TikTok has been conducting tests so users can play games on its video-sharing app in Vietnam, part of plans for a major push into gaming, Reuters reported Thursday, citing four people familiar with the matter. From the report: Featuring games on its platform would boost advertising revenue as well as the amount of time users spend on the app -- one of the world's most popular with more than 1 billion monthly active users. TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, also plans to roll out gaming more widely in Southeast Asia, the people said. That move could come as early as the third quarter, said two of them. A TikTok representative said the company has tested bringing HTML5 games, a common form of minigame, to its app through tie-ups with third-party game developers and studios such as Zynga.

Wordle!, an old mobile game with the same name as the viral online game Wordle, has been bought by mobile marketing firm and game maker AppLovin in an undisclosed deal. TechCrunch reports: While you may have now heard of the popular online game Wordle, later bought by The NYT, you may have missed the story earlier this year about how a mobile game of the same name was blowing up on the App Store. [Developer Steven Cravotta] said he had been surprised to find a game he created as a teenager five years ago suddenly being downloaded 40,000 times per day, up from just 10 downloads per day the month before, The WSJ had reported at the time. As it turned out, iPhone users had gone to the App Store in search of the Wordle game everyone was talking about and had been downloading Cravotta's game by mistake.

Cravotta's Wordle! game was similar to the online version that everyone was playing. He said he had created it as a teen because he wanted to make something that would challenge people's minds and be a great game for kids. But the app never took off. Cravotta promoted it for around half a year, he says, before deciding to move on to other things. "It just sat in my developer account for the longest time getting maybe one to two downloads a day for six years ... until all this craziness happened," Cravotta tells TechCrunch.

The mobile game monetized through paid advertisements and in-app purchases. While Cravotta could have tweaked the game to make even more money to capitalize on the surge of users, he left it untouched. "I just kind of let it run and do its thing," he says. According to data from Sensor Tower, the mobile game was downloaded approximately 18.9 million times. The vast majority of the installs (more than 99.6%) arrived after the web game went viral -- with downloads spiking on Jan. 12, 2022. From Feb. 12, 2022 onward, the game has seen 13.7 million downloads -- or about 72% of its lifetime installs since its April 2016 launch, the firm said. Today, the iOS game is still the No. 19 mobile game in the U.S. by average monthly active users as of the first quarter, right behind bigger titles like Among Us and just ahead of notable games like Minecraft and PUBG Mobile.

Millions of people stopped playing Call of Duty in the first quarter of 2022, as one of gaming's top franchises continued to cool off, according to Activision Blizzard's latest financial results. From a report: Call of Duty is the biggest annual franchise in gaming, so any struggles can have knock-on effects for the rest of the industry. Activision Blizzard said its Activision-branded games -- which nearly entirely consist of Call of Duty -- had 100 million monthly active users in the first three months of 2022. That's down from 107 million in the quarter before. And it's down from 150 million in the first three months of 2021. The drop comes as Microsoft presses forward on a bid to buy Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. In a press release, the company blamed the decline on "lower premium sales" for November's Call of Duty: Vanguard compared to November 2020's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. It also cited "lower engagement" for free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone and flat performance for its Call of Duty: Mobile title.

Sony is set to launch a new video game subscription service this summer, seeking to drive sales of its PlayStation consoles and compete with a similar offering from Microsoft. CNBC: The company said Tuesday it will bundle its existing PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now services into one single subscription service called PlayStation Plus. The new PlayStation Plus will be available in June and comes in three tiers:

1. The basic package, PS Plus Essential, replaces the original PS Plus, which offers players two free games each month and access to online multiplayer. It costs $10 a month or $60 for an annual subscription.
2. A step above Essential is PS Plus Extra, which comes with all the same perks as Essential but includes a selection of 400 downloadable PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 titles. It's priced at $15 monthly or $100 a year.
3. The most expensive package is PS Plus Premium. This one includes 340 more games than Extra, and lets players stream a selection of PS, PS2, PSP, PS3, PS4 and PS5 games over the internet. PS Plus Premium costs $18 a month or $120 each year.

An overview of Tencent's burgeoning games dominance. From a report: In the West, tech giant Tencent is not yet a household name. While its size and acquisitions have made frequent headlines, its presence has remained understated relative to competitors like Amazon and Google, with the name occasionally peppered into conversations as an example of China's burgeoning influence on technology and entertainment around the world. But in China, Tencent is everywhere. It's behind the nation's most popular messaging app, WeChat, with over 1.2 billion monthly active users. It's the behemoth that created QQ.com, one of the country's largest web portals and the world's fourth most visited website. And with Tencent Music, it also owns the majority of China's music services, with 841 million active users. It's also China's -- and the world's -- biggest game company. And with a growing presence internationally, we recently decided to take a closer look at how it operates and what it owns.

A year and a half later, Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service has formally launched in the U.S. for Android, iOS, Chrome OS, macOS and Windows. Engadget reports: The core Luna+ service with over 100 games will normally cost $10 per month, with the kid-friendly Family Channel and Ubisoft+ Channels available for a respective $6 and $18 per month. Amazon hopes to reel in newcomers by dropping the monthly fees of Luna+ and the Family channel to $6 and $3 for anyone who signs up during March. Existing users just have to maintain their subscriptions to lock in that pricing.

The official debut comes alongside some new channels. A Prime Gaming channel, as the name implies, gives Amazon Prime members a free, rotating mix of games. The March selection will include titles like Devil May Cry 5 and Flashback. Pay $5 per month for the Retro Channel and you'll get Capcom and SNK classics like Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting and Metal Slug 3, while a similar outlay for the Jackbox Games Channel provides access to all eight Jackbox Party Pack titles. Luna's latest update also makes it simpler to stream gameplay from a Fire TV device, Mac or Windows PC on Twitch.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Humble, the bundle-centric games retailer that launched with expansive Mac and Linux support in 2010, will soon shift a major component of its business to Windows-only gaming. The retailer's monthly subscription service, Humble Choice, previously offered a number of price tiers; the more you paid, the more new games you could claim in a given month. Starting February 1, Humble Choice will include less choice, as it will only offer a single $12/month tier, complete with a few new game giveaways per month and ongoing access to two collections of games: Humble's existing "Trove" collection of classic games, and a brand-new "Humble Games Collection" of more modern titles.

But this shift in subscription strategy comes with a new, unfortunate requirement: an entirely new launcher app, which must be used to access and download Humble Trove and Humble Games Collection games going forward. Worse, this app will be Windows-only. Current subscribers have been given an abrupt countdown warning (as spotted by NeoWin). Those subscribers have until January 31 to use the existing website interface to download DRM-free copies of any games' Mac or Linux versions. Starting February 1, subscription-specific downloads will be taken off the site, and Mac and Linux versions in particular will disappear altogether. Interestingly, the current Trove library consists of 79 games, but Humble says that the Trove collection will include "50+ games" starting February 1. This week's warning to Humble's Mac and Linux subscribers notes that "many" of the current Trove games will appear on the Humble Launcher, which is likely a nice way of saying that some of the existing games will not -- perhaps around 20 or so, based on the aforementioned numbers. Despite these changes, Trove's selection of games will remain DRM-free. FAQs about the Humble Launcher suggest that subscribers can download Trove files and continue accessing them in DRM-free fashion, no Humble Launcher or ongoing subscription required. The same promise has not been made for the more modern game collection found in the new Humble Games Collection.

Sony Group's PlayStation division is planning a new subscription service to compete with rival Microsoft's popular Xbox Game Pass, according to people familiar with Sony's plans and documents reviewed. Blooomberg: The service, code-named Spartacus, will allow PlayStation owners to pay a monthly fee for access to a catalog of modern and classic games, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren't authorized to speak to the press about the plans. The offering will likely be available on the smash hit PlayStation 4, which has sold more than 116 million units, and its elusive successor, the PlayStation 5, which launched more than a year ago but is still difficult to buy due to supply chain issues.

When it launches, expected in the spring, the service will merge Sony's two existing subscription plans, PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now. Currently, PlayStation Plus is required for most online multiplayer games and offers free monthly titles, while PlayStation Now allows users to stream or download older games. Documents reviewed by Bloomberg suggest that Sony plans to retain the PlayStation Plus branding but phase out PlayStation Now.

Ana Diaz writes via Polygon: Jack Morrison logs on to stream, he doesn't boot up Twitch, Streamlabs OBS, or speak into a fancy microphone. Instead, he grabs a basic circular mirror and sets it in front of his desktop monitor, facing the screen. Then he sits in front of his monitor, as usual, and plays the game, propping up his cell phone to face him and setting his camera live. When he boots up Apex Legends, viewers see the gameplay reflected in the mirror as they watch him play. This makeshift setup might have been surprising just a year ago, in an industry that seems to be more and more concerned with having the latest streaming technology. But it's become a rather common practice on TikTok, where video game streaming has picked up in the past few months. In September, the company said that one billion people in total use the app each month, and jokes and sounds riffing on video games have long proliferated widely across TikTok. Now, Morrison (JackMorrisonTV on TikTok) and other streamers with similarly crude setups have taken over the app's "LIVE" section, capturing as many as 2,400 viewers at a time.

These streamers are using low-key setups, in comparison to the complex (and expensive) setups that dominate Twitch, where a DSLR camera and the capture card to use it can cost over $800. The exact build of each TikToker's setup varies, but nearly all of them capture video via an external camera that's focused on a screen, or in Morrison's case, a reflection of a screen. A brief scroll through the gaming section of TikTok's live content shows these streamers' ingenuity; some will stream videos of tablets or phones as they play mobile games, while others will just put the camera in front of a screen. The games also vary widely, with people playing games like Snake, Minecraft, and Wordscapes in addition to shooters like Valorant.

The number of live streams is much smaller than the wave of short-form videos being pushed out every single day on the app, making them stand out more. It also feels like a more accessible platform, especially for people who are just getting started with streaming. TikTok streamers are using more basic technology, such as mirrors, cell phone stands, and the like. It's also less competitive than Twitch, which has over seven million unique streamers go live each month. [...] TikTok is also testing monetization features that might make it more appealing for streamers to use. [...] For now, streams seem like a quick and easy way to take advantage of TikTok's massive audience. Whether or not bona fide TikTok streaming stars will emerge on the platform or find a sustainable home there remains to be seen.

According to Bloomberg, Nintendo is planning to unveil a model of its Switch gaming console equipped with a bigger Samsung OLED display and support for 4K. It's expected to arrive before Christmas. From the report: Samsung Display Co. will start mass production of 7-inch, 720p-resolution OLED panels as early as June with an initial monthly target of just under a million units. The displays are slated for shipment to assemblers around July. The gaming community has speculated online about the introduction of an OLED or organic light-emitting diode screen, but Nintendo has stayed mum and President Shuntaro Furukawa said in February his company has no plans to announce a new Switch "anytime soon." Samsung's involvement is the strongest indication that Nintendo is serious about updating the console, and on a large scale.

Nintendo decided to go with rigid OLED panels for the new model, the people said, a cheaper but less flexible alternative to the type commonly used for high-end smartphones. The latest model will also come with 4K ultra-high definition graphics when paired with TVs, they said. That could intensify a longstanding complaint of developers, who have struggled with the difference in resolution between handheld and TV modes and now face a bigger gap between the two.

The tech giant likes to test and tweak. Stadia promised to change the industry and failed to deliver. From a report: Google's streaming video game service Stadia had ambitious plans to disrupt the gaming industry, which is dominated by consoles. The tech giant had planned to pack Stadia with original content, announcing two years ago that it was hiring hundreds of game developers and starting studios in Los Angeles and Montreal. But those teams barely had time to get started before they were dismissed earlier this month as Google shut down in-house game development. From the beginning, Google's approach to video games wasn't very Google-like. The Alphabet company tends to launch bare-bones products and test them as they grow. With Stadia, it came out big. Flashy press conferences and ad campaigns promised high-quality games with innovative features playable on Android smartphones or on the TV through Chromecast. Gamers would have access to a library of exclusive titles and well-known favorites like Assassin's Creed without having to dish out $500 for Sony Corp's PlayStation or Microsoft's Xbox.

So when Stadia launched in 2019, gamers were expecting the complete package, not the beta model. While the cloud streaming technology was there, playing to Google's strengths, the library of games was underwhelming and many of the promised features nonexistent. Other platforms offer hundreds of games a year, but Stadia offers fewer than 80, according to Mat Piscatella, an analyst at the NPD Group, which tracks video game sales data. Players also didn't like Stadia's business model, which required customers to buy games individually rather than subscribe to an all-you-can-play service a la Netflix or the Xbox's Game Pass. Paying as much as $60 for a single game, for it only to exist on Google's servers rather than on your own PC, seemed a stretch to some. After all the hype, gamers were disappointed. Stadia missed its targets for sales of controllers and monthly active users by hundreds of thousands, according to two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. A Google spokesperson declined to comment for this story. "I think it would be fair to say the messaging leading up to and around the launch was inconsistent," with the final product, Piscatella says. Further reading: Stadia Leadership Praised Development Studios For 'Great Progress' Just One Week Before Laying Them All Off.

Roughly half a billion people played Among Us in November, becoming "by far the most popular game ever in terms of monthly players," according to Nielsen's SuperData. The Verge reports: The success is even more remarkable because InnerSloth -- the company that makes Among Us -- only has four employees. That's roughly 125 million players per person who works on the game. It's proven to be so popular that the studio decided to cancel a sequel that was in the works and just put all its effort into improving the original. It even caught the attention of sitting congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who livestreamed herself playing it to try to encourage people to vote, with an audience on Twitch that peaked at over 400 thousand viewers.

In an email to The Verge, Carter Rogers, Principal Analyst at SuperData, said that the next-most popular game in terms of monthly active users only clocked in at 300 million. Rogers notes that Nielsen arrives at its figures through a mix of "point-of-sale and event data from publishers, developers and payment service providers." Among Us' release on the Nintendo Switch was recent enough that it didn't have an appreciable impact on the game's total numbers in Nielsen's analysis.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today, Microsoft revealed prices for its next-gen consoles: $299 or $499 for an Xbox Series S or Xbox Series X, respectively, starting November 10. But Microsoft is also talking up a smartphone-style program that lets players get either system for no money upfront as part of a subscription plan called Xbox All Access. With Xbox All Access, you make a two-year commitment to pay $24.99/month (for the Xbox Series S) or $34.99/month (for the Xbox Series X). In exchange for that commitment, you get the relevant hardware upfront, to keep, as well as a two-year subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Game Pass Ultimate usually costs $14.99/month, so your All Access monthly payments end up a bit higher to make up for that "free" upfront hardware. But in addition to not having to spend hundreds of dollars in one lump sum, All Access subscribers can actually come out ahead at the end of two years.

For the Xbox Series S:
- With All Access: $0 upfront + $24.99/month * 24 months = $599.67
- Without All Access: $299 upfront + $14.99/month * 24 months = $658.76
- All Access savings: $59.09

For the Xbox Series X:
- With All Access: $0 upfront + $34.99/month * 24 months = $839.76
- Without All Access: $499 upfront + $14.99 * 24 months = $858.76
- All Access savings: $19.00

So All Access subscribers save a lot of money upfront and a little money in the long run over players who buy their console and Game Pass separately. Not a bad deal, all things considered. Some things to note: you should be interested in Microsoft's Game Pass Ultimate subscription in the first place and know that it locks you in to that subscription for a full two years. It's also subject to a credit check and approval of a line of credit from Citizens One bank, which is partnering with Microsoft for the program.

Microsoft's next-generation consoles, the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, will be released on Nov. 10, Microsoft announced on Wednesday. Microsoft also confirmed the price of Xbox Series X: $499. Pre-orders will open on Sept. 22. From a report: As part of Wednesday's announcement, Microsoft also said it will expand Xbox All Access program to 12 countries. This program essentially allows players to purchase a console and Xbox Game Pass on a monthly payment program -- $24.99 a month. Xbox All Access will be available in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Korea, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States. Microsoft's localized Xbox Twitter accounts have also been tweeting regional pricing: In the U.K., the Xbox Series X will cost $499 and the Xbox Series S will cost $299. This holiday Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Xbox Game Pass for PC members get an EA Play membership at no additional cost.

Last week, India banned another 118 apps with links to China. PUBG Mobile Lite and PUBG Mobile Nordic Map were included in that sweeping ban. Now, PUBG Corporation says it's looking for ways to bring the apps back to India. Engadget reports: The South Korean company was included in the ban because the mobile games are published by China's Tencent. In a statement shared today, PUBG Corporation said it will no longer use Tencent Games to publish the PUBG Mobile franchise in India. According to TechCrunch, prior to the ban, PUBG Mobile had more than 40 million monthly active users in India, so there's a strong incentive to restore the game.

"Moving forward, PUBG Corporation will take on all publishing responsibilities within the country," it said. "As the company explores ways to provide its own PUBG experience for India in the near future, it is committed to doing so by sustaining a localized and healthy gameplay environment for its fans."

For years, it was long believed that $60 is the only price that the U.S. games market could bear (and they're often more expensive in international markets). But industry leaders and journalists have questioned the stubborn stickiness of the sticker price in recent years. And the last three years saw an explosion of varying price tiers, anywhere from free (like "Fortnite") to monthly subscription services, like Apple Arcade and Xbox Game Pass. And much of the industry's total game sales are digital downloads anyway. From a report: "The shift to $69.99 should have taken place in 2013, [in my opinion]," tweeted analyst Mat Piscatella of market research firm The NPD Group. "But folks thought mobile was a threat to the console business. ... Instead we got collector's, silver and gold editions [which offer additional content or perks] that elevate above $59.99 anyway." Big publishers like Activision, Ubisoft and EA all regularly release marked up "special editions" of games. These prices often only come with marginal bonuses (a skin or emote), but it's essentially charging people extra on nothing but a promise that more content is coming. EA's disastrous launch of "Anthem" in 2018 was a high-profile example of a game that charged a premium for promised content and barely delivered. Games haven't always been $60 though. Pricing in the 1990s usually depended on your local stores. Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games were anywhere from $40 to $100 a cartridge. It wasn't until 2005 that a retail price was unofficially standardized.

Business Insider reports that some players are adapting their avatars in the game world of Animal Crossing: New Horizons to show their support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the real world: In "Animal Crossing: New Horizons," players are creating customized signs and clothing for their game characters that say "BLM" and depict symbols of "No justice, no peace...." Anyone with access to a Nintendo Online account can host an online protest in the game; one such virtual protest was held on June 7.

As there's a limit of only eight players allowed to be on another player's island at a time, interested players were directed to a site which put folks in line to gain access. When the player's turn came, they were given a special code needed to enter the island. The protest host made customized signs, pillows, and memorial photos, and carved out a special path and area on their island to hold the sit-in protest. Players were encouraged to bring in-game currency (also known as bells) to the island, which would be converted into a charity donation by the host in the name of the player who contributed. This protest raised money for six different charities. including the NAACP, the National Bail Fund Network, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Meanwhile, Forbes reports: Roblox, a popular game among children and early teens that announced 100 million active players last year, has become a small-scale battleground in the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. The BBC is reporting that hackers are taking over accounts to spread pro-Trump propaganda, dressing them up in red hats like Trump supporters and putting pro-Trump messages in profiles...

There are ton of posts on social media from players who say that their accounts have been hacked, and Gamespot notes that since Roblox accounts are indexed by Google, it's easy to see a ton of accounts featuring the same message in the "about field": Ask your parents to vote for Trump this year!#Maga2020. A search on Google yields about 1,800 results... They also appear to be spamming friend requests and friend lists to send out pro-trump messages far beyond the single hacked account.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nearly three months after laying out some of the PlayStation 5's technological underpinnings, Sony today offered a first extended look at actual games running on the upcoming hardware during a live event. The event started off with a glimpse of an "expanded and enhcanced" version of Grand Theft Auto V, which is coming to the PlayStation 5 in 2021, in case you need an excuse to buy the game again. PlayStation 5 owners will also get GTA Online free at launch in 2021, while PS4 owners of GTAV will get $1 million in monthly online GTA Cash every month until the PS5 version launches.

A follow-up to last year's Spider-Man featuring Miles Morales will be hitting the PS5 in Holiday 2020. "A hero is just someone who doesn't give up," an unseen narrator says over the footage. "Your dad said that. He was right. Now it's your turn. Go be a hero Miles." Though the footage shown is tagged with a "captured on PS5," (and a ""Be greater, be yourself" slogan), it's unclear if it will also be available on older PS4 systems. Ratchet and Clank are back for more madcap run and gun mayhem in Rift Apart, a game that seems focused on warping quickly between dimensions that are randomly collapsing in on one another. The trailer shows the duo riding dragons, facing pirates, sliding down futuristic buildings, and more. And one dimension even features a female member of Ratchet's species, which is sure to satisfy a particular type of fan. Other games mentioned in the report that are coming to Sony's next-gen console include: Square Enix and Luminous Productions' Project Athia, Annapurna's Stray, Housemarque and PlayStation Studios' Returnal, LittleBigPlanet's A Big Adventure, Destruction Allstars, Ember Lab's Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Goodbye Volcano High, Soulstorm, Ghostwire Tokyo, Superbrothers' The Far Shore, Gearbox and Counterplay Games' Godfall, Solar Ash, Hitman 3, Astro's Playroom, and Little Devil Inside.

Developing...

Microsoft's Solitaire game is turning 30 years old today. Microsoft is celebrating the occasion with a world record attempt of the most games of Microsoft Solitaire completed in one day. From a report: 35 million people still play Solitaire monthly, according to Microsoft, with more than 100 million hands played daily around the world. Microsoft Solitaire was originally included as part of Windows 3.0 back in 1990, designed specifically to teach users how to use a mouse. Grabbing virtual cards and dropping them in place taught the basics of drag-and-drop in Windows, which we still use today in many parts of the operating system. Microsoft Solitaire, originally known as Windows Solitaire, is one of the most played games in the world as it shipped in every version of Windows for more than two decades. That means it has shipped on more than a billion PCs, and it only stopped being a dedicated part of Windows with the release of Windows 8 in 2012.

destinyland shares an update about Billy Mitchell, the intense dark-haired videogame champion in the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Last year the videogame record-keepers at Twin Galaxies revoked Billy Mitchell's entire lifetime's worth of videogame high scores after an online discussion argued videotapes of three of Mitchell's performances suggested they'd been achieved using a MAME emulator. Electronic Gaming Monthly reports that Mitchell has since streamed games on Twitch "obtaining scores equal to those that had been disputed, broadcast live from public venues," but the record-keepers also banned Mitchell for life from ever submitting any new high scores.

Ars Technica reports that Mitchell recently updated his defamation lawsuit against Twin Galaxies, while they've counter-filed a motion to dismiss it which is now scheduled to be heard on July 6. They argue that ruling in Mitchell's favor "would have chilling effects on the freedom of speech." But in March Billy updated his lawsuit to call their accusation "libelous on its face," saying that Twin Galaxies "at least implied [that he was a cheater], so that any reasonable reader would understand Twin Galaxies has called Mitchell a cheater who deserved punishment by stripping him of all his Twin Galaxies records and banning him for life from submitting further records." Ars Technica writes:

Mitchell takes particular issue with Twin Galaxies' alleged refusal to consider "25 sworn affidavits" from eyewitnesses supporting his claims, in favor of an exclusive focus on "scientific" evidence. Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day is quoted saying that he "find[s] it unexplainable that my testimony as the founder and former owner is disregarded, while others, specifically the ones against Billy, are embraced...."

Twin Galaxies' motion highlights that the 3,770-post dispute thread surrounding Mitchell's Donkey Kong scores (which is now included in its entirety in the court record) was viewed nearly 2.4 million times as of March 14... "Twin Galaxies believes that this was the most professionally documented and thoroughly investigated video game score of all time," Twin Galaxies owner Jason Hall said in his public declaration...

Court proceedings are "not the forum for [Mitchell] to get revenge," Twin Galaxies argues, claiming that its statements regarding Mitchell were "protected activity" under the First Amendment, and Mitchell's suit "seeks to chill the expression of free speech."
In the 1985 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, Mitchell simultaneously held the highest scores for six different video games — Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong, Jr., Centipede, and Burger Time. Because Twin Galaxies now refuses to recognize any of Mitchell's previous records, Guinness has now also expunged those records from its publication.

In 1999 CmdrTaco noted Billy's perfect game of Pac-Man. Though no questions were ever raised about that legendary game, the 2019 edition of Guinness's record book still demoted it to a new section called "Records That Never Were."