Following controversial changes to Dungeons & Dragons' decades-old Open Gaming License (OGL), "many prominent third-party RPG publishers now say they're abandoning the OGL, regardless of what changes [publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC)] officially releases in a coming new version," reports Ars Technica. "What's more, many in the community have now lost faith in WotC's stewardship of the licensed rules system that has underpinned so much of the industry's last two decades." From the report: Pathfinder publisher Paizo Inc. is behind perhaps the biggest effort to move the industry away from WotC's OGL. The company announced last Thursday that it is creating a new Open RPG Creative License (ORC) designed to be "open, perpetual, and irrevocable." [...] Regardless of the legal fate of the OGL, Paizo says it wants to "irrevocably and unquestionably keep alive the spirit of the Open Game License" with its new ORC. The system-agnostic license, designed with the help of IP law firm Azora Law, will eventually be controlled and protected by a nonprofit akin to the Linux Foundation, the company says. Until that new license is ready, upcoming Paizo products will be printed without any explicit license, the company says.

Paizo's ORC effort has already drawn some significant support from the community. Call of Cthulhu and Runequest publisher Chaosium, which never used the WotC OGL for its products in the first place, nonetheless writes that it's "very happy to be working with the rest of the industry to come up with a system-wide OGL that anyone can use." Popular D&D module publisher Kobold Press has also lent its support to Paizo's ORC product but stopped just short of committing to use it for its just-announced Core Fantasy ruleset, codenamed Project Black Flag. Instead, Kobold says it is "wait[ing] to see exactly what shape the Open Gaming License might take in this new era" and "will review the terms and consider whether they fit the needs of our audience and our business goals" when the updated OGL is eventually released. Mutants & Masterminds publisher Green Ronin is also on board with the ORC, with founder and President Chris Pramas publicly comparing the current OGL fiasco to WotC's disastrous attempt to push a new Game System License for the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons back in 2008.

Apart from the companies backing Paizo's ORC -- including Legendary Games and Rogue Genius -- some tabletop publishers are creating their own licenses or finding other ways to extricate themselves from the WotC OGL. Blade Runner RPG and Mutant: Year Zero publisher Free League, for instance, says it's overhauling its unique Year Zero Engine to remove any WotC OGL content. At the same time, it's creating a new "irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free" license for anyone who wants to use that engine in their own games. [...] Old-School Essentials publisher Necrotic Gnome has similarly announced that it's "moving away from the OGL" for its future products. The company is leaving a bit of wiggle room, saying it will be "keeping an eye on developments" and that its next move "will depend on how the OGL topic develops over the coming months." But Necrotic Gnome adds that "the direction is clear," and that direction is toward "an alternative open license," which could end up being Paizo's ORC. Arcadia publisher MCDM and publisher Basic Fantasy also have plans to abandon the D&D 5th edition ruleset. "Troll Lord Games, meanwhile, publicly abandoned the OGL weeks ago and liquidated its existing stock of 5th-edition D&D products, 'never to be revisited again, in any edition,'" adds Ars.

An anonymous reader shares a report from the Washington Post: Staff at Activision Blizzard-owned video game studio Proletariat — whose name is a term for the working class — announced their intention to form a union in December of last year. "Well, what'd you expect?" the Proletariat Workers Alliance wrote on Twitter at the time. Earlier this week, however, Proletariat leadership shared an update: Instead of voluntarily recognizing the union, it will conduct an anonymous vote through the National Labor Relations Board.

Proletariat owner Activision Blizzard has been accused of employing union-busting tactics in its negotiations with two other subsidiaries that have voted to unionize, Raven Software and Blizzard Albany.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Game Rant: A Discord user has just released various development assets from Valve's repository. It is not an isolated case as Valve is a constant target of hackers and the like. There have been multiple instances wherein concept images or artwork randomly surface on the internet. Valve is a globally recognized company whose games such as Half-Life, Portal, and Team Fortress have grown its large fan base. Its games go through a lengthy development process, which is the reason hundreds to thousands of documents, photos, and such are accumulated during this period. Only a limited number of staff with a Source developer license would have had access to the repository. As such, the files might have been more secure if access was limited.

Twitter user sylvia_braixen stated that one of the biggest Valve data breaches had just occurred. Not long after, they shared screenshots showing the various drops made onto a Discord server. They believe that the files were from the same wave of uploads that users got a taste of as early as 2016. According to the screenshots, the uploads were done by a user named Leakerwanderer, who had access to the Valve repository. Titles such as Half-Life and Team Fortress 2 are no strangers to leaks, and they were among those that had its assets shown this time as well.

Currently, the documents are accessible via a Discord server named Valve Cut Content. However, upon checking, the server is not accepting new members because of the recent flood of users who have tried to check out the files. With the gravity of the leak, people are left wondering if this data breach is a targeted attack, especially since a recent Valve prototype of Left 4 Dead surfaced online just a few days before. It seems that may have served as a precursor to this bigger repository leak.

Google is launching its final Stadia game today and is promising to release a tool next week to enable Bluetooth connections on its Stadia Controller. The Verge reports: The last Stadia game to launch on the service is Worm Game, a test game that was technically available on Stadia before Stadia launched publicly in November 2019. Developers at Google have decided to release the game just before the streaming service disappears next week. [...] Alongside the new game, Google is also committing to enabling Bluetooth on Stadia controllers. Google Stadia owners will be pleased to hear there's a self-serve tool coming next week that will enable Bluetooth on the Stadia Controller. "We'll share details next week on how to enable this feature," says a Google Stadia community manager in a forum post.

Google originally launched the Stadia Controller as a device that connects directly to Stadia services and had the Bluetooth chip disabled. After news broke of the Stadia shutdown, fans have been finding ways to save the controller from an e-waste fate by using workarounds to connect it wirelessly to other devices. Workarounds like connecting to an Android device will no longer be required thanks to this new tool. It means that most Stadia players that purchased a Founders or Premiere edition will have been effectively gifted a free Bluetooth controller thanks to Google's refunds.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: After a week of silence amid intense backlash, Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has finally addressed its community's concerns about changes to the open gaming license. The open gaming license (OGL) has existed since 2000 and has made it possible for a diverse ecosystem of third-party creators to publish virtual tabletop software, expansion books and more. Many of these creators can make a living thanks to the OGL. But over the last week, a new version of the OGL leaked after WoTC sent it to some top creators. More than 66,000 Dungeons & Dragons fans signed an open letter under the name #OpenDnD ahead of an expected announcement, and waves of users deleted their subscriptions to D&D Beyond, WoTC's online platform. Now, WoTC admitted that "it's clear from the reaction that we rolled a 1." Or, in non-Dungeons and Dragons speak, they screwed up.

"We wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community -- not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose," the company wrote in a statement. But fans have critiqued this language, since WoTC -- a subsidiary of Hasbro -- is a "major corporation" in itself. Hasbro earned $1.68 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2022. TechCrunch spoke to content creators who had received the unpublished OGL update from WoTC. The terms of this updated OGL would force any creator making more than $50,000 to report earnings to WoTC. Creators earning over $750,000 in gross revenue would have to pay a 25% royalty. The latter creators are the closest thing that third-party Dungeons & Dragons content has to "major corporations" -- but gross revenue is not a reflection of profit, so to refer to these companies in that way is a misnomer. [...] The fan community also worried about whether WoTC would be allowed to publish and profit off of third-party work without credit to the original creator. Noah Downs, a partner at Premack Rogers and a Dungeons & Dragons livestreamer, told TechCrunch that there was a clause in the document that granted WoTC a perpetual, royalty-free sublicense to all third-party content created under the OGL.

Now, WoTC appears to be walking back both the royalty clause and the perpetual license. "What [the next OGL] will not contain is any royalty structure. It also will not include the license back provision that some people were afraid was a means for us to steal work. That thought never crossed our minds," WoTC wrote in a statement. "Under any new OGL, you will own the content you create. We won't." WoTC claims that it included this language in the leaked version of the OGL to prevent creators from being able to "incorrectly allege" that WoTC stole their work. Throughout the document, WoTC refers to the document that certain creators received as a draft -- however, creators who received the document told TechCrunch that it was sent to them with the intention of getting them to sign off on it. The backlash against these terms was so severe that other tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) publishers took action. Paizo is the publisher of Pathfinder, a popular game covered under WoTC's original OGL. Paizo's owner and presidents were leaders at Wizards of the Coast at the time that the OGL was originally published in 2000, and wrote in a statement yesterday that the company was prepared to go to court over the idea that WoTC could suddenly revoke the OGL license from existing projects. Along with other publishers like Kobold Press, Chaosium and Legendary Games, Paizo announced it would release its own Open RPG Creative License (ORC). "Ultimately, the collective action of the signatures on the open letter and unsubscribing from D&D Beyond made a difference. We have seen that all they care about is profit, and we are hitting their bottom line," said Eric Silver, game master of Dungeons & Dragons podcast Join the Party. He told TechCrunch that WoTC's response on Friday is "just a PR statement."

"Until we see what they release in clear language, we can't let our foot off the gas pedal," Silver said. "The corporate playbook is wait it out until the people get bored; we can't and we won't."

Paramount+ has given an eight-episode, straight-to-series order to an adaptation of Hasbro's wildly popular Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game franchise. Deadline reports: Red Notice filmmaker Rawson Marshall Thurber wrote the pilot script and is set to direct the first episode of the series which will be a co-production between eOne and Paramount Pictures. At Paramount+, the Dungeons & Dragons series will join Halo, the video game adaptation, which is one of the streamer's most popular originals. Over the last couple of years, there has been a resurgence in bringing gaming titles to television, and this is the latest example.

Adapting Dungeons & Dragons for television has been a major focus for eOne under President of Global Television Michael Lombardo following the company's 2019 acquisition by Hasbro. The live-action series has been tipped to be the studio's largest-scope TV project ever, potentially launching a "Dungeons & Dragons" universe spanning multiple scripted and unscripted shows. Overseeing the series for eOne is Gabriel Marano, the company's EVP Scripted Television.

Alongside reaching 32 million concurrently online users, Steam has also just surpassed 10 million concurrent in-game players for the first time. From a report: The news was shared by SteamDB, and it shows the milestones were reached on Saturday, January 7, where the in-game concurrents were at 10,082,055 million and the concurrently online users -- those who are simply on Steam but not necessarily playing a game -- were at 32,186,301. As for what these millions of people were playing, the #1 played game in the past 24 hours as of this writing was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive at 1.08 million concurrent players. Sitting behind Counter-Strike were DOTA 2 (766,096), Goose Goose Duck (605,694), PUBG: Battlegrounds (439,944), and Apex Legends (367,585).

The popular gaming tech company just announced the Leviathan V2 Pro at CES 2023, the latest addition to its existing range of soundbars designed to provide compact, low-profile audio for PC gamers. The Verge reports: Created in partnership with THX and Audioscenic, Razer claims that the Leviathan V2 Pro can envelop a user with "3D audio" by combining beamforming surround sound with head-tracking AI technology. A built-in IR camera can detect the user's position, allowing the soundbar to optimize sound by adapting the audio beams to the listener's position in real time. There are two modes available for the 3D audio feature: THX Spatial Audio Virtual Headset for stereo content that allegedly mimics positional audio typically found in headsets and THX Spatial Audio Virtual Speakers for multi-channel audio that fills a room like a home theatre system. Given this is a Razer product, it also comes with customizable Chroma RGB lighting effects across 30 different lighting zones -- dwarfing the 18 zones you get on the standard Leviathan V2 soundbar.

The Razer Leviathan V2 Pro also comes with a subwoofer to enhance bass. A dedicated 3.5mm input for the subwoofer is included on the rear of the soundbar, alongside a second 3.5mm port for headphones, a power adapter port, and a single USB-C port to connect to your PC. The Leviathan V2 Pro also supports Bluetooth 5.0 if you want to wirelessly connect it to your computer or mobile device. Interesting features and funky lighting aside, pricing is going to be the hardest sell for the Leviathan V2 Pro. Starting at $399.99, it's considerably more expensive than both the standard Leviathan V2 ($249.99) and Leviathan V2 X ($99.99), but you do at least get more ports with this latest model. The Leviathan V2 Pro will be available to buy from February 2023 (if you have deep enough pockets for the purchase).

The PS5 looks to have a design fault that can take months to appear and only seems to happen if you use the console while it's in a vertical orientation. From a report: As Wololo reports, hardware repair specialists working on PS5 consoles that fail to boot are finding the problem is caused by the liquid metal thermal interface Sony used on the custom AMD Zen 2 CPU. When the PS5 is oriented in a vertical position, over time the liquid metal is moving and spilling out on to the components surrounding the CPU. This also means the liquid metal is no longer evenly spread across the chip it's meant to help cool.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The PlayStation 5 shortage is finally over — at least according to Sony. "Everyone who wants a PS5 should have a much easier time finding one at retailers globally, starting from this point forward," said Jim Ryan, the company's gaming boss, during its CES presentation. The company also announced that it's sold around 30 million consoles at this point. That's around 5 million more than the last time it released sales numbers in November.

It's been a long time getting to this point; the PlayStation 5 launched in November 2020, and it wasn't until August 2022 that we declared it "almost easy to buy." For most of the console's life, getting one required you to be either very lucky, relatively on-the-spot with drops, or willing to pay scalpers or Best Buy significantly more than the console's MSRP. Even recently, the main way to get it was via a $550 bundle, which included the PS5 with disk drive, and a game -- that's fine if you were already going to buy Horizon Forbidden West or God of War Ragnarok, but a pretty steep markup if you were hoping for the $399.99 digital console. During the presentation, Ryan thanked PlayStation fans for their patience as the company "managed unprecedented demand amid global challenges over the past two years."

An anonymous reader shares a report: EA says that a temporary "data storage issue" led to the corruption of many Madden NFL 23 players' Connected Franchise Mode (CFM) save files last week. What's worse, the company now estimates it can recover fewer than half of those corrupted files from a backup. The issue started last Monday, December 26, when EA tweeted that it was "aware of players experiencing connection issues when trying to connect to CFM." That problem lasted until Wednesday, December 28, when EA announced that subsequent server maintenance meant that "users should now be able to play CFM without issue."

But users who attempted to log in to play online franchise games during a 22-hour period ranging from Wednesday afternoon to Thursday morning saw their franchise save data corrupted by the aforementioned "data storage issue," as EA confirmed over the weekend. And while EA says some of those corrupted save files can be recovered from a backup, it adds that the development team is "currently projecting around 40% of leagues to be recovered." Players that didn't log in during the outage period last week should be unaffected, EA says, adding that CFM is now "up and running" and is "safe to log in and play." But the company offered a similar message on Wednesday afternoon, just before the period that led players who logged in to lose their save files in the first place.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Quality assurance workers at Microsoft's ZeniMax Studios, the people who make the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Doom, games, just voted to form a union, making it the first games studio to unionize under Microsoft and the largest group of union-represented Quality Assurance testers at any U.S. game studio. ZeniMax Workers United and the Communication Workers of America didn't share the exact vote count but said that the 300 QA testers overwhelmingly voted in favor of their union. Workers decided to join the union by signing union authorization cards or by voting via an online portal. As the company had previously promised, Microsoft has recognized the union.

"Before us is an opportunity to make big changes and bring equity to the video game industry. We want to put an end to sudden periods of crunch, unfair pay, and lack of growth opportunities within the company. Our union will push for truly competitive pay, better communication between management and workers, a clear path for those that want to progress their career, and more," Victoria Banos, a senior QA audio tester at Hunt Valley, said in a statement. "It's difficult to express in words just how much winning our union matters to us. We've been working so hard to get here that it would be impossible not to be excited. We know this is not the end of our hard work, but reaching this milestone gives us faith that when workers stand together, we can accomplish anything we set our minds to," Dylan Burton, a senior QA tester in Dallas said in a statement.

NVIDIA has announced that it's bringing GeForce Now game streaming to cars using the company's Drive platform. Engadget reports: The rollout will offer access to titles like Cyberpunk 2077 on a driver display while you're charging or parked, or any time from the backseat. The cloud gaming option already has initial support from major brands like the Hyundai group (including Genesis and Kia), Polestar and China's BYD. NVIDIA didn't offer a timeframe for GeForce Now access, although it noted that BYD would offer Drive Hyperion-powered cars in the first half of 2023. The Polestar 3 SUV (built using Drive Orin) arrives in late 2023.

The in-car GeForce Now client works on either Android or web-based infotainment systems. NVIDIA's service provides a catalog of 1,500 games, over 1,000 of which are playable using gamepads. While most of the selection is paid, there are free-to-play options like Destiny 2 and Fortnite. As with other game streaming services, this could get costly if you plan to use it often. While basic GeForce Now use is free, you can pay up to $200 per year for the full experience before you factor in the cost of the games themselves. In some cases, though, this might make more sense than buying a handheld console or tablet. Further reading: Nvidia Unveils GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs for Laptops

An anonymous reader shares a report: One year ago this month, Microsoft announced it would spend $68.7 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard, highlighting how it would get "iconic franchises" including Call of Duty, Warcraft and Candy Crush for that fee. But now that gamers and regulators are worrying Microsoft might keep Call of Duty from appearing on Sony's PlayStation, Microsoft's lawyers are suddenly pretending they have no idea why Call of Duty is special. Or even when it came out, for that matter.

As Matt Stoller notes, the company's 37-page reply to the FTC lawsuit seeking to block the Activision Blizzard deal includes this laughable passage: "Microsoft avers that it lacks knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations concerning industry perceptions of Call of Duty and Call of Duty's original release date; or as to the truth of the allegations concerning Call of Duty's launch and typical release schedule and the resources and budget Activision allocates to Call of Duty, including the number of studios that work on Call of Duty."

"Starting next year, Nintendo fans can step through a life-size warp pipe and enter the Mushroom Kingdom," reports Bloomberg, "for the first time on American soil."

Bloomberg shares its reaction after "an early preview tour of the land as it finalizes construction," noting that it has "a chirping soundtrack of cheerful instrumentals and distant coin clinks." Super Nintendo World, an interactive replica of Nintendo's dynamic lands and characters, will bring its colorful chaos to Universal Studios Hollywood when it opens on Feb. 17, 2023. The expansion provides an opportunity to race alongside Mario and Luigi before meeting them face to face, and it will bring video game-inspired dining, retail and merchandise to the California theme park inside an immersive, bowllike structure lined with spinning coins and turtle shells....

Whether Koopa Troopas in motion or a fake desert set against the actual skies, there's always something to look at — and somewhere intriguing to head first. Its marquee attraction, Mario Kart: Bowser's Challenge, puts riders in augmented reality-enabled helmets to experience the Mario Kart racing game firsthand while the challenge plays out virtually in front of them....

Super Nintendo World was released at Universal Studios Japan in March 2021, but its arrival stateside marks Universal Studio Hollywood's largest opening since its Wizarding World of Harry Potter expansion in 2016, and it's the first of Nintendo's notable footprints on domestic soil. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, starring Chris Pratt, hits theaters in April, and a third iteration of Super Nintendo World will open with Epic Universe, the all-new theme park arriving at Universal Orlando Resort in 2025.

In each iteration, the main draw is the Mario Kart experience. Here, riders in four-passenger vehicles will join Team Mario to compete across multiple courses for the Golden Cup — a familiar process to anyone who's played Nintendo's racing challenge back home.
The article reminds readers that "all attendees can punch blocks (with more force than one may anticipate) and re-create other moments in the Mushroom Kingdom."

But they ultimately describe the experience as a kind of "overwhelming immersion, transporting people to a location they've previously seen, but never before in real life."

VentureBeat's lead gaming writer made 10 predictions for 2023. Prediction #8? "Gaming will become more open in 2023." There are many forces at play that will make gaming more open. The web browser is poised for a comeback. Companies are working on ways to get around the restrictions of the app stores by turning to the open web. In the past, this meant bad graphics and limited interactivity. But new standards like glTF and proprietary technologies could enable speedier delivery.

The open web could be succeeded one day by the open metaverse. That won't happen real soon, but enough people are talking about this that the conversation is top of mind at some of the biggest and most important companies in the industry....

Gatekeepers who create platforms still take a 30% cut of royalties. Matthew Ball, author of the bestselling book The Metaverse, has argued that this stands in the way of progress as it weakens the developers who are in the best position to push forward ideas like the metaverse. While the industry isn't going to change overnight, the added awareness to the costs of closed platforms is a catalyst for change.

Epic isn't fighting for this all by itself. The Open Metaverse Standards group has formed to push for better open standards, and USD is making progress as an interoperable 3D file format. Forte and Lamina1 have raised a lot of money and they believe that blockchain technology infrastructure can also improve the openness of sectors such as gaming, enabling players to finally own their stuff.

Overall, more business models and technologies — like Web3 or cloud gaming or subscriptions — will yield more choice for both developers and consumers.

"Rapid chess" grants 15 minutes to each player for all moves (plus 10 seconds per move). "Blitz chess" grants each player three minutes (plus 2 seconds per move).

Now CNN reports that five-time world chess champion Magnus Carlsen "won both the World Rapid and World Blitz chess titles in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in the latest landmark of his glittering career." The 32-year-old Norwegian is now the holder of all three world chess championship titles — in Classical, Rapid and Blitz — for the third time in his career, while no other player has ever won both the Rapid and Blitz titles in the same year.

"Gonna need more hands soon," Carlsen joked on Twitter, posting a video of himself counting his now 15 world titles on his fingers.

It caps a triumphant end to Carlsen's remarkable decade-long reign as the classical world champion, as he has already announced that he will not defend his title next year.
Chess24 reports that for his first three-minute match, Magnus Carlsen showed up two and a half minutes late — and starting with just 30 seconds left on his clock, still beat his opponent.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Rumours of a Nintendo Switch Pro console have been swirling in the video game industry and the gaming community for years. However, it seems that Nintendo is ready to move on from the portable console. According to Digital Foundry's John Linneman, many developers acknowledged that a "mid-generation Switch update" was initially planned, but Nintendo opted to focus instead on building a new console. Nintendo has yet to officially announce its next video game system, and Linneman said he does not expect it will be released until 2023. "So I think at one point internally from what I can understand from talking to different developers, is that there was some sort of mid-generation Switch update planned at one point and that seems to be no longer happening," said Linneman in the Digital Foundry podcast.

Game developer Archer Maclean recently passed away at the age of 60. Maclean was a longtime programmer and designer best known for Dropzone on the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64. Game Developer reports: Born January 28, 1962, Maclean's first game was the aforementioned Dropzone. Following the success of that title, he would go on to do design and graphics for 1986's International Karate (and its 1987 sequel, International Karate+), and several snooker simulation games, including Archer Maclean Presents Pool Paradise. Several of these titles were developed at Awesome Studios, a subsidiary of the now defunct Ignition Entertainment. Maclean co-founded Awesome in 2002, and later left the developer in 2005. He went on to found Awesome Play, creators of the 2009 Nintendo Wii title Speedzone (or Wheelspin in Europe). Though Speedzone marked the end of his time as a game developer, Maclean also wrote columns for Retro Gamer Magazine.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft was hit on Tuesday in U.S. court with a private consumer lawsuit claiming the technology company's $69 billion bid to purchase "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard will unlawfully squelch competition in the video game industry. The complaint filed in federal court in California comes about two weeks after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a case with an administrative law judge seeking to stop Microsoft, owner of the Xbox console, from completing the largest-ever acquisition in the video-gaming market. The private lawsuit also seeks an order blocking Microsoft from acquiring Activision. It was filed on behalf of 10 video game players in California, New Mexico and New Jersey.

The proposed acquisition would give Microsoft "far-outsized market power in the video game industry," the complaint alleged, "with the ability to foreclose rivals, limit output, reduce consumer choice, raise prices, and further inhibit competition." A Microsoft representative on Tuesday defended the deal, saying in a statement that it "will expand competition and create more opportunities for gamers and game developers." After the FTC sued, Microsoft President Brad Smith said, "We have complete confidence in our case and welcome the opportunity to present our case in court."