Razer has launched a new initiative that lets gamers donate to COVID-19 initiatives just by playing games. Now when a gamer running its Razer Cortex software earns the company's Razer Silver currency they can pledge it towards the purchase of masks for frontline healthcare workers. From a report: Razer Silver is virtual currency gamers earn when they run the Cortex game optimization software and play eligible games. Silver can normally be exchanged for hardware, gift cards, or games. It's basically a loyalty program that encourages gamers to use Cortex and earn discounted or free Razer hardware. Cortex is available on both PC and Android and supports major titles including World of Warcraft and Borderlands.

Rockstar Games, 2K games, and their parent company Take-Two Interactive announced on Thursday that they will shut down the servers for games such as Grand Theft Auto Online, Red Dead Online, and NBA 2K for two hours on Thursday afternoon "to honor the legacy of George Floyd." Polygon reports: "Black Lives Matter," said Rockstar Games on its official Twitter account. "To honor the legacy of George Floyd, today, 6/4/20, from 2:00-4:00 p.m. ET, we will be shutting down access to our online games, Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online." "Following the memorial," Rockstar added in a follow-up tweet, "we hope you will join us in further honoring the many victims of America's racial injustices by supporting their families, black-owned businesses, those marching on the streets, and coalitions." Rockstar ended its thread with a link to Charity Navigator, a nonprofit organization that maintains a vetted list of civil rights-focused charities.

In addition to Rockstar's titles, additional games from 2K Games and Social Point will go offline as well from 2-4 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Take-Two Interactive said in a statement to Polygon. The list includes NBA 2K, Dragon City, and Monster Legend. Private Division, whose portfolio includes The Outer Worlds and Kerbal Space Program, will also "suspend" its activities during the window. "George Floyd's memory will serve as a reminder that racism and the violence it incites cannot be tolerated," Take-Two Interactive said. "We are committed to supporting efforts to eradicate racial injustice and stand in solidarity with the Black community against this systemic issue that causes conflict and division in our society."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Thanks to some Japanese-language news sources, we now know the nature of the big Sega reveal that was teased for this week's Famitsu. The publisher is working on some kind of initiative that it's dubbed "fog gaming." While it's not exactly clear what that is -- or if it's comparable to cloud gaming services like Google Stadia -- according to analyst Serkan Toto, it will likely involve using the guts of arcade machines during off-hours.

Three months after losing a deal with Take-Two, Star Theory Games was out of business. From a report: One Friday evening last December, employees of game designer Star Theory Games each received the same unusual recruitment message over LinkedIn. It struck them as bizarre for two reasons. One, it came from an executive producer at the publishing company funding their next video game. Two, it said the game -- in the works for the previous two years -- was being pulled from their studio. "This was an incredibly difficult decision for us to make, but it became necessary when we felt business circumstances might compromise the development, execution and integrity of the game," Michael Cook, an executive producer at Private Division, a publishing label within Take-Two Interactive Software, wrote in the message, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. "To that end, we encourage you to apply for a position with us."

It was strange and disconcerting news to Star Theory's employees. Normally, an announcement like this would be delivered in a companywide meeting or an email from Star Theory's leadership team. The contract with Take-Two was the studio's only source of revenue at the time. Without it, the independent studio was in serious trouble. The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Take-Two was looking to hire all of Star Theory's development staff to make that happen. "We are offering a compensation package that includes a cash sign-on bonus, an excellent salary, bonus eligibility and other benefits," Cook wrote. When employees returned to the office on Monday, Star Theory founders Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor convened an all-hands meeting. The two men had been in discussions about selling their company to Take-Two but were dissatisfied with the terms, they explained.

The game's cancellation was a shock, but the founders assured staff that Star Theory still had money in the bank and could try to sign other deals, according to five people who attended the meeting and asked not to be identified, citing the risk of litigation. Berry and Mavor encouraged employees to stick together and stay at the company. The next few weeks were chaos, employees said. Take-Two hired more than a third of Star Theory's staff, including the studio head and creative director. By March, as the coronavirus pandemic choked the global economy, any hope of saving the business appeared to be lost, and Star Theory closed its doors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A year ago, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said he was "pretty optimistic" about Google's Stadia game-streaming service. The concept of "being able to play our games on any device whatsoever around the world, and to do it with low latency, well that's very compelling if that can be delivered," he offered in May of 2019. Now, though, Zelnick has changed his tune a bit. In an interview given during the Bernstein Annual Strategic Decisions Conference late last week, Zelnick acknowledges what has been apparent to industry watchers for a while: "The launch of Stadia has been slow," he said. "I think there was some overpromising on what the technology could deliver and some consumer disappointment as a result."

While major publishers like EA and Activision stayed away from Stadia's "Founders" launch last November, Take-Two provided three of the service's highest-profile games in its early months -- Red Dead Redemption 2, NBA 2K20, and Borderlands 3. And Zelnick said such Stadia support will continue in the future "as long as the business model makes sense." (Take-Two's PGA Tour 2K21, WWE2K Battlegrounds, and the Mafia series are currently planned for future Stadia release.) That said, Zelnick was pretty bearish on how much of an impact the streaming business model will really have on Take-Two's bottom-line sales. "It's not a game changer," Zelnick said. "People who want our games now can get our games now. The fact that you could stream them and not have to have a console interface is really not that big of a deal."

Sony is postponing its PlayStation 5 event that was scheduled for June 4th due to ongoing protests. From a report: "While we understand gamers worldwide are excited to see PS5 games, we do not feel that right now is a time for celebration," says Sony in a Twitter message. "And for now, we want to stand back and allow more important voices to be heard."

Sony is planning a digital event to showcase games for its next-generation PlayStation 5 that may take place as early as next week, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Bloomberg reports: The virtual event could be held June 3, though some people also cautioned that plans have been in flux and that the date may change. Other PlayStation 5 events may follow in the coming weeks and months, and Sony is not expected to reveal every essential detail on the console during its first presentation. The Japanese tech giant has only let out a trickle of information on the PlayStation 5, which the company says is still planned for release this holiday season, despite the Covid-19 pandemic that has damped its promotional plans. Fans have been eager to hear about the lineup of video games that will launch alongside the console and those that will be revealed later.

moon_unit2 writes: The AI technique that DeepMind used to teach machines to play Atari can now bring new video game characters to life. WIRED reports that researchers at Electronic Arts and the University of British Columbia in Canada developed a reinforcement learning method for animating humanoid characters. The approach feeds on data gathered through motion capture, but then uses reinforcement learning to have a computer work out how to move a soccer character so that it achieves a particular objective, like running towards a ball or shimming past defenders. As the article notes, this is part of a wave of AI techniques that promise to revolutionize game development in coming years.

Last week, Kotaku reported on a new project, called Insignia, "that aims to recreate the original Xbox Live service, potentially restoring online play to many dozens of classic Xbox games that fell offline when the original Xbox Live service closed on April 15, 2010." From the report: The project's announcement on the r/originalxbox subreddit came from SoullessSentinel, a screen name of one Luke Usher. Usher is well known in the vintage Xbox community as the lead developer of Cxbx-Reloaded, arguably the most advanced PC-based emulator of the 2001 Xbox hardware. (Microsoft's classic console has proven notoriously tricky to emulate over the years.)

As a demonstration of Insignia's progress, Usher shared a video depicting the creation of a new Xbox Live account via the Xbox's system UI. It's a cool trick, as this process has not been technically possible since the online service's April 2010 closure. (In a cheeky touch, the video names the newly created account HiroProtagonist, the Gamertag of Xbox co-creator J Allard.) Insignia will work with normal, unmodded consoles, provided the user can perform a one-time process to retrieve their unit's internal encryption keys. Long-existing Xbox soft-mod techniques, which require physical copies of exploitable games like Splinter Cell or MechAssault but do not necessarily alter the console's hardware or operating system, should suffice for accomplishing this key retrieval. Once that initial setup's completed, Usher envisions a more or less vanilla Xbox Live experience, complete with matchmaking, voice chat, messaging, and almost everything else you might remember. (One exception would come in a lack of proprietary game DLC, which Insignia and its developers lack rights to distribute.) Anti-cheating measures are also in the works, as well as reporting and banning mechanisms for truly bad actors. The project works by using a DNS man-in-the-middle maneuver to redirect all of Xbox Live's original server calls to new addresses that point to Insignia's work-in-progress infrastructure.

"The current plan is for Insignia to be a centralized service run by Usher and associates," reports Kotaku. "He believes keeping it centralized will prevent player populations from diluting across multiple third-party servers, and that it will not be much of a resource burden." "The server," he noted, "is used for authentication, matchmaking, storing friends lists, etc. but actual game traffic is usually P2P between Xboxes, so the requirements for our server are pretty low."

Audi has dropped driver Daniel Abt in the all-electric racing series Formula E after he had a pro sim driver surreptitiously race for him during a virtual competition over the weekend. He has also been told to pay 10,000 euros to charity as a result. Abt said Tuesday that he thought the idea would be funny and that he had planned to release a video about the whole ruse. The Verge reports: Abt was supposed to be competing in the fifth round of Formula E's online sim racing series, which started up in April alongside virtual substitute series from Formula One, NASCAR, and IndyCar. The Formula E sim series was not only meant to give fans something to watch during the pandemic, but it was also supposed to keep the drivers and teams connected, all while raising funds for UNICEF. But Abt had tapped 18-year-old Lorenz Hoerzing, who has been competing in the sim racer section of Formula E's events, to run in his place. (Hoerzing has since been suspended from the sim racing series as a result.) Abt had someone even appear on the drivers' group Zoom call under the name "Daniel Abt" dressed in Audi red, but with a microphone blocking his face -- a noticeable departure considering Abt's lively presence on his personal streams of the previous races.

Hoerzing led most of the race in Abt's virtual car, but he came into contact with Mercedes-Benz driver Stoffel Vandoorne, allowing Nissan driver Oliver Rowland to take the win. This initially raised suspicions because Abt had previously struggled to compete in the earlier rounds of the virtual championship. The deception really started to unravel after Hoerzing finished third, meaning Abt was supposed to show up for the standard post-race interview with the top three drivers. But he didn't; Rowland and Vandoorne's Zoom feeds were instead placed next to a black box with Abt's name, and the broadcast hosts never even attempted to interview the Audi driver. During his portion of the interview, Vandoorne said was "questioning if it was really Daniel in the car." Vandoorne vented even more on his personal Twitch channel following the race and even tried to call Abt while streaming, but the Audi driver did not pick up. Organizers of the race were reportedly able to verify that Abt was not racing based on Hoerzing's IP address. "I didn't take it as seriously as I should have," Abt said after he was caught. "I'm especially sorry about this, because I know how much work has gone into this project on the part of the Formula E organization." In a later video, Abt said he "won't be racing" with the Formula E team anymore.

Take-Two expects to spend $89 million on marketing during the 12-month period ending March 31, 2024. That is more than twice the marketing budget for any other fiscal year over the next half-decade, according to the company's recent 10-K SEC filing. From a report: Why is Take-Two planning to spend that much more on marketing in fiscal 2024? One of the most likely explanations is that is when the publisher expects to release Grand Theft Auto VI, according to analyst Jeff Cohen of investment firm Stephens. Each year, Take-Two files a 10-K with numerous financial details, including its plans for marketing spend for each year for the next five years. In its previous 10-K, Take-Two notified investors of a spike in marketing costs for fiscal 2023. But that spending has now shifted to fiscal 2024. This movement in spending likely reflects developer Rockstar Games' current plans for the release of Grand Theft Auto VI.

Nvidia recently taught its AI system to recreate the game Pac-Man just by watching it being played. Hypebeast reports: No coding or pre-rendered images were used for the software to base the recreation on. The AI model was simply fed visual data of the game being played alongside controller inputs. From there, the AI recreated what it saw frame by frame, resulting in a playable version of Bandai Namco's most recognizable title. Although it's not a perfect recreation of the title and all its assets, all the mechanics and gameplay goals are the same. NVIDIA even believes this is how AI will be applied to game creation in the future. [Rev Lebaredian, Nvidia's vice president of simulation technology] notes the experiment was done in collaboration with Bandai Namco as it celebrates the 40th anniversary of the classic arcade game.

The artificial intelligence program is called GameGAN, with GAN standing for "generative adversarial network," which is a common architecture used in machine learning. GAN works by attempting to replicate input data while also comparing its work to the original source. If the two don't match, the data is rejected and the program looks for improvements and tries again. Although AI programs have generated virtual gaming spaces before, GameGAN is able to use a "memory module" that allows the program to store an internal map of the digital space it's trying to recreate, leading to a more consistent copy. The AI was trained on over 50,000 episodes and almost never died, the company says. Nvidia will be releasing the recreated game online in the near future.

Microsoft's Solitaire game is turning 30 years old today. Microsoft is celebrating the occasion with a world record attempt of the most games of Microsoft Solitaire completed in one day. From a report: 35 million people still play Solitaire monthly, according to Microsoft, with more than 100 million hands played daily around the world. Microsoft Solitaire was originally included as part of Windows 3.0 back in 1990, designed specifically to teach users how to use a mouse. Grabbing virtual cards and dropping them in place taught the basics of drag-and-drop in Windows, which we still use today in many parts of the operating system. Microsoft Solitaire, originally known as Windows Solitaire, is one of the most played games in the world as it shipped in every version of Windows for more than two decades. That means it has shipped on more than a billion PCs, and it only stopped being a dedicated part of Windows with the release of Windows 8 in 2012.

One of the world's most prolific hacking groups recently infected several Massively Multiplayer Online game makers, a feat that made it possible for the attackers to push malware-tainted apps to one target's users and to steal in-game currencies of a second victim's players. Ars Technica reports: Researchers from Slovakian security company ESET have tied the attacks to Winnti, a group that has been active since at least 2009 and is believed to have carried out hundreds of mostly advanced attacks. Targets have included Chinese journalists, Uyghur and Tibetan activists, the government of Thailand, and prominent technology organizations. Winnti has been tied to the 2010 hack that stole sensitive data from Google and 34 other companies. More recently, the group has been behind the compromise of the CCleaner distribution platform that pushed malicious updates to millions of people. Winnti carried out a separate supply-chain attack that installed a backdoor on 500,000 ASUS PCs.

The recent attack used a never-before-seen backdoor that ESET has dubbed PipeMon. To evade security defenses, PipeMon installers bore the imprimatur of a legitimate Windows signing certificate that was stolen from Nfinity Games during a 2018 hack of that gaming developer. The backdoor -- which gets its name for the multiple pipes used for one module to communicate with another and the project name of the Microsoft Visual Studio used by the developers -- used the location of Windows print processors so it could survive reboots. In a post published early Thursday morning, ESET revealed little about the infected companies except to say they included several South Korea- and Taiwan-based developers of MMO games that are available on popular gaming platforms and have thousands of simultaneous players.

Nintendo of America filed two lawsuits on Friday against Nintendo Switch hack resellers that sell software to play pirated video games, according to court documents obtained by Polygon. From the report: The first lawsuit was filed Friday in an Ohio court against Tom Dilts Jr., the alleged operator of the website UberChips. The second lawsuit was filed in a Seattle court that same day, against a number of anonymous defendants from a selection of websites. All defendants reportedly sell products from a group of anonymous hackers called "Team Xecuter." Nintendo's lawyers described the products as "an unauthorized operating system ... and accompanying piracy tools that install it." These products allow users to get around Nintendo's "technological protection measures" designed to protect its products from "unauthorized access and copying." Once it's disabled, players can download the unauthorized operating system and play pirated video games, lawyers said.

At the time of writing, the UberChips website appears to be offline -- under "scheduled maintenance." Other websites listed in the second lawsuit are still operating. A kit used for hacking the Nintendo Switch is listed for $47.99. The site also sells products for the SNES Classic, PlayStation Mini, Nintendo 3DS, and Game Boy Advance. The websites are also offering pre-orders for devices that will circumvent protection measures for the previously unhackable Nintendo Switch Lite and newer Nintendo Switch models. Nintendo said this is causing "tremendous harm" to the company; Nintendo lawyers said hundreds of the devices have already been sold. Nintendo is seeking $2,500 per trafficking violation in each of these cases, as well as a permanent injunction to stop operations of these websites.

Ubisoft is suing Apple and Google over a Chinese mobile game it says is "a near carbon copy" of one of its most popular games, Rainbow Six: Siege. The BBC reports: Area F2 is "designed to closely replicate... virtually every aspect" of the game, it alleges, in a 43-page document, complete with screenshots. It is also suing the developer, Ejoy, owned by Chinese tech giant Alibaba. Characters, game modes, game maps, animations, and even the user interface were copied, the document alleges. "Virtually every aspect of AF2 is copied from R6S, from the operator selection screen to the final scoring screen and everything in between," Ubisoft claims. "In fact, the games are so similar that an ordinary observer viewing and playing both games likely would be unable to differentiate between them."

Ubisoft estimates Area F2 has been downloaded more than a million times and made "tens of thousands of dollars" on in-game purchases. It says it has raised the issue with both Apple and Google, which both take a cut of sales on their respective app stores. "But rather than take any measures to stop or curtail the infringement... Google and Apple instead decided that it would be more profitable to collect their revenue share from AF2 and continue their unlawful distribution," Ubisoft says in its court filing. Ubisoft is seeking a jury trial over the alleged copyright infringement, in the Central District Court of California.

Minecraft has already become an international phenomenon, but it keeps getting bigger. Microsoft said its 11-year-old world-building game crossed 200 million copies sold, with more than 126 million people playing each month. From a report: Much of the game's recent success has come during the coronavirus pandemic. Microsoft said that in April, it tallied a 25% increase in the number of new players joining its game community, and a 40% spike in the number of people playing together. "In these extraordinary times, we're reminded more than ever before of the important role games like Minecraft can play in providing an escape from the day-to-day and fostering social connections between friends and families," Helen Chiang, Microsoft's head of Minecraft studio Mojang, wrote in a blog post Monday. The announcement came ahead of Microsoft's Build developer event, being held online May 19-20.

destinyland shares an update about Billy Mitchell, the intense dark-haired videogame champion in the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Last year the videogame record-keepers at Twin Galaxies revoked Billy Mitchell's entire lifetime's worth of videogame high scores after an online discussion argued videotapes of three of Mitchell's performances suggested they'd been achieved using a MAME emulator. Electronic Gaming Monthly reports that Mitchell has since streamed games on Twitch "obtaining scores equal to those that had been disputed, broadcast live from public venues," but the record-keepers also banned Mitchell for life from ever submitting any new high scores.

Ars Technica reports that Mitchell recently updated his defamation lawsuit against Twin Galaxies, while they've counter-filed a motion to dismiss it which is now scheduled to be heard on July 6. They argue that ruling in Mitchell's favor "would have chilling effects on the freedom of speech." But in March Billy updated his lawsuit to call their accusation "libelous on its face," saying that Twin Galaxies "at least implied [that he was a cheater], so that any reasonable reader would understand Twin Galaxies has called Mitchell a cheater who deserved punishment by stripping him of all his Twin Galaxies records and banning him for life from submitting further records." Ars Technica writes:

Mitchell takes particular issue with Twin Galaxies' alleged refusal to consider "25 sworn affidavits" from eyewitnesses supporting his claims, in favor of an exclusive focus on "scientific" evidence. Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day is quoted saying that he "find[s] it unexplainable that my testimony as the founder and former owner is disregarded, while others, specifically the ones against Billy, are embraced...."

Twin Galaxies' motion highlights that the 3,770-post dispute thread surrounding Mitchell's Donkey Kong scores (which is now included in its entirety in the court record) was viewed nearly 2.4 million times as of March 14... "Twin Galaxies believes that this was the most professionally documented and thoroughly investigated video game score of all time," Twin Galaxies owner Jason Hall said in his public declaration...

Court proceedings are "not the forum for [Mitchell] to get revenge," Twin Galaxies argues, claiming that its statements regarding Mitchell were "protected activity" under the First Amendment, and Mitchell's suit "seeks to chill the expression of free speech."
In the 1985 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, Mitchell simultaneously held the highest scores for six different video games — Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong, Jr., Centipede, and Burger Time. Because Twin Galaxies now refuses to recognize any of Mitchell's previous records, Guinness has now also expunged those records from its publication.

In 1999 CmdrTaco noted Billy's perfect game of Pac-Man. Though no questions were ever raised about that legendary game, the 2019 edition of Guinness's record book still demoted it to a new section called "Records That Never Were."

"Doom Eternal has become the latest game to use a kernel-level driver to aid in detecting cheaters in multiplayer matches," reports Ars Technica: The game's new driver and anti-cheat tool come courtesy of Denuvo parent Irdeto, a company once known for nearly unbeatable piracy protection and now known for somewhat effective but often cracked piracy protection. But the new Denuvo Anti-Cheat protection is completely separate from the company's Denuvo Anti-Tamper technology... The new Denuvo Anti-Cheat tool rolls out to Doom Eternal players after "countless hours and millions of gameplay sessions" during a two-year early access program, Irdeto said in a blog post announcing its introduction. But unlike Valorant's similar Vanguard system, the Denuvo Anti-Cheat driver "doesn't have annoying tray icons or splash screens" letting players monitor its use on their system. "This invisibility could raise some eyebrows," Irdeto concedes.

To assuage any potential fears, Irdeto writes that Denuvo Anti-Cheat only runs when the game is active, and Bethesda's patch notes similarly say that "use of the kernel-mode driver starts when the game launches and stops when the game stops for any reason...."

"No monitoring or data collection happens outside of multiplayer matches," Denuvo Anti-Cheat Product Owner Michail Greshishchev told Ars via email. "Denuvo does not attempt to maintain the integrity of the system. It does not block cheats, game mods, or developer tools. Denuvo Anti-Cheat only detects cheats." Greshishchev added that the company's driver has received "certification from renown[ed] kernel security researchers, completed regular whitebox and blackbox audits, and was penetration-tested by independent cheat developers." He said Irdeto is also setting up a bug bounty program to discover any flaws they might have missed.

And because of Denuvo Anti-Cheat's design, Greshishchev says the driver is more secure than others that might have more exposure to the Internet. "Unlike existing anti-cheats, Denuvo Anti-Cheat does not stream shell code from the Web," Greshishchev told Ars. "This means that, if compromised, attackers can't send down arbitrary malware to gamers' machines...."

If a driver exploit is discovered in the wild, Greshishchev told Ars that revocable certificates and self-expiring network keys can be used as "kill switches" to cut them off.

"Disney has ordered unauthorized copies of its Club Penguin game to close, after the BBC found children were being exposed to explicit messages," the British publication reports. The social network was shut down by Disney in 2017, causing unofficial clones of the website to launch on private servers using stolen or copied source code. The BBC reports: Visits to fan-run Club Penguin Online (the largest of the social network's unofficial clones) surged during the coronavirus pandemic with more than a million new players. But racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and sexual messages flow freely on the unauthorized platform. Disney said it was "appalled" by the website, and has ordered it to close or face legal action. Club Penguin Online appeared to go offline on Friday afternoon. One man involved in the site has been arrested on suspicion of possessing child abuse images. Detectives say the man from London has been released on bail pending further inquiries.

The BBC set up an account on the English, Spanish and Portuguese versions of Club Penguin Online. It found: content filters designed to remove offensive language had been disabled on several servers, allowing swear words, homophobic slurs, anti-Semitism and racist messages to be posted publicly; moderators were no longer removing racist content; and players were engaging in "penguin e-sex," sending and receiving explicit messages. Disney's original game banned the sharing of personal details, but players on this cloned site are openly sharing Snapchat, Instagram and Discord account details. A Zoom "meet-up" was also advertised and codes and passwords shared openly. Although it is impossible to verify the age of users, many told the BBC they were teenagers, and there were children playing, too.