Facebook blocks Votes for Women

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day to those living in the United States. The D.I.C.E. Awards announced their nominees, while a popular board game gets blocked by Facebook. All that and more below. 

D.I.C.E. Awards nominees revealed

We are fully into 2023 awards season, as the D.I.C.E. Awards announced their nominees.

The Design, Innovate, Communicate, and Entertain Awards (D.I.C.E. for short) are different from other awards, as they are voted on by game developers. Leading the nominations is Spider-Man 2 with nine, followed closely by Alan Wake 2 with eight. 

You can see the full list of nominated games by category here, but here are the nominees for Game of the Year.

• Alan Wake 2
• Baldur's Gate 3
• Cocoon
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

The event will be live streamed on February 15, 2024. 

Facebook bans Votes for Women

Facebook banned advertisements for the award-winning Votes for Women board game’s second run Kickstarter, claiming it is a “sensitive social issue.”

The game is about ratifying the 19th amendment, which gives women the right to vote. The description from the publisher’s website states:

Votes for Women captures and celebrates the struggle by inviting players to join the suffrage movement, organize support, and campaign for victory across the 48 states that were called to ratify the 19th Amendment in 1919-1920. The card-driven game can be played cooperatively, competitively, or in solitaire mode, and in each version players must navigate the historic events, movement schisms, and political challenges of the era to win.

According to a follow-up article on PC Gamer, developers received an automated response when creating an ad, stating it “mentions politicians or is about sensitive social issues that could influence public opinion, how people vote and may impact the outcome of an election or pending legislation." A review request was also submitted to Facebook and rejected. 

If you are interested in supporting Votes for Women, you can back the Kickstarter here, or try the game online.

Gaming layoffs continue

One of the biggest stories of 2023 was layoffs in the gaming industry. It seems that this unfortunate trend continues into the new year. 

Just this past week, Twitch cut 35% of its staff, game engine Unity cut 25% of staff, Discord says it is laying off 17% of staff and Playtika is cutting 10% of their staff. Overall, two weeks into 2024, over 2,700 layoffs in the games industry were announced. 

We feel for those who have lost their jobs due to these layoffs, and hope this trend ends soon.

Side quests (more stories worth reading)

🏆 We posted our 2023 Games of the Year, as voted by our subscribers. Check out the full list of winners. 

🔒 Capcom adds new Digital Rights Management to old PC games, raising worries over mods.

🏈 Bill Belichick, former coach of the Patriots, was not a member of the coach’s union, so his likeness was not used in Madden games. Gamespot compiled a visual history of every fake Belichhick in Madden games. 

🤖 Steam pages will now disclose which games use AI-generated content.

⚔️ Smite 2 was announced during the Smite World Championships.

🎮 A PlayStation DualSense V2 controller promising longer life leaked on retailer sites. Maybe someday it will help you remotely drive a car. 

🐉 Wyrmspan is based on the popular board game Wingspan, but with dragons instead of birds. Read an interview with Wyrmspan’s designer. 

🎤 Rapper/actor Ice-T discusses what happened to the popular Def Jam fighting game. 

📱 Global mobile game revenue dropped 2% in 2023. 

🤖 SAG-AFTRA agreed to let developers use AI voices in games, a deal that was immediately criticized by actors. 

🧹 Since its release last year, Hogwarts Legacy sold more than 22 million copies. 

🕸️ Stephanie Tyler Jones, whose likeness was used as Mary Jane in the Spider-Man games called out fans who “crossed boundaries”.

📉 GameStop is closing its NFT marketplace. 

🍗 Chick-fil-A is looking for someone to make “original games” for the company.

New Releases this week: 

Check out our most anticipated games of 2024. 

1/15: Sovereign Syndicate (PC)
1/18: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC)
1/18: Turnip Boy Robs A Bank (Xbox, Switch and PC)
1/19: The Cub (PlayStation, Switch and PC)