Eric David
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Twitter rolls out new policies and tools to fight trolls
Harassment is a recurring problem across nearly everly online community, and Twitter seems to be more susceptible than most. Twitter Inc CEO Dick Costolo even admitted the microblogs failures to tackle harassment adequately in an email memo that was leaked in February. “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we’ve ...
Blizzard’s eSports head says the studio “learned a lot” from livestream data
Livestreaming has become an increasingly important aspect of the video game industry, especially for developers whose games have a strong eSports community. Millions of people watch game streams on sites like Twitch.tv, and the data gained from those viewers has started to shape the way developers create and market their games. According to Kim Phan, senior manager ...
Top 25 public gaming companies earned $54.1 billion last year, industry up 10% overall
The video game industry shows no signs of slowing as the global game market grew 10.4 percent in 2014, according to research firm Newzoo. Last year, the top 25 companies in gaming earned of $54.1 billion in revenue, accounting for about 65 percent of the $83.6 billion earned by the video game industry overall. Chinese company ...
How the desire for Jedi killed Star Wars Galaxies
While the “New Game Enhancement” update is considered by many to be the death blow that eventually killed Star Wars Galaxies, former creative director Raph Koster says the seeds for the game’s destruction were planted only months after its release with the introduction of Holocrons, items that gave players information on how to access to ...
Steam now limits features until you spend at least $5
Valve Corp’s Steam Client is one of the most popular digital distribution platforms in gaming, reaching several million concurrent users each day. As with any popular online service, Steam frequently has to contend with malicious accounts attempting to spam or phish other users, and to fight this, Valve has announced that it will be limiting features for ...
Facebook makes “big strides” in fighting fake likes
It may seem strange that people would be willing to spend money on fake likes on Facebook, but it is a big enough problem that Facebook has been forced to continuously create new systems to combat organizations that sell fraudulent likes. “Keeping activity authentic on Facebook is an important part of our ongoing efforts to make ...
Riot Games, Valve, and Blizzard make up 77% of Twitch streams
Popular esports titles continue to dominate the livestreaming site Twitch.tv, with a vast majority of users continuing to watch only a handful of games. The real winners in the battle for Twitch domination appear to be Riot Games, Valve Corp and Blizzard Entertainment. According to a report by livestream data site Gamoloco, they collectively made ...
Koalah lets you place bets on your gaming skills
If you have ever wished someone would just pay you to play video games all day, you may get your chance with a recently launched web game platform called Koalah, which allows players to compete for high scores and cash rewards. The site currently lets you play a handful of casual games like Snake, an off-brand ...
User exposes Minecraft exploit after he said Mojang failed to act
About two years ago, a Pakistan-based developer named Ammar Askar discovered a vulnerability in Minecraft while he was working on mods for the block-building game. Askar says he informed Mojang AB of the problem, but after the studio failed to act on the information, he exposed the exploit on the internet, effectively forcing Mojang to come up ...
Instagram clarifies rules to allow photos of breastfeeding, other nudity still banned
Instagram has updated its community guidelines to explicitly allow photos showing breastfeeding or post-mastectomy scars, but other forms of nudity are still forbidden. “We’re not changing any of the policies,” Instagram’s director of public policy Nicky Jackson Colaco told The Washington Post, but she also explained that Instagram “added in detail around questions we’ve gotten over ...