Author: [email protected] (Tyler Wilde)
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Families of Uvalde victims sue Activision, say Call of Duty is ‘the most prolific and effective marketer of assault weapons in the United States’
On the second anniversary of the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, families of the victims have filed two lawsuits which accuse Instagram, gun maker Daniel Defense, and Activision of “grooming” the 18-year-old mass shooter, reports The New York Times. On May 24, 2022, the shooter killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary…
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Helldivers 2 is about being the ‘evil guys in the galaxy,’ says Johan Pilestedt: ‘Would you be able to survive a galactic war without plot armor to protect you?’
The notion that we ought to read Helldivers 2’s galactic war as a straightforward story about humanity’s noble defense against alien bugs and robots is too oblivious to warrant serious debate—Super Earth has a Ministry of Truth!—but in the endless churn of social media discourse, the interpretation has been posed. In a talk at game…
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Leaked video of alleged Valve hero shooter Deadlock looks kinda like BioShock Infinite
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Valve hasn’t responded to our emails about Deadlock, an alleged unannounced Valve hero shooter which is leaking all over the internet. That’s pretty typical for Valve, which tends to say nothing about leaks or rumors before one day dropping a casual blog post announcement. We’ll see if that’s how they play it this time. For…
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Free-to-play Ubisoft shooter XDefiant launches with the expected matchmaking issues, but I’m having a good time
Ubisoft’s new free-to-play competitive shooter, XDefiant, is out today, and it’s unsurprisingly hit some matchmaking issues: It likes to let me sit in an empty lobby for a couple minutes before telling me “playlist doesn’t exist.” The developers have acknowledged the problem, and as of 1:30 pm Pacific, things seem to be getting better—I got…
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The $200 Fallout TV series Pip-Boy replica looks a lot better than the bulky Fallout 4 collector’s edition toy
Fallout’s Pip-Boys are sensible items to make into collectibles: they’re iconic, wearable if you want, but would also look cool on a shelf. The Pip-Boy that came with the $120 Fallout 4 collector’s edition, however, was a bulky, cheap-feeling plastic toy that left us a bit wanting. Perhaps you just can’t do Fallout’s wrist-puters justice…
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The PC games market grew a lot more than the console games market last year, says research firm
2023 was a “recovery year” for games, according to the market researchers at Newzoo, and the platform that saw the greatest recovery was the PC. Revenue from PC game sales, microtransactions, and subscriptions grew 8.4% over 2022 revenues, says the firm, whereas console game revenues only saw a 0.3% increase, and mobile game revenues shrunk…
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New MultiVersus character is bad news for the guy who said ‘if Banana Guard gets added I will cut my balls off’
Banana Guards are minor characters in Adventure Time. They look like banana popsicles, and aren’t an obvious pick for the ensemble roster of Warner Bros fighting game MultiVersus, which could include lots of better-known cartoon characters. The Powerpuff Girls are expected, for instance, but there’s still been no reveal. Banana Guard, however, just made the…
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Take-Two CEO says he’s ‘not trying to be cute or difficult’ with vague answers about the fate of the Kerbal and OlliOlli studios, but is kind of being cute and difficult
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told IGN today that the company has not closed Kerbal Space Program 2 developer Intercept Games or OlliOlli maker Roll7 despite a recent report that said the studios had been shut down. “We didn’t shutter those studios, to be clear,” Zelnick told the site. “And we are always looking at our…
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Randy Pitchford is ‘a hit maker,’ says Take-Two CEO: ‘We’ve already identified many potential growth opportunities for the Borderlands series’
Take-Two “jumped” at the opportunity to buy Gearbox when the opportunity to do so on “reasonable” terms arose earlier this year, said CEO Strauss Zelnick during an investors call today. “We have all the respect in the world for Randy Pitchford and his team,” said Zelnick. “He has the ability to bring triple-A products to…
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AI is listening: Omnipresent robo-moderators are the latest online anti-toxicity strategy
“Toxicity” is one of a few words that has come to define today’s internet culture, and for online game makers, it’s arguably an even bigger issue than curbing cheating. Platoons of trust and safety officers have been raised, and over 200 gaming companies, including Blizzard, Riot, Epic Games, Discord, and Twitch, have joined the “Fair…