GYGO Mobile: The TikTok Ban Hits Games, Too

Welcome to another Wednesday! I’m still on my Sims grind, by which I mean installing mods, uninstalling mods, uninstalling the game, rinse and repeat. My laptop is a champion for running the game at all, but there are some things it simply is not capable of, and that is the, uh, 100 or so mods I tried to install. Listen, I just want things like babysitters and auto-gardening. Is that so much to ask, The Sims 4? (Apparently it is.)

Though a temporary ceasefire deal has been reached in Gaza, the devastation is ongoing and people are still in need. If you have some spare funds, consider donating to one of the many fundraising efforts at Gazafunds.com, which links to a new campaign every time you refresh the page. For digital actions you can take, subscribe to our own Zainabb Hull’s Crips for Palestine newsletter.

In Which I Am (Regrettably) Forced to Talk About the TikTok Ban

I don’t use TikTok because I don’t like TikTok. I think banning TikTok is a shortsighted political game but that we should also have a serious conversation about digital privacy (which includes apps developed in the US!). I think the whole TikTok ban was orchestrated to make Trump look like the savior of something ~young people~ like, and it’s transparent, and it makes me feel a bit sick. Thankfully, this news column is not about my feelings on privately owned social media, which are negative and capital-O, capital-P Old Person even as, yes, I understand that positives exist and we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, etc., etc., but the bathwater is just so very dirty and slime-ridden and maybe we ought to give the baby another wash while we’re at it.

Anyway, the US Supreme Court upheld the ban on TikTok, owned and operated in the US by California company TikTok Inc., with its parent company ByteDance Ltd. located in China. The real issue here was ByteDance’s location in China, which, according to the Supreme Court’s ruling, is required to “assist or cooperate” with any “intelligence work” by the Chinese government. Hence, security threat—but not so threatening that Trump, who signed the first executive order to ban it back in 2020, wouldn’t sign a second executive order shortly after being sworn in giving the app an additional 75 days to find a buyer. No word on whether it’s still fine when the US government buys data on US citizens from private companies, though.

Anyway—sorry, I have a lot of feelings about this topic and keep getting distracted by something else that makes me angry—ByteDance isn’t just the owner of TikTok. It’s a huge technology company that also owns a number of other apps and companies, including a publishing arm and—here, I swear we’re getting to the mobile games bit—game publishers. Specifically, it owns Nuverse, the publisher of US-based developer Second Dinner, who created Marvel Snap. Which, due to the TikTok ban, was also banned in the US for a short period of time in January.

Now, not every Nuverse app was disabled at the same time, or even at all—Earth: Revival – Deep Underground and Ragnarok X: 3rd Anniversary, both Nuverse games, were still available after both TikTok and Marvel Snap went down. It’s unclear what the standard was here, but it seems that Second Dinner was entirely unaware that their game would be affected by the ban. Marvel Snap is now available again in the US on your app store of choice and is providing players with “downtime packages” that include a number of in-game rewards. TikTok, however, is still unavailable (and phones with the app installed are being listed for more than the cost of my education on eBay, if you want to feel some kind of unhinged about the world today). Second Dinner is now actively seeking a new publisher.

According to rumor (the “rumor” in question being from our own notorious liar of a president) Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok. Other potential buyers include Elon Musk, MrBeast, that guy from Shark Tank, and former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin because, hey, why the fuck not. Why not. I hate it here.

Some Games I Might Try if You Can Pull Me Away from The Sims

Another elevator game… for iOS only. The Valley of the Architects is a puzzle game in which players will solved elevator-based puzzles in pursuit of a—you guessed it—lost architect. It’s out this March.

I am cautiously into the idea of Serial Cleaner, which has you stealthily cleaning up crime scenes to prevent the police from finding out who whacked who. Cautious because I hate stealth—phones are expensive and I don’t want to throw mine across the room if I get startled.

LOK Digital, a puzzle game based on a book by Blaž Urban Gracar, is out now! I watched the trailer for this one without sound and it looks completely incomprehensible, but the art style is neat. I’m in.

Cassette Beasts is a turn-based RPG that lets you use cassette tapes to turn into monsters with different abilities. The art style is cute and has a fun retro vibe!

In other news…

Monument Valley 3 is contributing 3% of upcoming profits to charity, specifically to the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies. ustwo, the developer behind Monument Valley, says that they are the first B-corp game studio, meaning they are a for-profit business meeting specific standards of transparency and social and environmental impact. Hopefully they’ve moved on from union busting while they’re at it.

Gordon Ramsay is in Hay Day! Why? Nobody knows! Please watch this trailer. This is me justifying all of my shitty little phone games.

 

inZOI and PUBG will both include AI-powered NPCs. Why? I don’t want this. I don’t play PUBG but I was interested in inZOI, and now much of that enthusiasm has faded. Part of the fun of life simulation games to me is the absurdity—the number of times I have to tell my sims to go to the bathroom while they decide to instead stand around looking confused before finally pissing themselves is actually part of the fun, even setting aside all of the other concerns I have with AI. Oh well. Time to play more The Sims, I guess.

Longleaf Valley, my beloathed, has planted two million trees. Some of them were thanks to yours truly, because I’m once again playing this silly little game.

Hoyoverse, the publisher behind Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, is settling with the Federal Trade Commission for $20 million and an agreement to block users under 16 from making purchases. The company was charged with violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule for a variety of reasons that include data collection and misleading information about the odds of winning loot box prizes. Those odds will now be disclosed to users and personal data will be deleted for users under 13.

Fusebox, another one of my beloatheds, is partnering with Banjiay Entertainment to develop games based on Bigg Boss and Big Brother. But will they bring back the good writers?

Hatsune Miku is coming to Fortnite with cat ears on! This is surely somebody’s something and I don’t want to know about it.

Fans of Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket are not loving a January update that allows players to trade cards. The new mechanic requires using stamina, which recovers over time or can be bought with an in-game currency paid for with real money. Higher-level cards also require Trade Tokens, which can be obtained by deleting cards from a player’s inventory. A 3-Diamond card will earn 25 Trade Tokens per deletion, and it requires 120 Trade Tokens to trade a card of the same value. The highest-level cards are not tradeable at all, meaning players are encouraged to spend real money on more packs to receive them. IGN’s writeup above has a helpful chart for how bonkers this exchange rate is. As players have pointed out, this makes it less a “trading” card game and more just a “card game.”

Roblox is suing PlayerAuctions, a third-party marketplace for selling digital goods in a variety of games. Third-party reselling can be a lucrative market, but is often against the terms of service on a given platform. According to Polygon’s investigation, Roblox wants all Roblox products on the site removed and to prevent PlayerAuctions from buying, selling, or trading Roblox items in the future. The lawsuit states that Roblox manages its “gross domestic product” itself and that PlayerAuctions interferes with that, and compares their economy to “certain smaller nations.” I hate to have read that and to know it.