Microsoft is working on an ambitious new Minecraft game with an augmented-reality spin that hopes to one up Niantic's wildly popular Pokemon Go mobile game. The Verge's Tom Warren sat down with Microsoft's HoloLens and Kinect creator, Alex Kipman, to take a look Minecraft Earth, a new free-to-play game for iOS and Android that lets players create and share whatever they've made in the game with friends in the real world, away from TV screens and monitors.

"We have covered the entire planet in Minecraft," explains Torfi Ilafsson, game director of Minecraft Earth. "Every lake is a place you can fish, every park is a place you can chop down trees. We've actually taken maps of the entire world and converted them to Minecraft." Warren writes: These maps, based on OpenStreetMap, have allowed Microsoft to start working out where to place Minecraft adventures into the world. These adventures spawn dynamically on the Minecraft Earth map and are designed for multiple people to get involved in. This is really where Minecraft Earth starts to get interesting and beyond anything I've played in other AR games like Pokemon Go. I tried a variety of adventures during my brief Minecraft Earth gameplay demo, and they range from peaceful and friendly to a little more risky, knowing you enter them and might lose all your treasure if you die to a monster. The fascinating part of adventures is that you can be side-by-side with friends, all experiencing the same game on the exact same spot of a sidewalk or in a park at the same time. Microsoft is doing some impressive behind-the-scenes computational magic (more on that later) so that when you play an adventure, it's in a precise location, beyond regular GPS coordinates, so that everyone is experiencing the same thing. You can fight monsters, break down structures for resources together, and even stand in front of a friend to block them from physically killing a virtual sheep.

All of the blocks that are collected during an adventure are shared with fellow players, so there are no player-versus-player battles here to kill each other and steal materials. You'll even see the tools that fellow players have in their hands on your phone's screen, alongside their username. The idea is that you essentially become your phone in Minecraft Earth, and your camera is a lens into this virtual world. Once you've gathered lots of resources, you can then start building. Every player will have a library of build plates, with some that are as big as 200 x 200 feet. You can use build plates to sit a Minecraft build down on a table and build something with friends. Every piece of material that a friend uses on your own plate will then be part of your build, so it's a collaborative effort to create giant structures; playing solo will mean a lot of searching around for materials. Once you've completed a build, you can then share a link to it for friends or followers to then play with your creation on a table or in giant scale in an open space. The game will be available in beta on iOS and Android this summer.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Fun as the element of surprise may be, matches in PUBG might be less dynamic than they seem. That's the assertion of researchers at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Georgia, who tested several AI algorithms to predict final player placement in PUBG from in-game stats and initial rankings. As the coauthors explain, each PUBG game starts with players parachuting from a plane onto one of four maps containing procedurally generated weapons, vehicles, armor, and other equipment. To train their AI models, the team sourced telemetry data recorded and compiled by Google-owned Kaggle, an online machine learning community. In total, it contained 4.5 million instances of solo, duo, and squad battles with 29 attributes, which the researchers whittled down to 1.9 million with 28 attributes.

Most players don't rack up any kills, the team notes, and only a small fraction manage to win with a pacifistic strategy. In fact, 0.3748% of the players in the corpus won kill-free, out of which 0.1059% players won without a kill and without dealing damage. They also observed that players who actively traverse maps -- i.e., walk more -- increase their chances of winning; that 2.0329% players in the sample set died before taking a single step; and that with players with fewer kills who prefer to battle solo or in pairs had higher chances of winning compared with players who played in a squad.

Sony and Microsoft, bitter rivals in the video game console wars, will team up in on-demand gaming to better compete with newcomers like Google as the industry's main battlefield looks poised to shift to the cloud, news outlet Nikkei reported Thursday. From a report: Sony President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has signed a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on a strategic tie-up. While details have yet to be hammered out, the partnership will center on artificial intelligence and the cloud. The latter category includes plans for joint development of cloud gaming technology. While this market is expected to grow as ultrafast fifth-generation wireless gains traction, such services require much processing power on the provider's end to deliver games with high-quality graphics and minimal lag. Sony and Microsoft plan to leverage the American computing behemoth's data centers for this purpose. The two companies, along with Nintendo, long dominated the gaming landscape. But the rise of mobile gaming has brought competition from such other players as China's Tencent Holdings, which publishes the mobile version of the wildly popular PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG). Press release: Sony and Microsoft to explore strategic partnership.

Valve's Steam Link app, which brings streaming games to your mobile device, is now available as a free download for iOS and Apple TV. The iOS launch comes nearly one year after Apple rejected the app due to "business conflicts." GameSpot reports: The Steam Link app promises to bring "desktop gaming to your iPhone or iPad." Users can pair a Steam controller or any MFI (Made-for-iPhone/iPad) controller to play games over a network connection provided they are on the same local network. The Steam Link app is effectively a replacement for the physical Steam Link device that Steam discontinued in 2018. Steam Link is already available on Android. As the Verge notes in their report, the biggest difference between the iOS and Android versions is that the iOS Steam Link app "doesn't allow users to purchase games from the Steam store, unlike on Android."

You can download Steam Link from iTunes here.

DarkRookie2 shares a report from Ars Technica: If you thought Epic was done adding to the growing pile of PC games exclusively available on its own Games Store, well... I'd like to know where you got that impression. In any case, you should think again, because Epic has announced it will "reveal brand-new material for several games, including some exclusives, coming to the Epic Games store" at next month's Electronic Entertainment Expo. Epic also confirmed the platform's first storewide sale will be announced in the coming days. "That confirmation came after a few eagle-eyed Fortnite players noticed a news-feed ad for the 'Epic Games Store Mega Sale' when launching the game," reports Ars Technica.

The message promised that users could "Sign up for 2FA in order to get $10 to spend in the store."

Longtime Slashdot reader Andy Smith writes: Gamers enjoying the single-player campaign in The Division 2 have been bitten by a bug in the latest update that spawned a range of server connection issues. While you might expect this to affect only multiplayer games, The Division 2 controversially requires a continuous server connection for the single-player campaign to work. Since Tuesday, campaign players have reported being kicked out of the game and losing their items, skills, and mission progress. Not surprisingly, developer Massive has been inundated with complaints . The company said: "We are aware of the connectivity issues some players are experiencing. We are investigating and working on a solution."

Ars Technica's Kyle Orland reports that Brazilian ROM hacker Vitor Vilela has released a ROM patch for the hit arcade game Gradius III, creating a new, slowdown-free version of the game for play on SNES emulators and standard hardware. "In magazine screenshots, the game's huge, colorful sprites were a sight to behold, comparable to the 1989 arcade original," writes Orland. "In action, though, any scene with more than a handful of enemies would slow to a nearly unplayable crawl on the underpowered SNES hardware." From the report: The key to Vilela's efforts is the SA-1 chip, an enhancement co-processor that was found in some late-era SNES cartridges like Super Mario RPG and Kirby Super Star. Besides sporting a faster clock speed than the standard SNES CPU (up to 10.74 Mhz versus 3.58 Mhz for the CPU), SA-1 also opens up faster mathematical functions, improved graphics manipulation, and parallel processing capabilities for SNES programmers.

The result, as is apparent in the comparison videos embedded here, is a version of Gradius III that Vilela says runs two to three times faster than the original. It also keeps its silky smooth frame rate no matter how many detailed, screen-filling sprites clutter the scene. That's even true in the game's notorious, bubble-filled Stage 2, which is transformed from a jittery slide show to an amazing showcase of the SNES' enhanced power. As if that wasn't enough, the patch even slashes the game's loading times, cutting a full 3.25 seconds from the notably slow startup animation. Vilela notes that the lack of slowdown "makes it incredibly super difficult" and even suggests that "some arcade segments of the game do not look RTA (real-time action) viable with SA-1. But we shouldn't underestimate the human capabilities."

dryriver shares a report from the BBC: Delta Airlines is facing significant criticism after posters discouraging its staff from joining a union were widely shared online. "Union dues cost around $700 a year," one of the posters states. "A new video game system with the latest hits sounds like fun. Put your money towards that instead of paying dues to the union," it continued. The posters point to a website featuring Delta branding which encourages workers not to unionize. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), which claims to represent more than 110,000 airline employees in the United States, is attempting to organize union representation for 44,000 Delta employees.

"Delta Airlines' all-out assault on their employees' legally-protected right to unionize with the Machinists Union is confirmation that our campaign to bring the benefits of IAM-representation is succeeding," it said in a statement. "The day when Delta ramp workers and flight attendants will finally be able to bargain for the compensation, benefits and work rules they deserve is coming quickly, and that has Delta terrified."

A new report from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) found that the average American video gamer is 33 years old, prefers to play on their smartphone and is spending big on content -- 20 percent more than a year ago and 85 percent more than in 2015. Reuters reports: The $43.4 billion spent in 2018 was mostly on content, as opposed to hardware and accessories. Of pay-to-play games, "Call of Duty: Black Ops III," "Red Dead Redemption II" and "NBA 2K19" took the top spots for most units sold but the list did not include free games such as "Fortnite."

Nearly 65 percent of U.S. adults, or more than 164 million people, play games. The most popular genre is casual games, with 60 percent of players gaming on their smartphones, though about half also play on personal computers and specialized consoles. Parents are limiting screen time for their kids and using video game ratings to screen content, and 87 percent of parents require permission for new game purchases, the study showed. Some 46 percent of all gamers are female, though they favor different kinds of games than men, particularly depending on age. The report also found that Gen Xers lean towards "Tetris," "Pac-Man," "Call of Duty," "Forza," and "NBA 2K," while baby boomers like "Solitaire," "Scrabble," "Mahjong" and "Monopoly."

Tencent has pulled the plug on its wildly popular video game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) in China, a likely victim of government restrictions on gaming. From a report: Instead, the company is migrating users over to a similar title, Heping Jingying or Elite Force for Peace. Heping Jingying has already been approved for monetization by the Chinese Communist party, thanks in no small part to its patriotic overtones. One analyst described the game as "a tribute to the People's Liberation Army Air Force" -- part of China's national military -- with anti-terrorism themes. PUBG Mobile launched in March last year, and has become one of the world's most popular video games, with as many players as Fortnite. According to estimates from China Renaissance, the game had roughly 70 million domestic players, which would have allowed Tencent to generate annual revenues from in-app purchases of roughly $1.18 billion to $1.48 billion.

Video games popular among kids would be prohibited from offering "loot boxes" or randomized assortments of digital weapons, clothing and other items that can be purchased for a fee, under federal legislation to be introduced by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.). From a report: Hawley's Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act takes aim at a growing industry revenue stream that analysts say could be worth more than $50 billion -- but one that increasingly has triggered worldwide scrutiny out of fear it fosters addictive behaviors and entices kids to gamble. Hawley's proposed bill, outlined Wednesday, covers games explicitly targeted to players under age 18 as well as those for broader audiences where developers are aware that kids are making in-game purchases. Along with outlawing loot boxes, these video games also would be banned from offering "pay to win" schemes, where players must spend money to access additional content or gain digital advantages over rival players.

"Social media and video games prey on user addiction, siphoning our kids' attention from the real world and extracting profits from fostering compulsive habits," Hawley said in a statement. "No matter this business model's advantages to the tech industry, one thing is clear: There is no excuse for exploiting children through such practices." Offering one "notorious example," Hawley's office pointed to Candy Crush, a popular, free smartphone puzzle app that allows users to spend $149.99 on a bundle of goods that include virtual currency and other items that make the game easier to play.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In a private school where tuition is high, students can bicker about clothes, shoe brands, cellphones, or video games. At Paul Towler's middle school, where he teaches English to seventh and eighth graders, some kids "have enough money to be comfortable and others' parents are owners of giant nationwide restaurant chains," he says. Towler is used to seeing such disparities play out in the real world through objects that you can physically hold. But after battle royale sensation Fortnite exploded, the fights between students took an unexpected turn. Fortnite's virtual clothes became a status symbol, and some of Towler's pupils started policing what their classmates wore in-game.

The confrontations could get ugly. One student in Towler's class "begged his parents for [money] to buy a skin because no one would play with him" because he wore basic virtual clothes. While the bullying wasn't always Fortnite-specific, Towler recalls that it seemed "vicious for [the student] to have another avenue for the meaner kids to attack him." Things got better for that kid, but when your social scene begins and ends with Fortnite, having nobody to play with is like a mark of death.

EA Access -- Electronic Arts' unlimited game subscription service that lets players access a massive library of EA games -- is finally coming to the PlayStation 4 this July, almost five years after it launched on the Xbox One. From a report: Like the current Xbox offering, EA Access for the PS4 costs either $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year. In addition to unlimited access to EA's vault of games, Access also comes with other perks, including a 10 percent discount on full-priced EA game purchases as well as early trials of upcoming EA games. EA Access for PS4 will be a separate account from EA Access for Xbox One. So if you're already paying for Access on your Xbox, you will have to pay a second monthly fee to play those games on your PS4.

Microsoft Solitaire, bundled with the Windows operating system since 1990, has been inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame for its popularity and influence on other video games and society in general. It joins classic titles like Doom, Tetris, World of Warcraft, and Halo: Combat Evolved. The Verge reports: The World Video Game Hall of Fame is a relatively new institution, created in 2015 and overseen by educational institute The Strong. Its official home is in The National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, and each year it selects a handful of new inductees. Solitaire may be a video game for the ages, but its inclusion in Windows had a higher purpose. The developers of the operating system felt that the familiar game was the perfect way to introduce users to relatively new computing concepts, like using a mouse and drag-and-drop. By playing Solitaire, users honed more than their card skills: a win-win for all.

Solitaire was first bundled with Windows 3.0 and appeared in every subsequent version of the software up until Windows 8.1. It was removed from the base level operating system, but was returned in Windows 10 after Microsoft admitted that Solitaire, along with Minesweeper and Hearts, still have "devoted followings." Because of its inclusion in the world's most popular PC operating system, lowly Solitaire has likely been installed on more than one billion devices, says the Strong Museum, making it one of the most popular video games of all time. "Microsoft Solitaire demonstrated that there existed a vast market for games that appeal to people of all types, paving the way for the growth of the casual game market," said the institute in a press statement. "We are humbly honored to have the opportunity to work on a game that has such broad appeal, is localized into 65 languages, and played in over 200 markets around the world, including Antarctica," said Microsoft's Paul Jensen, studio manager for Microsoft Casual Games.

New submitter Schnapple writes: Back in 2009, id Software put Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM on the App Store, but once iOS 11 started phasing out 32-bit apps, they stopped working. Since their source code was published under the GPL, I went in and fixed them up so they would run on modern devices, and also added game controller support and ported them to tvOS so they could run on Apple TV. Then over the last year I did the same for DOOM II and Final DOOM, Quake, Quake II, Quake III: Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and finally DOOM 3. I've chronicled the adventures on my blog. I can't publish them to the App Store for obvious reasons and you'll need to provide your own copy of the game data, but if anyone's interested in trying them out on Apple devices I've posted the sources to GitHub.

Days after Mortal Kombat was inducted into the World Videogame Hall of Fame, multiple sources at its creator (Warner Bros Interactive studio NetherRealm) are alleging a toxic workplace with 100-hour workweeks, Variety reports, citing seven current and former full-time employees and contractors: Reports of low pay and the crunch of extreme overtime as workers tried to finish the game on time initially surfaced about NetherRealm Studios on social media earlier in April, but those issues appear to be symptomatic of a long-term poisonous work culture at the studio, according to seven people who spoke to Variety -- five of whom asked that their names not be used for fear of reprisals... The common thread among all the sources was that they said they felt the pressure to work long hours came with the threat of being replaced or denied a chance at a more... One current employee said that he and others at the studio have been working 60 to 70 hours per week, seven days a week since January. While he said various factors are to blame for the crunch, such as poor communication and mismanagement, he cited a January marketing event for "Mortal Kombat 11," called MK Day, which put the studio behind significantly...

The catch-up still persists, even though "Mortal Kombat 11" was released on April 23. Problems with in-game currency and exploits have the studio working on its third patch to fix glitches, and it already has two more patches planned. When asked how the studio higher-ups are positioning this "catch-up" work, the current employee said that they phrase it very carefully. "I think they walk that fine line really well," he said. "So it's a lot of implying, not up-front. They don't tell us, 'You have to work these hours.' They also don't tell that to any of the temporary/contract employees. When we interviewed all of our contractor/temporary employees, my direct manager would tell them, 'Overtime isn't mandatory, but everyone is expected to do their fair share.' Meaning when we have it -- because even before we started interviewing and building up our temp team, we already knew there's going to come a point where we're going to start crunching because we've been doing this since time immemorial, [on] every project."

Some full-timers have taken to living at the studio when working the most intense periods of crunch, he said, sleeping in their office or on an inflatable sofa in their cubicle. One employee has even been spotted wearing a bathrobe while in the studio. One source said that for some of the temporary positions, it's easy enough to replace those who don't crunch with a new batch of eager contractors. Many temporary employees are recruited from DePaul University, the person said, and are students who are willing to work a nine-month contract for $14 an hour in exchange for the chance to work on a triple-A franchise.
In a statement to Variety, NetherRealm Studios said they were "actively looking into all allegations" as "we take these matters very seriously and are always working to improve our company environment." But last week James Longstreet, a developer who worked on 2011's "Mortal Kombat," posted on Twitter that "The [Mortal Kombat] team's stance is that crunch works, and MK games are always profitable, so it's clearly the right thing to do.

"It's wrong -- crunch doesn't work, the workers don't see the profit (bonuses at WB games are capped to a small percentage of salary), and it ruins lives."

"Looking for some new sick burns to throw out at other players on Xbox Live? Microsoft's got you covered," reports Motherboard: In its new community standards, published this week, the company's got some examples of acceptable trash talk, including gems like:

- Get destroyed. Can't believe you thought you were on my level.

- That was some serious potato aim. Get wrecked.

- Only reason you went positive was you spent all game camping. Try again, kid.

- Cheap win. Come at me when you can actually drive without running cars off the road.

- That sucked. Get good and then come back when your k/d's over 1....

"We get it -- gaming can be competitive and interactions with other players can get heated," the community standards state. "A little trash talk is an expected part of compe titive multiplayer action, and that's not a bad thing. But hate has no place here, and what's not okay is when that trash talk turns into harassment." Microsoft defines acceptable trash talk as "light-hearted banter or bragging" that's focused directly on the game and "encourages healthy competition." Harassment is "negative behavior that's personalized, disruptive, or likely to make someone feel unwelcome or unsafe..."

For breaking the rules, players can expect consequences, but Microsoft is hesitant to call it a punishment "We're not out to punish, but rather to protect everyone's experience," the standards note. For every "corrective action" -- which the standards state could be a suspension, or a restriction on the ability to send messages or stream live -- Microsoft wants its players to learn from their mistakes; players will be welcomed back to the community to prove they've changed their ways, the company says. But that doesn't mean every abusive gamer will be welcomed back into the fold. Repeat offenders or particularly severe abuse will garner a permanent suspension, the standards state, which requires the profile owner to "forfeit all licenses for games and other content, Gold membership time, and Microsoft account balances."

The classic Windows game Solitaire has joined such landmarks as Doom, Tetris, and World of Warcraft in being inducted into the Strong Museum of Play's World Video Game Hall of Fame. The award recognizes Solitaire's role as a significant part of gaming's history. From a report: Solitaire was first bundled with Windows 3.0. Much like the other notable bundled game, Minesweeper, Solitaire was there to serve as a secret tutorial: in a time when the mouse was still regarded as a new and exotic piece of computer hardware, Solitaire honed clicking, double clicking, and drag-and-drop skills. As a computerized version of a familiar card game, it was instantly recognizable. It was bundled with every subsequent Windows version, up to Windows 7. Windows 8 replaced it with a much more varied set of card games. The combination of approachability and bundling means that the game has been installed on more than a billion PCs, and it has likely been played by many billions of people.

You expect to lose money gambling, but you don't really expect to lose it abstaining from gambling. But if you're a FanDuel user who hasn't made any bets or deposits for two years, the site will now deduct $3 per month until you put some money on the table. You have to play to win, it seems, but not to lose. From a report: In an email sent to such lapsed (or perhaps recovering) users, FanDuel wrote: "It appears your account has been inactive for over two years, which means you have neither deposited nor entered a contest during that time. We've recently updated our Terms of Use to impose a monthly inactivity fee of $2.99 for any accounts that have no play or deposit activity for a period of 24+ months. Per our terms, we are providing you with 30 days notice prior to imposing this fee."

Minecraft creator Marcus 'Notch' Persson, who sold the title to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, won't be part of 10-year anniversary plans for the game because of his "comments and opinions," Microsoft said in a statement. From a report: Minecraft's creator Marcus Notch Persson has recently made some seemingly controversial white supremacist and transphobic comments via Twitter that have all but forced Microsoft to put some space between itself and the games creator. "His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of 'Minecraft'," a Microsoft spokesperson said. Fortunately, Persson's has had little to no involvement with Minecraft since its sale to Microsoft for $2.5 billion back in 2014, so it's been easier for the company to remove loading screen text that referenced Notch as well as uninviting him from future Minecraft events such as the 10-year anniversary shindig coming up soon.