Civil Asset Forfeiture is the process by which law enforcement can seize private property of citizens without ever needing to charge those citizens of committing a crime. Laws governing civil forfeiture vary from state to state but most states allow officers to seize any amount of money or property and keep the proceeds for department use.

This procedure is highly controversial and has many proponents as well as critics. Most critics equate civil forfeiture with highway robbery, while the proponents consider it another tool to fight crime and pay for law enforcement.

Yesterday, we wrote about a report provided by Movoto that claims to show the most pirated movies, tv shows and games from each state. This report showed some interesting results such as Watch Dogs being the most pirated game in the U.S.

Or maybe it is the other way around. 

With all the news media reporting on civil unrest around the world, whether it is the wars in Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan and more, or the street violence in the US and Central America, it might seem so surreal that it could very well be coverage of video games. In fact, the difference between real life and video games is so slight that many in the news media mistake video game footage for real life carnage.

We have all had problems with lag. That annoying phenomenon that results in your character continuing to run on your screen but standing perfectly still, and thus a sitting duck, on the screens of your opponents. However, there is one place we don't normally see lag, games without an online component. 

Throughout the US and around the world, game developers are fighting for tax incentives and breaks similar to those offered to other creative industries such as the movie industry. Many groups such as TIGA in the UK make the claim that such tax breaks are needed in order to compete with other nations for game development talent, competition created in part by the tax breaks and incentives offered in those competing nations.

While these fights for increased tax breaks rage on, one question seems to remain unasked. Are these tax incentives worth the trouble?

It might not come to a big surprise for many of you, but gamers are less likely to be conservative than non-gamers and more likely to use products and services that many politicians want banned. 

The two most recent Reason-Rupe polls show that gamers are more likely to consider themselves independent in their political views. The polls show that 55% of frequent gamers consider themselves independent while 30% consider themselves Democratic and 15% Republican. 

For many years, video games have been the subject of various studies, scares and outrages. One of the most common concerns over video games has been what many consider the addictive nature of games.

Do you give or receive gifts for Easter? I was unaware of the tradition until my wife introduced it to me several years ago. Until then, Easter was about going to Grandma's house and taking part in an Easter egg hunt. The eggs were a mixture of colored boiled eggs and plastic candy-and-money-filled eggs. But apparently people do give gifts on Easter and Target is hoping parents will shop there.

It is no secret that theft is a big problem in any part of the world. It is something that we as humans have been battling for our entire existence. The city of Tulsa Oklahoma recognizes how hard this battle is and is looking to give law enforcement more tools to work with in their fight against theft.

Earlier this week, Rock Paper Shotgun posted an editorial in response to some Twitter comments made in response to some comments written in an earlier post about GOG's Time Machine Sale. In that post, RPS Editor John Walker wrote:

Good news for fans of violent games. A large majority of Americans are keen on getting the government out of the business of blocking violent games from being played. You may recall that for many years, various state and the Federal governments had been attempting to regulate violent games in some way.

Every year, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma publishes a list of government programs which he feels wastes tax payer money and government resources called the Wastebook. While he tops the list of wasted tax payer money with a jab at Congress itself, it is when you get into the rest of the document that you find some rather interesting spending programs. In his opening statement to the report, Coburn writes:

Nearly three months ago, a group of game developers and other concerned constituents in Oklahoma sent a joint letter to Senator Tom Coburn, cosponsor of S 134 Violent Content Research Act of 2013. In that letter, they expressed concern over the bill's sponsor, Senator Rockefeller, and the potential of this bill to lead to further attempts at game regulation.

Gold Fire Studios recently learned that its latest gameplay trailer for Casino RPG has been hit with a terms of service violation and has been removed from their channel. This was the trailer produced for the recent public beta launch of the game.

While many indie developers are struggling to find a way to deal with the problem of piracy, there is yet another equally big problem for them, obscurity. As big a problem as piracy is, it does have one thing going for it that obscurity doesn't, people actually playing the game. It is this lack of people playing that has resulted in Gun Monkeys creator Size Five Games to take a novel approach to combating it.

Two years ago today, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the First Amendment rights of gamers and the games industry. This ruling came about after years of legal battles between the games industry and various states. This particular ruling was over a legal dispute between the state of California and the games industry.

When Sony announced at E3 how much better it was than Microsoft, it reaffirmed that the PS4 would be region free. When Microsoft was sufficiently humbled and reversed its anti-consumer ways, it announced that its console would be region free too. This means that games purchased anywhere in the world would be playable on their respective consoles everywhere else.

Vlambeer is no stranger to cloning controversies.

Two years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that trying to regulate the sale of video games based on violent content was an unconstitutional violation of our First Amendment rights. To add to that, each year the Federal Trade Commission does a secret shopper survey showing that the video games industry self regulates far better than any other entertainment industry it studies.

Whatever your thoughts are on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, many young immigrants are taking advantage of the opportunity to go from illegal to legal residency status. However, some are finding the requirement to show proof of residency since 2007 a little tough. Take for example the story of Jose Muñoz.

Not even a year into its life, the Super Podcast Action Committee may be coming to a bitter end. Unbeknownst to its co-hosts or producer, it was violating a patent with every episode recorded and published for your listening pleasure. With the potential licensing fees and damages needed to be paid, it would kill the Super PAC over night.

For months, the popular gamers group OKGamers.com had been working with Sapulpa, OK based Central Technology Center to organize and host the fifth annual TechCon this coming Saturday. Hundreds of gamers planned to come out and participate in a variety of gaming tournaments from Soul Caliber to League of Legends. You can imagine the surprise and frustration of those gamers when they saw this abrupt message on the Facebook event page.

While Oklahoma lawmakers rightfully refused to introduce game regulation related legislation this year, the calls for such regulation from many uninformed people continue. We already wrote about one oped calling for an extra tax be levied on the entertainment industry. However, the larger issue of the public's opinion on violent gaming is something that will have to be addressed for many years to come.

Popular indie game making tool, Game Maker, has a bit of a DRM problem. Over the weekend, some users noticed that the tool was permanently vandalizing their sprites with images of a skull.

A recent update to Game Maker Studio has left many developers confused and frustrated after an anti-piracy system went haywire.

 

Sad news for Capcom vs Tatsunoko fans. Capcom no longer holds the rights to publish games using the Tatsunoko properties. In response to a forum post about playing the game on the Wii U, Christian Svensson, Corporate Officer/Senior Vice-President, stated that Capcom won't be making any more.

I think I need a daisy for this. I seem to have entered a loop of "Nintendo loves me. It loves me not." While I am still excited for the coming release of the WiiU console, I am disheartened by the company's most recent news. It will continue its policy of region locking games.

While many consumers are still deciding on whether to buy or not buy the Wii U this coming holiday season, Nintendo is busy making the choice to develop for the console as easy as possible for indie game developers. 

Cloned games are nothing new to the games industry. You can hardly walk the isles of Gamestop or browse the listings of the iPhone App Store without coming across a clone or two [thousand]. This is especially true for many classics such as Breakout or in this case Tetris.

The First Sale Doctrine has been an important part of copyright law for well over a hundred years now and an important part of the gaming culture for the last 30 years or so. Unfortunately, these last few decades have also seen a lot of effort to erode what protections consumers have to resale their property without the permission of the copyright owner. Once again, the Supreme court is poised to rule on how far the protections the First Sale Doctrine go when it comes to copyright.