Security

• The online alcohol retailer Drizly was hit by a data breach this week, with as many as 2.5M accounts compromised
  • Information taken includes email address, date of birth, hashed passwords, and in some cases even delivery addresses
  • Data obtained by TechCrunch also included phone numbers, IP address, and location data associated with billing information
  • Though the company said that no financial data was taken, a listing on a dark web marketplace claims to be selling a hacked Drizly account including a valid credit card
    • This may not have been part of the same breach though, as the listing is from February and according to haveibeenpwned.com the hack occurred on July 2nd
  • Quick reminder, don’t re-use your passwords and if you have an account on Drizly it’s time to change it

Free games

• Epic Games

  • 20XX

    • 2016
    • Mega Man X inspired roguelike action platformer that you can play with a friend on the couch or online

  • Barony

    • 2015
    • First person roguelike RPG with optional cooperative play and graphics that are kind of like Doom meets Minecraft, it’s described as a love-note to classics like System Shock and Daggerfall

  • Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery

    • 2012
    • Indie exploratory action-adventure featuring an award-winning soundtrack by Jim Guthrie, that has you traversing a mythic realm, use a sword to do battle, and evoke sworcery to solve musical mysteries

• Xbone

  • Dunk Lords

    • 2020
    • 2-on-2 basketball beat ’em up with over the top special moves, unique attacks, and abilities

  • Portal Knights

    • 2016
    • Indie RPG in a multiplayer sandbox where you can explore and build, craft items, and go adventuring

  • Override: Mech City Brawl

    • 2018
    • 3D mech brawler featuring giant robots, local and online versus modes, 4-player Voltron-style combat, and a single player campaign

  • MX Unleashed

    • 2004
    • Motocross racing game that has you racing to the finish while performing crazy stunts

  • Red Faction II

    • First person shooter based on a Mars where humankind is ruled by an evil dictatorship and only your group of elite soldiers can stand in its way

• PS4

  • Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

    • 2020
    • Cute MMO party game with up to 60 players in a delightful free-for-all struggle through rounds of escalating chaos

  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered

    • 2020
    • The campaign from 2009’s first person military shooter Modern Warfare 2 fully remastered with improved textures, animations, lighting, and more

iOS 14’s new security features continue to catch bad apps in the act

• The latest culprit is Instagram, who thanks to a new indicator introduced in the upcoming software’s beta was caught using peoples’ cameras while they were just scrolling through the feed
• According to Instagram in a statement to The Verge, they only access the camera when you tell them to, and this is a bug in the new iOS saying things are using the camera when they aren’t
  • While this is a beta piece of software, I’d tend to believe that the Facebook-owned company is getting caught in some shenanigans a lot more easily than that there’s a weirdly targeted bug saying that this one app is using your camera
• One theory on reddit is that they keep your camera active in the background to remove the usual initialization delay when you first open it, so you’re ready to take pictures immediately, but I for one am not as inclined to give Facebook that kind of benefit of the doubt
  • And even if that was the case, then they’re still lying about this being a bug AND they’re purposefully killing your battery that much faster for a tiny bit of convenience
• Either way, Instagram says they’ll work on fixing this “bug” in a future update

On July 27th, every player nuke was disarmed on the PS3 version of Metal Gear Solid 5, officially earning everyone on the platform a special cutscene that many believed would never been seen legitimately

• in MGSV you run a private military corporation and are given the option to build nuclear weapons, which in a not-so-surpisingly true to reality situation many did to at least have them as a deterrent
• This was triggered by a bug on PC a few years back where people actually had so many nukes that the counter glitched out and flipped back to zero, but the 5 year old game apparently still had a group of people dedicated to invading player bases and disarming or destroying any nukes that were left in the game
• Unfortunately other platforms like PC may never see this happen, as some players have used hacks or exploits to do things like make other players’ games crash when they invade

Google’s taking heat in Australia over data privacy, with the country’s competition regulator accusing them of misleading users

• The issue here is Google’s 2016 move to combine personal info in Google accounts with browsing activities on non-Google websites, which the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says they didn’t get explicit permission to do
  • Part of the change saw Google’s privacy policy lose a statement that it wouldn’t combine advertising cookies with personal information, and replace it with one saying that “Depending on your account settings, your activity on other sites and apps may be associated with your personal information in order to improve Google services.”
• The complaint says that linking that data together provided Google with extreme market power and was worth a lot of money, but was achieved through misleading behaviour
• Google argues that the change was optional and that they fully intend to defend their actions
• But the regulator believes that Google didn’t sufficiently inform consumers about what it sought to do, including information about activity on sites not actually related to Google, and is seeking a fine “in the millions”
• For anyone more local that might be worried, you can check your settings at adssettings.google.com

Google’s announced the launch of a new Google One app for iOS, designed to let users store photos, videos, contacts, and calendars for backups

• You can use the free 15GB of storage that comes with your Gmail accounts, or upgrade to a Google One membership for additional storage and the ability to share it with family
• It pretty closely mirrors Apple’s iCloud offerings, but is an alternative for people using iPhones but still deep in the Google ecosystem

This Week In Gaming History:

July 25 – 2004 – I Have No Tomatoes – Windows/Linux

• Strange name so I needed to bring it up
• I Have No Tomatoes is a Bomberman-styled game set on an isometric playfield. The player’s goal is to kill as many enemy tomatoes as possible across ten levels, each of them 60 seconds long.
• http://tomatoes.sourceforge.net/index.html

July 26 – 2010 – Gorillaz: Escape to Plastic Beach – iPhone

• Gorillaz: Escape to Plastic Beach is a game based on Gorillaz, an English virtual band created by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett.
• It consists of four animated members: 2-D (lead vocals, keyboards), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar), Noodle (guitar, keyboards) and Russel Hobbs (drums and percussion). Their debut album sold 7 million copies in 2001 and was accompanied by animated music videos. The band later even went on tour with projected video and later virtual characters on stage. This game was made as a promotion for their third music album, Plastic Beach, released in 2010.
• The final chapter of the game includes an MP3 download of the band’s single ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ featuring De La Soul and Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals.
  • Super Fast Jellyfish is a song I chose to put on out PS2J Spotify Playlist

July 27 – 2010 – StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – PC/Mac

• The much anticipated followup to the real time strategy juggernaut.
• Fans waited 12 years for Star Craft 2
• This game is now a decade old and has over a million hours watched and 2300 broadcasters on Twitch, in this past week.

July 28 – 2004 – Electronic Arts acquires Criterion Software

• Electronic Arts, Inc. – The company acquires Criterion, the studio responsible for the successful Burnout series and, most importantly, the RenderWare engine used by a great number of developers and many AAA titles. EA bought the studio from Canon Europe.
• Criterion’s latest title of note, is Star Wars: Jedi – Fallen Order

July 29 – 2003 – Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour – Gamecube

• The follow up to the N64 Release, I was very surprised to find that this was the last Mario Golf title for home console
• The last golf game was made for 3DS and released May 1st, 2014
• I find it strange as golf can be easily emulated with a Wii-mote or Joy-Con

July 30 – 1975 – Black Jack – Altair 8800

• I like to find older game for the weekly list, and wanted to know what the Altair 8800 was
• Wikipedia says: The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issues and was sold by mail order through advertisements there In Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines
• It looks more like a lit switchboard than a computer

July 31 – 1996 – Virtua Fighter: Kids – SEGA Saturn

• Virtua Fighter Kids is a modified version of Virtua Fighter 2 for the Sega Saturn. All characters were left the same, but the difference is that they are no longer adults but kids with traditional anime huge heads and short arms and legs.
• A variety of new features has been added to increase the gameplay such as the ability to program specified moves for each character or new endings.
• Its something that new generations will not have to deal with, a bit of a spin on a new game for a full game price. Makes me happy for DLC and updates.

Josh bought Clubhouse 51 Games for Nintendo

• I learned a few board games I am interested in getting physical copies of
  • Hare and Hounds
  • Shogi
  • Backgammon
  • Mancala
• Learned a few card games popular in Japan too!
  • For 2 players:
    • Speed
    • Pig’s Tail
    • Takoyaki
  • For 4 players:
    • Sevens
    • President
• Some games feel phoned in
  • Toy Tennis
  • Toy Soccer
  • Toy Curling
  • Toy Boxing
  • Toy Baseball
• And there is also Hanafuda
  • A complex card game, I’m sort of unwilling to learn even on this game
  • Hanafuda are Japanese playing cards that are used to play a variety of games. Hanafuda translates to “flower cards”. The name also refers to games played with the cards.
• Cool features I’d like to try
  • There is the option for TV and Switch out with the kickstand standing it up, or laying down and players can use the touch screen
  • As well as a Mosaic Mode, there Switch consoles can be laid on a table and up against each other to extend the game past the limit of one screen. A mosaic of consoles
  • And there is a Clubhouse Games Guest Pass
    • Your friends can download this for free and play with you, without getting the full game for themselves.

Tidbits

• Paramount has announced Sonic The Hedgehog 2 to be released April 8th, 2022
  • Confirmed by Ben Schwartz, the voice of Sonic
• Animal Crossing bug that removed camera user interface, is now put into the game!
• After offering more movies online while theatres were closed, Universal has set up a new deal to shorten theatrical windows from 75 days to 17
  • That means that just over two weeks after a movie comes to theatres you could buy or rent it digitally on iTunes or other online platforms
• Spotify has launched their new Group Session feature for all premium subscribers, allowing people to listen to music and podcasts together long-distance
  • Groups of two to five people can simultaneously stream audio by sharing a Join link over messaging apps or social media
  • Once you’re in everyone can play, pause, skip, and queue up tracks for a full listening party
• In a now-familiar turn of events, the 2021 Consumer Electronics Show has been announced as an all-digital event running from January 6-9
  • Even after borders reopen and restrictions are lifted, I can see a lot more digital events going forward just because of accessibility and budget advantages
• Thanks to a leak via Doritos promotional material, we now know that the Activision project code named The Red Door is Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War
• KFC is partnering with bioprinting companies in Russia to create 3D-printed chicken nuggets
  • The process uses chicken cells and plant material to reproduce the taste and texture of real meat “almost without involving animals in the process”, according to a press release
  • KFC plans to hit final testing this fall in Moscow