New Connections, New Technology & New Records

Tencent has Introduced Facial Recognition to Catch Kids Staying up to Game.
China’s tech behemoth Tencent has recently announced it would begin using facial recognition to catch kids staying up late to play it’s video games. This is to better enforce the law passed by China in 2019 that bans minors from playing video games between the hours of 10pm and 8am. The law intends to prevent gaming addiction. It required Chinese gaming companies implement real name verification systems as well as limits to how long children can play and how much they can spend. Many have been able to bypass this security so Tencent hopes these new security measures will be stronger. This system currently only operates in China, and it is unlikely it will spread outside anytime soon.

The Witcher Universe Collides
A trailer recently dropped for the second season of Netflix’s The Witcher – with it set to release December 17 this year. The show takes inspiration directly from the books rather than the game but the two are strongly linked regardless, especially as it dipped into the games fan base   for the foundation of it’s incredible popularity. Alongside this announcement, CD Projekt Red announced that “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition”, which is set to release later this year, will include free DLC based on the Netflix series. This upgrade is available to anyone who purchased the original game, whether you’ll be playing on a new console or not, so you’re already set.

Retro games continue to smash price records at auction.
Earlier this week an incredibly rare copy of The Legend of Zelda, still factory sealed, was sold for a record-breaking price of 870 thousand dollars. The sale occurred on the online platform Heritage Auctions which also hosted the previous record-breaking sale of Super Mario Bros at 660 thousand dollars. This version of The Legend of Zelda features barely noticeable differences from the original but the chance to own a unique piece of the franchises history makes it a highly sought-after collectors piece. The Legend of Zelda didn’t get to hold onto the record very long as it was knocked off the top spot three days later by a copy of Super Mario 64 which sold for over 1 and a half million USD. It might seem like an outrageous amount to spend on a game but it’s easy to understand the desire to own a piece of gaming history. “It seems impossible to overstate the importance of this title, not only to the history of Mario and Nintendo, but to video games as a whole,” said Valarie McLeckie, a video games specialist for Heritage Auctions, which handled the sale. Prices for historical games like this have skyrocketed in the past years and there’s no way of knowing where the record might land next.