THQ Nordic will host a digital game showcase on August 12th

THQ Nordic will host its second annual digital showcase on August 12th, the publisher announced on Wednesday. The company said it would announce new games as well as share updates on previously announced ones during the event, with the entire proceedings available to watch via Twitch, Steam and YouTube starting at 3PM ET. 

Based on the trailer the company shared, fans can look forward to updates on SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake and Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed, among other titles. With the Entertainment Software Association not moving forward with an E3 this year, it’s likely more publishers will soon announce similar events timed for the summer months of the year. In announcing its showcase so early and months after the traditional start of E3, it’s likely the company wants to create a space for itself where it doesn’t have to compete with bigger publishers like Microsoft and Sony for attention.

ESPN will air tonight’s Nets and Knicks game with decade-spanning classic graphics

On November 1st, 1946, the Toronto Huskies and New York Knicks played what is now considered the first game in NBA history. With the league celebrating its 75th birthday this season, ESPN hopes to take fans on a trip down memory lane.When the Brooklyn …

MLB is turning to an electronic pitch-calling system to fight cheating

For well over a century, baseball catchers have signaled pitches with their fingers, but that could soon become a thing of the past in the big leagues. Major League Baseball has approved the use of a system that will allow catchers to send directions to their pitchers electronically.

The PitchCom system centers around a sleeve catchers wear on their forearm. They can press buttons to identify the pitch type and location. The pitcher hears the call through a bone conduction listening device. The channels are encrypted and teams can program codewords to replace terms like “fastball” or “curveball.”

According to the Associated Press, MLB is providing every team with three transmitters, 10 receivers and a charging case for the system, which works in Spanish and English. Teams can use one transmitter and up to five receivers at any time. Along with catchers and pitchers, three other fielders can use a receiver, which is tucked inside the cap. The devices can only be used on the field during games — not in clubhouses, bullpens or dugouts.

PitchCom is optional and teams can still use traditional hand signals if they wish. Around half of MLB teams are said to have expressed interest in using PitchCom. Some players tested the system during spring training and it was broadly well-received, as ESPN reports.

“I think it can be beneficial when it comes to August, September and October and you’re pushing towards the playoffs, with all the scouts in the stands and eyes on you trying to decipher what you’re throwing,” Chicago White Sox pitcher Dallas Keuchel said. “It’ll be nice not to have to go through several sets of signs.”

The tech could help teams ward off the threat of sign stealing by their opponents, an issue that has hung over the sport for the last several years. The Houston Astros were infamously caught stealing signs using a camera and monitors during their run to the 2017 World Series title. Teams have even been accused of using fitness trackers to signal the opposing catcher’s pitch calls. Widespread adoption of PitchCom could eliminate such attempts at cheating and help speed up games.

Meanwhile, the creators of PitchCom are working on a version of the system that will provide visual indicators of pitch calls. That’s expected to be available next year.

PitchCom
PitchCom Sports

‘Ghost Recon Breakpoint’ won’t receive any more updates

Ubisoft says Ghost Recon Breakpoint will no longer receive content updates, leaving the tactical shooter essentially frozen in time. In the last few months, the developers added a mode called Operation Motherland and a bunch of items. In all, Ubisoft released 11 content updates for Breakpoint. The publisher will keep the servers for both that game and its predecessor Ghost Recon Wildlands online for the foreseeable future.

Breakpoint wasn’t well received when it was released in October 2019. Ubisoft swiftly went into damage control mode to resolve some of the bugs and stability issues in the weeks after release. However, the game’s perhaps best known these days for being home to Ubisoft’s first rollout of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

In December, the publisher announced plans to add NFTs (though it calls them “Digits”) to its games through the Quartz platform. The news didn’t go over well with players or employees, many of whom cited concerns about the environmental impact of NFTs and accused Ubisoft of trying to milk more money from consumers.

Breakpoint was the first target of the NFT project. Ubisoft gave away Digits to players, including gun skins with small, barely noticeable serial numbers. Players didn’t exactly flock to buy them on secondary markets, though. An Ubisoft executive claimed in January that players could benefit from having a secondary market for in-game items, “but they don’t get it for now.”

“Thank you to all Ghost Recon Breakpoint players who claimed their first Digits,” a message on the Quartz site reads. “You own a piece of the game and have left your mark in its history. As the last Digit for Ghost Recon Breakpoint was released on 3/17/2022, stay tuned for more updates with features to the platform and future drops coming with other games!”

Bringing development on Breakpoint to an end at this point isn’t a massive surprise. It wasn’t exactly designed to last as a live service title for many years, and Ubisoft is well-known for churning out sequels to its core franchises. 

Still, the move will severely diminish the perceived value of Breakpoint‘s NFTs. It’s unlikely that interest in Breakpoint will increase in the future, which will make it more difficult for Digits owners to sell them. Holders of the NFT items won’t be able to transfer them to other titles either, leaving them in possession of in-game goods with little real-world value.

Even though Breakpoint is on life support, the Ghost Recon brand isn’t going away anytime soon. In October, Ubisoft announced a free-to-play battle royale title called Ghost Recon Frontline.

The entire ‘Next Generation’ cast will appear in ‘Star Trek: Picard’ season three

The entire* principal cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation will appear on the third and final season of Picard. Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner, who have already featured in the series, will be joined by LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden a…

Hackers swipe nearly $600 million from a ‘play to earn’ crypto game

Digital thieves just pulled off another major crypto heist. Motherboard has learned hackers stole 173,600 Ethereum (about $591.2 million) from the Ronin blockchain that powers Axie Infinity, a popular “play to earn” game where players can receive crypto in exchange for playing and paying some starting costs. The perpetrators reportedly exploited a backdoor in a Remote Procedure Call node from Axie creator Sky Mavis to get a signature, letting them “forge fake withdrawals” using compromised private keys.

Sky blamed the flaw on a holdover from the fall. The firm asked for help from the Axie DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to handle free transactions and help cope with an “immense user load” in November. The move let Sky sign transactions on the DAO’s behalf until December, but the access wasn’t revoked after that point.

The company has responded by ‘pausing’ the Ronin bridge to close off avenues of attack, and has temporarily disabled the Katana decentralized exchange. It hoped to minimize near-term damage by increasing the threshold necessary for validation, but also said it was in the middle of a node migration that would leave the old system behind. Sky intends to track the stolen Ethereum with help from Chainalysis, and is contacting security teams at “major” crypto exchanges.

The theft compounds existing worries for Sky. Motherboard notes Axie Infinity has suffered from plummeting values for its NFTs and tokens in recent months, prompting reforms in a bid to keep the game afloat. An incident like could easily make things worse by not only starving the game of much-needed funds, but rattling the confidence of players.