Shortly after Thursday's release of Grand Theft Auto: The Definitive Edition, the Rockstar Games Launcher on PC went down, leaving most Rockstar titles unplayable, reports PC Gamer.

They also identified possible issues explaining why: Firstly, the Trilogy has shipped with internal developer comments visible on the code, such as... "This shit doesn't work the way they wrote it below so we'll just show the text and place the blip at the beginning of the mission...."

Coders leaving funny comments is one thing: even if you might not want the public to see it, who really cares. However some dataminers have found that Vice City and San Andreas may have shipped with songs that have technically been 'removed' from the game because the licenses have expired... The presence of unlicensed music could in theory be a big headache for Rockstar. While the music may not be accessible to the average user, it is in the product's files and can be accessed using certain tools. And, oh yeah, without the appropriate license.
One dataminer told the site that the audio codec used in these games is the open source OGG-VORBIS, and for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, "EVERY song is there." And then Thursday the official Twitter feed for Rockstar Support announced their Games Launcher was "temporarily offline for maintenance." PC Gamer reported it remained down for more than 16 hours.

Friday night Rockstar Support announced their Launcher was now back online — but that GTA: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition "is unavailable to play or purchase as we remove files unintentionally included in these versions.

"We're sorry for the disruption and hope to have correct ones up soon."

Sony Group has reduced its PlayStation 5 production outlook for this fiscal year due to component and logistics constraints, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The Tokyo-based entertainment giant had previously targeted more than 16 million units assembled in the year ending March, setting it up to achieve its sales goal for the period and also get a head start on the subsequent year's production. The company has now cut that number down to about 15 million, making its aim of 14.8 million PS5 sales by March difficult, the people said, asking not to be named as the information is not public. Logistics issues and parts shortages have grown more severe for Sony, Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki told investors on a conference call late last month. PS5 sales in the quarter ended September were slightly weaker than expectations, he said on Oct. 28, having previously warned that any resurgence in the spread of Covid-19 may impact the company's components supply. The PlayStation 5 became the fastest Sony console to reach 10 million units sold this July, but it has fallen behind the sales pace of its predecessor PlayStation 4 since then.

Valve has delayed the release of its Steam Deck handheld by several months, it announced in a statement today. The anticipated handheld will now start rolling out in February 2022, pushed back from an initial December release. Kotaku reports: "We're sorry about this -- we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues, but due to material shortages, components aren't reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates," Valve wrote. "Based on our updated build estimates, Steam Deck will start shipping to customers February 2022. This will be the new start date of the reservation queue -- all reservation holders keep their place in line but dates will shift back accordingly." Further reading: Valve Launches Steam Deck, a $400 PC Gaming Portable

Over the weekend, the hacking group Fail0verflow claimed to have obtained PS5 root keys allow them to decrypt the console's firmware. "Additionally, Andy Nguyen (a security engineer at Google who's better known under his handle, theflow0) managed to access the PS5's debug settings menu on a retail PS5 over the weekend, too," adds The Verge. Is this the first steps towards jailbreaking Sony's latest console? The Verge's Chaim Gartenberg reports: The two exploits are particularly notable due to the level of access they theoretically give to the PS5's software. Decrypted firmware -- which is possible through Fail0verflow's keys -- would potentially allow for hackers to further reverse engineer the PS5 software and potentially develop the sorts of hacks that allowed for things like installing Linux, emulators, or even pirated games on past Sony consoles.

For now, the two exploits won't result in much of a change for PS5 owners -- there's no sudden PS5 jailbreak available today, and neither Nguyen nor Fail0verflow have published the details of their respective hacks -- nor is it even clear if they ever will. Nguyen has already said that he has "no plans for disclosure" of his hack, while Wololo.net notes that Fail0verflow held off on publishing its PS4 hacks last console generation until Sony patched things, meaning that it's possible none of this will lead to concrete changes in the PS5 hacking scene.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Last evening the web was alive with angry players who couldn't play their games due to an unexpected error. While the situation is still not completely clear, it appears that someone allowed a domain used by Denuvo's anti-piracy technology to expire, meaning that players of some big games couldn't enjoy what they had paid for. [...] According to Alex Buckland, the DRM provider for all of the affected games had let a key domain expire, rendering the system inoperable. Following the failure to renew, the domain then went into a grace period but when that expired too, it appears to have been removed from DNS records. This meant that the domain would not resolve to an IP address, effectively breaking the system.

To solve the problem, some users on Steam posted up tutorials for players to modify their Windows HOSTS file to point to the last known IP address for the domain. This appeared to do the trick but obviously, such drastic measures shouldn't be needed to play a game that has been legally purchased -- especially those that are single-player only.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCMag: Intel has posted a release that the hybrid CPU core architecture on Alder Lake can be incompatible with certain games, specifically some protected by the anti-piracy DRM software from Denuvo. This was confirmed in our review of the Core i9-12900K when we tried to run the hit AAA Ubisoft title Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, part of our processor benchmark suite. The game would crash halfway through the test run, or simply not boot in at all. The errors occur because Denuvo's DRM software will mistakenly think the so-called "Performance-cores" and "Efficiency-cores" (P-cores and E-cores) on the chip belong to two separate PCs, when in reality the two types of processing cores are running on the same Alder Lake processor. (This P-core/E-core design is a new trait of Intel's chips with Alder Lake.)

Intel was originally mum on which specific games were affected, making it unclear the scale of the problem; the company cited "32" in pre-release briefings to the tech press. Whether these would be marginal titles or blockbusters we did not know, as hundreds of games use the Denuvo DRM scheme. But on Thursday, the company published a list of every PC title known to it that has incompatibility issues with Alder Lake. It spans 51 games, including For Honor, Mortal Kombat 11, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, as well as the Assassin's Creed: Valhalla game we observed the issue on. Intel says it is working with game developers to roll out a software fix, although the company notes that some of the affected DRM-protected titles can run fine, so long as your PC is on Windows 11. In the meantime, the company says it has come up with a workaround that can run any of the affected games on Alder Lake. But it'll do so by placing the efficiency cores on standby. "According to Intel, 22 of the games won't work on Alder Lake under both Windows 10 and Windows 11," adds PCMag. "[T]he remaining 29 titles [...] will suffer incompatibility problems, but only when run on Windows 10. So owners can also solve the issue by updating their PCs to Windows 11 or using the Scroll Lock workaround if available."

EA CEO Andrew Wilson called NFT and "play-to-earn" games the "the future of our industry," but added that "it's still early to figure out how that's going to work," when asked about the topic during the company's earnings call this week. From a report: "I think that in the context of the games we create and the live services that we offer, collectible digital content is going to play a meaningful part in our future," Wilson said. "So, it's still early to tell, but I think we're in a really good position, and we should expect us to kind of think more innovatively and creatively about that on a go-forward basis." EA has yet to officially step into the NFT and "play-to-earn," or blockchain space that's been growing in the past few years. "Play-to-earn" games often require players pay an up-front cost through cryptocurrency to play the game and collect unique, in-game items. Those items can then increase in value and be sold to other players. It's common for players to also have input on the game's development as their monetary stake in it increases the game's overall value. Recent EA job listings include "NFT" and "blockchain" in the descriptions, suggesting that the company is at least aware of the genre's surge in popularity. A post for a senior director of the company's competitive gaming brand reads, "We set the pace for EA's investment in gaming subscriptions, our PC storefront and platform, competitive gaming (including FIFA, Apex Legends, and Madden NFL), as well as new business opportunities, including fantasy sports, blockchain and NFTs, and more."

Ana Diaz writes via Polygon: Jack Morrison logs on to stream, he doesn't boot up Twitch, Streamlabs OBS, or speak into a fancy microphone. Instead, he grabs a basic circular mirror and sets it in front of his desktop monitor, facing the screen. Then he sits in front of his monitor, as usual, and plays the game, propping up his cell phone to face him and setting his camera live. When he boots up Apex Legends, viewers see the gameplay reflected in the mirror as they watch him play. This makeshift setup might have been surprising just a year ago, in an industry that seems to be more and more concerned with having the latest streaming technology. But it's become a rather common practice on TikTok, where video game streaming has picked up in the past few months. In September, the company said that one billion people in total use the app each month, and jokes and sounds riffing on video games have long proliferated widely across TikTok. Now, Morrison (JackMorrisonTV on TikTok) and other streamers with similarly crude setups have taken over the app's "LIVE" section, capturing as many as 2,400 viewers at a time.

These streamers are using low-key setups, in comparison to the complex (and expensive) setups that dominate Twitch, where a DSLR camera and the capture card to use it can cost over $800. The exact build of each TikToker's setup varies, but nearly all of them capture video via an external camera that's focused on a screen, or in Morrison's case, a reflection of a screen. A brief scroll through the gaming section of TikTok's live content shows these streamers' ingenuity; some will stream videos of tablets or phones as they play mobile games, while others will just put the camera in front of a screen. The games also vary widely, with people playing games like Snake, Minecraft, and Wordscapes in addition to shooters like Valorant.

The number of live streams is much smaller than the wave of short-form videos being pushed out every single day on the app, making them stand out more. It also feels like a more accessible platform, especially for people who are just getting started with streaming. TikTok streamers are using more basic technology, such as mirrors, cell phone stands, and the like. It's also less competitive than Twitch, which has over seven million unique streamers go live each month. [...] TikTok is also testing monetization features that might make it more appealing for streamers to use. [...] For now, streams seem like a quick and easy way to take advantage of TikTok's massive audience. Whether or not bona fide TikTok streaming stars will emerge on the platform or find a sustainable home there remains to be seen.

According to Nikkei Asian Review, "Nintendo will only be able to produce about 24 million units of its popular Switch game console in the fiscal year through March, 20% below an original plan." From the report: Its production has been held up by shortages of semiconductors and other electronic parts amid strong demand for Switch, including for its latest version released on Oct. 8. Nintendo's trouble is a reminder of the far-reaching impact of the global supply crunch that has affected a wide range of industries from autos to electronics to machinery.

The Kyoto-based company originally planned on producing a record 30 million Switch units on the back of rising demand for computer games triggered by the COVID pandemic, which has forced people to spend more time at home. However, production bottlenecks quickly emerged around springtime for key components including microcomputers. The company concluded it would have to revise down production targets as it was not able to secure enough supplies. Nintendo's suppliers have already been notified about the production cuts.

Netflix, the video-streaming giant, began its expected foray into video games with the introduction of five mobile games to its users worldwide, playable initially on Android devices. From a report: The titles are included in a Netflix subscription, and there'll be no advertising or additional purchases required, Mike Verdu, Netflix's vice president of game development, said Tuesday. The streaming company has targeted video games as its next big thing -- it's an industry that's larger than the movie and TV businesses. Players logging in will see a dedicated games row and tab where they can choose which titles to play. Games for Apple's iPhone are also planned. The initial offering includes titles linked to Netflix shows, such as Stranger Things: 1984 and Stranger Things 3: The Game. Also included are Shooting Hoops, Card Blast and Teeter Up.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: The Japanese video game company Sega announced Monday that it plans to "explore a strategic alliance" with Microsoft, which will see Sega build new games and overhaul its development process via Microsoft's Azure platform. The new alliance is part of a forward-focused initiative at Sega called "Super Game." According to a news release, Microsoft's Azure provides Sega with a "next-generation development platform" that Sega can customize to account for different styles of work and infrastructural changes. "SEGA has played such an iconic role in the gaming industry and has been a tremendous partner over the years," Microsoft CVP Sarah Bond said in a statement. "We look forward to working together as they explore new ways to create unique gaming experiences for the future using Microsoft cloud technologies. Together we will reimagine how games get built, hosted, and operated, with a goal of adding more value to players and Sega alike."

According to Sega, the key focuses behind Super Game are the keywords "Global," "Online," "Community," and "IP utilization." With 5G on its way to supercharge cloud gaming in many parts of the world, Sega is explicitly using Microsoft Azure in an attempt to anticipate and serve whatever the next trend might be. The name of the initiative follows up on information spotted in Sega's March 2021 financial presentation, where the company stated that its strategy included the creation of a Super Game within the next five years, defined as a title that "can be expanded globally." With IP utilization as one of the Super Game's hallmarks, it suggests that Sega plans to turn one of its tentpole franchises -- the same financial report mentioned Phantasy Star Online, Sonic the Hedgehog, Persona, Yakuza, and Total War as potential candidates -- to be made into a big-ticket service game. Whatever that ends up being, its development process will be powered by Microsoft Azure.

The game formerly known as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds accounts for 97% of the revenue of its maker Krafton. Given that the Seoul-based company is valued at almost $20 billion, we have a rough estimate for how much this single game is worth, according to the stock market. A good chunk of that value is in the potential that title holds for expansion. From a report: Krafton has staked its future on making PUBG -- no longer an abbreviation but a brand for a wider intellectual property franchise -- into a big fantasy universe spanning different games and entertainment genres. The first big test of this strategy is PUBG: New State, the mobile sequel that moves the battle royale action to 2051 and adds more advanced weaponry, vehicles and graphics. It arrives on Nov. 11. I haven't played it to be able to tell you how good it will be, but I would be hugely surprised if it turns into anything other than another money printer for Krafton.

The reason for my confidence is simple: The company isn't straying too far from what made the original 2017 game a hit and is mostly changing the cosmetics atop the underlying physics and gameplay. This approach has proven highly successful in the mobile arena. The smartphone game is launching in more than 200 countries and in 17 different languages and has already had more than 50 million preregistrations. Another essential element for mobile success that Krafton taps into is making the game free to play. The vast majority of smartphone app store revenue comes from games, which seems counterintuitive considering that most of those games demand no upfront payment. The real money, however, is in enticing players to make microtransactions within the game, such as personalizing your character with "skins" or buying a pet or better weapons. This is such a big deal that Epic Games took Apple and Alphabet's Google to court over the split of who gets to profit from those addictive little in-game buys in PUBG rival Fortnite.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Kotaku, written by Luke Plunkett: RPCS3, an emulator I've been writing about since 2016, but which first began in 2011, has come along way since it made its first tentative steps towards making PS3 games playable on a PC. From those humble beginnings, the team behind it have just announced a huge milestone: everything ever released on the PS3 will now boot up. Earlier today the RPCS3 team tweeted: "We're delighted to announce that RPCS3 now has a total of ZERO games in the Nothing status! This means that all known games and applications at least boot on the emulator, with no on-going regressions that prevent games from booting. We look forward to emptying out Loadable too!"

There have been over 6,000 games and programs tracked over the emulator's lifespan, so to get every single one of them to some degree of booting up is an incredible achievement. It's important to note, though, that of the emulator's five tiers of playability, only one -- "Playable" -- is worth your time. The others are saddled with huge numbers of glitches, performance issues, or simply the fact they refuse to load past the title screens. [...] As of today, 63.53% of PS3 games are "playable" on the emulator, which means 36.47% are not; still a hugely impressive number, but just something to bear in mind!

Quick Google Stadia recap: Things have not been great. From a report: Google's AAA cloud gaming service launched in 2019 to middling reviews and since then has severely undershot Google's sales and usage estimates by hundreds of thousands of users. The company shut down its first-party studio, "Stadia Games & Entertainment (SG&E)," before it could ever develop a game, and it did so one week after lead executive Phil Harrison gave the division a positive progress report. Several key executives have left the struggling division, like Assassin's Creed co-creator and SG&E leader Jade Raymond, Stadia's VP and head of product, John Justice, and Engineering Lead Justin Uberti.

When Google killed the game division at the beginning of the year, an accompanying blog post hinted that big changes were coming to Google's strategy: "In 2021, we're expanding our efforts to help game developers and publishers take advantage of our platform technology and deliver games directly to their players." Rather than continuing to push Stadia as a consumer-facing, branded service, Google seems to want to pivot the service to what would essentially be "Google Cloud Gaming Platform." This would be a back-end, white-label service that could power other companies' products, just like a million other Google Cloud products, like database hosting and push messaging. Google said it believes a back-end service "is the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business." This all brings us to this Batman game presented by AT&T Wireless.

Earlier this year, device skin maker Dbrand released a set of black PS5 faceplates and baited Sony to sue them (because that's their shtick -- to come across sassy and harsh). Sony is now obliging. Kotaku reports: As The Verge reports, Dbrand's "Darkplates" have recently been removed from the company's store, and any purchasing links now redirect to a page that only lists all the news articles written about the plates, including [a Gizmodo story]. Why pull them now? Because the company received a cease & desist letter from Sony, part of which says: "It has come to SIE's attention that dbrand has been promoting and selling console accessories in a manner that is deeply concerning to our client. First, dbrand is selling faceplates for the PSS console (in both standard edition and digital edition configurations) that replicate SIE's protected product design. Any faceplates that take the form of our client's PSS product configuration, or any similar configuration, and are: produced and sold without permission from SIE violate our client's intellectual property rights in the distinctive console design. Second, dbrand is selling skins for SIE devices that feature the PlayStation Family Mark Your company may not sell products that bear unauthorized depictions of our client's PlayStation Marks. The below still from one of dbrand's instructional videos shows a dbrand skin bearing a design identical to the PlayStation Family Mark."

For their part, Dbrand have responded with a rambling corporate shitpost on Reddit, which opens with "much like your hopes and dreams, Darkplates are dead" before eventually settling into actual legal defenses of their position, saying the plates don't violate any existing trademarks. Dbrand suspects that Sony's actual motivation here is moving to shut down competitors before revealing its own, first-party replacement panels for the PS5.

"Why not play Doom using Twitter via short commands and videos?" Kotaku asks bored internet users.

"Tweet2Doom is a new Twitter bot that started up in September of this year and which lets folks play through the original game using a series of commands." Those commands are translated to the bot and you are sent back a video showing you what happened, then you can continue to send more commands and progress through levels. The full list of commands and how it works can be found in this pinned tweet from the account...

Tweet2Doom now joins a long and ever-growing list of "Ways To Play Doom." That list includes a pregnancy test, unreleased indie console, cash registers and much, much more.

"Billy Mitchell always has a plan," said Billy Mitchell in the 2007 documentary about Donkey Kong high scores, The King of Kong.

And he tweeted the phrase again Wednesday. GameSpot explains why. "Billy Mitchell, the professional gamer and hot sauce purveyor who rose to fame for setting several retro video game high scores, is preparing for a return to court." As reported by Axios, the U.S. appeals court gave Mitchell permission to proceed with his defamation suit against Twin Galaxies, the online video game leaderboard website. In case you missed the legal tussle, the whole saga began when Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records stripped Mitchell of his several of world records for Pac-Man and Donkey Kong after he was accused of using emulation devices to earn his scores instead of authentic arcade machines, as was required for these world record attempts. While Guinness would later reverse its decision, Twin Galaxies has so far refused to reinstate Mitchell's records.

Mitchell would file a defamation suit against Twin Galaxies in 2019, while the site itself fought back with an "anti-strategic lawsuit against public participation" — more commonly known as a SLAPP motion — response, a legal move designed to have frivolous lawsuits dismissed from court and prevent parties from being silenced, as spotted by Kotaku. This week's ruling by the State of California's Second court has stated that Mitchell and his legal team have enough material to continue the lawsuit.

Whether Mitchell and his team actually stand a chance of winning the case is another matter entirely...
Mitchell also tweeted the exact wording of the court's decision, starting with the words "Because Mitchell showed a probability of prevailing on his claims, the trial court properly denied the anti-SLAPP motion."

Epic tells The Verge that it's "open to games that support cryptocurrency or blockchain-based assets" on its game store, unlike its competitor Valve which has banned games that feature blockchain technology or NFTs from Steam. From the report: When we asked about allowing games that featured NFTs, Epic told us there'd be some limitations, but that it's willing to work with "early developers" in the "new field." Epic says that the games would have to comply with financial laws, make it clear how the blockchain is used, and have appropriate age ratings. It also says that developers won't be able to use Epic's payment service to accept crypto; they would have to use their own payment systems instead. Epic's CEO Tim Sweeney has said that the company isn't interested in touching NFTs, but that statement now appears to only apply to its own games. Epic tells The Verge that it will clarify the rules as it works with developers to understand how they plan to use blockchain tech in their games.

Games that use blockchain technology or let users exchange NFTs or cryptocurrencies won't be allowed on Steam, according to a rule added to Valve's "What you shouldn't publish on Steam" list. The Verge reports: The change was pointed out by SpacePirate, a developer working on an NFT-based game, who said that the change was because the company doesn't allow game items that could have real-world value. But Steam could also be avoiding controversy with the move. Steam has a history of making controversial moderation decisions, especially when it comes to games with sexual content. In this case, though, it doesn't seem like people are pressing F to pay respects to NFT games -- a majority of the replies and quote tweets to SpacePirate's tweets are praising Valve for the move (or mocking those that are upset about it).

It's perhaps understandable why Steam would want to avoid having NFTs on its platform. Besides the justification cited by SpacePirate that they could have real-world value (which seems a bit weak, given the massive commercial communities around things like CS:GO skins and Team Fortress 2 hats), NFT and crypto-based games don't have the best reputations. There's the infamous Evolved Apes saga where a developer sold NFTs with the promise that they'd be included in a fighting game but then seemingly took the money and ran. There are some potentially interesting game concepts that use NFTs, but it's hard to say how many of them would've been a good fit for Steam even if they were allowed.

The original Xbox was released 20 years ago next month, and to mark the upcoming anniversary, the console's designer has apologized to AMD's engineers and its CEO for Microsoft's last-minute decision to drop AMD for rival Intel. GameSpot reports: Seamus Blackley apologized on Twitter to the AMD engineers who worked with Microsoft to create the prototype Xbox consoles that the company used in the lead-up to the OG Xbox's release in November 2001. To AMD CEO Lisa Su, Blackley said, "I beg mercy." "I was standing there on the stage for the announcement, with [Bill Gates], and there they were right there, front row, looking so sad," he said of AMD engineers in the room. "I'll never forget it. They had helped so much with the prototypes. Prototypes that were literally running the launch announcement demos ON AMD HARDWARE." "I felt like such an ass," Blackley said. Microsoft dropped AMD in favor of Intel due to "pure politics," Blackley said in another tweet.