This Week In Gaming: PlayStation’s future, Dead Space, and a day off Twitch ~ XDA

There have been a few interesting stories in the gaming industry this week, including footage of the new Dead Space, as well as Twitch streamers protesting the persistent raids of channels. There has been a rumor lately about Nintendo Switch Online getting Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, but those haven’t been confirmed yet.

Sony announces its showcase for next week

Sony seems like it’s finally prepared to start revealing some new games, or at least we can hope. They announced a summer showcase to be held next week. Sony says the show will feature news on upcoming games: “The Showcase will weigh in at around 40 minutes and include updates from PlayStation Studios and some of the industry’s most imaginative developers, for games releasing this holiday and beyond.”

As for what specifically will be at the event, the only thing we know for sure won’t be there is the next-gen PSVR, which Sony says it’s not ready to show yet. There are many likely titles that could make an appearance, including God of War: Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, and possibly games that we haven’t seen yet. With the addition of “releasing this holiday,” there are also a few games we know of that could be shown, including Death Stranding Director’s Cut.

Motive gives us the first look at the Dead Space remake

Early in the week, the developers of the new Dead Space game, a complete remake of the original, showed off some footage of an early build of the game. Not only does it look amazing, but Motive have cranked up the gore by having the limb-cutting in the remake now include tearing flesh. Isaac Clarke will also have a voice in the remake, but the developers have said he’ll only speak in the game when spoken to.

It’s actually surprising to see how the graphics of the original Dead Space have aged, considering the game in isolation still looks pretty good. But when you compare it to the very early build of the game shown on the stream, it looks almost primitive. The new game will also feature a few additional features that were added in Dead Space 2, including Isaac’s flight boots. Proof of the pudding and all that, we’ll only know if this is a Resident Evil 2-style remake when we get it, but so far, it’s looking good.

China restricts children to just 3 hours of online gaming a week

China will limit the amount of time children can play video games to just three hours most weeks, a dramatic escalation of restrictions which dealt a blow to the world’s largest mobile gaming market https://t.co/HI4tPuaP2B

— Bloomberg (@business) August 31, 2021

China’s National Press and Publication Administration is rolling out stronger restrictions on how much children are allowed to game online: From now on, those companies who offer online games can only open their servers from 8-9 PM on Fridays, weekends, and public holidays. That means that, on most weeks, Chinese children will only be able to play online games for those three hours. I can only imagine how congested their servers are going to be.

Previously, the restrictions had limited children to only 1.5 hours every day, so this is pretty extreme. Naturally, major companies in the industry, such as Tencent, are chafing at this. Supposedly, this is to combat the growing problem of gaming addiction among Chinese children, and the country has always had a complicated relationship with games — a recent piece from a state-owned news outlet (translated by the New York Times) called them “spiritual opium.”

Twitch viewers take a day off to protest harassment raids

Hey friendos, I won’t be streaming tomorrow in support of #ADayOffTwitch. (Here’s a handy graphic of some of the things those protesting are asking of @Twitch in case you’re not familiar with what’s going on.) I’ll be back on Thursday for our first swing at Senior Detective! pic.twitter.com/OA9NQlTnq3

— Meg Turney (@megturney) September 1, 2021

Twitch streamers facing harassment is a long-standing problem of the site, and lots of streamers have taken matters into their own hands by holding a virtual walk-out called #ADayOffTwitch. Several minority content creators were targeted by hate raids that overwhelm the stream chat with messages designed to evade automatic hate speech detection. The streamers want Twitch to take stronger measures to prevent this harassment, including the ability to deny raids (which really should be a feature, honestly).

This apparently did have an effect on Twitch viewership, as it dipped on the day of the walkout. Twitch responded to the protest with the statement: “No one should have to experience malicious and hateful attacks based on who they are or what they stand for, and we are working hard on improved channel-level ban evasion detection and additional account improvements to help make Twitch a safer place for creators.”