Why GameStop's Disastrous Quarter Hints the Videogame Industry as We All Know It Is Dying

t could be argued that GameStop's (GME - Get Report)   mixed-to-grim earnings report released Thursday was beyond its control.
A technology expert told TheStreet in early March that it's the beginning of the end for packaged video games. Its customer base is leaving in droves from it and other companies that sell in-store video games, in favor of online outlets, and that tide is highly unlikely to turn back.
But that may not soothe the pain of investors, who saw GameStop shares crash 12% to $21.01 on Friday. The video game retailer earned $2.38 a share in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2017, which ended in January, which exceeded analyst expectations for $2.28 a share. Same-store sales dived 16.3%. Revenue plummeted 13% year over year to $3.05 billion, and fell short of the consensus analyst estimate.
"2016 proved to be a more difficult year than we originally forecast, while our strategic transformation drove record gross margins of 35% and earnings came in within our revised guidance of $3.77 a share, we encountered stiff headwinds as we completed the third year of the console cycle," said CEO Paul Raines during an earnings call Thursday. "As a result, the physical games category declined 15% and our GameStop brand lost a small amount of market share during the holiday period due to deep discounting."
For the year ahead, the company sees earnings of $3.10 to $3.40 a share, far short of analysts estimates for $3.70 a share. At the same time, revenue is expected to be in the range of $8.44 billion to $8.78 billion, which falls between a 2% decline to 2% growth over the previous year.
GameStop isn't a alone in having trouble selling video games. Its competitor Best Buy (BBY - Get Report)   noted in its latest earnings report that video game sales were down.

A kid buying video games
"We expected some decline in gaming sales heading into the quarter, but the level of industry softness across both gaming hardware and software was much steeper than anticipated," said Best Buy Chairman and CEO Hubert Joly on a conference call.
"We're seeing more games being sold digitally, as 25% of the games are sold as full-game download. Full-game downloads are increasing by 5% to 10% points per year," Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson told TheStreet in early March. He said then that he has seen the amount of packaged games sold at stores drop in the last three years.
Olson said the trend is being fueled by convenience for the consumer and accelerated by faster internet speeds and greater storage capacity on gaming consoles. And that change is very good news for games publishers such as Electronic Arts (EA - Get Report) and Activision Blizzard (ATVI - Get Report) as well as video game console makers, because the newer landscape is much more lucrative: profit margins on sales of a packaged game are 60% versus 80% on a full-game download.
Both Microsoft  (MSFT - Get Report) and Sony  (SNE - Get Report) have introduced the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, respectively, which feature video game subscriptions, but for now their offerings aren't as current as gamers would like, said Olson. He expects the companies to offer more popular games over time.
"Eventually, we expect all games will be 100% download and streaming," he added. He said also that retailers who may be missing sales of packaged video games, "can benefit from the retail sales of the consoles."
Microsoft recently took a big step toward that digital download only environment. The company hatched a program where Xbox One owners can pay $10 per month to have unlimited access to over 100 Xbox One and backward-compatible Xbox 360 games. The news sent shares of GameStop into free-fall at the time.
To be sure, packaged games, both at GameStop and Best Buy, have their days numbered.

electrolaser

An electrolaser is a type of electroshock weapon that is also a directed-energy weapon. It uses lasers to form an electrically conductive laser-induced plasma channel (LIPC). A fraction of a second later, a powerful electric current is sent down this plasma channel and delivered to the target, thus functioning overall as a large-scale, high energy, long-distance version of the Taser electroshock gun.
Alternating current is sent through a series of step-up transformers, increasing the voltage and decreasing the current. The final voltage may be between 10⁸ and 10⁹ volts.^{[citation needed]} This current is fed into the plasma channel created by the laser beam.

Contents

• 1 Laser-induced plasma channel
• 2 Uses
• 3 Examples of electrolasers
  • 3.1 Applied Energetics / Ionatron
  • 3.2 Phoenix
  • 3.3 HSV Technologies
  • 3.4 Picatinny Arsenal
• 4 Similar devices
• 5 See also
• 6 References

Laser-induced plasma channel

A laser-induced plasma channel (LIPC) is formed by the following process:

• A laser emits a laser beam into the air.
• The laser beam rapidly heats and ionizes surrounding gases to form plasma.
• The plasma forms an electrically conductive plasma channel.

Because a laser-induced plasma channel relies on ionization, gas must exist between the electrolaser weapon and its target. If a laser-beam is intense enough, its electromagnetic field is strong enough to rip electrons off of air molecules, or whatever gas happens to be in between, creating plasma.^[1] Similar to lightning, the rapid heating also creates a sonic boom.^{[citation needed]}

Uses

Methods of use:

• To kill or incapacitate a living target through electric shock.
• To seriously damage, disable, or destroy any electric or electronic devices in the target.
• As electrolasers and natural lightning both use plasma channels to conduct electric current, an electrolaser can set up a light-induced plasma channel for uses such as:
  • To study lightning
  • During a thunderstorm, to make lightning discharge at a safe time and place, as with a lightning conductor.^[2]
  • Directing atmospheric lightning to a terrestrial collection station for the purpose of electrical power generation.
  • As a weapon, to make a thunderhead deliver a precise lightning strike onto a target from an aircraft; in this case, the aircraft and laser can be compared to a triggered spark gap, in that the relatively minor amount of initial input from the laser allows a large amount of energy to flow between the cloud and the ground.

Because of the plasma channel, an electrolaser may cause an accident if there is a thunderstorm (or other electricity sources such as overhead powerlines) about.^{[citation needed]} (See Taser for more information – principles of operation, controversies, etc.)
An electrolaser is not presently practical for wireless energy transfer due to danger and low efficiency.^{[citation needed]}

Examples of electrolasers

Applied Energetics / Ionatron

Publicly traded company Applied Energetics (formerly Ionatron) develops directed-energy weapons for the United States Military. The company has produced a device called the Joint IED Neutralizer (JIN) which was deemed unfit for field use in 2006.^[3] The JIN is intended for safely detonating improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Future designs include weapons mounted on land, air and sea vehicles and as a hand-held infantry version.
Applied Energetics said that the weapons will be able to be used as a non-lethal alternative to current weaponry, but will be able to deliver a high enough voltage jolt to kill.
Applied Energetics / Ionatron say that they are working on an electrolaser system, called LGE (Laser Guided Energy).^{[citation needed]} They are also studying a laser-induced plasma channel (LIPC) as a way to stop people from going through a corridor or passageway.^[4]

Phoenix

There was an unconfirmed report that in 1985 the U.S. Navy tested an electrolaser.^{[citation needed]} Its targets were missiles and aircraft. This device was known as the Phoenix project within the Strategic Defense Initiative research program. It was first proved by experiment at long range in 1985, but this report may have referred to an early test of MIRACL, which is or was a high-powered chemical laser.^{[citation needed]}

HSV Technologies

HSV Technologies, Inc. (Stood for the last names of the original founders, Herr, Schlesinger and Vernon; this is NOT the same company as Holden Special Vehicles), formerly of San Diego, California, USA, then Port Orchard, WA, designed a non-lethal device which was profiled in the 2002 TIME magazine article "Beyond the Rubber Bullet". It is an electrolaser using ultraviolet laser beams of 193 nm, and promises to immobilize living targets at a distance without contact. There is plan for an engine-disabling variation for use against the electronic ignitions of cars using a 248 nm laser. The lead inventor, Eric Herr, died in 2008 and the company appears to have been dissolved, as their website now hosts an unrelated business (as of 9/2015) ^[5]

Picatinny Arsenal

Scientists and engineers from Picatinny Arsenal have demonstrated that an electric discharge can go through a laser beam. The laser beam is self-focusing due to the high laser intensity of 50 gigawatts, which changes the speed of light in air.^[6] The laser was reportedly successfully tested in January 2012.^[7]

FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.
Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.
They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.
The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.

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Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefiting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions.The first decision occurred in October 2010, when the State Department and government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, giving Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America’s uranium supply.
When this sale was used by Trump on the campaign trail last year, Hillary Clinton’s spokesman said she was not involved in the committee review and noted the State Department official who handled it said she “never intervened ... on any [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] matter.”
In 2011, the administration gave approval for Rosatom’s Tenex subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in a partnership with the United States Enrichment Corp. Before then, Tenex had been limited to selling U.S. nuclear power plants reprocessed uranium recovered from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program.
“The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials.
The Obama administration’s decision to approve Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One has been a source of political controversy since 2015.
That’s when conservative author Peter Schweitzer and The New York Times documented how Bill Clinton collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in Russian speaking fees and his charitable foundation collected millions in donations from parties interested in the deal while Hillary Clinton presided on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
The Obama administration and the Clintons defended their actions at the time, insisting there was no evidence that any Russians or donors engaged in wrongdoing and there was no national security reason for any member of the committee to oppose the Uranium One deal.
But FBI, Energy Department and court documents reviewed by The Hill show the FBI in fact had gathered substantial evidence well before the committee’s decision that Vadim Mikerin — the main Russian overseeing Putin’s nuclear expansion inside the United States — was engaged in wrongdoing starting in 2009.
Then-Attorney General Eric Holder was among the Obama administration officials joining Hillary Clinton on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at the time the Uranium One deal was approved. Multiple current and former government officials told The Hill they did not know whether the FBI or DOJ ever alerted committee members to the criminal activity they uncovered.
Spokesmen for Holder and Clinton did not return calls seeking comment. The Justice Department also didn’t comment.
Mikerin was a director of Rosatom’s Tenex in Moscow since the early 2000s, where he oversaw Rosatom’s nuclear collaboration with the United States under the Megatons to Megwatts program and its commercial uranium sales to other countries. In 2010, Mikerin was dispatched to the U.S. on a work visa approved by the Obama administration to open Rosatom’s new American arm called Tenam.
Between 2009 and January 2012, Mikerin “did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire confederate and agree with other persons … to obstruct, delay and affect commerce and the movement of an article and commodity (enriched uranium) in commerce by extortion,” a November 2014 indictment stated.
His illegal conduct was captured with the help of a confidential witness, an American businessman, who began making kickback payments at Mikerin’s direction and with the permission of the FBI. The first kickback payment recorded by the FBI through its informant was dated Nov. 27, 2009, the records show.
In evidentiary affidavits signed in 2014 and 2015, an Energy Department agent assigned to assist the FBI in the case testified that Mikerin supervised a “racketeering scheme” that involved extortion, bribery, money laundering and kickbacks that were both directed by and provided benefit to more senior officials back in Russia.
“As part of the scheme, Mikerin, with the consent of higher level officials at TENEX and Rosatom (both Russian state-owned entities) would offer no-bid contracts to US businesses in exchange for kickbacks in the form of money payments made to some offshore banks accounts,” Agent David Gadren testified.
“Mikerin apparently then shared the proceeds with other co-conspirators associated with TENEX in Russia and elsewhere,” the agent added.
The investigation was ultimately supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now the deputy FBI director under Trump, Justice Department documents show.
Both men now play a key role in the current investigation into possible, but still unproven, collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election cycle. McCabe is under congressional and Justice Department inspector general investigation in connection with money his wife’s Virginia state Senate campaign accepted in 2015 from now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe at a time when McAuliffe was reportedly under investigation by the FBI. The probe is not focused on McAuliffe's conduct but rather on whether McCabe's attendance violated the Hatch Act or other FBI conflict rules.

The connections to the current Russia case are many. The Mikerin probe began in 2009 when Robert Mueller, now the special counsel in charge of the Trump case, was still FBI director. And it ended in late 2015 under the direction of then-FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired earlier this year.

Its many twist and turns aside, the FBI nuclear industry case proved a gold mine, in part because it uncovered a new Russian money laundering apparatus that routed bribe and kickback payments through financial instruments in Cyprus, Latvia and Seychelles. A Russian financier in New Jersey was among those arrested for the money laundering, court records show.
The case also exposed a serious national security breach: Mikerin had given a contract to an American trucking firm called Transport Logistics International that held the sensitive job of transporting Russia’s uranium around the United States in return for more than $2 million in kickbacks from some of its executives, court records show.
One of Mikerin’s former employees told the FBI that Tenex officials in Russia specifically directed the scheme to “allow for padded pricing to include kickbacks,” agents testified in one court filing.
Bringing down a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme that had both compromised a sensitive uranium transportation asset inside the U.S. and facilitated international money laundering would seem a major feather in any law enforcement agency’s cap.
But the Justice Department and FBI took little credit in 2014 when Mikerin, the Russian financier and the trucking firm executives were arrested and charged.
The only public statement occurred a year later when the Justice Department put out a little-noticed press release in August 2015, just days before Labor Day. The release noted that the various defendants had reached plea deals.
By that time, the criminal cases against Mikerin had been narrowed to a single charge of money laundering for a scheme that officials admitted stretched from 2004 to 2014. And though agents had evidence of criminal wrongdoing they collected since at least 2009, federal prosecutors only cited in the plea agreement a handful of transactions that occurred in 2011 and 2012, well after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’s approval.
The final court case also made no mention of any connection to the influence peddling conversations the FBI undercover informant witnessed about the Russian nuclear officials trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons even though agents had gathered documents showing the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s foundation, sources confirmed to The Hill.
The lack of fanfare left many key players in Washington with no inkling that a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme with serious national security implications had been uncovered.
On Dec. 15, 2015, the Justice Department put out a release stating that Mikerin, “a former Russian official residing in Maryland was sentenced today to 48 months in prison” and ordered to forfeit more than $2.1 million.
Ronald Hosko, who served as the assistant FBI director in charge of criminal cases when the investigation was underway, told The Hill he did not recall ever being briefed about Mikerin’s case by the counterintelligence side of the bureau despite the criminal charges that were being lodged.
“I had no idea this case was being conducted,” a surprised Hosko said in an interview.
Likewise, major congressional figures were also kept in the dark.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chaired the House Intelligence Committee during the time the FBI probe was being conducted, told The Hill that he had never been told anything about the Russian nuclear corruption case even though many fellow lawmakers had serious concerns about the Obama administration’s approval of the Uranium One deal.
“Not providing information on a corruption scheme before the Russian uranium deal was approved by U.S. regulators and engage appropriate congressional committees has served to undermine U.S. national security interests by the very people charged with protecting them,” he said. “The Russian efforts to manipulate our American political enterprise is breathtaking.”

How The Solar Warden And Blue Sphere Alliance Will Change Life As We Know It

By now, many people have heard about the Solar Warden group that hacker Gary McKinnon talked about uncovering in one of his hacking sessions.

In 2010, investigative reporter Darren Perks requested more information about the Solar Warden Program from the Department of Defense through the Freedom of Information Act.



He received the following response confirming the Solar Warden project existed:

About an hour ago I spoke to a NASA rep who confirmed this was their program and that it was terminated by the President. He also informed me that it was not a joint program with the DoD. The NASA rep informed me that you should be directed to the Johnson Space Center FOIA Manager.

I have ran your request through one of our space-related directorates and I’m waiting on one other division with the Command to respond back to me. I will contact you once I have a response from the other division. Did NASA refer you to us?

Parks additionally stated:

When Gary McKinnon hacked into U.S. Space Command computers several years ago and learned of the existence of “non-terrestrial officers” and “fleet-to-fleet transfers” and a secret program called “Solar Warden”, he was charged by the Bush Justice Department with having committed “the biggest military computer hack of all time”, and stood to face prison time of up to 70 years after extradition from UK. But trying earnest McKinnon in open court would involve his testifying to the above classified facts, and his attorney would be able to subpoena government officers to testify under oath about the Navy’s Space Fleet.

McKinnon also found out about the ships or craft within Solar Warden. It is said that there are approx eight cigar-shaped motherships (each longer than two football fields end-to-end) and 43 small “scout ships. The Solar Warden Space Fleet operates under the US Naval Network and Space Operations Command (NNSOC) [formerly Naval Space Command]. There are approximately 300 personnel involved at that facility, with the figure rising.

Solar Warden is said to be made up from U.S. aerospace Black Projects contractors, but with some contributions of parts and systems by Canada. United Kingdom, Italy, Austria, Russia, and Australia. It is also said that the program is tested and operated from secret military bases such as Area 51 in Nevada, USA.

Project Camelot’s Kerry Cassidy interviewed military whistleblower Mark Richards, who also confirmed the existence of this program:



We’ve recently heard about the ET group, the Blue Avians, who are associated with the Blue Sphere Alliance and how they began to arrive into our solar system since 1999. According to contactee Corey Goode, there are over 100 Blue Spheres helping our planet to push for complete disclosure and the release of suppressed technology. Goode stated that some of these spheres are as large as some of the biggest planets in our solar system.





This is a brief synopsis of Goode provided by Dr. Michael Salla:

Corey Goode (aka GoodETxSG) has revealed more about his claimed contact experiences with a group of extraterrestrials called the Sphere Alliance that is cooperating with an alliance of secret space programs indigenous to Earth. He has earlier revealed that there are five secret space programs belonging to our current Earth civilization, as well as between five to seven space programs belonging to ancient human civilizations that are still operating. Several of these secret space programs indigenous to Earth make up what he calls the Secret Space Program (SSP) Alliance, which should not be confused with the Sphere Alliance which he claims comprise five different extraterrestrials races that are here to assist humanity deal with an upcoming “Event” that will change life dramatically on the planet.

Corey claims to have attended several off-planet meetings where three of these extraterrestrial races belonging to the Sphere Alliance, have appeared. The alien race which he has communicated with the most is called the Blue Avians – one of whom he met with as recently as this past weekend is called “Tear-Eir”. In addition to his recent contact experiences, Corey also claims to have earlier served, from 1987 to 2007 with several secret space programs as an Intuitive Empath. In an earlier question and answer email exchange, Corey described the five secret space programs as follows:

Solar Warden – mainly focused on policing the Solar System and surrounding Star Clusters;
Interplanetary Corporate Conglomerate (ICC) – focused mainly on development and aquisition of technology by any means.
Dark Fleet – worked almost entirely outside the Sol System, Very Military (Offensive),
“NATO TYPE SSP” – Recently in Alliance Conferences they were referred to as the “League of Nations Program.”
Various Special Access Program SSP’s that were small, usually had the newer technology, very secretive and worked for some of the Secret Earth Governments
This is David Wilcock’s account:

“100 spheres the size of either Neptune or Jupiter have entered our solar system in the last 2-3 years. There were many others the size of our Moon that came in between 1999 and 2001…

The Cabal used an advanced weapon to fire on one of the Moon-sized ones in mid-December. The object lit up, becoming a bright red spot in the sky that people saw… and redirected the beam back to the base it came from. This caused serious damage and some loss of life… Since that time we have had the no-fly zone around the earth and the quarantine around our solar system. No one who was already here is being allowed to leave — either from Earth or any of the “colonies,” as they are called.

The group that has appeared from the spheres is called the “Blue Avians.”… One of the five main factions in the Space Program, named Solar Warden, is allied with them now, and they are working with the Alliance on earth, but never the Cabal… The… main thing they said was that Cabal people were defecting over into the Alliance and altering the plans.



The key is that the Avians want us to move into a loving and peaceful world. They want this transition, similarly, to be as peaceful as possible.”

Goode gave further confirmation of the Solar Warden in his interview with Wilcock on the Jimmy Church Show:



In Dr. Salla’s Q&A session with Goode, Salla asked:

“Is there currently a disclosure race happening between the Cabal/Illuminati and the Solar Warden/Sphere Alliance in terms of how much information should be released and how this frames key issues?”

Goode stated:

Yes, When FULL Disclosure occurs it will also come with the disclosure of massive crimes against humanity that will send the bulk of society into shock for some time. The fact that there are aliens will not be as disruptive or shocking as what all the “Elites” have done in secret during the time they were hiding the existence of aliens and most of all the high technology that would have ended the financial system decades ago.

IF the “CABAL/ILLUMINATI” can control the Disclosure they can also control the narrative and spin of disclosure they think to make themselves come out looking better in the end. They had planned on being off planet when all this info broke. Now that they are stuck here with everyone else they are all turning on each other and spinning and cutting deals as fast as they can. They know what the population will call for if there is full and unfettered disclosure of our true history along with the release of suppressed technologies and the existence of alien life.

They MUST do everything they can to control the narrative and manner that this information is disclosed. This is a much more complicated situation than most realize. Complete disclosure is going to leave many of the world’s population calling for “heads to roll”.

Apparently, negative factions are trying to flee the planet and solar system but are unable to due to help from the Sphere Alliance, to which Goode stated:

“The Sphere Alliance has setup 2 “Energy Barriers” that cannot be penetrated by any beings or technology (be they 3/4D or 4/5D beings). One is the “Outer Barrier” which completely closes off the entire Sol System (including Gate/Portal travel) from travel into or out of the system. The other is a “Barrier” that surrounds the Earth. It keeps every Being and Craft/Technology that was either On Earth or in Near Earth Orbit from leaving a certain distance from the Planet. There are active Gates/Portals that allow travel between Planets within the Sol System. However those Portals are affected by these “Energetic Tsunami Waves” at times and regular travel is ill advised and can be dangerous.

There are also a lot of recent skirmishes between different “Cabal” factions since they have realized that their “Royal White Reptilians” have tried to negotiate their safe passage out of the Sol System by giving up all of their Illuminati/Cabal followers as well as their lower cast Reptilian and Other Allied Races in their Federation. There is chaos among these groups who are following the example of their masters and turning on each other. Though they are heavily denying this publicly and putting their most clever disinformation agents out to control the narrative as best they can.”

You can find updates on Corey’s website, Sphere Being Alliance.

Corey will be doing weekly interviews with David Wilcock on GaiamTV.  The first one is July 14th, 2015.   Click here to subscribe.

This falls into alignment to what Dr. Simon Atkins stated about CERN… that it’s being used to prevent the incoming intergalactic wave of energy that will transform consciousness. If this happens, it would immediately expose everyone who has committed crimes against humanity.

The ruling elite and ET factions may be trying to use CERN as a means of creating a portal to escape but because of the barriers placed over the planet by the Sphere Alliance, this cannot happen. Basically, they’re all screwed and will be turning on one another while trying to save their own asses.

If all of this comes to fruition, you can expect to see a world like you’ve never seen before! Imagine if all of the suppressed technologies were released? Imagine receiving advanced technologies from our galactic neighbors, such as a replicator that can instantly manifest anything you want to eat?

While it all sounds like science fiction right now, there are enough sources and confirmations to give this information credibility.

Blizzard knuckles down on community as Valve fiddles

taken exactly the kind of firm, decisive action we've come to expect of the company; it's added some graphs to the interface. Nothing's going to top the sheer shade of Gamasutra's headline on this topic - "Steam considers preventing review bombs, adds graphs instead" - which perfectly sums up the exasperation so many developers feel with the service at this point. "We're aware of the problem, and doing as little as humanly possible to fix it" is in many ways the worst response the company could have conjured.

Review bombs, for the uninitiated, are when a mob descends on Steam to leave a flood of poor reviews - often accompanied by a grossly offensive comment - on a game whose developer has done something to raise their hackles. The most recent example was the review-bombing of Firewatch after its developers demanded PewDiePie remove videos of the game following his latest racist "slip of the tongue", but dozens of developers have been targeted for this kind of treatment, often simply for the sin of being female or a minority, or for in some way otherwise upsetting the denizens of Reddit and 4chan. Review bombing can hammer a game's rating on Steam and consequently seriously damage its sales - it's a direct and effective way for online mobs to damage the livelihoods of developers.

    "What's most frustrating is that the data Valve is now revealing makes it clear how trivial it would be to fix this problem if they actually cared"

Valve's response has been to effectively shrug off responsibility for these problems and place it entirely on the shoulders of its customers. Steam users will now be expected to look at a graph for a game to make sure it's not being review bombed, a process that assumes that they've bothered looking at a game with a low review score in the first place, that they understand what review bombing is, and that they know what it looks like on a graph - all of which seem vanishingly unlikely, making this move entirely unhelpful. What's most frustrating is that the data Valve is now revealing makes it clear how trivial it would be to fix this problem if they actually cared; an automated system that flagged possible review bombing for human review would be beyond trivial to implement.

This is the crux; the problem is not technological, it's philosophical. Valve clearly has a strong philosophy and political standpoint about how online services should work and about how the freedom of users (including users who haven't actually bought a game but still want to give it a 1-star review and call its creator a variety of colourful names) should be balanced against the protection of creators' livelihoods. Moreover, it has a belief that where problems do arise, they can be fixed with more data and tweaked algorithms; this reflects the broad Silicon Valley ideological fervour about the power and purity of algorithms, which conveniently ignores the extraordinary degree to which code that deals with human behaviour tends to reflect the implicit biases of its authors. Valve absolutely knows it could fix this issue with tighter rules, more human supervision and, yes, some better algorithms to report back to those supervisors; it just doesn't want to do that, because that's not its philosophy.

On the flip side of this coin, you've got Blizzard - a company which embraces technology with every bit as much fervour as Valve, but takes a very different approach to protecting its players and policing its community. Last week, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan laid things out very clearly - the team has absolutely refocused personnel and resources away from other features and content in order to address player toxicity in the Overwatch community.

    "There will always be a subset of people who get their kicks from aggressively ruining other people's fun... For them, harassment and abuse is the game, more so than the game itself"

It's throwing people, time and money into making its blockbuster game into an environment where people can play without facing abuse and harassment. Some of that effort boils down to developing smarter systems - Kaplan bemoaned the fact that resources have been diverted from other features in order to implement player-reporting on consoles, a feature Overwatch initially lacked on those platforms in the belief that consoles' own native player management systems would suffice. Other simple aspects of the game's systems and designs are clearly designed to avoid player harassment - dropping kill:death ratios from the scoreboard is one such move, for example.

Ultimately, though, the work Blizzard is doing on Overwatch - and that other companies that genuinely care about this issue, such as League of Legends creator Riot, are doing on their games - is about people, not algorithms. Clever design and good code gets you so far in managing human behaviour, but there will always be a subset of people who get their kicks from aggressively ruining other people's fun, and will devote themselves to learning to game any system you throw in their way. For them, harassment and abuse is the game, more so than the game itself; to deal with them, ultimately, you need living, breathing people empowered to make good decisions on behalf of the community.

This is, perhaps, what Valve doesn't understand - or is the understanding which it rejects on the grounds of its philosophy. Review bombing is a form of "gaming" Steam's systems; it arose because groups of people discovered that it was possible to manipulate Steam's data and algorithms in a way that achieved their political objectives. You can't fix that by just providing more data; the only way to prevent it from impacting on the income and livelihoods of developers (who, let's remember, give Steam a hell of a cut of their sales, and deserve to be treated with a damned sight more respect by Valve) is to seal up loopholes and add a layer of human supervision, in the form of people with clear priorities to protect creators and preserve Steam as a great retail platform, not a vector for online abuse mobs.


Blizzard's philosophy here (and again, it's not just Blizzard - plenty of other game operators also recognise and value of properly policing and improving their communities) is a great counter-example, and a window into what a service like Steam could be like if Valve rooted out some of this counter-productive philosophy from its way of doing business.

Steam is one of the most important developments in the games business in the last 20 years; it effectively rescued PC gaming from commercial doldrums and placed it on a path to the rude health it's in now. Its very importance, both commercially and culturally, cries out for better management; for it to slide into being a hostile environment for developers and a vector for online abuse (and thus also a pretty unpleasant place for the average consumer to shop for games) is a deeply worrying and unfortunate outcome.

Valve's critics don't pile on the company out of dislike, but out of disappointment at seeing such a vital part of the industry go to seed; if the company is really serious about fixing these issues, we'd suggest that a good first step would be to put down the graphs and see if maybe Blizzard is free for a chat on the phone.