GAMES
- Sensor Tower: Gaming accounted for 75% of total mobile revenue so far in 2019 – Game spending reaches nearly $30 billion this year
- Developers and G2A clash over the impact of grey market keys on indies
- No More Robots petition demands G2A drop all indie games: Mike Rose claims retailer is “lying” about his lack of contact, and low sales of Descenders via its marketplace “isn’t the fucking point”
- G2A: “We want to finally stop the accusations” – Divisive marketplace addresses developer complaints after indies called for players to pirate games rather than purchase from G2A
- G2A: “It’s a good thing that people can re-sell keys” – Marketplace says it aims to present a solution to current controversy later this week
- G2A image rehabilitation effort backfires: Platform says employee approached 10 sites to run undisclosed sponsored post, says it was unauthorized, “absolutely unacceptable”
- Indie Publishers Tell Gamers To Pirate Instead Of Buying Keys Through Reseller G2A
- GameStop: “As new subscription services evolve, we’ll evolve along with them” – US retail giant talks about surviving the digital transition by turning stores into experiences
- Take This rounds up data on crunch and mental health in the game industry
- For Warframe, live support means seeing development as a marathon, not a sprint
- New executive directors named for both the IGDA and the IGDA Foundation
- China’s biggest game devs join forces to create new age rating system
- Microsoft and Sony reportedly scaling back console production in China: President Trump’s trade war causing further disruption in tech sector manufacturing
- Report: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo consider moving manufacturing out of China
- Nintendo will move parts of Switch production from China to Vietnam
- Nintendo moves some Switch production to Vietnam: Japanese publisher confirms the move is to diversify its manufacturing locations, and is unrelated to proposed tariffs
- “Xbox Game Pass is the first time subscription is fair for developers”: At Gamelab 2019, a panel of developers debated the breakthrough Microsoft has made with its subscription service
- Research lessons from the making (and near-breaking) ofHalo 2
- French government launches ‘Join the Game’ campaign to recruit game devs
- French government launches campaign to attract UK talent post-Brexit: UKIE CEO responds to Join the Game, which boasts tax breaks and funding for studios that relocate
- UK trade association asks government to counter France’s seduction of game devs
- TIGA calls for Video Game Investment Fund for UK devs to prevent post-Brexit exodus: “Governments in other jurisdictions will continue to seek to attract our successful studios and talented development staff”
- Yogscast cuts ties with Matthew ‘Caff’ Meredith after sexual harassment allegations: Meredith’s entire mod team abandons him as eight victims come forward in three days
- Obsidian has been “very careful” not to “lecture” players with politics in Outer Worlds: “I don’t want people to think this is a really hard, politically-charged game,” says co-director Leonard Boyarsky
- Google speaks to fuzzy game-ownership question in new Stadia FAQ
- tinyBuild CEO clears confusion on DRM stance after one rep says it’s “not smart business”: Alex Nichiporchik claims comments were result of not properly training community managers on the issue
- Hello Games: Positive No Man’s Sky stories “don’t do as well — and that’s a problem” – Sean Murray discussed his decision to stop talking to the press after the launch of No Man’s Sky
- League of Legends leads Fortnite as Twitch’s most viewed game of 2019
- League of Legends reclaims top spot on Twitch: Riot’s MOBA on track to exceed one billion hours viewed in 2019, as Fortnite begins to flag
- Former Riot and EA devs form new multiplayer studio, Vela Games
- Konami PES rebrand will help the series in Europe: “Talking about Pro Evolution Soccer — in Europe, it was always a tricky one”
- Former Paradox CEO defends studio’s continuous DLC model as ‘fair and balanced’
- Paradox’s Fredrik Wester defends company’s DLC policy:
- Former CEO says business model isn’t flawless but funds ongoing development and allows for experimentation
- The GamesIndustry.biz Podcast: Why people see EA as the “bad guys”
- Tencent, Chinese gaming companies push new age rating system: Proposed system would have four categories, spearheaded by publishers and developers
- Official StarCraft mod makes the game look like a Saturday morning cartoon
- Don’t Miss: Devs measure the enduring influence ofStarCraft
- When will Disney get back into video games? | Opinion: Suggesting Disney should buy Activision Blizzard is half correct; its gaming strategy needs re-evaluation, but that’s the wrong acquisition
- Artifact designer says game is salvageable, but isn’t interested in damage control: “Valve is a smart company with lots of smart people working there, I think that it’s possible they can do that,” says Richard Garfield
- Layoffs at Endless Entertainment: Mobile studios behind Series Your Story Universe dismisses seven staff due to slowdown in development cycle
- RuneScape dev Jagex sold by parent company for $530 million
- Glass Bottom Games on taking “the biggest possible swing” with Skatebird
- How Zachtronics makes its games so GIFable: Studio founder Zach Barth discusses why screenshots are more important for indies than trailers
- Zachtronics offers free educational licenses for all of its games: SpaceChem and Opus Magnum dev advises educators to “understand” the games before showing them to students
- Blog: Why Academia: School Simulator hasn’t done as well as similar games
- Nintendo is ‘investigating’ 5G and streaming tech, but refuses to ‘chase trends’
- Shigeru Miyamoto: Games will still be fun without streaming: Legendary Nintendo designer says “it may look like we’re falling behind” but platform holder is still keeping up with new tech like VR
- Nintendo Switch Online now has over 10 million subscribers
- Bethesda: “We are bringing some people to Nintendo Switch” – Pete Hines discusses building new IP, the potential of streaming, and its recent love for Nintendo
- Super Mario Maker 2 holds UK No.1 in strong week for Nintendo Switch: Handheld game sales rise as summer months roll on
- The compact Switch Lite is Nintendo’s newest dedicated handheld
- Nintendo confirms portable-only, $200 “Switch Lite” for September [Updated]
- Nintendo: The 3DS isn’t about to be replaced by the Switch Lite
- Crash Team Racing nitro-boosts to stay at the top of EMEAA charts
- Beat Saber dev Beat Games shuffles leadership as CEO steps down
- Report: Facebook Signs Deal for ‘Assassin’s Creed’ & ‘Splinter Cell’ VR Games
- Grab the new XRDC Healthcare Report and see how AR/VR is changing medicine!
- Play as Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand in Metal Gear Solid 5
- Gaming Luminary DanTDM Concludes Arena-Only U.K. Tour Dubbed ‘The Contest’
- DrLupo, Who Raised $920,000 In 4 Hours For St. Jude, Honored As Hospital’s First ‘Creator Of The Year’
- Cuphead has sold 4 million copies and has a Netflix adaptation on the way
- Cuphead the game is becoming Cuphead the animated Netflix series
- Cuphead getting Netflix series: Syndication company behind Betty Boop and Popeye helping adapt vintage cartoon-styled game that has now sold more than 4 million
- U.S. Patent No. 8,858,328: Storage medium having game program stored therein, hand-held game apparatus, game system, and game method
- Shovel Knight has surpassed 2.5 million sales
- Mobile dev Million Victories raises $1.4 million
- Smite and Paladins developer Hi-Rez has opened its first UK studio
- Former Panic Button development director opens new studio Enduring Games
- My Friend Pedro’s journey from Flash cult hit to indie success
- Fall Guys developer Mediatonic cuts the ribbon on new Madrid studio
- Don’t Miss: How to design for coziness
- Don’t Miss: 50 common game camera mistakes — and how to fix them
- Don’t Miss: Monsters from the id: The making of the original Doom
- Blog: Generating world maps for Unexplored 2
- Watch Children of Morta’s lead dev explain its family-focused game design
- Video: Game design tools beyond spreadsheets and flowcharts
- Exploring special game modes in a roguelike context
- Keywords Studios opens recording studio for game localization in Brazil
- Behind the 12-year-old Wii Sports hoax that briefly fooled the Internet
- Fixing the past: The art of collecting pinball machines
DIGITAL
- Once Again, Russian Internet Propaganda Efforts Shown To Be Much Bigger Than Originally Believed
- Report: Russian intel started the Seth Rich rumor to cover for DNC hack – Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff claims SVR was the source of story in “ConspiracyLand” podcast.
- Appeals Court Affirms: Trump Can’t Block Followers On Social Media
- Pres. Trump Violates the Constitution By Blocking @RealDonaldTrump Followers–Knight First Amendment v. Trump
- Trump’s Twitter blocks violate First Amendment rights, appeals court affirms
- Prenda Law porn-troll saga ends with prison for founder
- Prenda’s John Steele Gets 5 Years In Prison; Insists He’s Really, Really, Really Sorry
- CBP Agents Flocked To Closed Facebook Groups To Post Bigoted Memes And Insult Detainees
- If You Want To Kill Google And Facebook, Leaving Section 230 Alone Is Your Best Hope
- France wants to fine Facebook over hate speech: The measure would force companies to remove content within 24 hours, and was approved by the lower house of the French Parliament Thursday
- Governor Cuomo Calls For Investigation Into Facebook’s Advertising Practices
- Wellness startup’s generic Viagra ads flout Facebook rules
- Facebook Unveils New Monetization Tools, Including More Creator Control Over ‘Ad Breaks’
- Facebook says it will launch experimental apps under NPE Team name: Facebook experiments… what could go wrong?
- Facebook Announces Libra Cryptocurrency and Calibra Wallet
- Why Libra Needs A Humanitarian Fig Leaf
- SEC Sues Social Media Co. Over $100 Million ICO
- Computer from NASA’s Apollo program reprogrammed to mine bitcoin
- Web Scraping Decisions Consider Contract Cause of Action
- Comments on Sen. Hawley’s “[Ending] Support for Internet Censorship Act” (Eric Goldman)
- Politicians Queue Up To Make France’s Proposed Law Against ‘Hateful Content’ Far, Far Worse
- Could ‘fake text’ be the next global political threat?: An AI fake text generator that can write paragraphs in a style based on just a sentence has raised concerns about its potential to spread false information
- Amazon Workers Plan Prime Day Strike at Minnesota Warehouse
- Court rules Amazon can be held responsible for defective third-party goods
- Amazon May Be Liable for Marketplace Items–Oberdorf v. Amazon (Eric Golman)
- “Close to 10%” of Autopilot software team reportedly departs after shakeup
- ‘Deep Fake’ Legislation Is On The Way, Threatening Free Speech Protections
- The UK’s Entire Approach To ‘Online Harms’ Is Backwards… And No One Cares
- UK ISPs Vilify Mozilla For Trying To Secure The Internet
- FTC Reportedly Considering Asking YouTubers To Turn Off Ads In The Name Of Child Privacy
- YouTube’s Cleanup Efforts Are Driving Business Opportunities for Creators, Says Product Chief Neal Mohan
- YouTube Updates Video Editing Tools, Allowing Creators To Automatically Release Manual Copyright Claims
- YouTube is making it much easier for creators to deal with copyright claims
- Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: The Case Of YouTube And ‘Hacking’ Videos
- Studio71 Signs Jacksepticeye, Joey Graceffa and Other YouTubers to Multichannel Network Roster
- Having 30,000 followers makes you a celebrity, UK advertising watchdog rules: The one time it might be ok to obsess over your follower count
- What Actually Counts As Good Engagement For Influencer Marketing?
- RTL Consolidates Digital Operations, Sets Ambitious Revenue Target
- Report: Struggling HQ Trivia developer cuts workforce by 20 percent
- Layoffs at HQ Trivia as downloads continue to fall: Troubled mobile company streamlines as it shifts towards subscriptions
- Report: TikTok was installed 344m times in first half of 2019
- TikTok Is A Mostly Untapped Space For Western Ecommerce — But Chinese Companies Are Using It To Make Millions
- Russell Simmons-Founded All Def Digital Lays Off Staff in Reorg; CEO Claims Company Isn’t Shutting Down
- Mobile Content Vs. Short-Form – It’s Not the Same Thing
- Beauty Brand Il Makiage Re-Launches Website With Micro Influencers To Solve Makeup’s Ecommerce Conundrum
- Arnold Schwarzenegger, Serena Williams to Create Shows for Snapchat
- Snapchat snaps up shows from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maddie Ziegler
- Snapchat Launches ‘Creator Shows’ From Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Hart, Serena Williams and Others – With Ad-Revenue Sharing Deals
- Snapchat Introduces New ‘Creator Shows’ Format With Emma Chamberlain, Rickey Thompson, FaZe Banks
- Snapchat is launching Creator Shows featuring stars and influencers: They’ll be five-minute shorts with around 10 episodes
- BuzzFeed Debuts First Snapchat Original, Weekday Trendy News Roundup ‘BTW’
- BBC Studios Invests in Short-Form Platform Quibi
- BBC Studios Invests In Quibi, Will Produce Original Nature Series ‘Fierce Queens’
- Why Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Quibi Is Luring A-List Talent
- AT&T takes some Time Warner shows off Netflix, makes them exclusive to HBO Max
- Sony Pictures Buys Nurulize, a Virtual Production Software Startup
- IBM Patents a Watch That Unfolds Into a Full Tablet
- The computer conundrum: New technologies force the profession to deal with new ethical debates
- Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4
- Behold, the most (intentionally) poorly designed website ever created
- Penetration testing takes on new meaning when cyber meets Harlequin
- The DMCA bell did not toll for a beloved musician—thus, I could grieve him
- Third parties confirm AMD’s outstanding Ryzen 3000 numbers: AMD has pulled ahead of Intel for the first time in 20 years.
- Microsoft releases Windows 1.11 throwback app as a Stranger Things tie-in
A.I.
- Lennon or McCartney? Machine learning tries to crack disputed Beatles authorship: Researchers at Harvard analysed 8 songs to find out which Beatle wrote them
- AI made from a sheet of glass can recognise numbers just by looking
- Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes: Deep learning has a terrible carbon footprint.
- Tiny robot leaps around carrying its own battery, electronics
COMMUNICATIONS
- What we Heard – The Report of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review (BTLR) Panel
- Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review: What We Heard Report
- ‘Smoking gun’: Huawei staff employment records link them to Chinese military agencies
- “This is crazy”: FCC kills part of San Francisco’s broadband-competition law
- Killing Net Neutrality Rules Did Far More Harm Than You Probably Realize
- Amazon plans nationwide broadband—with both home and mobile service
- Amazon Jumps Into The Satellite Broadband Game
- AT&T’s robocall-blocking expansion won’t block spam calls unless you pay extra
- Coop Leader Testifies Regarding Inaccurate FCC Broadband Data
- T-Mobile says it can’t be sued by users because of forced-arbitration clause
- Last Woman Standing: Belittled by Viacom and CBS executives and insulted by her own father, Shari Redstone now sits atop a $30 billion media empire.
PRIVACY
- Court: It’s Cool If The (Federal) Government Searches A Phone The (Local) Government Seized Illegally
- Breaching the GDPR won’t fly with the ICO
- British airways to be fined a record £183m for data breach
- British Airways faces record-breaking GDPR fine after data breach: The ICO wants to fine the airline £183 million
- New UK ICO guidance on cookies and similar technologies
- GDPR: One Year On
- Can I buy a phone that doesn’t use anything from Google or Apple?: Steve does not like firms slurping up his data, so wants a device that respects his privacy
- Zoom for Mac made it too easy for hackers to access webcams. Here’s what to do [Updated]
- Silent Mac update nukes dangerous webserver installed by Zoom
- D-Link Settles With FTC, Agrees To Fix Its Shoddy Router Security
- Whitehats use DoS attack to score key victory against ransomware crooks
- Starter for five on Legislating the Internet of Things
- Months After The Law’s Enactment, California Law Enforcement Agencies Are Still Blowing Off Public Records Requests
- Voting Machine Makers Claim The Names Of The Entities That Own Them Are Trade Secrets
- Thinking Of Privacy As A Property Right Will End Badly
CREATIVITY
- In Canada and elsewhere, freedom of speech is on the endangered list
- Cameras should be welcomed in Canadian courtrooms: Forstner
- Health Canada’s new draft Guidance on Advertising versus Other Activities is now available
- New rules banning harmful gender stereotyping in advertising
- Indonesian Court Convicts Woman Of Criminal Defamation For Recording Her Boss Trying To Harass Her Into An Affair With Him
- Big Fair Use Win Concerning Andy Warhol’s Paintings Of Prince
- Whose Game is on? Carrie Underwood and NBC sued over SNF song
- Pirates of the Caribbean Copyright Suit Must Walk The Plank
- Copyright Infringement Claims Precluded by Plaintiff’s Own Patent Lawsuit
- Supreme Court to consider Abrogation of Sovereign Immunity under Copyright Law
- Supreme Court to address Whether Copyright Protection available for Annotated State Code
- Breach of confidence, copyright and database rights: live sports data
- International trademarks: Is the Madrid System right for you?
- Vegan Food Manufacturers Sue State Over Unconstitutional Law Banning Them From Using Meat Words
- Sound, Noise, Distinguish? The relationship between sound and intellectual property law (Shane Burke)
- 1H 2019 Quick Links, Part 2 (Keyword Advertising) (Eric Goldman)
- 1H 2019 Quick Links, Part 3 (Trademarks) (Eric Goldman)
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