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The adguard DNS is pretty alright.
https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
Skip the app and expand option 2 for instructions for configuring most major platforms.
Simulated Gambling:
Interactive activity within a game that:
a) resembles or functions like a real world age restricted betting or gambling service; and
b) does not provide rewards that can be redeemed for real world currency or traded to other players in-game for real world currency.Note: For example, interactive activity within games that resembles or functions like real world commercial casinos, slot machines, lotteries, sports betting services or other betting services will be simulated gambling.
https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2023L01424/asmade/text
As far as Australia is concerned the mere appearance of a slot machine is enough, it doesn’t need to function like one.
Its a themed slot machine with fictionalised in game currency.
Defeat your landlord in this slot machine roguelike deckbuilder!
If rated today Australia would give it R18+, but it was reviewed before last years changes so it has been grandfathered in at M with the description “Simulated Gambling”.
Simulated gambling seems to have been grouped in as an adjacent issue as some jurisdictions regulate loot boxes.
Balatro is in a similar position in Australia where it is PG on the play store, M on switch and would be R18+ if reviewed today.
astro bot (4 titles over 11 years), dragon quest (11 titles over 38 years), ace attorney (11 titles over 23 years), or balatro (winning best indie game at both the game awards and the golden joysticks this year)?
It must be a big rock?!
Thanks for presenting your rational, its well reasoned within the definitions you give.
However the definitions might not be as universality accepted as we might like, for example this presents CRPG as synonymous with “role-playing video game” with ARPGs, TRPGs, MMORPGs, etc as subgenres.
We’re going back to what made those early Diablo games feel so awesome but taking them in some cool, fresh directions
As of now, it’s unclear if Corden is referring to first-party or third-party games making their way to Microsoft’s consoles.
This is news only when either: a 1st party strategy is confirmed, or 3rd party titles are named.
That 3rd party timed exclusives go multiplatform eventually is just business as usual.
They are not talking about a new platform, but finding a more distinct voice as a publisher
Sega had that kind of style [back then]. Sega’s position was like, ‘If you have attitude, Sega’s the company for you, rather than Nintendo’, because of the games, because of the style, because of coolness or the kind of attitude. We have such beautiful content value in Sega, and some other IPs, so we’re trying to revive it with a little bit of the flavour of hip-hop now.
This wasn’t as general as many people think:
- It applied only to “auxiliary games” so anything using the primary engine was ok e.g. running in the fog for assassins creed or practicing moves in a combat game.
- It applied only to US and Japan so anywhere else was unrestricted. The entire PAL region was unaffected.
But also:
- The patent was held by Namco / Bandai Namco, they are a prolific publisher but made very limited use of their ability to use loading screen mini games freely.
- The patent expired in 2015, despite this very few games have used loading screen mini games since.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US5718632
I can only conclude that the industry just wasn’t that interested in the idea.
What’s next, the superhero landing?
A different branch on IP law but for decades Marvel and DC had a shared trademark on “Super Hero”.
If either felt they could argue it was a unique trade identifier they would have claimed it exclusively but instead they claimed shared ownership and used it to lock out competition in the space from 1979 to 2024.
The source the Tweektown article is quoting also says:
Anticipation is so high that some competing game publishers are waiting as long as possible to commit to their release dates for the fall, according to people familiar with their deliberations who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The publishers want to see whether GTA 6 will make its deadline or slip into 2026, these people say, and they’re determined to keep their own games far, far away.
This is probably more interesting, that some upcoming games which don’t have release dates may be waiting for this before they commit to a schedule is somewhat noteworthy.
The article says they had three projects in the works funded by take 2, square enix, microsoft. Take 2 backed off and square enix reduced the budget/scope. This leaves the microsoft project as the remaining project with its original budget intact.
Are you saying that take 2 and square enix’s actions are attributable to game pass?
It looks like this is the one:
https://funkofusion.itch.io/funko-fusion
- It closely copies the branding of Funko Fusion by 10:10 Games.
- The title and account have been pulled.
Both match leafo’s description:
[…] some person made a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funko Fusion), with links to the official site and screenshots of the game.
[…] I had removed the page and disabled the account.
I think Iwantmyname may be the worst player in this story.
Everyone else kind of did what they were expected to do:
- Itch provides a platform for user generated content and took down some questionable content when asked.
- Funko is an IP based toy company and asked a tech company to protect their IP online
- BrandShield is a fucking cancer of a service that acted aggressively to protect its client’s interests
But:
- Iwantmyname is meant to provide a domain name registration service, it’s a cutthroat industry where often times customer service is viewed as an unnecessary cost, but itch was their client and they should have been helping itch respond to the notice in a manner that allowed it to continue to exist. Instead they were willing to shut it down without any real dialog.
The rest might be decent business partners if you are looking for their kind of service but Iwantmyname isn’t to be trusted.
As part of a settlement first announced in December 2022, the FTC obtained an order requiring Epic Games to pay $245 million to resolve allegations that the game maker used design tactics known as dark patterns to trick players into making unwanted purchases, let children rack up unauthorized charges without any parental involvement, and blocked some users who disputed unauthorized charges from accessing their purchased content. The FTC alleged that Fortnite’s counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players of all ages to incur unwanted charges based on the press of a single button. For example, players could be charged while attempting to wake the game from sleep mode, while the game was in a loading screen, or by pressing an adjacent button while attempting simply to preview an item.
Cool that they are getting into the weeds looking at UI design.
My son and I are very casual players and it always seemed scammy how much they push spending vbucks to boost though the season pass. To my mind that should be an uncommon occurrence and presented as a secondary option, but of course Epic presents it as perfectly normal selecting the button as default on some screens.
I think its kind of standard for these things but the defensive termination sounds like a trap. If you make a claim about an unrelated patent against “EA, their partners or affiliates” then they revoke your access to the pledge.
I’m not sure how partner or affiliate is defined in this context but EA have business dealings with a lot of companies…
Crash, Spyro, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, etc.
Don’t forget Sly
Edit: they didn’t forget sly!
I’m all for platform level comparability (one of my major gripes with xbox BC was that BC of original xbox and 360 titles was implemented per-title and while some were supported most of the library was left behind).
But from a pragmatic perspective my home PC has always been Windows and preservation efforts that allow me to run the games I know on the hardware I am running will mean more to me.
I support the principal and encourage the cross platform efforts but its unlikely to mean much to me personally until its bundled in with a plug and play solution like Batocera.
I’ve edited my initial comment to reflect that not everyone will share my priorities.
Going forward, even if a game is no longer available for sale on GOG, as part of the GOG Preservation Program, it will continue to be maintained and updated by us, ensuring it remains compatible with modern and future systems.
This commitment to ongoing support is more than any other shop front offers for their delisted titles.
For these titles it probably just means updating the dosbox wrapper but its still more than we get from anywhere else something.
Important to note that:
- This doesn’t meet any of the traditional definitions of “open source”
- EA isn’t using that term to describe their offer.
Our Pledge
Electronic Arts (EA) promises not to enforce against any party for infringing any of the listed EA patents. A list of patents subject to this pledge can be found below, and EA may add additional patents to this pledge at a later date.
EA makes this pledge legally binding, irrevocable (except as under “Defensive Termination”) and enforceable against EA and all subsequent patent owners of the listed patents. This pledge does not provide any warranties or assurances that the activities covered by pledged patents are free from patent or other intellectual property infringement claims by a third party
Defensive Termination
EA reserves the right to terminate this pledge for a specific party or its affiliates going forward if that party files a patent infringement lawsuit or other patent proceeding against EA, its affiliates, or partners.
https://www.ea.com/commitments/positive-play/accessibility-patent-pledge
Stupid article needs a before and after comparison.
Instead it has way too many ads.
“It’s a bit technical,” begins Birdwell, "but the simple version is that graphics cards at the time always stored RGB textures and even displayed everything as non linear intensities, meaning that an 8 bit RGB value of 128 encodes a pixel that’s about 22% as bright as a value of 255, but the graphics hardware was doing lighting calculations as though everything was linear.
“The net result was that lighting always looked off. If you were trying to shade something that was curved, the dimming due to the surface angle aiming away from the light source would get darker way too quickly. Just like the example above, something that was supposed to end up looking 50% as bright as full intensity ended up looking only 22% as bright on the display. It looked very unnatural, instead of a nice curve everything was shaded way too extreme, rounded shapes looked oddly exaggerated and there wasn’t any way to get things to work in the general case.”
This should have been easy enough to illustrate.
Edit:
Here is a greyscale illustration of a similar phenomenon:
From https://www.odelama.com/photo/Developing-a-RAW-Photo-by-hand/
Of course in reality it get a bit more complex when we perceive colors as having different brightness too:
From https://www.vis4.net/blog/avoid-equidistant-hsv-colors/
Alternative link for the same story:
Do you mean this quote from Nintendo"s submission to the court?
Nintendo has reason to believe that other accounts active in the SwitchPirates community may also have been controlled by Defendant, or else reflect other individuals who have worked alongside Defendant.
This is a very open ended statement, its not limited to alt accounts at all.
They are targeting exactly one person that they are in litigation with.
I don’t know about that, they seem to be saying they are looking for his associates (emphasis mine):
In the course of our investigation, we also became aware of multiple other online actors who appeared to have a role in the Pirate Shops. However, we were unable to determine the identity of locations of these other actors with a sufficient degree of certainty to name them in the initial complaint.
[…]
However, because Williams allegedly evaded Nintendo’s attempt to serve him, and then didn’t appear in court, Nintendo argues in its filing that this meant they were unable to find these identities through discovery, and as such is seeking the subpoenas.
- @[email protected] to
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It seems SKG = Stop Killing Games.
I hadn’t seen the acronym before.