Eric David
Latest from Eric David
The Long Dark devs on balancing player feedback with creative vision
Steam’s Early Access program has helped many indie games get off the ground by allowing developers to sell their in-progress games to fans. Players get to play the game long before it comes out and contribute feedback to its development, and creators get the steady funds needed to complete their games. Hinterland Studio Inc, the Canadian ...
EA’s response to being the “worst company” and how it has changed
Demonstrating the fallibility of online polls and the fact that video games are serious business, Electronic Arts Inc has previously been chosen by a Consumerist poll as the worst company in America. Twice. What did they do to earn this dubious honor? If other companies have been guilty of using child labor or financially supporting corrupt governments, ...
GOG Summer Sale 2015 opens with deals on Witcher 3 and hundreds more
While everyone is still waiting around for the Steam Summer Sale, which supposedly starts June 11, GOG.com kicked off its own sale today with big discounts on hundreds of titles. The site has discounts on several bundles of classic games, as well as on the entire Witcher franchise (developed by GOG’s parent company) and more. GOG is ...
CultureMap will deploy thousands of iBeacons across the US
Bluetooth beacons are a growing trend in location-based advertising, with major companies like Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc investing in the technology. Beacons are also becoming an increasingly important tool for gathering data related to local trends and foot traffic, as they can track where the crowds are. Now CultureMap, an online news and review ...
Steam now refunds game purchases within 14 days ‘for any reason’
One of the drawbacks of many digital distribution platforms is their almost complete lack of a refund policy. For many services, once a digital good is bought, there is no way to return it unless there is an issue with the distribution platform itself. That is about to change for one of the biggest game ...
GameFly picks up cloud company to build Netflix for games
As the video game industry continues shifting away from physical games and toward digital distribution, the rental industry has all but evaporated. Now, GameFly (still a thing, apparently) is trying to turn the tide for game rentals by building a Netflix-like service that would allow users to play games without having to fully buy them. ...
GameStop wins bidding war for ThinkGeek, Hot Topic’s deal is terminated
Despite earlier reports that Hot Topic would be purchasing ThinkGeek, Inc.’s parent company, Geeknet, Inc., for $122 million, that deal has now been terminated and the company’s outstanding shares have been purchased in a surprise bidding war by GameStop Corp. for $140 million. The Dallas-based game seller recently pulled itself out of an end-of-the-year slump by posting ...
Supreme Court overturns conviction of man who sent death threats through Facebook
The Supreme Court has reversed the conviction of a man accused of sending his death threats to his wife and others via Facebook, and the case has raised new questions about when online threats are harmless venting and when they are serious threats. Anthony Elonis served several years in jail for posting violent threats – ...
How fear of penis towers held back progress on Lego Universe
Sometimes it seems like it is an unwritten rule in gaming that if you give players the ability to build things, someone will eventually make a penis. Or a forest of penises. Or a giant penis death tower that erupts lava onto the landscape. Lego discovered this firsthand when they released Lego Universe, a family-friendly MMO and Lego building game that ...
Nintendo’s next console rumored to run on Android
Even with the current success of Nintendo Co Ltd’s most recent family-friendly title, Splatoon, the Japanese game company still has its eyes on the next console generation, especially after the mediocre sales performance of the Wii U. Aside from the codename “NX” and the chance that it may be region-free, little is known about the next Nintendo game ...