Ubisoft claws back more shares as Vivendi fight continues Ubisoft has won another small victory in its fight against media conglomerate Vivendi by buying back 3.625 million of its own shares for $137.9 million (€122.5 million).

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1 More Steam changes inbound as Valve targets discoverability "This change should result in your title appearing to a smaller, but better targeted group of potential customers based on their preferences and tastes."

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  Sponsored: Game devs! Did you know you can now register the .games domain? The .games extension launched on Sept. 21, and already has the potential to become one of the most popular new domains on the market.

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  Blog: Memories from BioShock lead programmer Christopher Kline After BioShock lead programmer Christopher Kline had to pull out of our recent Twitch stream, he was kind enough to share a few memories of his work on the game

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  Blog: What Badland tells us about mobile-to-console ports Ubisoft game designer Stanislav Costiuc examines the mobile-to-console port of one-touch puzzler, Badlands.

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4 7 games with entertaining fail states that every dev should study Death where is thy sting? Many games have such clever and entertaining fail states that you practically look forward to your next untimely demise. We spoke to several devs about their favorites.

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  Video Game Deep Cuts: Prague, Rogue, & FiveRP This Video Game Deep Cuts selection, picking top longform video game articles and videos of the week, looks at everything from Prague in the latest Deus Ex to Roguelike Celebration & GTA V mods.

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54 Insomniac, other devs condemn Palmer Luckey's support of pro-Trump troll group Updated: Palmer Luckey's support for a pro-Trump political organization has drawn fire from VR developers and promises to cancel their games if he does not step down from Oculus.

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  Get a job: Cryptic Studios is hiring a Character Artist The Star Trek Online dev is hiring an artist to work closely with the rest of the team at its Los Gatos, CA studio and contribute to creating creatures, weapons, armor and costumes in its games.

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10 Don't Miss: 20 Atari games every designer should play Check out this classic 2008 feature from Gamasutra about 20 timeless Atari games showcasing intriguing mechanics or design decisions that modern game developers should study and learn from.

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  Blog: How to show your indie game at any expo A general and practical guide guide on how to show your indie game at any expo, including tips on how to prepare your booth, but also your build.

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  Devs raise money for indie collective Juegos Rancheros via itch.io bundle Fantastic Arcade is happening next week in Austin, Texas, and now a posse of high-profile indie devs are selling copies of games they'll be debuting at the Arcade in a new bundle on itch.io.

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3 Facebook, Intel come out on top at AI-only Doom deathmatch battle royale The folks behind Doom-based AI research platform VizDoom released results of a competition to see who can build the best Doom-playing AI -- and the winning teams were from Facebook and Intel.

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  Q&A: Implementing and balancing traversal mechanics in Grow Up "We had a vision of an unbounded planet very early on, a place where BUD could explore a world from any angle in any way without linearity."

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  Get expert advice on implementing great VR hand-tracking at VRDC Veteran game developer Matt Newport is now chief technology officer at VR firm Osso VR, and at VRDC he'll be running down the finer points of great, accurate hand-tracking in VR game and experiences.

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  Open the pod bay doors and join us for a developer stream of Event[0] I can’t let you do that Dave. But I can let you join us for a stream of Event[0] today at 3PM EST on our new Twitch channel, where we'll be interviewing the developers of the new AI conversation game.

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2 Frictional's existential horror game Soma sells 450K, turns profit "We spent over five years making our, by far, most ambitious game ever. We also spent quite a lot of money on various outsourcing such as voice acting, 3D models and animations."

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  PR crises and insecure AI: This week in video game blogging This week, guest curator Taylor Hidalgo brings together some developers' perspectives shared in the world of games blogging.

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  Today is the last day to submit talks for the Summits and VRDC at GDC 2017! GDC organizers want to remind you that today is the last day to propose a talk for one of the Game Developers Conference 2017 Summits or the VR-focused VRDC at GDC 2017!

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1 Ubisoft opens book publishing house to 'propel' brands forward Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs creator Ubisoft is looking to boost its cross-media brand power with the opening of its very own publishing house, Ubisoft Publishing.  

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4 Kabam pulls the plug on struggling Star Wars: Uprising Kabam's free-to-play action RPG Star Wars: Uprising has been canceled and pulled from the iOS and Android app stores. 

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  Crashing Season: A story of puppies, sweat, and tears Making mobile games is a journey through sweat, tears and joy. In this blog post, Finnish mobile game company Koukoi Games shares its story.

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6 Blog: Building MMO communities using economics "Community is something of a mystical beast hunted by game studios around the globe. In this article I show how and why economics is the right tool to build the desired community."

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  Beyond the sea: Devs look back at the influential BioShock 2 We caught up with some of the developers from BioShock 2 for lessons and memories from the game's development.

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3 Community managers' war stories show need for better harassment policies A look at the world of community management highlights the fact that sometimes community managers are left on the front line without proper support to handle online harassment.

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