Netflix Looking To Expand Squid Game Into Video Games

Squid Game on Netflix is undeniably popular. So much so that a South Korean ISP sued the streaming service for its overwhelming network usage. But it’s the same kind of popularity that has convinced the streaming service that the show should not remain just as a TV series.

Minyoung Kim, VP of content for Asia at Netflix, told The Hollywood Reporter that the company is looking to expand Squid Game to “games, consumer products, and others”. She notes that there has been “an overwhelming but happy volume of requests” to do so.

The video games side of things make sense, but it’s unclear what sort of direction that Netflix wants to take Squid Game into. The company’s previous dabbling in the field produced a couple of games based on the Stranger Things series. But beyond that, the company has just resorted to including selected paid mobile games into the package for subscribers. And that’s only available in three countries in Europe for now.

Another Netflix show comes to mind if the streaming service wants to add interactivity to Squid Game, and that’s Black Mirror Bandersnatch. Which can work, depending on the amount of context that gets lost in translation, like many video games from Japan.

Riot Games To Release Its Own Game Launcher Soon

GOG Galaxy, EA Origin, and Steam are some of many game launchers that are currently available on PC. And if you happen to be a regular player of League of Legends (LoL) and Valorant, well… then get ready to add another one to that list.

According to Riot Games, the developer of the two aforementioned titles, the new launcher is aimed to unify all of its in-house games under a single platform and enable players to access them under a single sign-in. In addition, existing desktop shortcuts to titles such as LoL and Valorant will still work even after the rollout of its platform. However, it was not mentioned if accessing these shortcuts would directly launch their respective games, or redirect users to the new Riot Games Launcher.

From their description, the upcoming platform seems like it might function similarly to Activision-Blizzard’s BattleNet client, where each game features its own tab and respective page for launching it and receiving patch updates. At the same time, the overall launcher will also act as a central hub for users to easily keep up with the latest announcements, news, and events for each title. The developer ensures that the new launcher will be lightweight in terms of resource requirements.

The new Riot Games Launcher will first be available on 20 September for testing, and is expected to roll out to all players worldwide starting 4 October. The team noted that the latter is subject to change, should additional time be needed to iron out any issues as well as to add new features to the upcoming client app.

Zoom Has Games You Can Play With Others In A Call

Conference calls are a daily reality for many who are now working from home. With Zoom being a commonly used software for that, it is now integrating a number of games that you can play with others in a call.

There are nine games in total for now, and they are all of the multiplayer kind. These range from LGN Poker, which should be self explanatory, to one called Heads Up! It’s been on iOS and Android for awhile, and is described as “charades with a twist”, and is apparently made by TV personality Ellen DeGeneres.

Zoom integrating games is quite the odd one. On one hand, it’s easy to imagine this being useful for those who sign into a call early. These games can then be used to kill time, and wait for the actual meeting to start, or while waiting for the late ones to show up. It can also be used for team building, if your boss is so inclined. But on the other, games by their very nature will usually drag on, derailing the meeting.

At any rate, the option to play games with others in a Zoom call is now available. Maybe you can just casually call up a bunch of friends to play them. But more than likely, if you have friends for that, you’ll probably be hitting up a proper multiplayer video game on Steam or something else.

Video Games Cheats Invade Consoles With Machine Learning

Video game cheats have primarily been a plague on PC, not so much on consoles. But a new, relatively sophisticated method brings the disease to consoles. And it involves a PC, a capture card, and machine learning.

The Anti-Cheat Police Department, a bunch of volunteers who look out for and disrupt cheating groups, have shared on Twitter a new kind of cheating. As mentioned, it uses machine learning, The way it works is by having the cheat analyse your gameplay in real time, and the cheat adds in inputs so that your crosshairs snap to your enemies.

Because it’s not an aim bot or wall hack, you will actually have to see your enemies for the cheat to kick in. And even then, you’ll have to manually aim in the general direction of your targets until a certain threshold where it kicks in and does the aiming for you. Think of it as aim assist, but turned up to 19 and given a steroid overdose.

Making this even scarier is that this is usable even on consoles. All you need is a PC that’s running the cheat, and a capture card to allow your PC to see gameplay from your console.

There was a video promoting this on YouTube, presumably showcasing the cheat working in a Call of Duty. Activision has since made a copyright claim on the video, taking it down. But as Eurogamer reports, the cheat’s discord is still active, and the software is still up for sale. The good news is that it is still detectable. But even then, it will be awhile before any real action gets taken against this new breed of cheat. More so, it’s a sign of the evolution that cheats are currently going through

Rockstar Games Co-Founds CircoLoco Records

The Grand Theft Auto series is undoubtedly the biggest franchise belonging to Rockstar Games. And in those games, music plays a very major role, as understated as it usually is. And with that, the company is partnering with CircoLoco to announce a new record label. And it is simply named CircoLoco Records.

With the new label, CircoLoco Records will release its first album, Monday Dreamin’, on 9 July. One track, called Lumartes (Extended) by Seth Troxler, is already available to listen to right now. And the record label will make one more EP available every week until the full album.

CircoLoco styles itself as “representing house and techno for over 20 years”. It also has a long history as Monday morning parties in Ibiza since 1999. So it’s a sign of what sort of tracks to expect from the new label, from genre to its evolution through the ages.

If you like the music of Grand Theft Auto, particularly those of GTA Online, then this release is certainly one to keep track of, no pun intended. As mentioned, the first full album by CircoLoco Records will be out on 9 July. There is also a vinyl in the works for the hardcore audiophiles. But no word on when that will be available.

Steam Hinted To Port Games Over To Consoles Later This Year

 

There’s a chance that Steam, Valve’s popular digital storefront on PC, might be porting its exclusives to video game consoles later in 2021. This was hinted, albeit vaguely, by none other than the company’s president Gabe Newell a few days back during a talk at Sancta Maria College in Auckland, New Zealand.

“You will have a better idea of that by the end of this year,” Newell replied when asked by a student if Steam would be porting games to consoles. Seeing that the PlayStation 4 being the only console to feature virtual reality capabilities via its PSVR peripheral, it could be possible for Valve to port Half-Life: Alyx over to it. That, or to the PS5 since Sony had recently teased the next iteration of its virtual reality system for the new console.

It’s also worth noting that earlier in January, Newell revealed that several newer games are currently being worked on by his company. Although no further details were shared in regards to this, he did mention that Valve will announce them eventually. That being said, Newell’s response to the student’s question could be referring to these upcoming yet unannounced games, which may see a multi-platform release.

There’s also a long-shot speculation from others who believe that Valve might also bring its Steam digital storefront to consoles. However, such a move is quite unlikely and wouldn’t make sense as video game consoles feature their own closed stores such as Nintendo sShop, PlayStation Store, and the Microsoft Store on Xbox consoles.

Regardless, we’ll only find out what Valve actually has in store for home video game consoles in late 2021.

Epic Games Allegedly Offered US$200 Million For First-Party PS Titles On EGS

The ongoing Epic Games vs Apple legal battle is a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes goings-on in the video games industry. Many of these appear as official court documents, some unintentionally. A new one that falls in that category has revealed something new, that’s both surprising and not at the same time.

The now deleted document suggests that Epic Games tried to offer Sony Interactive Entertainment US$200 million (~RM821.2 million) to have first-party PlayStation titles on the Epic Games Store. Said documents mentions the above amount as a minimum guarantee for four to six titles. Though it’s unclear if the amount is for all the games, or just a single title.

A number of them have indeed made their way to PC, though not necessarily as EGS exclusives. Most notable among them is Horizon Zero Dawn, which is also available on Steam. Ditto the upcoming Days Gone PC port. According to PC Gamer, ReadySet Heroes is one title published by Sony that is currently still exclusive to the EGS. Predator: Hunting Grounds is now also on Steam following a year of timed exclusivity.

Of course, Epic Games didn’t only approach SIE for this. The company also had a back and forth with Microsoft, but faced resistance from the latter’s Game Pass side of things. And as it turns out, Microsoft was also in talks with Valve. As for Nintendo, it appears that Epic did not even bother, since their “corporate history says this is a non-starter”.

Overall, while it’s not publicly known if SIE took the deal, it’s the one that probably the most likely to succeed. The two companies may have had their disagreements, especially when it comes to crossplay. But SIE did invest US$250 million into Epic Games.

PlayStation Ramadan Deals Sees Physical Games Go As Low As RM55

Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced its PlayStation Ramadan Deals. In addition to discounted hardware like controllers, this sees the discounts going to even the PS VR headset, as well as physical copies of games.

According to the list sent out by SIE, you can get the following deals from PlayStation Authorised Dealers:

• PlayStation VR – RM979
• DualShock 4 – RM179 (selected colours)
• Ghost of Tsushima – RM169
• Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time – RM169
• The Last of Us Part II – RM129
• Final Fantasy VII Remake – RM129
• God of War  – RM55
• The Last of Us Remastered  – RM55
• Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End  – RM55
• Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition  – RM55
• Ratchet & Clank  – RM55

 

Beyond physical items, SIE also has discounts for digital copies of games on the PlayStation Store. Discounts here also go all the way up to 80%. Both of these sets of discounts are in effect starting today, 28 April until 12 May.

If you don’t already have a PS Plus subscription, you can also get a year’s subscription for RM127, which is 20% off the usual price. Though this offer is shorter than the ones mentioned above, ending on 5 May instead. But if yours is expiring, there should be little reason to not get it, considering the free games you get every month.

Important Caveats To Buying Video Games At Full Price

Over the weekend, John Garvin, a leading figure in the production of SIE’s Days Gone, said “if you love a game, buy it at *bleeping* full price”. This was quickly followed up by “don’t complain if a game doesn’t get a sequel if it wasn’t supported at launch”. He said this on David Jaffe’s YouTube podcast, on the subject of Days Gone seeing more engagement following its availability on PS Plus this month.

This is countered, sort of, a little later when Jaffe brought up the movies Austin Powers and Pitch Perfect. They didn’t do well in theatres, but later exploded when they became available on DVD, which then spawned sequels. You can watch this exchange at around the 2:42:00 mark of the video in question.

But getting back to the point of buying games at full price. Sure, it’s pretty much the best way you can tell developers of a game you like that they’ve done a great job. And it would be nice to be able to do that without getting ripped off. But the reality remains that it’s not that simple.

The argument against buying games at full price

There’s a good enough scenario to not buy games at full price, and that is if it launched in a messy state. And there’s no better example today than Cyberpunk 2077.

Even its refund situation was messy, never mind the game itself. Not to mention that the game had already received a discount or two in a prior Steam sale. Days Gone was in a similar situation too, at least during its review cycle. Now that the game is making its way to PC, it remains to be seen if history will repeat itself.

Then there are other reasons to not pay full price for a game. One is if it’s not your kind of game anyway, and you’re just looking to kill time. This may be because you’ve been cooped up indoors for too long in the past year or something. And obviously don’t buy a game at full price if you can’t afford to. That last one, in particular, really goes without saying.

Of course, there will come a time when it is indeed a good idea to buy a game at full price. But that’s still after you’ve gotten a fairly good idea of what you’re getting into. This means no day-one, no pre-orders, and most importantly, no buyers remorse at the end of the process.

No day-one, no pre-orders, no buyer’s remorse

Which reminds me of Star Citizen, actually. It’s amazing in its own way that people are willing to shell out the kind of money that the game is asking for. As for the game’s development (which is now entering its 10th year), it looks to be going along at its own pace. That being said, the process seems to be plagued with what looks like perpetual feature creep, with no end in sight. But that’s a topic for another day.

Naturally, the comment caused an understandable amount of online chatter that Garvin had to clarify what he said on Twitter. Though in all honesty, it doesn’t really help. Especially spicy is his disingenuous bit about “More power to you. Just don’t buy it on sale a year later, discover you love it, then wonder why a sequel never got made”.

And it’s also a little strange that the consumers are being put in the line of fire, when they have no power over what happens to games. After all, they’re not the one that decides that games should be pushed out before all the bugs are squashed. They’re also not the ones that get to decide if a game gets a sequel or not, regardless of if it sells well or not.

Beating the dead horse called piracy again

It’s probably also worth pointing out that Garvin also mentioned piracy. This horse has been beaten so many times, the carcass has shifted from the stable to the glue factory. No one but pirates condone piracy, but not every instance of piracy equals a lost sale.

As video game critic Josh Bycer said, if someone wants to pirate a title, they just wouldn’t pay for it. A title can go from launch to out of sale and a pirate still won’t hand over money for it. Minecraft creator Notch, as well as Daredevil comics writer Mark Waid, also have their own take on why piracy does not equal lost sales.

All in all, be an informed gamer. Don’t get pressured into paying full price for a buggy game just because it’s got strong sequel potential. Especially with our currency being so much weaker to the US dollar, and each game is like 25% of the local minimum wage.

PS5 Update Lets You Store Games On External USB Drives

The PS5 has had an update or two since launch, but they were on the smaller side of things. Now, Sony Interactive Entertainment has released what it calls the console’s first major update. And this one lets you store games on external USB drives.

That being said, the limitations of external storage remains, that is you can’t play PS5 games from them. You’ll still have to move them to the internal SSD for that. This is definitely a faster process than having to download them. That being said, you’ll have to be careful about chewing through its total read/write life cycle.

Other things being added in this update include features that extend across two console generations. For one, there’s cross-generation Share Play. This means you can let a friend try out your PS5 game on their PS4, and vice versa. Then there’s the Request to Join Game Session option. This allows others to join in your game without you sending out the invite yourself, and you just need to approve their request.

The PS5 is also getting more personalisation options with this update. This includes things like shortcuts to disabling in-game voice chat and adjusting the volumes of individual voice chats. A more interesting one is what SIE calls Game Update Pre-download. It basically allows you to download updates early, if it’s enabled by a game’s dev team.

The PlayStation blog post also mentions new features coming to the PS app in the future, including joining a PS5 game via the app. For a more detailed breakdown of each feature, you can tread them yourself.

Your PS4 Games Are Actually At The Mercy Of A Battery

Discussions of video games preservation is taking centre stage once again. The PS3, PSP and PS Vita stores will go down this year, and the future of the PS4 is also uncertain. The PS5 may be backwards compatible, but only to the generation preceding it. And with that, people are wondering again what they’ll have to do if they want to play a game from the good old days.

Plenty of arguments have been made as to why the closure of the digital storefronts are a bigger deal than they appear. Ditto the virtues of video game preservation, even if doing so means resorting to emulation. In fact, there’s one each that you should spend some time reading. The former is by Den of Geek, and the latter is by video game critic Josh Bycer. But things can be worse, as evidenced by the PS4 and its weird DRM implementation.

For context, the PS4 effectively turns into a brick and loses connection to PSN if its CMOS battery runs out. This ends up getting tied to trophies, so even games you bought digitally end up getting borked. While this applies to titles for the PS3, PSP and PS Vita that are bought via PSN, physical copies are fortunately unaffected.

If you’ve adopted a digital first policy that early, this could hurt you more than just not being able to buy new games. Sony has said that if you bought a game digitally you will still be able to download them. But this report by VGC states that some PS3 owners are already not able to download patches, which does not sound too assuring. The situation with patches for physical games are also murky. Here’s hoping that things don’t get worse, and people won’t lose the ability to download games they own.

But back to the DRM issue. Your ability to play games you bought depends on the charge in the CMOS battery and internet connectivity. While the latter is available more often than not, you can never tell when your access to it gets inadvertently cut. And if your CMOS battery runs out at the same time, then you’ve basically no access to your games.

If you’ve gotten a PS4 in its early days, this is quite the possibility, since it’s now a seven year-old console. It’s even more so for the 15 year-old PS3. And I certainly don’t want to lose access to my games when my internet connection gets cut.

Unlike with a PC, replacing the CMOS batteries on consoles isn’t something you should do yourself either. Unless, of course, you have a lot of experience taking consoles apart. Fortunately, iFixit has guides for the PS3 if you’re feeling adventurous. However, there’s none for the PS4 – at least not exactly. But the company has the steps needed to get to the motherboard, where you’ll be able to find the battery.

As mentioned in iFixit’s PS4 article, SIE can fix this by issuing a patch that disables trophy earning while offline. Until that happens, the availability of your games are at the mercy of essentially a battery, and an internet connection. And it’s certainly not ideal, to say the least.

Esports Titles For Hanoi SEA Games 2021 Have Been Announced

Following the last SEA Games that took place in 2019, it’s time to prepare for the next instalment of 2021. This time, it’s Vietnam’s turn to host. And the country has decided on which titles will be included in its esports events.

Eight titles have been chosen as medal events for the Hanoi SEA Games 2021. The games are Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, League of Legends and its Wild Rift mobile variant, Arena of Valor, PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, CrossFire and FIFA Online 4. The list is posted on the Malaysia Esports Federation’s Facebook page.

It’s an interesting selection of games, to be sure. From the looks of it, they are all free-to-play titles, and a majority of them are on mobile. Half of them also happen to be of the MOBA genre. They are also mostly team events, with only PUBG Mobile getting an individual category. Titles that were in the previous SEA Games like Dota 2, Hearthstone, Starcraft II and Tekken 7 are notably missing.

The Hanoi SEA Games 2021 will take place between 21 November and 12 December. As you’d expect, all 11 countries in the region will be participating in up to 40 medal events, of which esports is one of.

Epic Games Launcher Reportedly Drains 20 Percent More Battery Than Steam On Laptops

Game launchers are notorious for causing systems to consume more power and if you’re on a laptop, leaving those programs to operate in the background while not connected to a power source clearly means that its battery is going to run out of juice a lot faster. With the Epic Games launcher, it’s actually even worse.

A study by PC World found that running the Epic Games Store (EGS) launcher in the background of a Microsoft Surface Pro 7+ equipped with an Intel 11th generation Ice Lake CPU consumed up to 20% more battery power than when the Steam launcher was active. Moreover, the site found that running just the Steam launcher alone in the background made little to no impact on the battery life of the Surface Pro 7+.

Statistically, the laptop’s battery lasted a total of 587 minutes with Steam active, while running it with the EGS launcher reduced that time to 482 minutes.

It’s a similar story with a Ryzen-based Surface Laptop 3, in which PC World noted that a clear run with the Steam launcher active depleted its battery in 472 minutes, while another run with the EGS launcher depleted it faster by 434 minutes; that’s approximately an 8% difference.

This marks the second time that Epic Games’ launcher has come under the spotlight. Back at the end of 2020, the digital distribution store gained attention when it was discovered that just running the app in the background was causing AMD Ryzen CPUs to run 20°C higher than average.

It was discovered that the surge in temperature was being caused by the launcher sending data to a server belonging to Epic Games. Then, as now, the only solution to the issue was to simply disable or shut down the launcher.

Sony Acquires Evolution Championship Series Fighting Games Tourney

If you’re even a little familiar with fighting games, you’ll know of the Evolution Championship Series, or Evo for short. It is, after all, the largest fighting game tournament, with an event in Japan in the early first half of every year, and a Las Vegas main event in August. Sony is making a big entry into the fighting game scene, by acquiring the tournament.

More specifically, Sony Interactive Entertainment and RTS, an esports venture from Endeavor, jointly acquired the “assets and properties” of the Evo series. This effectively means that future Evo tourneys are basically PlayStation events. According to IGN, Evo co founders Tony and Tom Cannon will remain as key advisors.

Following the acquisition, SIE also announced that this year’s Evo will be a digital tourney. The dates are between 6 and 8 August, with another set taking place from 13 to 15 August.

With the acquisition, the FGC community is naturally worried about non-PlayStation titles getting axed from the event. But fortunately, Evo business developer Mark “MarkMan” Julio tweeted that the tourney is still open to all platforms.

Nintendo has also provided a statement to IGN regarding the acquisition. In it the company says that it will continue to “assess Evo, and other opportunities”. Which sounds like nothing much will change in the part of the organisers and participants.

Epic Games Goes After Apple In The EU With New Antitrust Complaint

Epic Games is taking its grievances with Apple into another realm and by that, we mean that the owner of the wildly popular MOBA title, Fortnite, is taking the fruit company to court in the European Union (EU).

The company officially announced its decision to file an antitrust lawsuit against the company at Cupertino by posting it on its official page. Then, as now, the complaint accuses Apple of “not just harming, but completely eliminating” its competition in app distribution and payment processes via the use of iOS.

Some of you may remember that Epic Games tried to launch its own direct payment option on Fortnite, for both Android and iOS devices. In an effort to avoid paying Apple its 30% cut of the pie for allowing the game to be published on its mobile platform. As you can imagine, Apple wasn’t happy with Epic Games’ action and responded to the errant behaviour by booting Fortnite off iOS.

Epic Games argues that Apple’s rules and regulations on iOS are some of the most anti-competitive and restrictive in the world; it says that the company actively prevents and disallows developers from promoting their work on iOS, outside the official App Store. In Apple’s case, it argues that Epic Games’ payment system was a feature that wasn’t reviewed or approved by it and as such, it violated its App Store guidelines.

At the time of writing, the European Commission says that it has received the complaint and that they are looking into it.