming service comes to iOS
  62. Stadia plans to bypass App Store with web app iOS launch
  63. Google Stadia begins public iOS test in a few weeks: With Apple blocking games streaming via apps, Google moves Stadia to Safari as a web app
  64. Controller use on Steam has doubled in past two years
  65. Controller use on Steam has ‘more than doubled’ since 2018
  66. Steam beefs up DualSense support with LED, rumble, and more
  67. The anatomy of a Steam sale
  68. “The time is right to re-evaluate open worlds. We can do better”
  69. Unknown 9’s multimedia awakening
  70. The forgotten Flash Website movement (when websites were ‘the new emerging artform’)
  71. GeForce Now arrives on iOS via Safari: Nvidia gets around App Store’s game streaming policies with a beta version of browser-based offering, will soon add support for GOG storefront titles
  72. PS5 is biggest console launch in history
  73. PlayStation 5 delivers ‘biggest console launch ever’ for Sony
  74. PlayStation 5 sold almost six times as many units as Xbox Series X|S in Japan: Sony’s consoles sold 118,085 units in four days, while Microsoft’s machines sold 20,534 in six days
  75. Spider-Man: Miles Morales is PS5’s biggest launch game as Call of Duty grabs No.1 | UK Boxed Charts
  76. Scalpers and bots reportedly driving PS5 shortages
  77. Xbox Series X/S vs. PlayStation 5: Our launch-month verdict
  78. Microsoft: Bethesda Games Will Be ‘First, Best’ On Xbox, PC
  79. Xbox experimenting with how to pay studios for Game Pass “because we don’t think we have it figured out
  80. What agreements land games on Game Pass? Xbox head says they’re ‘all over the place’
  81. How to turn your Xbox Series X/S into an emulation powerhouse
  82. How one developer is sneaking emulators through a hole in the Xbox Store
  83. The Winner of the Console Wars is…Light Beer?
  84. JoJo Siwa, Loren Gray To Host 2-Day ‘Among Us’ Event
  85. TikTok developer launches publishing arm and casual gaming platform
  86. COVID-19 expected to boost investment in esports: But esports activity won’t go back to pre-pandemic levels for another year, some execs believe
  87. Esports company Blast receives £1.7m in funding from Edge Investments
  88. Insert Coin, the arcade documentary worth feeding all your quarters into 
  89. OpenBCI Announces Brain-Computer Interface Designed Specifically for VR/AR Headsets
  90. Video: Making compelling character interactions for VR NPCs
  91. Lost “Sega VR” game unearthed, made playable on modern VR headsets
  92. Veteran VR Studio of ‘Waltz of the Wizard’ Pausing PSVR Development Until Sony Addresses PS5 Roadmap
  93. Warner Music: “If artists want to be in the next James Bond, they should want to be in the next AAA game”
  94. Don’t Miss: How GoldenEye 007 set a new standard for video game AI
  95. Don’t Miss: Defining direction, writing, art and music on Yakuza 4
  96. Don’t Miss: The story behind Remedy’s viral dog mocap star
  97. Don’t Miss: Mapping out the subtle social cues throughout Hitman’s level design
  98. Don’t Miss: A PC game for consoles – Remaking Divinity: Original Sin
  99. Video: Bugsnax’s devs discuss launching on the PS5 
  100. Video: A deep dive into Ubisoft’s VR escape rooms
  101. Video: Breaking down the making of Teardown
  102. Video: The world generation tech behind Far Cry 5
  103. Blog: Is Apple’s platform fee reduction a PR move or sound investment?
  104. Blog: General tips for ‘Games as a Service’ indie games
  105. Blog: Power of storytelling in blockbuster casual games?
  106. Blog: The art of compelling quest design in Ghost of Tsushima
  107. Blog: The Impact of video game criticism
  108. Blog: Historians discuss Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
  109. Blog: Four hyper-casual prototype best practices
  110. Deep Dive: Evolving the UX/UI of A Total War Story: Troy using user testing & feedback
  111. Hugo Awards adds video game category for 2021
  112. Patenting video games in Europe – The EPO’s Board of Appeal decide in favour of Nintendo (T1504/17)
  113. U.S. Patent No. 10,532,290: Sharing recorded gameplay to a social graph

DIGITAL

  1. Twitter, Facebook Plan For Post-Trump Era
  2. Why it’s easy to hate Facebook but hard to leave
  3. Facebook AI catches 95% of hate speech; company still wants mods back in office
  4. Facebook Could See Antitrust Charges From Nearly 40 States Over Acquisitions Of Instagram, WhatsApp
  5. Advertisers Challenge Facebook’s Representations on Audience Targeting and Fraudulent Traffic
  6. Facebook Says Ads for Giving Tuesday Are OK, So Long as They Aren’t About Social Issues
  7. Disappointing: Netflix Decides To Settle With Chooseco LLC Over ‘Bandersnatch’ Lawsuit
  8. Instagram Adds Branded Content Tags To ‘Reels’, ‘Live’, Unveils Several Updates To ‘Branded Content Ads’ Format
  9. Age Gating on Instagram is Now a Bit Easier
  10. David Attenborough Departs Instagram Mere Months After Record-Breaking Foray
  11. White House Offers To Allow Renaming Confederate Bases… In Exchange For Getting Rid Of Section 230
  12. Content Moderation Case Study: Facebook Attracts International Attention When It Removes A Historic Vietnam War Photo Posted By The Editor-in-Chief Of Norway’s Biggest Newspaper (2016)
  13. Bad Analogy: Comparing Social Media To Guns
  14. AMD laptops have a hidden 10-second performance delay. Here’s why
  15. Apple security chief maintains innocence after bribery charges
  16. Apple moving forward with plan to limit “creepy” user tracking
  17. “We are giddy”—interviewing Apple about its Mac silicon revolution
  18. Mac mini and Apple Silicon M1 review: Not so crazy after all
  19. Snapchat Giving $1 Million Per Day To “Top” Creators With New Short Video Platform ‘Spotlight’
  20. BuzzFeed Acquires HuffPost In Stock Deal As Part Of Larger Pact With Its Parent, Verizon Media
  21. Creator-To-Consumer Vendor Gumroad Launches Monthly Memberships
  22. Wonder What’s Ahead For Film? Watch What WarnerMedia Does
  23. Nvidia developed a radically different way to compress video calls
  24. Will Parler Users Treat Its ‘Glitch’ That Hid Georgia Election Content The Same Way They Treated A Twitter Glitch?
  25. YouTube Defeats Lawsuit Over Cryptocurrency Scam–Ripple v. YouTube (Eric Goldman)
  26. After Quitting YouTube, Ingrid Nilsen To Launch Fragrance Studio ‘The New Savant’
  27. As Billie Eilish Hits 1 Billion Views, YouTube Unveils ‘Infinite Music Video’ Concept For “Bad Guy”
  28. Top 50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide Last Week
  29. Top 50 Most Viewed US YouTube Channels Last Week
  30. Snapchat Giving $1 Million Per Day To “Top” Creators With New Short Video Platform ‘Spotlight’
  31. Is Food The New Merch For Creators? And Are Ghost Kitchens The Next Frontier?
  32. MrBeast Launches New Channel, ‘Beast Philanthropy,’ To Raise Money For His Food Bank
  33. Inconceivable: TikToker Who Made Paint Mixing Very, Very Cool… Is Fired From Sherwin-Williams For Doing So
  34. Charli D’Amelio Has Amassed 100 Million TikTok Followers In One-And-A-Half Years
  35. A general introduction to the regulation of virtual currencies in USA

A.I.

  1. USPTO Releases Public Comments on AI
  2. Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property: Transatlantic Approaches
  3. Intellectual property strategies for data and artificial intelligence – ThinkHouse
  4. Florida Sheriff’s Pre-Crime Software Says D-Students And Victims Of Domestic Violence Are Potential Criminals
  5. AI & cybersecurity: reflections on a multidimensional relationship
  6. When AI sees a man, it thinks “official.” A woman? “Smile”
  7. AI Trends Part 1: IoT privacy and security risks
  8. AI in the boardroom: opportunities and challenges
  9. Robots invade the construction site 

COMMUNICATIONS

  1. Canadian Government introduces legislation that would fundamentally transform the broadcasting ‎system
  2. The Broadcasting Act Blunder, Day One: Why There is No Canadian Content Crisis (Michael Geist)
  3. The Broadcasting Act Blunder, Day Two: What the Government Doesn’t Say About Creating a “Level Playing Field” (Michael Geist)
  4. The Broadcasting Act Blunder, Day Three: Minister Guilbeault Says Bill C-10 Contains Economic Thresholds That Limit Internet Regulation. It Doesn’t. (Michael Geist)
  5. The Broadcasting Act Blunder, Day Four: Why Many News Sites Are Captured by Bill C-10 (Michael Geist)
  6. The Broadcasting Act Blunder, Day Five: The Narrow Exclusion of User Generated Content Services (Michael Geist)
  7. 10 Years Of U.S. Broadband Policy Has Been A Colossal Failure 
  8. ‘Activist’ Investor Elliott Management Sells Stake In AT&T After Encouraging Mass Firings
  9. AT&T raises DirecTV prices again amid customer losses and possible sale
  10. More Evidence FCC Claims That Killing Net Neutrality Would Boost Broadband Investment Were Bullshit
  11. FCC reallocates transportation safety spectrum for Wi-Fi use, endorses C-V2X for auto safety
  12. Ajit Pai’s FCC Does Something Good, Frees Wireless Spectrum The Auto Industry Had Done Little With
  13. Trump’s FCC Nominee Asked Fox News To Help Destroy Section 230 To Help Elect More Republicans
  14. Comcast raising TV and Internet prices, including a big hike to hidden fees
  15. UK government buys chunk of bankrupt Starlink competitor, OneWeb
  16. OneWeb exits bankruptcy and is ready to launch more broadband satellites

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

  1.  Using music in your business? Copyright fees proposed to increase
  2. Disney (Disney!) Accused Of Trying To Lawyer Its Way Out Of Paying Royalties To Alan Dean Foster
  3. Who Owns Vacation Photos of You? Probably Not You–Hubay v. Mendez (Eric Goldman)
  4. Hyperlinking: more control for copyright owners
  5. “Cultural misinterpretation” or designer’s freedom?
  6. Due diligence of copyright is key when purchasing a record label business
  7. Poland’s Bid To Get Upload Filters Taken Out Of The EU Copyright Directive Suddenly Looks Much More Hopeful
  8. Brexit and copyright: 6 key things to know
  9. Good News: Academics Can Make Their Articles Published In Top Journal Nature Freely Available As Open Access. Bad News: They Must Pay $11,000 For Each One 
  10. Bricks and mortar or is online in order? Federal Court of Appeal checks in to trademark use and hotel services
  11. UK High Court finds EAGLE RARE infringed by AMERICAN EAGLE
  12. Puma v Nike Footwear brands dispute FOOTWARE
  13. The Lord Chamberlain v Grant Harrold – British Queen blocks Royal Butler trade mark 
  14. Taiwanese Semiconductor Pleads Guilty, To Pay $60 Million Fine for Criminal Trade Secret Theft 
  15. Understanding compulsory licensing: a global overview 
  16. Recent Patent Developments in the Autonomous Vehicle Market 
  17. Common Patent Misconceptions – Myth #5 – Provisional Applications
  18. Printed Matter Is Patentable If It’s Functional, Not Just Communicative 

PRIVACY

  1. Canada Proposes Federal Privacy Law Overhaul – Key Takeaways 
  2. The dawn of Canadian Privacy Law 2.0: The Consumer Privacy Protection Act introduced 
  3. Attention, mall shoppers: your data is being collected!
  4. ‘You Have Zero Privacy’ Say RCMP Social Media Surveillance Documents Before Going On To Demonstrate Why
  5. US Military Is Buying Location Data From Data Brokers, Including Data Pulled From US App Users
  6. Portland, Maine Passes Facial Recognition Ban That Says The City Can Fire Employees For Violating It
  7. Seattle PD Detective Took Clearview Facial Recognition Tech For A Spin, Possibly Violating Local Laws
  8. Very Little Stands Between the U.S. and a Technological Panopticon
  9. Court Sends Wyze Labs Privacy Suit to Arbitration (Eric Goldman)
  10. Google is testing end-to-end encryption in Android Messages
  11. Make the Web Great Again (Andres Guadamuz) 

CREATIVITY

  1. Cryptocurrency Giant Binance Sues Forbes, Driving New Attention To Article About Binance’s Corporate Structuring

Jon

Read More | No Comments



Creative Commons License