Tag Archives: Games

Google is finally allowing Stadia players to join multiplayer games without needing an invite. This basic feature is available on most console platforms and PC launchers, but it has taken Google nearly two years to add it to Stadia. A new support page confirms the feature is live in Far Cry 6 on Stadia, so friends can join you without you having to dig into menus and issue an invite. Google mentions the feature is only available in “select games,” and is disabled by default.

The NFL got what it needed: Sunday. After a week in which the public started to really see what the league is, to get a glimpse of just how slimy its underbelly truly is, it needed Sunday. Because once Sunday arrived, enough fans who may have been mildly appalled at the racism, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, exploitation, and the NFL’s lead counsel doing favors for the president of at least one team, turned their attention to the games. They may have even gotten an early start consuming the… Source link

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American 

As the Apple v. Epic Games lawsuit goes under appeal, Google on Monday afternoon filed an answer and counterclaim in the Epic Games’ antitrust litigation against the company. The tech giant and Android maker denies Epic’s allegations of antitrust behavior and instead says that it’s owed relief, as Epic Games breached the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement (DDA) by allowing Fortnite players who download the app through Google Play to use Epic’s own payment processing… Source link

Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service appears to have lost another top video game industry veteran — kind of. Jack Buser, Stadia’s Director for Games and a former PlayStation exec, is moving to the company’s Google Cloud division to head up “Gaming Solutions,” according to a ZDNet report. Google confirms Buser is leaving the Stadia group for Google Cloud, providing this statement to The Verge: Gaming is an incredibly important vertical at Google and we’re seeing huge momentum… Source link

GameStop (GME) apparently no longer sees itself as a retailer under the dual leadership of new chairman Ryan Cohen and CEO Matt Furlong, but rather as a tech company perhaps some day worthy of being in the same discussion as an Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Google (GOOG, GOOGL).  “GameStop has two long-term goals: delighting customers and delivering value for stockholders. We are evolving from a video game retailer to a technology company that connects customers with games,… Source link

Apple’s Mac has long been an afterthought for the video game industry, and few think of Google as a games company — despite running Android, one of the biggest game platforms in the world. But Google had a plan to change those things in October 2020, according to an explicitly confidential 70-page vision document dubbed “Games Futures.” The “need-to-know” document, which was caught up in the discovery process when Epic Games hauled Apple into court, reveals a tentative… Source link

Enlarge / Let’s see, you landed on my “Google Ads” space, and with three houses, that’ll be $1,400. Ron Amadeo / Hasbro Back in 2018, Google and Epic Games kicked off a years-old spat over Fortnite on the Play Store. Instead of distributing the game through Google Play, Epic decided that sideloading would be the way to get Fortnite on Android, thereby sidestepping Google’s 30 percent cut of sales. Epic would go on to file an antitrust… Source link

(Bloomberg) — Tencent Holdings Ltd. dived as much as 11% Tuesday after an offshoot of China’s official news agency decried the “spiritual opium” and “electronic drugs” of games, prompting the country’s largest corporation to declare the possibility of banning kids under the age of 12 from playing altogether. The twin developments stoked fears Beijing will next set its sights on online entertainment after reining in the e-commerce, ride-hailing and online education industries…. Source link

The 2020 Olympic Games are currently still on in Tokyo, Japan — against all odds — and in celebration of Japanese culture and sports in general, Google is debuting a new interactive Doodle on Thursday with art from Japanese animation house Studio 4°C. The new Doodle, called Doodle Champion Island Games, is actually a series of Olympic event-themed 16-bit mini-games that you can play, contributing to the scores of four teams Google will track on a global leaderboard. Playing as Lucky… Source link