EU Approves Microsoft, Activision Acquisition With Some Minor Stipulations

Legal Issues

from the promises-promises dept

One hurdle defeated, two more to go. For months now, we have been discussing Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision for $69 billion. What would be the largest video game studio acquisition in history has faced several hurdles along the way, primarily from the EU, the UK, and the United States. While the UK’s CMA has already formally nixxed the purchase (appeal by Microsoft pending) and the FTC decision is looming, leaks had already suggested months ago that the EU was set to approve the deal.

And now those leaks have been proven prescient. The European Commission has formally approved of the purchase. To get there, the EC relied on three points: it believes Microsoft’s promises to keep its titles available to other cloud-gaming providers, it thumbs its nose at the popularity of Call of Duty in the EU, and, my favorite, it claims that Microsoft wouldn’t make popular titles Xbox exclusives because Microsoft has so badly lost the console wars to Sony. Yes, seriously.

As to those promises:

Because of those concerns, the EC’s decision is conditional on certain assurances Microsoft has made to preserve competition. Those include a free license for any cloud streaming service to allow its users access to “any Activision Blizzard PC and console games” for at least 10 years. Anyone who has purchased any current or upcoming Activision-Blizzard games (or accessed them through a subscription) will “have the right to stream those games with any cloud game streaming service of their choice and play them on any device using any operating system” throughout Europe.

With this commitment in place, the EC says it’s satisfied that the merger will “represent a significant improvement for cloud game streaming compared to the current situation.” The Commission notes that “cloud game streaming service providers gave positive feedback and showed interest in the licenses” and points to existing Microsoft agreements with cloud providers such as Boosteroid.

Which… fine, whatever. Cloud gaming isn’t completely without adoption, but it also is a fraction of the total gaming market. If, when it comes to cloud-gaming specifically, the EC wants to buy into Microsoft’s totally coincidental 10 year deals it made after the purchase, so be it. I, and the industry generally, have been more focused on the non-cloud console market. What happens if Microsoft decides to make Call of Duty an Xbox/PC exclusive? Well, to start, no big deal, according to the EC, because the series isn’t as popular in the EU as it is in America.

Even if Microsoft did make the Call of Duty franchise an Xbox exclusive, the decision would “not significantly harm competition in the consoles market” because the series “is less popular in [Europe] than in other regions of the world, and is less popular in [Europe] within its genre compared to other markets,” European regulators wrote.

And that’s true. It’s hard to break this down to the EU specifically, or by game specifically, but sources I’m looking at suggest that Call of Duty titles quite recently have been the number one seller in the EU, even if those sales are outpaced by the Americas in total numbers. I don’t think the numbers warrant the hand-waving routine the EC is undergoing here, but that also wasn’t their only comment on the matter. The EC didn’t think Microsoft would ever consider pulling CoD off of the PlayStation due to Microsoft being outpaced by its rival in sales so badly.

In the end, European regulators said they were not concerned about the merger’s effects on the market for non-cloud console gaming. Despite Sony’s concerns, Microsoft “would have no incentive to refuse to distribute Activision’s games to Sony” after a merger, the EC said, partly because “there are four Sony PlayStation consoles for every Microsoft Xbox console bought by gamers” across Europe.

And there you have it: the EC has approved the acquisition.

As I stated earlier, this isn’t the end of the story. Microsoft still has its appeal of the CMA to contend with, nevermind the far more important potential battle with the FTC in America. Were the latter to refuse to allow this to move forward, that would probably be the end of this deal. In the meantime, I suppose Microsoft should be focusing on ensuring it can keep its promises to the EC while also committing to not accidentally gaining console market share on Sony.

Filed Under: antitrust, call of duty, cloud streaming, competition, eu, european commission, exclusives, video games
Companies: activision blizzard, microsoft

Bungie Wins Default Judgment Against Danish Cheat Purveyor In Ruling That Encourages More CFAA Abuse

Legal Issues

from the well,-'win'-might-be-overstating-things dept

A lawsuit [PDF] against a cheat creator has swung almost completely in Bungie’s direction, mainly thanks to the Danish defendant being unwilling to travel across the pond to defend himself in court. The claims are numerous, ranging from copyright infringement to trademark infringement to CFAA violations to the ever-popular (but rarely successful) RICO.

While Bungie seems willing to fight against bogus DMCA claims that affect its fans, it’s also apparently willing to wield the same law to punish people who sell cheats to other users. This doesn’t always work, but it works well enough that Bungie continues to aggressively protect its products from hacks offered by developers to people unwilling (or unable) to compete on a level playing field.

This case centers on the “Wallhax” cheats for Destiny 2 apparently developed by Canadian company Elite Boss Tech and Denmark resident Daniel Larsen, along with a handful of others Bungie managed to unmask after obtaining a settlement from two defendants last October.

The default judgment awarded here comes with a $16 million price tag. But that number really means nothing. If Bungie was unable to persuade Daniel Larsen to engage in its extraterritorial lawsuit, it’s unlikely it will be able to convince him to hand over millions of dollars in response to this judgment.

Citing the settlements Bungie has already been able to obtain from cooperating defendants, the court pushes forward with the default judgment. The court agrees with pretty much every claim raised by Bungie, including the civil version of RICO most plaintiffs fail to apply as carefully as Bungie does here.

Specifically, Bungie has alleged and provided evidence that Larsen and the enterprise engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956 and 1957. As to criminal copyright infringement, Bungie must demonstrate that Larsen willfully infringed on a valid copyright for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain. See 17 U.S.C. § 506(a). Here, the allegations and evidence suffice to show that Larsen willfully accessed and utilized Bungie’s Destiny 2 software in order to develop the Wallhax cheat, which directly infringed on Bungie’s two valid copyrights for Larsen’s personal gain. The allegations and evidence are also sufficient to satisfy the predicate act of money laundering. A defendant engages in money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(A)(i) when they (1) conduct (or attempt to conduct) (2) a financial transaction, (3) knowing that the property involved in the financial transaction represents the proceeds of some unlawful activity, (4) with the intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity, and (5) the property was in fact be derived from a specified unlawful activity. 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1). Bungie has shown that Larsen and the Wallhax enterprise obtained financial proceeds from the sale of the Wallhax cheat, which was the product of criminal copyright infringement.

I haven’t read all the predicate acts for money laundering, but the criminal act suggests actual “laundering” of proceeds to disguise their illegal origin. But it appears I have that all wrong: simply depositing proceeds from crimes into any financial institution is apparently “laundering,” even if no steps are taken to obfuscate the illegal origins of the funds. Weird.

It’s a default judgment so there are no counterarguments to consider. But the judge decides Bungie’s CFAA arguments have enough merit to be carried along with the rest of the allegedly illegal flotsam:

Bungie has provided sufficient allegations and evidence that Larsen violated the CFAA when he intentionally accessed the Destiny 2 servers to obtain the Destiny 2 software to create the Wallhax cheat without authorization. By doing so, Larsen violated that terms of the LSLA and manipulated key elements of the Destiny 2 software through the Wallhax cheat…

That’s not very descriptive and nothing in this decision explains what exactly constituted this CFAA violation. For that, we have to go back to Bungie’s amended complaint, which provides some helpful context:

Defendants, acting in concert with users who deploy their cheat software, obtain data from within the Destiny 2 client software’s memory space that the users are not authorized to access – specifically the positional information used in Defendants’ “ESP” display.

In addition, Defendants are fully aware that users who deploy their cheat software do so in violation of the LSLA, and that access to the Destiny 2 client software memory space by such users is entirely unauthorized.

In accessing the Destiny 2 client software’s memory space without authorization, Defendants’ software obtains information from the Destiny 2 system to enable the presentation of the “ESP” display on the users’ computers.

In addition, by accessing the Destiny 2 client software’s memory space without authorization, Defendants’ software takes control of the aiming function of the Destiny 2 client software, enabling the player to fire with perfect accuracy every time.

As a result of this conduct, Defendants’ software endows cheating users with significant advantages not available to players who play the game honestly.

This is all very unfortunate but companies like Bungie have plenty of options to deal with cheaters and cheat purveyors. Violating a user agreement should be grounds for banning or account suspension. But they really shouldn’t be considered violations of the CFAA, even in civil cases. While it’s always fun to pile on charges (we learned it from you, prosecutors! [intense sobbing]), it does very little for the internet at large to treat end user license agreement violations as malicious acts. While the acts alleged here appear to be deliberate circumvention, treating any unexpected (or exploratory) use of software as an illegal act (as the court does here) makes it that much tougher to discover and report security flaws or engage in research that utilizes methods service providers may not expect.

It’s not that Bungie is wrong to deter cheaters and those selling cheats to cheaters. It’s that it had a lot of options to deploy that didn’t bring the oft-abused CFAA into the mix. Bungie was always going to win, especially when the defendant no-showed the entire case. Portraying exploitation of areas left unprotected by Bungie as a criminal act in and of itself does no one any favors.

Filed Under: cfaa, cheats, daniel larsen, default judgment, destiny 2, video games, wallhax
Companies: bungie, elite boss tech

Bethesda DMCAs Its Official Twitter Account Trying To Stop ‘Redfall’ Leaks

Copyright

from the seeing-red dept

We’re getting into the warmer seasons, which means AAA games are coming up for release dates. It also means that leaks of content, or sometimes the entire games, for those AAA games are coming out as well. We just talked about several leaks coming out for Nintendo’s latest Zelda title. And now, right on the cusp of Bethesda’s release of the much anticipated Redfall, the publisher is very busy trying to nuke every bit of leaked content it can sniff out on the internet. Including, briefly, images of Redfall appearing on its own official Twitter account.

Eager to prevent leaks from making it out into the world with only a few hours to go until launch, Bethesda is being extra vigilant, issuing takedown and copyright strikes wherever unapproved Redfall images and footage might pop up. Perhaps a little too vigilant actually, as the studio managed to copyright strike itself.

Both GamePitt and PMS Jordan shared screenshots of the evidence, which showed Redfall’s Twitter account with the banner image removed. Not just removed, which has been happening for no reason to a lot of people since Twitter started to crumble beneath our virtual feet, but replaced with a grey rectangle. On it, a message reads “The image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder”.

Policing copyrights is hard! So hard, in fact, that sometimes you pull the trigger on your DMCA gun only to find that you had it pointed at your own head.

While this certainly does cause me to wonder aloud whether there were other mistakes made in the DMCA blitz Bethesda has undertaken, in particular the potential for the blitz to have caught up instances that would qualify as fair use, it also makes me wonder just how useful these anti-leak campaigns really are. A good portion of this content that is being taken down are images and the like that most publishers, likely including Bethesda, wouldn’t give a flying damn about post-release. Given everything else going on publicly with this particular game, is attempting to bottle up leaks on the internet really anyone’s best use of time?

Not only does it have a very small and crowded window in which to operate, but Redfall’s build-up to launch has also been plagued with backlash. Gamers have taken issue with its always-online requirement, the inclusion of Denuvo DRM, and an FPS cap on consoles.

If nothing else, I’ll have to thank Bethesda for making this game in such a way that it will almost certainly give me other future posts in which to write about it.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, leaks, redfall, video games
Companies: bethesda

Red Cross Continues To Want To Pretend That Video Game Wars Are IRL Wars

Overhype

from the pew-pew dept

I think I can state the following without controversy: video games are, by and large, a path for escaping the real world for the sake of entertainment. The idea is that the real world can be a place that we want to get away from, diving into some fantasy world where the same rules don’t apply, our mundane tasks don’t exist, and we can do things digitally that we would never even consider doing in real life. I, for instance, have not even one single time stomped a turtle to death only to pick up its carcass-shell to be thrown at one of my enemies. And yet I’m a fan of the Super Mario Bros. series of games.

The same goes for wargames. Sure, there is value for some in games of war being as realistic as possible. But that isn’t the case for everyone. And, yet, for years now, with several examples, the Red Cross has attempted to inject the IRL rules of war into video games. The idea I suppose is to educate the public about the actualities of real life war in an attempt to force them to realize that IRL war is not a game. But that’s fairly silly. We know it’s not a game. That’s why we spent $60 on a video game instead of signing up for the Marines.

But the Red Cross isn’t going to give this up. Recently it partnered with several streamers on Twitch to get them to play a bunch of war games under fairly strict rules prohibiting their committing any war crimes.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has partnered up with a bunch of Twitch streamers to encourage gamers to not commit war crimes in popular shooters like Call of Duty. The ICRC hopes that its event, “Play by the Rules,” will educate players on the statutes of actual war. The organization has even created its own Fortnite mode to help communicate what those rules are.

“Every day, people play games set in conflict zones right from their couch. But right now, armed conflicts are more prevalent than ever,” the ICRC website said. “And to the people suffering from their effects, this conflict is not a game. It destroys lives and leaves communities devastated. Therefore, we’re challenging you to play FPS by the real Rules of War, to show everyone that even wars have rules—rules which protect humanity on battlefields IRL.”

Look, this is all… fine I guess? In fact, I can see it being mildly interesting for someone who has watched gamers, or played war games myself, conduct themselves in a manner completely outside of those rules, if only to see what these war games look and feel like when you try to adhere to IRL rules of war. Those rules have been whittled down to incorporate the following:

1. No thirsting (don’t shoot downed/unresponsive enemies)
2. No targeting non-violent NPCs
3. No targeting civilian buildings
4. Use med kits on everyone

Those are certainly rules I want to be followed in IRL wars, even though they rarely are. One need only look at the conflict in Ukraine to know that to be the case.

But as laudable as this IRL rules are, they simply don’t always make sense in a video game setting. Half the fun of these games is, again, doing things you’d never do in real life. Breaking the rules, intentionally or not. Gibbing out a downed enemy to rub it in. Emptying a clip without regard for NPC civilians because all you care about is taking down your human competition.

At some level, the Red Cross has to understand that engaging in all of that in a video game isn’t a war crime; it’s simply entertainment. And no amount of finger-wagging is going to change that.

Filed Under: streaming, video games, war crimes, war games
Companies: red cross

Bethesda Does Denuvo Backwards: Puts The DRM On Game Released A Year Ago

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the it's-baaaack dept

It’s been quite some time since we’ve talked about Denuvo and its once-vaunted anti-piracy DRM for video games. If I’m being totally honest, I had thought that part of the company’s business was simply gone, so poorly did the DRM perform. By the end, cracking groups were getting around Denuvo-protected games in days, sometimes a single day, and even sometimes in a matter of hours. If a DRM can be defeated in hours, what’s the point of it?

Well, the answer from some was that the DRM at least offered some protection in the critical first-release window of a video game. The idea is that with a massive percentage of a game’s sales occurring within the first days and weeks of release, the protection offered within that window was worth the cost of the DRM. I’d argue that’s idiotic for a variety of reasons, but there is at least some logic to it. If you’re Bethesda, though, apparently you layer Denuvo onto a game that was released a year ago.

Bethesda Softworks has just quietly added Denuvo protections to Ghostwire Tokyo, a game that was quickly cracked after its Denuvo-free release just over a year ago. The late addition was confirmed by DSOGaming, which says it triggered the new Denuvo protections in the game’s latest Steam update by simulating frequent changes in the CPU. While fresh Denuvo protection seems unlikely to impact piracy for the long-cracked title, it could serve as a shield for new DLC and expansion content.

It doesn’t appear, however, that buying DLC is what will trigger the addition of Denuvo. Those who play the game are going to be getting it regardless. Which, frankly, is pretty shitty. Customers bought the game without Denuvo and now, after a year, they’re suddenly going to have DRM added to what they already purchased? DRM with a reputation for causing major performance issues.

Piracy issues aside, Denuvo has received widespread criticism for allegedly hurting performance when compared to unprotected versions of the same game. Ars’ testing found those allegations weren’t true for Warner Bros.’ Arkham Knight, but Digital Foundry found Denuvo caused some minor CPU-based slowdown in Devil May Cry 5.

So, will Denuvo help protect all this DLC and expansion content for Ghostwire? I doubt it, given how quickly Denuvo has tended to be defeated since roughly 2020. But, hey, maybe Bethesda can at least get its money worth by pissing off its own customers in doing all this, right?

Filed Under: denuvo, drm, ghostwire tokyo, video games
Companies: bethesda

Everything Stadia Is Now Officially Dead, Project Head Exits Google

Failures

from the stop-stop-it's-already-dead dept

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about Google’s Stadia product. What was originally billed as a forthcoming world class cloud video game streaming platform launched terribly, never gained much traction, and eventually was announced to be pivoting to serving as the backend platform for other companies that actually knew what the hell they were doing with game streaming. While most of Stadia and its team had been fully sunsetted, it was only a few weeks ago that Google finally gave up entirely and shut down its plans to be even a backend service for anyone else to use.

When Google killed the service, the narrative from the company was that Stadia’s technology would live on in Google Cloud, but, according to Stephen Totilo of Axios, even Stadia’s white-label game-streaming service is now dead.

When Stadia’s shutdown was formally announced, Stadia VP and General Manager Phil Harrison made a big deal of the continuation of Stadia’s technology, with even the title being called “A message about Stadia and our long term streaming strategy.” The post read: “The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts—as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed.”

Those comments from Harrison were made, literally, a couple of months ago. Two months later, the latest report regarding Stadia is not only that any pivoted-to plans have been shut down and killed, but that Harrison is absconding now that he has no more platforms at Google to murder.

Google Stadia and all its associated projects are dead, and that means it’s finally time for the division’s leader, Phil Harrison, to move on. Business Insider reports Harrison has left Google. The report claims he left in January, but Harrison’s Linkedin was only updated in the last few days to say he left Google in April. Harrison spent five years working on Stadia.

It’s impossible to know how useful executives are when we’re outside a company, but Harrison joined Google with a bad reputation with gamers. His previous major executive roles oversaw Sony’s Playstation 3 launch and Microsoft’s launch of the Xbox One and the Kinect. Those both happen to be the consensus worst console releases from each company and presiding over the life and death of Stadia is not helping Harrison’s prodigious reputation.

For critics of the way Google rolls out and then supports, or not, its high profile projects, this is red meat. Delicious, juicy red meat. The tech industry is absolutely lousy with failure, of course. Ambitious projects and ideas are entertained all the time. Hell, that’s why we get so much actual cool stuff that works coming out of the industry.

But for a company with the resources of Google to fail this hard, this fast, and this completely in an endeavor that really kinda should be at least partially in its wheelhouse is not a good look.

Filed Under: phil harrison, stadia, video game streaming, video games
Companies: google

Microsoft Yanked Forthcoming Game’s PlayStation Port To Make It Exclusive

Say That Again

from the liar-liar dept

Timing, as they say, is everything. We’ve been talking about Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard a lot lately and for good reason. It’s a huge deal, both in terms of the size of the purchase relative to the video game industry, but also because of what it could mean for the overall competitive marketplace in the industry as well. The regulators have expressed varied levels of concern and Microsoft’s rebuttal to those concerns has mostly been to ink 10-year deals with other platforms to keep the key series Call of Duty non-exclusive, at least for that timeframe. All the while, throughout this and previous acquisitions taking place in a climate of market consolidation, Microsoft executives have made vague, non-committal statements about how it doesn’t actually want to go the exclusivity route with its titles generally.

Take Microsoft’s acquisition of Zenimax/Bethesda, for instance. After Microsoft acquired the game studio for a then eye-popping $7 billion, Xbox’s Phil Spencer said the following.

“I don’t want to be flip about that,” he added. “This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games. But I’ll also say in the model—I’m just answering directly the question that you had—when I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us. Whatever that means.”

Go ahead and sit down with a pen and paper and try to map out what in the actual hell Spencer is even saying there. You’re best bet is to draw a picture of a waffle with a silly face plastered on top of it, because that’s exactly what that statement is. But if you can find anything at all concrete in the statement, it certainly has to be the part in which Spencer indicates Microsoft is not interested keeping groups of people from playing games as a result of its acquisitions. This is the exact argument Microsoft is making to the regulators as it tries to push through the purchase of Activision Blizzard. After all, it can’t be an antitrust or competitive market concern if Microsoft keeps these titles available on these other platforms and doesn’t limit the competition.

But then the next Elder Scrolls game, a beloved franchise, would be an Xbox/PC exclusive. Oops. And now, in the midst of Microsoft arguing it will act in an opposite fashion to regulators around the world, we learn that another Bethesda title was going to have a PlayStation version before Microsoft nixed it post-acquisition.

Due on May 2, 2023, Redfall is an online co-op shooter that features a whole lotta blood-sucking vampires. You play as a slayer who has to use weapons, stakes, magic, and stealth to take down all the vamps and save your small town before it’s too late. The game seems cool and it’s nice to hear that developer Arkane is looking to remove the previously-announced always-online requirement. However, if you are a PlayStation owner, you won’t get to play Arkane’s next big title, even though at one point there was a PS5 port in the works.

Speaking to IGN France (and translated by IGN), Redfall director Harvey Smith explained that once Bethesda was bought by Microsoft in 2020, things changed fast. “We got bought by Microsoft and that was a huge sea change. They said, ‘No PlayStation 5. Now we’re gonna do Game Pass, Xbox, and PC.’”

If you were a regulator, or perhaps the lawyer for a group of gamers suing Microsoft to stop the Activision Blizzard purchase, you’d have to think that the quote above should be center stage in your efforts. I’m picturing this quote on big placards being held up the way that the clowns in Congress do when they want to make some infantile point to the masses.

Timing is everything. At the exact moment that Microsoft is arguing it will not limit competition by taking titles exclusive, here is a concrete example, admitted to publicly by the company that Microsoft acquired, of it doing the exact opposite. The work had already begun on the PlayStation version and Microsoft killed it. All in as direct contradiction to Spencer’s statement could be had with his wishy-washy messaging.

Canceling a PS5 port of a big game like Redfall seems to run directly in opposition to that statement. And while I understand that, duh, Microsoft wants its games to be Xbox-exclusive, that’s not the message the company has been putting out for the last year or so as it’s tried to convince courts and regulatory groups around the world that it won’t make Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive once it completes its separate, nearly $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard King.

Yes, exactly. And now we’ll see just how much attention those regulators are paying to doing their jobs, because if Redfall doesn’t enter the conversation they’re having with Microsoft, then those regulators are merely mechanisms by which rubber stamps are wielded.

Filed Under: antitrust, competition, elder scrolls, exclusives, playstation, video games, xbox
Companies: activision blizzard, microsoft, sony

Ukrainian Game Devs To Russian Hackers: ‘Russian Hackers, Go Fuck Yourselves’

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the ╭∩╮（︶︿︶）╭∩╮ dept

Back in the early days of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, one of the most captivating stories was that of Snake Island, a small island in Ukrainian territorial waters. Under constant radioed threats from a Russian cruiser, Ukrainian border guard Roman Hrybov uttered his now iconic response to the warship: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” Keep that story in the back of your mind.

Leaks happen on the internet. So do hacks. When two countries are belligerents in a war these days, the cyberwar attacks generally ramp up. Still, leaks are leaks and if they’re approached the right way, they can be no big deal. Or they can be an avenue for actually generating more support from the customers or fanbase. You just have to accomplish two things. First, you have to successfully steal yourself against the scary, scary leaks and not treat them as the end of the world. Second, you have to behave in a human and awesome way, so as to garner more public support, all while explaining that a leak is not necessarily representative of the finished product you are building.

How could those to preamble paragraphs possibly mesh into a single post? Let’s talk about how a Russian hacker group compromised systems at Ukrainian developer GSC Game World, the studio behind the Stalker video game series.

On the 11th of March, a post on a Russian fan page for the Stalker series boasted of having hacked the in-development Stalker 2, and started making threats to the Ukrainian developers of the game. Those developers have now responded, and basically told them to go to hell.

The post and hack appear to be in response to developers GSC Game World’s decision not to localise the upcoming shooter for the Russian market, and for the way Russian members of the series’ community are being treated in the wake of their country’s invasion of Ukraine last year. The hackers ask GSC to “rethink your attitude towards players from Belarus and Russia”, and to “apologize for the unworthy attitude towards ordinary players from these countries”.

With regards to the lack of a Russian localisation, they write “Fans are waiting for it from your official company. It is not necessary to spoil the game for people because of politics.”

According to the hacking group, if their requests are not honored, they will be releasing a ton of exfiltrated data. This includes art, details, imagery, and all kinds of other content for the unreleased Stalker 2 game that is slated for release later this year.

As you can imagine, this is never a fun situation for content creators. All of that content may factor into the completed game at one level or another, but it is almost certainly not fully representative of what will be the finished game. You can imagine GSC being both very pissed off that this happened and very concerned about the impression the released content could leave an otherwise willing-to-buy public. Many studios in cases like this would negotiate with the hackers to ensure the content was not released.

Or, if you’re GSC, you say something similar to: Russian hackers, go fuck yourselves. The following is from a statement GSC released, but you really should go read the whole thing. The caps, by the way, are in the original.

WE ARE A UKRAINIAN COMPANY, AND LIKE MOST UKRAINIANS, WE HAVE EXPERIENCED MANY THINGS THAT ARE MUCH MORE TERRIFYING: DESTROYED HOUSES, RUINED LIVES, AND THE DEATHS OF OUR LOVED ONES. ATTEMPTS TO BLACKMAIL OR INTIMIDATE US ARE COMPLETELY FUTILE.

OUR UNWAVERING COMMITMENT TO SUPPORTING OUR COUNTRY REMAINS UNCHANGED-WE WILL CONTINUE TO DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO SUPPORT UKRAINE. AND THIS WON’T CHANGE IN THE FUTURE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

There you have GSC deciding that the leaks aren’t that scary, at least not enough to give in. As to acting human and imploring its fans to see things the studio’s way, while explaining why, this is about as good as I’ve ever seen it done.

IN THE EVENT OF ANY LEAKS, WE ASK THAT YOU REFRAIN FROM WATCHING OR DISTRIBUTING INFORMATION ABOUT S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: HEART OF CHORNOBYL. OUTDATED AND WORK-IN-PROGRESS MATERIALS MAY DILUTE THE IMPRESSION OF THE FINAL IDEA THAT WE HAVE PUT INTO THE GAME. WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO STAY PATIENT AND WAIT FOR THE OFFICIAL RELEASE FOR THE BEST EXPERIENCE POSSIBLE. WE BELIEVE THAT YOU WILL LOVE IT.

WE’D LIKE TO EXPRESS OUR DEEPEST APPRECIATION FOR OUR LOYAL COMMUNITY. WE ARE OVERWHELMED BY THE RESPONSE AND SUPPORT WE HAVE RECEIVED FROM YOU. THANK YOU FOR THAT. FROM EACH AND EVERY MEMBER OF THE GSC GAME WORLD TEAM.

Your move, Russian hackers.

Filed Under: hacks, russia, stalker, ukraine, video games
Companies: gsc game world

No, Ukraine, The World Should Not Boycott A Video Game That Looks Kindly On Russian Communism

Overhype

from the and-neither-should-you dept

As we’re right at the 1 year anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of its sovereign neighbor, Ukraine, regular readers here will have followed along with all kinds of posts we’ve done on the subject, be it on tech-related items or some of the ways the video game industry has organized to help the country get the funds it needs to survive. Throughout it all, the conflict has, in most cases rightly, been pitched as a conflict between good and evil, democracy vs. authoritarianism, and a free and open society combatting an aggressor with all the hallmarks of a closed, censor-heavy society.

Which makes it particularly annoying that Ukraine is now seeking to ban a video game that is sympathetic to Russian communism, may have some ties to the Russian government, and would like the rest of the world to boycott it as well.

Ukraine’s Digital Ministry has said it will ask Steam, Microsoft, and Sony to remove Atomic Heart from their gaming platforms in Ukraine, and possibly elsewhere, pointing to its retro-Communist aesthetic and reported “Russian roots.”

As reported by the Ukrainian tech news/job site Dev.ua (Google translation), Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation (which also provided a statement in English to PCGamesN) writes that Atomic Heart “has Russian roots and romanticizes communist ideology and the Soviet Union.” The Ministry cites the game’s “toxicity,” “potential data collection of users,” and use of funds from the game “to conduct a war against Ukraine.” The statement asks for an outright ban on the game in Ukraine but calls on other countries to consider “limiting distribution” of the game.

There are several reasons why this is not a good idea. For starters, it is exceptionally unlikely that any significant portion of the world will comply with the request to boycott the game. I highly doubt that the platforms in question will, either, even as some of them have gotten involved in some of the industry action to support Ukraine. After all, the justification for all of this amounts to that the game is sympathetic to Russian communist history. A claim which, well:

Atomic Heart’s gameplay takes place in an alternate history, where the Soviet Union is, as I put it in my first impressions, “not just ascendant, it is literally floating.” The USSR makes the world’s best robots, its citizens live in a utopia where those robots do their menial tasks and labor, and even greater things are just about to happen. If you’ve played the Fallout or BioShock series, you know that a game can lovingly detail a world full of astounding promises, yet take apart that optimism by showing the hypocrisy, the false promises, the ego-driven leaders and actors causing so much pain, and the impact on real people’s lives when it all comes apart.

After playing the game’s early hours and reading more about its broad plot points (and without necessarily spoiling it entirely for everyone), I’ll say that there is, unsurprisingly, more nuance than is mentioned in a call for boycott. The Soviet State in Atomic Heart, and its maniacal leaders, are responsible for the death of untold thousands or millions of citizens at the hands of their own robots. There are plans to foist this death on the rest of the world, rather than win them over with the benefits of collectivist effort. The KGB, for which your protagonist formerly worked, are not the good guys.

So, yeah, not exactly the glowing review of the Russian communist system that Ukraine described. And that becomes a major issue for the Digital Ministry’s credibility. When you’re not just advocating for a ban on a game, or any other piece of media, in one country, but a boycott in other countries, it would be nice to get the actual details of the accusation correct.

The other reason for the boycott, according the ministry, has at least some more legs: that the studio that released the game has some ownership that can be tied back to the Russian government.

The developer, Mundfish, cites Cyprus as its international headquarters but has previously shown off its Russia-based offices in a video tour. AIN.capital, a site focused on Central and Eastern European tech news, cited Mundfish’s Russian store website privacy policy in January as disclosing that user data could be transferred to Russian state authorities, including the tax office and FSB, Russia’s modern state security agency. AIN.capital also cites a legal address in Russia in the policy. Mundfish denied collecting data in a response to GamesRadar, stating that its privacy statement was “outdated and wrong, and should have been removed years ago.” The Russian store has seemingly been removed from Mundfish’s site.

Mundfish’s investors include Tencent, the Chinese gaming giant, and GEM Capital. GEM Capital’s founder, Anatoliy Paliy, formerly served as first deputy general director for a Gazprom division, and GEM is actively involved in the Russian energy market. Like Mundfish, GEM claimed to games journalist Kirk McKeand in January that it was now based in Cyprus and had no Russian investments. You can read more about the hard-to-prove but quite plausible web of connections between GEM, Gazprom, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at PC Gamer’s detailed explainer.

So, yeah, more muddled than the first claim… but so what? Unless Ukraine wants to make some kind of sanctions-based argument, is it really suggesting that the rest of the world ought to be boycotting any video game produced by any publisher that has any ties back to any kind of Russian ownership? For a video game that doesn’t actually reference the current war with Ukraine? A game, mind you, that began development in 2018, long before the current conflict?

This is a small example of how you cede the moral high ground in a war of not only bullets, but of the minds of the world as well. Either Ukraine is for an open and free society… or it isn’t. This is not an example of the former.

Filed Under: atomic heart, boycotts, censorship, communism, free speech, russia, ukraine, video games

Microsoft Inks 10 Year Deal To Bring Xbox Games To Nintendo Consoles

Deals

from the what-amazing-timing dept

What amazing timing! Merely a few weeks back we were discussing the major regulatory hurdles the United States, the EU, and the UK were putting in front of Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68 billion. Agencies from all three governing bodies, while differing on some specifics, generally had the same concerns: lessening the competitive marketplace through industry consolidation, that the deal will incentivize Microsoft to start making AAA game franchises exclusives to Microsoft systems, and the idea that the only bulwark thus far offered against those concerns has been Microsoft’s promises.

Microsoft has said repeatedly that it would not change the status of Call of Duty on PlayStation after the sale, going so far as to suggest signing a 10-year agreement to that effect. That agreement would reportedly also include the option for Sony to put Call of Duty on its own subscription service, PS Plus. But the CMA isn’t very enthusiastic about these possibilities, which would require “monitoring and enforcement.” Instead, it proposes “structural remedies” that deal with potentially anti-competitive mergers at the source.

In an amazing instance of great timing, it seems, Microsoft in the past few days announced a deal with Nintendo that would coincidentally serve as something of a response to the CMA’s concerns in the UK that none of these promises were formal enough.

“Microsoft and Nintendo have now negotiated and signed a binding 10-year legal agreement to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo players—the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity—so they can experience Call of Duty just as Xbox and PlayStation gamers enjoy Call of Duty,” the statement reads. “We are committed to providing long-term equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms, bringing more choice to more players and more competition to the gaming market.”

Now, a couple of things should be noted here. First, the reporting suggests that this deal was in the works long before the regulators started making their regulatory noises about the merger. And that makes total sense, but so what? Microsoft had to anticipate that the regulatory issues being raised were always a possibility and may have kicked the tires on this deal proactively in case it found itself in the position it does today.

Second, and perhaps more strangely, this deal is a departure for how Activision has worked with Nintendo in the past, at least on Call of Duty games.

You know, it’s been a minute since Call of Duty was even on a Nintendo console. If you can believe it, it’s actually been almost 10 years since 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts was the last one to hit the Wii U. Every other entry since has skipped over the family-friendly systems.

Whereas Xbox’s chief rival, Sony’s PlayStation, has only the less-formal promise of also getting CoD for 10 years on its console. I’m not entirely sure what getting a deal inked with Nintendo first means… but it’s at least kinda weird.

Still, while the video game industry is fast paced, ten years isn’t that long of a time period. Microsoft could certainly be playing the long game here, willing to stave off any plans for bringing a bunch of franchises to exclusivity in order to get this deal done first.

But I’ll reiterate again: exclusives are almost always dumb and serve mostly to reduce the total income these publishers could generate. If Microsoft thinks it can bully the public into buying Xbox consoles in enough numbers to justify it, then I think it’s making a mistake.

Filed Under: antitrust, call of duty, video games, xbox
Companies: activision, microsoft, nintendo