"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.

Americans stuck at home have flocked in droves to video gaming, sending sales to a quarterly record. From a report: U.S. consumer spending on video games jumped to $10.9 billion in the first quarter, up 9% from a year earlier, research firm NPD Group said in a report released Friday. Game content reaped the lion's share of the spending, $9.6 billion, up 11% year-over-year, NPD said. Top titles included Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, DOOM Eternal, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V, Minecraft, MLB The Show 20 and NBA 2K20, according to the firm. Sales gains for Nintendo's Switch console offset declines for other platforms, NPD said, sending game-hardware sales up 2% to $773 million. Accessory sales rose 1% to $503 million.

The Epic Games Store has been down for several hours as people flood the service to snap up GTA V for free. "We are currently experiencing high traffic on the Epic Games Store," Epic acknowledges in a tweet. "We are aware that users may be encountering slow loading times, 500 errors, or launcher crashing at this time and we are actively working to scale. We'll provide an update as soon as we can." ExtremeTech reports: The surge in traffic for the Epic Game Store has apparently been intense enough that it has actually created issues for related Epic services like Epic Battle Breakers and Fortnite.

If you can't get on the EGS to pick up your copy of the game, don't worry -- it's going to be free through May 21. It isn't clear which edition of the game Epic is giving away, however, because nobody can log in to check. Rumors ran wild on this point, with some implying Epic would give away the "latest premium edition with additional content." At the very least, the rumor is that this represents the complete title, not just a front-end for accessing either the single-player campaign or GTA Online. Epic is having something of a banner week. "First, Tim Sweeney's company wowed the internet with the new PS5 demo built on Unreal Engine 5," reports ExtremeTech. "Now the EGS has broken down under the weight of Grand Theft Auto, which puts Epic news front-and-center before PC gamers who might not have cared about the console announcement."

Also worth mentioning is the company on Wednesday launched Epic Online Services, giving developers free access to the same kinds of tools used to support Epic Games' massive Fortnite player base.

New submitter quantumghost writes: SpaceX has opened up a new online simulator that mimics the Crew Dragon capsule controls. The game was released in anticipation of SpaceX's upcoming launch of Crew Dragon to the International Space Station. On May 27th, it'll be the first American-built spacecraft to haul American astronauts to the ISS in 11 years.

The goal of the simulator is to see if you can dock your spacecraft to the ISS. "According to the new game's opening slide, this is the actual interface on which astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, Crew Dragon's inaugural test pilots, have been," reports Popular Mechanics. "The central interface is packed with a slew of numbers. The green numbers indicate whether corrections need to be made. When they're below 0.2, it means you've successfully docked and beat the simulation."

Epic Online Services is now available, giving developers free access to the same kinds of tools used to support Epic Games' massive Fortnite player base. From a report: The new suite, which went live on Wednesday, enables a unified gameplay experience across multiple platforms, including Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, PC platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux), and Xbox. It gives developers and their communities ready access to features like cross-play, cross-progression, unified matchmaking, lobbies, and more. Support for Android and iOS platforms will be added soon. "At Epic, we believe in open, integrated platforms and in the future of gaming being a highly social and connected experience," said Chris Dyl, general manager of online services at Epic Games, in a news release. "Through Epic Online Services, we strive to help build a user-friendly ecosystem for both developers and players, where creators can benefit regardless of how they choose to build and publish their games, and where players can play games with their friends and enjoy the same quality experience regardless of the hardware they own."

Epic Games' Unreal is already one of the most widely used game engines on the planet, utilized by game developers, advertisers and filmmakers alike. And it's ready to take the next step. From a report: Epic Games announced its new Unreal Engine 5 today and we finally have an idea of what graphics will look like on next generation hardware. The first gameplay footage from Microsoft's Xbox Series X was underwhelming, but the first run of games on new hardware typically is. The nine minutes of footage from Epic, which is running a tech demo on PlayStation 5 hardware, offered our first real glimpse of what may be the future of video game visuals. The clip features a video game protagonist exploring a cave system then skysurfing through a mountain pass as ruins crumble around her. Epic designed it to showcase two new features of Unreal Engine 5 -- nanite and lumen. Epic Games says that nanite allows game designers to render an incredible amount of polygons on screen, leading to photo-realistic environments. Lumen is a new lighting engine that renders light and fills space similarly to Nvidia's RTX tech.

In the demo, the two new technologies add up to a beautiful scene with complicated textures, animation, and lighting. Epic Games is selling these new technologies, and Unreal Engine 5 in general, as tools developers can use to save time in the development process. According to Epic Games, Unreal Engine 5 comes with a suite of tools that allow developers to rely less on hand crafting environments and animations. The demo is gorgeous, but it doesn't show off the developer's version of the software and it's hard to know what the software will look like for its target audience -- people making video games.

Age of Empires 2, a 21-year-old game, could well be having its best year ever. From a report: Since its HD re-release in 2013 the game has had a steady growth in average player count, but with the release of Age of Empires 2: Definitive edition last year and COVID-19 lockdowns inflating player counts across the industry, Age of Empires 2 is boasting totals that beat some very big-name games. It's now by far Steam's most popular RTS, with both the Definitive Edition and the 2013 HD Edition having higher player counts than closest competitor Company of Heroes 2. This year's big tournament boasted the largest Age of Empires 1v1 prize pool since 2002.

Last month, in April, the games' combined average player count was over 50,000 players. April 12 was the definitive edition's all-time player peak, and the combined total of the games was 59,995 players. That's well into the top 150 all-time peak player counts on Steam... for a 21-year-old game. The two games generally average higher player counts than popular free-to-play game War Thunder or industry darling Stardew Valley. They're on-par with the popular action RPG Path of Exile. Their average is nearly as many as perennially popular premium games like Civilization VI or Terraria. Both versions of Age of Empires 2 sit in the top 100 games on Steam, with the Definitive Edition sitting at #25. Combined, however, the Age of Empires community on average pushes up to the #15 spot -- or higher, on peak player count days.

Nintendo announced last week that Animal Crossing: New Horizons has sold over 13.41 million copies in its first six weeks. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is about as far as you can get from a communications super-app geared toward in-app sales or collaboration. From a report: In fact, as a franchise originally made for children, it barely has a proper chat function. But as we watch real-world society grind to a painful halt, many players are now also using this game as an unexpected economic and creative lifeline. Here's the story of how this Nintendo Switch game has become an experimental playground for real-world businesses and creative experiences, letting players find new ways to mirror conventional culture with in-game resources.

Jeff Grubb, writing for VentureBeat: One of the tidbits revealed during the first Xbox 20/20 event today is that Dirt 5 supports 120 frames per second on Xbox Series X. Publisher Codemasters' racing game is coming in October, but it supports Smart Delivery. So if you get it for Xbox One, you'll get the Xbox Series X version at no additional cost. And what does the Xbox Series X-optimized version of Dirt 5 get you? In an interview with the Xbox team, Codemasters confirmed that Dirt 5 supports the next-gen console's high-framerate feature. This means you can drive around the rally racer at 4K and 120 frames per second. High framerate is one of a number of key features for the next-gen consoles. And that makes sense. Racing games already have nearly photorealistic visuals. More graphical effects are not going to make much of a difference to the presentation of a Dirt 5. So this enables Codemasters to put that extra horsepower toward running the game faster.

OK, so the Xbox Series X can run Dirt 5 at up to 120fps, but that's not going to matter if you don't have the right display. High-refreshrate content is common on the PC, but consoles have primarily topped out at 60fps. Because of this it hasn't matter that most TVs top out at 60Hz. But it is a problem for the next-gen consoles. To actually see Dirt 5 running at 120fps, you'll need a TV that runs at 120Hz or faster. That means the TV updates its frames 120 times every second. The good news here is that a lot of TVs already have this feature. The bad news is that even if you have an HFR panel, support is a lot more complicated than that. The issue comes down to the audio/video interface running between your TV and the Xbox Series X.

Twitch, the online video site popular among gamers, is looking for its version of "The Bachelor." From a report: The company plans to fund a slate of original, unscripted series that would be live and interactive, airing two to three times a week, according to an internal document seen by Bloomberg. Its preferred genres are game shows, dating shows, sports, music and talk -- many of the cornerstones of reality TV. The global health crisis has provided Twitch, owned by Amazon.com Inc., a rare opportunity to broaden its audience and experiment with new kinds of programming. While many TV networks have struggled to produce shows during the pandemic, Twitch's most popular personalities have always filmed themselves from home.

Slashdot reader thereitis shares a report from Ars Technica that "delves into the reversing community's efforts to produce usable C source code from N64 game binaries." Here's an excerpt: Early this week, with little warning, the Internet was graced with a Windows executable containing a fully playable PC port of Super Mario 64. Far from being just a usual emulated ROM, this self-contained program enables features like automatic scaling to any screen resolution, and players are already experimenting with adding simple graphics-card-level reshaders, including ray-tracing, as well. The PC port -- which was released with little buildup and almost no promotion -- wasn't built from scratch in a modern game engine, in the manner of some other now-defunct Super Mario 64 porting projects. And its release has nothing to do with a recent leak of internal Nintendo files dating back to the Gamecube days. Instead, the port seems to be a direct result of a years-long effort to decompile the Super Mario 64 ROM into parsable C code. This kind of reverse-engineering from raw binary to easy-to-read code isn't a simple process, but it's an effort that a growing community of hobbyist decompilers is undertaking to unlock the secrets behind some of their favorite games.

MicroProse, an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey and Sid Meier in 1982, is being resurrected after an absence of almost 20 years. The publisher's last game was Grand Prix 4 released in 2002, but is most famous for the XCOM and Civilization franchises. MojoKid shares a report from HotHardware: The company is now being led by CEO David Lagettiu, while Bill Stealey, who originally founded MicroProse with Sid Meier, will be onboard as a consultant this time around. For those that would like to see some of their MicroProse classics "refreshed" for modern systems, you're in luck. It will be remastering a number of games, although those specific titles haven't been revealed at this time. What the reinvigorated company has announced, however, is that it has three new games on deck. The first is Task Force Admiral, which will have you in command of a U.S. Navy WWII (Pacifica Theater) carrier task force. This will be a full 3D simulation game with 90 ship classes and 40 different types of aircraft with realistic ballistics and full damage modeling. The game is being developed by Drydock Dreams.

Next up is Second front, which is another WWII-themed game developed by Hexdraw. "Second Front is an accessible WWII turn-based tactical game with more than 40 infantry units and 200 tanks, vehicles and guns," writes MicroProse. It has all the depth of a paper wargame and the ease of a computer simulation. Campaign, scenarios and a complete editor make it an infinite tactical sandbox experience." Finally, there's Sea Power, which was developed by Triassic Games. Sea Power shifts to "modern naval conflict campaigns." All three of the games will be launching soon via Steam, which you can check out using the follow links: Task Force Admiral, Second Front, Sea Power.

Microsoft, gearing up for its biggest-ever year of launches for Xbox products and services in the middle of a global pandemic and economic recession, will replace its plan for a splashy public game-conference event with a monthly series of online showcases. From a report: The virtual events start on May 7, with a look at third-party games planned for its new console, called Xbox Series X. In June, the company will highlight the Xbox platform and services, and July's session is intended to cover games produced by Microsoft's own 15 game studios, including the next iteration of its biggest franchise, "Halo." The Redmond, Washington-based company had originally planned to unveil many of the details about the new products next month at the E3 conference, which has been canceled. Gaming audiences "love the authenticity of us showing up in our sweatpants here in our home office and talking about what we are doing," Xbox chief Phil Spencer said in an interview. This also seemed like a good time to eschew the typically flashy, celebrity-studded events the video-game industry is known for, he said. "We can all look at the unemployment numbers right now. We can also understand we're in video games, while we have front-line medical workers out there that are keeping people alive."

The developers of the open-source QEMU (Quick EMUlator) emulator, which can run programs on various architectures such as ARM and RISC-V, have released version 5.0. Slashdot reader syn3rg writes: Hot on the heels of the 4.0 release (from a major release perspective), the QEMU team has released version 5.0. This version has many changes, including:

• Live migration support for external processes running on QEMU D-Bus
• Support for using memory backends for main/"built-in" guest RAM
• block: support for compressed backup images via block jobs
• ARM: support for the following architecture features: ARMv8.1 VHE/VMID16/PAN/PMU ARMv8.2 UAO/DCPoP/ATS1E1/TTCNP ARMv8.3 RCPC/CCIDX ARMv8.4 PMU/RCPC
• ARM: support for Cortex-M7 CPU
• ARM: new board support for tacoma-bmc, Netduino Plus 2, and Orangepi PC
• MIPS: support for GINVT (global TLB invalidation) instruction
• PowerPC: 'powernv' machine can now emulate KVM hardware acceleration to run KVM guests while in TCG mode
• PowerPC: support for file-backed NVDIMMs for persistent memory emulation
• RISC-V: experimental support for v0.5 of draft hypervisor extension
• s390: support for Adapter Interrupt Suppression while running in KVM mode

"Not a current user, but I'm happy to see the project advancing," adds syn3rg.

For the full list of changes, you can visit the changelog. QEMU 5.0 can downloaded here.

Microsoft now has 10 million subscribers to its Xbox Game Pass service, the company said during an investor call yesterday. It's the first time Microsoft has publicly disclosed Xbox Game Pass numbers, and it's a sign that the company's ambitious bet on subscription gaming is starting to pay off. From a report: Microsoft has been trying to build a "Netflix for video games" for years, and it looks like it's taking an early lead before a significant expansion to game streaming later this year. 10 million Xbox Game Pass subscribers is a significant milestone. EA's competing subscription services, EA Access and Origin Access, hit more than 5 million subscribers last year, and Sony's PlayStation Now subscriber base reached 1 million in October, five years after its debut. Apple and Google haven't disclosed numbers for Apple Arcade or Google Play Pass, and Nvidia's GeForce Now service reached 1 million users shortly after its launch. Microsoft is also sharing some additional Xbox Game Pass statistics today. "Since March, Xbox Game Pass members have added over 23 million friends on Xbox Live, which is a 70 percent growth in friendship rate," explains Xbox chief Phil Spencer. "Game Pass members are also playing twice as much and engaging in more multiplayer gaming, which has increased by 130 percent."

Nintendo is telling partner developers it's not going to hold one of its Nintendo Direct video events in June. From a report: The publisher has had a June Direct to correspond with E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) every year since 2013. And before that, it held annual stage presentations. But complications brought about from Japan's work-from-home order as part of its attempts to mitigate COVID-19 are forcing Nintendo to push back its schedule. Nintendo was putting together a June event. The company was lining up partners and was planning to unveil its first-party schedule for the rest of 2020. That included highlighting the Mario franchise's 35th anniversary, which it's going to celebrate with the release of some classic 3D Mario games on Switch, according to various reports. But now, the company is far less certain. If it holds another Direct, it may not come until the very end of summer.

Mike Bouma is Slashdot reader #85,252. (And judging by his Slashdot profile, he was also a participant in the short-lived Amiga webring.) He writes: KK of the demo scene group Altair is making a Doom clone for the Amiga 500. The system requirements are a mere 7 Mhz Amiga 500 with 1 MB of RAM!

Have a look:

Dread Ep 01 — making "Doom" clone for Amiga 500

Dread Ep 02 — "Doom" clone for Amiga 500 — Laying out the map...

You can find KK/Altair at the English Amiga Board.

Nintendo has confirmed that about 160,000 Nintendo Network ID accounts have been compromised since the beginning of April. Digital Trends reports: The Japan-based video game company says login ID and password information of these profiles were obtained "illegally by some means other than our service" and in response, it's freezing the ability to log into a Nintendo account through Nintendo Network ID (NNID). Nintendo began looking into a potential breach after several players reported suspicious logins and fraudulent transactions for digital items like Fortnite VBucks through linked PayPal accounts earlier this month. Nintendo's investigation revealed intruders may have accessed personal data such as nicknames, dates of birth, country of residence, and email addresses.

Plus, for users who used the same password for an NNID and Nintendo account, it's warning that their "balance and registered credit card/PayPal may be illegally used at My Nintendo Store or Nintendo eShop." In addition to halting Nintendo Network ID (NNID) logins, Nintendo is reaching out to affected customers via email and resetting their passwords. It's also recommending enabling two-factor authentication to everyone. Despite this, Nintendo is asking users who have discovered fraudulent transactions in their accounts to contact the company so it can cancel the purchases and possibly for initiating refunds.

Valve told ZDNet today that it's safe to play games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 even after their source code leaked online this week on 4chan and torrent sites. From a report: The leak has caused panic in the two games' online communities. For most of the day, gamers have been warning each other that hackers may develop exploits based on the leaked source code that may be used to hack computers connecting to CS:GO and TF2 servers. Warnings have been circulating all day on Twitter and on the official /r/counterstrike and /r/tf2 subreddits.

"The source code for Team Fortress 2 has apparently been leaked, leading to hackers reportedly able to deliver malware through Remote Code Execution to other players," reports TechRadar. However, Valve assures users that playing on official servers is perfectly safe. From the report: This leak was initially reported by @SteamDB on Twitter, with the source code in question dating back to 2017 and 2018, affecting Counter-Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2. According to a report on the issue from PCGamesN, several Team Fortress 2 server communities have advised players to avoid the game until further notice.

Valve has reached out with a comment, saying "We have reviewed the leaked code and believe it to be a reposting of a limited CS:GO engine code depot released to partners in late 2017, and originally leaked in 2018. From this review, we have not found any reason for players to be alarmed or avoid the current builds (as always, playing on the official servers is recommended for greatest security)." Valve goes on to clarify that it's investigating the problem and anyone who has any information can report it on Valve's security page, which will explain how to fix the issue.