Gather ’round, children, and let me tell you a story about the old bugaboo we used to call DRM. Digital Rights Management was the beast under every gamer’s bed in the mid-2000s, an invisible bit of software baked into game discs that dictated and tracked player behavior under the guise of preventing piracy. DRM software, like SecuROM, limited the times a game could be downloaded and forced players to regularly connect to the internet for authentication checks, at a time when less than half of American adults had reliable broadband connections. DRM features soured the releases of BioShock, Mass Effect and Spore, and by 2010, anti-piracy software had rendered Assassin’s Creed 2 and Splinter-Cell: Conviction unplayable. When Microsoft attempted to release the Xbox One with always-on DRM features in 2013, intense vitriol from fans forced the company to reverse its plans at the 11th hour. There were lawsuits. DRM was a curse word. Meanwhile, Valve was building out Steam. When it landed in 2003, the digital PC storefront was designed to streamline the patch process for games like Counter-Strike and make it easier for Valve to implement anti-piracy and anti-cheat measures. Steam was made to be a DRM machine. In 2004, with the release of Half-Life 2, Valve made Steam a requirement for every player, and even those who’d purchased new, physical copies of the game had to boot up the launcher first. There was some low-level grumbling, but PC players were used to being lab rats, and... Continue reading at 'Engadget'
[ Engadget | 2024-03-04 16:30:21 UTC ]
News tagged with:
#living rooms
#actual demand
#quasi-console hardware
#frankenstein hybrid
#vr hardware
#gorgeous screen
#clever ruse
#digital distribution
#spinal fluid
#undisputed leader
#varied landscape
#entire studios
#constantly churning
#20th anniversary
#libraries
Gather ’round, children, and let me tell you a story about the old bugaboo we used to call DRM. Digital Rights Management was the beast under every gamer’s bed in the mid-2000s, an invisible bit of software baked into game discs that dictated and tracked player behavior under the guise of... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2024-03-04 16:30:21 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#living rooms
#digital distribution
#varied landscape
#20th anniversary
#libraries
Bless me, Gaben, for I have sinned. In a moment of weakness I turned off the adult content filters in my Steam search, and now my game library has been tainted by the shame of tender, undulating flesh rendered in Unreal Engine. But fear not, fellow naughty gamers: Steam will soon let you... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2023-12-21 15:29:02 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#ve made
#video games
#unreal engine
#libraries
These video game and audiobook pairings complement each other for the ideal playing and listening experience. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2023-08-10 10:34:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#video game
#listening experience
#audiobook
Writers B.J. Best, Andrew Ervin, and Brittney Morris join co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell live from the Unbound Book Festival in Columbia, Missouri to discuss the narrative realms of video games and the evolving space they inhabit. The group reminisces about their first... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-05-04 08:53:59 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#brittney morris
#video games
#book festival
Bestselling novelist Gabrielle Zevin joins the L.A. Times Book Club April 22 to discuss 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow' at the Festival of Books. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-03-29 14:00:34 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#times book
Niantic has created some of the most popular augmented reality games like Ingress and Pokémon Go. But this week the company is launching a new title called NBA All-World that might be the best application of its location-based tech to date.For people who have played one of Niantic’s previous... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-01-25 17:00:37 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#surprising amount
#january 24th
#official release
#dive deeper
#real life
#harry potter
Google’s interactive Doodle today celebrates the life and accomplishments of video game pioneer Gerald “Jerry” Lawson on what would have been his 82nd birthday. The Doodle lets you play five retro pixel-art platformers in your browser — with two even letting you play as Lawson. The Doodles’... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-12-01 18:15:43 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#commercial success
#libraries
Amazon doesn't want to limit itself to streaming football games on Thursday nights. The internet giant has struck a deal with the NFL for Prime Video to livestream a yearly match on Black Friday, the day after American Thanksgiving. The first game airs November 24th, 2023 at about 3PM Eastern,... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-10-19 21:10:50 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#internet giant
#black friday
#large audience
#nielsen ratings
#nielsen
"Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow," by Gabrielle Zevin, is a novel about video game makers who came of age with Donkey Kong and fell in love. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-06-28 16:07:16 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#gabrielle zevin
Are you tired of getting your short stories rejected by literary magazines with weird names like Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and, lol, The New Yorker? Do you, a writer of a searing, minimalist narratives of longing and loss amid the ruins of late capitalism, need to eat? Sure you do! Well,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-17 16:16:55 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#video game
#literary magazines
#paris review
#late capitalism
#short stories
Valve’s portable PC gaming machine, the Steam Deck, is gaining a lot of attention as its official release date draws near. But between its Linux-based Steam OS operating system and its power-efficient AMD parts, players could be forgiven for wondering which high-powered games can actually run... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2022-02-23 17:14:15 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#large library
#steam deck
#libraries
The Steam Deck, Valve’s take on a Switch-style portable PC gaming machine, is perhaps the most anticipated piece of portable hardware since…well, since the Nintendo Switch. So it’s understandable that the technology press is champing at the bit to devour every detail about it, even well before... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2022-02-09 18:09:04 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#haptic feedback
#console gamers
#expect vibration
#enhance immersion
#poo stain
#white sheet
#weeks left
#syncing progress
#today epic
#linux version
#incomplete glimpses
#huge library
#starting price
#february 25th
#big promises
#libraries
The Steam Deck, Valve’s take on a Switch-style portable PC gaming machine, is perhaps the most anticipated piece of portable hardware since…well, since the Nintendo Switch. So it’s understandable that the technology press is champing at the bit to devour every detail about it, even well before... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2022-02-08 14:47:24 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#haptic feedback
#console gamers
#expect vibration
#enhance immersion
#poo stain
#white sheet
#weeks left
#syncing progress
#today epic
#linux version
#incomplete glimpses
#huge library
#starting price
#february 25th
#big promises
#libraries
In a busy year for gaming mergers, another deal has just been announced. Tencent is to fully acquire Sumo Group, the UK developer behind LittleBigPlanet 3 and Crackdown 3. The Chinese web giant is offering 513 pence per share for the studio, in which it already owns an 8.75 percent stake,... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2021-07-19 09:14:25 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#multiple reports
#long-term success
#non-executive chairman
#publishers including
Tired of the subtweets? The peevish reviews? The [gasp] indecorous email sign-offs? Do you wish the literary world would just conduct its brawls out in the open for all to see? Well, now you can fight along at home with Street Writer, Maxwell Neely-Cohen’s absolutely wonderful literary homage to... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-04 14:06:11 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#literary world
For the first time in its storied history, the Hugo Awards will honor a video game. The annual literary award has avoided recognizing the medium for years, but present circumstances being what they are, it will make an exception at the next World Sci... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2020-11-23 22:04:25 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#hugo awards
#video game
#literary award
AS AN EXPRESSIVE MEDIUM, video games have a strange way of reducing central concepts of modernist art and theory to basic operational elements. The technical specifications of “point of view” that have preoccupied novelists since the turn of the 20th century are crudely literalized within game... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-31 17:00:02 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#video games
#technical specifications
#20th century
#novelists
William Collins has scooped an “era defining” history of contemporary Britain from broadcaster and author Andrew Marr. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-31 22:20:47 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#modern britain
#william collins
Indie 404 Ink has landed a part-memoir, part-investigation of how video games can positively impact mental health from journalist Joe Donnelly. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-31 16:31:20 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#video games
#mental health
It’s Friday, and the Humble Store’s offering some dirt-cheap gaming gratification to kick off the weekend. The Humble Lego Games Bundle includes a total of eight games available as Steam codes, and paying just $12 or more unlocks every one. Don’t delay, though: This Humble Bundle expires on... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2019-05-17 14:02:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |