Good news everyone! Our multi-billionaire corporate overlords are adding policies to REDUCE privacy-invading tracking. Grandpa Google, Father Facebook, Auntie Amazon, all is forgiven!

Specifically, Google is limiting the sharing of user data with third parties across different applications. Altruistic wholesomeness out of the kindness of their own heart or shrewd attempt to increase value of it’s own data collection? You be the judge.

Apple has enacted similar changes with it’s app store, though Mama Meta would get a little nervous, claiming it could cost the company $10 billion in revenue. Thank God the folks at Meta turned out to be wrong, some good news followed the policy enactment… Meta lost $232 billion from their market cap that day! A 26% loss! … I didn’t say it was good news for them.

On a brighter note (for Facebook this time), they seem on much better terms with Google’s use of these policies based on Graham Mudd’s statements on Twitter (VP of product marketing at Facebook). Google has also admitted the existing agreements regarding technologies will last for 2 years, likely to allow more preparation time for the various parent companies of different platforms.

“[It is] encouraging to see this long-term, collaborative approach to privacy-protective personalized advertising from Google […] We look forward to continued work with them and the industry on privacy-enhancing tech through industry groups”. – Graham Mudd: Vice president of product marketing, ads and business.

Google’s super computer collaboration with Nvidia has also lead to suggestions that data collection may not be as necessary with regards to research purposes.

What are the results or upcoming effects? Well, in spite of my earlier flippancy and joy at The Hashtag Big Tech Masterminds taking a little financial blow, the new policies unfortunately mean third parties and smaller start-up businesses (LIKE US) also somewhat lose out on better advertising opportunities to customers, which means fewer avenues of financial success.

The card-carrying commie in me is saying “okay, then let’s eat the rich and radically distribute ourselves like a Mario Party mechanic”! On the other hand, that would only work if whoever gets their hands on that money doesn’t end up defaulting to a “greed is good” mindset once the greenback starts flowing… In other news, we live in a society!

Voucher Codes:

The post Google and Facebook! Policy Changes + VOUCHERS first appeared on Get2Gaming.

It’s good to be back! I swear, you turn your back from blogs for one week and BOOM! Wordle becomes a thing, Sifu drops, Uncharted drops, it’s a veritable dropping factory as far as things to cover go!

Wordle is a new free game accessible via Facebook and Messenger. Aim of the game is that every day, you get 4 or 5 guesses to what the word of the day is. The correct letters in a certain order light up if you get close enough and BOOM: Grammar nazis everywhere finally have a socially acceptable reason to mock “there” mates for using “they’re” incorrectly! Bob’s your uncle, fanny’s your aunt!

Wordle has recently been bought out by The New York Times for a ‘seven figure sum‘ due to it’s success, so needless to say, things are good for the devs (I hope).

How did Wordle ‘Destroy’ A Criminal? Sit down and strap-on, it’s story time!

CBS has recently covered the  attempted kidnapping of Denyse Holt (no relations to Raymond, or this would’ve been a much different story). The kidnapper broke into her home stark-bollock naked with a pair of scissors, forcing Ms Holt around the house while clipping phone wires and taking any nearby knives. He also forced her to take a bath with him, but as far as I’m aware, no other physical harm came to Ms Holt.

Sometime later, Holt’s daughter Meredith was concerned that something may have happened to her Mum when she realised she hadn’t sent her her daily Wordle update in the morning. This lead to friends and family calling the police and SWAT once they found out Ms Holt wasn’t reading any messages and BOOM, she was saved by the fuzz 17 hours later.

Ms Holt is safe and the criminal has been apprehended.

What took me so long… Don’t know how much detail I can go into, but the short version is: My colleagues and I took part in a sort of ‘beta test’ for lack of a better word for an upcoming collaborative project with Go2Games and others.

What on God’s Green Earth Possessed You To Write About This Serious Topic So Flippantly: I love me some dark humour, but even I’ll admit this probably wasn’t the best thing to re-debut with. A good friend of mine is basically a Wordle weeb, but by the time I wrote out my jokes in the first half… Well… Made my bed, may as well lay in it- TO THE PRODUCT POEMS:

Cities. I’m hustling and bustling while bussy be bussin. “Daaaamn, Barbie“!

There’s an AMIIBO from Tazmilly Village. With magic so strong, he could pillage! With a thrust and some thunder from somewhere down-under, he caught a glimpse of Lottie’s cleavage.

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The post Wordle DESTROYS Criminal with GRAMMAR and LOGIC! first appeared on Get2Gaming.

PT still stings. The playable teaser for a new Silent hill game, Directed by the dream duo of Hideo Kojima and Guilermo Del Toro, was released unannounced onto the playstation store, and was an instant classic. Unfortunately this was then followed near immediately by the news that Kojima was leaving Komani after Metal gear solid 5, and that the game was canceled. Obviously Kojima would late go on to re-use a lot of the ideas he had for the Cancelled Silent Hills in death Stranding, but as of now the silent hill franchise is still in limbo.

With no way to play PT itself anymore, the game having been pulled from the PlayStation store a few years back, enterprising reddit User ROBYER1 took it upon themselves to re-create the games iconic hallway for VR. Using a free 3d modeling software called blender, ROBYER1 then ported the model to be used as a virtual home for the Oculus quest from facebook. If you have the space in your home you can even use roomscale to fully explore the environment.

P.T. Hallway from Silent Hills in Meta/Oculus Quest as a Custom VR Home! (Link in comments) from silenthill

This is just a re-creation of the area, and you cannot complete the original games puzzles or gain access to the secret trailer that was hidden at the end of the experience. However, ROBYER1 has said there are some hidden secrets arround the map for enterprising players to find if they go looking.

This map will not work natively on Occulus quest, and needs to be sideloaded onto the headset though the use of the program “sidequest”.

Its hard to think that Silent hills would not have been a huge success had it come out, given how enduringly iconic PT is to this day. As of now, konami hasnt said anything on the subject of silent hill for a while outside of the ever-present pachinko machines that make up most of Konami’s output for their classic franchises these days. There have been whispers of Komani Licensing the franchise to some third party developers to make their own take on the series, but as of right now nothing has been firmly announced.

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The post You can explore PT As part of Oculus first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Now, you know me. Co-op gaming with the lads IS my crack pipe!

So imagine my surprise when Facebook Gaming released a free-to-play Pac-Man game that not only features gameplay with up to four players, but also a Mario Maker-like maze creation mode! The game is Pac-Man Community.

Speaking of which, have a butcher’s here if you want to check out our Mario games available. Signing up to our newsletter gets you a discount. And stay to the end of this article for a cheeky little Pac-Man shaped surprise!

In addition to the modes mentioned above, there is also a Watch Tab option, letting players spectate the creators playing the game. This mode lets you optionally take control of Pac-Man or the ghosts if you’re feeling adventurous! It’s good to hear Pac-Man Community has built-in social mechanics, partly for accessibility, partly for the sake of the Facebook boomers that post Messenger texts on their wall by accident!

But for those of you who are more into the competitive scene, don’t you worry mon petit bourgeois! Nintendo Switch Online subscribers can play Pac-Man 99, a Battle Royale take on the classic game.

“Gaming is a big part of the metaverse, and I’m looking forward to seeing games like this get more interactive and immersive” – Mark Zuckerberg.

Click here if you want to give Pac-Man Community a try for yourself!

The Vaguely-Related Questionably-Inserted Product Power Hour: Now, if you’re clicking on this, you’re probably into Pac-Man, and if you’re into Pac-Man, you probably like other retro old-school games from the days of dial-up being the peak of technological brilliance. Well, we have not one, but TWO My Arcade mini gaming consoles. My Arcade is not literally my arcade (I wish), it’s essentially a portable console that has a specific retro game or games ported to it, letting you get stuck into some good ol’ 8-bit goodness while on the go. We’ve got My Arcades for Karate Champion and Pixel Classic (containing over 300 games). Must-haves for collectors or anyone who’s interested in the preservation of The History of The Gaming Canon TM LTD PhD MBE FBI CIA L.O.L.

For making it this far, here’s a treat:

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The post Pac-Man Fans Make Facebook Wholesome! first appeared on Get2Gaming.

That’s right folks, between the Minecraft storymodes (psst, we got some cool Minecrafterooneys here), that one Carmen Sandiego special, Bandersnatch and the League of Legends adaptation Arcane (more on that here), Netflix states plans to make games accessible for the App Store and IOS. For a little catch-up, we have some backstory on Netflix’s own recent gaming service for Android users.

There may be some push-back, as tech reporter for Bloomberg Mark Gurman has pointed out the App Store’s primary policy being against letting third-party companies make their own gaming hubs in the store. And don’t even get me started on the Fortnite-Chinese store debacle or the play store legalese that became the impetus for a 1984-style ad on the topic by Epic Games.

Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Google Stadia have also tried (and currently failed) to appeal to Apple, but as of yet, the only way way these services have gotten to work is via Cloud-based gaming services, like how Facebook (possibly soon to be Meta) has a bunch of accessible mini-games of varying quality you can play with friends on Messenger. I like Words with Friends and the basketball hoopy-shooty-woosh-dunkery one.

Gurman has gone on to state that despite Netflix’s games being playable via the in-app login, it can’t be downloaded from the app itself. You’ll have to get it from the app store first, then log into Netflix. For Android games, Netflix’s gaming system functions this way for the Google Play Store.

“Apple will need to change its rules or grant Netflix an exemption” […] “That leaves the ultimate success of Netflix’s service in the hands of Apple, a longtime partner but also a growing rival.” – Mark Gurman

The Funtime Netflix Recommendation Hole: Because I’ve heard many a sad tale from friends of mine complaining they ran out of stuff to watch on Netflix, so here’s some recommendations for anyone using Netflix UK, or anyone who’s international and uses Nord VPN or the like.

1. White Tiger (Netflix Original): A shrewd young man from a poor family uses his wit and intellect to rise to incredible wealth. A darkly funny and emotionally raw exploration of class struggles and inequalities. Think Wolf of Wallstreet but double the wolf (or tiger rather) and half the Wallstreet.
2. Inside Job (Netflix Original): What if every single majorly insane conspiracy theory (besides the Flat-Earther’s) was real and kept under wraps by a corrupt government? Boom! Quirky adult sitcom fun times written and produced by Gravity Falls creators Shion Takeuchi and Alex Hirsch! I especially liked the episode parodying James Bond that also acted as a critique of toxic masculinity and incel culture. For a breakdown on the Incel crowd, have a butcher’s at the video by Contrapoints on the topic.
3. Om Shanti Om: My very first Bollywood experience and a welcomed one! You know how a lot of JoJo fans (myself occasionally included) point to all the weird wacky plot points without context in a non-sequitur jokey way which leads to a “you gotta see it to believe it” method of encouragement? Om Shanti is basically THAT for Bollywood, so I won’t go too in-depth on the plot, but I will say it is a hilarious and beautiful watch alone or with friends. Overcome the one-inch-high barrier that is subtitles and you’re in for a world of fun.

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The post Netflix Plans for App Store and IOS Games + Recommendations first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg believes that the Oculus VR will change the way we communicate

As well as having a pretty huge presence at E3 this year, Oculus VR have very recently announced it’s controllers and retail iteration. Mark Zuckerberg, who is CEO of Oculus’ parent company Facebook, has stated that the headset is just the beginning of VR technology. He feels that virtual reality will grow to become a part of every day communication.

Zuckerberg took a question, in a Facebook Q & A, on how he feels the world will look like in 10 years time. In responding, he said that Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR came about initially because he is convinced that this technology will change the way we all communicate and compute.

“We’re working on VR because I think it’s the next major computing and communication platform after phones,” he said. “In the future we’ll probably still carry phones in our pockets, but I think we’ll also have glasses on our faces that can help us out throughout the day and give us the ability to share our experiences with those we love in completely immersive and new ways that aren’t possible today.”

In addition, Zuckerberg talked about his company’s research into artificial intelligence, and mentioned how Facebook is focusing on language and image interpretation to make personalized internet experiences more effective and, more importantly, possible.

The post Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg on Oculus VR first appeared on Get2Gaming.