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Booting Up. Starfield devs just announced that they went ‘gold’. What does going gold mean? We reveal the answer below…

Hint: it’s nothing to do with sales or numbers in general.

— Tim Rhyne, Derek Neville, Jason Liu

HEADLINES

OpenAI makes gaming acquisition. Looks like the AI giant may be making a direct entry into the gaming world — or at least gaming-like experiences. OpenAI announced yesterday that they’ve acquired Global Illumination, a digital product company that recently launched Biomes (Minecraft meets Roblox?).

Shadow Siege. Call of Duty will have its official reveal for Modern Warfare 3 via a Warzone in-game event. The limited-time event that was included in yesterday’s patch is scheduled to begin at 1:30 pm ET today. Players will be able to drop in and earn in-game rewards while working toward the community-wide goal of unlocking the reveal for the world to see.

Epic brings new tooling to console. Epic Games expands its Epic Online Services from PC crossplay to consoles. This will allow developers the ability to deliver a secure cross-platform friends list, game invites, and a uniform UX with a self-contained SDK.

HUD

• 🧟‍♂️ Zombies confirmed for Modern Warfare 3, the first Modern Warfare game to include the popular game mode.

• 🔌 Linus Tech Tips pulls plug (for now) amidst allegations of conflicts of interest and sexual harassment.

• 🚀 Preloads for Starfield begin today for Xbox X/S and August 30 for Windows PC.

• 🛡️ Blizzard unveiled two new Heritage Armor sets that will be available with the upcoming September release of the Fury Incarnate.

THIS DAY IN GAMING HISTORY

• 💰 On this day in 1998 Electronic Arts acquired Westwood Studios, developers of the Command and Conquer franchise. Yes, people still play C&C — see below!

• 👶 Children are resilient, even more so when they are indestructible weapons in the 2018 release — Dad Quest.

PATCH NOTES

• ⛵ World of Warships update 12.7 brings the construction of a new dockyard.

• 🏰 Modern Warfare 2 & Warzone’s latest patch provided the content for the upcoming Shadow Siege event .

• 🏗️ Fall Guys Summer Breeze update brings numerous new obstacles to the level editor.

HIVE MIND

Relevant

Console industry adapting to the success of F2P models.

MAJOR W

• 🗺️ Bungie commits to a free Destiny 2 map pack in 2024 and forms a PvP “strike team” for Crucible.

• 🎮️ Gamers will acquire a console, just to play an exclusive title.

• ✈️ Most difficult boss in gaming? — Reading the Top Gun NES game manual unlocked one answer.

F IN THE CHAT

• 😑 This debate over the worst video game name.

• 🐶 Less than half of gamers fail to give multiple pets to Cerberus.

CREATOR SPOTLIGHT

DrVahey — Physician by day, Commander by night.

Bryan Vahey is a resident physician that like most of us, spends his free time gaming. His Twitch broadcasts often feature him playing Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 Yuri’s Revenge against his viewers.

He displays a mastery over this 22-year-old game and helps support the community of this iconic franchise with content delivered to his 40K YouTube subscribers.

—Tim

Answer: In the video game industry, going ‘gold’ refers to a title having received approval from first-party distributors, like Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo to be published.

While modern distribution is now completely digital, historically, games were copied onto main disks to distributors for their use in creating more copies for mass production. These disks were often gold in color.

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