YouTube is acquiring Twitch for $1 billion

The popular video game streaming service may soon be a part of YouTube.

A deal for YouTube to purchase Twitch for $1 billion is closing "imminently," according to a report by Variety.

Sources familiar with the matter say that the deal will be carried out with an "all-cash offer" and would make it the biggest acquisition in YouTube's history since Google buying the video-sharing site for $1.65 billion in 2006. YouTube has prepared for regulators in the United States to challenge the deal with expectations that the Justice Department will decide whether the deal is anti-competitive, sources say.

Chase, director of PR for Twitch, said on Twitter, "For those asking about the story today, Twitch doesn't comment on rumors." YouTube representatives have declined to comment too.

Twitch is a significant player in gaming today now that new consoles like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One can take advantage of Twitch streaming out of the box. A deal like this can be beneficial for Twitch to scale up in its infrastructure, but there are other concerns too like YouTube's copyright claims. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out and what it really means for gamers.

NES drinking

Still searching for that perfect Christmas gift? Well, look no further – I give you the gift of the century!

Regardless if you’re spending the holidays with your boyfriend or girlfriend, long lost family or drunk in-laws, crazy cat ladies or that weird hippie neighbor who “doesn’t believe in material possessions” this is the obvious gift of choice!

As kids of the 80tees we all know what a NES is, remember that special moment when first unboxing the system, and although we ourselves never fought him, we all knew that one guy who reached and beat Mike Tyson in Punch-Out. We know how to find the warp-zone in level 1-2 in SMB, we can all recite the Konami code in our sleep, and we all know the theme to the Moon in Duck Tales. Long story short - we´re all of the NES generation.

As we have grown up, we may have left the NES behind, but the nostalgia never leaves. And as we beers and whiskey replaced soda as the drink of choice, so must also these new bereaves adapt to our living memories. Enter the extremely stylish Ink Whiskey Concealable Entertainment Flask – the first container that truly matches your retro gaming fandom.

Matt Cornell, the inventor behind the flask and founder of Ink Whiskey LLC, wanted to make this canteen a concealable flask instead of a flask that was just shaped differently. He wanted the product to look and feel exactly like the game cartridges we all grew up with. Therefor it looks like an NES game cartridge, right down to the classic dull-gray color.

Outside of being a handy little way to be sneaky, the team also created some awesome alcohol-themed parody art labels of some classic video games that we all know and love. Here's a quick sneak peak at the five labels available to choose from:

The funding goal for this KickStarter project has already been topped off. You can get a Drunk Hunt-labeled flask for $15 or choose from one of the other labels at the $20 level. So, go ahead: Raise your flask to retro gaming and make a toast to the perks of adulthood.

iPhone Controller

The iPhone is already one of the largest gaming platforms on the market — the App Store makes it easy for developers to get their titles to customers and iPhone owners spend a significant amount of time on the device gaming.

iOS 7 includes support for MFi "Made for iPhone" Apple Certified hardware game controllers, which will allow manufacturers to create dedicated iOS gaming controllers, turning the iPhone and the iPad into gaming machines on par with handheld gaming systems. Apps will be able to be designed around the game controller framework, allowing for seamless connectivity.

So here we have what appears to be a style of game controller that allows you to see the screen of your phone, as well as an entirely standalone controller with what seems to be dual analog sticks. Also, rumors say that Apple has reinforced that if your game is going to support a game controller it needs to be totally playable without.

"Made for iPhone" is going to be the familiar branding for these controllers, and developers will have one common interface to code. Allegedly, there's even some prototype controllers floating around WWDC (Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2013).

Will we be playing a proper Zelda: A Link to the Past on the iPhone this fall? I sure hope so!

note: if you happen to have an Apple Developer ID you can read all about the controller here

HyperInflation 2.0

Right now a totally amazing and fascinating story about virtual hyperinflation is unfolding, crashing the economy of Blizzard's MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) Diablo 3. Blizzard blew its economic strategy for Diablo 3 by making the "sinks" (places where gold is taken out of the economy) unattractive, adding in real-money-for-stuff trades, and then letting a bug run wild. Before you knew it, players were loading up virtual wheelbarrows full of virtual gold to buy virtual bread.

This was demonstrated when, in a message board entry prefaced by stating “Sell Equipment before Patch 1.0.5 Hits!” (a patch is a piece of software added to an operational program or application as bugs are found, changes desired, or ways of improving performance discovered), a player warned that,

Blizzard just announced that the drop rates for [certain] items are going to be doubled … if you haven’t already, you should consider converting your current gear to cash … since real $ [are] the best hedge against gold devaluation.

If historical cases of hyperinflation — real, and now virtual — have one thing in common, it is the instinct among its victims to blame the symptoms rather than the disease. The Austrian economist Hans Sennholz noted that during the German hyperinflation, “intrigue and artifice” were believed to be at work. Similarly, a handful of Diablo 3 players, frustrated about the decimation of their purchasing power, expressed increasing suspicion of manipulation and conspiracy theories.

Why are certain items priced so astronomically high? Many of them are not even that good yet cost 100’s of millions of gold. … I have about 45,000,000 gold saved up [and] check every few days to see if I can get any upgrades that are worth the gold, but … everything is vastly overpriced … clearly controlled by the gold sellers.

This, however, is not the first time hyperinflation has struck Blizzards virtual worlds. A few years back their now iconic game World of Warcraft was truck by a similar economic melt-down, when trade moved out of the game, and on to Craigslist and E-Bay. Gamers were selling their loot and gear to the highest bidder offline, and then simply handing these extremely sough after and costly items to its new owner online. However, an in-game mechanic forces a player who trades an item to give something in return, be it another item or other tender. Since the real trade already had been executed offline this was simply a facade, and the meant-to-be super expensive sword was traded for an shabby copper coin.

The virtual money lost all its value, prices on in-game items skyrocketed, and the hyperinflation was a fact. Blizzard had to close down servers, migrate players, and sanitize the entire economical system. Its funny to me how instances of the economy that we are trying our hardest avoid in real life, apparently cannot be circumvented not even i worlds we fully control.