Atari has completed the acquisition of its long-standing rival Intellivision, bringing a decades-long games industry battle to an end.

The buyout includes the rights to the Intellivision brand as well as more than 200 back catalog games. 

Atari hopes to make the most of commercial opportunities from its former rival, pushing digital and physical distribution of legacy Intellivision titles, as well as being open to new releases and licensing agreements, as stated in the company press release. 

Atari and Intellivision have been at loggerheads since the late 1970s, continuing their intense rivalry through the 1980s and the ensuing decades. However, both brands are very different in the digital age compared to their halcyon days. 

“Uniting Atari and Intellivision after 45 years ends the longest running console war in history,”  declared Mike Mika, Studio Head at Digital Eclipse, an Atari-owned game studio most recently known for its retro ports.

Wade Rosen, Chairman and CEO of Atari, noted the “very rare opportunity to unite former competitors and bring together fans of Atari, Intellivision, and the golden age of gaming.”

In recent years, Intellivision attempted to launch a new console, the Amico, which will remain as a standalone entity. After funding problems, the impact of the pandemic and now a takeover, Amico will be part of a limited Intellivision rebrand as it starts a new chapter in a different guise. 

Atari will grant certain licensing properties to the successor brand to feature Intellivision games on the console.

 Phil Adam, CEO of Intellivision, described Atari as a “valuable partner”, adding “we have every confidence they will be a responsible steward of the storied Intellivision brand.”

IGN Entertainment, owned by Ziff Davis, has now bought the entire Gamer Network of brands, which includes at least four of the highest-profile gaming sites left alive in the space, and stakes in others.

The purchase includes Eurogamer, GamesIndustry.biz, Rock Paper Shotgun and VG247. Then, shares in Outside Xbox, Digital Foundry, Nintendolife, PushSquare, Pure Xbox and Time Extension. The move has already resulted in significant “redundancy” layoffs of acclaimed journalists across the brands as they are absorbed into the mega-site.

While consolidation is generally not great in any industry, game journalism is especially struggling and moves like this are only going to make things worse. Mid-level or smaller sites are already fighting against YouTube and Twitch, and for visibility against Google’s increasingly actively hostile search policies (which now include AI rip-offs of their articles as of last week), but now you have a site like IGN owning five major brands that can populate the entire link list for a given topic, in theory.

While this is just the latest move, we have other, similar ones in the past. Fandom bought GameSpot, Giant Bomb and even Metacritic, the all-improtant aggregator, back in 2022. The Gamur network has over a dozen publications including Destructoid, The Escapist, Gamepur and Twinfinite.

There are some big-name sites that are relatively standalone, or at least the only gaming site in their network. Polygon seems like the healthiest, perhapps, while something like Kotaku seems constantly on death’s door with a skeleton staff trying to fight against its poor private equity management. Elsewhere, there are major brands like the New York Times and Forbes (hey that’s me) in the gaming space, covering the massive industry that make it harder for smaller sites to compete. But even there, there are problems. The Washington Post recently culled almost its entire gaming vertical, cut down to more or less one guy (hi Gene).

There is also the public war against game journalists by in part, the “anti-woke” crowd who believes the progressive-leaning outlets are going extinct because of allegedly activist takes. And there are also console fanboys who are constantly ripping outlets for allegedly favoring one piece of hardware or another, or lambasting them for “inconsistent opinions” across dozens of writers who have diverse viewpoints. In short, when you bring up the layoffs and general destruction of the industry, the reaction from gamers is often a disheartening “good, they deserve it.”

It's almost all bad news. Many former bigger names in the space have either fled to PR, game development itself or have fashioned their own independent entities like Kinda Funny Games or the recently-formed Aftermath. Others have realized that you yourself sort of need to be a “brand” with a big social media presence, a paywalled newsletter or your own YouTube/Twitch space to draw a consistent audience (this essentially what I’ve done the last few years especially).

It's hard to see this getting better. I feel for my colleagues who are enduring this sort of thing essentially every month at this point, and I feel like the recent Google AI push especially is the Mad Max dust storm on the horizon poised to blow everyone away for good. God help us all.

Sony has said it has launched an investigation after a ransomware group claimed to have breached the company’s systems.

Cyber Security Connect reported that a ransomware group calling itself Ransomed.vc claimed it had breached Sony Group and threatened to sell stolen data.

“We have successfully compromissed [sic] all of sony systems,” Ransomed.vc claimed on both on the clear and dark nets, as reported by Cyber Security Connect. “We won’t ransom them! We will sell the data. Due to Sony not wanting to pay. DATA IS FOR SALE.”

While the claims are unverified at this stage, Cyber Security Connect said Ransomed.vc posted proof-of-hack data that includes screenshots of an internal log-in page, an internal PowerPoint presentation outlining test bench details, and a number of Java files. There’s also a file tree of the entire leak, which appears to have less than 6,000 files. Cyber Security Connect described this cache of data as “small" relative to the "all of Sony systems” claim.

Ransomed.vc threatened to post the data on September 28 if no buyer is found beforehand.

In a statement issued to IGN, Sony said: “We are currently investigating the situation, and we have no further comment at this time.”

The news rekindles memories of the costly PlayStation Network hack of 2011, which saw the personal details of 77 million accounts accessed. PSN ended up offline for nearly a month, disrupting game launches and customer services.

At long last, it's nearly Starfield release time, with early access having opened on August 31. After years of tiny teasers, big reveals, leaks, and delays, it's time to get comfortable in the cockpit for the official Starfield launch.

As we've found this month, it may not be immediately clear when you can actually play Starfield. There's the date that Bethesda is actually promoting as the launch date, then there's the date when certain players get Starfield early access, then there's the date that equates to for those of us on the back third of the world timezone map. Nobody wants to miss the chance to press the big "play" button as early as possible, so check our breakdown here to be sure you know exactly when Starfield launches for you.
When is the Starfield release time?

Starfield global launch times confirming August 31 at 5pm PDT for Premium Edition and September 5 at 5 pm PDT for Standard Edition.
(Image credit: Bethesda Game Studios)

The official Starfield release time is at 5 pm Pacific on either August 31 or September 5, depending on which version you bought. Anyone who's purchased the Premium Edition or higher can begin playing on August 31. For standard edition players and those playing via Game Pass, launch day is September 5.
Here's when the Starfield launch happens (Premium and Standard Edition respectively) in other timezones:

    5 pm PDT, August 31/September 5 (Los Angeles)
    8 pm EDT, August 31/September 5 (New York)
    1 am BST, September 1/September 6 (London)
    2 am CEST, September 1/September 6 (Berlin)
    10 am AEST, September 1/September 6 (Sydney)
    12 pm NZST, September 1/September 6 (Auckland)

Bethesda has been promoting September 6 as the official launch day, as that will be the calendar date when the majority of players worldwide start playing. But the internet has no timezone, so be prepared to start seeing Starfield screenshots, gameplay, and opinions in the wild on August 31.

Some Premium Edition owners reported that Starfield didn't unlock for them on time when the "early access" period has began. A Bethesda Support account (which seems to be legit) has indicated that this is a temporary error due to the number of players and the issue seems now to have largely passed.

Whether you're making your first space jumps ASAP or cooling your jets to play on Game Pass, get prepared for the journey with our guide to all the Starfield factions you can join, all the Starfield companions you can recruit along the way, and all the Starfield traits we've seen so far.

Call of Duty is joining the growing number of online games combatting toxicity by listening to in-game voice chat, and it's using AI to assist the process. Activision announced a partnership with AI outfit Modulate to integrate its proprietary voice moderation tool—ToxMod—into Modern Warfare 2, Warzone 2, and the upcoming Modern Warfare 3.

Activision says ToxMod, which begins beta testing in North American servers today, is able to "identify in real-time and enforce against toxic speech—including hate speech, discriminatory language, harassment and more."

Modulate describes ToxMod as "the only proactive voice chat moderation solution purpose-built for games." While the official website lists a few games ToxMod is already being used in (mostly small VR games like Rec Room), Call of Duty's hundreds of thousands of daily players will likely represent the largest deployment of the tool to date.
Call of Duty's ToxMod AI will not have free rein to issue player bans. A voice chat moderation Q&A published today specifies that the AI's only job is to observe and report, not punish.
"Call of Duty’s Voice Chat Moderation system only submits reports about toxic behavior, categorized by its type of behavior and a rated level of severity based on an evolving model," the answer reads. "Activision determines how it will enforce voice chat moderation violations."

So while voice chat complaints against you will, in theory, be judged by a human before any action is taken, ToxMod looks at more than just keywords when flagging potential offenses. Modulate says its tool is unique for its ability to analyze tone and intent in speech to determine what is and isn't toxic. If you're naturally curious how that's achieved, you won't find a crystal-clear answer but you will find a lot of impressive-sounding claims (as we're used to from AI companies).

The company says its language model has put in the hours listening to speech from people with a variety of backgrounds and can accurately distinguish between malice and friendly riffing. Interestingly, Modulate's ethics policy states ToxMod "does not detect or identify the ethnicity of individual speakers," but it does "listen to conversational cues to determine how others in the conversation are reacting to the use of [certain] terms."

Terms like the n-word: "While the n-word is typically considered a vile slur, many players who identify as black or brown have reclaimed it and use it positively within their communities… If someone says the n-word and clearly offends others in the chat, that will be rated much more severely than what appears to be reclaimed usage that is incorporated naturally into a conversation."

Modulate also offers the example of harmful speech toward kids. "For instance, if we detect a prepubescent speaker in a chat, we might rate certain kinds of offenses more severely due to the risk to the child," the site reads.

In recent months, ToxMod's flagging categories have gotten even more granular. In June, Modulate introduced a "violent radicalization" category to its voice chat moderation that can flag "terms and phrases relating to white supremacist groups, radicalization, and extremism—in real-time."

The list of what ToxMod claims to be detecting here includes:

    Promotion or sharing ideology
    Recruitment or convincing others to join a group or movement
    Targeted grooming or convincing vulnerable individuals (ie, children and teens) to join a group or movement
    Planning violent actions or actively planning to commit physical violence

"Using research from groups like ADL, studies like the one conducted by NYU, current thought leadership, and conversations with folks in the gaming industry," says the company, "we've developed the category to identify signals that have a high correlation with extremist movements, even if the language itself isn't violent. (For example, 'let’s take this to Discord' could be innocent, or it could be a recruiting tactic.)"

Modulate is clearly setting its goals high, though for Call of Duty's purposes, it sounds like ToxMod will simply be the middleman between potential offenders and a human moderation team. While the machinations of AI decision-making are inherently vague, Activision says its enforcement will ultimately abide by Call of Duty's official Code of Conduct. That's not dissimilar to how Riot and Blizzard have been handling voice chat moderation in Valorant and Overwatch 2, though Riot has also been gathering voice chat data for over a year to develop its own AI language model.

ToxMod will roll out worldwide in Call of Duty at the launch of Modern Warfare 3 on November 10, starting with English-only moderation and expanding to more languages at a later date.