This is the regular weekly post where I share updates about things happening in gaming, machine learning, audio, or frankly anything that catches my eye and seems relevant to share or discuss here. Let’s hop right in!
Epic and Apple’s battle has officially progressed out of the initial phases and will be going to court in May of 2021. Generally speaking, so far things are trending in Apple’s favor on the specific case (can they kick off Fortnite for violating their terms), but is a bit more open-ended in terms of the more abstract debate about Apple’s refusal to allow other payment systems on their devices.
In broader tech news, a Congressional committee released a massive and comprehensive report this week, detailing substantial concerns around Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon’s purported anti-competitive behavior. This Twitter thread captures the largest points well. Two major ones for me were that these organizations – and especially Google and Amazon – seem to have been caught red-handed in lies about some of their behavior; and that almost no action has been taken in decades around mergers and acquisitions in this space, which is something the report urges the FTC to rectify moving forward.
And finally, Wired has announced a new gaming-specific section, which they emphasize will be selective in terms of quality of content they discuss, but also expansive and inclusive to all who might call themselves gamers. This emerges during a time when gaming is more ubiquitous and more essential for social interaction than ever, so it’s well-timed – though I wonder whether this emerged because gaming has finally grown mainstream enough to safely discuss, or if it’s because Wired only recently identified the need for more coverage there. Either way, together with the recent Steam news announcements, there’s going to be even more gaming content than ever before coming soon. Still in print form, though – I wonder when we’re going to start seeing the first gaming journalists whose primary format is e.g. streaming?
That’s all for this week! As always, any thoughts or feedback are welcome. Stay safe, healthy, and sane, all!
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