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Random Tower Posts

Humble Abandons Its Last Founding Principle

Published July 2, 2021 by E. Zachary Knight

Long ago, a new games platform launched, the Humble Bundle. Founded by Wolfire Games, this new service sold bundles of indie games on a pay what you want scale with proceeds split between developers and charity. Purchasers of the bundles could choose to give all the sale price to the charities, or split the cost between the charities and developers, or anything in between. this novel sales approach lead to a huge success of the Humble Bundle and helped raise millions for charity.

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Happy Public Domain Day, 2021 Edition

Published January 1, 2021 by E. Zachary Knight

It is the third annual public domain day in the United States. January 2019 was the first time in a long time that anything covered by copyright in the US entered the public domain. This year makes 3 years of stuff finally making it to the point that they can be freely distributed, built upon, reworked, or used however anyone wishes.

One cool option for using public domain material this year is to check out the Gaming Like Its 1925 game jam over on itch.io. This game jam is hosted by Some very awesome people who are interested in promoting the public domain and working to make copyright work for the people once again. There are prizes available and just a lot of fun to be had there for all interested.

And just like every year, the Duke Law School has published an article highlighting many of the works that have entered the public domain at midnight last night. There is a ton of books, movies, music, non-fiction, and a lot more that are now available for anyone.

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You Don’t Own What You Buy: Ouya Edition

Published July 9, 2019 by E. Zachary Knight
Eliminate DRM: Defective By Design

On June 26th, the Ouya servers were finally shut down. After that day, there is no more store, no more updates, and no more games that rely on DRM in order to play. Razer in its announcement said it was up to the developers to decide how the games were going to be treated after the shutdown, and they had until that day to push out an update to fix any DRM issues.

But like any DRM that relies on a server check, some games on the Ouya store are no longer playable. I hopped on my Ouya yesterday to see what the state of the machine was. I wanted to see if any of the games I had were still playable. What I found was a huge mixed bag.

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Razer Officially Puts An End To The Ouya

Published May 22, 2019 by E. Zachary Knight

All the way back in the Summer of 2012, the Ouya took the world by storm. The promise was to release a modestly priced micro console, the first of its kind, that anyone could develop for. Their Kickstarter campaign quickly blew passed its goal and raised over $8million.

But it was not all roses and sunshine. The Ouya quickly caught the ire of those in the more “hardcore” gamer persuasion. They lambasted the system for its “under powered” hardware and the fact that it ran on an Android operating system, an OS typically used by hated “casual” gamers. But not all controversy was this kind of trumped up BS. The makers of the console created a number of controversies of their own.

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Sega Announces 10 More Genesis Mini Titles

Published April 18, 2019 by E. Zachary Knight

Sega has released the titles of 10 more games coming to the Genesis Mini coming September 19. Andrew and I took the time to come up with 30 games we would like to see on this console. So where do these 10 games line up with our predictions?

Well, the image to the left are the 3 games of the 10 that either both of us or one of us predicted. Streets of Rage 2 and Sonic 2 were both really safe bets. Andrew listed Contra: Hard Corps. That was it for titles on our lists. So what other games did Sega reveal that are coming to the Mini?

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Sega Mini Is Coming, But With What Games? [Updated]

Published April 3, 2019 by E. Zachary Knight

The big news recently is that Sega is finally ready to launch their true competitor to Nintendo’s NES and SNES Classic consoles. While it is true that Sega has licensed out their console brand and game libraries to At Games in the past for a retro console experience, those offerings were plagued with terrible controllers and emulation. In response, Sega pulled the development of their latest retro console experience in-house and will release it this year on September 19th.

However, much like Sony, Sega is holding some of its cards close to its chest. While we know that we will be getting a Genesis 1 formatted console and two of the 3-button controllers with HDMI output for $80, we only know 10 of the 40 announced games. Those games are Ecco the Dolphin, Castlevania Bloodlines, Space Harrier II, Shining Force, Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, ToeJam & Earl, Comix Zone, Sonic the Hedgehog, Altered Beast, and Gunstar Heroes.

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Happy Public Domain Day US, For Real This Time!

Published January 1, 2019 by E. Zachary Knight

Happy Public Domain Day Everyone! This is a momentous occasion as this is the first year since the 1978 Copyright expansion that the US has actually had one of these. Today, the first works from 1923 will enter the public domain in the US and it is a bittersweet moment for everyone who cares about the progress of art and science. Sweet for the wonderful works that people will be able to distribute freely without risk of being sued or jailed for doing so. Bitter for all the works that have been lost because the owner of the copyright didn’t care about preservation or because the copyright owner cannot be found.

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