From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
No time to absorb gaming industry news all on your own? Come enjoy
this pre-Digested news feed! Comes pre-chewed to make things easier
for you! Mmmm, tasty!
* Epic fires 1000 people
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/todays-layoffs?sessionInvalidated=true
Look, I gotta lead with this one. I love making fun of Epic. But
it looks like rumors of the Fortnite money running short are true.
And sure, the producers at Fortnite say this mass-layoff will
'impact the game in ways the remaining teams "cannot fully
understand", and that "they will have to pick up the pieces",
but that's okay. It's all for the best, says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney.
There will now be 1000 new highly-trained people available for
other companies to hire; a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! He's
doing everybody a favor by firing all these people! (Sweeney
himself, already worth $7 billion, is not taking a paycut).
Side note: If you include the 800 people Epic laid off just a
while back and this current batch, they've fired more than
four times the number of people in a year than Valve has as
its entire workforce ;-)
* Wine gets sweeter
https://www.xda-developers.com/wine-11-rewrites-linux-runs-windows-games-speed-gains/
Wine --the not-an-emulator backend that lets you run Windows
apps on Linux-- is getting a rewrite that should see
significant speed gains. Mostly this has to do with a new
kernel extension that better schedules/synchronizes the
many threads used by modern programming. Modern games often
use Wine and Proton together, so this should result in
better performance for non-native games running on Linux.
I myself still use Windows primarily for my gaming, but
I'm thrilled to see Linux gaining on the Microsoft hegemony;
this is great news as far as I'm concerned.
* Blizzard CEO says gamers should 'man up' over AI usage in games
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/ex-blizzard-president-says-gamers-need-to-man-up-over-ai-usage-in-games-after-crimson-desert-devs-issue-apology/
Regardless of what your opinion is about AI in games, this is
another example of CEOs not earning their too-high salaries.
These guys just should shut-the-fuck-up if they can't read
the room. I know the game publisher C-levels love AI; it lets
them fire all their employees so they don't have to pay them
anymore! But your customers have made it abundantly clear
they DON'T like it. Now, maybe AI-generated artwork /is/
the future whether gamers like it or not... but rubbing it
in their faces is not the best look.
* No GPUs, no RAM, no Hard-Drives... and now no CPUs
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/processors/cpu-shortage-is-getting-more-serious-day-by-day-no-less-than-the-memory-chip-situation-according-to-an-unnamed-gaming-pc-company/
Thanks to the AI-bros scarfing up all the tech for themselves,
GPUs, RAM and SSDs/hard-drives are getting harder to find...
and even if you can find them, the prices are much higher too.
But at least the core of the computer, the CPUs, are still easy
to get... oh, what's that? We're getting news that now CPU
production isn't keeping up with demand either. And, yeah,
the usual suspects are to blame again. But don't worry.
Mouse-pads are still cheap. That's all you really need for
gaming anyway, right?
Masticating the news for your time and pleasure... only here on
CSIPGA! ;-)
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