A four-year antitrust investigation into PC games geo-blocking in the European Union by distribution platform Valve and five games publishers has led to fines totalling $9.4 million after the Commission confirmed today that the bloc's rules had been breached. From a report: The geo-blocking practices investigated since 2017 concerned around 100 PC video games of different genres, including sports, simulation and action games. In addition to Valve --which has been fined just over $1.94 million -- the five sanctioned games publishers are: Bandai Namco (fined $412k), Capcom ($479k), Focus Home ($3.39 million), Koch Media ($1.2 million) and ZeniMax ($1.94 million). The Commission said the fines were reduced by between 10% and 15% owing to cooperation from the companies, with the exception of Valve who it said chose not to cooperate (a "prohibition Decision" rather than a fine reduction was applied in its case). The antitrust investigation begun in February 2017, with a formal statement of objections issued just over two years later when the Commission accused the companies of "entering into bilateral agreements to prevent consumers from purchasing and using PC video games acquired elsewhere than in their country of residence" in contravention of EU rules.

CD Projekt Red is still trying to contain the damage from widespread reports of major technical problems in the versions of Cyberpunk 2077 released for the PS4 and Xbox One last month. From a report: To that end, studio co-founder and CEO Marcin Iwinski today tweeted a video message seeking to explain the internal situation leading up to the problematic launch. "Despite good reviews on PC, the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standard we wanted it to meet," Iwinski said in the message. "I, and the entire leadership team, are deeply sorry for this, and this video is me publicly owning up to that." The core of the problem, Iwinski said, was the "in-game streaming system" that Cyberpunk 2077 used to "feed" content and game mechanics to the engine without frequent breaks for loading. That system had to be "constantly improved" for last-gen consoles during development, Iwinski said, in order to keep up with the "epic" look of the PC version (which saw its graphics and other assets scaled down to work on more limited, older console hardware).

"Things did not look super difficult at first, [but] I think that time has proven we underestimated the task," Iwinski said. "Because the city is so packed and the disk bandwidth of old-gen consoles is what it is, it constantly challenged us." winski was less direct about why these problems with the console versions weren't discovered and either fixed or delayed before launch. "Every change and improvement needed to be tested, and as it turned out, our testing did not show a big part of the issues you experienced while playing the game," Iwinski said. He added that communication problems caused by the team working from home amid COVID-related restrictions meant some issues got lost over video calls or emails. "We saw significant improvements each and every day leading up to release [and] really thought we'd deliver in the day zero [version on consoles]," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The "instant on" feature that's activated by default on new Xbox Series S/X consoles could suck up a total of 4 billion kWh -- the equivalent of a year's operation for a large power plant -- from US owners alone through 2025. That's according to a preliminary report released this week from the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmentally focused nonprofit advocacy group. As the name implies, the "instant on" feature of the Series S/X (and the Xbox One before it) lets users skip the usual startup time when turning the console back on. That saves about 10 to 15 seconds of waiting per power cycle on the Series S/X, down from about 45 seconds on the Xbox One.

"Instant on" standby also lets the system check periodically for system updates in order to download and install them in between play sessions. But leaving the "instant on" feature active means the Xbox Series S/X draws nine to 10 watts of power 24 hours a day -- even when it's not being actively used -- compared to less than 1W if the standby settings are switched to "energy saving" mode. The Xbox Series S/X initially drew 25 to 28W of "instant on" standby power at launch, but a recent firmware update caused a dramatic reduction, placing the new systems below the ~13W drawn by the Xbox One's "instant on" mode. The PlayStation 5, by contrast, uses between 1 and 2 watts when sitting idle in "rest mode."

Ubisoft said it will develop a new Star Wars game, indicating a longtime exclusivity agreement for Electronic Arts on the Walt Disney franchise will come to an end. From a report: The new Star Wars title is set to be the first not published by EA since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. The news sent shares of the two game companies diverging Wednesday. Ubisoft climbed more than 7%, and EA fell as much 3.2%. The agreement with EA is scheduled to expire in 2023. In an emailed statement, EA said: "We're proud of our long-standing collaboration with Lucasfilm Games, which will continue for years to come." Lucasfilm said in a blog post Wednesday morning that it had "a number of projects underway" with EA. Ubisoft said only that its game will be set in an open-world environment and will developed by the company's Massive Entertainment team in Sweden, best known for a series of shooting games called Tom Clancy's The Division. The group is also working on a game based on James Cameron's "Avatar" movies.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Somehow, it's already been two decades since Microsoft first announced the Xbox, its foray into console gaming. Specifically, the Xbox was unveiled at CES in 2001 -- to commemorate that launch, Bloomberg has published an in-depth oral history of how the console came to be. It's a fascinating read, but one particular passage stands out: details on Microsoft's efforts to secure games for the brand-new console. While the company implored third-party developers to work on the Xbox, Microsoft also considered using its considerable financial might to buy developers. And Microsoft set its sights high, approaching Nintendo about an acquisition. Microsoft was laughed out of the room, says Kevin Bachus, a director for third-party relations on the Xbox project. "They just laughed their asses off," Bachus said to Bloomberg. "Like, imagine an hour of somebody just laughing at you. That was kind of how that meeting went."

Microsoft's specific pitch did make some amount of sense. At the time, Nintendo was lagging behind Sony badly from a hardware perspective. So Microsoft figured it could take on hardware production and leave Nintendo to focus on the software. "We actually had Nintendo in our building in January 2000 to work through the details of a joint venture where we gave them all the technical specs of the Xbox," said head of business development Bob Mcbreen. "The pitch was their hardware stunk, and compared to Sony PlayStation, it did. So the idea was, 'Listen, you're much better at the game portions of it with Mario and all that stuff. Why don't you let us take care of the hardware?â(TM) But it didn't work out."

According to Nielsen company SuperData's 2020 year in review, 55 percent of people picked up video games during the first phase of lockdowns. The Verge reports: According to SuperData, 66 percent of consumers from 18 to 24 played more console games, while 60 percent played more mobile titles. Unsurprisingly, buyers also tended toward digital purchases. SuperData reports that 27 percent of people -- about 1 in 4 -- played games to stay in touch with each other. [...] As physical spaces disappeared, video games became one of the few places for people to spend time together... SuperData estimates that digital games alone garnered $126.6 billion over the course of the year. The numbers may not spike this year as much as they did in 2020, but SuperData predicts "the long-term habits formed during lockdown are here to stay."

A little over a year after bringing Minecraft Earth in the US, Microsoft announced this week it will shut down the game later this year. Engadget reports: Minecraft Earth players have until June 30th, 2021, to play the augmented reality title before Microsoft shuts down its servers and it's no longer available to download from app marketplaces. Developer Mojang Studios blamed the coronavirus pandemic and all the changes to day-to-day life that have come with it for the shutdown. "Minecraft Earth was designed around free movement and collaborative play -- two things that have become near impossible in the current global situation," the studio said. Like Niantic with Pokemon Go, Mojang had tweaked the game to make it easier to play at home. Those changes clearly weren't enough.

But if there's a silver lining in today's news, it's that Mojang plans to send off Minecraft Earth in style. The studio is rolling out one last update for the game it says contains changes "to make your time in Minecraft Earth as fun as possible." Among other tweaks, the update does away with real-money transactions and drastically reduces the time it will take for players to craft and build things within the game. It also offers players a chance to see all the content that Mojang was working on before today's announcement. "We hope these adjustments will allow you to explore, craft, and build more -- while staying safe indoors," the studio said. Once June 30th comes and goes, Microsoft will delete player data on July 1st. If you spent money in Minecraft Earth at any point during the life of the game, you'll get a token that will allow you to download the Bedrock edition of Minecraft to your mobile device. You can find more details on the shutdown on the Minecraft website.

It might have taken more than 20 years, but a game intended for the original PlayStation has at last made its way into the world. Engadget reports: A group of Japanese developers worked on Magic Castle for eight months in the late '90s. They used Sony's Net Yaroze, a system with which hobbyists could make games for the console. The team sent the RPG to several publishers, but most didn't bite. Sony showed interest, but it wanted the developers to ditch their game and move to a different project. The team rejected the offer and later disbanded. And so the unfinished Magic Castle stayed on the shelf for over 20 years. Until now.

One of the developers, who goes by PIROWO, rediscovered the Magic Castle source code a while back. They decided to finish and release it, four console generations later. Magic Castle has some interesting tricks up its sleeve, as EuroGamer notes. It features dynamic music and you can customize the position of the user interface. There are four character classes to choose from and 20 floors with randomized elements to make your way through. You can download the game from the Internet Archive and play it with an emulator.

Fast Company's technology editor harrymcc writes: After years of growing technical irrelevance and security concerns, the Flash browser plug-in will reach the end of the road on January 12 when Adobe blocks its ability to display content. The web will survive just fine. But there's a huge library of old Flash games — some of them quirky, interesting, and worth preserving. Over at Fast Company, Jared Newman wrote about several grassroots initiatives that will allow us to continue to enjoy these artifacts of the Flash era even after Flash is history.
Some tips from the article:

• If you have a Windows PC, the best way to replay old Flash content is with FlashPoint, a free program with more than 70,000 web games and 8,000 animations, most of which are Flash-based. (Experimental Mac and Linux versions are also available, but are complicated to set up....)

• Conifer lets you run a legacy browser with Flash support on a remote machine, insulating you from any security issues...

• The Internet Archive has made thousands of Flash games and animations playable online in modern web browsers through emulation, so you can play the Helicopter Game or watch Peanut Butter Jelly Time in their original forms.

• Ruffle is the underlying emulation software that The Internet Archive is using. You can also install it as a standalone program or browser extension...

• Newgrounds has released its own Flash Player for Windows that safely loads content from its website, so you still get the full experience of using Newgrounds proper.

But the article opens with a sentence reminding us that "After all the challenges of 2020, there's one thing we can all look forward to in the new year: Adobe Flash Player will finally be dead."

An anonymous reader writes: So on New Year's Eve, the "jam" rock band Phish re-broadcast their legendary 1995 performance on New Year's Eve -- while playing a game of chess against the audience. (Just as they'd done in 1995 -- although during that tour they'd made two just moves during each show.) In a video promoting this year's event, a chess "historian" remembers "No single band in the '90s was playing better chess against their audience" and shares an alleged conspiracy theory that they were being coached by Garry Kasparov. And yet, "Midway through the second of two nights at Madison Square Garden, the audience takes Phish's queen" -- and the band resigned.

This had left their ongoing audience-versus-band match with a score (one game apiece). So 25 years later, for New Year's Eve, Phish finally staged the great re-match.

"However, just as it was time to begin the game (and as the show kicked off with opener "Punch You In The Eye"), Chess.com, the popular chess site hosting the online game, crashed," reports JamBands.com.
Thinking quickly, the band announced on Twitter that "We're making a quick pivot, 2020 style, to live chess mode. We will be using a moderator from Chess.com who will take feedback on the move within the chat and then complete the audience move."

JamBands.com explains how the long-awaited match finally culminated: In between sets, the broadcast cut to a live zoom call between all four band members, during which they discussed their next moves in the game and chatted. At various points, Gordon and Anastasio picked up guitars, and Gordon had a surreal projection of a chess board floating behind him at times. During the first break, McConnell referenced the technical difficulties. "I'm sorry this didn't work out to plan, but nothing this year did," he said with a laugh.

During the break between the second and third sets, the shenanigans increased, with drummer Jon Fishman following through on an off-hand promise to shave his head. (At first, the other three band members didn't even notice.) Ultimately, the band defeated the audience... Down to just their king, queen and a few pawns, the audience resigned as the band was up a pawn and still had a rook and queen on the board...

Phish raised funds for a charity during the broadcast. "For this final webcast of the year, our beneficiary will be none other than The WaterWheel Foundation itself," the band wrote prior to the stream. "Since 1997, the band and their fans have collaborated on a nationwide charitable endeavor by raising funds and donating the proceeds across the country. This year alone, collectively we have raised and donated nearly $750,000 to 27 different nonprofits during the Dinner And A Movie series. Join us in continuing to support those in need...."
You can watch the entire four-and-a-half-hour webcast on YouTube.

The last day of the year was also the last day for FarmVille, one of the original addictive Facebook games. From a report: FarmVille, which allowed players to cultivate colorful cartoonish farms by tending crops and caring for livestock, had 30 million daily players at its peak. But game developer Zynga announced in September it would shut down the game on Dec. 31, a victim of Adobe's decision to stop distributing and updating its Flash Player for web browsers, which in turn led Facebook to announce an end to support for Flash games on its platform.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A ten-year longitudinal study published in the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking on a group in early adolescence from as young as ten years old, investigated how playing violent video games at an early age would translate into adulthood behavior (23 years of age). Titled "Growing Up with Grand Theft Auto: A 10-Year Study of Longitudinal Growth of Violent Video Game Play in Adolescents" the study found no correlation between growing up playing video games and increased levels of aggression ten years later. This particular study utilized a more contemporary approach for analyzing its data, known as the person-centered approach. Traditional studies use a variable-centered approach whereby researchers treat each variable, or characteristic, as related to another variable. An example would be that exercising is related to a reduced incidence of heart disease. This has been particularly valuable when comparing groups. In a person-centered approach researchers combine various algorithms across variables to determine how these variables compare among individuals. This approach provides a more accurate depiction of how variables relate to the individual.

Phoronix reports: It's been a turbulent year and 2020 is certainly ending interesting in the Linux/open-source space... If it wasn't odd enough seeing Sony providing a new official Linux driver for their PlayStation 5 DualSense controller for ending out the year, there is also a new Linux port to the Nintendo 64 game console... Yes, a brand new port to the game console that launched more than two decades ago.

Open-source developer Lauri Kasanen who has contributed to Mesa and the Linux graphics stack took to developing a new Nintendo 64 port and announced it this Christmas day. This isn't the first time Linux has been ported to the N64 but prior attempts weren't aimed at potentially upstreaming it into the mainline Linux kernel...

This fresh port to the N64 was pursued in part to help port emulators and frame-buffer or console games.
And also, the announcement adds, "Most importantly, because I can."

CD Projekt SA, the Polish video-game publisher of Cyberpunk 2077, was sued by an investor who claims the company misled him about the potential of the error-plagued game whose botched release this month caused shares to dive. From a report: Andrew Trampe sued Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles and seeks to represent other investors who bought the company's securities. CD Projekt failed to disclose that Cyberpunk 2077 was "virtually unplayable on the current-generation Xbox or Playstation systems due to an enormous number of bugs," according to the complaint. As a result, Sony Corp. removed Cyberpunk 2077 from the Playstation store, and Sony, Microsoft and the company were forced to offer full refunds for the game, according to the complaint.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After over a year of requests from fans and enthusiasts, and months of official teases, Microsoft Flight Simulator has a virtual reality mode. Whether you play the game via Steam or the Windows Store, you can now take advantage of "OpenXR" calls to seemingly any PC-VR system on the market, aided by an "enable/disable VR" keyboard shortcut at any time. This summer, ahead of the game's final-stretch beta test, the developers at Asobo Studio used a screen-share feature in a video call to tease the VR mode to us at Ars Technica. This is never an ideal way to show off VR, in part because the platform requires high refresh rates for comfortable play, which can't be smoothly sent in a pandemic-era video call. But even for a video call, it looked choppy. Asobo's team assured us that the incomplete VR mode was running well -- but of course, we're all on edge about game-preview assurances as of late. Now that users have been formally invited to slap Microsoft Flight Simulator onto their faces, I must strongly urge users not to do so -- or at least heavily temper their expectations. Honestly, Asobo Studio should've issued these warnings, not me, because this mode is nowhere near retail-ready.

Ultimately, trying to use the 2020 version of MSFS within its VR mode's "potato" settings is a stupid idea until some kinks get worked out. It's bad enough how many visual toggles must be dropped to PS2 levels to reach a comfortable 90 fps refresh; what's worse is that even in this low-fidelity baseline, you'll still face serious stomach-turning anguish in the form of constant frametime spikes. Turn the details up to a "medium" level in order to savor the incredible graphics engine Asobo built, of course, and you're closer to 45 fps. I didn't even bother finding an average performance for the settings at maximum. That test made me sick enough to delay this article by a few hours. [...] The thing is, my VR stomach can always survive the first few minutes of a bumpy refresh before I have to rip my headset off in anguish -- and this was long enough to see the absolute potential of MSFS as a must-play VR library addition. I don't have an ultrawide monitor, so testing MSFS has always been an exercise in wishing for a better field of view -- to replicate the glance-all-over behavior of actual flight. Getting a taste of that in my headset -- with accurate cockpit lighting, impressive volumetric clouds, and 3D modeling of my plane's various sounds -- made me want to sit for hours in this mode and get lost in compelling, realistic flight. But even the most iron stomachs can only take so much screen flicker within VR before churning, and that makes MSFS's demanding 3D engine a terrible fit for the dream of hours-long VR flight... at least, for the time being.

Sony has published a new "hid-playstation" Linux kernel driver for bringing up the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller and will also be used for supporting other PlayStation hardware on Linux. Phoronix reports: This new Linux kernel driver supports the PlayStation 5 "DualSense" game controller both in USB and Bluetooth modes. All key functionality along with LEDs, motion sensors, touchpad, battery, lightbar, and rumble are all supported by this official Sony Linux driver. The Linux kernel already has the existing "hid-sony" driver while this PlayStation 5 game controller comes with the hid-playstation driver. In announcing the new driver, they are planning to move some of the Sony Interactive Entertainment hardware support from the existing hid-sony to hid-playstation drivers. The hid-sony driver will continue to be maintained and used by broader Sony devices. This new driver follows the move from about a year ago of Sony "officially" maintaining the hid-sony Linux input driver.

This new driver comes in at just over 1,400 lines of code in its initial form catering to the PS5 controller. When transitioning support for older hardware to this new driver there is also a promise of unit test coverage and more. The new HID-PlayStation driver is currently under review and isn't yet queued up for mainlining but those wanting to try it out can find the 13 patches up for testing.

Leaked Nintendo documents have revealed a frightening surveillance operation carried out against a hacker who was researching exploits for the 3DS handheld. TorrentFreak reports: During the past 24 hours, various Twitter accounts (1,2) have been posting snippets from documents that were recently leaked from Nintendo. While there are numerous items of interest, the most shocking revelations involve Neimod, a hacker who several years ago developed exploits for the 3DS handheld console. [T]he scale of the operation, which is revealed in detail in the leaked documents, shows just how far the gaming giant was prepared to go to stop his work. For example, the leak reveals personal profiling that dug deeply into Neimod's education status, listed details of his working life, while offering evidence of physical snooping on his daily lifestyle. What time he could be found at home, who came to see him there, and even when he visited places like banks and restaurants are all included. While this kind of surveillance is creepy in its own right, additional documents reveal a detailed plan to use the gathered intelligence to physically confront Neimod in order to pressurize him into complying with the company's demands.

According to Nintendo's planning, the operation would begin around April 15, 2013, with its team meeting at a local hotel to discuss and finalize their plans. Following a review of Neimod's movements of the previous week, the team would then decide where and when contact would be made -- after work or at home, for example. With an undercover investigator monitoring Neimod to discover what time he left work, Neimod was to be approached by a 'contact team,' who were instructed to approach their target "in a friendly, non-threatening, professional, and courteous manner." "Provide a business card," the instructions read. After Neimod had been engaged in conversation, the team was instructed to flatter the hacker by "acknowledging his engineering/programming aptitude." They were also told to reference his stated aim of not "facilitating piracy" with his hacks but point out Nintendo's concerns that a release of his hack could do just that.

Whether Neimod complied or resisted, Nintendo prepared for both eventualities. The following slide, posted to Twitter by Eclipse-TT, shows a flow chart that begins with instructions for the "Knock and Talk Team," details a staging area, rules of engagement, and plans for what should happen when things go to plan -- or otherwise. The Nintendo "Final Enforcement Proposal" document describes a "carrot and stick" approach, with the stick being a laundry list of potential offenses committed by Neimod under Belgian law and the carrot representing a number of sweeteners that might be of interest to the hacker. If cooperation was achieved, Nintendo suggested it could refrain from filing a criminal complaint. It may also enter into a "bounty" contract with Neimod with payments made for finding and documenting exploits. Within certain parameters, his discoveries could still be announced to the public, allowing him to retain "bragging rights." This could help Nintendo's image, the company wrote.

Roughly half a billion people played Among Us in November, becoming "by far the most popular game ever in terms of monthly players," according to Nielsen's SuperData. The Verge reports: The success is even more remarkable because InnerSloth -- the company that makes Among Us -- only has four employees. That's roughly 125 million players per person who works on the game. It's proven to be so popular that the studio decided to cancel a sequel that was in the works and just put all its effort into improving the original. It even caught the attention of sitting congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who livestreamed herself playing it to try to encourage people to vote, with an audience on Twitch that peaked at over 400 thousand viewers.

In an email to The Verge, Carter Rogers, Principal Analyst at SuperData, said that the next-most popular game in terms of monthly active users only clocked in at 300 million. Rogers notes that Nielsen arrives at its figures through a mix of "point-of-sale and event data from publishers, developers and payment service providers." Among Us' release on the Nintendo Switch was recent enough that it didn't have an appreciable impact on the game's total numbers in Nielsen's analysis.

An internal Nintendo leak has revealed measures the company took when approaching a 3DS homebrew hacker. The measures are rather extreme and apparently include surveillance of the individual in question, as well as internal presentations and instructions on how to approach him. From a report: This comes courtesy of prominent Twitter Nintendo leaker Eclipse. According to documents unearthed by Eclipse -- which also include a Switch software development kit and console security documents, among other things -- the company conducted surveillance on Neimod, a hacker who cracked the 3DS, in 2013. Online Nintendo historian Forest of Illusion corroborates this with an internal document showing findings about Neimod's personal life including where he lived and his average work week. In addition to the surveillance, Nintendo also created detailed plans on how to approach Neimod in order to get him to back down from hacking the 3DS. In the documents, IRC chats involving Neimod are included, showing Nintendo covertly extracting information from Neimod and altering its response to the issue based on what he says. The details of Nintendo's plan to approach Neimod are remarkably detailed, with multiple stages and potential outcomes mapped out in a flowchart.

The military news site Task and Purpose reports: The U.S. military's youngest branch, the Space Force, just trounced its sibling services, as well the United Kingdom's military, in the second annual Call of Duty Endowment Bowl.

The transatlantic Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War tournament pit eight teams from the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Marine Corps, along with the British Army, Royal Navy, and Royal Air Force, against each other. Each team was captained by a civilian gamer and popular streamer who offered guidance and tips to players in real-time as they vied for the top spot...

The tournament was put on by the Call of Duty Endowment, which has placed more than 77,000 veterans into full-time jobs since its inception in 2009. This year alone, the endowment placed 11,000 veterans in jobs amidst the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

"Space Force isn't even a year old so this may have been their very first win in anything competitive against any of the other services," Dan Goldenberg, the endowment's executive director said during the event, according to Business Insider. "So it's a heck of a great way to start off their history."