An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gaming On Linux: Valve announced a change for Steam today that will make things a lot clearer for everyone, as developers will now need to clearly list the kernel-level anti-cheat used on Steam store pages. In the Steamworks Developer post Valve said: "We've heard from more and more developers recently that they're looking for the right way to share anti-cheat information about their game with players. At the same time, players have been requesting more transparency around the anti-cheat services used in games, as well as the existence of any additional software that will be installed within the game."

Developers with games already on Steam will also need to do this, as it's not just for new games coming up for release, and it is also part of the release process now too. So Valve will be doing checks on games to ensure the notices are there and correct. However, it's only being forced for kernel-level anti-cheat. If it's only client-side or server-side, it's optional, but Valve say "we generally think that any game that makes use of anti-cheat technology would benefit from letting players know".

Comcast says the latest installment of Call of Duty, released on October 25th, resulted in a whopping 19 percent of its overall traffic last week. The ISP says it's the company's "biggest weak in internet history." The Verge reports: It's not really possible to quantify that further, given Comcast didn't provide any specific numbers -- either about how many customers were downloading the game or how big their downloads were. Ranging between 84.4GB for the PlayStation version and 102GB for the PC edition Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is, in the grand tradition of Call of Duty games, a hefty download. It can be as much as 300GB if players choose to go ahead and download Modern Warfare II and III and all the associated content packs and languages, as Activision explained in June. The announcement underscores "just how restrictive its 1.2TB data cap can be in 2024," notes The Verge. "For any players who did download the whole massive 300GB package, they'll have wiped out a huge chunk of their 1.2TB Xfinity data cap in one fell swoop."

"If they used their internet as normal otherwise, that could put them right up against or even blow past that cap. Given that my family used nearly 800GB last month without any notably large game downloads, it wouldn't be that hard at all."

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has blasted the AI industry as "90% marketing and 10% reality" even as he acknowledged AI's transformative potential. Speaking to TFiR, Torvalds said he would "basically ignore" AI until the hype subsides, predicting meaningful applications would emerge in five years.

The Finnish software pioneer singled out ChatGPT and graphic design as current practical use cases. His criticism follows Baidu CEO's recent warning of an impending AI bubble burst, claiming only 1% of companies would survive the fallout. "I think AI is really interesting, and I think it is going to change the world. And, at the same time, I hate the hype cycle so much that I really don't want to go there," Torvalds said.

Baidu CEO Robin Li has proclaimed that hallucinations produced by large language models are no longer a problem, and predicted a massive wipeout of AI startups when the "bubble" bursts. From a report: "The most significant change we're seeing over the past 18 to 20 months is the accuracy of those answers from the large language models," gushed the CEO at last week's Harvard Business Review Future of Business Conference. "I think over the past 18 months, that problem has pretty much been solved -- meaning when you talk to a chatbot, a frontier model-based chatbot, you can basically trust the answer," he added.

Li also described the AI sector as in an "inevitable bubble," similar to the dot-com bubble in the '90s. "Probably one percent of the companies will stand out and become huge and will create a lot of value or will create tremendous value for the people, for the society. And I think we are just going through this kind of process," stated Li. The CEO also guesstimated it will be another 10 to 30 years before human jobs are displaced by the technology. "Companies, organizations, governments and ordinary people all need to prepare for that kind of paradigm shift," he warned.

Though native Linux game servers have been scarce over the last two decades, "I've seen people using the Box64 emulator to play x86_64 games on ARM devices," writes Slashdot reader VennStone. "It got me thinking: why not apply this to game servers...?

"I thought it would be fun to see if I could build a super low-power Trackmania 2 server using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W."

They dubbed the experiment "Trackberry", and shared all the technical details in a blog post at Interfacing Linux (includinga video). For example, they installed PyEnv so it could create a virtual environment for the PyPlanet server controller. ("That's right, your little Pi Zero 2 W is about to compile some software, slowly....")

But ultimately "it turns out that the A53 can run not only the server but also the server controller, with minimal effort. Five players push one core to around 50% load, while the others handle the database and controller." WHY STOP THERE? There are a gang of x86 Linux servers that could potentially run with Box64. Imagine playing Pirraria, 7 Days to Pi, Counter-Pi 2, Pitorio, and countless others! Granted, you may need a more powerful device than a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. I'll leave that research up to you.

My main takeaway from this experiment? Box64 is straight-up Scandinavian witchcraft and is not to be trifled with. Not even a little bit.

That said, it introduces a compelling option for those of us looking to run dedicated game servers that don't require much in the way of system resources. Under load, TrackBerry averages 2.8 watts and, according to the scientific number digits below, ends up running just under $3.00 a year or $0.25 a month. I find the concept of having a stack of microSD cards, each holding a different game server, neat....

You can see TrackBerry in action every Tuesday and Friday on Twitch...

The greatest tennis players in the world will be left to rage against a machine after any tight line calls at Wimbledon next year as the All England Club will break with tradition by removing line judges from all courts during the championships for the first time in its 147-year history. From a report: From 2025 onwards live electronic line calling (ELC) will be used on all courts in both the main draw at the All England Club and the qualifying tournament off-site in Roehampton. The new technology was successfully tested during this year's championships. Wimbledon's chief executive, Sally Bolton, said: "The decision to introduce Live Electronic Line Calling at the championships was made following a significant period of consideration and consultation."

Bolton added: "Having reviewed the results of the testing this year, we consider the technology to be sufficiently robust and the time is right to take this important step in seeking maximum accuracy in our officiating. For the players, it will offer them the same conditions they have played under at a number of other events on tour."

Along with 343 Industries now becoming Halo Studios, future Halo games will be developed using Unreal Engine 5. The Verge's Tom Warren reports: Halo moving to Unreal Engine 5 is being positioned as the first step of a transformation for Halo Studios to change its technology, structure, processes, and even culture. "We're not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe of how we make Halo games," says Pierre Hintze, studio head at Halo Studios. The team building Halo will move from the studio's Slipspace Engine to Unreal, after the proprietary engine it built for Halo Infinite became difficult to use and strained development. Halo Studios has had to dedicate a lot of staff to developing the Slipspace Engine, and parts of it are almost 25 years old.

"One of the primary things we're interested in is growing and expanding our world so players have more to interact with and more to experience," says Chris Matthews, art director at Halo Studios. "Nanite and Lumen [Unreal's rendering and lighting technologies] offer us an opportunity to do that in a way that the industry hasn't seen before. As artists, it's incredibly exciting to do that work." Halo Studios isn't committing to any release dates or new Halo game announcements just yet, but the team has been building some examples of Halo running in Unreal. Dubbed Project Foundry, the work is "neither a game nor a tech demo," but more of a research, development, and training tool. It's also the foundation for how the studio is changing up the way it builds Halo games.

Project Foundry has been built as if it was a shipping game so that a bunch of it can appear in Halo games in the future. "It's fair to say that our intent is that the majority of what we showcased in Foundry is expected to be in projects which we are building, or future projects," says Hintze. Project Foundry includes more detailed landscapes for Halo biomes, as well as foliage levels we haven't seen in Halo games in the past. Master Chief's armor has even been remodeled in this footage [...]. Halo Studios is now working on multiple Halo games, while the Slipstream Engine will continue to power Halo Infinite. "We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite," says Hintze. "[But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The companies behind the streaming industry, including smart TV and streaming stick manufacturers and streaming service providers, have developed a "surveillance system" that has "long undermined privacy and consumer protection," according to a report from the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) published today and sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Unprecedented tracking techniques aimed at pleasing advertisers have resulted in connected TVs (CTVs) being a "privacy nightmare," according to Jeffrey Chester, report co-author and CDD executive director, resulting in calls for stronger regulation.

The 48-page report, How TV Watches Us: Commercial Surveillance in the Streaming Era [PDF], cites Ars Technica, other news publications, trade publications, blog posts, and statements from big players in streaming -- from Amazon to NBCUniversal and Tubi, to LG, Samsung, and Vizio. It provides a detailed overview of the various ways that streaming services and streaming hardware target viewers in newfound ways that the CDD argues pose severe privacy risks. The nonprofit composed the report as part of efforts to encourage regulation. Today, the CDD sent letters to the FTC [PDF], Federal Communications Commission (FCC), California attorney general [PDF], and California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) [PDF], regarding its concerns. "Not only does CTV operate in ways that are unfair to consumers, it is also putting them and their families at risk as it gathers and uses sensitive data about health, children, race, and political interests,â Chester said in a statement.

Russian authorities are considering a ban on Discord, citing unspecified legal violations. According to the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant, the ban may happen "in the coming days." PC Gamer reports: The opening salvo has already been fired. The Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor has issued five separate rulings relating to Discord since September 20, which can all now be used as justification for an upcoming ban. Say what you will about authoritarian regimes, but they love their bureaucracy. Kommersant quotes an anonymous official source as saying the ban is being considered for violations of Russian law: needless to say, these violations have not been detailed, nor are likely to be.

Russian users have also complained about periodic outages on Discord over September, with many resorting to VPNs, and both the web and mobile versions of the platform affected. Should the ban become a reality, the big losers will be Russian players and developers, with no obvious domestic replacement. "The problem is that for Russian developers, communication with the community, including the international one, and technical support are implemented through Discord," said Vasily Ovchinnikov, head of Russia's Organization for the Development of the Video Game Industry. Today, a Moscow court fined Discord 3.5 million roubles ($37,675) for, apparently, failing to restrict access to banned information.

Steam has broken its record for the most PC players online, with 38,366,479 concurrent gamers. As IGN notes, that figure is a million more than the previous record, set last month. From the report: So, what helped propel Steam to new heights over the weekend? All the usual suspects were in the top 10 most-played games on Valve's platform, including Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Banana (yes, Banana has yet to split), and PUBG, with this year's Black Myth: Wukong, Satisfactory 1.0, Space Marine 2, and Valve's own Deadlock putting in work. Last week saw PlayStation exclusives God of War Ragnarok and Final Fantasy 16 both launch on Steam for the first time, which will have provided a modest boost, too.

The popularity of Steam is gradually increasing as Valve's vice-like grip on the PC market tightens ever further. Competitors such as the Epic Games Store and CD Projekt's GOG occupy a relatively small piece of the PC gaming pie, with Steam continuing to enjoy record-breaking success even amid perceived downturns in the video game industry. The release of Steam Deck is yet another platform on which Steam operates.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After 20 years, it's now possible for solo players to finish storylines in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft that previously required a group to do an intensive raid. That's thanks to "Story Mode," a new raid difficulty that was added for the final wing of the first raid of the recently released The War Within expansion. Over the years, developer Blizzard has expanded the difficulty options for raids to meet various players and communities where they are in terms of play styles. The top difficulty is Mythic, where the semi-pro hardcore guilds compete. Below that is Heroic, where serious, capital-G gamers coordinate with friends in weekly raid schedules to progress. Then there's Normal, which still requires some coordination but isn't nearly as challenging and can typically be completed within a few tries by a pick-up group. The most accessible difficulty is Raid Finder, where you're matched with random players automatically to complete a vastly easier version of a raid. Now Story Mode has been added to the mix, and it's even easier than Raid Finder.

In Story Mode, you fight only the raid's final boss, which has been scaled back in stats and complexity so that it's beatable for a single player or a very small group of friends. Challenging encounter mechanics have been removed, and the whole fight has been retooled to focus exclusively on the narrative aspects. There are some rewards, but they're not the same as those on more difficult raids; the goal was to avoid cheapening the experience for those who do want to go all the way. So far, Story Mode is available exclusively for the newest raid, which is called Nerub-ar Palace. It hasn't been made available for other encounters yet, but Blizzard has hinted that this could be the long-term goal.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IGN: Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has asked fans to please not make "offensive or inappropriate" mods upon the game's PC release tomorrow, September 17. Yoshida wouldn't comment on any specific mods he wants to see in Final Fantasy 16 in an interview with PC Gamer, though made clear what he doesn't want to see. "If we said, 'it'd be great if someone made X, Y, Z,' it might come across as a request, so I'll avoid mentioning any specifics here," Yoshida said. "The only thing I will say is that we definitely don't want to see anything offensive or inappropriate, so please don't make or install anything like that."

Mods allow players to create custom content for games, often resulting in incredibly useful gameplay changes such as the ability to play Elden Ring with friends seamlessly, or major additions such as an entire new expansion for Fallout 4 or the ability to play as custom characters in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Due to the nature of the internet, however, many mods are also, as Yoshida put it, "offensive or inappropriate." While cheating is one thing, fellow publisher Capcom expressed concern in November 2023 that "there are a number of mods that are offensive to public order and morals" which cause damage to the property itself.

An anonymous reader shares a report: September has been a big month for desktop hypervisors, with the field's big players all delivering significant updates. Oracle delivered VirtualBox version 7.1, billed as a major upgrade thanks to its implementation of a UI with a "modernized look and feel, offering a selection between Basic and Experienced user level with reduced or full UI functionality."

[...] Parallels also released a desktop hypervisor update last week. Version 20 of the eponymous tool now offers a VM that's packed with tools developers may find handy as they work on generative AI applications. Among those tools are the Docker community edition, lmutils, the OpenCV computer vision library, and the Ollama chatbot interface for AI models. [...] The other big player in desktop hypervisors is VMware, with its Fusion and Workstation products for macOS and Windows respectively. Both were recently updated.

China's internet regulator has proposed a strict regime that will, if adopted, require digital platforms to label content created by AI. From a report: The Cyberspace Administration of China announced its draft plan, which will require platforms and online service providers to label all AI-generated material with a visible logo and with metadata embedded in relevant files. The draft proposes that logos appear in several locations in a text, image, video, or audio file. In audio files, Beijing wants a voice prompt to inform listeners about AI-generated content at the start and end of a file -- and, as appropriate, mid-file too. Software that plays audio files will also need to inform netizens when they tune in to AI content.

Video players can get away with just posting notices about the content at the start, end, and relevant moments during a clip. Netizens who post AI-generated content will be required to label it as such. If they use generation tools provided by a platform, they'll be required to identify themselves -- and a log of their activities will be retained for six months. Some labels denoting AI-made content will be applied dynamically, based on metadata embedded in AI-generated content.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: Britain's competition watchdog on Friday issued a statement of objections over Google's ad tech practices, which the regulator provisionally found are impacting competition in the U.K. In a statement, the Competition and Markets Authority alleged that the U.S. internet search titan "has harmed competition by using its dominance in online display advertising to favour its own ad tech services." The "vast majority" of the U.K.'s thousands of publishers and advertisers use Google's technology in order to bid for and sell space to display ads in a market where players were spending £1.8 billion annually as of a 2019 study, according to the CMA.

The regulator added that it is also "concerned that Google is actively using its dominance in this sector to preference its own services." So-called "self-preferencing" of services by technology giants is a key concern for regulators scrutinizing these companies. The CMA further noted that Google disadvantages ad technology competitors, preventing them from competing on a "level playing field...." In the CMA's decision Friday, the watchdog said that, since 2015, Google has abused its dominant position as the operator of both ad buying tools "Google Ads" and "DV360," and of a publisher ad server known as "DoubleClick For Publishers," in order to strengthen the market position of its advertising exchange, AdX...

AdX, on which Google charges its highest fees to advertisers, is the "centre of the ad tech stack" for the company, the CMA said, with Google taking roughly 20% of the amount for each bid that's processed on its platform.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since its introduction in the 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons has become one of the most influential tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) in popular culture, featuring heavily in Stranger Things, for example, and spawning a blockbuster movie released last year. Over the last decade or so, researchers have turned their focus more heavily to the ways in which D&D and other TRPGs can help people with autism form healthy social connections, in part because the gaming environment offers clear rules around social interactions. According to the authors of a new paper published in the journal Autism, D&D helped boost players' confidence with autism, giving them a strong sense of kinship or belonging, among other benefits.

"There are many myths and misconceptions about autism, with some of the biggest suggesting that those with it aren't socially motivated, or don't have any imagination," said co-author Gray Atherton, a psychologist at the University of Plymouth. "Dungeons & Dragons goes against all that, centering around working together in a team, all of which takes place in a completely imaginary environment. Those taking part in our study saw the game as a breath of fresh air, a chance to take on a different persona and share experiences outside of an often challenging reality. That sense of escapism made them feel incredibly comfortable, and many of them said they were now trying to apply aspects of it in their daily lives." [...] For this latest study. Atherton et al. wanted to specifically investigate how autistic players experience D&D when playing in groups with other autistic players. It's essentially a case study with a small sample size -- just eight participants -- and qualitative in nature, since the post-play analysis focused on semistructured interviews with each player after the conclusion of the online campaign, the better to highlight their individual voices.

The players were recruited through social media advertisements within the D&D, Reddit and Discord online communities; all had received an autism diagnosis by a medical professional. They were split into two groups of four players, with one of the researchers (who's been playing D&D for years) acting as the dungeon master. The online sessions featured in the study was the Waterdeep: Dragonheist campaign. The campaign ran for six weeks, with sessions lasting between two and four hours (including breaks). Participants spoke repeatedly about the positive benefits they received from playing D&D, providing a friendly environment that helped them relax about social pressures. "When you're interacting with people over D&D, you're more likely to understand what's going on," one participant said in their study interview. "That's because the method you'll use to interact is written out. You can see what you're meant to do. There's an actual sort of reference sheet for some social interactions." That, in turn, helped foster a sense of belonging and kinship with their fellow players.

Participants also reported feeling emotionally invested and close to their characters, with some preferring to separate themselves from their character in order to explore other aspects of their personality or even an entirely new persona, thus broadening their perspectives. "I can make a character quite different from how I interact with people in real-life interactions," one participant said. "It helps you put yourself in the other person's perspective because you are technically entering a persona that is your character. You can then try to see how it feels to be in that interaction or in that scenario through another lens." And some participants said they were able to "rewrite" their own personal stories outside the game by adopting some of their characters' traits -- a psychological phenomenon known as "bleed."

PlayStation hero shooter Concord will be taken offline on September 6, 2024 and all players will receive a full refund, Sony announced Tuesday. From a report: Announced on the PlayStation Blog, director Ryan Ellis said "while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intended."

Concord will therefore be taken offline so Sony and developer Firewalk Studios can "explore options, including those that will better reach our players." The game will be removed from sale immediately and anyone who purchased on the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct will be refunded to their original payment methods. Those who purchased on Steam and the Epic Games Store will be refunded in the coming days. Firewalk Studios' AA shooter was released less than two weeks ago on August 23.

Notorious for a hardworking culture, Japan launched an initiative to help people cut back. But three years into the effort, the country is having a hard time coaxing people to take a four-day workweek. From a report: Japanese lawmakers first proposed a shorter work week in 2021. The guidelines aimed to encourage staff retention and cut the number of workers falling ill or dying from overwork in an economy already suffering from a huge labor shortage. The guidelines also included overtime limits and paid annual leave. However, the initiative has had a slow start: According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, only about 8% of companies in Japan allow employees to take three or more days off a week.

It's not just companies -- employees are hesitant, too. Electronics manufacturer Panasonic, one of Japan's largest companies, opted into the effort in early 2022. Over two years in, only 150 of its 63,000 eligible employees have chosen to take up four-day schedules, a representative of the company told the Associated Press. Other major companies to introduce a four-day workweek include Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, electronics giant Hitachi, and financial firm Mizuho. About 85% of employers report giving workers the usual two days off a week. Much of the reluctance to take an extra day off boils down to a culture of workers putting companies before themselves, including pressure to appear like team players and hard workers. This intense culture stems from Japan's postwar era, where, in an effort to boost the economy, then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida enlisted major corporations to offer their employees lifelong job security, asking only that workers repay them with loyalty.

The Philippines' $38 billion outsourcing industry faces a seismic shift as AI tools threaten to displace hundreds of thousands of jobs. Major players are rapidly deploying AI "copilots" to handle tasks like summarizing customer interactions and providing real-time assistance to human agents, Bloomberg reports. Industry experts estimate up to 300,000 business process outsourcing (BPO) jobs could be lost to AI in the next five years, according to outsourcing advisory firm Avasant.

However, the firm also projects AI could create 100,000 new roles in areas like algorithm training and data curation. The BPO sector is crucial to the Philippine economy as the largest source of private-sector employment. The government has established an AI research center and launched training initiatives to boost workers' skills.

The Verge's Ash Parrish reports: Last week, as a part of the updates to Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition -- collectively known as the 2024 revision -- the publisher announced that it would update D&D Beyond, the tabletop RPG's official digital toolkit that players use to reference content and create characters using a host of official and third-party sources. The update would add the new 2024 rulebooks to the toolkit, mark outdated content with a "legacy" badge, and change players' character sheets to reflect all the new rules and features.

That last part is critical to understanding why some D&D players (including my own dungeon master) spent the last 72 hours in a state of panic. Though some of the 2024 revisions are essentially cosmetic in nature -- for example, "races" will be updated to "species" -- other updates like the ones to weapons, spells, and magic items fundamentally alter the game. Wizards of the Coast would have essentially overwritten every user's character sheet with the new information whether they wanted it or not. "All entries for mundane and magical items, weapons, armor, and spells will also be updated to their 2024 version," Wizards said in its initial announcement. The publisher did say that players would have the option to continue to use the 2014 version of spells and magic items. But doing so requires using the game's homebrew rules. which aren't known for being user-friendly.

Thankfully, Wizards of the Coast isn't in the car business, and after a weekend of backlash on social media, the company will no longer force the new changes on players. "We misjudged the impact of this change, and we agree that you should be free to choose your own way to play," Wizard's said in its latest announcement. Current character sheets will only be updated with new terminology while the older versions of spells, magic items, and weapons will be preserved. Also, players who have access to both the 2014 and 2024 digital versions will have the option to use both when creating new characters.