YouTube is looking to take a more aggressive approach in preventing viewers from using ad blockers while watching videos on its platform. As BleepingComputer reports, people have been posting screenshots on social networks like Reddit that show a pop-up notice warning them that their player will be blocked after three videos. 

The warning says YouTube will block their ability to play videos on the platform unless they disable their ad blocker or add the website to their white list. "Ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide," the notice continues. To go ad-free, the company tells users to get a YouTube Premium subscription so "creators can still get paid." Prior to these warnings, YouTube only showed popups to ad blocker users, reminding them that it's against the website's TOS. Eventually, it added a timer to the notices to ensure viewers take the time to read them.

The website has confirmed to BleepingComputer that the new alerts are part of an experiment. A spokesperson told the publication that YouTube is "running a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium." They said that YouTube might temporarily disable playback "[i]n extreme cases, where viewers continue their use of ad blockers." The spokesperson added that they will only disable playback "if viewers ignore repeated requests to allow ads on YouTube," though it's unclear if that means YouTube won't automatically block playback after a viewer watches three videos and will give them more opportunities to comply. 

At the moment, this new approach only affects a small number of users, and YouTube didn't say how many people and regions are part of the test. The website, which makes most of its money from ads, has seen its ad revenue decline over the past three quarters, so we won't be surprised if this test expands to more users around the world should it turn out to be effective. 

Annapurna Interactive is developing a game based on the iconic science fiction film Blade Runner. The game’s set between the events of Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, so you can get some closure as to what Deckard was doing before meeting up with Ryan Gosling in an abandoned casino or whatever.

Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth follows a Blade Runner — the name on their ID is blanked out in the trailer — as they explore a mysterious location called the “land of the dead.” You can’t tell much from the trailer, but we see footage of what looks like an early version of the memory-crafting technology seen in Blade Runner 2049.

Annapurna says this game is actually canon and it takes place just one year after the events of the original film, which would put it directly in the crosshairs of some big events alluded to in the sequel. It’s always good to see more Blade Runner in gaming, especially after the criminally underrated and recently remastered 1997 adventure title.

It’s also important to note that Annapurna Interactive is actually developing this title, and not just publishing it. This is the company’s first in-house game, after gaining industry notoriety from publishing titles like Stray, Outer Wilds, Donut County and a whole lot more. Annapurna certainly has great taste, so let’s see if this translates to in-house development. There’s no release date yet, but it’s set to launch on major consoles and PC.

Video games have been competitive for as long as people could land their three-character initials on a digital scoreboard. The fighting game genre got its start in the 1970s, but it was when Street Fighter 2 hit the arcades in the '90s that the genre would ascend to a whole new level. Since then, many groundbreaking series have graced the genre, such as Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Super Smash Bros. and much more. 

While fighting games may never have the same mass-market appeal they did in the '90s, 2023 is proving to be a mini-rennaisance for the genre. We've already had Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 1 is arriving this fall, and there's Tekken 8 still to come. That's without mentioning the upcoming reboot of Dead or Alive or Riot Games' League of Legends spin-off Project L. It's a good time to be a fighting game fan — watch the video below for the full story.

Unless you switch to chronological timeline on Facebook, the things you see on your timeline could seem pretty arbitrary at times. Now, Meta has given us pretty comprehensive look at how its AI systems decide on the posts that appear on our Facebook and Instagram feeds. The social networking giant has released 22 card systems for the platforms that explain how its AI systems rank content for its Feed, Stories and Reels. Each card explains how a certain aspect of Meta's platform works — for instance, the company explains that for Facebook Feeds, its AI system starts by gathering all potential posts by friends and Pages you follow. 

After that, the system considers various input signals, such as who created the post, how you interacted with them and how many of your friends have liked the post, if any. All those aspects will help the AI rank posts based on which you'll find the most relevant and valuable and then show them on your feed in order of the scores they get. The card systems also show how you can customize what you see on the platforms and link to instructions on, say, how to unfollow a person or a group and how to click "show more" or "show less" on a post to indicate if you like or dislike a particular subject. 

In a post announcing the cards' release, Nick Clegg, Meta's President of Global Affairs, listed the tools you can use to personalize your experience on the company's platforms. In addition to the two aforementioned tools, Facebook and Instagram have centralized menus with customization controls, called Feed Preferences and Suggested Content Control Center, respectively. Clegg also said that Meta is testing a new feature on Instagram allows you to indicate whether you're "Interested" in a recommended reel in the Reels tab, so the app can show you more similar content. At the moment, you can only indicate whether you're "Not Interested" in a specific reel. In addition, he said Meta is working on making the "show more" and "show less" feature more prominent. 

Meta has lifted the lid on how its algorithms work before the European Union starts enacting the Digital Markets Act in 2024. The new law will require online services like Facebook and Instagram to be more transparent on the technologies behind their recommendation algorithms. It will also require platforms to offer chronological feeds and will ban ads targeting you based on your religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity or political affiliation. Earlier this year, Meta also rolled out a new version of its "Why am I seeing this ad?" tool to provide more transparency on how your activities power its ad-matching software.

Blizzard is bringing hardcore servers to World of Warcraft Classic. Inspired by the game’s popular “Death = Delete” community add-on, the mode limits any character you create to exactly one life. If your hero dies, running back to their body as a ghost won’t bring them back to life, nor can someone else resurrect your character with a class ability like the Shaman’s Ancestral Spirit spell. You also can’t use abilities like the Warlock’s Soulstone spell to bring your character back to life on their own. Oh, and Paladins won’t be able to bubble hearth out of sticky situations.

Your character won’t disappear after they die. Instead, they will remain as a ghost, so you can stay in touch with guildmates and any friends you met during your adventure. And if you want to continue playing your character after their untimely demise, Blizzard will offer free transfers to non-hardcore servers.

This being World of Warcraft we’re talking about, you have to imagine some people will try to trick other players into killing their own characters. To that point, Blizzard says Classic Hardcore will feature restrictions not found in other versions of the game. For instance, you won’t be able to kite a monster from one area to another in hopes of it terrorizing low-level characters. You also will need to deliberately flag yourself for PvP combat before you can attack another player. “We’ve added this failsafe to prevent situations in which a player could unintentionally take aggressive action against another player who is flagged for PvP, and unwittingly flag themselves,” notes Blizzard.

Speaking of PvP, Classic Hardcore will feature less of an emphasis on player-versus-player combat. You can’t queue for battlegrounds, for example, but Blizzard is introducing a new dueling mechanic that allows players to challenge one another to a fight to the death. Slaying an opposing player in such a duel will impart a permanent cosmetic buff called “String of Ears” on your character that tracks the number of players you’ve successfully taken down.

Hardcore servers will arrive in World of Warcraft Classic before the end of summer. Before then, a public test build of the new mode will go live on June 29th.

The Nintendo Switch Online library just got a bit beefier, thanks to the addition of four classic Sega Genesis titles. The subscription-based classic games platform is now host to Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, The Revenge of Shinobi, Landstalker and Crusader of Centy, joining around 30 pre-existing Genesis titles and many more NES, SNES and Game Boy releases. That’s right. Sonic and Mario are friends now.

For the uninitiated, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts is a tough-as-nails platformer that still gives nightmares to adults of a certain age. The Rise of Shinobi is a serviceable entry in the OG ninja-simulation franchise. Landstalker is a cult favorite action RPG with an isometric view and Crusader of Centy is a well-reviewed, yet relatively obscure, Zelda clone. Crusader of Centy is tough to find, with physical copies selling for thousands of dollars, so this is a boon for retro gaming enthusiasts. Here’s a video of all four games in action, so you can decide if you want to plunk down $50 for a yearly NSO Expansion Pack subscription.

As a note, these games are only available with a $50-yearly Expansion Pack subscription, though that also gets you access to N64 and Game Boy Advance titles. If you just want to play from a library of NES, SNES and Game Boy releases, go with the cheaper standard NSO subscription of $20 each year. Nintendo isn’t exactly speedy with these releases, with game drops around once a month, so check the full library before handing over your debit card information.

Sony announced the PlayStation Plus games lineup for July today. They include Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Alan Wake Remastered and Endling – Extinction is Forever. All three titles will be available on PS5 and PS4 for subscribers on the Essential, Extra and Premium tiers.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020) is a controversial installment in the long-running military shooter franchise. Set in the early 1980s, its plot borrows from a well-known (and largely baseless) real-world conspiracy theory about a Soviet spy named Perseus who supposedly infiltrated the US atomic weapons program. If you can get past its questionable premise and (arguably tone-deaf) Vietnam War flashback missions, you can enjoy classic Call of Duty shoot-em-up fare as you blast your way across East Berlin, Turkey, Moscow and other Cold War hotspots. In addition to the story mission, it includes the title’s Multiplayer and Zombies modes.

Activision

Meanwhile, Alan Wake Remastered is the 2021 remake of the now 13-year-old adventure title that was initially an Xbox 360 exclusive. The game puts you in the shoes of the title character, a successful author on vacation in the (fictional) Washington state town of Bright Falls. But after his wife mysteriously vanishes, he sets out on a nightmarish investigation that blurs the lines between reality and fiction. The remastered version includes the case game and (initially DLC) expansions “The Signal” and “The Writer.”

Finally, Endling – Extinction is Forever is a third-person survival-adventure title that puts you in the paws of the last surviving fox. Set in a future reality where humans have exhausted Earth’s resources, leaving it in ruin, you must guide your three cubs to safety and save the species. Aside from its obvious thematic commentary about climate change, nature preservation and human excess, it provides fun (and relatively short) stealth gameplay using 2D movement in shifting 3D environments.

Herobeat Studios

The three games will be available for PlayStation Plus subscribers from July 4th through the 31st. In addition, Sony says you’ll have until next Monday, July 3rd, to claim June’s games, including NBA 2K23, Jurassic World Evolution 2 and Trek to Yomi.

Film director Roland Emmerich is making a massively-multiplayer online (MMO) game powered by everyone’s favorite punching bags, NFTs. The director of Independence Day, Stargateand, uh, Moonfall just announced Space Nation Online, a forthcoming RPG that's going to be part of a larger shared universe encompassing animated shorts, a live-action TV show and plenty of Web3 nonsense.

To that end, there’s a bile-inducing page detailing the tokenomics surrounding the “Web3 Space Opera MMO”, if you want to throw away your money on a procedurally-generated picture of a starship or whatever. The developers say the NFT-based framework is “designed for the purpose of solving multiple issues and enhancing the potential of Web3 games by means of our observation, investigation and research.” Okay. 

Now on to the good news. Despite the heavy emphasis on non-fungible tokens, there’s some decent talent behind the scenes here, beyond Emmerich. Jerome Wu, who worked on World of Warcraft, is on board, as is Tony Tang from Warframe. The shared-universe title has received more than $50 million in financial backing, with more funding rounds to come, as reported by Deadline. There's even a first-look video if you want to see how development is coming along.

Space Nation Online, which puts players on an “epic journey to unravel the mysteries of the Telikos Cluster”, drops an alpha build later this summer, with a full release planned for 2024. Assuming some level of success, animated shorts, TV shows and spinoff games come after that.

For nearly eight years, Joe Tung was responsible for leading development on Riot’s hit MOBA, League of Legends. At the end of 2020, he left the company to cofound Theorycraft Games. Since then, the studio, which employs people who contributed to League, Valorant, Overwatch, the Halo series, Destiny and Apex Legends, has been quietly working away on its first project, a game codenamed Project Loki. Before today, only a handful of content creators and pro-gamers have had the chance to play Loki. That’s about to change, with Theorycraft announcing a two-day PC playtest that will start tomorrow, June 29th.

Theorycraft describes Project Loki as a squad-based hero battleground. Imagine a game that has MOBA-like heroes who need to nail skill shots to perform their best. Now, instead of pitting those characters against one another on a map with minion lanes and towers, you force them to fight on a large, Fortnite-inspired battleground. That’s the pitch of Project Loki, and the studio hopes it turns out to be the next game you decide to spend 10,000 hours playing with your friends. One thing Tung, whose past credits also include Halo: Reach, says is a core part of Project Loki is player creativity. Each session starts with you and your teammates choosing a group of heroes you think will win you the match, and will need to adapt your strategies on the fly.

Tung says Theorycraft Games is a “small and very independent game studio,” but it has the backing of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which took part in the company’s $50 million series B fundraising round last year. In other words, there’s a lot of money riding on the bet that Theorycraft can create the next LoL or Apex Legends. Expect to hear more about the game in the weeks and months ahead. You can sign up to playtest Project Loki on Theorycraft's website. 

There's something so satisfying about finally getting to play the game you love on your console of choice. Rail shooter, Air Twister, is the latest video game to make the jump, with ININ Games announcing it will be released on PS4 and PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PC. Air Twister first came on the scene in 2022 exclusively for Apple Arcade. 

Air Twister is the brainchild of Yu Suzuki, who designed classic hits like Out Run, Virtua Fighter and Space Harrier, and follows Princess Arch on a mission to prevent her planet's total destruction (no pressure). Suzuki credits Air Twister as a twist on a game he first thought of in the 80s but wasn't possible to create with the technology of the time. It features 12 unique stages and ten alien bosses — including a clock and candelabra that look straight out of Beauty and the Beast. You can choose from modes such as Boss Rush, Arcade and Turbo as you explore a series of minigames and unlock new challenges through the Adventure Map, all with the backdrop of new and rerecorded songs from Dutch composer Valensia.

You'll have to wait until November 10th to help Princess Arch defend her planet from invaders on your PC or console. Until then, Air Twister is still available on Apple Arcade for iOS and Mac users.