Kotaku reports: Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — Definitive Edition was released on November 11 on all major platforms including the Switch. However, for folks who bought the game on PC, they've been unable to play the game since just shortly after it was released. Now three days later, [PC] fans are still unable to access the game they bought days ago with no update from Rockstar on when the GTA Trilogy will become playable again.

The remastered Grand Theft Auto trilogy has had a very, very rocky launch, with players across all platforms reporting various graphical bugs, gameplay glitches, and other annoying changes and tweaks to the classic PS2-era games. But while players on Xbox One or PS5 or Switch are dealing with annoying bugs and odd visual problems, players on PC are left unable to play any of the games included in the collection.
In a review Screen Rant writes that all three games "look better here than they ever have before." But... The visual improvements don't discount the fact that there are a lot of things missing in Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — Definitive Edition, including basic functions like the series' iconic cinematic camera mode which premiered in GTA 3. Gone also from GTA 3 is the top-down camera angle which was added in to please players coming over from GTA 2. Both of these camera angles were also missing in previous re-releases of GTA 3, but not including them in what is called the Definitive Edition feels like a mistake.
On the plus side, they write that "Some new but fun inclusions also make returning to Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas enjoyable, like San Andreas' updated bridge facts or the new cheat which lets players turn on Big Head Mode in all GTA Trilogy games if they enter the Konami code. The ability to instantly restart missions after being killed, busted, or otherwise failing is also much appreciated."

But Eurogamer reports that unhappy fans are now review-bombing the newly-released game on Metacritic: At the time of writing, the trilogy has 2000+ user reviews on the aggregate site. Of the 2054 reviews recorded by PC users on Metacritic, the combined score is a miserable 0.5. It peaks at 1.0 for PS5 players, but otherwise, most other platforms boast a similarly low score...

"This is it! This is the end of Rockstar, this is just too much," opines one particularly unhappy Xbox One customer, who has the highest number of "helpful" points.... "This so-called definitive edition is one of the most pathetic remasters of all time, especially considering how amazing Rockstar used to be. They were the top. They were the best there ever was. They showed other developers what can be done. I just can't believe that the end of Rockstar would be like this..."

Rockstar is now being inundated with refund requests as the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition backlash intensifies.
Oh, and one more thing. IGN reports that the game also appears to contain files for the infamous deleted sex mini-game "Hot Coffee."

A wild bear broke into a parked car looking for food. This set AI pundit Lance Eliot a-thinking... The AI driving system of a self-driving car is always intact. A parked self-driving car is immediately able to become a moving car.... If the self-driving car is making use of its object detection system, even though the autonomous vehicle is parked, the AI driving capability would be alerted at [a hypothetical] pending crash that is about to occur... Depending upon what the AI developers anticipated, the AI driving system might activate the self-driving car and attempt to quickly drive away from the converging human-driven car.
For most makers of self-driving cars, this is an obscure "edge" case. But Eliot imagines a world where a self-driving car is parked next to a forest... The human hiker has left the autonomous vehicle and has trekked somewhere deep in the woods. A bear meanders into the parking lot, looking for a free meal. If the AI driving system is using its object detection features, the bear would likely be detected. When the bear decides to wander directly toward the self-driving car, the AI driving system might activate the autonomous vehicle and drive away from the bear.

It is unclear if the bear will somehow divine that the self-driving car is capable of moving on its own accord... After a while, it seems plausible to suggest that bears will be concerned that those free meal containers (on wheels) seem to move away upon the bear approaching. This will possibly discourage some bears and they will steer clear of parked cars. Other bears might turn this into a game. Kind of hide-and-seek, of sorts. Approach a car, it moves away. Fun! Walk over to the car and see which way it goes next. A grand old time in the parking lot, that's for sure.
And as long as we're telling shaggy bear stories... The odds are that self-driving cars will be designed differently on the interior than are conventional human-driven cars. For example, there is no need for a steering wheel and nor any need for the pedals. Those will no longer be included. The interior is opened up to allow for perhaps swiveling seats, possibly reclining seats so that you can sleep on a long journey inside a self-driving car. Given that type of interior, the bear is bound to find things a lot more comfortable inside a self-driving car than a conventional human-driven car. The next thing you know, bears will fall in love with self-driving cars, doing so because it is a quiet, spacious, and secure place to rest and relax. No need to worry about predators getting at the bear while relishing the plush and roomy interior....

A second question is whether the bears might figure out how to communicate with the AI driving system. You know, bears are pretty sharp. Perhaps a truly enterprising bear could convince the AI to take the bear for a cozy ride while inside the self-driving car.

Don't be especially surprised if you start to see bears riding around in self-driving cars.

And please remember, you heard about it here, first.

If you're worried the metaverse will be all fun and games, fear not: Microsoft is taking its own stab at the idea, and it will have PowerPoint and Excel. From a report: The company is adapting its signature software products to create a more corporate version of the metaverse -- a concept promoted by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg that promises to let users live, work and play within interconnected virtual worlds. The first offering, a version of Microsoft's Teams chat and conferencing program that features digital avatars, is in testing now and will be available in the first half of 2022. Customers will be able to share Office files and features, like PowerPoint decks, in the virtual world. "This pandemic has made the commercial use cases much more mainstream, even though sometimes the consumer stuff feels like science fiction," Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Nadella himself has used the technology to visit a Covid-19 ward in a U.K. hospital, a Toyota manufacturing plant and even the international space station, he said. Microsoft also has plans for gaming and entertainment. "You can absolutely expect us to do things in gaming," says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an interview with Bloomberg. "If you take Halo as a game, it is a metaverse. Minecraft is a metaverse, and so is Flight Sim. In some sense, they're 2D today, and the question is can you now take that to a full 3D world, and we absolutely plan to do so."

The case for robot umpires in baseball got some new interest this week — especially for Silicon Valley's baseball fans. As America settled in to watch the final inning of this year's National League Division Series, the Washington Post reports that (human) viewers saw a (human) umpire "call a third strike on a checked swing by San Francisco Giants infielder Wilmer Flores...ending the night, and season, of MLB's best team of 2021." (Though instead of swinging "Flores clearly appeared to hold up.")

But the backlash raises the question of whether a so-called robo-umpire — essentially, a set of highly placed and well-programmed cameras — could have automatically adjudicated the checked swing...

It's not a hypothetical question: MLB is in the middle of a three-year partnership with the independent Atlantic League for just such a robo-umpire, a system called Automatic Balls and Strikes (ABS), that this past season rendered a home-plate umpire moot for his most important job. MLB hasn't given a timetable for when the system could reach the big leagues, but it's clearly a trial balloon. ABS is overseen by TrackMan, a Denmark-based start-up that began by helping golfers with their swing and then expanded to baseball before broadening again to auto-officiating responsibilities. Under their ABS system, players are measured for a strike zone before the season, with their info then fed into the machine. Then, during the game, the company's sensor in the stands behind home plate uses Doppler technology to determine where the ball is thrown and where it should have been thrown based on the player's strike zone. The sensor then relays the call to, well, whoever wants to hear it. In the case of the Atlantic League, this is an actual umpire behind the plate who, in an ironic reversal, is a human who simply does what the machine tells him to do and announces the call.

The system is not being used for checked swings, but the technology is equally applicable; it makes little difference whether a ball is crossing the plate in one direction or a bat crosses it the other way...

But accuracy is only part of the equation. Presumably TrackMan could have made the right call — but what effect would such automation have on us socially? An argument can be made that it would increase consumer confidence and eliminate discord; an equal argument could be made the other way, that subjectivity is what makes the public realm, or at least baseball, a dynamic and interesting place.

The Flores checked swing, in other words, gets at the question that stretches across much of innovation: Just because we could, does that mean we should?
"Some fans have questioned whether judgment calls are part of the fun of baseball and a legalistic rendering is contrary to the spirit of the game," the article points out. And another issue: currently catchers will sometimes even move their glove with the caught ball so it looks like it passed through the strike zone when it didn't. (Or, as Deadspin puts it, "It's lying about where the pitch came in to fool the umpire into giving your team a strike when he shouldn't have." Though they call it "a beautiful art that defines the catcher position... and it will be rendered useless by the emergence of robot umpires.")

Deadspin tracked down the President of TrackMan Baseball, who said that after an entire season of use in the Atlantic league, "Our system was accurate to about a half-inch, and we do this at hundreds of baseball stadiums every single day." But Deadspin worries that if it's actually implemented in Major League Baseball stadium, then pitchers would be afraid to throw borderline pitches, and would be forced to throw more balls over the plate. While endless hits and home runs might sound exciting, it would only lengthen an already slow sport, and the high that comes from witnessing incredible offensive feats would slowly fade as they would become more commonplace.

It's a game that encourages people to 'get a life' -- build a house, make a Sim and fulfil their dreams. So why are so many players intent on murder? From a report: The Sims has far evolved from its humble beginnings in 2000, where you created characters and tended to their needs, like a slightly more demanding Tamagotchi. As the games became more advanced, The Sims provided opportunities for the lives of your characters to more closely mirror reality: they now have lifetime goals and desires, can feel disappointment and joy, and now even do their own laundry. But whether they live a rich and fulfilling life, or an existence defined by endless suffering, the Sims' destiny is entirely in your hands. Of course many players choose not to be benevolent Gods in the Sims world -- and instead aim to kill and torture as many Sims as possible. Death has hugely evolved over 21 years of gameplay; we're no longer just sticking Sims in a swimming pool and selling a ladder to watch them drown. Instead, we're watching them explode in rocket ships, choke on pufferfish or even be eaten by the 'Cowplant' -- a mutant Venus flytrap with a cow head for a face.

"The Sims see you controlling a little society, but that doesn't mean you're making it better. It reminds me of Bruce Almighty, where the role of God is handed over but that doesn't necessarily mean that's strictly a good thing. It's rather therapeutic just killing Sims, and being quite an irresponsible God," 26-year-old Dubliner RTGame (real name Daniel), who has 2.6 million subscribers on YouTube says. "I feel like a kid with a magnifying glass on the small ants. It sounds quite twisted but it's quite fun to do things like that in games like The Sims to see what happens. But yes, I do have a lot of Sims blood on my hands." He's far from alone. While many in the Sims streaming community focus their content on cutesy legacy-style playthroughs or intricate design challenges, there's an increasing interest in more boundary-pushing content. RTGame credits the popularity of his bizarre Sims series for helping him jump into streaming as a full-time career, while other YouTubers such as CallMeKevin and Plumbella count speed runs where they kill entire neighbourhoods among some of their most viewed content.

Nintendo's worst-selling home console, the Wii U, continues to be the source for some of its biggest hits on the record-setting Nintendo Switch. From a report: With the Switch, Nintendo is putting on a clinic about how to turn prior failure into fortune as it repurposes games from the disastrous Wii U and tries selling them again on its newer hit device. The latest example of this salvaged success is the Switch's "Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury," which sold 5.6 million copies in its first seven weeks of release this year, according to new Nintendo financial data. Compare that seven week total to the just over seven-year total of 5.9 million copies sold of 2013's "Super Mario 3D World" for Wii U. The newer Switch game is basically the old game with a fun bonus adventure. The Wii U was a disaster even by Nintendo's usual cycles of occasional struggle and phenomenal fortunes. The 2012 successor to the popular Wii (remember swinging that controller?) bombed, with just 13.6 million units sold lifetime. Its big innovation: a home console with a controller that contained a screen, allowing players to keep playing their games using that screen when others needed the TV. But people didn't care and it was discontinued by early 2017.

"The huge parachute used by NASA's Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message," reports the Associated Press — thanks to the rover's puzzle-loving systems engineer Ian Clark.

"During a live stream discussing the landing, one Nasa commentator said: 'Sometimes we leave messages in our work for others to find. So we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work,'" reports the Guardian.

One Reddit user actually deciphered the message using Python code.

Long-time Slashdot reader rufey writes that "Decoded the slogan is 'Dare Mighty Things' — a line from President Theodore Roosevelt — which is a mantra at JPL and adorns many of the center's walls." The orange sections of the 70-foot (21-meter) parachute represented ones in binary code, while the yellow sections represented zeroes. (So the letter "A" becomes yellow-yellow-yellow-yellow-yellow-yellow-orange...) The Associated Press reports: Clark also included the GPS coordinates for the mission's headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Clark, a crossword hobbyist, came up with the idea two years ago. Engineers wanted an unusual pattern in the nylon fabric to know how the parachute was oriented during descent. Turning it into a secret message was "super fun," he said Tuesday. Only about six people knew about the encoded message before Thursday's landing, according to Clark. They waited until the parachute images came back before putting out a teaser during a televised news conference Monday...

Another added touch not widely known until touchdown: Perseverance bears a plaque depicting all five of NASA's Mars rovers in increasing size over the years — similar to the family car decals seen on Earth.

Deputy project manager Matt Wallace promises more so-called hidden Easter eggs...
The official Twitter feed for the rover has already revealed that it's carrying another message hidden in a plaque with a logo of the sun — "Explore as One," written in Morse code.

Some other interesting facts about the rover:

• NASA points out that Perseverance carried a special placard with 10,932,295 names, "stenciled by electron beam onto three fingernail-sized silicon chips."

• Space.com notes that it also carried a small aluminum plate honoring the healthcare workers of the world.

• NASA is encouraging children to code their own version of the helicopter using the visual programming language Scratch.

Long ago there were plans for a remastered Xbox 360 version of the Nintendo 64 game "Goldeneye 007" — but they never materialized, and that game became a lost legend. But then Monday Ars Technica interviewed longtime Spanish game streamer Graslu00, who had somehow uploaded a two-hour video demo-ing the lost game. The files came with a peculiar note: "Never say never, release coming soon, James."
Days later Engadget reported: This week, a ROM of a canceled 2007 Xbox 360 remaster of the game appeared online, allowing those with a PC to play it using an emulator. According to VGC (via Polygon), the leaked ROM includes the game's entire single-player campaign, as well as its multiplayer component. It also allows players to seamlessly toggle between the remaster's enhanced textures and effects and the original's blocky N64 graphics.
So this weekend the BBC tracked down videogame designer David Doak, who'd worked on the original 1997 game, who admitted it was fun finally seeing the remastered game "out in the wild." "It is always heart-warming to see that the original game is still so fondly remembered and has obviously brought joy to so many people over almost 25 years since release.

"The current excitement over the leak of this 'naughty remaster' speaks volumes for the impact and enduring legacy of GoldenEye 007."

David Doak also appeared as a character called Dr Doak in the original game, but was replaced in the remastered version. Some gamers have already modified the leaked software to put him back in, which he said was "particularly touching."
Since 2009 he's been using the Twitter handle @DrDoak.

In March he'd tweeted, "Dr Doak works in a chemical weapons facility. He washes his hands regularly and is careful to avoid touching his face. This is good practice. Be like Dr Doak."

A little over a year after bringing Minecraft Earth in the US, Microsoft announced this week it will shut down the game later this year. Engadget reports: Minecraft Earth players have until June 30th, 2021, to play the augmented reality title before Microsoft shuts down its servers and it's no longer available to download from app marketplaces. Developer Mojang Studios blamed the coronavirus pandemic and all the changes to day-to-day life that have come with it for the shutdown. "Minecraft Earth was designed around free movement and collaborative play -- two things that have become near impossible in the current global situation," the studio said. Like Niantic with Pokemon Go, Mojang had tweaked the game to make it easier to play at home. Those changes clearly weren't enough.

But if there's a silver lining in today's news, it's that Mojang plans to send off Minecraft Earth in style. The studio is rolling out one last update for the game it says contains changes "to make your time in Minecraft Earth as fun as possible." Among other tweaks, the update does away with real-money transactions and drastically reduces the time it will take for players to craft and build things within the game. It also offers players a chance to see all the content that Mojang was working on before today's announcement. "We hope these adjustments will allow you to explore, craft, and build more -- while staying safe indoors," the studio said. Once June 30th comes and goes, Microsoft will delete player data on July 1st. If you spent money in Minecraft Earth at any point during the life of the game, you'll get a token that will allow you to download the Bedrock edition of Minecraft to your mobile device. You can find more details on the shutdown on the Minecraft website.

This week London's prestigious Financial Times published a 15-minute video investigating the question: "Is QAnon a game gone wrong?" In 2017, the Q team, whoever they may be, made use of the modern equivalent of the Playboy's letters page. It's a message board called 4Chan... A YouTuber called defango has since claimed the work was his. He says he created Q as an alternative reality game, mostly for the LOLs, but also to smoke out bad journalists in the alternative media space. But he also says that in 2018, a man called Thomas Schoenberger wrested control of the game from him... Nobody knows if what he says is really true. What is becoming clear is that the whole thing has run away with itself...

Anyone who plays live action role playing games, known as LARPs, will recognise the gaming elements of QAnon [according to alternate-reality game pioneer Jim Stewartson.] "In 2015, 2016, and 2017, there were a lot of what are called LARPs, live action role playing is what the term means. And it really just means that there is a person pretending to be somebody else. The players knew they weren't real, but it was fun for them to interact with. But what happened on 4Chan and 8Chan is that individual people would go and LARP all by themselves, and create basically a single point of contact for an entire alternate reality game. In 2016, there was FBI Anon, and CIA Anon, Meganon, and all of these different LARPs that were basically practicing, they were prototyping what QAnon is... So it turns out there's a guy named Thomas Schoenberger. He saw this Cicada game as an opportunity to radicalise smart people, and he ended up creating puzzles and calling it Cicada, even though he was not the creator of it."

To this day, no one seems quite sure who the creator of Cicada was. We haven't been able to confirm Thomas Schoenberger's involvement in either Cicada or QAnon... [But Jim Stewartson tells them] "There's a woman named Lisa Clapier who runs an account called SnowWhite7IAM. And her job was to bring people from Cicada to QAnon. So there was a whole theme about follow the White Rabbit. A whole theme around Snow White and Disney characters. And that theme was used specifically to pull people from Cicada into QAnon."
A similar origin story appears in a new article at Heavy.com: Between 2014 and 2016, Schoenberger "stole" Cicada, Heavy's source said, and he started manipulating the puzzle. Later on, while working with Chavez, "breadcrumbs" — vague top secret information hidden in clues, were presented through the Cicada game.

In October 2017 QAnon posts premiered on 4chan, a site Schoenberger was prominent on before moving to 8chan in December, a site run out of the Philippines by pornography mogul and pig farmer, Jim Watkins, Heavy's source said.

Nintendo is about to release its biggest product for the holiday season, where it will be up against new-generation consoles from rivals Microsoft and Sony. An early look at the new Mario Kart game for the Switch, featuring augmented reality and your living room as the race track, indicates that Nintendo will be just as competitive. From a report: In Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, which becomes available from the Japanese gaming giant on Oct. 16, players use their Switch consoles to race and around their home. The action places animated objects in real-world surroundings, along the lines of Pokemon Go. Here's how it works: You, holding your Switch, play through what would look like a regular game of Mario Kart if not for your couch and dinner table in the background. You'll steer around a real toy kart on a track you've plotted out in your house. A camera attached to the kart feeds footage to your Switch screen, allowing you to take control of Mario or Luigi as they collect mushrooms and drive laps.

The game, previewed over a Zoom call with a Nintendo representative, looks fun and challenging, with a robust selection of options such as custom races and environments. Everything one might expect from a Mario Kart game is here, from the sound effects to the prominent presence of Lakitu, a friendly monster who sits on a cloud and referees the race, occasionally using a fishing rod to rescue you from danger. You can build elaborate racing tracks out of furniture and cardboard, limited only by the size of your room, which may be a drag for those in New York apartments.

In recent years Amazon has become a major force in television and film, so we have seen that the company can succeed in generating popular mass entertainment. Why is the company struggling so badly with games? Discussing the question with people involved with Amazon Games, some common themes emerge. From a report: "We're bringing a lot of Amazon practices to making games," Mike Frazzini, Amazon's vice president for game services and studios, told me in March. That isn't working because video games are fundamentally a creative endeavor, not the sort of purely quantifiable mass consumer product or service that Amazon knows how to make. No less than great novels or films, great top-end games cannot be created through user data requirements, A/B testing, behavioral analytics, user surveys and iterative critiques by departments ranging from security to finance. Yet games must jump through all those hoops at Amazon, according to people in a position to know. That product development sensibility can work for chintzy mobile games that are made to extract as much money as possible from players but does not work in creating multibillion-dollar long-term franchises that generate not just revenue but emotional loyalty. Instead, thinking of games like tech products just leads to watered-down games without a strong point of view or creative direction.

For example, Amazon executives told me that while designing Crucible they solicited private input from hundreds of streamers and esports figures -- people who play video games for a living and definitely know fun when they feel it. So how could the company ingest that input and still churn out a mediocre product? Turns out, the questions Amazon asked the game pros were generally incremental -- "Which weapon do you prefer?" "What classes and enemies do you enjoy?" -- rather than stepping back and asking, "Does this overall concept work?" That's why Crucible can feel like it was put together with bits and pieces of other successful games, rather than forging a strong vision of its own. The entire structure of most successful game publishers is built around protecting and insulating the creative people -- writers, artists and designers -- from the business. Take-Two does not tell Rockstar what the story of the next Grand Theft Auto should be. Mike Morhaime spent decades shielding the creative engine at Blizzard Entertainment from various corporate owners as Blizzard created StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo -- iconic franchises all.

Many precincts of the entertainment business are run by financial professionals, but the successful ones -- whether in television, music, film or games -- learn to let the creative people create. "Amazon is run not even by finance guys but by tech guys who instead of putting their creatives outside the bubble and protecting them from the culture, hired them into the bubble and expected them to work within that confine," said one person involved with Amazon's game efforts. "Amazon culture is great for product, horrible for creative endeavors." It is impossible to imagine Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, issuing her own version of Frazzini's pronouncement: "We're bringing a lot of Amazon practices to making movies." That is because when it comes to film and television, Amazon lets people with deep industry experience run the show and acquire projects being made by outside professionals. Salke was president of NBC Entertainment before joining Amazon two years ago. Her boss, Mike Hopkins, who joined Amazon in February, was previously chief executive of Hulu and chairman of Sony Pictures Television. Frazzini, meanwhile, had no significant game industry experience before joining Amazon.

TikTok said Tuesday that it plans to create 10,000 jobs in the United States over the next three years, a substantial increase from the roughly 1,400 employees it currently has in the country. From a report: The announcement comes as the company faces mounting criticism over its handling of user data and its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. "These are good-paying jobs that will help us continue to build a fun and safe experience and protect our community's privacy," a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement provided to CNN on Tuesday. TikTok said it has already tripled its US workforce this year, and the new jobs will be based in California, Texas, Florida and New York -- focusing on areas including sales, content moderation, engineering and customer support. The jobs announcement is part of a wider game of defense that TikTok has been playing to meet allegations by policymakers that TikTok poses a national security risk. The move also appears to follow a tried and true playbook for tech companies: when under fire, play up the job creation potential. Lawmakers including Sens. Chuck Schumer, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley worry the company's user data could ultimately find its way to the Chinese government.

If you've been getting owned in Call of Duty: Warzone a lot before you even hit the ground and thought it would be more fun to play if you could use cheats to see other players through walls, you're not alone. From a report: Last month, the developers of the hugely popular game banned more than 70,000 cheaters and promised to combat the game's cheating problem. "We are watching. We have zero tolerance for cheaters," tweeted the official account of Infinity Ward, the game's developer. This week, Infinity Ward rolled out a new, basic security feature which appears to have had the added bonus of locking out many cheaters: two-factor authentication. Infinity Ward announced that new Warzone players on PC will have to use SMS to login to the free version of the game, "as another step to provide an additional layer of security for players." Infinity Ward and Activision did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but cheaters are currently complaining about the effect this simple move has had on them.

As our lives have become a seemingly endless series of work meetings on Zoom and FaceTime or WhatsApp catch-ups with friends, we're all getting a bit sick of seeing people's faces enclosed in a cold, almost lifeless, digital frame. A tech worker from New York had a different idea for his tech conference, which he announced, in all seriousness, on April Fools' Day. The free conference is called Deserted Island DevOps and is happening on Thursday, entirely inside Animal Crossing, the Nintendo Switch hit game released in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. From a report: Speakers are doing their talks on an island in Animal Crossing specifically built for the conference, and attendees can follow along in the game, on Twitch, or Zoom, as a fallback option. Other than the unusual, and incredibly colorful and fun setting, the conference is very much like any other conference. The speakers' avatars are standing behind a podium, their slides are being displayed next to them, and attendees sit in the audience. Crucially, the conference isn't about Animal Crossing, it's kind of a standard software development type conference. It just happens to be happening inside a video game.

Scott Kelly, writing for The New York Times: Being stuck at home can be challenging. When I lived on the International Space Station for nearly a year, it wasn't easy. When I went to sleep, I was at work. When I woke up, I was still at work. Flying in space is probably the only job you absolutely cannot quit. But I learned some things during my time up there that I'd like to share -- because they are about to come in handy again, as we all confine ourselves at home to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Here are a few tips on living in isolation, from someone who has been there.

Follow a schedule: On the space station, my time was scheduled tightly, from the moment I woke up to when I went to sleep. Sometimes this involved a spacewalk that could last up to eight hours; other times, it involved a five-minute task, like checking on the experimental flowers I was growing in space. You will find maintaining a plan will help you and your family adjust to a different work and home life environment. When I returned to Earth, I missed the structure it provided and found it hard to live without.

But pace yourself: When you are living and working in the same place for days on end, work can have a way of taking over everything if you let it. Living in space, I deliberately paced myself because I knew I was in it for the long haul -- just like we all are today. Take time for fun activities: I met up with crewmates for movie nights, complete with snacks, and binge-watched all of "Game of Thrones" -- twice.

Forbes reports that in a world filled with school closings and social isolation, gaming has surged: - Steam, the most popular digital PC gaming marketplace, reached new heights Sunday, drawing a record 20,313,451 concurrent users to the 16-year-old service, according to third-party database SteamDB

- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, released by Steam-owner Valve in 2012, seems to be the top beneficiary of the increased engagement, breaking it's all-time peak on Sunday with 1,023,2290 concurrent players, topping its previous peak last month by a million, which itself beat the record set in April 2016...

- Activision Blizzard's new free-to-play battle royale spinoff Call of Duty: Warzone, launched March 10 on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, is also likely benefiting, drawing in a staggering 15 million in three days, besting the record 10 million in three days by last year's battle royale sensation Apex Legends.
Polygon adds: Gaming saw a 75% increase, week over week, in data usage this March, Verizon said. Video games are proving to be a popular way to pass the time during lockdown -- though we're also starting to see the strain this is placing on various networks and services... Recently, Nintendo experienced a nine-hour network outage. Over the weekend, Xbox Live also went down, preventing users from online play.

Gaming adjacent tools and services are also seeing a surge. As our sibling site The Verge reports, live streaming platform Twitch had a 10% jump in viewership. The popular communication app Discord, meanwhile, recently saw server outages that coincided days after it expanded its screen sharing limit for users.

The games that people are playing themselves are changing in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, too. Pokemon Go, for instance, has tweaked its mechanics to make it easier for people to play from home, while also changing its events to make it easier for people to play solo. And in an effort to entice its players to stay home, Rockstar vowed to add fun bonuses to the MMO for players who are "spending a little extra time at home." Elsewhere, game developers are starting to give out their games for free in an effort to help people stay indoors. It's no wonder we're seeing changes in usage, playtime, and outages across the board.

Target quietly soft-launched a new concept store in downtown San Francisco a few days ago: The Game Room lets people try out Magic Leap and Oculus Quest headsets, gaming PCs and mobile gaming rigs. It's an obvious play to make Target look hip to San Francisco's tech-savvy clientele, but it's also indicative of bigger industry changes. From a report: Missing from the store are the typical gaming fodder you'd find in your neighborhood Target. No physical discs or accessories for current-generation consoles. Instead, the Game Room is all about the future of gaming, from phones hooked up to Google's cloud gaming service Stadia to a corner that explains Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass to multiple VR/AR areas. You can buy some, but not all, of the items on display. (Target doesn't currently sell the Magic Leap headset, for instance.)

The store is largely a test of how Target can capitalize on the growing interest in gaming even as the huge amount of money being spent by gamers is increasingly on digital goods and services not sold in stores. It also shows what a big retailer like Target considers the cool fun new thing right now. Until recently the space housed the Target Open House: a display-room for the Internet of Things, which first opened in 2015, to show off products like smart speakers and connected doorbells. It was meant to be a splashy, experiment space to demonstrate how a smart home actually works, back when that seemed exciting.

Id software has released a new trailer for their upcoming Doom sequel set on a demon-infested planet Earth in the year 2151. And GameSpot has uploaded a 10-minute clip of gameplay while Collider released 15 minutes.

Collider writes: Doom Eternal takes everything that was gloriously batshit about Doom 2016, throws it in a Lamborghini full of Slayer albums and catapults it into the sun. This game is out of its goddamn mind in the best possible way, and I literally cannot wait to get my hands on the full version... The Fortress of Doom is massive. I wasn't able to access every area, and could only guess at the function of some of the areas I did see. One section had the original Doom Marine costume on display in a glass case, and the game's director, Hugo Martin confirmed that the skin is an unlockable. Moreover, he indicated that there are several unlockable player skins in the game, including one he was clearly excited about but couldn't reveal, saying that it was still in the licensing approval stage...

Doom Eternal, like its predecessor, is a fast game, pitting you against hordes of powerful enemies that force you to constantly be on the move and quick-swapping weapons to inflict maximum damage while avoiding death. You have a few tools at your disposal to earn guaranteed life, ammo, and armor, which are the over-the-top glory kills, the terrifying chainsaw, and the brand-new flame belcher respectively. Glory kills are special instant-death maneuvers you can unleash on enemies after staggering them, and the addition of a retractable arm blade has heightened the graphic absurdity of them to such a degree that I was giggling like an idiot every time I pulled one off.

I spent the next three hours murdering my way across three massive levels that were incredibly varied in terms of design, beginning in a blasted post-apocalyptic city, then moving to a vast overgrown temple, and finally ending up in a heavily-fortified arctic base... Each stage had a completely different feel -- the city was very ground-based, with dark subway tunnels and skeletal office buildings. The temple was spread out across what felt like miles, with an unexpected amount of verticality and traversal thanks to the new climbing mechanic. Yep, Doom Guy can now cling to certain walls, as well as swing from poles to extend his jump and gain access to distant ledges. The climbing controls are a bit funky, like Spider-Man with a rotator cuff injury, but the traversal puzzles are fun and satisfying, and allow for some truly massive environments...

Martin promised that players will continue to be introduced to new enemies and environments right up until the end of the 22+ hour campaign. He describes Doom Eternal as a thinking person's action game, and that the team's goal was to create a combat puzzle worth your time.
DOOM Eternal is scheduled to be released on March 20th.

Many users have taken to the Lutris Forums to report that EA is permanently banning Linux players on Battlefield V. "Good friends, finally after some time without being able to play Battlefield V for Linux, this week I was using lutris-4.21, I was having fun when my anti-cheat, FairFight, blew me out of the game, so I was banned," writes one user. "As I was not using any cheating, I think the anti-cheat considered dxvk or the table layer that used at the time as cheating..." Another user said the "same problem" happened to them, and they "got banned on tuesday for cheating."

While some users await a response from EA, others have received an email confirming the action that was taken on their account. "... After thoroughly investigating your account and concern, we found that your account was actioned correctly and will not remove this sanction from your account," the email states.

We've seen this happen on multiple occasions with Blizzard, but they eventually fixed the problem the first time. In a comment on Hacker News, user jchw writes: "Anti-cheat software is an absolute shit show of cat-and-mouse tactics. It's often difficult to distinguish anti-cheat software from rootkits or spyware. They're invasive and user hostile, and they frequently cause collateral damage that is swept under the rug and that support tacitly refuses to acknowledge..."