Game Pro : Handheld Exploration featuring Huge Jackpots Gifts

22/10/2024

Turkish government bans Roblox over alleged child exploitation

Effectively immediately, Roblox has been banned in Turkey for the forseeable future.

As spotted by GamesIndustry, the creation platform was banned for "content that could lead to the exploitation of children," said the country's Minister of Justice Yılmaz Tunç. "It is everyone's duty to look out for, protect and support the best interests of our children, the guarantor of our future." No specific instances of exploitation were given, but questions about safety on platforms like Roblox and Fortnite have been raised for several years.

Turkey marks the first country to take a stand over
Roblox's alleged child safety issues. In late July, a Bloomberg report claimed the platform was a haven for child predators, and that possible ways to reduce their presence were shot down.

While Roblox Corp. initially denied the report's claims, CEO David Baszucki later acknowledged the company needed better saftey methods.

In response to the ban, Roblox Corp. told Eurogamer it would "respects the laws and regulations in countries where we operate. We look forward to working together to ensure Roblox is back online in Turkey as soon as possible."

22/10/2024

Losses in Unity's app marketing division drive 16 percent revenue dip

Even after laying off over a thousand employees at the start of the year, game engine and monetization solutions developer Unity has yet to see the 'profitable growth' it sought. Today the company reported a 16 percent decline in revenue year-over-year (down from $533 million to $426 million), contributing to a net loss of $126 million for the time period ending July 31, 2024.

Unity's losses are nothing new, but their persistent presence was what drove an ill-advised "Runtime Fee" policy introduced in late 2023 that was altered for Unity 6 users after a mass uproar from developers. The good news is it is losing less money; net losses declined about 35 percent, decreasing from $193 million in 2023 to $126 million.

21/10/2024

'Nightmare' porting process drove Haak developer Blingame to cancel Xbox version

Indie developer Blingame revealed it had to kill the Xbox Series X|S version of its 2022 game, Haak, owing to a tumultuous porting process.

Over the weekend, the studio released a statement detailing how it spent "over 14 months" trying to bring its game to Microsoft's console. That ended up being a "nightmare," mainly owing to "many" alleged bugs in Microsoft's Partner Center.

Last year, Baldur's Gate 3's Xbox Series X|S port hit a snag pre-release owing to the S console. Those issues were later resolved, but the two games indicate a potential larger issue with bringing titles to Xbox as a staggered release.

21/10/2024

North Beach Games opens Prague studio to support itself and smaller devs

Publisher North Beach Games is going international and opening a new studio over in Prague.

The offshoot will be headed up by creative director and CTO Sam Edwards, along with general manager Tomáš Pšenička. Its core team will work directly in Prague, while some staff will be working remotely.

Chiefly, North Beach's new team is tasked with creating and supporting more survival crafting games. This duty extends to assisting smaller third-party studios by providing them a "technical, design, and art resource."

"it is the company’s mission to...empower the world’s best independent developers with the support and resources they need to create and successfully launch games worldwide," wrote North Beach.

21/10/2024

Hunt: Showdown sees new concurrent player high with 1896 update

Crytek released the 1896 update for Hunt: Showdown last week, and PC players have returned to the multiplayer shooter in droves.

Per SteamDB, the game reached a new peak of concurrent players with 60,124 players on its August 15 release. According to PCGamer, that's well up from its last high of 41,255 players in October 2023.

Significant updates and new expansions (or an incoming sequel) often revitalize a game's community. In Hunt's case, 1896 was deemed by Crytek to be the start of a "whole new era" for the game, which turns five years old on August 27.

19/10/2024

Take a look at Nix's motion capture puppet from Star Wars Outlaws

https://youtu.be/-jQmaHXwelg

As motion capture technology has grown in the world of game development, actors and technicians alike have sought ways to fill fake stages with objects and scenery that can motivate actors' performances. In games like Star Wars Outlaws, actors are tasked not just with acting out dramatic cutscenes, but sometimes doing so with creatures big and small that a human being can't easily be subbed in for.

One such creature in Outlaws is Nix, a one-of-a-kind Axolotl-like creature called a "merqaal" who helps player character Kay Vess (played by Humberly González) on her heists, and joins her for some delicious meals from street vendors across the galaxy. With Nix attached to Vess' hip, how was González supposed to always be acting with a tiny creature that didn't exist in the real world?

One word: Puppets. Or specifically, one googly-eyed, four-legged puppet with fake gills built and piloted by Camille Loiselle-D'Aragon. And as you can see in the video above, he and Loiselle-D'Aragonmake for one hell of an acting team.

Ubisoft used a puppet for alien creature Nix in Star Wars Outlaws to give him a presence on the motion capture stage.

19/10/2024

Sony is raising the price of PlayStation 5 hardware in Japan

Sony is increasing the price of the PlayStation 5 and certain accessories in Japan.

Breaking the news in a blog post, the company explained the standard PlayStation 5 (complete with disc drive) will now retail for 79,980 yen ($551) in the region. As noted by Reuters, that's an increase of around 20 percent on the previous price of 66,980 yen ($462).

The PlayStation 5 Digital Edition will cost 72,980 yen ($504), which again represents a 20 percent increase on the old 59,980 yen ($414) price tag.