"The advent of gaming, especially computer gaming, marks a fundamental break in human affairs," argues American economist Tyler Cowen (in a Bloomberg opinion column).

"Gaming is profoundly transforming two central aspects of the modern world: culture and regulation. There will be no turning back... Plenty of trading already takes place in games — involving currencies, markets, prices and contracts. Game creators and players set and enforce the rules, and it is harder for government regulators to play a central role. The lesson is clear: If you wish to create a new economic institution, put it inside a game. Or how about an app that gamifies share trading? Do you wish to experiment with a new kind of stock exchange or security outside the purview of traditional government regulation? Try the world of gaming, perhaps combined with crypto, and eventually your "game" just might influence events in the real world...

[R]egulators are already falling behind. Just as gaming has outraced the world of culture, so will gaming outrace U.S. regulatory capabilities, for a variety of reasons: encryption, the use of cryptocurrency, the difficulties of policing virtual realities, varying rules in foreign jurisdictions and, not incidentally, a lack of expertise among U.S. regulators. (At least the Chinese government's attempt to restrict youth gaming to three hours a week, while foolhardy, reflects a perceptive cultural conservatism.)

Both the culture-weakening and the regulation-weakening features of games follow from their one basic characteristic: They are self-contained worlds. Until now, human institutions and structures have depended on relatively open and overlapping networks of ideas. Gaming is carving up and privatizing those spaces. This shift is the big trend that hardly anyone — outside of gaming and crypto — is noticing.

If the much-heralded "metaverse" ever arrives, gaming will swallow many more institutions, or create countervailing versions of them. Whether or not you belong to the world of gaming, it is coming for your worlds. I hope you are ready.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Take-Two Interactive has sued several programmers and enthusiasts said to be behind the popular re3 and reVC Grand Theft Auto fan projects. The lawsuit says that after the company filed a DMCA takedown notice to remove the projects from Github, the defendants filed a bad faith counter notice to have the content reinstated, thus triggering this copyright infringement lawsuit. "Defendants' source code projects, known as re3 and reVC, purport to have created a set of software files (which Defendants claim they 'reverse engineered' from the original Game software) that allow members of the public to play the Games on various hardware devices, but with so-called 'enhancements' and 'modifications' added by Defendants," the complaint reads (PDF). "Perhaps most notably, Defendants claim that their derivative GTA source code enables players to install and run the Games on multiple game platforms, including those on which the Games never have been released, such as the PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch." According to Take-Two, the defendants' conduct is willful and deliberate since they are well aware that they do not have the necessary rights to copy, adapt or distribute derivative GTA source code or the audiovisual elements of the games. The gaming giant adds that [defendant Angelo Papenhoff] publicly expressed concern that Take-Two would find out about the 're3' and 'reVC' projects.
[...]
Take-Two says that by willfully and maliciously copying, adapting and distributing its source code and other content, all of the defendants have infringed its exclusive rights under copyright law. As a result, the company is entitled to damages in amounts to be determined at trial or, alternatively, a maximum statutory damages award of $150,000 for each infringed work. Additionally, the gaming company says that by submitting bad faith DMCA counternotices to have the projects restored to Github, three of the defendants made misrepresentations under U.S.C. 512(f). Finally, Take-Two is seeking temporary, preliminary, and permanent injunctive relief to restrain the defendants from continuing their allegedly infringing activities. The company wants all infringing source code and games removed from the Internet and wants the defendants to hand over all materials that infringe its rights. Take-Two also wants a full accounting of "any and all sales or downloads of products or services" that infringe its rights.

New submitter Chaldean42 shares a report from The Verge: On Wednesday, September 1st, a number of channels on Twitch will go dark as streamers participate in #ADayOffTwitch, a walkout designed to bring attention to the ongoing hate and harassment that's plagued the platform for the last several weeks. [...] A Day Off Twitch was born out of the #TwitchDoBetter movement, a hashtag created by streamers affected by the hate raids that have exploded across Twitch in recent weeks. Though the action of bombing a streamer's chat with racist, sexist, transphobic, and generally abusive messages is not new, the phenomenon has seen a dramatic increase, thanks to users employing bots to overwhelm chats with hundreds of automatically generated messages. In response to what they thought was Twitch's slow response to the abuse, streamer RekitRaven created the #TwitchDoBetter hashtag to urge the Amazon-owned streaming platform to deploy better tools to stem the tide of harassment.

Twitch has promised that fixes are forthcoming, but in the meantime, streamers are left to contend against the hate raids with community-developed tools and resources. [...] The responses to A Day Off Twitch have been varied, even among its supporters. Because of Twitch's endemic hold on the streaming community, it's just not feasible for some smaller streamers, arguably the population most affected by hate raids, to take a day off. For some creators, Twitch is their only means of income. Users trying to make or maintain affiliate or partner status -- designations that grant creators access to many different methods of monetization -- could jeopardize their finances or the health of their channel by taking even one day off. There are also contractual obligations like advertising deals or partnerships that prevent streamers from skipping a day. Other streamers oppose A Day Off Twitch for more philosophical reasons. To them, the people behind these hate raids are working to bully marginalized streamers off the platform, and taking a day off is giving them exactly what they want. Continuing to stream and speaking out against the abuse is therefore the best way to counter trolls who might not otherwise face repercussions for their actions. A spokesperson for Twitch told The Verge, "We support our streamers' rights to express themselves and bring attention to important issues across our service. No one should have to experience malicious and hateful attacks based on who they are or what they stand for, and we are working hard on improved channel-level ban evasion detection and additional account improvements to help make Twitch a safer place for creators."

CD Projekt is working on a first expansion of Cyberpunk 2077, Chief Executive Adam Kicinski said after the Polish video games maker reported a first-half beat on its net profit. From a report: Cyberpunk 2077, featuring Hollywood star Keanu Reeves, was one of last year's most anticipated games, but after a bug-ridden start it was kept off Sony's (6758.T) PlayStation Store for six months, only returning in June. CD Projekt did not give an update on how many units of Cyberpunk it had sold in the first half of 2021, but company officials told a conference call that the game was the leading source of revenue in the period. Along with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk drove CD Projekt's revenue 29% higher in the first half of the year to 470.6 million zlotys ($124 million).

CD Projekt said its net profit was 105 million zlotys, which was 28% lower compared to last year but above the 71 million expected by analysts. The planned Cyberpunk expansion would involve a charge to gamers, similar to the ones released for The Witcher, board member Michal Nowakowski said during Wednesday's call. "When we talk about expansions then we talk about bigger things," he said, while declining to give a specific timing for its release.

A new version of the classic Atari game "Centipede" will be released for consoles and PC in late September under the name "Centipede: Recharged" and sporting a more futuristic look. From a report: The game's lead developer, Adam Nickerson, first partnered with Atari for last year's "Missile Command: Recharged," which revamped another classic in a similar style. Nickerson tells Axios he first connected with Atari after discovering an email in his spam folder from an Atari official who liked his work. Atari showed him a list of franchises they had the rights to. He went with "Missile Command" first because he used to be obsessed with it.

Duckstation, an emulator that allows users to run Playstation games, was recently made available for installation onto the latest generation of Xbox consoles. From a report: It's time to jog those nostalgia muscles, as the emulator will not only be able to play your PS1 favorites but also scale those games up to native 4K resolution at 60fps. In addition to the 4K treatment, Duckstation will let gamers improve the overall look of the emulation experience in a couple of other ways.

Turning this on disables dithering, an effect that was built into the original Playstation hardware. Dithering in layman's terms was basically a function to improve depth of color by underpinning graphics with a series of lines or dots, which were then blurred by the system's video encoders. Turning this on helps improve graphic capabilities by smoothing out the blocky textures on 3D objects. The original low-poly graphics of the PS1 would often look cruder as they enlarged, so this function basically smoothes out those clunky compositions.

South Korea is ending a law it announced in 2011 that blocked young gamers from accessing game websites after midnight. "South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, as well as the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, say that they're ending the law to respect children's rights and encourage at-home education," reports Engadget. "The country aims to abolish the law by the end of the year when it revises its Youth Protection Act." From the report: The news doesn't mean underage gamers are entirely off the hook, though. Instead, excessive gaming will be managed by the country's "choice permit" system, which lets parents and guardians arrange approved play times. Still, that sounds more permissive than China's gaming curfew, which bans players under 18 from playing between 10PM and 8AM. Additionally, they're limited to 90 minutes of game time during weekdays, and three hours on weekends and holidays.

As Kotaku reports, the shutdown law was originally meant to curb PC gaming, but it also affected consoles. Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live ended up restricting their accounts to adults. That's why Minecraft is now an R-rated game in the country. "In the changing media environment, the ability of children to decide for themselves and protect themselves has become important more than anything," Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said, according to The Korea Times. "We will work with related ministries to systematically support media and game-use education at schools, homes, and in society so that young people can develop these abilities, and continue to make efforts to create a sound gaming environment and various leisure activities for children."

California has expanded its anti-discrimination lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, adding temporary workers to the female full-time employees of whom it is suing on behalf. The state's Department of Fair Employment & Housing also alleges the game maker has interfered with its investigation. Axios reports: The amended complaint was filed Monday and redefines the "group" it says was wronged by the gaming giant. A copy reviewed by Axios specifically mentions that California's protections against anti-harassment, equal pay and other equal employment opportunity protections "exist for employees and contingent or temporary workers." Throughout the lawsuit, the word "employees" has been changed to "workers" in reference to harassment, sex discrimination regarding pay and other allegations.

The DFEH also says Activision Blizzard has stymied its efforts through NDAs, requiring employees to speak with the company ahead of contacting the DFEH, and its involvement with WilmerHale, a law firm the game maker said will investigate misconduct issues. The suit claims that this "directly interferes" with DFEH's ability to "investigate, prosecute, and remedy workplace discrimination and harassment violations on behalf of employees and contingent or temporary workers." It alleges, in part, that "documents related to investigations and complaints were shredded by human resource personnel" in violation of what it asserts is the game company's legal obligation to retain them pending the investigation. A spokesperson for Activision Blizzard said that the company has "complied with every proper request in support of its review even as we had been implementing reforms to ensure our workplaces are welcoming and safe for every employee."

"With regards to claims that we have destroyed information by shredding documents, those claims are not true. We took appropriate steps to preserve information relevant to the DFEH investigation," the spokesperson added. "We have provided the DFEH with clear evidence that we do not have gender pay or promotion disparities. Our senior leadership is increasingly diverse, with a growing number of women in key leadership roles across the company."

California sued the video game studio last month over allegations of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and potential violations of the state's equal pay law.

"Destiny 2" is the second major game in a week to promise anti-cheat services as an upcoming feature. From a report: Cheating is widespread in many major online games, driving players, including influential streamers, to quit in frustration. No one likes getting shot by a player who is paying for a cheat to effectively snipe without aiming. Anti-cheat software isn't new. But in the ongoing arms race between cheaters and developers, the implementation of better anti-cheat tech is meant to tell players it's OK to play. During a Tuesday showcase of upcoming content for "Destiny 2," a developer said that anti-cheat was "one of the biggest asks from our community" and is being offered in advance of the highly competitive Trials of Osiris mode. (The studio teased the addition last week.) Last week, Activision devoted a portion of its blog post announcing the next paid "Call of Duty" game to note that "Warzone," its very popular -- and cheater-infested -- free battle royale, would soon get "a new PC anti-cheat system across the entire experience when it launches with the new map." Activision has banned more than 500,000 "Warzone" accounts for cheating since the game's 2020 launch, while Bungie has filed new lawsuits against sites that sell cheats.

Playdate, the one-bit gaming system with an analog crank, will be relatively easy to fix if you ever need to replace its battery or buttons. Ars Technica reports the findings from iFixit's teardown: The most interesting findings: The Playdate's signature crank uses a Hall effect sensor rather than a spring or another kind of wear-out-able physical mechanism, so it shouldn't suffer from drift over time like some console controller joysticks do. And while there is a warranty sticker inside the Playdate, it specifically says that you'll void the system's warranty if you break anything inside it, not that you'll void it just by taking the system apart. This strikes a good balance between "don't come in here if you don't know what you're doing" and "we trust you to make your own repairs if you need to."

The teardown also gives us a few specifics on the Playdate's intentionally low-powered hardware, which includes a 216MHz ARM Cortex M7 processor, 128 megabits (or 16MB) of RAM, and 4GB of eMMC storage. The one major complaint iFixit had is that the LCD screen appears to be glued to the front of the Playdate -- replacing the screen will probably necessitate replacing the entire rest of the casing as well. But since the front of the Playdate is simple yellow plastic rather than metal and glass, this part shouldn't cost as much as it does when your phone's screen breaks.

Microsoft is bringing its cloud gaming service to Xbox consoles later this year. From a report: The company announced Tuesday that Xbox Cloud Gaming, which lets players stream games rather than having to install them onto a device, would arrive on its new Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles as well as older Xbox One machines this holiday. American tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon are betting on a future of video games beyond consoles, where subscription services and software will play a much greater role. Though Microsoft is still investing heavily in Xbox hardware, it's also putting a great deal of focus into Xbox Game Pass, a subscription service that gives players access to a library of over 100 titles for about $15 a month. Cloud gaming, where games are hosted on remote servers and streamed to users over the internet, is a big part of Microsoft's strategy. The aim is to attract gamers to the Microsoft ecosystem through a range of different devices.

"A newly-enhanced edition of the original Quake has been officially revealed by Bethesda at QuakeCon 2021," reports GamesRadar+ The updated edition of the classic 1996 first-person shooter is out right now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Nintendo Switch.

There's updated visuals, online and local multiplayer, and new content available in the enhanced edition of Quake. Two expansions for the original game — The Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity — are included in all purchases, as are the Dimensions of the Past and the brand new Dimension of the Machine expansions, the latter two of which are developed by Wolfenstein studio MachineGames.
"Those who own Quake on Steam or from the official Bethesda.net store can access the update for free," reports Ars Technica: The multi-platform release could be seen as positive news after Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda, a move that generated worries about Microsoft/Bethesda exclusivity moving forward. For those who don't mind waiting, Limited Run Games will offer physical disc and card releases for the PS4 and Switch, respectively, including a pricey limited edition that comes in a box that looks like the in-game nail-gun ammo...

According to a press release, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of the game will run at full 4K and 120 fps once a future update goes live.

Programmer Ryan C. Gordon (also known as icculus) is a former employee at Loki Software, one of the first companies to port videogames from Microsoft Windows to Linux, according to his Wikipedia page. He's still hosting many Loki software projects at icculus.org, "as well as several new projects created by himself and others."

He's also Slashdot reader #32,040, and dropped by this week with a very special announcement: I took Zork 1 and made it into a multiplayer game!

You can try it yourself by telnetting to multizork.icculus.org with some friends. Telnet seemed appropriate for a game from 1980, at least until I can figure out how to efficiently send everyone a 300 baud modem.

A detailed technical explanation about hacking the Z-Machine to make this work is over here and source code is, of course, available. Enjoy, and don't get eaten by a grue!

Apple's Mac has long been an afterthought for the video game industry, and few think of Google as a games company -- despite running Android, one of the biggest game platforms in the world. But Google had a plan to change those things in October 2020, according to an explicitly confidential 70-page vision document dubbed "Games Futures." From a report: The "need-to-know" document, which was caught up in the discovery process when Epic Games hauled Apple into court, reveals a tentative five-year plan to create what Google dubbed "the world's largest games platform." Google imagined presenting game developers with a single place they can target gamers across multiple screens including Windows and Mac, as well as smart displays -- all tied together by Google services and a "low-cost universal portable game controller" that gamers can pair with any device, even a TV.

After months of rumors and speculation, Kotaku has learned from sources that Rockstar Games may be remastering three classic Grand Theft Auto games. Currently, it appears these games will be released later this fall for a multitude of platforms, including the portable Nintendo Switch. From a report: For the past year, rumors have swirled on Twitter, Reddit, and various message boards that Rockstar is working on remakes or remasters of classic, PS2-era Grand Theft Auto titles. These rumors only grew in popularity as Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, used DMCA takedowns to remove classic GTA mods from the internet while announcing that the publisher had three remastered games in development. While Kotaku can't confirm what all of those teased remastered titles specifically are, we can confirm via corroborating details from three sources that GTA remasters are currently in the final stages of development.

Amazon.com withdrew a set of staff guidelines that claimed ownership rights to video games made by employees after work hours and dictated how they could distribute them, according to a company email. Bloomberg: The longstanding policies within Amazon Game Studios had drawn criticism on social media over the last month after a Google engineer posted about them. Some game developers described the rules as "draconian." The old policies mandated that employees of the games division who were moonlighting on projects would need to use Amazon products, such as Amazon Web Services, and sell their games on Amazon digital stores. It also gave the company "a royalty free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, transferable license" to intellectual property rights of any games developed by its employees.

MojoKid writes: AMD officially unveiled the Radeon RX 6600 XT in late July but the cards have officially launched today, aimed at 1080p gaming. In a review at HotHardware, PowerColor is offering both a high-end Radeon RX 6600 XT Red Devil and its somewhat more mainstream "Fighter" branded counterpart, for example. Whereas AMD's reference Radeon RX 6600 XT offers a Game clock up to 2359MHz and a Boost clock of 25895MHz, the PowerColor Red Devil peaks at 2428MHz (Game) and 2607MHz (Boost). Those higher GPU clocks result in higher compute performance and fillrate, etc., but the memory configuration and frequency are the same -- so in memory bandwidth constrained situations, performance won't be all that much different.

Performance-wise, with most game titles that use traditional rasterization, the Radeon RX 6600 XT is clearly faster than the GeForce RTX 3060 and previous-gen cards like the Radeon RX 5700 XT or GeForce RTX 2060 Super. However, when you factor ray tracing into the equation, NVIDIA has a distinct and significant advantage still. The Radeon RX 6600 XT Fighter should sell for at or close to its $379 MSRP. PowerColor says that they should be readily available for gamers to purchase today.

People will no longer be able to play the digital version of The New York Times daily crossword puzzle in third-party apps, according to an announcement made by the Times on Monday. The Verge reports: Starting August 10th, the crossword will be available digitally only via the NYT site or on its own crossword app. Downloadable PDFs, in addition to the physical newspaper, will still be available for people who want to print and play. Until now, crosswords were available in the Across Lite .puz file format, so anyone with a Times games subscription could download a puzzle and open it in the desktop or mobile app of their choice. The change applies not just to future puzzles but to the archive of puzzles that are currently in the .puz format.

Everdeen Mason, editorial director of games at the Times, said on Twitter that she made the decision to end .puz support in an effort to build something where editors can "edit and make games rather than adapt things for tools we can't control."

Activision Blizzard President J. Allen Brack is stepping down from the company after Blizzard was sued by the state of California last week for discriminating against women and fostering a "frat boy" culture that entailed sexual harassment and discrimination. He will be replaced by two executive vice presidents, who will serve as co-leaders. From a report: Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra, the former executive vice president of development and the former EVP and general manager of platform technology, respectively, will take the helm at Blizzard and share responsibility for development and operational accountability. The company is continuing to face an outpouring of stories of misconduct, and workers who organized a walkout have demanded a set of new rules for handling reports of sexism, harassment and discrimination.

The hackers who breached Electronic Arts last month have released the entire cache of stolen data after failing to extort the company and later sell the stolen files to a third-party buyer. From a report: The data, dumped on an underground cybercrime forum on Monday, July 26, is now being widely distributed on torrent sites. According to a copy of the dump obtained by The Record, the leaked files contain the source code of the FIFA 21 soccer game, including tools to support the company's server-side services. The existence of this leak was initially disclosed on June 10, when the hackers posted a thread on an underground hacking forum claiming to be in possession of EA data, which they were willing to sell for $28 million.