Assassin's Creed Shadows is seemingly not out of hot water with gamers just yet, although this time, the flak seems to have been mostly unwarranted. Earlier this week, rumors popped up on Reddit claiming to reveal the Assassin's Creed Shadows Animus Hub, which was supposedly the upcoming RPG's dedicated launcher, and a host of in-game season passes and rewards. The leak purports to detail the first free battle pass, which is referred to as "Eye in the Dark" and will consist of 20 reward tiers. Completing the battle pass allegedly rewards 9,050 Isu coins, which can be used to purchase various cosmetics in the form of character, weapon, and mount customization options. Somewhat comically, there appear to be in-game collaborations with the likes of VISA, Red Bull, Intel, BAPE Clothing and Sprecher, although how these will play out in the game is a mystery. This news made quite a stir when it was first announced, since Ubisoft was very clear when it confirmed the game's delay last month that there would be no season passes in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

As it turns out, though, the rumors were kicking up enough speculation about the return of paid subscriptions, battle passes, and season passes that Ubisoft took to its official Discord server to address the rumors directly. Although Ubisoft confirmed that the Animus Hub is a piece of software it has been working on, all the content and rewards offered in the Animus Hub will be free content. Ubisoft was, however, careful with its words, not denying the existence of season passes and battle passes, instead only commenting that those passes will not be paid. Additionally, Ubisoft confirmed that there will be additional in-game content available for free in the Animus Hub.

Game File reporter, Stephen Totilo, has discovered a new Nintendo-filed legal document—the Japanese multinational video game company's North American office is ready to do battle (in court) with Tropic Haze. The latter's Yuzu Switch Emulator is the focus of Nintendo's legal case—initiated on February 26, at the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Totilo's social media summary of goings-on stated: "Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu, saying their tech illegally circumvents Nintendo's software encryption and facilitates piracy. Seeks damages for alleged violations and a shutdown of the emulator." The Dolphin Emulator—a Gamecube and Wii emulation platform—was removed from Valve's Steam store last year, following the sending of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown order, but its development team was not pursued in US courts. The House of Mario is reportedly fiercely protective of its intellectual properties and technologies—gaining a hard-nosed reputation for engaging in plenty of legal action over decades past.

Nintendo's federal-level lawsuit alleges that Tropic Haze's Yuzu Switch Emulator played a large part in widespread illegal distribution of a 2023 flagship game title. They believe that "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" was pirated over one million times in a time period prior to its official launch on Switch consoles, while Yuzu's Patreon funding almost doubled within the same cycle. Nintendo stated (through filed documentation): "With Yuzu in hand, nothing stops a user from obtaining and playing unlawful copies of virtually any game made for the Nintendo Switch, all without paying a dime to Nintendo or to any of the hundreds of other game developers and publishers making and selling games for the Nintendo Switch...In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others' copyrighted works." They argue that Yuzu is capable of circumventing the Switch console's many layers of encryption—Tropic Haze's software, in their opinion, is "primarily designed" to break Switch software protections.

Well that blew up, huh? If you follow emulation or just gaming on the whole, you've probably heard about the controversy around the Dolphin Steam release and the Wii Common Key. There's been a lot of conclusions made, and while we've wanted to defend ourselves, we thought it would be prudent to contact lawyers first to make sure that our understanding of the situation was legally sound. That took some time, which was frustrating to ourselves and to our users, but now we are educated and ready to give an informed response.

We'd like to thank Kellen Voyer of Voyer Law for providing us with legal council for this matter. And to be clear, all of the analysis below is specifically regarding US law. Without further delay, let's begin.

A flurry of DMCA take down notices, on Activision's part, have brought even more attention to an alleged Call of Duty internal alpha test. Leakers have been talking about Modern Warfare III being the likely candidate for a new CoD release this year, following a planned premium expansion for MW II morphing into a full-fledged sequel. Activision has been busy scrubbing the internet clean of screenshots sourced from the alleged "Hailström" test build, but issued copyright strike messages contain references to the next entry in the series. Targeted tipsters have been warned about activity that has resulted in: "leaked content from unreleased video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" appearing on social media and other gaming community hubs.

The publisher has semi-acknowledged that the cat is out of the bag, and yesterday addressed the fan base with a simple query: "Let's get this out of the way...Should MW II Operators, Weapons and Bundles carry forward into Call of Duty 2023?" This official tweet was shared by the Sledgehammer Games account—this Activision-owned studio is rumored to be the primary development house working on Modern Warfare III, with other Call of Duty-oriented outfits providing additional support. Call of Duty: Vanguard (2021) was Sledgehammer's third fully developed entry in the blockbuster (and highly contested) series.

While seeing DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) claims used for the removal of copyrighted content on Youtube and the like is a common occurrence, seeing it used to take a game off digital store shelves is still a relatively new concept. However, that is precisely what happened to Stardock's Star Control: Origins which released back on September 20th, 2018. The DMCA claim itself comes from exclusive copyright holders Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford who were two of the original game designers that worked on the series' first and second installments back in the early 1990s for Accolade. Considering Stardock bought the brand, trademark and publishing rights in 2013, this particular DMCA claim may not be legitimate. Even so, the game has been pulled, oddly enough the DLC remains available for purchase.

While Paul and Fred are claiming exclusive copyright in regards to the original titles as well as any related materials present in said games, they also claim similar copyright in regards to Star Control 3. Even if they do have some form of a legitimate copyright claim, Stardock's title does not use characters or story threads from the previous games and is based in a separate standalone universe. Taking into account Stardock's ownership of the brand, the DMCA claim appears to be nothing more than a form of harassment directed at Stardock. Worse yet, considering the resulting loss of income due to the DMCA claim, the company will be laying off some developers assigned to Star Control: Origins. Considering this legal dispute has been ongoing for some time you can view Stardocks side of the story on a separate webpage. Meanwhile, you can see the original DMCA takedown at the source provided below.

You know that iPhone you bought? Or that home appliance? Or that tractor? They're not yours. Not completely, I mean, because if something breaks, you'll have to repair them through the official repair services of the hardware maker. You can try to repair them by yourself, but you'll probably have a lot of trouble doing it or even getting an unofficial technical service to do it. Oh, and until now it even wasn't legal for you to try. Companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung or John Deere have turned repair control into an art form. The DRM they impose on their products is becoming more and more complex, and there are lots of devices that are very complicated to open to try to repair.

Agencies like EFF have long been fighting for the so-called "right to repair" movement to try to fight these kinds of strategies, and these days those efforts have paid off. The Librarian of Congress and US Copyright Office have adopted "exemptions to the to the provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") that prohibits circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works". This means that from now on, users will be able to hack the software and fix the hardware on (some of) their devices in order to repair or maintain them. The new rules apply to smartphones, "home appliances" and "home systems", but they go beyond there and will allow users to repair cars, tractors and other motorized land vehicles (no boats or planes, though) by modifying their firmware.

You've probably heard about the recent issues regarding PewDiePie (handle of one of the most popular gaming YouTubers, Felix Kjellberg) and Campo Santo (Firewatch). The company issued a copyright strike for the YouTuber's streaming of their game, where Kjellberg used racist terms which Campo Santo didn't feel they should be in any way associated with. YouTube accepted the copyright strike, taking the video down. Legally, Campo Santo (and any video game company for that matter) can do such a thing. Kjellberg, however, is particularly worried because, as he said, "It's a pretty big deal. If I get more than three of them, my channel will shut down." As a response, users started review bombing Firewatch on Steam - id est, posting negative review after negative review, or changing their positive reviews for negative ones, so as to diminish the game's score in the light of what they see as a reprimandable action from Campo Santo.

Yes, that's right, SOPA might have been set back for now, but the vested interests from the big media corporations (music/movies/news etc) that want it implemented unsurprisingly aren't sitting idle and are pushing for ever more draconian measures aka 'SOPA Plus'. A digital music report (PDF) asks for everything that was in the original SOPA and then some, with a wishlist of seven 'fixes':

Anno 2070's Draconian DRM: Guru3D's Graphics Card Review Killed Off (UPDATED)

Hilbert Hagedoorn of well-known PC tech review site guru3d.com recently bought a copy of Ubisoft's Anno 2070 and wanted to use it in one of his graphics card reviews. However, he became badly unstuck. This game comes on the Steam platform and the store page states: "3rd-party DRM: Solidshield Tages SAS 3 machine activation limit". Unfortunately for Guru3D, they found out exactly what this means, which resulted in just one performance graph, an aborted review, an unplayable game - and bad publicity for Ubisoft once again. They have published an article about their experience, pledging not to use their titles again because of this DRM.