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Liberal-flavored site Burnt Orange Report sheds some light on a Texas bill sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans in the House that gives law enforcement in the state broad powers to look at private Internet data without much justification.
The bill was sponsored by Texas Republican Reps. John Frullo, Allen Fletcher, and John Carona; and Democratic Rep. Senfronia Thompson. House Bill 2268 is described as follows:
At about this time last year adult video streaming and rental outfit SugarDVD announced that it would bring its services to the PlayStation 3. Since that time the service has been added to every imaginable device on the planet either through a custom app or simply via a device's version of a web browser. SugarDVD is available (or at least accessible) on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, Ouya, iPad, Android, ROKU, BOXEE, and Google TV.
Indie Royale has launched the Mayhem Bundle, offering players multiple indie titles that are described as a "mix-up of anarchic indie games." The bundle includes Burn Zombie Burn!, Primal Fears, Alien Shooter 2: Conscription, Plain Sight, Lucius and Droplitz. A seventh mystery game will be added to the mix at a later date.
All of the games are available on Steam for Windows, while only two titles offer Desura codes: Lucius and Alien Shooter 2: Conscription.
On Thursday June 13th (as part of this year’s E3 expo) video gaming site Venus Patrol will team up with MOCAtv (the video channel of Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art) to present an alternative press conference called HORIZON. Organizers say that this press event will show off a "lineup of beautiful games as an alternative to what we’ve come to expect from standard E3 fare."
Google announced that it will dump its Google+ Games service in favor of new game services to be rolled into Google Play, which was announced yesterday at the Google I/O event. Google issued a statement saying that all of the games currently available on Google + will be moved into its new service and that the section of Google + will be shut down on June 30.
As detailed in this May 7 story, indie studio Notion Games indicated that Ubisoft had asked it to change the name of its game Super Ubi Land to something else to avoid the implication that the game was somehow associated with the French publisher. At the time Notion Games said that it would do just that and that it understood where Ubisoft was coming from.
A survey carried out by VoucherCodesPro of 1,442 men in the United Kingdom found that men who have been in relationships for six months or more would rather play a new video game than have sex with their partner. Forty-nine percent of men surveyed said that they would choose video games over sex, while 32 percent would rather have sex with their partner, and 19 percent indicated that their choice would depend on the game in question.
In April the House of Representatives managed to push the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) through the chamber, but shortly thereafter it stalled in the Senate. Leaders there said they weren't planning on taking the issue up, instead planning to focus on a number of separate bills to address issues related to cybersecurity concerns by the government and corporations.
Nintendo has decided to target "Let's Play" videos on YouTube with "content ID match" claims, according to multiple reports this morning. By making these claims it allows Nintendo to either block content or monetize the video. This is not sitting well with Let's Play video makers like Zack Scott whose videos have been targeted by Nintendo.
Electronic Arts has decided to do away with its controversial online pass system for used games, the company confirmed with GamesBeat last night.
"Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass," EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed to GamesBeat in an e-mail. "None of our new EA titles will include that feature."
One of the most pervasive criticisms that came out of the event where Sony unveiled the PS4 was the fact that none of the presenters were women.
To be honest, I didn't notice until someone pointed it out.
Oh, don't give me that look. I'll bet you didn't notice that not a single one of the presenters were red-heads. Now, I don't know if that's true or not but I bet you'd have to scan through footage of the entire presentation to confirm it one way or the other.
Sorry, I got off topic. Where was I?
The U.S. Department of Education announced the winners of this year's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract awards. The SBIR funds are earmarked for small businesses using "cutting-edge R&D" to develop technologies to solve tough problems. Half of those contracts are game-related in some way - either they are for games or use gaming technology in a creative way.
German online game developer InnoGames will host a Game Jam in its Hamburg office on June 21. Participants will be charged with developing computer games with a team in a 48-hour period. Teams will have to create graphics, game design and programming from scratch. This is the sixth game jam held by the company. A team from InnoGames will also be participating in the event.
Facebook has blocked an app that lets users play a game of "Russian Roulette" with their Facebook account. The social suicide game was a little too over the top for Facebook, apparently. Like the real-world game involving a gun with one bullet in it, the app gives participants a one-in-six chance of deleting their Facebook account. Social Roulette was brought to the attention of Facebook by an automated system that deals with "negative user experience."
Organizers of The Boston Festival of Indie Games announced that game designer and producer Robin Hunicke will deliver the keynote address at this year's event to take place Saturday, September 14, 2013 at the Stratton Student Center and the Johnson Athletic Center on the MIT campus.
Select Twitch.tv content is now available via Xbox 360 thanks to the release of a new app. While Xbox Live Gold members won't be able to use the service to broadcast their gameplay exploits with the new app, they will be able to watch content from the top 300 live Twitch channels. For now the app is only available to Xbox Live Gold members in the United States.
The murder trial of Chris Harris from Arminton, Illinois began earlier this month in Peoria, Illinois. Harris is accused of murdering Rick and Ruth Gee and three of their children with a tire iron in the family’s Beason home in late September 2009. One of the children, a three-year-old girl, survived the attack. Prosecutors laid out what happened after brothers Chris and Jason Harris, intoxicated from a night of drinking and doing cocaine visited the Gee home in search of marijuana.
An interesting story in the New York Times (as unearthed by Develop) reveals that a hedge fund manager that controls billions in investment in Sony has suggested that the company break up parts of the company.
Nvidia today announced pricing and a release window for its hand-held console system, Project SHIELD (now called simply SHIELD), this morning. The system will cost almost as much as the Wii U, which is surprising given that its other Android-based competitors like the GameStick and the Ouya are priced at right around $100.
The Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA) and the AbleGamers Foundation have teamed up to open a special chapter of the organization dedicated to consumers called the AbleGamers Game Accessibility Chapter. The AbleGamers Foundation runs AbleGamers.com, which provides news and reviews on the accessibility of mainstream video game titles, and covers assistive technology. The ECA is the non-profit membership-driven organization that represents consumers of various forms of entertainment in the US and Canada.