As people all over the world slowly comes to terms with the tragic news of basketball legend Kobe Bryant’s passing yesterday, tributes are being paid across the globe to the five-time NBA champion. Both Bryant and one of his daughters, Gianna, were among the nine people who lost their lives in a helicopter crash in California yesterday.

Bryant had a 20-year career in the sport with a legacy that crosses all media, including video games. A great many of us will fondly recall playing as the LA Lakers legend many times since his first appearance back on the Super NES in NBA Live 97. Of course, it wasn’t long until he became the marquee star in Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside – the youngest player to have his name on a game at just 19 years of age – and that Nintendo 64 game was soon followed up with NBA Courtside 2: Featuring Kobe Bryant. He’s been a fixture of NBA games ever since.

2K, the makers of the the NBA 2K series, have updated the latest game NBA 2K20 to display the tribute below across all platforms:

The game’s official Twitter account also joined the many people across social media paying tribute to the man with the following message:

As people across the world have woken to this sad news, we’re certain we’ll see many more tributes throughout the week and beyond to a sportsman who touched the lives of many millions throughout his career. Our thoughts are with his wife and surviving children, and the other families who lost loved ones in this incident.

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This month, a bipartisan group of legislators in Washington state presented new legislation that could soon become the most comprehensive privacy law in the country. The centerpiece of this legislation, the Washington Privacy Act as substituted, goes further than the landmark bill California recently enacted and builds on the law Europeans have enjoyed for the past year and a half.

As Microsoft President Brad Smith shared in his blog post about our priorities for the state of Washington’s current legislative session, we believe it is important to enact strong data privacy protections to demonstrate our state’s leadership on what we believe will be one of the defining issues of our generation. People will only trust technology if they know their data is private and under their control, and new laws like these will help provide that assurance. We’re encouraged that privacy legislation in Washington has been welcomed by privacy advocates such as Consumer Reports and the Future of Privacy Forum.

To date, the U.S. has taken the approach of enacting privacy law in just a few key areas, such as financial services, children and some health data. However, on average, people today produce 25 times the online data they did in 2010, and this data no longer just records our medical checkups or banking activities but just about every aspect of our lives. The Washington Privacy Act addresses these significant gaps by creating comprehensive baseline protections. As the United States Congress continues to work on these safeguards, states such as Washington have the opportunity to move faster and give people the protections they deserve.

Washington came close to passing a good bill last year. As I wrote in April 2019, every year we kick the can down the road is another year we’ll spend searching for the perfect legislation rather than starting to provide people with needed protection, and then building on a strong foundation. And people are overwhelmingly voicing their support for the legislature to take action now. In a Crosscut/Elway poll conducted in December 2019, 84% of Washington respondents supported “strengthening consumer protections for personal data online” and placed privacy above issues such as carbon emissions and rent control.

Why the Washington Privacy Act is strong

The Washington Privacy Act, introduced by Senator Reuven Carlyle, has four core components that we believe are critical in any comprehensive privacy bill.

Corporate responsibility: First, it holds companies responsible for ensuring they only use data for the reason they collect it and with the permission of their customers. If a company collects someone’s phone number for the purpose of two-factor authentication, they shouldn’t then be permitted to use that information for targeted ad or search purposes.

Consumer empowerment: Second, it gives people the ability to control their data by providing rights to access, correct, delete and relocate their data, and to limit a company’s ability to use their data.

Transparency: Third, it requires companies to be clear about their intentions for collecting people’s personal data in a way that is easy to understand.

Strong enforcement: Fourth, it enables the state attorney general to ensure companies comply with the law. The state attorney general can take legal action with penalties up to $7,500 per violation, meaning total penalties for a non-compliant company could – depending on the number of people affected – amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition to attorney general enforcement, the Washington Privacy Act requires companies to be responsive to consumer requests for information about what data of theirs companies have and how that data is used.

This year’s bill has significant improvements over last year’s legislation. For example, it now requires companies to tell people why their data is being collected and to use it only for that purpose, ensures companies only collect the minimum data needed for that purpose, and prohibits companies from using data in new ways that are different and distinct from the reasons they collected the information in the first place.

Prevent a “race to the bottom” with facial recognition

In addition to addressing the four privacy principles, the Washington Privacy Act sets standards for how and when companies can use facial recognition technology. This portion of the bill includes a range of steps to protect people from this largely unregulated technology, and we think four are particularly worth discussing.

Fairness: First, suppliers of facial recognition technology must build their technology so that third-party research organizations can test its accuracy and examine it for bias.  When undisclosed problems with the technology are discovered, suppliers must take action.

Consent: Second, the default rule is that people must give permission for companies to add their image to a facial recognition database and this consent must be meaningful, not just a footnote buried in legal jargon.

Notification: Third, in any public place where facial recognition technology is used, companies must post clear notice.

Human Review: Fourth, results of facial recognition must be verified when critical decisions such as mortgage approvals or employment considerations are being made, and humans have to be involved in the decision-making process.

The Washington Legislature will also consider an important proposal to regulate the use of facial recognition by government. A bill proposed by Senator Joe Nguyen contains many of the safeguards the Washington Privacy Act applies to corporate use as well as new rules to be applied to governmental scenarios. For example, the technology can only be used in public places to address serious crimes when a search warrant has been issued or when there’s a genuine emergency such as a terrorist threat or a kidnapped child. Law enforcement must disclose to defendants when facial recognition is being used in a legal case against them.

As Brad Smith has outlined, if we don’t act, we risk waking up five years from now (or even sooner) to find that facial recognition services have spread in ways that exacerbate societal issues. By setting boundaries before, during and after deployment of facial recognition, we hope that these regulations offer the public more opportunity to be involved in the decisions regarding the acceptable use of the technology by commercial actors as well as state and local authorities. Neither the Washington Privacy Act nor the Nguyen bill provide all the answers to the challenges that will arise with this technology, but both bills provide strong baseline standards that will give people meaningful protections for the first time. Passing these bills in this session will allow the legislature to focus future sessions on building and improving upon them.

Open public dialogue

We believe advocating for laws like these are good for our customers and important for holding the industry to higher standards than the law does today. Microsoft has been engaged along with dozens of entities including companies, privacy experts, advocacy groups and legislators invited to comment on early draft proposals leading up to this session. We are committed to working with lawmakers and stakeholders to ensure the final bill provides comprehensive privacy protection for all Washingtonians. You can learn more about our efforts from last week’s testimony.

Tags: data privacy, Data Protection, facial recognition technology, Privacy, Privacy and Security, Washington Privacy Act, Washington state

This weekend at EVO Japan 2020, SNK released a trailer for the second Samurai Shodown season pass. Yep – even though it’s still not available here in the west on Nintendo’s hybrid platform, it’s already up to its second lot of downloadable content.

The brief clip shows off the previously confirmed character Mini Majikina and also reveals Sogetsu Kazama and Iroha. A fourth mystery fighter was teased as well. See for yourself below:

In somewhat related news, Bandai Namco announced the Samurai Shodown lead Haohmaru would appear as a DLC character in the second season pass of Soulcalibur VI.

Are you excited for the release of Samurai Shodown on the Switch next month? Comment down below.

And here we are once more for another edition of Box Art Brawl, the weekly battle between regional variants of retro game box covers to find out which one you think deserves gold medal in the looks department.

Last week Super NES classic Castlevania: Dracula X bared its teeth and got down to bloody battle until the Japanese version emerged victorious having sucked up nearly two-thirds of your vote. North America trailed behind with Europe a distant third.

Today we go back to the Nintendo 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the game which took Zelda into the third dimension in such fine form that you could argue it’s not until Breath of the Wild that the series has genuinely moved forward from the blueprint laid out back in 1998. For such a revered series we’ve got three suitably reverent covers below for your persual.

Master Sword at the ready…

Europe

Beginning this week in Europe, we get a stark black background with the logo, here rendered in bullion-like yellow-gold, slap-bang in the centre. The traditional black border of this version works seamlessly here with the frame being broken by the Master Sword in the logo. It’s simple, elegant and with just the sword, shield and the glint of the logo, we know an epic journey awaits us, even if it doesn’t elaborate on the specifics. It’s probably got monsters and stuff, innit.

Japan

Beyond the colours of the game’s logo (and the N64 stamp in the top right corner), the Japanese variant goes for a washed out, smokey monochrome cover that puts Link and trusty steed Epona in the centre.

This subdued example impressed us initially, although that wore off after a while and the more we looked at it the more vacant it became. It gives us a little more context by having the protagonist on the box, but somehow having him alone behind an abstract, flaming veil suggests less about the game than the titles adorning the other two examples. It’s not bad, but we like it less every time we look at it. Let’s move on, then.

North America

Switching black for gold, the title logo with the Hylian Shield and Master Sword gets its familiar colours here on a simple cover which calls back to the similar covers of A Link To The Past and Link’s Awakening DX (which previously had a brawl of its own). The red strip and the peeling ‘Only for’ label arguably spoils the grandeur a bit, but it’s big, bold and classic.

Bonus!

And as a cheeky little non-polled bonus, here are the covers for the North American and European releases of excellent Ocarina of Time 3D on 3DS. The Japanese version was essentially the same as the European variety. Interestingly, us Europeans were also able to get our hands on a more subdued ‘gold’ version of the US box through pre-ordering and other promotions at launch, so we could switch between using which ever case we preferred (although it does mean we have one extra, empty Ocarina of Time 3D case on our shelf).

So, three covers, but which one gets your vote? Take another look, select your favourite below and plant the Master Sword into vote button to journey into the future:

That’s all for this week’s brawl! Let us know in the comments if there are any games you’d like to see duke it out for your entertainment, and we’ll see you next week for another round.

Duelyst, the 2016 digital card game from Counterplay Games, is going offline for good next month.

The news was shared over on the free-to-play game’s Steam page earlier today. Though no reason was given for the server closure, it’s a similar sort of announcement to the ones other developers have had to make once the costs of keeping an online game up and running started to outweigh what the game was bringing in.

“Saying goodbye to any game is never easy, and it’s always hardest when you love the game as much as we all love Duelyst. We’re incredibly proud of the effort our developers have put in on Duelyst over the years, and even more proud of the amazing community of friends and gamers that have enjoyed Duelyst,” writes the team.

The official shutdown is slated to take place on February 27 at 3 PM PST. In the meantime, x has reduced the cost of orbs in-game, disabled the purchased of Duelyst’s in-game diamonds currency, and is offering to refund purchases made between December 21 and today’s announcement.