Some stories from my blog cluster that caught my attention:

• Valve is being sued for not shutting down the gambling at sites such as CSGO lounge, and thus being implicitly involved in illegal gambling. Note that no-one has yet sued them for the internal economy of the drops-with-microtransactions in the game, which could equally be considered infringing on gambling laws from a certain light. (Story via Slashdot).
• At the other end of the economic scale, Gamesbrief has a piece on Hadean Lands a low-rent contemporary text adventure selling on Steam for £8.99, to which you can add DLC to make it £26.99. What’s the DLC? A Certificate you sign to promise you won’t use hints to complete it. Clever marketing for a game that adheres to the puzzle-driven practices of a classic genre.
• Meanwhile, ETC Press, the new publisher of my new philosophy book, Wikipedia Knows Nothing, has released Volume 1 of Analog Game Studies. While ‘analogue games’ is a foul piece of retroactive slander against boardgames, this is a magnificent collection of scholarly work on the form – and you can get it for free.
• In sadder boardgame news, Goro Hasegawa has died at the age of 83. Hasegawa-san is famous for creating the boardgame Othello, which famously marketed with the phrase “A minute to learn… a lifetime to master”. (Story via Purple Pawn).
• And finally, one of Purple Pawn’s writers, Yehuda, is also my favourite capsule film reviewer. Along with other reviews, check out his dismantlement of X-Men: Apocalypse, which faithfully recreates the tedium of Apocalypse in the comics.

Some major ihobo news coming soon – watch this space!