JB

I report on gaming news.

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[JB @CheckpointJake]

Living to see the day web publishers mass block Google bots. Degoogle the web.

[DuckDuckGo @DuckDuckGo]

People aren’t just complaining about Google's AI search overhaul, they’re leaving.

Yesterday alone, our week over week installs surged 30% in the U.S. 🚀

Momentum is growing. It’s time to Fire Google.

[JB @CheckpointJake]

He said the quiet part out loud.

https://t.co/1FnDGNSYmU

[AdamHumphreys @AdamJHumphreys]

Considering Google algorithmically scrapes sites for AIO and buries sites below the searchable fold in on 82% of searches, this gives strong legal grounds across industries. Their algorithm buries copied content while promoting content they scraped. Citation or plagiarism?

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

It’s upsetting to watch so many people be led to believe a software feature created from human exhaust is an alien intelligence.

It’s a psyop. LLMs are a clever way to compress and search large databases with patterns. They have now inhaled effectively all of human knowledge. From this point, there will be spikes of improvement in narrow areas, but the big models are already collapsing from inhaling their own exhaust.

The core technology is at least 40 years old. Neural networks are nothing new. We’re just attaching obscene amounts of computing and data to them.

The physical nature of an LLM is literally just a database of tokens (word parts) and weights (relationships) that can be queried. It is not magic. It can be made deterministic by setting the entropy aka temperature to zero. It is a clever way to store an immense amount of data and retrieve it through token predicting.

“Agents” are just LLMs being queried in a loop. They take exponentially more energy and suffer the same problems as chatbots—hallucinations and sycophancy—but exponentially more complicated to solve.

In reality, it’s all a category error. It’s a mirage created by the desire of a small group of elites to build a technological and financial moat around themselves. “AGI” is the McGuffin, the plot device, to serve as the messiah that will deliver people from the toils of everyday life.

The broligarchs are trying to sell us our own replacements. According to them, we won’t have to drive, or work, or think anymore. The robots and AI will all do it for us.

It’s the oldest con there is: magic beans.

Your chatbot is not your Jesus or your girlfriend. Your Claude instance is not intelligent. It’s a search engine for human knowledge stolen from the internet and the destruction of physical books.

So please understand. You are witnessing the biggest financial bubble in all of human history based on deceptive marketing, astroturfing, and cult dynamics. You are not witnessing the birth of a new intelligence. Unfortunately, that’s a battle we’re losing.

[JB @CheckpointJake]

@edzitron When will Google's AI bullshit fall too? Waiting for the day Ed does a story on those shitheads.

[The Verge @verge]

Google’s AI search is so broken it can ‘disregard’ what you’re looking for https://t.co/VZK80cqa6P

[JB @CheckpointJake]

Subnautica 2 devs have responded to pirates leaking the game 48 hours early.

"I hope you rethink your life choices."

https://t.co/kGZypaBQha

[JB @CheckpointJake]

Sony Still Hasn’t Fixed the Security Issue That Lets Hackers Hijack PlayStation Accounts

The security issue was reported back in December but still no fix. The hack happened again to someone and it will keep happening until SONY changes its policy.

https://t.co/DxjQ8mesAa

[JB @CheckpointJake]

Trying to find out what this actually means, will report back.

[Dexerto @Dexerto]

An insider is claiming that GTA 6's user-generated content will "produce millionaires"

"When it does come, especially on PC, if you thought GTA 5 was crazy, especially with the RP servers, you haven’t seen nothing yet"

[JB @CheckpointJake]

This has been happening since 2017. Nothing has changed in 2026

[Jez @JezCorden]

Microsoft has issued a statement on the claims of a former Halo art director who had some pretty damning allegations against 343i (Halo Studios) and Microsoft HR.

Makes you wonder what else is going on. Unfortunate situation, and sadly not the first time I've heard accusations like this (layoff rounds used to "remove" staff xyz manager didn't personally like).

https://t.co/q1YPpP4KyA

[Unlimited L's @unlimited_ls]

NEW: Musician Murphy Campbell says she isn’t making money on YouTube because an AI company is cloning her music and filing copyright claims against her own videos

“An entity called Timeless Sounds IR uploaded AI-generated versions of my songs to all major streaming platforms...

They used a distributor, which I just discovered, and that distributor’s name is Vydia. They used Vydia to upload all these AI-generated songs.

Vydia has since decided to make copyright claims on all of the videos that were used to feed that AI engine to sound like me.

So Vydia has come forward and made copyright claims on my YouTube page.

Because YouTube does not personally review these things, I am no longer making money on YouTube.

Vydia is making money on YouTube off of my own videos of me playing my own banjo in my own backyard with traditional folk songs, some for my own family, over AI-generated music.”

[JB @CheckpointJake]

@JezCorden Is anyone really happy in 2026?

[Clawsomegamer @Clawsomegamer]

Sony has developed AI based tech that will monitor online activity across PlayStation Network for child safety.

https://t.co/3nAkCm4IxW

[JB @CheckpointJake]

🤡

[Pirat_Nation 🔴 @Pirat_Nation]

Valve has updated its developer disclosure form for generative AI use.

Developers do not need to disclose if they used "AI powered tools"

[Clawsomegamer @Clawsomegamer]

ESRB rating spotted for an unannounced Konami game "Enchanted Wonderland" for Switch

[JB @CheckpointJake]

AI wont win

[JB @CheckpointJake]

Massive news, folks.

[Synth Potato🥔 @SynthPotato]

We got our first bit of new info on The Elder Scrolls 6 in over 7 years:

Todd Howard has confirmed TES6 will have MORE TREES than Skyrim!

[Clawsomegamer @Clawsomegamer]

Game dev at Player First Games (studio behind MultiVersus) claims AI image gen isn't 'theft' because it's trained on public data just like human artists learning from existing works.

But ongoing lawsuits vs. Stability AI/Midjourney + US Copyright Office reports say otherwise: mass unauthorized copying for commercial tools raises real infringement issues.

[Clawsomegamer @Clawsomegamer]

Half of Steam's Current Top 10 Best-Selling Games Are From Devs Who Embraced Gen AI

Clair Obsur: Epedition 33
Arc Raiders
Where Winds Meet

are just some of the examples here.

Following Larian Studios' announcement of Divinity, generative AI has been the talk of the town. The team confirmed that it would explore the technology during pre-production, and it didn't take long for the gaming community to explode.

In the aftermath, games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also received criticism for making use of AI. The discussion eventually grew big enough that other developers like Warhorse Studios also got involved, but for all the negativity around AI, Steam's current top 10 global best-sellers list tells a different story.

SteamDB shows that half of the games on the list come from studios that have already embraced AI.

In fact, three games on the list already use the technology. Both Arc Raiders and Where Winds Meet openly disclose their artificial intelligence use in the Steam description. These titles make use of the technology for NPC voice acting.

[JB @CheckpointJake]

@Goog_Enough @thefox Easy to figure out.

All Valnet sites
All Ziff Davis sites
Bloomberg
Forbes
Verge
NY times / Post