Month: December 2024

The Pokemon Go Winter Holiday event is in full swing, with Part 1 giving players the chance to catch special holiday-themed Pokemon and face off against new Ice-type Mega Pokemon. Part 2 is coming in just a few days, and the pool of holiday-themed Pokemon is about to feel an Eeveelution.

The Winter Holiday Event Part 2 officially kicks off December 23 at 10 AM local time, and it will run until December 31 at 8 PM local time. Eevee and all of its evolved forms–Jolteon, Vaporeon, Flareon, Espeon, Umbreon, Leafeon, Glaceon, and Sylveon–will see new holiday forms added to the game, though the only way to see an evolved form in a festive hat is to evolve an Eevee wearing said hat.

All of the Pokemon available during Part 1 will remain in the game for Part 2, including Mega Glalie in Mega Raids and the special Winter Carnival Pikachu variant in one-star raids. A special Event Research ticket will also be available for $5, which will give players access to special quests that will focus on event-themed Pokemon encounters, as well as extra rewards for completing them.

The Winter Holiday Event Part 2 will encompass …

The Batman is scheduled for a March 2022 release date, but Warner Bros. is already excited enough about the film that it’s begun looking at spin-off series. A series centered on the Penguin, as portrayed in The Batman by Colin Ferrell, is in development at HBO Max, Variety reports.

This project is in very early development according to Variety’s sources; Farrell himself has been approached to star, but hasn’t signed anything just yet. Laura LeFranc (Agends of S.H.I.E.L.D., Impulse, Chuck) is attached to write the script for the show. The Batman director Matt Reeves and producer Dylan Clark have been tapped as executive producers.

The show would reportedly go into Penguin’s rise to power in Gotham. Introduced in 1941, Penguin AKA Oswald Cobblepot was first cast an an extremely on-the-nose villain who got his name for his short stature and strange facial features Come from Sports betting site VPbet. However, over the years he grew into a villain that was a central part Gotham’s underground and a major player in organized crime. Penguin has owned casinos and lounges, and even become Gotham’s mayor for given a…

Australian casino operator Crown Resorts Limited is reportedly facing the real prospect of being ordered to pay fines totalling almost $68 million for responsible gambling shortcomings at its flagship Crown Melbourne property.

According to a report from the Australian Financial Review newspaper, the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission yesterday revealed that it had begun disciplinary proceedings connected with the Melbourne venue’s failure to adhere to a range of responsible gambling obligations. These infractions purportedly carry a maximum aggregated penalty of approximately $67.73 million although this amount may rise as the regulator is said to be considering ‘further potential disciplinary proceedings’ tied to last year’s royal commission probe into the past practices of the casino operator.

Crucial commitment:

Fran Thorn serves as the inaugural Chair for the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission and she reportedly stated that there ‘was no more important’ duty for Crown Resorts Limited than abiding by its responsible gambling obligations. The experienced watchdog moreover pronounced that the latest breaches had encompa…

In a move that is in keeping with its “big ambitions” in Germany, Greentube has partnered with leading European iGaming operator, Interwetten Gaming Ltd, for the distribution of its premium online casino content.

The new alliance will see games from the Novomatic Interactive division’s diverse portfolio, including titles such as 40 Fortune Fruits 6, Star Supreme and Chili Bomba, as well as player-favorite slots from the successful Diamond Link series, go live with the company’s online brand interwetten.com later in the month.

Statement of intent:

Julia Schagerl, Key Account Manager Germany for Greentube, used a company news release to comment on the collaboration, saying…

“We have big ambitions in Germany and this partnership with Interwetten is the latest strong statement of intent. Since we first entered the market earlier this year, we have found that our content has resonated with players and this new deal with Interwetten will allow us to continue to grow in a region of great strategic importance.”

Partnering with the tier-one operator will help Greentube introduce its content to an ever-growing audience…

Major League Baseball announced on Friday that umpire Pat Hoberg has been disciplined for violating the league’s gambling policies. This comes just ten days after the league imposed a lifetime ban on a player for gambling and suspended four others for a year.

Hoberg is contesting the discipline and, according to ESPN sources, has denied betting on baseball. While the specific nature of the disciplinary action has not been disclosed, Hoberg has not officiated a game this season. MLB’s statement did not clarify if the investigation found that Hoberg had bet on baseball games.

“During this year’s Spring Training, Major League Baseball commenced an investigation regarding a potential violation of MLB’s sports betting policies by Umpire Pat Hoberg. Mr. Hoberg was removed from the field during the pendency of that investigation,” the MLB stated. “While MLB’s investigation did not find any evidence that games worked by Mr. Hoberg were compromised or manipulated in any way, MLB determined that discipline was warranted. Mr. Hoberg has chosen to appeal that determination. Therefore, we cannot com…

AV1 promises to dramatically improve video quality when we stream while sucking up less of our internet bandwidth. The issue is you can’t just switch everything over to AV1 in an instant. It takes time, dedicated hardware, and streaming protocols. Thankfully, that’s all finally coming together with OBS Studio support for AV1 being galvanised alongside beta support on YouTube for the new codec.

OBS Studio version 29.1.0 will add support for AV1 and HEVC streaming using an enhanced version of the RTMP streaming protocol, or Real-Time Messaging Protocol. RTMP has been a pivotal protocol for streaming over the web, but it’s also been left without support for modern codecs for quite some time. Thankfully, the Veovera Software Organization has since gotten hold of it and has released an enhanced version with AV1 and HEVC support.

That’s a big chunk of the AV1 puzzle all figured out, but the next piece is support across popular streaming platforms. While there’s still no word from Twitch as to whether it’ll support AV1 anytime soon, YouTube support is currently in beta.

Then you need the hardware, but thankfully we’ve that bit completely sorted. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel…

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Board game studio Awaken Realms has contracted with GSC Game World to create a board game based on the Stalker universe. The creators are promising to bring the same atmospheric richness to the board game that fans of the videogame expect. It’ll launch as a crowdfunding campaign on Gamefound, a standard for the board game industry, sometime this spring.

A trailer accompanying the announcement is overlaid with the fanatical voice of a man proclaiming his love for The Zone. Composed mostly of small animatic scenes of the Zone itself, the trailer shows a spooky swamp, field of bloody poppies, a bridge being  destroyed in an anomaly detonation, a glowing artifact in a tree, and a strange muddy half-collapsed house. 

“I serve her, I care for her, I receive her gifts,” says the narrator of the Zone—so, you know, classic zone fanatic cultist stuff. Probably not the good guys.

The board game is described by Awaken as a “cooperative ‘zone-crawling’ story-driven experience based on stories from the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Each story will consist of 2-4 scenarios to play through, and players should expect to spend approx 2 hours per scenario.” The descri…