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This week in ridiculousness, King Ltd., makers of the super-popular Candy Crush Saga mobile and Facebook title, somehow got their trademark application accepted and now they own the video game and apparel rights to the word “candy.” They immediately began working with Apple to take down similarly named “copycat” apps from iTunes as they promised only to use their new found legal power for good. Except they didn’t, at least from a PR standpoint....

While the next entry in the Call of Duty franchise has not been announced, developer Treyarch is meeting with professional esport players for feedback. The news comes from pro-player Chance, who recently responded to a thread in a competitive Call of Duty subreddit. In the post, a user stated Call of Duty Modern Warfare turned them off the franchise, and they may not want to pick up the next game. Citing lack of ranked play, prestige, and incentive to get better, the Redditor seems frustrated at how Infinity Ward’s latest title handles online play....

A good headset has become a requirement for competitive gaming nowadays. Being able to gauge your surroundings by sound alone is a tremendous advantage and one that is necessary in order to perform at a high level. However, most quality headsets can cost an arm and a leg, forcing frugal customers to spring for low-quality gear. Thankfully, Turtle Beach’s Elite Atlas headset manages to pack impressive speakers into a sleek design — all at a price point that won’t break the bank....

Only a few days ago, Twitch rolled out a system that caused mid-roll ads to run if the streamer had not personally chosen to run an ad after a designated amount of time. To say that this decision was controversial would be an understatement, as many viewers and streamers voiced their displeasure with the change on Twitter. Now it seems that Twitch has decided to walk back this decision as it has announced that the system will be going away....

2020 was a fantastic year for gaming that saw the launch of a new console generation, game-changing computer hardware, and tons of great games. However, at least the first two out of these had to endure at some point with a shortage in supply. Despite that last part, 2020 managed to be one of the gaming industry’s best years as millions of people in the United States found themselves with at least a bit of extra time while working from home....

UPlay Plus was announced last year as a $14.99 subscription service. The price will stay the same with the name change to Ubisoft Plus, and players will still be able to play over 100 Ubisoft games, including upcoming content like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs: Legion. Ubisoft Plus will not be coming to consoles, or at least not yet. There are a lot of things to look forward to for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and both have their own versions of some sort of subscription service....

Rachel Hofstetter, better known as Valkyrae, relocated from Twitch to YouTube at the start of 2020 and it has proven to be an advantageous move for the streamer. The start of 2021 has been rocky due to OfflineTV Rust server drama, but the streamer most recently received a surprise birthday party while in-game with friends. Overall, Valkyrae appears to not be slowing down, and recent streaming data proves that. Social distancing and quarantining played a part in the blossoming success of the streamer, although most of it is due to Valkyrae’s Among Us streams....

This Van Helsing review contains spoilers. Van Helsing Episode 10 Part of the experience of Van Helsing requires the viewer to stay alert and not become lulled by show’s deliberate pace for fear of missing the significance of the small details. Tonight’s tenth episode “Stay Away” abandons restraint, and from beginning to end, assaults our senses with one startling scene after another. If we learn anything from this chapter, just like Vanessa and the crew, it’s a mistake to get too comfortable....

“Because we are Vikings.” Never let it be said that Ragnar Lothbrok was a man without a sense of vision, but it takes the steady hand of eldest son Bjorn Ironside to take the assembled great army onward toward its destiny. Likewise, tonight’s installment of Vikings takes the slow, deliberate approach before building to a devastating crescendo as the heathen army finally makes its move to avenge the death of its slain king....

Across the Internet, people are enjoying the latest viral sensation and the first big meme of 2019. These memes depict the Scooby Doo character Shaggy Rogers as an incredibly powerful, godlike figure capable of performing various feats with a minuscule amount of his power. This eventually led to a petition to add Scooby Doo’s best friend to Mortal Kombat 11, but others have also taken this opportunity to create this figure of meme-hood for the classic table-top RPG, Dungeons and Dragons....

Virtua Fighter was never known for an amazingly varied cast. The characters were always few but noticeable. Characters were developed to accurately portray a martial art and fill a character archetype gap in the fighting game genre. The franchise has only improved with time, and AM2 Studio was always very careful not to add a character that would play like one already in the game. All characters in the game feel very different from each other....

This Voltron Legendary Defender review contains spoilers. We have a spoiler free version here. So as a TV reviewer I should start a review super dignified right? Maybe begin this one like my last few reviews where I talk about Voltron: Legendary Defender’s realation to the original series or how it’s one of the best things on TV. I won’t be doing that this time. Because Voltron: Legendary Defender has transcended anything I ever thought possible....

WandaVision’s make-up artists have revealed an X-Men easter egg in episode six that nobody seems to be talking about. It should go without saying, but if you are not completely up to date with WandaVision then be warned, there are spoilers dead ahead. Now that’s out of the way, it has been revealed by a couple of people working behind the scenes on WandaVision that we all completely missed an X-Men easter egg a couple of episodes ago....

Warning: contains major spoilers for War of the Worlds Season 2. Bill’s World-Saving Sacrifice When Bill pushed teenager Emily off a hospital roof, he ensured that Emily and Sacha would never meet and sire a tribe of malevolent future-humans who would one day visit present-day Earth (all sporting matching bullseye tattoos copied from Emily’s teenage whim) and slaughter billions. Bill murdering Emily meant that she and Sacha would never pass on their combined genetic conditions (his incestuously inherited Muscular Dystrophy and her Stargardt Disease/blindness-causing macular degeneration) to their space offspring....

The new WarioWare game, WarioWare: Get It Together, has been the talk of the town ever since Nintendo’s E3 Direct. The game… wait, what? Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2? Playable Zelda or Ganon or second Link? Link’s been on the Guinness? Never heard of it. Anyway, all anyone has been talking about is WarioWare, at least in my house - I’m the only one who plays video games in my house, and I talk to myself a lot....

Warner Bros. Interactive is ramping up its video game output, and as a result, the publisher is considering the prospect of hosting its own E3 conference in years to come. This year, Warner Bros. Interactive brought an impressive slate of games including Injustice 2, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the previously unannounced Batman: Arkham VR. However, future iterations of the event might see an even bigger presence from the publisher....

This article contains spoilers for Mayfair Witches episode 2. Mayfair Witches episode 2 is called “The Dark Place,” which is where magic practitioners go when they’re thinking of breaking bad. The episode opens in the home of a midwife, practicing the closest thing to medicine to be had in Donnelaith, Scotland in 1681. She’s treating a wound with willow bark and burdock. Healing arts have come a long way, yet some things never change....

What Does Banhammer Mean? The term “banhammer” refers to the power of moderators and system administrators to effectively ban users from a digital space. It began in Internet chat rooms and progressed to use in online gaming platforms. Techopedia Explains Banhammer Experts commonly attribute the first use of the term “banhammer” to MSN chat rooms in the mid-1990s where a hammer icon was used for administrative banning privileges. Over time, various icons and memes have developed around the use of the term “banhammer....

Last year, you probably heard a lot about Obsidian’s latest RPG - a quiet, introspective yarn centered around time loops and imploding universes called Outer Wilds. Wait, no, sorry - that’s The Outer Worlds, a game that most people think is Outer Wilds. There was a lot of confusion at the game’s titling last year. That’s it. That’s the joke. And it looks like the joke is ultimately on us, as Outer Wilds writer Kelsey Beachum made a cheeky announcement on Twitter today: she’s also doing work on The Outer Worlds....

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining turns 40 years old this week. Despite being the filmmaker’s late-in-life stab at commercialism after the failure of Barry Lyndon, his single attempt at horror remains one of the most artful, and hauntingly confounding, chillers ever produced. It turned Stephen King’s traditional haunted hotel yarn into a metaphysical nightmare of… well, just about anything you want. As Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 documentary explored, there are Kubrick conspiracy theorists who will tell you The Shining is about everything from white guilt over the generational mass murder of American Indians (plausible) to a confession of Kubrick’s complicity in faking the moon landing (bonkers)....