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St Jude Play Live Kicks Off On Friday

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The St Jude Play Live fundraising event starts this Friday. For the uninitiated, it’s a fundraising event where streamers play games to raise money for St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The charity works to treat and cure childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. The families they treat are never charged for the services they receive, which include treatment, housing, and even food. Gamers around the world are encouraged to log into Twitch and stream their games for the event to raise money.

St Jude have packed the fundraising event with prizes and incentives to encourage players to join in. Although gamers can take part in the fundraising at any time throughout the year, it’s all through the month of May that they will be able to take part in weekly challenges and win prizes for their efforts. St Jude will also offer additional support, such as guiding gamers through the process of setting up Twitch streaming on their consoles. The event is sponsored by several companies, such as GameStop, which will supply prizes. Players can earn points by sharing the event on Facebook and Twitter, recruiting new participants, and of course by raising money. Those points are accumulated to put players on the leaderboard, and at the end of the month the player at the top of the leaderboard will win the grand prize – a trip for 2 to the GameStop Expo in Las Vegas in September. Some of the other prizes include Xbox Ones, Playstation 4s, and GameStop gift cards. Streamers will be able to win an “ultra-rare” Twitch/St. Jude PLAY LIVE hoodie by earning 500 points. Players can even earn 10 academic service hours for every $100 they raise.

There are a few rules for streamers to be aware of. They can only play games which have an ESRB rating of “Teen” or lower. This is because St Jude will have the streams broadcast on their fundraising page so that the children the gamers are raising money for can watch along. So streamers will have to keep their content kid-friendly, which means no swearing, nothing illegal, nothing racist or homophobic, and no streaming while drunk. It also means keeping the chat friendly by banning any profanity.

St Jude treats children across the world for life-threatening diseases. Since the charity was founded fifty years ago, they have helped push the survival rate for childhood cancer up from 20% to 80%. Their current goal is to drive the worldwide survival rate for childhood cancer up to 90% within the next decade. But you don’t need a Twitch channel to support them. St Jude encourages people to “play games and raise awareness for the kids of St. Jude”  by using social media or their email tool to let their family and friends know when they’ll be playing. So what are you waiting for? Pickup your controller and get playing!

Rhiannon likes video games and she likes writing, so she decided to combine them. As well as writing about video games, she also belts out the occasional science fiction or fantasy story, edits videos, and eats strawberry oreos. In that order.

Gaming

Sony Has a “Monopoly” on the High-End Japanese Gaming Market, According to a US Senator

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The never-ending saga surrounding Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has a new participant.  Today, Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from the state of Washington, said some things about the subject that were hard to understand.

The senator, whose remarks were reported on by ResetEra, spoke at a Senate finance committee hearing on “the president’s 2023 Trade Policy Plan,” which we are sure was quite interesting.

Senator Cantwell said that she had been told that Sony “controls a monopoly of 98% of the high-end game market” despite the fact that “Japan’s government has allowed Sony to engage in blatant anti-competitive conduct through exclusive deals and payments to game publishers, establishing games that are among the most popular in Japan.”

This 98% statistic is highly deceptive because it ignores PC, Nintendo, and mobile games and instead refers to Sony’s adoption rate over Microsoft in Sony’s native country of Japan, a fact that shouldn’t surprise anyone who is even somewhat familiar with the video game business.

What can we do to rectify these problems and create a level playing field, she said of US Trade Representative Katherine Tai after charging Japan’s Federal Trade Commission with improperly failing to look into this purported “exclusionary conduct”?

It is absurd to claim that Sony has a monopoly on the Japanese video game market, as Luke Plunkett of Kotaku correctly points out, “because Sony doesn’t even have a 98% share of the market for the God of War series, a title they own, as Steam is getting 30% of every sale on PC.”

It goes without saying that we can’t expect elected officials to be experts in every field, but this is a visible step at a time when the ongoing attempt to buy the company is at a very important point.

Is it significant that Microsoft, along with Nintendo, maintains its headquarters in Redmond, Washington—Senator Cantwell’s district—or that Microsoft has given Cantwell more than $500,000 over the past two decades?  Let us leave that up to you.

 

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Consoles

Eating trash, Pizza Possum destroys the PS5

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Pizza Possum is an arcade action game in which you, a possum, attempt to consume as much trash as you can without being discovered.  It is a web-based sequel to the anarchy simulator Untitled Goose Game.It will eventually be available on the PS5.

We couldn’t help but notice that the possum in the title doesn’t look like the cute Australian possum that comes out at night to visit people.On the other hand, it looks like the horrible North American opossums are the ones that will attack trash cans and cause general chaos.Even though we think the second choice was better in terms of theme, we prefer the first one and are happy to explain why.

Your thoughts on Pizza Possum?  Does it possess the necessary mass appeal to successfully skitter along the back fenceline while setting the dog off in the process?

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The Mercenaries, a free piece of DLC for Resident Evil 4 Remake, launches on April 7

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Resident Evil 4 is now out, and the excellent remake can be bought right away.Even though you probably plan to play it all this weekend, you can take comfort in the fact that The Mercenaries, Resident Evil’s almost-required challenge mode, will be available as free DLC on April 7.

The mode’s exact details are still unknown, but if it’s anything like previous versions, you can expect some pretty hard tasks to test your skills.

You’re stumped about something? If you are still debating whether to purchase Resident Evil 4 Remake, be sure to look at our exhaustive guide for the answer or our in-depth review. Are you spending this weekend playing Resident Evil 4? Are you anticipating The Mercenaries?

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