While there is a myriad of many pressing issues giving Americans anxiety right now at the fervor of the 2024 elections, the video game industry is simply not just standing outside looking in.
The 2024 US Elections
Both the primary Democrat and Republican camps in the running have proposed rhetorical technological legislation in some way, or utilized games to reach their prospective voters.
The Trump campaign proposed a series of tariffs on Chinese imports, which would end up putting a higher price on electronics and technological devices integral to the gaming supply chain, and in turn would hit gamers’ wallets. Harris’s supports a stronger Federal Trade Commission, perpetuated by the Click to Cancel rule in Kamala Harris’ vice presidency. In a rare moment of unity, both parties support the Right to Repair, endowing any consumer the legal right to freely modify and repair their equipment with wider, non-limiting accesses to services.
Harris has also vocally backed the Biden administration’s AI Bill of Rights, which highlighted the need to protections against unsafe and potentially abusive AI use. On the other hand, the Trump campaign vows to repeal it. And in another high strung effort to get gamers to Pokémon GO to the polls, the Harris campaign also developed a map in Fortnite. Tim Walz also streamed with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Making Way to Mobilization
Meanwhile, The New York Times tech workers went on strike. Members of the Times Tech Guild are asking subscribers to honor the picket line by not playing any of the paper’s games. The strike strategically comes ahead of the 2024 US elections, in which the Times is often noted for its live election tracking that is typically supported infrastructurally by those participating in the strike.
According to co-founder Austin Kelmore, the UK chapter of the IWGB Game Workers has expanded to over 1,500 members. Hitting this milestone, IWGB has also updated its manifesto.
Interesting Updates
Nintendo released a new music app to play and download soundtracks from the company’s extensive library.
Caves of Qud 1.0 will be hitting December.
Stardew Valley is getting a huge 1.6 update.
In the year of our Lord 2024, a new Death Note video game was recently released.
The Steam version of Killer 7 also apparently has some updates.
Guilty Gear -Strive- gets its first character for the Season 4 Pass with Queen Dizzy.
The developer behind Nightmare Kart is working to get an arcade cabinet of the game made.
In other news…
The Russian government is attempting to fine Google for an insurmountable $2.5 decillion for refusing to restore pro-Kremlin and state-run accounts that were on YouTube. That amount of money currently does not even exist on Earth.
Arm Holdings is ending a contract with Qualcomm that allows Snapdragon chip production.
NVIDIA GeForce users are being advised to update their GPU drivers due to high-risk vulnerabilities.
The developers purport Dragon Age: The Veilguard won’t get DLC.
Netflix plans on delisting most of its interactive series by December.
And unfortunately, Sony shuts down Firewalk Studios, the developer behind Concord.
