It is a cold Friday in March, I turned a year older this week, and I am in a bit of a mood for no good reason besides being a cranky old guy. So perhaps it is time for some bullet point bile, broken up into three categories. Can you put each in its correct place?
- The New York Times to Impose Its New Wordle Order
The self-proclaimed “paper of record” took a bit of time from its nearly non-stop headlines about President Biden’s age to go after anybody who was out there peddling any games that seemed even Wordle adjacent.
A bit on the nose, eh Wordle?
The New York Times bought the game from its creator about two years back. The game wasn’t original, the concept wasn’t original, and even the name had been used before. But it became a hit during the pandemic and the Times wanted to expand its word games. One does not live by the Sunday crossword alone I guess.
This week their lawyers began sending out copyright based take down notices to “hundreds” of Wordle-like titles.
This should have been no surprise. The Times has a long history of sending its lawyers after any hint of what they consider infringement. I remember back in the 80s when Infocom‘s company newsletter was called the New Zork Times. They too received a cease and desist letter threatening legal action and had to change the name lest somebody mistake it for a product of the New York Times, which might cause confusion in the marketplace and tarnish the brand of the paper.
None of the regular sites I hit has gone down yet, but I will keep an eye out.
- Nintendo Shuts Down Yuzu
Elsewhere out on the legal front, Nintendo won its lawsuit against Switch emulator creator Yuzu, who acceded to the mounting pressure from the video game giant who had been framing Yuzu’s intent as being to circumvent DRM, which would put it in line for violating the DMCA.
In addition to ceasing all development and support of its emulator, Yuzu also had to agree to pay all of Nintendo’s costs, which totaled up to $2.4 million by their calculation.
Nintendo has long been as fierce as the New York Times in sending its lawyers after anybody using their intellectual property, including some innocuous fan projects, and vigorously stomping out anything that might cause one less hardware unit to sell.
Anyway, I am kind of sad I missed out on Yuzu because, for me at least, the worst thing about playing games on the Switch is actually being required to play them on the Switch. I’d much prefer them on my PC. Alas, no longer and option.
- Apple and Epic at it Again
Epic went spoiling for a fight with Apple and Google a few years back because… well, Tim Sweeney wants to be as rich as possible I guess. As with his fight with Steam, he just wants to be the person collecting the tax and resents other who got there first.
The fight with Apple has gone back and forth since then and it had looked like things had settled down with Epic getting some of what it wanted, including the ability to have its own storefront. And then Apple banned Epic’s developer account in the EU.
Sweeney was immediately out with histrionics, but Apple was also declaring that Epic was “verifiably untrustworthy” and would not live up to the developer agreement they had signed. This will all draw the attention of EU regulators again, who will be wielding their Digital Markets Act, it “tax the US tech companies” regulations.
How do I feel about this?
Survey say… let them fight!
It is hard to feel sad when rich people are fighting to be incrementally more rich.
A follow up about how Apple is embracing the drama and that the EU is its real foe in this battle.
- Elon Invents Blogging
Having chased away all serious, paying advertisers on the Twitter platform… we have Cheech & Chong, Crypto scams (still!), and nazi ads left, and I block all of them besides Cheech & Chong… Elon has been thrashing around trying to find SOMETHING that will make money for his $44 billion boondoggle. And so they have announced Articles.
From the @write account
You can have BOLD, ITALIC, and STRIKETHROUGH text. And images!
Freaking amazing, right? RIGHT?!?
Oh yeah. Who needs quote blocks or inline links, just give us money and we’ll let you do long form and give them a special icon and tab on your profile. We totally won’t change our mind in three months and disappear the whole thing the next time Elon has a brain fart, we promise!
I am just waiting until he finally gets around to re-inventing Twitter… a version without him on it.
- EA Jumps on the AI Bandwagon
I mean, EA has a long tradition of being dumb, or at least not being able to read the room. And they are ramping up to lay off 5% of their staff. So they have to give the investors SOMETHING to be positive about, and AI is the magic wand currently. Just say that and Wall Street will love you, right? So how did EA CEO Andrew Wilson do on that? Let’s go check over at PC Gamer… and… oh my!
Truth in Headlines
I am not positive the bong hit was verified, but Andrew did ramble on about 3 billion people using EA tools to make games while he painted a picture of a future where EA simply didn’t have to pay any of those pesky creative or technical people who actually make literally everything they sell today.
There was some law of hiring I recall where bad managers only hire people dumber than they are, so when we’re at a point where the CEO of EA wants to fire everybody and I am starting to suspect that we are seeing this in action. Dumb guy achieves life goal, promoted to CEO and fires everybody.
That is probably being too hard on him. As we all know by this point, as a public company you must meet the infinite growth demands of Wall Street, and when you’ve got nothing you have to make shit up. This is a classic “making shit up” performance. He’ll probably get a huge bonus and lay off even more staff.
- Cataclysm Classic Closed Beta Begins
Finally, Blizzard announced that Cataclysm Classic, which will remake the WoW Classic progression servers now lingering in Wrath of the Lich King into a new world, has started its closed beta test.
Can you re-run a cataclysm?
I’ve actually been waiting for this to show up, having worn out on Wrath Classic after five characters. However, closed beta doesn’t mean we’re close to actually getting it, and the roadmap that Blizzard put out at the beginning of the year made it seem like we would be into summer before the cataclysm hit. Still, it is nice to see it is finally in motion.
And on that bit of upbeat news, it is off to get through the day and to the weekend.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 