Kelly @ Kelly @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Penalties will vary between states but for NSW the maximum fines for selling games with restricted classifications to underage customers are:

https://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cfacgea1995596/s30.html
https://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cpa1999278/s17.html

These seem steep enough to encourage compliance.

But G, PG, or M? The customers age is none of their business and I wouldn't expect them to take an interest.

Edit: to put those penalties in perspective the sentencing for supplying alcohol to minors scales up a maximum of $11k and/or 12 months incarceration.
https://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/la2007107/s117.html

While for tobacco the maximum penalties are:

https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/pha2008178/s22.html

So it looks like it is penalized significantly more lightly than alcohol or tobacco.

But basically, its not a retroactive re rating of any game unless the game is patched to add in simulated gambling or loot boxes.

This FAQ say titles will need reclassification if the modify their loot box payouts, so any ongoing live service game will get an updated classification eventually.

Q. Would changing the rewards within an existing paid loot box, cause the video game to require reclassification?

A. Adding new rewards to existing paid loot boxes constitutes adding new in-game purchases linked to elements of chance and may cause a video game to become unclassified and require reclassification depending on the original classification of the video game.

https://igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/INFRA6558-Australian-Classifications-%E2%80%93-Fact-sheet-%E2%80%93-industry-FAQs_v6.pdf

The clapback:

We have received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement.

At this moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.

https://www.pocketpair.jp/news/news16

One of the perks of backwards compatibility on the current consoles is that console gamers can still buy and play anything they have released over the last 10 years.

To be honest M can still be sold to anyone of any age. But the text descriptions usually highlight the more highly classified content so sports games with loot boxes will see changes like this:

if I spend money for a currency in a gacha game, and then trade that currency for some character pulls, does that count? [...] Essentially, I paid for a character, and I still get a character, I just don't know which one I will get.

Yes. A real money purchase that leads to randomised rewards counts.

This comes into effect pretty soon. I expect a few titles will get caught in the transition.

McDonalds currently has their Monopoly promotion running and this time it is entirely in app. Purchases have to be made in app with real world currency to be eligible to play mini games to collect randon properties that correspond to real world prizes. This feels like it would be M if classified under the new guidelines

They are still a pretty big deal.

Take-Two Interactive announced in January 2022 its intent to buy Zynga for $12.7 billion. The deal was completed in May 2022.

According to Take-Two Interactive, about 10% of the world's population plays Zynga's games every month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga

For context, that buyout value is $4.5 billion more than Microsoft paid for ZeniMax Media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_video_game_mergers_and_acquisitions

I'm surprised he had enough contributors give him the OK for that to be viable.

This is just Polygon's guess of what they think will be nominated - pure crystal ball gazing.

That said on previous years there has been a few weeks between ballots being due and the cut off for a games release date:

Ballots were sent out to outlets on Oct. 29, due back on Nov. 6, [...]. Outlets also had until Nov. 13 to send in updated versions of those ballots, if changes were necessary. [...] To be eligible, the game must be released before Nov. 20 [...]

https://www.polygon.com/2020/11/18/21574150/the-game-awards-nominations-2020-games-list

Are they valuing it at €1 per cart?

That seem too high for production costs and too low for retail value.

This is the commit where the license changed:

https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation/commit/9ca6b5430fb358b39f21ce0b2fc0268de954dd23

The parent link on that page takes you to the most recent before the license change:

https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation/commit/25bc8a64803df7e702db66e0f11d7b7d0fdc99f2

Anyone can fork the repo and continue working from 25bc8a6

Open critic has a handy chart available for scored titles that compares it with the rest of their database. This offers some insight into the score distribution:

• a score of 50 places in the 6th percentile
• a score of 60 places in the 15th percentile
• a score of 70 places in the 40th percentile
• a score of 80 places in the 79th percentile
• a score of 90 places in the 99th percentile

So a score of 70 is already pretty mid, and 60 or lower is going to be dire.

The Annapurna Interactive entity still exists and still has contracts with developers and platform owners.

What's happened is that all their staff left. People have been moved over from other Annapurna divisions in an effort to keep things running but its likely a lot of institutional knowledge has been lost.

If I was a developer with a title being managed by them I would be very concerned for its future.

Why do they do this?!?

I guess its either:

• they think it will improve sales because the second hand market for "code in a box" is small
• they think it will cost sales but by less than the money they save by not manufacturing game cards
• they don't know if either is true but they are willing to experiment to find out.

When its some regions only like this is feels like a/b testing. And to be honest its a pretty safe play for them because the die hard physical fans will just order internationally.

all the PS4 games the PS5 doesn't have.

Thankfully this list is small enough that you can just ignore it:

• Afro Samurai 2 Revenge of Kuma Volume One
• Just Deal With It!
• Robinson: The Journey
• We Sing
• Hitman Go: Definitive Edition
• Shadwen

https://www.playstation.com/support/games/ps5-backward-compatibility-games/#only

workers who have lost their jobs should "drive an Uber" or "go to the beach for a year" until employment settles.

The second part has real "let them eat cake vibes"!

They've released 22 video games over the last 40 years, they may have slowed a little in recent decades but they never really stop.

If we cross reference the above list with the excluded games list here we get an even shorter list:

https://support.xbox.com/help/games-apps/backward-compatibility/what-games-are-compatible-with-my-xbox

• Fighter Within
• FRU
• Kinect Sports Rivals
• Shape Up
• Xbox Fitness

Its a short list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category%3AXbox_One-only_games