Assassin's Creed, a video game franchise set in huge worlds where each one can take hundreds of hours to complete, is getting even bigger. From a report: A new project, which is known inside Ubisoft Entertainment by the code name Assassin's Creed Infinity, sets out to create a massive online platform that evolves over time, according to people familiar with its development. Whereas previous Assassin's Creed games each unfolded in specific historical settings such as ancient Greece or Ptolemaic Egypt, Infinity will contain multiple settings with room to expand to others in the months and years following its debut, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing a project under development. Individual games on the platform might look and feel different, but they will all be connected. Details surrounding the project, which hasn't been previously reported, are in flux, and it's still years away from release. The teams have also been affected by the #MeToo allegations that have swept through the company over the last year.

Nintendo is announcing a new Switch model today with a larger 7-inch 720p OLED display. While rumors had suggested this new Switch would ship with a new Nvidia chip inside, it doesn't look like that's the case. From a report: Nintendo lists this Switch OLED model as only supporting 1080p via TV mode, and rumors had suggested 4K support, thanks to a rumored Nvidia chip upgrade. The Switch OLED model will go on sale for $350 starting on October 8th. Other than the new screen, this revised model includes an adjustable stand for tabletop play, 64GB of built-in storage (up from 32GB), a new dock with a wired ethernet port built in, and improved audio for handheld or tabletop play. Nintendo only mentions "up to 1080p via HDMI in TV mode" for the TV dock, so the rumored 4K mode isn't part of this OLED Switch.

League of Legends developer Riot Games released a 37-track album of ambient tunes (now on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music) "that will let gamers stream their sessions accompanied by music that doesn't infringe copyright protections," reports Bloomberg.

And that's just one response to aggressive copyright enforcement: For example, a new Guardians of the Galaxy game to be released later this year will be loaded with a soundtrack with songs by Iron Maiden, KISS, Wham!, Blondie and more. To stay on the good side of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the studio behind the game, Eidos Montreal, has created a toggle switch that will allow gamers to turn off the soundtrack when live streaming, Venturebeat has reported. Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt SA also created an option for players to turn off certain songs that could cause trouble and replace them with an alternative.

After largely ignoring streaming platforms for years, last spring the music industry suddenly bore down on Twitch, owned by Amazon.com Inc. and started sending users thousands of DMCA takedowns for copyright violations. Twitch responded by telling users they could no longer use copyrighted material and also had to remove old posts that violated the rules. Some games are still struggling to adapt. Earlier this month, a number of music publishers, including those that represent Ed Sheeran and Ariana Grande, sued Roblox Corp. for copyright infringement, saying the company hasn't licensed the music many of its creators have used in their games. The lawsuit is seeking at least $200 million in damages, the Wall Street Journal reported...

The collection is just the beginning and Riot said it's committed to creating more projects like Sessions in the future.

As Axios reports, a company called playerWON (kill me), described as "a first-of-its-kind in-game advertising platform" (bring me back then kill me again), has signed deals with companies like EA and Hi-Rez (Smite) to try to bring TV-style commercials to their console games. Kotaku reports: Having tested this tech for over a year, they feel like it's now ready to be implemented, the idea being rather than just beaming videos to them in the middle of a game, players would be able to view an ad then, when servers detected the commercial had been viewed in its entirety, "release rewards to the player." This tech would be licensed out to developers so it could be implemented in the game itself (unlike the ads we already see on consoles, in places like system menu screens), and they're trying to justify it by saying that because young people are "cord-cutters," they're unreachable via traditional, cheaper marketing, and are only being reached by branded content deals (like the sneakers and clothes in NBA 2K, or cup noodles in Final Fantasy).

Testing has been taking place inside Smite for around a year, and the findings are as awful as you're probably expecting: "Data from one of Simulmedia's pilot campaigns with Smite, a F2P multiplayer battle arena game from Tencent's Hi-Rez Studios, shows that players were much more likely (22%) to play a game and spend money within the game (11%), if they watched in-game ads that gave them access to more gaming perks." As a result, playerWON "plans to launch in-game ads in roughly a dozen more games by the year's end."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since the first Humble Indie Bundle launched to much acclaim in 2010, users have been able to allocate up to 100 percent of a bundle's pay-what-you-want purchase price to Humble's partner charities. That option will be going away in mid-July as the company institutes a new 15 to 30 percent minimum cut that will go to the storefront itself. If that new policy sounds familiar, it's probably because of a test Humble Bundle in April that hid the charity sliders from some customers as a form of early user testing. In light of negative feedback, Humble Bundle apologized for not being "more proactive in communicating the test." But at the time, the company also said it was planning to limit total charity donations to 15 percent of the user-set purchase price in the near future. By May, though, Humble Bundle backtracked and said it was leaving the charity sliders intact and turning them back on for all customers "while we take more time to review feedback and consider sliders and the importance of customization for purchases on bundle pages in the long term."

Today, that review seems to be over, and Humble Bundle has once again decided to set limits on the proportion of payments users can allocate to charity (though at a higher level than it publicly mulled back in April). In a blog post Thursday, the Humble Bundle team attributed the 15 to 30 percent minimum store cut (which will vary from bundle to bundle) to the fact that "the PC storefront landscape has changed significantly since we first launched bundles in 2010, and we have to continue to evolve with it to stay on mission." Humble Bundle says customers can still adjust their specific charitable giving within these new limits, and on-screen sliders will make any minimums clear. The team also argues that ensuring Humble Bundle itself makes some money from every bundle sale will "[let] us continue to invest in more exciting content so we can keep growing the Humble community, which will ultimately drive more donations for charitable causes."

After yesterday's industry-wide discussion of the cost of being visible on Sony's PlayStation Store, Kotaku has heard from multiple independent developers and publishers expressing similar frustrations and fury. From a report: There were two main responses to our article yesterday highlighting one independent developer's frustrations with working with Sony to sell games on the PlayStation store. The first was a confusing number of people convinced that this was somehow part of an underground conspiracy to destroy Sony. The second was many indie game developers and publishers getting in touch to say that, yes, wow, Sony are far harder to work with and sell games through than anywhere else.

It's not possible to rationalize with the former group. We had confirmed hard figures on Sony's fees for getting any visibility on the PlayStation's in-built store, so we reported them. The conspiracy, disappointingly, ends there. However, the information about just how much worse it is for indies to work with Sony than Microsoft or Nintendo keeps piling in. "Oh yeah, so there's Nintendo who supports you," one such response begins. "[Then] Microsoft who supports you and [then] there is Sony who supports its own AAA machine and gives a fuck about everyone else."

As Bloomberg reported in April, Sony shows extraordinary caution even with the games it makes itself, with an obsessive focus on blockbuster success. According to that article, the Japanese corporation is moving away from developing smaller in-house games, so fixated are they on only the largest games. It seems this lack of interest in smaller titles extends to third-party developers attempting to sell their games on the system. "Sony does not understand what indie means," an independent publisher tells me under the condition of anonymity, via Twitter DMs. "Not at all. For them indie is something in the lower million budgets."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Gamer: An oversight in accounts used to test Microsoft's payment systems let one engineer swindle his way into over $10 million after selling Xbox Gift Cards for Bitcoin over two years, a new report from Bloomberg revealed this week. In order to make sure its payment systems work, Microsoft employs engineers to "simulate" purchases on its stores. But soon after joining the company in 2017, Volodymyr Kvashuk discovered that there was a flaw in the accounts used to test purchases. See, these simulated accounts are usually flagged as such by the system, and won't send you physical goods if you tried to buy, say, a new gamepad from its site. But if you tested a purchase of Xbox Gift Cards, you'd still receive a completely valid 25-digit code. Kvashuk could've easily reported this to his bosses. But with unlimited free codes at his fingertips, he chose a different option instead.

At first, Kvashuk generated himself a handful of codes -- a cheeky $5 or $10 here or there. But there was the opportunity to make massive, life-changing sums of money off this exploit. He began cycling through mock profiles belonging to his colleagues to hide his tracks, automating the process with a bespoke piece of software prosecutors would later describe as "created for one purpose, and one purpose only: to automate embezzlement and allow fraud and theft on a massive scale." After acquiring these codes, Kvashuk would head to crypto marketplaces like Paxful to find prospective sellers. He'd sell them in bulk at a relative discount, which buyers would then go on to sell to folks who wanted to use the codes. Money laundering sites like ChipMixer would let him hide his trail, and the proceeds went towards facilitating an increasingly lavish lifestyle. [...] Microsoft was eventually clued in to Kvashuk's antics after noticing a sharp spike in gift card transactions, with federal agents eventually raiding his home in July 2019. In court, Kvashuk tried to argue that the mass theft was simply an experiment to increase store spending. Obviously, it didn't fly. Kvashuk was sentenced to 9 years in prison, likely deported back to his home country of Ukraine, and will be charged restitution of $8.3 million.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from PC Gamer: Near, also known by their username Byuu, the creator of several groundbreaking videogame emulators and a recent celebrated translation of JRPG Bahamut Lagoon, has died by suicide. Near posted a thread on Twitter explaining how they were affected by a campaign of harassment organized against them on the Kiwi Farms forum. Subsequently, Hector Martin, an IT consultant and Linux hacker, posted a message about Near from a mutual friend (CW: contains explicit details of Near's method of suicide) and said that they had confirmed Near's death with police in a follow-up tweet. The linked document also focuses on the Kiwi Farms forum and the doxing and harassing of Near and their friends.

Near's bsnes was the first Super Nintendo emulator with 100% compatibility, and higan is a multi-system emulator supporting 26 different devices including the NES, SNES, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, Sega Master System and Genesis/Mega Drive, and PC Engine. If you've played any of the indie games influenced by EarthBound, aka Mother 2, then odds are good that game's designer had a copy of EarthBound open in higan for reference. Parts of the emulator created to keep Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer working in the final years of the famous physicist's life were even borrowed from higan's open source code.

Browser-based Xbox Cloud Gaming leaves the limited beta it's been in since the end of April and formally rolls out an open beta for iPhone, iPad and Windows 10 (or Windows 11!) PCs. CNET reports: In conjunction, the Backbone One mobile gaming controller for the iPhone [...] joins the Designed for Xbox program, with specific features designed to make you feel more like you're playing on an Xbox or standalone device. Xbox Cloud Gaming, nee Project xCloud, lets you play a subset of Xbox Game Pass games on a device other than a console by streaming them from the cloud, a la Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now. It, like others, follows Amazon Luna's lead of using a web app to circumvent Apple's App Store policies which effectively shut out cloud gaming apps. For Windows PCs, it lets you play games your system might not otherwise have the power or space to run locally via Game Pass for PC.

"Every Sony PlayStation 3 ID out there was compromised, provoking bans of legit players on the network," Threatpost is reporting, calling it "just the latest in a shocking spike in attacks on unsuspecting gamers."

tlhIngan (Slashdot user #30,335) shares Threatpost's report: Sony reportedly left a folder with every PS3 console ID online unsecured, and it was discovered and reported by a Spanish YouTuber with the handle "The WizWiki" in mid-April... Now, several weeks later, players on PlayStation Network message boards are complaining that they can't sign on and are receiving the error message 8071006. After enabling two-factor authentication (2FA), one player was able to sign back in without issue, according to posts on the PS3 subreddit, which includes a link to instructions on how to opt into 2FA on the PS3.

It appears threat actors have started using the stolen PS3 console IDs for malicious purposes, causing the legitimate players to get banned... Sony has not responded to Threatpost's request for comment or confirmed a connection between the PS3 ID breach and player reports of being locked out of the platform...

Sony is hardly the only gaming company leaking data like a sieve. A report from January found a half a million credentials stolen from the Top 25 gaming companies on caches of breached data for sale in criminal marketplaces. In June, the "Battle of the Galaxy" mobile game leaked 6 million gamer profiles, and attackers are working out how to use gaming platforms like Steam to host or deliver malware.

Patrick Klepek writes via Motherboard: Few role-playing experiences are as beloved as the original Final Fantasy games, which is why Square Enix announcing a new brand it's calling Pixel Remasters for the first six games was greeted with equal parts shock and horror. For every brilliant reinvention, like last year's Final Fantasy 7 Remake, you have these nightmarish updates to classics like Final Fantasy 6 that are so abjectly awful to look at that fans created mods to try and replace the visuals. It's not really clear what Square Enix wants to accomplish with these Pixel Remasters, but what's abundantly clear is that Square Enix intends to revisit the visuals across each 2D game. The new sprites aren't massive departures from the originals, but they're different, and it's led to speculation about whether the company is going to address a longstanding issue with older games being released on fancy new televisions and computer monitors.

I've always loved the way video games looked -- fuzzy and crunchy -- on those humorously heavy and bulky older cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs that used to populate family rooms. What I didn't know until earlier this year, however, was the science behind it all. It's not just that high-definition displays provide a crisper look at art made in earlier eras of video games, but that art was specifically drawn knowing it would ultimately pipe through a CRT, and when that art is viewed on a modern, non-CRT display, you're actually losing some intended detail. [...] The problem is many people will never experience it in real-life, and so filters and similar technologies are essentially forms of emulation for television tech. More than 705 million CRT TVs have been sold in the United States since 1980, and the vast majority of these environmentally unfriendly devices are in the process of being broken down and recycled. That process will take years. But more practically, nobody is making CRT TVs anymore, and as the existing supply naturally breaks down, it falls to hobbyists to keep them ticking. No great shock to learn that Starkweather isn't a huge fan of Square Enix's approach for the Pixel Remasters, partially because it risks erasing the work of the original artists. One solution that Starkweather proposes is Square Enix spending time on a refined CRT filter.

"Filters are simply filters and they change visuals without having any artistic intention behind," said renowned pixel artist Thomas Feichtmeir. "I have not yet seen any CRT filter implemented in a game which truly simulated a realistic CRT experience." While naive folks like myself learned about CRT through a Twitter account, Feichtmeir had a similar realization years ago. At home, Feichtmeir had a CRT monitor next to an LCD laptop, and as he transferred his dawn pixels from one to the other, it dawned upon him that they looked different. He noticed a similar issue playing games re-released on modern displays. "If you make a piece of pixel art on a LCD and you put it on a CRT," he said, "it's the equivalent of taking one of your articles, putting it through Google Translate and to expect that the other language it comes out [with] will have perfect meaning and grammar. A whole field of 'localization' exists for writing and in the game industry to address those issues." Though Feichtmeir has no specific insight into what Square Enix is or isn't planning for its Pixel Remasters series, watching what's been released gave him pause on the CRT theory. "Considering the couple of screenshots and snippets we saw in the presentation, I would not say any of it really accounts for the gap between CRT and LCDs," he said. "We still can see a lot of techniques which theoretically should stay on a CRT -- like overly dithered textures or just color optimized battle backgrounds. The biggest change are the characters, where they basically removed the volumetric shading in exchange for a dark outlined flat style. In my eyes this just changes the style to something which does not feel close to the original. And I think what a remaster should deliver on is to recreate the feeling how the original game felt."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCGamesN: Microsoft has finally debuted Windows 11, and it's not just packing auto HDR and native Android apps. The long-teased DirectStorage API that's meant to cut down loading times on gaming PCs much in the same way the Xbox Velocity Architecture speeds things up on Microsoft's consoles is on its way, and it won't be coming to Windows 10 like we originally thought. The Windows 11 exclusive feature improves communication between your storage device and graphics card, allowing assets to load quicker without having to pass through the CPU first. Naturally, this means more time spent gaming and less time reading the same hints as you move from area to area.

It'll work best with systems that are dubbed 'DirectStorage Optimized', containing the right hardware and drivers for the job. If you're more of the DIY type that prefers to build the best gaming PC yourself, requirements demand an NVMe SSD with 1TB of storage or more. PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs and the latest GPUs from Nvidia and AMD will offer a better experience, but DirectStorage will still work with older standards like the third generation PCIe 3.0 -- you won't have much luck with 2.5-inch SATA drives, though. DirectStorage will only work with games built using DirectX 12, so there's no telling how many titles will support the feature when you upgrade to Windows 11 for free later this year.

Video game giant Electronic Arts has struck a deal with AT&T and its WarnerMedia unit to acquire Warner Bros. Games' mobile games studio Playdemic for $1.4 billion in cash. From a report: "Playdemic is a premier mobile gaming company founded in 2010 and known for its popular, award-winning game Golf Clash," EA said on Wednesday. "Golf Clash is one of the leading mobile games in the U.S. and U.K. and has more than 80 million downloads globally to date."

"We have enjoyed working with the talented team at Playdemic as they have grown Golf Clash beyond all expectations into a hit mobile game with tremendous longevity," said David Haddad, president of Warner Bros. Games. "While we have great respect for the Playdemic team, our decision to divest is a part of our overall strategy to build games based on Warner Bros. storied franchises." EA said the acquisition is part of its mobile growth strategy focused on delivering new experiences for EA's network of nearly half a billion players around the world.

The annual video game convention E3 is normally full of teasers for splashy, graphic-rich games from big-name studios and surprise announcements about new titles. But this year's online-only event was much quieter, with many hot releases delayed as a result of the pandemic. That gave games from independent studios a chance to steal the show. From a report: Some of the most impressive reveals this year were small-scale, indie games that may not have the wow factor of something like Ubisoft Entertainment SA's Assassin's Creed but appealed to fans with interesting story lines, quirky graphics or unusual gameplay. Highlights included Replaced, a gorgeous cyberpunk-themed action game and debut title from Sad Cat Studios, and Twelve Minutes, in which players must break a time loop full of betrayal and murder. The game, from a division of film company Annapurna Pictures, stars Daisy Ridley and Willem Dafoe. Entries like these delighted fans and showcased the breadth of possibilities of video games.

Most years, E3 takes place in Los Angeles, where fans and industry professionals convene at the convention center to play demos and watch trailers for the hottest new games. Commercials and giant posters from expensive series like Call of Duty compete for attendees' eyeballs, and fans come away excited about what's coming in the fall. This year, while there will be Microsoft's Halo Infinite, promised in time for the holidays after a year's delay, Nintendo's highly anticipated next game in the Zelda series won't come until next year. Same with Elden Ring, a much-hyped dark fantasy based on the book that inspired Game of Thrones. Fans didn't seem to mind, and left the show raving instead about Tunic, a Zelda-inspired action-adventure game starring a small fox developed by Canadian creator Andrew Shouldice, and Neko Ghost, Jump, a platforming game from Burgos Games, in which you can shift between 2D and 3D perspectives.

This explosion of independent games, which are usually made by small teams that aren't funded by multi-billion-dollar corporations like Electronic Arts, or Activision Blizzard, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the late 2000s, developers mostly had to partner with big publishers to get their games to audiences. The rise of digital distribution on PCs and consoles combined with the increased accessibility of game-making tools such as the Unity Engine have made it easy for solo developers, or two or three people working in a garage, to release successful games on their own. Some companies, such as Annapurna Interactive and Devolver Digital, have thrived as independent publishers, partnering with developers to release exclusively small, creative games.

Microsoft will let Xbox One owners play next-gen Xbox games through its xCloud service. The news was buried in a blog post recapping Microsoft's Xbox + Bethesda showcase, with the company confirming plans to leverage Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) for Xbox One consoles. That means the 2013 hardware will be able to play Xbox Series X exclusive games from 2021 -- extending the lifecycle of what would normally soon be obsolete boxes. From a report: "For the millions of people who play on Xbox One consoles today, we are looking forward to sharing more about how we will bring many of these next-gen games, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, to your console through Xbox Cloud Gaming, just like we do with mobile devices, tablets, and browsers," says Will Tuttle, editor in chief of Microsoft's Xbox Wire. Until now, Microsoft had only described xCloud on consoles as a way for players to "try [games] before you download," but it's clear the company sees the service as offering much more. Microsoft originally announced Microsoft Flight Simulator as an Xbox One title, before quietly removing references to the Xbox One launch in December. Microsoft recently confirmed Flight Simulator will now launch on Xbox Series X / S consoles on July 27th.

Sony will allow "Cyberpunk 2077" to be sold on its online PlayStation store starting June 21, the game's creators at CD Projekt Red said today. From a report: Sales of the buggy would-be blockbuster have been hit hard since Sony delisted the game shortly after its launch. Many fans had high hopes that the game would meet the level of quality of CDPR's last adventure, "The Witcher 3." A reappearance may signal the game is in a viable condition to play.

Amazon's new Luna game streaming service is offering no-invite access on Prime Day, June 21 and 22. From a report: During that time, Prime subscribers in most of the US will be able to start a 7-day Luna trial, and can now get discounts on a Luna controller and Fire TV bundle. To access Luna currently, you must request an invitation or own a supported Fire TV device. It's available on Windows and Mac PCs, Fire TV, iPhone and iPad (via the web) and on supported Android phones. It costs $5.99 a month to access games including Resident Evil 7, Control, Tacoma, Rez Infinite and Metro Exodus. Amazon is discounting the dedicated Luna controller by 30 percent from today until June 22, reducing it to $49 from the list price $70 for Prime members. On top of that, it's offering the Fire TV stick 4K and Luna Controller in the Fire TV Gaming Bundle for $74, a discount of around $45.

Long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool summarizes a report from Polygon: Photographer Judy Jurasek has sued Capcom for copyright infringement of at least 80 of her photographs in their recent game, Resident Evil: Devil May Cry and other games. Jurasek claims the textures in the video game where copied from her 1996 book Surfaces which contained 1,200 images of surfaces and textures. The book was sold with a CD-ROM with digital copies of the images. Jurasek's damages could total $12M from Devil May Cry alone.

Jurasek claims that Capcom never licensed the images for use in their video games. The initial filing is over 100 pages with many detailed photographic examples of her claims. Part of her evidence comes from Capcom's 2020 data breach. The data breach leaked among other things files and filenames of images used by Capcom. At least one filename appears to match those found in the CD-ROM from Surfaces.
Jurasek is also seeking additional damages of $2,500 to $25,000 for each used photograph for "false copyright management and removal of copyright management," according to Polygon's report, which says she's alleging her photos were used for "everything from marbled textures to ornate sculptural details that are recognizable and abundant in Capcom games," and even the shattered glass texture used in the Resident Evil 4 logo.

A Capcom representative told Polygon that the company is "aware of the lawsuit" and has "no further comment."

Internal company data leaked during a February security breach is now being circulated on the internet, Polish video games maker CD Projekt said in a statement published on Thursday. From a report: The attack, which compromised some of its internal systems including the source code to its much-hyped game Cyberpunk 2077, dealt another blow to the Warsaw-based business after the game's launch was beset by glitches. read more "We are not yet able to confirm the exact contents of the data in question, though we believe it may include current/former employee and contractor details in addition to data related to our games," the statement said. It added that the company couldn't confirm whether or not the data has been manipulated or tampered with since the breach. Not a good day for game developers.

Microsoft on Thursday announced plans to expand its Xbox Game Pass subscription service to many more screens, including third-party smart TVs and also streaming devices the company is currently building itself. From a report: Microsoft intends to deliver its subscription platform on less powerful hardware via the cloud, as it does now with Android and iOS smartphones using a beta version of its Xbox Cloud Gaming service. "We believe that Microsoft can play a leading role in democratizing gaming and defining the future of interactive entertainment," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a prerecorded interview with Xbox chief Phil Spencer. "There are really three key areas where we believe we have an incredible competitive advantage: First, our leadership in cloud computing. Second, the resources we have to build our subscription service, Xbox Game Pass. And third, our overall focus on empowering creators." Microsoft says it's in the process of "working with global TV manufacturers to embed the Xbox experience directly into internet-connected televisions," adding that no extra hardware will be required, save a controller. The company is also "building its own streaming devices for cloud gaming to reach gamers on any TV or monitor without the need for a console at all."