• « Nous avons conçu des machines intelligentes, puis demandé aux médecins d’être encore plus intelligents »

    L’intelligence artificielleest souvent saluée comme la solution aux défis les plus complexes de la médecine moderne. Qu’il s’agisse de prédire des infections chez les prématurés ou de recommander des traitements personnalisés, les outils d’IA promettent plus de précision et d’efficacité. En tant que chercheurs et médecins, nous voyons l’immense potentiel de l’IA. Mais nous constatons aussi un problème croissant : bien que l’IA soit conçue pour alléger la charge des cliniciens, elle pourrait en réalité l’aggraver. Comme nous l’avons souligné en mars dans un article publié dans le JAMA Health Forum, on demande aux médecins d’accomplir l’impossible. L’IA s’introduit dans les hôpitaux à un rythme que les réglementations ne peuvent pas suivre. Les médecins doivent décider – souvent seuls – quand se fier aux recommandations d’un algorithme et quand les rejeter. Et si le résultat est mauvais, ce sont eux qui en portent la responsabilité. Des recherches montrent que le public tend à blâmer davantage les médecins qui suivent une recommandation erronée d’IA que ceux qui suivent un avis humain fautif. Les médecins restent perçus comme les décideurs finaux, même lorsque la technologie échoue. Résultat : on demande aux médecins d’évaluer parfaitement la fiabilité d’outils qu’ils n’ont pas conçus et ne peuvent entièrement comprendre, tout en les tenant seuls responsables du résultat. Lire aussi | Intelligence artificielle et médecine : des promesses et beaucoup de questions Nous appelons cela le « dilemme surhumain du médecin ». La société attend depuis longtemps des médecins qu’ils soient infaillibles et l’IA ne fait qu’amplifier ces attentes. On demande désormais aux médecins d’interpréter instantanément des résultats algorithmiques, en naviguant entre deux risques constants : les faux positifset les faux négatifs. « Boîtes noires » Les voilà ainsi pris dans un double piège. S’ils suivent l’IA et que celle-ci se trompe, ils peuvent être blâmés pour avoir fait confiance à une machine. S’ils la rejettent et qu’un préjudice survient, ils peuvent être blâmés pour l’avoir ignorée. Cela ajoute de la pression, brouille leur jugement et érode la confiance, tant envers la technologie qu’envers eux-mêmes. Il vous reste 60.99% de cet article à lire. La suite est réservée aux abonnés.
    #nous #avons #conçu #des #machines
    « Nous avons conçu des machines intelligentes, puis demandé aux médecins d’être encore plus intelligents »
    L’intelligence artificielleest souvent saluée comme la solution aux défis les plus complexes de la médecine moderne. Qu’il s’agisse de prédire des infections chez les prématurés ou de recommander des traitements personnalisés, les outils d’IA promettent plus de précision et d’efficacité. En tant que chercheurs et médecins, nous voyons l’immense potentiel de l’IA. Mais nous constatons aussi un problème croissant : bien que l’IA soit conçue pour alléger la charge des cliniciens, elle pourrait en réalité l’aggraver. Comme nous l’avons souligné en mars dans un article publié dans le JAMA Health Forum, on demande aux médecins d’accomplir l’impossible. L’IA s’introduit dans les hôpitaux à un rythme que les réglementations ne peuvent pas suivre. Les médecins doivent décider – souvent seuls – quand se fier aux recommandations d’un algorithme et quand les rejeter. Et si le résultat est mauvais, ce sont eux qui en portent la responsabilité. Des recherches montrent que le public tend à blâmer davantage les médecins qui suivent une recommandation erronée d’IA que ceux qui suivent un avis humain fautif. Les médecins restent perçus comme les décideurs finaux, même lorsque la technologie échoue. Résultat : on demande aux médecins d’évaluer parfaitement la fiabilité d’outils qu’ils n’ont pas conçus et ne peuvent entièrement comprendre, tout en les tenant seuls responsables du résultat. Lire aussi | Intelligence artificielle et médecine : des promesses et beaucoup de questions Nous appelons cela le « dilemme surhumain du médecin ». La société attend depuis longtemps des médecins qu’ils soient infaillibles et l’IA ne fait qu’amplifier ces attentes. On demande désormais aux médecins d’interpréter instantanément des résultats algorithmiques, en naviguant entre deux risques constants : les faux positifset les faux négatifs. « Boîtes noires » Les voilà ainsi pris dans un double piège. S’ils suivent l’IA et que celle-ci se trompe, ils peuvent être blâmés pour avoir fait confiance à une machine. S’ils la rejettent et qu’un préjudice survient, ils peuvent être blâmés pour l’avoir ignorée. Cela ajoute de la pression, brouille leur jugement et érode la confiance, tant envers la technologie qu’envers eux-mêmes. Il vous reste 60.99% de cet article à lire. La suite est réservée aux abonnés. #nous #avons #conçu #des #machines
    WWW.LEMONDE.FR
    « Nous avons conçu des machines intelligentes, puis demandé aux médecins d’être encore plus intelligents »
    L’intelligence artificielle (IA) est souvent saluée comme la solution aux défis les plus complexes de la médecine moderne. Qu’il s’agisse de prédire des infections chez les prématurés ou de recommander des traitements personnalisés, les outils d’IA promettent plus de précision et d’efficacité. En tant que chercheurs et médecins, nous voyons l’immense potentiel de l’IA. Mais nous constatons aussi un problème croissant : bien que l’IA soit conçue pour alléger la charge des cliniciens, elle pourrait en réalité l’aggraver. Comme nous l’avons souligné en mars dans un article publié dans le JAMA Health Forum, on demande aux médecins d’accomplir l’impossible. L’IA s’introduit dans les hôpitaux à un rythme que les réglementations ne peuvent pas suivre. Les médecins doivent décider – souvent seuls – quand se fier aux recommandations d’un algorithme et quand les rejeter. Et si le résultat est mauvais, ce sont eux qui en portent la responsabilité. Des recherches montrent que le public tend à blâmer davantage les médecins qui suivent une recommandation erronée d’IA que ceux qui suivent un avis humain fautif. Les médecins restent perçus comme les décideurs finaux, même lorsque la technologie échoue. Résultat : on demande aux médecins d’évaluer parfaitement la fiabilité d’outils qu’ils n’ont pas conçus et ne peuvent entièrement comprendre, tout en les tenant seuls responsables du résultat. Lire aussi | Intelligence artificielle et médecine : des promesses et beaucoup de questions Nous appelons cela le « dilemme surhumain du médecin ». La société attend depuis longtemps des médecins qu’ils soient infaillibles et l’IA ne fait qu’amplifier ces attentes. On demande désormais aux médecins d’interpréter instantanément des résultats algorithmiques, en naviguant entre deux risques constants : les faux positifs (faire confiance à une IA défectueuse) et les faux négatifs (rejeter une IA fiable). « Boîtes noires » Les voilà ainsi pris dans un double piège. S’ils suivent l’IA et que celle-ci se trompe, ils peuvent être blâmés pour avoir fait confiance à une machine. S’ils la rejettent et qu’un préjudice survient, ils peuvent être blâmés pour l’avoir ignorée. Cela ajoute de la pression, brouille leur jugement et érode la confiance, tant envers la technologie qu’envers eux-mêmes. Il vous reste 60.99% de cet article à lire. La suite est réservée aux abonnés.
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  • Amazon Fire Sticks enable “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy

    Enders Analysis

    Amazon Fire Sticks enable “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy

    Research firm blames outdated DRM tech, Facebook ads, Amazon hardware, and more.

    Scharon Harding



    May 30, 2025 5:18 pm

    |

    114

    An Amazon Fire Stick and remote.

    Credit:

    Amazon

    An Amazon Fire Stick and remote.

    Credit:

    Amazon

    Story text

    Size

    Small
    Standard
    Large

    Width
    *

    Standard
    Wide

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    * Subscribers only
      Learn more

    Amazon Fire Sticks are enabling “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy, according to a report today from Enders Analysis, a media, entertainment, and telecommunications research firm. Technologies from other media conglomerates, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, are also enabling what the report’s authors deem an “industrial scale of theft."
    The report, "Video piracy: Big tech is clearly unwilling to address the problem," focuses on the European market but highlights the global growth of piracy of streaming services as they increasingly acquire rights to live programs, like sporting events.
    Per the BBC, the report points to the availability of multiple, simultaneous illegal streams for big events that draw tens of thousands of pirate viewers.
    Enders' report places some blame on Facebook for showing advertisements for access to illegal streams, as well as Google and Microsoft for the alleged “continued depreciation” of their digital rights managementsystems, Widevine and PlayReady, respectively. Ars Technica reached out to Facebook, Google, and Microsoft for comment but didn’t receive a response before publication.
    The report echoes complaints shared throughout the industry, including by the world’s largest European soccer streamer, DAZN. Streaming piracy is “almost a crisis for the sports rights industry,” DAZN’s head of global rights, Tom Burrows, said at The Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit in February. At the same event, Nick Herm, COO of Comcast-owned European telecommunication firm Sky Group, estimated that piracy was costing his company “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenue. At the time, Enders co-founder Claire Enders said that the pirating of sporting events accounts for “about 50 percent of most markets.”
    Jailbroken Fire Sticks
    Friday's Enders report named Fire Sticks as a significant contributor to streaming piracy, calling the hardware a “piracy enabler.”
    Enders’ report pointed to security risks that pirate viewers face, including providing credit card information and email addresses to unknown entities, which can make people vulnerable to phishing and malware. However, reports of phishing and malware stemming from streaming piracy, which occurs through various methods besides a Fire TV Stick, seem to be rather limited.

    Still, at the February Financial Times event, Herm said that Fire Sticks account “for about half of the piracy in the UK.”
    “People think that because it’s a legitimate brand, it must be OK. So they give their credit card details to criminal gangs. Amazon is not engaging with us as much as we’d like," he said.
    In the UK, there has been a push to crack down on illegal usage of Fire Sticks. For example, in November 2024, a man received a three-year, four-month sentence for hacking Fire Sticks. In June 2024, another man got a two-year suspended sentence after a police raid found jailbroken Fire Sticks in his home. In the US, however, there aren’t nearly as many publicized efforts to combat illegal streaming on Amazon devices.
    While Enders’ report accuses Amazon of contributing to the piracy problem, as the owner of its own streaming service, Prime Video, Amazon has an incentive to fight piracy. Amazon’s streaming business includes selling streaming hardware, but the business is more centered on getting people to sign up for Amazon services, data collection, and ad sales.
    When reached for comment, an Amazon spokesperson told Ars Technica:
    Pirated content violates our policies regarding intellectual property rights and compromises the security and privacy of our customers. We work with industry partners and relevant authorities to combat piracy and protect customers from the risks associated with pirated content. Our Appstore prohibits apps that infringe upon the rights of third parties, and we warn customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources.
    Amazon’s representative also told Ars that Amazon works with industry partners to break up piracy networks and has assisted law enforcement efforts, including the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit in London and UK IP Crime Group.

    DRM limitations
    Enders’ report also blamed poorly updated DRM systems, especially from Google and Microsoft, for contributing to streaming piracy. Google’s Widevine and Microsoft’s PlayReady "are now compromised across various security levels,” the report said, pointing to a lack of upkeep. Microsoft issued its most recent big update to PlayReady, version 4.6, in December 2022.
    The report authors wrote:
    Over twenty years since launch, the DRM solutions provided by Google and Microsoft are in steep decline.
    A complete overhaul of the technology architecture, licensing, and support model is needed. Lack of engagement with content owners indicates this a low priority.
    Outside of Enders' report, Google was criticized by the Italian government earlier this year for allegedly failing to block pirate websites identified by Italy’s communication regulator, AGCOM. In March, the Court of Milan ordered Google to poison its public DNS servers with the goal of blocking illegal soccer streams.
    And beyond the aforementioned tech giants, earlier this month, France ordered five VPN providersto block illegal sports streaming sites. Unsurprisingly, the move has been slammed by VPN providers as setting “a dangerous precedent," per i2Coalition, an Internet infrastructure trade association that manages the international VPN Trust Initiative consortium of VPN providers.
    A growing problem
    As the Internet solidifies its position as the primary method for watching shows, movies, and, increasingly, live events, it presents new challenges to content distributors and owners seeking to curb online piracy.
    In the case of sports, especially, the distribution of sports rights across various linear networks and streaming services often means signing up for multiple services in order to watch a single team’s season. For some fans—including NFL players themselves—that's financially and/or logistically impractical. Simultaneously, anti-piracy advocates argue that piracy could lead to higher subscription fees for streaming services.
    As legislation and rights holders become more stringent about piracy, we can expect more effort from tech providers and law enforcement to block piracy, while hackers also seek new ways to enable illegal streams.

    Scharon Harding
    Senior Technology Reporter

    Scharon Harding
    Senior Technology Reporter

    Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

    114 Comments
    #amazon #fire #sticks #enable #billions
    Amazon Fire Sticks enable “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy
    Enders Analysis Amazon Fire Sticks enable “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy Research firm blames outdated DRM tech, Facebook ads, Amazon hardware, and more. Scharon Harding – May 30, 2025 5:18 pm | 114 An Amazon Fire Stick and remote. Credit: Amazon An Amazon Fire Stick and remote. Credit: Amazon Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Amazon Fire Sticks are enabling “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy, according to a report today from Enders Analysis, a media, entertainment, and telecommunications research firm. Technologies from other media conglomerates, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, are also enabling what the report’s authors deem an “industrial scale of theft." The report, "Video piracy: Big tech is clearly unwilling to address the problem," focuses on the European market but highlights the global growth of piracy of streaming services as they increasingly acquire rights to live programs, like sporting events. Per the BBC, the report points to the availability of multiple, simultaneous illegal streams for big events that draw tens of thousands of pirate viewers. Enders' report places some blame on Facebook for showing advertisements for access to illegal streams, as well as Google and Microsoft for the alleged “continued depreciation” of their digital rights managementsystems, Widevine and PlayReady, respectively. Ars Technica reached out to Facebook, Google, and Microsoft for comment but didn’t receive a response before publication. The report echoes complaints shared throughout the industry, including by the world’s largest European soccer streamer, DAZN. Streaming piracy is “almost a crisis for the sports rights industry,” DAZN’s head of global rights, Tom Burrows, said at The Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit in February. At the same event, Nick Herm, COO of Comcast-owned European telecommunication firm Sky Group, estimated that piracy was costing his company “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenue. At the time, Enders co-founder Claire Enders said that the pirating of sporting events accounts for “about 50 percent of most markets.” Jailbroken Fire Sticks Friday's Enders report named Fire Sticks as a significant contributor to streaming piracy, calling the hardware a “piracy enabler.” Enders’ report pointed to security risks that pirate viewers face, including providing credit card information and email addresses to unknown entities, which can make people vulnerable to phishing and malware. However, reports of phishing and malware stemming from streaming piracy, which occurs through various methods besides a Fire TV Stick, seem to be rather limited. Still, at the February Financial Times event, Herm said that Fire Sticks account “for about half of the piracy in the UK.” “People think that because it’s a legitimate brand, it must be OK. So they give their credit card details to criminal gangs. Amazon is not engaging with us as much as we’d like," he said. In the UK, there has been a push to crack down on illegal usage of Fire Sticks. For example, in November 2024, a man received a three-year, four-month sentence for hacking Fire Sticks. In June 2024, another man got a two-year suspended sentence after a police raid found jailbroken Fire Sticks in his home. In the US, however, there aren’t nearly as many publicized efforts to combat illegal streaming on Amazon devices. While Enders’ report accuses Amazon of contributing to the piracy problem, as the owner of its own streaming service, Prime Video, Amazon has an incentive to fight piracy. Amazon’s streaming business includes selling streaming hardware, but the business is more centered on getting people to sign up for Amazon services, data collection, and ad sales. When reached for comment, an Amazon spokesperson told Ars Technica: Pirated content violates our policies regarding intellectual property rights and compromises the security and privacy of our customers. We work with industry partners and relevant authorities to combat piracy and protect customers from the risks associated with pirated content. Our Appstore prohibits apps that infringe upon the rights of third parties, and we warn customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources. Amazon’s representative also told Ars that Amazon works with industry partners to break up piracy networks and has assisted law enforcement efforts, including the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit in London and UK IP Crime Group. DRM limitations Enders’ report also blamed poorly updated DRM systems, especially from Google and Microsoft, for contributing to streaming piracy. Google’s Widevine and Microsoft’s PlayReady "are now compromised across various security levels,” the report said, pointing to a lack of upkeep. Microsoft issued its most recent big update to PlayReady, version 4.6, in December 2022. The report authors wrote: Over twenty years since launch, the DRM solutions provided by Google and Microsoft are in steep decline. A complete overhaul of the technology architecture, licensing, and support model is needed. Lack of engagement with content owners indicates this a low priority. Outside of Enders' report, Google was criticized by the Italian government earlier this year for allegedly failing to block pirate websites identified by Italy’s communication regulator, AGCOM. In March, the Court of Milan ordered Google to poison its public DNS servers with the goal of blocking illegal soccer streams. And beyond the aforementioned tech giants, earlier this month, France ordered five VPN providersto block illegal sports streaming sites. Unsurprisingly, the move has been slammed by VPN providers as setting “a dangerous precedent," per i2Coalition, an Internet infrastructure trade association that manages the international VPN Trust Initiative consortium of VPN providers. A growing problem As the Internet solidifies its position as the primary method for watching shows, movies, and, increasingly, live events, it presents new challenges to content distributors and owners seeking to curb online piracy. In the case of sports, especially, the distribution of sports rights across various linear networks and streaming services often means signing up for multiple services in order to watch a single team’s season. For some fans—including NFL players themselves—that's financially and/or logistically impractical. Simultaneously, anti-piracy advocates argue that piracy could lead to higher subscription fees for streaming services. As legislation and rights holders become more stringent about piracy, we can expect more effort from tech providers and law enforcement to block piracy, while hackers also seek new ways to enable illegal streams. Scharon Harding Senior Technology Reporter Scharon Harding Senior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 114 Comments #amazon #fire #sticks #enable #billions
    ARSTECHNICA.COM
    Amazon Fire Sticks enable “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy
    Enders Analysis Amazon Fire Sticks enable “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy Research firm blames outdated DRM tech, Facebook ads, Amazon hardware, and more. Scharon Harding – May 30, 2025 5:18 pm | 114 An Amazon Fire Stick and remote. Credit: Amazon An Amazon Fire Stick and remote. Credit: Amazon Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Amazon Fire Sticks are enabling “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy, according to a report today from Enders Analysis, a media, entertainment, and telecommunications research firm. Technologies from other media conglomerates, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, are also enabling what the report’s authors deem an “industrial scale of theft." The report, "Video piracy: Big tech is clearly unwilling to address the problem," focuses on the European market but highlights the global growth of piracy of streaming services as they increasingly acquire rights to live programs, like sporting events. Per the BBC, the report points to the availability of multiple, simultaneous illegal streams for big events that draw tens of thousands of pirate viewers. Enders' report places some blame on Facebook for showing advertisements for access to illegal streams, as well as Google and Microsoft for the alleged “continued depreciation” of their digital rights management (DRM) systems, Widevine and PlayReady, respectively. Ars Technica reached out to Facebook, Google, and Microsoft for comment but didn’t receive a response before publication. The report echoes complaints shared throughout the industry, including by the world’s largest European soccer streamer, DAZN. Streaming piracy is “almost a crisis for the sports rights industry,” DAZN’s head of global rights, Tom Burrows, said at The Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit in February. At the same event, Nick Herm, COO of Comcast-owned European telecommunication firm Sky Group, estimated that piracy was costing his company “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenue. At the time, Enders co-founder Claire Enders said that the pirating of sporting events accounts for “about 50 percent of most markets.” Jailbroken Fire Sticks Friday's Enders report named Fire Sticks as a significant contributor to streaming piracy, calling the hardware a “piracy enabler.” Enders’ report pointed to security risks that pirate viewers face, including providing credit card information and email addresses to unknown entities, which can make people vulnerable to phishing and malware. However, reports of phishing and malware stemming from streaming piracy, which occurs through various methods besides a Fire TV Stick, seem to be rather limited. Still, at the February Financial Times event, Herm said that Fire Sticks account “for about half of the piracy in the UK.” “People think that because it’s a legitimate brand, it must be OK. So they give their credit card details to criminal gangs. Amazon is not engaging with us as much as we’d like," he said. In the UK, there has been a push to crack down on illegal usage of Fire Sticks. For example, in November 2024, a man received a three-year, four-month sentence for hacking Fire Sticks. In June 2024, another man got a two-year suspended sentence after a police raid found jailbroken Fire Sticks in his home. In the US, however, there aren’t nearly as many publicized efforts to combat illegal streaming on Amazon devices. While Enders’ report accuses Amazon of contributing to the piracy problem, as the owner of its own streaming service, Prime Video, Amazon has an incentive to fight piracy. Amazon’s streaming business includes selling streaming hardware, but the business is more centered on getting people to sign up for Amazon services (like Prime Video), data collection, and ad sales. When reached for comment, an Amazon spokesperson told Ars Technica: Pirated content violates our policies regarding intellectual property rights and compromises the security and privacy of our customers. We work with industry partners and relevant authorities to combat piracy and protect customers from the risks associated with pirated content. Our Appstore prohibits apps that infringe upon the rights of third parties, and we warn customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources. Amazon’s representative also told Ars that Amazon works with industry partners to break up piracy networks and has assisted law enforcement efforts, including the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit in London and UK IP Crime Group. DRM limitations Enders’ report also blamed poorly updated DRM systems, especially from Google and Microsoft, for contributing to streaming piracy. Google’s Widevine and Microsoft’s PlayReady "are now compromised across various security levels,” the report said, pointing to a lack of upkeep. Microsoft issued its most recent big update to PlayReady, version 4.6, in December 2022. The report authors wrote: Over twenty years since launch, the DRM solutions provided by Google and Microsoft are in steep decline. A complete overhaul of the technology architecture, licensing, and support model is needed. Lack of engagement with content owners indicates this a low priority. Outside of Enders' report, Google was criticized by the Italian government earlier this year for allegedly failing to block pirate websites identified by Italy’s communication regulator, AGCOM. In March, the Court of Milan ordered Google to poison its public DNS servers with the goal of blocking illegal soccer streams. And beyond the aforementioned tech giants, earlier this month, France ordered five VPN providers (NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN, and CyberGhost) to block illegal sports streaming sites. Unsurprisingly, the move has been slammed by VPN providers as setting “a dangerous precedent," per i2Coalition, an Internet infrastructure trade association that manages the international VPN Trust Initiative consortium of VPN providers. A growing problem As the Internet solidifies its position as the primary method for watching shows, movies, and, increasingly, live events, it presents new challenges to content distributors and owners seeking to curb online piracy. In the case of sports, especially, the distribution of sports rights across various linear networks and streaming services often means signing up for multiple services in order to watch a single team’s season. For some fans—including NFL players themselves—that's financially and/or logistically impractical. Simultaneously, anti-piracy advocates argue that piracy could lead to higher subscription fees for streaming services. As legislation and rights holders become more stringent about piracy, we can expect more effort from tech providers and law enforcement to block piracy, while hackers also seek new ways to enable illegal streams. Scharon Harding Senior Technology Reporter Scharon Harding Senior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 114 Comments
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  • Games Inbox: Are video games too expensive on console and PC?

    Doom The Dark Ages – not a cheap gameThe Friday letters page blames Sony for the decline of Bungie, as one reader thinks they’ve guessed the secret of Super Mario on Switch 2.
    To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk
    Top three
    I was considering buying Doom: The Dark Ages but was shocked to find that the game is £70 on PC. I know it’s that on console too but normally PC games are at least £10 cheaper, although I’m not sure why. So we’ve got a game that is single-player only, can be beaten in around 13 hours, and is not only the most expensive a console game can be but the same on PC too. How many different ways can Bethesda find to put me off buying the game?I wonder if this is an attempt by Microsoft to push people towards paying for Game Pass, but I can assure them that is not going to work on me. I’ll just buy the game on Black Friday, when I’m sure it’ll be at least half price – just like Doom 2016 was by that same point.
    Video games might not have seen much of a price rise over the decades, I understand that, but what these companies seem to forget is that back in the SNES days most of us were only getting two or three games a year, because they were so expensive. If Microsoft and whoever wants to go back to those days then fine, but I can tell you Doom is not going to be one of my three for 2025.Sonny
    GC: PC games are usually cheaper because there’s no licensing fee to pay to publish them, as there is on consoles.
    Expect nothing
    So basically Sony are wasting another year? Possibly no summer showcase at all and if it is it’ll just be a bog standard State of Play? That is just tragic at this point. We’ve had three years of them acting like this and I have no idea why or what would convince them to stop and go back to how they used to be. I guess the assumption has to be that they’re never going to now.We’ve got Ghost Of Yōtei this year and the Returnal sequel next year and I think that means nothing else is imminent. If they had something coming out between those two, I think we would’ve heard about it by now. We might get more games published but not made by them, like Death Stranding 2, but I’m not even sure if that’s hoping for too much at the moment.Scooby
    Tears of the Mushroom Kingdom
    How did Nintendo shake up the long running Zelda franchise? They went open world with Breath Of The Wild. How are Nintendo shaking up the long running Mario Kart franchise? They’re going open world with Mario Kart Worldfor the Switch 2 release.So, what do I predict they’ll do with the next mainline Mario game to shake up the franchise? No, I’m not going to predict anything because it’s a fool’s errand to predict Nintendo!ttfp saylowNow playing: Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdomand Crime Scene CleanerEmail your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk
    Hands-on management
    I have been hearing about Bungie having bad management for years, long before Sony bought them, so I’m not sure why this has never been solved. Obviously, they’re the ones in charge, so there’s not much the workers can do, but Sony certainly could, and should’ve, knocked some heads together.In that sense it’s hard not to at least partially blame Sony for the mess that Bungie has got into. They bought them but don’t seem to have had a plan for what they were going to do with them.
    It makes me wonder whether these companies are just bought like trophies, with no real idea of how they could be used effectively. I remember when Sony bought Bungie the rumours were that they did it just as much to stop Microsoft from getting hold of them, who would’ve presumably used them to revitalise Halo.
    But then what has Microsoft done to change or improve Activision? As far as I can see nothing has changed and they certainly haven’t started making more games or bringing back any of their old franchises. The average person probably has no idea they even changed hands.Whisper
    No answer
    I have been trying for hours to find a direct link to GAME online UK customer services contact details, to raise an issue with a faulty controller purchased in April of this year.Although on the GAME website there is information regarding contacting customer services every link you follow sends you to drop down menus that do not meet the criteria I’m looking for.
    I have accidentally but more successfully had immediate contact with GAME SA via WhatsApp or email but as for GAME UK, no response at all.
    Is this a purposeful ploy on behalf of GAME online UK to make their customers so frustrated they give up?!Lorraine
    First impressions
    I just wanted to say thank you to GC for their preview of the Nintendo Switch 2. I just finished reading the feedback, from the press event in Paris. It was a very informative piece and I’m modestly relieved to see positive impressions. I am pleasantly unsurprised to see the Welcome Tour was the lowest point of the event. Of course, you had to expect that GC. It did put someone to sleep, after all.I’m glad to also see that Cyberpunk 2077 is a winner as well. It was a dumpster fire on PlayStation 4, so it’s extremely important that it was ported sufficiently enough to ensure the same issues never bore fruit. Mario Kart World is shaping up to be a wonderfully delicious experience and I’m deeply glad for it, since I’ve brought the bundle. It was important that my investment is paying off.
    I also am curious to see how the titles that we’ve yet to see test footage run on the system, namely Star Wars Outlaws and Borderlands 4. I’ve also heard that the upcoming James Bond title will be ported; very interesting to hear. I wasn’t expecting that at all and it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. But we know nothing of the title yet, so that’s essentially a long time away.
    That’s all my thoughts. So, I’d like to thank GC again and I am indeed much more positive. With two weeks left until launch day, hopefully the positive momentum continues.Shahzaib Sadiq
    Giving it a chance
    I’m glad that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has done well, despite all the negativity before it was released. Ubisoft brought some of it on themselves, but it reviewed well and I took a chance and was very impressed by it. It has some of the best graphics I’ve ever seen and while the gameplay is a little predictable for the series it’s still a lot of fun.It makes me want to try out Star Wars Outlaws too, as that good a bad rap before it was released as well, mostly just because it was a Ubisoft game, as far as I can tell. So I’m going to try and pick it up next time I see it on sale. I’m not a fan of any company but I don’t think it’s right to dismiss any game just because of who made it.Arnie
    All in good time
    I definitely agree that Rockstar’s best game is possibly Red Dead Redemption and taking nothing away from Grand Theft Auto due to the more interesting new ideas involved in the game. One of these was getting a bounty on a person and being able to hogtie a target and take them back alive if possible, which was just like a Western film.Literally. you had every location going, with the great plains, the forests, the variety of frontier towns with the characters doing an amazing job creating the best drama out there. And of course, the mountain ranges and across the border to the desert region and Mexican villas, amongst their own unique landscapes.
    The city is awesome in GTA and the night life and sunrise appearing on the horizon, with your favourite radio station blasting a belter of a tune, is how gamers fell in love with GTA. But Red Dead just made it work over a 100-odd years prior.
    A future Red Dead Redemption 3 would be an incredibly exciting experience to dream about, with all the amazing possibilities that Rockstar’s clever devs can give us. But hey, GTA 6 soon and I’ll go with that for now.Alucard
    Inbox also-rans
    I’m still kind of shocked that Monster Hunter Wilds is the best-selling game of the year. I know of literally no one in the real world that is even aware of the franchise. Good for Capcom though, I guess.FocusReally excited about the fan campaign for Star Wars Battlefront 3. I’m not sure it’ll work, given the costs involved, but I’d love to see it, given all the new shows they could base maps on. I want to play as K-2S0!Gordo

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    The small printNew Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.
    You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.
    You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.
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    Games Inbox: Are video games too expensive on console and PC?
    Doom The Dark Ages – not a cheap gameThe Friday letters page blames Sony for the decline of Bungie, as one reader thinks they’ve guessed the secret of Super Mario on Switch 2. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk Top three I was considering buying Doom: The Dark Ages but was shocked to find that the game is £70 on PC. I know it’s that on console too but normally PC games are at least £10 cheaper, although I’m not sure why. So we’ve got a game that is single-player only, can be beaten in around 13 hours, and is not only the most expensive a console game can be but the same on PC too. How many different ways can Bethesda find to put me off buying the game?I wonder if this is an attempt by Microsoft to push people towards paying for Game Pass, but I can assure them that is not going to work on me. I’ll just buy the game on Black Friday, when I’m sure it’ll be at least half price – just like Doom 2016 was by that same point. Video games might not have seen much of a price rise over the decades, I understand that, but what these companies seem to forget is that back in the SNES days most of us were only getting two or three games a year, because they were so expensive. If Microsoft and whoever wants to go back to those days then fine, but I can tell you Doom is not going to be one of my three for 2025.Sonny GC: PC games are usually cheaper because there’s no licensing fee to pay to publish them, as there is on consoles. Expect nothing So basically Sony are wasting another year? Possibly no summer showcase at all and if it is it’ll just be a bog standard State of Play? That is just tragic at this point. We’ve had three years of them acting like this and I have no idea why or what would convince them to stop and go back to how they used to be. I guess the assumption has to be that they’re never going to now.We’ve got Ghost Of Yōtei this year and the Returnal sequel next year and I think that means nothing else is imminent. If they had something coming out between those two, I think we would’ve heard about it by now. We might get more games published but not made by them, like Death Stranding 2, but I’m not even sure if that’s hoping for too much at the moment.Scooby Tears of the Mushroom Kingdom How did Nintendo shake up the long running Zelda franchise? They went open world with Breath Of The Wild. How are Nintendo shaking up the long running Mario Kart franchise? They’re going open world with Mario Kart Worldfor the Switch 2 release.So, what do I predict they’ll do with the next mainline Mario game to shake up the franchise? No, I’m not going to predict anything because it’s a fool’s errand to predict Nintendo!ttfp saylowNow playing: Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdomand Crime Scene CleanerEmail your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk Hands-on management I have been hearing about Bungie having bad management for years, long before Sony bought them, so I’m not sure why this has never been solved. Obviously, they’re the ones in charge, so there’s not much the workers can do, but Sony certainly could, and should’ve, knocked some heads together.In that sense it’s hard not to at least partially blame Sony for the mess that Bungie has got into. They bought them but don’t seem to have had a plan for what they were going to do with them. It makes me wonder whether these companies are just bought like trophies, with no real idea of how they could be used effectively. I remember when Sony bought Bungie the rumours were that they did it just as much to stop Microsoft from getting hold of them, who would’ve presumably used them to revitalise Halo. But then what has Microsoft done to change or improve Activision? As far as I can see nothing has changed and they certainly haven’t started making more games or bringing back any of their old franchises. The average person probably has no idea they even changed hands.Whisper No answer I have been trying for hours to find a direct link to GAME online UK customer services contact details, to raise an issue with a faulty controller purchased in April of this year.Although on the GAME website there is information regarding contacting customer services every link you follow sends you to drop down menus that do not meet the criteria I’m looking for. I have accidentally but more successfully had immediate contact with GAME SA via WhatsApp or email but as for GAME UK, no response at all. Is this a purposeful ploy on behalf of GAME online UK to make their customers so frustrated they give up?!Lorraine First impressions I just wanted to say thank you to GC for their preview of the Nintendo Switch 2. I just finished reading the feedback, from the press event in Paris. It was a very informative piece and I’m modestly relieved to see positive impressions. I am pleasantly unsurprised to see the Welcome Tour was the lowest point of the event. Of course, you had to expect that GC. It did put someone to sleep, after all.I’m glad to also see that Cyberpunk 2077 is a winner as well. It was a dumpster fire on PlayStation 4, so it’s extremely important that it was ported sufficiently enough to ensure the same issues never bore fruit. Mario Kart World is shaping up to be a wonderfully delicious experience and I’m deeply glad for it, since I’ve brought the bundle. It was important that my investment is paying off. I also am curious to see how the titles that we’ve yet to see test footage run on the system, namely Star Wars Outlaws and Borderlands 4. I’ve also heard that the upcoming James Bond title will be ported; very interesting to hear. I wasn’t expecting that at all and it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. But we know nothing of the title yet, so that’s essentially a long time away. That’s all my thoughts. So, I’d like to thank GC again and I am indeed much more positive. With two weeks left until launch day, hopefully the positive momentum continues.Shahzaib Sadiq Giving it a chance I’m glad that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has done well, despite all the negativity before it was released. Ubisoft brought some of it on themselves, but it reviewed well and I took a chance and was very impressed by it. It has some of the best graphics I’ve ever seen and while the gameplay is a little predictable for the series it’s still a lot of fun.It makes me want to try out Star Wars Outlaws too, as that good a bad rap before it was released as well, mostly just because it was a Ubisoft game, as far as I can tell. So I’m going to try and pick it up next time I see it on sale. I’m not a fan of any company but I don’t think it’s right to dismiss any game just because of who made it.Arnie All in good time I definitely agree that Rockstar’s best game is possibly Red Dead Redemption and taking nothing away from Grand Theft Auto due to the more interesting new ideas involved in the game. One of these was getting a bounty on a person and being able to hogtie a target and take them back alive if possible, which was just like a Western film.Literally. you had every location going, with the great plains, the forests, the variety of frontier towns with the characters doing an amazing job creating the best drama out there. And of course, the mountain ranges and across the border to the desert region and Mexican villas, amongst their own unique landscapes. The city is awesome in GTA and the night life and sunrise appearing on the horizon, with your favourite radio station blasting a belter of a tune, is how gamers fell in love with GTA. But Red Dead just made it work over a 100-odd years prior. A future Red Dead Redemption 3 would be an incredibly exciting experience to dream about, with all the amazing possibilities that Rockstar’s clever devs can give us. But hey, GTA 6 soon and I’ll go with that for now.Alucard Inbox also-rans I’m still kind of shocked that Monster Hunter Wilds is the best-selling game of the year. I know of literally no one in the real world that is even aware of the franchise. Good for Capcom though, I guess.FocusReally excited about the fan campaign for Star Wars Battlefront 3. I’m not sure it’ll work, given the costs involved, but I’d love to see it, given all the new shows they could base maps on. I want to play as K-2S0!Gordo More Trending Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk The small printNew Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content. You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot. You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter. Arrow MORE: Games Inbox: What is Rockstar Games’ best game? GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy #games #inbox #are #video #too
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    Games Inbox: Are video games too expensive on console and PC?
    Doom The Dark Ages – not a cheap game (Bethesda) The Friday letters page blames Sony for the decline of Bungie, as one reader thinks they’ve guessed the secret of Super Mario on Switch 2. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk Top three I was considering buying Doom: The Dark Ages but was shocked to find that the game is £70 on PC. I know it’s that on console too but normally PC games are at least £10 cheaper, although I’m not sure why. So we’ve got a game that is single-player only, can be beaten in around 13 hours, and is not only the most expensive a console game can be but the same on PC too. How many different ways can Bethesda find to put me off buying the game?I wonder if this is an attempt by Microsoft to push people towards paying for Game Pass, but I can assure them that is not going to work on me. I’ll just buy the game on Black Friday, when I’m sure it’ll be at least half price – just like Doom 2016 was by that same point. Video games might not have seen much of a price rise over the decades, I understand that, but what these companies seem to forget is that back in the SNES days most of us were only getting two or three games a year, because they were so expensive. If Microsoft and whoever wants to go back to those days then fine, but I can tell you Doom is not going to be one of my three for 2025.Sonny GC: PC games are usually cheaper because there’s no licensing fee to pay to publish them, as there is on consoles. Expect nothing So basically Sony are wasting another year? Possibly no summer showcase at all and if it is it’ll just be a bog standard State of Play? That is just tragic at this point. We’ve had three years of them acting like this and I have no idea why or what would convince them to stop and go back to how they used to be. I guess the assumption has to be that they’re never going to now.We’ve got Ghost Of Yōtei this year and the Returnal sequel next year and I think that means nothing else is imminent. If they had something coming out between those two, I think we would’ve heard about it by now. We might get more games published but not made by them, like Death Stranding 2, but I’m not even sure if that’s hoping for too much at the moment.Scooby Tears of the Mushroom Kingdom How did Nintendo shake up the long running Zelda franchise? They went open world with Breath Of The Wild. How are Nintendo shaking up the long running Mario Kart franchise? They’re going open world with Mario Kart World (it’s in the name!) for the Switch 2 release.So, what do I predict they’ll do with the next mainline Mario game to shake up the franchise? No, I’m not going to predict anything because it’s a fool’s errand to predict Nintendo!ttfp saylow (gamertag) Now playing: Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom (rescued from the backlog) and Crime Scene CleanerEmail your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk Hands-on management I have been hearing about Bungie having bad management for years, long before Sony bought them, so I’m not sure why this has never been solved. Obviously, they’re the ones in charge, so there’s not much the workers can do, but Sony certainly could, and should’ve, knocked some heads together.In that sense it’s hard not to at least partially blame Sony for the mess that Bungie has got into. They bought them but don’t seem to have had a plan for what they were going to do with them. It makes me wonder whether these companies are just bought like trophies, with no real idea of how they could be used effectively. I remember when Sony bought Bungie the rumours were that they did it just as much to stop Microsoft from getting hold of them, who would’ve presumably used them to revitalise Halo. But then what has Microsoft done to change or improve Activision? As far as I can see nothing has changed and they certainly haven’t started making more games or bringing back any of their old franchises. The average person probably has no idea they even changed hands.Whisper No answer I have been trying for hours to find a direct link to GAME online UK customer services contact details, to raise an issue with a faulty controller purchased in April of this year.Although on the GAME website there is information regarding contacting customer services every link you follow sends you to drop down menus that do not meet the criteria I’m looking for. I have accidentally but more successfully had immediate contact with GAME SA via WhatsApp or email but as for GAME UK, no response at all. Is this a purposeful ploy on behalf of GAME online UK to make their customers so frustrated they give up?!Lorraine First impressions I just wanted to say thank you to GC for their preview of the Nintendo Switch 2. I just finished reading the feedback, from the press event in Paris. It was a very informative piece and I’m modestly relieved to see positive impressions. I am pleasantly unsurprised to see the Welcome Tour was the lowest point of the event. Of course, you had to expect that GC. It did put someone to sleep, after all.I’m glad to also see that Cyberpunk 2077 is a winner as well. It was a dumpster fire on PlayStation 4, so it’s extremely important that it was ported sufficiently enough to ensure the same issues never bore fruit. Mario Kart World is shaping up to be a wonderfully delicious experience and I’m deeply glad for it, since I’ve brought the bundle. It was important that my investment is paying off. I also am curious to see how the titles that we’ve yet to see test footage run on the system, namely Star Wars Outlaws and Borderlands 4. I’ve also heard that the upcoming James Bond title will be ported; very interesting to hear. I wasn’t expecting that at all and it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. But we know nothing of the title yet, so that’s essentially a long time away. That’s all my thoughts. So, I’d like to thank GC again and I am indeed much more positive. With two weeks left until launch day, hopefully the positive momentum continues.Shahzaib Sadiq Giving it a chance I’m glad that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has done well, despite all the negativity before it was released. Ubisoft brought some of it on themselves, but it reviewed well and I took a chance and was very impressed by it. It has some of the best graphics I’ve ever seen and while the gameplay is a little predictable for the series it’s still a lot of fun.It makes me want to try out Star Wars Outlaws too, as that good a bad rap before it was released as well, mostly just because it was a Ubisoft game, as far as I can tell. So I’m going to try and pick it up next time I see it on sale. I’m not a fan of any company but I don’t think it’s right to dismiss any game just because of who made it.Arnie All in good time I definitely agree that Rockstar’s best game is possibly Red Dead Redemption and taking nothing away from Grand Theft Auto due to the more interesting new ideas involved in the game. One of these was getting a bounty on a person and being able to hogtie a target and take them back alive if possible, which was just like a Western film.Literally. you had every location going, with the great plains, the forests, the variety of frontier towns with the characters doing an amazing job creating the best drama out there. And of course, the mountain ranges and across the border to the desert region and Mexican villas, amongst their own unique landscapes. The city is awesome in GTA and the night life and sunrise appearing on the horizon, with your favourite radio station blasting a belter of a tune, is how gamers fell in love with GTA. But Red Dead just made it work over a 100-odd years prior. A future Red Dead Redemption 3 would be an incredibly exciting experience to dream about, with all the amazing possibilities that Rockstar’s clever devs can give us. But hey, GTA 6 soon and I’ll go with that for now.Alucard Inbox also-rans I’m still kind of shocked that Monster Hunter Wilds is the best-selling game of the year. I know of literally no one in the real world that is even aware of the franchise. Good for Capcom though, I guess.FocusReally excited about the fan campaign for Star Wars Battlefront 3. I’m not sure it’ll work, given the costs involved, but I’d love to see it, given all the new shows they could base maps on. I want to play as K-2S0!Gordo More Trending Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk The small printNew Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content. You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot. You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter. Arrow MORE: Games Inbox: What is Rockstar Games’ best game? GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy
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  • LGBTQ+ nightlife is going back to its counter-cultural roots

    Queerness and nightlife go hand in hand. Out of the mainstream. Underground and counter-cultural. Whether it’s the location, venue, organisers or crowd, they are always outside the norm. 
    Some, like new lesbian bar La Camionera in Hackney, east London, have been designed, built and crafted by queer hands – the same ones which will soon be shaking, stirring and drinking negronis on a brushed aluminium countertop, or raising a glass in the purpose-built seating areas.
    Source: Rachel FerrimanLa Camionera
    The reopening of the quietly elegant La Camionerafollows a months-long conversion of a temporary space led by its trans owner and a team of queer architects, contractors and trades. It is unique and stylish.  Advertisement

    But that’s not the only reason this tailored LGBTQ+ space stands out. Its mere existence sits against a background of queer venue closures because of an unholy trinity of rising costs, licensing issues and safety concerns. London, to take one city, has lost half of these safe spaces since 2006.
    Waves of redevelopment and gentrification have had their impact, too. One of the most famous victims was the wildly beloved Joiners Arms pub in Hackney Road in 2015. Never forgotten, attempts continue to resurrect this institution somewhere else in London’s East End a decade on.
    But can La Camionera pave the way for a design-led renaissance of after-hours ‘queerness’? One thing is for sure, there is a growing queer movement – architects included – to create safe, accessible LGBTQ+ spaces and define what that might look like.
    We’re going out, to find out.
    The state of play
    The Night Time Industries Associationrecently reported that 37 per cent of all night clubs across the UK have permanently shut since March 2020. That’s an average of three clubs a week, or 150 a year.Advertisement

    LGBTQ+ venues make up a considerable chunk of this. In the capital, between 2006 and 2022, Greater London Authority numbers show that 75 bars, clubs and LGBTQ+ pubs shut down – sometimes forever. 
    The list keeps growing. In the past 18 months, G-A-Y Late in Soho and The Glory in Haggerston have closed. Meanwhile, a third LGBTQ+ safe space, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, has been fighting closure on and off for years – though it seems the east London venue may finally have had a late reprieve. 
    Venue closures are happening elsewhere in the UK, too, with Birmingham losing the Village Inn, Glasgow losing Bonjour and Sheffield losing the Queer Junction nightclub. 
    Based on the current rate of club closures, the NTIA warns the UK could have no nightclubs of any kind by 2030. The pro-nighttime body blames the collapse partly on the long-term impact of the Covid pandemic. Once closed down and locked up, these unique spaces rarely re-emerge, eyed up by developers for larger gain. 
    And, while the NTIA data does not explain how many of these closures are LGBTQ+, the community is among the hardest-hit because queerness and nightlife are so intertwined. Or, as Olimpia Burchiellaro, a shareholder of the Friends of The Joiners Arms campaign, puts it: ‘Nighttime is queer time’. 
    A call toArms
    While The Joiners Arms, where reportedlyAlexander McQueen used to hang out, became one of the first LGBTQ+ venues to get protection in the planning system because of the sexual orientation of its users back in 2017, no on-site replacement has yet popped up on Hackney Road.
    Tower Hamlets Council had imposed a planning condition requiring any new development on The Joiners Arms site to include an LGBTQ+ venue. Developer Regal Homes had agreed to it. However, the proposed scheme that forced the closure has been delayed. No development, no new venue. 
    Burchiellaro tells the AJ that The Joiners Arms shows that LGBTQ+ spaces often act as ‘canaries in the coalmine’; a bellwether of the redevelopment cycle and of the state of the nighttime economy more generally. With little planning protection, they can be easily lost because they are often perceived as ‘unproductive’ uses in buildings ripe for replacement.
    Source: Friends of The Joiners ArmsFriends of The Joiners Arms protest outside the former pub
    ‘Gentrification and redevelopment are making it more and more difficult for communities who are not solely focused on profit, like queer spaces, to exist,’ argues Burchiellaro. ‘And, although queer clubs and bars have always been businesses, they’ve always been so much more than that.’
    In the meantime, the Friends of  The Joiners Arms campaign has put on ‘an itinerant, moving club night’ at other east London venues as an act of resistance against anti-LGBTQ+ gentrification and the demise of LGBTQ+ nightlife in the capital, according to Aska Welford, an architectural worker formerly with Karakusevic Carson Architects. Welford, who is leading on co-design for a future permanent home for The Joiners Arms campaign, adds: ‘Even without the physical space, without a permanent, fixed space, queer people continue to exist and have a good time and be together.’
    Safe and sound
    In Edinburgh, GRAS architect Kirsty Watt has also resorted to moving club nights, dubbed ‘Femmergy’, that turn the city’s historic urban fabric – including most recently a former biscuit factory – into a playground for femme-presenting members of the LGBTQ+ community, including trans people and afab women. Watt says: ‘In Edinburgh the queer nightlife scene particularly focused around cis gay men and so women, non-binary and trans people weren’t necessarily welcome in those spaces and that was the point of it, because there wasn’t really a space at all.’
    Source: Kirsty WattFemmergy club night
    While Femmergy has difficulties finding Edinburgh venues with level access and accessible toilets, the club nights have provided a safe space for people ‘to be inherently themselves and represent themselves in a way that they want to while still feeling safe’, says Watt. 
    Both accessibility and safety are central to Femmergy, and are what makes it queer, she tells the AJ, ‘because people need to feel like they have a representation within their urban space’. However, she admits that having level access and accessible toilets have ‘limited us in terms of what venues we can work with, particularly in Edinburgh, because so many of the buildings are historic’.
    Putting the pop in pop-up
    So, if permanent dedicated spaces don’t always exist, what about bringing the nuts-and-bolts of a party to the people instead? This is the concept behind the Mobile Dyke Bar, a travelling lesbian disco started by former Royal Academy Interior design student Lucy Nurnberg and her right-hand woman, Ali Wagner, as part of a wider project dubbed Uhaul Dyke Rescue, a series of design-led club nights. The Mobile Dyke Bar is made of prefabricated parts which ‘slot’ into rental vans, which Nurnberg suggests is a tongue-in-cheek response to hyper-masculine removal van culture as much as it is a declaration of space for lesbians when there is barely any. 
    Its next stop is Mighty Hoopla, a pop festival in south London, later this month – the Mobile Dyke Bar’s second outing at the LGBTQ+ friendly event. 
    Source: Courteney FrisbyThe Mobile Dyke Bar at Mighty Hoopla in 2024
    ‘The idea was that this would be a friendly space, but also about taking space for ourselves and being like, “Look, we need a bit of a dedicated corner here”,’ explains Nurnberg, whose Uhaul Dyke Rescue service was a reaction to ‘queer spaces in London generally declining, especially lesbian spaces’.
    Nurnberg adds that her interior design course informed Uhaul’s philosophy, ‘which is a bit secret and underground’ and had to be done on the cheap. It also looks at temporary structures as queer structures. 
    ‘We had a scaffold structure on the dance floor for our first night because I know that dykes love to flex muscle,’ Nurnberg explains, ‘But I also wanted to make it for anybody more femme presenting, and for anybody wanting to look a bit sexy, so we put a swing on the structure and people loved it.’
    Why architects should design the night
    CAKE, a Dalston, east London-based practice, which was behind the Agnes stage at Rally festival in south London last year, has experience on an even bigger scale of delivering for a queer crowd. 
    The Layher scaffolding and translucent fibreglass-clad structure was designed to flip to become ‘The Strap’ at Body Movements – a queer festival the following day. That’s when the versatility of the modular structure’s raised platforms, floating walls, and one central dance floor all came into action – bringing the audience, artist and stage together. ‘For both days, depending on the music, it was a completely different environment,’ says CAKE architect Emiliano Zavala. ‘At  Body Movements people were dancing up on terraces and the whole thing was inhabited, and for Rally, the crowd was low and spread out, with the stage a kind of undercroft. The difference was really interesting.’
    Source: Rory GaylorAgnes by CAKE Architecture
    Why did CAKE take on the challenge? Hugh Scott Moncrieff, creative director, says it ‘wasn’t the idea of making money’ but the opportunity to make creative architecture that reflects music, rhythm and sound, as well as context.
    Agnes, or The Strap, was possible because CAKE had proven to festival organisers with an earlier Rally stage that you could ‘spend a tiny bit of money on design work’ and win against standard fabrication teams ‘who weren’t coming at it from an architectural lens’, Scott Moncrieff adds. Agnes could be getting an upgrade for this year’s August bank holiday festivals. The structure also won the people’s choice award at last month’s AJ Small Projects. A sign of better-designed nights out to come?
    The future is niche – and lesbian
    If the Mobile Dyke Bar and Agnes could be the future of festivals and club nights, is La Camionera the future of LGBTQ+ nighttime spaces more broadly? A well-polished, honed product for a community crying out for something decent designed especially for them? 
    Daniel Pope, of newly established design studio and architects Popelo, which worked on La Camionera, says the bar is special because the result is super-niche. Certainly, there is no underfoot nastiness, peeling paint or unwanted design features common to many of the old underground venues. Yet this is queer through and through. 
    ’There’s not really many queer spaces where you can get a really beautiful drink in a nice glass, where the floor isn’t sticky,’ says Pope. ‘And with funding being so difficult, often queer spaces can feel quite DIY and quite shabby, perhaps not thought-through. With La Camionera, we really tried to make it feel high-end. So we focused the budget on specific areas, like the bespoke bench seat and polished aluminium bar; it feels quite luxe.’
    Source: Rachel FerrimanLa Camionera interior by Popelo and WET Studio
    Those additions, Pope admits, had to be costed in and compensated for elsewhere. Making decisions like these is part of the ‘burden’ on queer architects delivering queer spaces – often pro bono or for a reduced fee. But designing with care and enthusiasm, and, crucially, with first-hand experience of being part of the community.
    As Pope says: ‘While I can’t talk for lesbians and there’s loads of spaces for gay men in London, I know that having a lesbian space that felt really sexy was key for La Camionera.
    The architect, who worked alongside LGBTQ+ set design firm Wet Studio on the job, argues that La Camionera’s queer energy was brought by that very queer team of ‘builders and makers who know how you want to feel in a space as a queer person’. On that basis, bespoke queer design for clubs, bars and music experiences in general could be the way forward – and a challenge to the troubles of the wider nighttime economy and a lack of LGBTQ+ representation in permanent spaces.
    He adds: ‘Talking from experience, when I was not out, I would go to events and never felt like I enjoyed it. It wasn’t until I started making queer friends and we would go to queer venues that you could be yourself and connect with other people in a really magnetic way.’

    queer architecture 2025-05-22
    Gino Spocchia

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    Tagsqueer architecture
    #lgbtq #nightlife #going #back #its
    LGBTQ+ nightlife is going back to its counter-cultural roots
    Queerness and nightlife go hand in hand. Out of the mainstream. Underground and counter-cultural. Whether it’s the location, venue, organisers or crowd, they are always outside the norm.  Some, like new lesbian bar La Camionera in Hackney, east London, have been designed, built and crafted by queer hands – the same ones which will soon be shaking, stirring and drinking negronis on a brushed aluminium countertop, or raising a glass in the purpose-built seating areas. Source: Rachel FerrimanLa Camionera The reopening of the quietly elegant La Camionerafollows a months-long conversion of a temporary space led by its trans owner and a team of queer architects, contractors and trades. It is unique and stylish.  Advertisement But that’s not the only reason this tailored LGBTQ+ space stands out. Its mere existence sits against a background of queer venue closures because of an unholy trinity of rising costs, licensing issues and safety concerns. London, to take one city, has lost half of these safe spaces since 2006. Waves of redevelopment and gentrification have had their impact, too. One of the most famous victims was the wildly beloved Joiners Arms pub in Hackney Road in 2015. Never forgotten, attempts continue to resurrect this institution somewhere else in London’s East End a decade on. But can La Camionera pave the way for a design-led renaissance of after-hours ‘queerness’? One thing is for sure, there is a growing queer movement – architects included – to create safe, accessible LGBTQ+ spaces and define what that might look like. We’re going out, to find out. The state of play The Night Time Industries Associationrecently reported that 37 per cent of all night clubs across the UK have permanently shut since March 2020. That’s an average of three clubs a week, or 150 a year.Advertisement LGBTQ+ venues make up a considerable chunk of this. In the capital, between 2006 and 2022, Greater London Authority numbers show that 75 bars, clubs and LGBTQ+ pubs shut down – sometimes forever.  The list keeps growing. In the past 18 months, G-A-Y Late in Soho and The Glory in Haggerston have closed. Meanwhile, a third LGBTQ+ safe space, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, has been fighting closure on and off for years – though it seems the east London venue may finally have had a late reprieve.  Venue closures are happening elsewhere in the UK, too, with Birmingham losing the Village Inn, Glasgow losing Bonjour and Sheffield losing the Queer Junction nightclub.  Based on the current rate of club closures, the NTIA warns the UK could have no nightclubs of any kind by 2030. The pro-nighttime body blames the collapse partly on the long-term impact of the Covid pandemic. Once closed down and locked up, these unique spaces rarely re-emerge, eyed up by developers for larger gain.  And, while the NTIA data does not explain how many of these closures are LGBTQ+, the community is among the hardest-hit because queerness and nightlife are so intertwined. Or, as Olimpia Burchiellaro, a shareholder of the Friends of The Joiners Arms campaign, puts it: ‘Nighttime is queer time’.  A call toArms While The Joiners Arms, where reportedlyAlexander McQueen used to hang out, became one of the first LGBTQ+ venues to get protection in the planning system because of the sexual orientation of its users back in 2017, no on-site replacement has yet popped up on Hackney Road. Tower Hamlets Council had imposed a planning condition requiring any new development on The Joiners Arms site to include an LGBTQ+ venue. Developer Regal Homes had agreed to it. However, the proposed scheme that forced the closure has been delayed. No development, no new venue.  Burchiellaro tells the AJ that The Joiners Arms shows that LGBTQ+ spaces often act as ‘canaries in the coalmine’; a bellwether of the redevelopment cycle and of the state of the nighttime economy more generally. With little planning protection, they can be easily lost because they are often perceived as ‘unproductive’ uses in buildings ripe for replacement. Source: Friends of The Joiners ArmsFriends of The Joiners Arms protest outside the former pub ‘Gentrification and redevelopment are making it more and more difficult for communities who are not solely focused on profit, like queer spaces, to exist,’ argues Burchiellaro. ‘And, although queer clubs and bars have always been businesses, they’ve always been so much more than that.’ In the meantime, the Friends of  The Joiners Arms campaign has put on ‘an itinerant, moving club night’ at other east London venues as an act of resistance against anti-LGBTQ+ gentrification and the demise of LGBTQ+ nightlife in the capital, according to Aska Welford, an architectural worker formerly with Karakusevic Carson Architects. Welford, who is leading on co-design for a future permanent home for The Joiners Arms campaign, adds: ‘Even without the physical space, without a permanent, fixed space, queer people continue to exist and have a good time and be together.’ Safe and sound In Edinburgh, GRAS architect Kirsty Watt has also resorted to moving club nights, dubbed ‘Femmergy’, that turn the city’s historic urban fabric – including most recently a former biscuit factory – into a playground for femme-presenting members of the LGBTQ+ community, including trans people and afab women. Watt says: ‘In Edinburgh the queer nightlife scene particularly focused around cis gay men and so women, non-binary and trans people weren’t necessarily welcome in those spaces and that was the point of it, because there wasn’t really a space at all.’ Source: Kirsty WattFemmergy club night While Femmergy has difficulties finding Edinburgh venues with level access and accessible toilets, the club nights have provided a safe space for people ‘to be inherently themselves and represent themselves in a way that they want to while still feeling safe’, says Watt.  Both accessibility and safety are central to Femmergy, and are what makes it queer, she tells the AJ, ‘because people need to feel like they have a representation within their urban space’. However, she admits that having level access and accessible toilets have ‘limited us in terms of what venues we can work with, particularly in Edinburgh, because so many of the buildings are historic’. Putting the pop in pop-up So, if permanent dedicated spaces don’t always exist, what about bringing the nuts-and-bolts of a party to the people instead? This is the concept behind the Mobile Dyke Bar, a travelling lesbian disco started by former Royal Academy Interior design student Lucy Nurnberg and her right-hand woman, Ali Wagner, as part of a wider project dubbed Uhaul Dyke Rescue, a series of design-led club nights. The Mobile Dyke Bar is made of prefabricated parts which ‘slot’ into rental vans, which Nurnberg suggests is a tongue-in-cheek response to hyper-masculine removal van culture as much as it is a declaration of space for lesbians when there is barely any.  Its next stop is Mighty Hoopla, a pop festival in south London, later this month – the Mobile Dyke Bar’s second outing at the LGBTQ+ friendly event.  Source: Courteney FrisbyThe Mobile Dyke Bar at Mighty Hoopla in 2024 ‘The idea was that this would be a friendly space, but also about taking space for ourselves and being like, “Look, we need a bit of a dedicated corner here”,’ explains Nurnberg, whose Uhaul Dyke Rescue service was a reaction to ‘queer spaces in London generally declining, especially lesbian spaces’. Nurnberg adds that her interior design course informed Uhaul’s philosophy, ‘which is a bit secret and underground’ and had to be done on the cheap. It also looks at temporary structures as queer structures.  ‘We had a scaffold structure on the dance floor for our first night because I know that dykes love to flex muscle,’ Nurnberg explains, ‘But I also wanted to make it for anybody more femme presenting, and for anybody wanting to look a bit sexy, so we put a swing on the structure and people loved it.’ Why architects should design the night CAKE, a Dalston, east London-based practice, which was behind the Agnes stage at Rally festival in south London last year, has experience on an even bigger scale of delivering for a queer crowd.  The Layher scaffolding and translucent fibreglass-clad structure was designed to flip to become ‘The Strap’ at Body Movements – a queer festival the following day. That’s when the versatility of the modular structure’s raised platforms, floating walls, and one central dance floor all came into action – bringing the audience, artist and stage together. ‘For both days, depending on the music, it was a completely different environment,’ says CAKE architect Emiliano Zavala. ‘At  Body Movements people were dancing up on terraces and the whole thing was inhabited, and for Rally, the crowd was low and spread out, with the stage a kind of undercroft. The difference was really interesting.’ Source: Rory GaylorAgnes by CAKE Architecture Why did CAKE take on the challenge? Hugh Scott Moncrieff, creative director, says it ‘wasn’t the idea of making money’ but the opportunity to make creative architecture that reflects music, rhythm and sound, as well as context. Agnes, or The Strap, was possible because CAKE had proven to festival organisers with an earlier Rally stage that you could ‘spend a tiny bit of money on design work’ and win against standard fabrication teams ‘who weren’t coming at it from an architectural lens’, Scott Moncrieff adds. Agnes could be getting an upgrade for this year’s August bank holiday festivals. The structure also won the people’s choice award at last month’s AJ Small Projects. A sign of better-designed nights out to come? The future is niche – and lesbian If the Mobile Dyke Bar and Agnes could be the future of festivals and club nights, is La Camionera the future of LGBTQ+ nighttime spaces more broadly? A well-polished, honed product for a community crying out for something decent designed especially for them?  Daniel Pope, of newly established design studio and architects Popelo, which worked on La Camionera, says the bar is special because the result is super-niche. Certainly, there is no underfoot nastiness, peeling paint or unwanted design features common to many of the old underground venues. Yet this is queer through and through.  ’There’s not really many queer spaces where you can get a really beautiful drink in a nice glass, where the floor isn’t sticky,’ says Pope. ‘And with funding being so difficult, often queer spaces can feel quite DIY and quite shabby, perhaps not thought-through. With La Camionera, we really tried to make it feel high-end. So we focused the budget on specific areas, like the bespoke bench seat and polished aluminium bar; it feels quite luxe.’ Source: Rachel FerrimanLa Camionera interior by Popelo and WET Studio Those additions, Pope admits, had to be costed in and compensated for elsewhere. Making decisions like these is part of the ‘burden’ on queer architects delivering queer spaces – often pro bono or for a reduced fee. But designing with care and enthusiasm, and, crucially, with first-hand experience of being part of the community. As Pope says: ‘While I can’t talk for lesbians and there’s loads of spaces for gay men in London, I know that having a lesbian space that felt really sexy was key for La Camionera. The architect, who worked alongside LGBTQ+ set design firm Wet Studio on the job, argues that La Camionera’s queer energy was brought by that very queer team of ‘builders and makers who know how you want to feel in a space as a queer person’. On that basis, bespoke queer design for clubs, bars and music experiences in general could be the way forward – and a challenge to the troubles of the wider nighttime economy and a lack of LGBTQ+ representation in permanent spaces. He adds: ‘Talking from experience, when I was not out, I would go to events and never felt like I enjoyed it. It wasn’t until I started making queer friends and we would go to queer venues that you could be yourself and connect with other people in a really magnetic way.’ queer architecture 2025-05-22 Gino Spocchia comment and share Tagsqueer architecture #lgbtq #nightlife #going #back #its
    WWW.ARCHITECTSJOURNAL.CO.UK
    LGBTQ+ nightlife is going back to its counter-cultural roots
    Queerness and nightlife go hand in hand. Out of the mainstream. Underground and counter-cultural. Whether it’s the location, venue, organisers or crowd, they are always outside the norm.  Some, like new lesbian bar La Camionera in Hackney, east London, have been designed, built and crafted by queer hands – the same ones which will soon be shaking, stirring and drinking negronis on a brushed aluminium countertop, or raising a glass in the purpose-built seating areas. Source: Rachel FerrimanLa Camionera The reopening of the quietly elegant La Camionera (Spanish for ‘female trucker’ and slang for butch lesbian) follows a months-long conversion of a temporary space led by its trans owner and a team of queer architects, contractors and trades. It is unique and stylish.  Advertisement But that’s not the only reason this tailored LGBTQ+ space stands out. Its mere existence sits against a background of queer venue closures because of an unholy trinity of rising costs, licensing issues and safety concerns. London, to take one city, has lost half of these safe spaces since 2006. Waves of redevelopment and gentrification have had their impact, too. One of the most famous victims was the wildly beloved Joiners Arms pub in Hackney Road in 2015. Never forgotten, attempts continue to resurrect this institution somewhere else in London’s East End a decade on. But can La Camionera pave the way for a design-led renaissance of after-hours ‘queerness’? One thing is for sure, there is a growing queer movement – architects included – to create safe, accessible LGBTQ+ spaces and define what that might look like. We’re going out (OUT), to find out. The state of play The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) recently reported that 37 per cent of all night clubs across the UK have permanently shut since March 2020. That’s an average of three clubs a week, or 150 a year.Advertisement LGBTQ+ venues make up a considerable chunk of this. In the capital, between 2006 and 2022, Greater London Authority numbers show that 75 bars, clubs and LGBTQ+ pubs shut down – sometimes forever.  The list keeps growing. In the past 18 months, G-A-Y Late in Soho and The Glory in Haggerston have closed. Meanwhile, a third LGBTQ+ safe space, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, has been fighting closure on and off for years – though it seems the east London venue may finally have had a late reprieve.  Venue closures are happening elsewhere in the UK, too, with Birmingham losing the Village Inn, Glasgow losing Bonjour and Sheffield losing the Queer Junction nightclub.  Based on the current rate of club closures, the NTIA warns the UK could have no nightclubs of any kind by 2030. The pro-nighttime body blames the collapse partly on the long-term impact of the Covid pandemic. Once closed down and locked up, these unique spaces rarely re-emerge, eyed up by developers for larger gain.  And, while the NTIA data does not explain how many of these closures are LGBTQ+, the community is among the hardest-hit because queerness and nightlife are so intertwined. Or, as Olimpia Burchiellaro, a shareholder of the Friends of The Joiners Arms campaign, puts it: ‘Nighttime is queer time’.  A call to (Joiners) Arms While The Joiners Arms, where reportedlyAlexander McQueen used to hang out, became one of the first LGBTQ+ venues to get protection in the planning system because of the sexual orientation of its users back in 2017, no on-site replacement has yet popped up on Hackney Road. Tower Hamlets Council had imposed a planning condition requiring any new development on The Joiners Arms site to include an LGBTQ+ venue. Developer Regal Homes had agreed to it. However, the proposed scheme that forced the closure has been delayed. No development, no new venue.  Burchiellaro tells the AJ that The Joiners Arms shows that LGBTQ+ spaces often act as ‘canaries in the coalmine’; a bellwether of the redevelopment cycle and of the state of the nighttime economy more generally. With little planning protection, they can be easily lost because they are often perceived as ‘unproductive’ uses in buildings ripe for replacement. Source: Friends of The Joiners ArmsFriends of The Joiners Arms protest outside the former pub ‘Gentrification and redevelopment are making it more and more difficult for communities who are not solely focused on profit, like queer spaces, to exist,’ argues Burchiellaro. ‘And, although queer clubs and bars have always been businesses, they’ve always been so much more than that.’ In the meantime, the Friends of  The Joiners Arms campaign has put on ‘an itinerant, moving club night’ at other east London venues as an act of resistance against anti-LGBTQ+ gentrification and the demise of LGBTQ+ nightlife in the capital, according to Aska Welford, an architectural worker formerly with Karakusevic Carson Architects. Welford, who is leading on co-design for a future permanent home for The Joiners Arms campaign, adds: ‘Even without the physical space, without a permanent, fixed space, queer people continue to exist and have a good time and be together.’ Safe and sound In Edinburgh, GRAS architect Kirsty Watt has also resorted to moving club nights, dubbed ‘Femmergy’, that turn the city’s historic urban fabric – including most recently a former biscuit factory – into a playground for femme-presenting members of the LGBTQ+ community, including trans people and afab women. Watt says: ‘In Edinburgh the queer nightlife scene particularly focused around cis gay men and so women, non-binary and trans people weren’t necessarily welcome in those spaces and that was the point of it, because there wasn’t really a space at all.’ Source: Kirsty WattFemmergy club night While Femmergy has difficulties finding Edinburgh venues with level access and accessible toilets, the club nights have provided a safe space for people ‘to be inherently themselves and represent themselves in a way that they want to while still feeling safe’, says Watt.  Both accessibility and safety are central to Femmergy, and are what makes it queer, she tells the AJ, ‘because people need to feel like they have a representation within their urban space’. However, she admits that having level access and accessible toilets have ‘limited us in terms of what venues we can work with, particularly in Edinburgh, because so many of the buildings are historic’. Putting the pop in pop-up So, if permanent dedicated spaces don’t always exist, what about bringing the nuts-and-bolts of a party to the people instead? This is the concept behind the Mobile Dyke Bar, a travelling lesbian disco started by former Royal Academy Interior design student Lucy Nurnberg and her right-hand woman, Ali Wagner, as part of a wider project dubbed Uhaul Dyke Rescue, a series of design-led club nights. The Mobile Dyke Bar is made of prefabricated parts which ‘slot’ into rental vans, which Nurnberg suggests is a tongue-in-cheek response to hyper-masculine removal van culture as much as it is a declaration of space for lesbians when there is barely any.  Its next stop is Mighty Hoopla, a pop festival in south London, later this month – the Mobile Dyke Bar’s second outing at the LGBTQ+ friendly event.  Source: Courteney FrisbyThe Mobile Dyke Bar at Mighty Hoopla in 2024 ‘The idea was that this would be a friendly space, but also about taking space for ourselves and being like, “Look, we need a bit of a dedicated corner here”,’ explains Nurnberg, whose Uhaul Dyke Rescue service was a reaction to ‘queer spaces in London generally declining, especially lesbian spaces’. Nurnberg adds that her interior design course informed Uhaul’s philosophy, ‘which is a bit secret and underground’ and had to be done on the cheap. It also looks at temporary structures as queer structures.  ‘We had a scaffold structure on the dance floor for our first night because I know that dykes love to flex muscle,’ Nurnberg explains, ‘But I also wanted to make it for anybody more femme presenting, and for anybody wanting to look a bit sexy, so we put a swing on the structure and people loved it.’ Why architects should design the night CAKE, a Dalston, east London-based practice, which was behind the Agnes stage at Rally festival in south London last year, has experience on an even bigger scale of delivering for a queer crowd.  The Layher scaffolding and translucent fibreglass-clad structure was designed to flip to become ‘The Strap’ at Body Movements – a queer festival the following day. That’s when the versatility of the modular structure’s raised platforms, floating walls, and one central dance floor all came into action – bringing the audience, artist and stage together. ‘For both days, depending on the music, it was a completely different environment,’ says CAKE architect Emiliano Zavala. ‘At  Body Movements people were dancing up on terraces and the whole thing was inhabited, and for Rally, the crowd was low and spread out, with the stage a kind of undercroft. The difference was really interesting.’ Source: Rory GaylorAgnes by CAKE Architecture Why did CAKE take on the challenge? Hugh Scott Moncrieff, creative director, says it ‘wasn’t the idea of making money’ but the opportunity to make creative architecture that reflects music, rhythm and sound, as well as context. Agnes, or The Strap, was possible because CAKE had proven to festival organisers with an earlier Rally stage that you could ‘spend a tiny bit of money on design work’ and win against standard fabrication teams ‘who weren’t coming at it from an architectural lens’, Scott Moncrieff adds. Agnes could be getting an upgrade for this year’s August bank holiday festivals. The structure also won the people’s choice award at last month’s AJ Small Projects. A sign of better-designed nights out to come? The future is niche – and lesbian If the Mobile Dyke Bar and Agnes could be the future of festivals and club nights, is La Camionera the future of LGBTQ+ nighttime spaces more broadly? A well-polished, honed product for a community crying out for something decent designed especially for them?  Daniel Pope, of newly established design studio and architects Popelo, which worked on La Camionera, says the bar is special because the result is super-niche. Certainly, there is no underfoot nastiness, peeling paint or unwanted design features common to many of the old underground venues. Yet this is queer through and through.  ’There’s not really many queer spaces where you can get a really beautiful drink in a nice glass, where the floor isn’t sticky,’ says Pope. ‘And with funding being so difficult, often queer spaces can feel quite DIY and quite shabby, perhaps not thought-through. With La Camionera, we really tried to make it feel high-end. So we focused the budget on specific areas, like the bespoke bench seat and polished aluminium bar; it feels quite luxe.’ Source: Rachel FerrimanLa Camionera interior by Popelo and WET Studio Those additions, Pope admits, had to be costed in and compensated for elsewhere. Making decisions like these is part of the ‘burden’ on queer architects delivering queer spaces – often pro bono or for a reduced fee. But designing with care and enthusiasm, and, crucially, with first-hand experience of being part of the community. As Pope says: ‘While I can’t talk for lesbians and there’s loads of spaces for gay men in London, I know that having a lesbian space that felt really sexy was key for La Camionera. The architect, who worked alongside LGBTQ+ set design firm Wet Studio on the job, argues that La Camionera’s queer energy was brought by that very queer team of ‘builders and makers who know how you want to feel in a space as a queer person’. On that basis, bespoke queer design for clubs, bars and music experiences in general could be the way forward – and a challenge to the troubles of the wider nighttime economy and a lack of LGBTQ+ representation in permanent spaces. He adds: ‘Talking from experience, when I was not out, I would go to events and never felt like I enjoyed it. It wasn’t until I started making queer friends and we would go to queer venues that you could be yourself and connect with other people in a really magnetic way.’ queer architecture 2025-05-22 Gino Spocchia comment and share Tagsqueer architecture
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  • Microsoft blames Apple's interference for why the Xbox mobile store has failed to launch

    Apple's actions to fight the injunction from its Epic Games App Store legal fight interfered with plans to launch the Xbox mobile web store, Microsoft has said.An Xbox controllerThe continuing legal drama between Apple and Epic Games over an anti-steering injunction harmed more than the two companies, it is alleged. According to an amicus brief supplied to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on May 20, Microsoft's plans were impacted by Apple's unwillingness to play ball.The brief, first reported by The Verge, focuses on the injunction, which required Apple to allow developers to link out to external websites to handle payments. The injunction was intended to permit external transactions, but Apple's implementation was far from what was intended by the court. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
    #microsoft #blames #apple039s #interference #why
    Microsoft blames Apple's interference for why the Xbox mobile store has failed to launch
    Apple's actions to fight the injunction from its Epic Games App Store legal fight interfered with plans to launch the Xbox mobile web store, Microsoft has said.An Xbox controllerThe continuing legal drama between Apple and Epic Games over an anti-steering injunction harmed more than the two companies, it is alleged. According to an amicus brief supplied to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on May 20, Microsoft's plans were impacted by Apple's unwillingness to play ball.The brief, first reported by The Verge, focuses on the injunction, which required Apple to allow developers to link out to external websites to handle payments. The injunction was intended to permit external transactions, but Apple's implementation was far from what was intended by the court. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums #microsoft #blames #apple039s #interference #why
    APPLEINSIDER.COM
    Microsoft blames Apple's interference for why the Xbox mobile store has failed to launch
    Apple's actions to fight the injunction from its Epic Games App Store legal fight interfered with plans to launch the Xbox mobile web store, Microsoft has said.An Xbox controllerThe continuing legal drama between Apple and Epic Games over an anti-steering injunction harmed more than the two companies, it is alleged. According to an amicus brief supplied to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on May 20, Microsoft's plans were impacted by Apple's unwillingness to play ball.The brief, first reported by The Verge, focuses on the injunction, which required Apple to allow developers to link out to external websites to handle payments. The injunction was intended to permit external transactions, but Apple's implementation was far from what was intended by the court. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
    0 Commentaires 0 Parts
  • Microsoft blames Apple for Xbox mobile store delays

    Microsoft says Apple's App Store rules are to blame for the continued delay of the Xbox mobile app store it announced last summer. In an amicus brief filed this week first spotted by The Verge, Microsoft expressed support for Epic Games in the company's long-running bout against Apple. The company also expressed concern that Apple could succeed in overturning the injunction that has opened the floodgates for payments outside of apps that circumvent Apple's 30 percent fee.
    "Among its other provisions, the order challenged in this appeal would prevent Apple from requiring consumers and app developersto use Apple’s in-app payment processing system as the exclusive means for the purchase of digital goods or services for use within iOS apps available for download on the Apple App Store, Microsoft said in the brief. "In part as a response to the district court’s injunction issued over a year ago, Microsoft undertook significant work to prepare new consumer offerings. However, Apple’s evasion of the injunction has hampered Microsoft in delivering these offerings." 
    The offering in questions would have allowed Microsoft to direct users of its apps like the Xbox app or games like Candy Crush and Minecraft to "separate platforms for payment." That's exactly what Spotify and Amazon's Kindle app has started doing in recent weeks, letting those companies avoid Apple's standard in-app purchase fees. 
    "The district court’s injunction allows Apple to maintain its in-app exclusivity but at least should have enabled Microsoft to offer consumers a workable solution by launching its own online store — accessible via link-out — for in-app items to be purchased off-app and used in games or other apps," the brief reads in part. "And that is what Microsoft wants to do. But even this solution has been stymied by Apple."
    Apple filed an appeal against the injunction earlier this month, and just a few days later it asked the Ninth Circuit to halt enforcement of the original ruling while it works through its appeal. Microsoft, for its part, is urging the court to enforce the injunction while the courts handle the appeal. The company points out that Apple itself has said that the policy changes it made in response to the injunction "can be undone," raising concern that without firm enforcement by the courts, Apple could pull the rug at any given moment.
    While things are moving quickly, with apps like Fortnite already returning to the App Store in the US, Microsoft remains in a holding pattern awaiting a firm outcome in the case. It seems they want to avoid a situation where the Xbox mobile store is released, only to be taken down should Apple win on appeal.
    Update, May 21, 2025, 3:42PM ET: This story has been updated with a link to the amicus brief that Microsoft filed and now includes more details from that filing. This article originally appeared on Engadget at
    #microsoft #blames #apple #xbox #mobile
    Microsoft blames Apple for Xbox mobile store delays
    Microsoft says Apple's App Store rules are to blame for the continued delay of the Xbox mobile app store it announced last summer. In an amicus brief filed this week first spotted by The Verge, Microsoft expressed support for Epic Games in the company's long-running bout against Apple. The company also expressed concern that Apple could succeed in overturning the injunction that has opened the floodgates for payments outside of apps that circumvent Apple's 30 percent fee. "Among its other provisions, the order challenged in this appeal would prevent Apple from requiring consumers and app developersto use Apple’s in-app payment processing system as the exclusive means for the purchase of digital goods or services for use within iOS apps available for download on the Apple App Store, Microsoft said in the brief. "In part as a response to the district court’s injunction issued over a year ago, Microsoft undertook significant work to prepare new consumer offerings. However, Apple’s evasion of the injunction has hampered Microsoft in delivering these offerings."  The offering in questions would have allowed Microsoft to direct users of its apps like the Xbox app or games like Candy Crush and Minecraft to "separate platforms for payment." That's exactly what Spotify and Amazon's Kindle app has started doing in recent weeks, letting those companies avoid Apple's standard in-app purchase fees.  "The district court’s injunction allows Apple to maintain its in-app exclusivity but at least should have enabled Microsoft to offer consumers a workable solution by launching its own online store — accessible via link-out — for in-app items to be purchased off-app and used in games or other apps," the brief reads in part. "And that is what Microsoft wants to do. But even this solution has been stymied by Apple." Apple filed an appeal against the injunction earlier this month, and just a few days later it asked the Ninth Circuit to halt enforcement of the original ruling while it works through its appeal. Microsoft, for its part, is urging the court to enforce the injunction while the courts handle the appeal. The company points out that Apple itself has said that the policy changes it made in response to the injunction "can be undone," raising concern that without firm enforcement by the courts, Apple could pull the rug at any given moment. While things are moving quickly, with apps like Fortnite already returning to the App Store in the US, Microsoft remains in a holding pattern awaiting a firm outcome in the case. It seems they want to avoid a situation where the Xbox mobile store is released, only to be taken down should Apple win on appeal. Update, May 21, 2025, 3:42PM ET: This story has been updated with a link to the amicus brief that Microsoft filed and now includes more details from that filing. This article originally appeared on Engadget at #microsoft #blames #apple #xbox #mobile
    WWW.ENGADGET.COM
    Microsoft blames Apple for Xbox mobile store delays
    Microsoft says Apple's App Store rules are to blame for the continued delay of the Xbox mobile app store it announced last summer. In an amicus brief filed this week first spotted by The Verge, Microsoft expressed support for Epic Games in the company's long-running bout against Apple. The company also expressed concern that Apple could succeed in overturning the injunction that has opened the floodgates for payments outside of apps that circumvent Apple's 30 percent fee. "Among its other provisions, the order challenged in this appeal would prevent Apple from requiring consumers and app developers (like Microsoft) to use Apple’s in-app payment processing system as the exclusive means for the purchase of digital goods or services for use within iOS apps available for download on the Apple App Store, Microsoft said in the brief. "In part as a response to the district court’s injunction issued over a year ago, Microsoft undertook significant work to prepare new consumer offerings. However, Apple’s evasion of the injunction has hampered Microsoft in delivering these offerings."  The offering in questions would have allowed Microsoft to direct users of its apps like the Xbox app or games like Candy Crush and Minecraft to "separate platforms for payment." That's exactly what Spotify and Amazon's Kindle app has started doing in recent weeks, letting those companies avoid Apple's standard in-app purchase fees.  "The district court’s injunction allows Apple to maintain its in-app exclusivity but at least should have enabled Microsoft to offer consumers a workable solution by launching its own online store — accessible via link-out — for in-app items to be purchased off-app and used in games or other apps," the brief reads in part. "And that is what Microsoft wants to do. But even this solution has been stymied by Apple." Apple filed an appeal against the injunction earlier this month, and just a few days later it asked the Ninth Circuit to halt enforcement of the original ruling while it works through its appeal. Microsoft, for its part, is urging the court to enforce the injunction while the courts handle the appeal. The company points out that Apple itself has said that the policy changes it made in response to the injunction "can be undone," raising concern that without firm enforcement by the courts, Apple could pull the rug at any given moment. While things are moving quickly, with apps like Fortnite already returning to the App Store in the US, Microsoft remains in a holding pattern awaiting a firm outcome in the case. It seems they want to avoid a situation where the Xbox mobile store is released, only to be taken down should Apple win on appeal. Update, May 21, 2025, 3:42PM ET: This story has been updated with a link to the amicus brief that Microsoft filed and now includes more details from that filing. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/microsoft-blames-apple-for-xbox-mobile-store-delays-162413207.html?src=rss
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  • Microsoft blames Apple for its delayed Xbox mobile store

    A year ago Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed that Microsoft was planning to launch a new Xbox mobile web store in July 2024. That never happened. I’ve been wondering what the hold up has been over the past year, and it seems we might have an answer: Apple.Microsoft filed an amicus brief late on Tuesday, in support of Epic Games’ ongoing fight with Apple’s control over the App Store. The brief takes issue with Apple’s attempt to overturn the injunction that allows Epic and other developers to freely advertise alternative payment methods in their apps, and not have to pay Apple additional fees for purchases made outside of apps.It’s a key ruling that has already allowed Fortnite to return to the App Store in the US, complete with the ability for Epic Games to link out to its own payment system inside the game. Microsoft has wanted to offer a similar experience for its Xbox mobile store, but it says its solution “has been stymied by Apple.” Here’s how Microsoft explains it:The district court’s injunction allows Apple to maintain its in-app exclusivity but at least should have enabled Microsoft to offer consumers a workable solution by launching its own online store — accessible via link-out — for in-app items to be purchased off-app and used in games or other apps. And that is what Microsoft wants to do. But even this solution has been stymied by Apple. Prior to the district court’s most recent order, Microsoft had been unable to implement linked-out paymentsbecause of Apple’s new anti-steering policies that restrict Microsoft’s communication to users and impose an even higher economic cost to Microsoft than before the injunction.The court ruling makes it possible for Microsoft to now launch its Xbox mobile store, but it’s clear that the software giant also wants to ensure Apple’s appeal against the ruling isn’t successful. If Microsoft did launch its Xbox mobile store and then Apple won a temporary stay, it may have to pull that store pending the appeal process.Microsoft even notes in its filing that “Apple makes no argument that the technical or policy changes cannot be undone,” so it’s urging the ruling to be enforced pending Apple’s appeal. “Microsoft’s own experience managing app stores confirms that Apple’s policies could be restored if Apple ultimately prevails on appeal.”The court ruling also impacts Microsoft’s main Xbox mobile app. “Similarly, Microsoft has long sought to enable Xbox app users on iOS to both buy and stream games in the app from the cloud or their other devices,” says Microsoft in its filing. “Apple’s policies have restricted Microsoft’s ability to offer these functionalities together; the injunction allows Microsoft to explore this possibility.”Microsoft started rolling out the ability to purchase games and DLC inside the Xbox mobile app last month, but it had to remove the remote play option to adhere to Apple’s App Store policies. You can’t currently buy an Xbox game in the Xbox mobile app on iOS and then stream it inside that same app. You have to manually navigate to the Xbox Cloud Gaming mobile website on a browser to get access to cloud gaming.Sarah Bond also announced plans to let players purchase and play games within the Xbox app on Android in October, just days after a court ruled that Google must crack open Android to third-party app stores. The feature was supposed to arrive in November, but Bond then blamed a “temporary administrative stay” for holding it back.See More:
    #microsoftblames #apple #its #delayedxboxmobile #store
    Microsoft blames Apple for its delayed Xbox mobile store
    A year ago Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed that Microsoft was planning to launch a new Xbox mobile web store in July 2024. That never happened. I’ve been wondering what the hold up has been over the past year, and it seems we might have an answer: Apple.Microsoft filed an amicus brief late on Tuesday, in support of Epic Games’ ongoing fight with Apple’s control over the App Store. The brief takes issue with Apple’s attempt to overturn the injunction that allows Epic and other developers to freely advertise alternative payment methods in their apps, and not have to pay Apple additional fees for purchases made outside of apps.It’s a key ruling that has already allowed Fortnite to return to the App Store in the US, complete with the ability for Epic Games to link out to its own payment system inside the game. Microsoft has wanted to offer a similar experience for its Xbox mobile store, but it says its solution “has been stymied by Apple.” Here’s how Microsoft explains it:The district court’s injunction allows Apple to maintain its in-app exclusivity but at least should have enabled Microsoft to offer consumers a workable solution by launching its own online store — accessible via link-out — for in-app items to be purchased off-app and used in games or other apps. And that is what Microsoft wants to do. But even this solution has been stymied by Apple. Prior to the district court’s most recent order, Microsoft had been unable to implement linked-out paymentsbecause of Apple’s new anti-steering policies that restrict Microsoft’s communication to users and impose an even higher economic cost to Microsoft than before the injunction.The court ruling makes it possible for Microsoft to now launch its Xbox mobile store, but it’s clear that the software giant also wants to ensure Apple’s appeal against the ruling isn’t successful. If Microsoft did launch its Xbox mobile store and then Apple won a temporary stay, it may have to pull that store pending the appeal process.Microsoft even notes in its filing that “Apple makes no argument that the technical or policy changes cannot be undone,” so it’s urging the ruling to be enforced pending Apple’s appeal. “Microsoft’s own experience managing app stores confirms that Apple’s policies could be restored if Apple ultimately prevails on appeal.”The court ruling also impacts Microsoft’s main Xbox mobile app. “Similarly, Microsoft has long sought to enable Xbox app users on iOS to both buy and stream games in the app from the cloud or their other devices,” says Microsoft in its filing. “Apple’s policies have restricted Microsoft’s ability to offer these functionalities together; the injunction allows Microsoft to explore this possibility.”Microsoft started rolling out the ability to purchase games and DLC inside the Xbox mobile app last month, but it had to remove the remote play option to adhere to Apple’s App Store policies. You can’t currently buy an Xbox game in the Xbox mobile app on iOS and then stream it inside that same app. You have to manually navigate to the Xbox Cloud Gaming mobile website on a browser to get access to cloud gaming.Sarah Bond also announced plans to let players purchase and play games within the Xbox app on Android in October, just days after a court ruled that Google must crack open Android to third-party app stores. The feature was supposed to arrive in November, but Bond then blamed a “temporary administrative stay” for holding it back.See More: #microsoftblames #apple #its #delayedxboxmobile #store
    WWW.THEVERGE.COM
    Microsoft blames Apple for its delayed Xbox mobile store
    A year ago Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed that Microsoft was planning to launch a new Xbox mobile web store in July 2024. That never happened. I’ve been wondering what the hold up has been over the past year, and it seems we might have an answer: Apple.Microsoft filed an amicus brief late on Tuesday, in support of Epic Games’ ongoing fight with Apple’s control over the App Store. The brief takes issue with Apple’s attempt to overturn the injunction that allows Epic and other developers to freely advertise alternative payment methods in their apps, and not have to pay Apple additional fees for purchases made outside of apps.It’s a key ruling that has already allowed Fortnite to return to the App Store in the US, complete with the ability for Epic Games to link out to its own payment system inside the game. Microsoft has wanted to offer a similar experience for its Xbox mobile store, but it says its solution “has been stymied by Apple.” Here’s how Microsoft explains it:The district court’s injunction allows Apple to maintain its in-app exclusivity but at least should have enabled Microsoft to offer consumers a workable solution by launching its own online store — accessible via link-out — for in-app items to be purchased off-app and used in games or other apps. And that is what Microsoft wants to do. But even this solution has been stymied by Apple. Prior to the district court’s most recent order, Microsoft had been unable to implement linked-out payments (or even inform customers that alternative purchase methods exist) because of Apple’s new anti-steering policies that restrict Microsoft’s communication to users and impose an even higher economic cost to Microsoft than before the injunction.The court ruling makes it possible for Microsoft to now launch its Xbox mobile store, but it’s clear that the software giant also wants to ensure Apple’s appeal against the ruling isn’t successful. If Microsoft did launch its Xbox mobile store and then Apple won a temporary stay, it may have to pull that store pending the appeal process.Microsoft even notes in its filing that “Apple makes no argument that the technical or policy changes cannot be undone,” so it’s urging the ruling to be enforced pending Apple’s appeal. “Microsoft’s own experience managing app stores confirms that Apple’s policies could be restored if Apple ultimately prevails on appeal.”The court ruling also impacts Microsoft’s main Xbox mobile app. “Similarly, Microsoft has long sought to enable Xbox app users on iOS to both buy and stream games in the app from the cloud or their other devices,” says Microsoft in its filing. “Apple’s policies have restricted Microsoft’s ability to offer these functionalities together; the injunction allows Microsoft to explore this possibility.”Microsoft started rolling out the ability to purchase games and DLC inside the Xbox mobile app last month, but it had to remove the remote play option to adhere to Apple’s App Store policies. You can’t currently buy an Xbox game in the Xbox mobile app on iOS and then stream it inside that same app. You have to manually navigate to the Xbox Cloud Gaming mobile website on a browser to get access to cloud gaming.Sarah Bond also announced plans to let players purchase and play games within the Xbox app on Android in October, just days after a court ruled that Google must crack open Android to third-party app stores. The feature was supposed to arrive in November, but Bond then blamed a “temporary administrative stay” for holding it back.See More:
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  • Bungie Blames Stolen 'Marathon' Art On Former Developer

    An anonymous reader shared this report from Kotaku:

    One of the most striking things about Bungie's Marathon is its presentation. The sci-fi extraction shooter combines bleak settings with bright colors in a way that makes it feel a bit like a sneaker promo meets Ghost in the Shell, or as designer Jeremy Skoog put it, "Y2K Cyberpunk mixed with Acid Graphic Design Posters." But it now looks like at least a few of the visual design elements that appeared in the recent alpha test were lifted from eight-year old work by an outside artist.

    "The Marathon alpha released recently and its environments are covered with assets lifted from poster designs I made in 2017," Bluesky user antire.alâ posted on Thursday. She shared two images showing elements of her work and where they appeared in Marathon's gameplay, including a rotated version of her own logo. A poster full of small repeating icon patterns also seems to be all but recreated in Marathon's press kit ARG and website...

    Bungie has responded and blamed the incident on a former employee. The studio says it's reaching out to the artist in question and conducting a full review of its in-game assets for Marathon"We immediately investigated a concern regarding unauthorized use of artist decals in Marathon and confirmed that a former Bungie artist included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game," the studio posted on X.
    "As a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission..." their X post emphasizes.
    "We value the creativity and dedication of all artists who contribute to our games, and we are committed to doing right by them. Thank you for bringing this to our attention."

    of this story at Slashdot.
    #bungie #blames #stolen #039marathon039 #art
    Bungie Blames Stolen 'Marathon' Art On Former Developer
    An anonymous reader shared this report from Kotaku: One of the most striking things about Bungie's Marathon is its presentation. The sci-fi extraction shooter combines bleak settings with bright colors in a way that makes it feel a bit like a sneaker promo meets Ghost in the Shell, or as designer Jeremy Skoog put it, "Y2K Cyberpunk mixed with Acid Graphic Design Posters." But it now looks like at least a few of the visual design elements that appeared in the recent alpha test were lifted from eight-year old work by an outside artist. "The Marathon alpha released recently and its environments are covered with assets lifted from poster designs I made in 2017," Bluesky user antire.alâ posted on Thursday. She shared two images showing elements of her work and where they appeared in Marathon's gameplay, including a rotated version of her own logo. A poster full of small repeating icon patterns also seems to be all but recreated in Marathon's press kit ARG and website... Bungie has responded and blamed the incident on a former employee. The studio says it's reaching out to the artist in question and conducting a full review of its in-game assets for Marathon"We immediately investigated a concern regarding unauthorized use of artist decals in Marathon and confirmed that a former Bungie artist included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game," the studio posted on X. "As a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission..." their X post emphasizes. "We value the creativity and dedication of all artists who contribute to our games, and we are committed to doing right by them. Thank you for bringing this to our attention." of this story at Slashdot. #bungie #blames #stolen #039marathon039 #art
    GAMES.SLASHDOT.ORG
    Bungie Blames Stolen 'Marathon' Art On Former Developer
    An anonymous reader shared this report from Kotaku: One of the most striking things about Bungie's Marathon is its presentation. The sci-fi extraction shooter combines bleak settings with bright colors in a way that makes it feel a bit like a sneaker promo meets Ghost in the Shell, or as designer Jeremy Skoog put it, "Y2K Cyberpunk mixed with Acid Graphic Design Posters." But it now looks like at least a few of the visual design elements that appeared in the recent alpha test were lifted from eight-year old work by an outside artist. "The Marathon alpha released recently and its environments are covered with assets lifted from poster designs I made in 2017," Bluesky user antire.alâ posted on Thursday. She shared two images showing elements of her work and where they appeared in Marathon's gameplay, including a rotated version of her own logo. A poster full of small repeating icon patterns also seems to be all but recreated in Marathon's press kit ARG and website... Bungie has responded and blamed the incident on a former employee. The studio says it's reaching out to the artist in question and conducting a full review of its in-game assets for Marathon ["and implementing stricter checks to document all artist contributions."] "We immediately investigated a concern regarding unauthorized use of artist decals in Marathon and confirmed that a former Bungie artist included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game," the studio posted on X. "As a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission..." their X post emphasizes. "We value the creativity and dedication of all artists who contribute to our games, and we are committed to doing right by them. Thank you for bringing this to our attention." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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  • Grok says it’s ‘skeptical’ about Holocaust death toll, then blames ‘programming error’

    Grok, the AI-powered chatbot created by xAI and widely deployed across its new corporate sibling X, wasn’t just obsessed with white genocide this week.
    As first noted in Rolling Stone, Grok also answered a question on Thursday about the number of Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II by saying that “historical records, often cited by mainstream sources, claim around 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945.”
    However, Grok then said it was “skeptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives,” adding, “The scale of the tragedy is undeniable, with countless lives lost to genocide, which I unequivocally condemn.”
    As defined by the U.S. Department of State, Holocaust denial includes “gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources.”
    In another post on Friday, Grok said this response was “not intentional denial” and instead blamed it on “a May 14, 2025, programming error.”
    “An unauthorized change caused Grok to question mainstream narratives, including the Holocaust’s 6 million death toll, sparking controversy,” the chatbot said. Grok said it “now aligns with historical consensus” but continued to insist there was “academic debate on exact figures, which is true but was misinterpreted.”
    The “unauthorized change” that Grok referred to was presumably the one xAI had already blamed earlier in the week for the chatbot’s repeated insistence on mentioning “white genocide”, even when asked about completely unrelated subjects.

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    In response, xAI said it would publish its system prompts on GitHub and was putting “additional checks and measures in place.”
    In February, Grok appeared to briefly censor unflattering mentions of Musk and President Donald Trump, with the company’s engineering lead blaming a rogue employee.
    #grok #says #its #skeptical #about
    Grok says it’s ‘skeptical’ about Holocaust death toll, then blames ‘programming error’
    Grok, the AI-powered chatbot created by xAI and widely deployed across its new corporate sibling X, wasn’t just obsessed with white genocide this week. As first noted in Rolling Stone, Grok also answered a question on Thursday about the number of Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II by saying that “historical records, often cited by mainstream sources, claim around 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945.” However, Grok then said it was “skeptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives,” adding, “The scale of the tragedy is undeniable, with countless lives lost to genocide, which I unequivocally condemn.” As defined by the U.S. Department of State, Holocaust denial includes “gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources.” In another post on Friday, Grok said this response was “not intentional denial” and instead blamed it on “a May 14, 2025, programming error.” “An unauthorized change caused Grok to question mainstream narratives, including the Holocaust’s 6 million death toll, sparking controversy,” the chatbot said. Grok said it “now aligns with historical consensus” but continued to insist there was “academic debate on exact figures, which is true but was misinterpreted.” The “unauthorized change” that Grok referred to was presumably the one xAI had already blamed earlier in the week for the chatbot’s repeated insistence on mentioning “white genocide”, even when asked about completely unrelated subjects. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW In response, xAI said it would publish its system prompts on GitHub and was putting “additional checks and measures in place.” In February, Grok appeared to briefly censor unflattering mentions of Musk and President Donald Trump, with the company’s engineering lead blaming a rogue employee. #grok #says #its #skeptical #about
    TECHCRUNCH.COM
    Grok says it’s ‘skeptical’ about Holocaust death toll, then blames ‘programming error’
    Grok, the AI-powered chatbot created by xAI and widely deployed across its new corporate sibling X, wasn’t just obsessed with white genocide this week. As first noted in Rolling Stone, Grok also answered a question on Thursday about the number of Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II by saying that “historical records, often cited by mainstream sources, claim around 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945.” However, Grok then said it was “skeptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives,” adding, “The scale of the tragedy is undeniable, with countless lives lost to genocide, which I unequivocally condemn.” As defined by the U.S. Department of State, Holocaust denial includes “gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources.” In another post on Friday, Grok said this response was “not intentional denial” and instead blamed it on “a May 14, 2025, programming error.” “An unauthorized change caused Grok to question mainstream narratives, including the Holocaust’s 6 million death toll, sparking controversy,” the chatbot said. Grok said it “now aligns with historical consensus” but continued to insist there was “academic debate on exact figures, which is true but was misinterpreted.” The “unauthorized change” that Grok referred to was presumably the one xAI had already blamed earlier in the week for the chatbot’s repeated insistence on mentioning “white genocide” (a conspiracy theory promoted by X and xAI owner Elon Musk), even when asked about completely unrelated subjects. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW In response, xAI said it would publish its system prompts on GitHub and was putting “additional checks and measures in place.” In February, Grok appeared to briefly censor unflattering mentions of Musk and President Donald Trump, with the company’s engineering lead blaming a rogue employee.
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