The British Sky Broadcasting Group has always been notoriously protective of its namesake, and it was no different with the upcoming video game No Man’s Sky.
In a post on Twitter, Hello Games’ Sean Murray tweeted that a settlement had been reached with Sky Television, as the game had been in legal murky waters for the past three years.
Yay! We finally settled with Sky (they own the word "Sky"). We can call our game No Man's Sky. 3 years of secret stupid legal nonsense over
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) June 17, 2016
This comes as incredibly good news for gamers impatiently awaiting the release of No Man’s Sky, as it has been hotly anticipated since it was announced back in 2013. The game has run into a few delays, but that hasn’t seemed to temper demand. Many hopefuls are voicing their concerns online, wondering if it was this issue with Sky that brought about the recent two month delay. Some were so upset about this recent delay that death threats were sent to the development team.
The game’s concept is incredibly unique and novel. It’s a procedurally generated universe with over 18 quintillion planets for players to explore. It’s so massive and expansive that it’s near impossible for two players to travel to the same planet. Players can claim planets, excavate resources, and trade among one another.
Sean Murray made an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and demonstrated the massive scope of the game. As Colbert put it, “it’s beautiful to look at and awe-inspiring like the night sky — to know the vastness and the capability of it.”
This isn’t the Sky group’s first foray into trademark infringement. Most notably, Sky was able to get Microsoft to change the name of its cloud storage service Skydrive to Onedrive. This came to the chagrin of many Microsoft fans that had become fond of the Skydrive name. But it seemed to work out when Microsoft released the Xbox One and adopted the Universal Windows 10 platform. Essentially, everything became one.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.