game

How a simple comma was enough to put a Steam game on the ropes

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The bug fixes It is one of the most frustrating tasks in video game development, especially when a failure seems to occur completely randomly and without following any pattern. The world of bugs in video games is very curious, and if not tell the guys at Atari, who when trying to center the company’s logo on the game ‘Tempest’ they ended up implementing a bug which allowed infinite games to be played. Well, something along those lines has happened to Black Beach Studios, developer of Iron Rebelliona mecha shooter for virtual reality. The studio spent months facing an enigma: players kept complaining on Steam and in the Meta Quest store about unexpected closures in the game. The problem was that in the automatic bug reports absolutely nothing appeared. It wasn’t until the team began recreating very specific game situations that they came up with a chain of errors so absurd that, in retrospect, it almost seems like a joke despite making all the sense in the world. Two Germans, a fight and a fall to the left Screenshot of Iron Rebellion | Image: Black Bleach Studio According to they explain the developers themselves in a video posted on TikTok, the origin of the problem lay in an extremely specific combination of events. The game crashed exactly when the following happened: A mecha was destroyed. The remains of the mecha were falling to the left. The combat took place at a very specific point on a specific map. And there were always exactly two German players participating in the game. Given this, the team asked the logical question: how is it possible that the players’ language causes the game to break? Those of you who know computer science will already be guessing the reason: the decimalsthat the devil carries them. In computing, decimal numbers are a delicate matter. While in the English-speaking world the point is used as a decimal separator (for example, 1.99), In countries like Germany, the comma is used by default (as we do in Spain, for example, with 1.99). If this is not taken into account, the ingredients for disaster are in place: due to the German localization, the game, for some reason, converted decimal points into commas when calculating physical positions. Image | Black Beach Studio When the mecha fell to the left at that specific point, the game sent the position data in network packets to the rest of the players. Due to locale settings, these packages contained commas instead of periodswhich caused the other players’ network code to not know how to interpret the information. The data could not be processed and the game would crash completely instantly. The problem has already been solved and the game is fully functional, but it is not the first time something similar has happened. In fact, something similar happened in a very beloved game: ‘The Witcher 2’. The game had a bug in memory management and font encoding with German texts, so every time I tried to process a character with Umlaut (ä, ö, ü) or ß, it would break. Furthermore, it happened in any context: when played in subtitles, in the inventory… The community had to come to the rescue with an unofficial mod. Via | Gamestar.de Image | Gamestar.de

We thought that the Chinese RAM manufacturers came to relieve the market. Turns out they’re playing the same game as everyone else.

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When the market is shared by a few, you can’t expect popular prices. The RAM memory segment is dominated by three manufacturers (Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung) and, with most of its production focused on the AI ​​market, the consumer segment is in deep water. In a scenario in which there are simply no chips, the Chinese RAM memory companies seemed like a ball of oxygen. The reality seems somewhat different. Hunting in China. Giants like Asus, Lenovo or Apple have been around for some time knocking on the doors of Chinese companies of RAM memory. Although traditionally it was the two South Korean companies (Samsung and SK Hynix) and the American Micron that supplied RAM to both manufacturers and assemblers, with the current component crisis those companies have been left orphaned and have had to look to the Chinese market. CXMT and YMTC (which is the counterpart of flash memory) are the two proper names of Chinese RAM and in recent years they have been making advances to catch up with consumer chips. There are those who believe that they are not suitable for high-end products, but when the need arises, expectations relax. That is why both have consolidated as a juicy element to alleviate the marketbut it turns out that they did not come to solve the global crisis, but to play the same game as the big ones. Bargaining power. As demand increased, both YMTC and CXMT have started selling their products at premium prices. It is that market that regulates itself, one in which everyone is in the same boat and, if they can sell their products at a higher price, they see no need to do so at a lower one (especially when we are seeing stratospheric financial results in this situation). But the most curious thing is that they are selling the most expensive things… to their own business partners. According to ReutersCXMT has been raising Huawei’s RAM prices for months. Huawei is competing against Nvidia both in the local and global markets, showing its equipment specially designed for a period in which AI inference seems like the next step of this technology, and as pointed out in Reuters, when Huawei asked for a relief in prices, CXMT did not give in. In fact, they point out that a power struggle is taking place with negative consequences for Huawei, since CXMT has been ordering its engineers to leave clean rooms in which they collaborated with partners of the Chinese giant, such as SiCarrier. In fact, it has also been recently commented that Huawei has begun to move to create your own DRAM factory. The one who warns… It is an interesting twist when it was assumed that Chinese manufacturers would arrive to alleviate the situation, competing with aggressive discounts below the prices of the three that control the market thanks to a growth produced, in part, through government subsidies. By competing with prices below those of the market they would be able to get a juicy piece of the pie among consumer brands, but as we have repeatedly said when we talked about itIn the end what rules is… money. Whenever it has been reported that someone opened a new plant or that a new research movement was being carried out in NAND chips, we already commented that the product would not be intended to alleviate the situation worldwide in the consumer segment, but for what is most profitable for the manufacturers of these chips: the AI ​​segment. Seeing the record profits of companies like SK Hynix or Samsung, it was naive to think that a company would enter this sector to alleviate the burden of consumer products. USA with the magnifying glass. Thus, CXMT has become the fourth largest manufacturer of memory worldwide, including the memory that goes into mobile phones and servers for AI, which is giving it brutal bargaining power, enough to put the brakes on a Huawei that has full government trust to become one of the technological engines of the country. However, there is a conflict of interest because Huawei is interested in its hardwarebut where China is also competing globally is in AI, and CXMT has just signed two very juicy agreements in this area. one with ByteDance for more than 7 billion dollars and another with Tencent for more than 3 billion dollars. Both to supply DRAM chips for data center servers for artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the United States is seeing a new problem being born, as both CXMT and YMTC have started to get your attention. YMTC is listed in the ‘EntityList‘ American and Micron is seeing its business in jeopardy, urging Congress to impose stricter controls on CXMT. Interestingly, Apple is advocating the opposite as it desperately needs RAM and CXMT seems like the ideal candidate. Prepared for the worst. In any case, and as we have said on several occasions, any movement in this direction by the RAM majors will be aimed at producing more chips for hyperscalers. It’s a gigantic market right now that doesn’t seem to have an end or relief in sight. Samsung has achieved a quarter even better than Nvidia and since SK Hynix has issued a clear warning“Next year will be the worst in the history of the semiconductor industry.” Translation: buy now what you think you will need because there is nothing to indicate that the situation will relax in the short term. And when it happens, there are already manufacturers like Lenovo who point out that prices they will never return to the pre-crisis situation… In Xataka | There is a company that has grown 3,000% in the stock market, even beating the performance of Nvidia: Sandisk

Video game preservation has already been mortally wounded with Sony. The next blow comes from an entire country: Germany

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Many times we have treated video games as if their availability was guaranteed, even when they depended on discs, digital stores and servers that could disappear. What we have seen this week reminds us that preserving them requires more than will: we need supports that survive and organizations capable of cataloging them, maintaining them and opening them to researchers and the public. Sony has decided to close one of those avenues for future releases. Almost at the same time, Germany has dropped one of the most ambitious public projects that existed to prevent that memory from being lost. The closure is already underway. The Internationale Computerspielesammlung, known as ICS, is in the process of dissolution after the public funding that supported it expired at the end of April 2026. GamesWirtschaft points out that The federal government refused to renew its share of support and the partners voted unanimously to dissolve the company. The decision does not erase the existing collections at once, but it does leave the shared database and the infrastructure that allowed it to be consulted without defined continuity, the future of which remains under legal and technical review. An archive of more than 60,000 games. The ICS gathered records and funds provided by institutions such as the Computerspielemuseum of Berlin, the USK, the game association and the DIGAREC research center. The collection encompassed cartridges, floppy disks, CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray, as well as boxes, manuals, associated materials and hardware. Of course, what could be publicly consulted since April 2019 was the digital database, not the games themselves. The physical pieces remain in the hands of the proprietary entities. The ambition went much further. The ICS aspired to gather in one place the funds that were still distributed among its partners and turn the whole into a stable tool for researchers, media and specialists. The plan included facilitating access through automated emulation and creating a permanent public headquarters in the German capital region. The complete leap was never consolidated: a repository already existed, but permanent institutionalization, public headquarters and the access provided through emulation were missing. That second phase remained uncompleted. The money did not find a stable outlet. The aid came from the Berlin Senate and the Federal Commissioner for Culture, but was linked to a temporary phase of the initiative. When the video game policy passed to the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space in 2025, it studied whether it could turn the ICS into a permanent institution. He ultimately concluded that the model was not economically viable due to the scale of the work required. Preserving also means guaranteeing access. The scenario left by these two movements does not only imply that there are fewer objects to save or fewer projects capable of organizing them. It also weakens the ability to consult, study and understand these games decades from now, when they will depend on hardware, documentation and systems that may no longer exist. The coincidence between Sony’s announcement and the fall of the ICS points in that direction: the video game memory does not disappear all at once, but when the structures that keep it available are removed, one by one. Images | Sei In Xataka | ‘Minecraft’ has achieved something revolutionary in the dynamics of the game: allowing its users to sit

feel. And in the process it has revolutionized the game

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It has taken ‘Minecraft’ 17 years to unlock one of the simplest actions for its players: sit down. And a few days after doing so, the striking thing is not that the players are sitting down. The thing is that the cushions on which they can do so have become, thanks to the ingenuity of the users, a rosetta stone that unlocks many other activities. It suits you or makes you feel. On July 7, Mojang incorporated into Minecraftboth in its PC version and in its console and mobile versions, an object called cushion (cushion). It is made with three slabs of wool of the same color, exists in 16 different shades and allows, for the first time in the history of the game, to sit without resorting to mods or tricks. The same package adds a straw bed that avoids setting the respawn point when sleeping, designed for long expeditions. Learn to sit. The need was not new. For years, the community has built fake chairs by hiding a mine cart inside a stair block, or resorting to saddled pigs, boats, and invisible armor supports to simulate a character sitting. The cushion once and for all solves a void that the players themselves had been filling for more than a decade with botched work. Mohjang has only formalized a need. What have people done? More than sitting, of course. The cushion is classified as an entity and not a block, allowing it to break free from the usual ‘Minecraft’ grid and be placed in heights that a normal block could not occupy. It was not a decision linked to the game mechanics, but it has opened the door to experimentation. For example, there is no cooldown (mandatory waiting time before repeating an action) to sit and thanks to the possibility of being activated remotely and in a similar way to how beds work, chaining several cushions allows you to move faster than walking. Some players have already built vertical elevators by placing a cushion every six blocks, with the trick of leaving an additional unit at the top to be able to get off. Others use the cushions to decorate the ice roads on which the boats slide, because since there is no collision they do not slow down the movement as any other building block would do. There are those who have integrated them into mechanisms of redstone (the “electrical cable” of the game) to build illuminated dance floors, and who has used them as roof tiles or as the base of furniture previously impossible without mods. They don’t stop, they don’t stop. And of course, many creative constructions: there are those who have recreated a döner kebab only with cushions, but it is not the first time something like this has been done, this pattern has precedents. The update of redstone 2013 added a handful of technical blocks, including the comparator and the hopper (when the first is pointed at the second, it emits a signal of redstone proportional to the number of objects it contains), and ended up giving shape to a entire engineering subculture. Years later, the honey blocks of update 1.15, intended almost as minor filler, ended up allowing larger and more complex piston constructions than had been seen until then. Give me cushions. The reception has been, in general, enthusiasticalthough the truth is that the cushions are still in the experimental phase. Mojang may decide that collisionless behavior is too powerful before the part reaches its final release, which will be in Drop 3 in 2026, scheduled for fall. It doesn’t matter, because if it’s not with this, it will be with another inane and harmless object with which the players will build completely unforeseen devices. Such is the greatness of this seemingly inconsequential game. In Xataka | 60 euros/hour to be a gardener in Minecraft: a tempting remote job offer for experienced players

Microsoft bet 80 billion that you would play hundreds of titles. It failed because you just wanted to play the same old game.

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I have dozens of games in my library. Do you know how many I play? to two: from time to time I play a FIFA (I’ll always continue to call it that, I’m afraid) and if I get around to it I’ll hit the old ‘Battlefield 1’ that still has me conquered. In recent years I have enjoyed ‘Ghost of Tushima’, ‘Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’ or ‘Sifu’, for example, but while I was spending hours on those half a dozen titles, many others that I have in my library are simply collecting dust. Surely many of you play many more games and invest much more time in this, and Microsoft was surely thinking of you when it configured its future strategy. Xbox’s ambition was great until it wasn’t The idea in 2020 was clear, and those responsible for Microsoft said that There were 2.8 billion gamers in the world and they wanted to conquer them all. As? Well, with two great projects: Spend a million in buying video game development studios to constantly grow the catalog, and, of course, Create the ‘Netflix of video games’ with Xbox Game Pass Both ideas seemed to make a lot of sense and many gamers, especially those of us who were from Xbox, felt excited by that ambition. Xbox Game Pass seemed to be really exceptional for gamers and a nightmare for Sony, and although the operation to buy Activision Blizzard and franchises like ‘Call of Duty’ It was exceptionally expensive.the play again seemed like a fantastic bet for players of all types. But lo and behold, it wasn’t. These days we have known that Microsoft has spent close to $80 billion on agreements that would give it access to titles such as the aforementioned ‘Call of Duty’ or ‘Skyrim’, so that these video games could be available from day 1 or almost from the first moment on Xbox Game Pass. They wanted to create a catalog that would allow gamers to play hundreds of titles, including the most recent “triple A” titles, as part of the subscription to that service. They were wrong. And we also thought that the idea made sense. less is more The truth is that the strategy has not worked out well for them. The company has announced that will lay off 3,200 employees in its Xbox division20% of its staff, and will also allow five development studios to leave the company to follow their own path again. Maybe the answer wasn’t having more games. Steam already gave a strong clue at the beginning of 2025 when it pointed out that its platform It had become a video game dump.: Of 19,000 titles in 2024, almost no one played 80% of them. As in many other areas, the long tail theory prevails: interest is concentrated in a handful of contents that, on their own merits (perhaps seasoned with some luck) become absolute successes. The reality for the vast majority of gamers is the same: there are too many games on the market and people simply don’t have time to play all of them. Let’s be handsome or uglyWe insist, there is no time for so many video games. My colleague Jose García wrote in 2021 his particular reflection on how many we have become new digital Diogenes When it comes to video games: we get countless new games (most of them free) on Epic Games, Steam or GOG, but we have them collecting virtual dust in our library because we will never play many of them. My situation was also reflected in another text by Isra Fernández: Being a gamer after having children is complicated. The Netflix of video games was a utopia The picture that this situation paints for us is one that we intuited and made sense, but that we deceived ourselves by rejecting. Creating the Netflix of video games was impossible because video games are radically different to series or movies. While one consumes series or movies once and abandons them probably forever, gamers return to the video games we like again and again. We don’t spend an hour or two on them, but dozens and even hundreds of hours both in solo games and in games against other players on the internet. The way of consuming both content is precisely what destroys the illusion that a Netflix of video games makes sense. Xbox Game Pass offers us hundreds of titles so we can try them (and buy them) if we want, but we rarely do. I myself enjoyed Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for three years, and although I tried around twenty titles during that time, I always ended up returning to my classics. The options were wonderful, but I just didn’t have time for them. because when I wanted to play, I wanted to go back to my FIFA or my ‘Battlefield 1’. Microsoft itself already accused the problem when it gave us the worst news two years ago by raising the price of Xbox Game Pass. That was not enough, because a few months later he uploaded it again. The service was becoming more exclusive than ever, and it was doing so for one simple reason: they weren’t making enough money with it. But there is another problem that It is not just about consuming, but about producing. The “Netflix rhythm” is also unviable: there four scriptwriters start writing and in six months the platform releases a series that people devour in a weekend. In video games things are different, with increasingly longer and obscenely expensive developments. The famous availability of games available on “day 1” does not help either. That AAA video games worth 70 or 80 euros are available for free to subscribers was wonderful for us, but a shot in the foot for the company’s accounts. Building loyalty was important, but that was killing income for developments like these in which a lot of time and money is invested. The conclusion is clear in retrospect: Microsoft’s strategy was fantastic for … Read more

From 2028 you will not buy the game, just a permit to play it as long as Sony wants

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Sony recently gave us one of the worst news for the video game industry. And the company will stop manufacturing physical disks for all new PlayStation games starting in January 2028. The company justifies as “a natural evolution towards current consumer preferences”, in which the demand for the digital format has prevailed over the physical medium. From that date on, any title you want to purchase will only exist in the PlayStation Store cloud or in digital versions from partner stores. What we have to do now is ask ourselves what this change really means for those who pay for a game. Why does it matter? When you buy a record, that object is yours. You can lend it, resell it, keep it on a shelf for years and it continues to work even if the company responsible goes bankrupt. There are nuances to this, since each company manages the licenses of its content in different ways, but the important thing is that the physical medium has that added value that, in most cases, allows you to own the content. When you buy a digital game, on the other hand, you do not acquire the software, but rather a license to use it subject to a contract that almost no one reads. Steam leaves it in writing in your subscriber agreement, as the content is licensed, not sold. This legal distinction, which is usually a fine print that many of us ignore, becomes the general rule of the PlayStation ecosystem as soon as the disc disappears completely. And yes, we can talk about that today, even buying in physical format, nothing guarantees that all the content is on the disk. Also, in terms of preservation, although a disk can last for many years if well preserved, it is not an eternal medium and can also deteriorate over time. What is at stake here is a company’s total control over what you buy, and that, even minimally, should matter to us. Anti-consumer practices. Companies have a thousand reasons to abandon the physical format, and over the last few years we have seen examples of anti-consumer practices beyond the abandonment of this format. In 2024, Ubisoft shut down the servers of The Crew, a driving game that required permanent connection even to play alone. The title stopped working completely for all its buyers, without any patch that would allow you to continue playing offline. That was the spark that ignited the movement. Stop Killing Gameswhich gathered more than 1.3 million verified signatures to ask the European Union to force publishers to leave their games in a playable state when they withdraw support. This month, the European Commission refused to impose that obligation by lawalleging that the studios’ intellectual property rights outweigh the player’s continued access, although they did commit to promoting a voluntary code of conduct by the end of the year. The fine print is now the norm. That same debate has forced distributors themselves to be more honest about what they sell. In the United States, a California law (the AB 2426) prohibits digital stores from using words like “buy” if they do not offer real ownership of the product. As a consequence, Steam started showing a notice in the payment process that clarifies that you are only acquiring a license for the game, not its ownership. PlayStation Store is not subject to that law outside of California, but the principle is identical. Legal front. In addition to the pulse in Europe, Sony faces in the United Kingdom a class action lawsuit valued at nearly $2.7 billion for alleged abuse of a dominant position in the sale of digital games. In parallel, Ubisoft is already being sued in France and California for the closure of The Crew, accused of making consumers believe that they were purchasing a game permanently when, in practice, their access ended up being temporary. They are different disputes, but they all point to the same question. What legal protection does someone have who has paid 70, 80 or 90 euros for something that can disappear due to the decision of a company? Impotence. There’s no magic solution really, but if you value preservation, there are cases like GOGwho sell installers without DRM that can be downloaded and saved permanently, the closest thing today to real ownership of a video game. But of course, that doesn’t solve the problem of someone buying physical games in the PlayStation ecosystem. It may be that we are doomed to abandon the physical format. But not this way, or at least not having to give up our possession to a company. And the problem is that we have been convinced for all these years that the convenience and comfort of the digital format had to strictly go through a company’s total control over what you buy. Regarding PlayStation, games already published on disc before 2028 will continue to exist in that format, so anyone who values ​​this format still has a year and a half to continue buying. And it is worth remembering that not even the label “physical” guarantees anything anymore. The clearest example we had it a few days ago with GTA VIwhich its physical edition will include only a download code inside the box, without any disc. They are anti-consumer measures. Cover image | Mahtab Mashuq Tonmoy In Xataka | “We have never seen the price of a component rise so much and so quickly”: The thing about Apple, Microsoft and Valve is only the tip of the iceberg

“The video game is unaffordable in many cases as we have traditionally conceived it”

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Surely this is not the first time you have heard that the video game makes more money than cinema. That’s right, according to the data, although with certain nuances. However, the gaming industry is not having it easy right now, especially due to the situation with layoffs, the closure of studios, the component crisis or its difficulties in reaching a new audience. Opinions. Asha Sharma, the new CEO of Xbox, has opinions on the matter, and assures that traditional gaming has become inaccessible to many. His statements come at a particularly delicate time for his own company. And he is right, since the component crisis and the state of the industry in general is making it increasingly prohibitive to buy hardware or games. But on the other hand, it is worth remembering that Microsoft is precisely a company that also contributes to the very poor state of this industry. We have the last example in the latest increase in the price of its consoles. At the same time, it must also be said that we are at a point where we have more games (and very good ones) than ever, even titles that do not cost us any basic cost. The traditional video game is in danger. In an interview with Entertainment Weeklythe CEO of Xbox said that the video game “is unaffordable in many cases, as we have traditionally conceived it.” It’s not just about the price of hardware, but also, as she noted, “the economics of attention and the competition of subscriptions.” It is a sum of factors important enough to be expelling players from their favorite ecosystems. Although Xbox has many more problems than that. How is the panorama on Xbox. Sharma, who came from the world of AI, came to Xbox just a few months ago with no prior experience in the video game industry. That caused some rejection on social networks, but your first decisionsas recover Xbox name for Microsoft’s gaming division, give details of its next console, lower the price of Game Pass (still much more expensive than a few years ago) or returning (half-way) to console exclusives like Gears of War: E-Day, they have given it some credit. Xbox wanted to believe that this year’s Showcase was going to become a moment of reaffirmation. However, weeks later the other side arrived: with an internal communication that the company itself made public, and that it spoke of a drop in income, the hardware component crisisand how it has been “overextended” in the execution of its strategy. Additionally, rumors are mounting about another wave of mass layoffs and studio closures, although Xbox has not officially confirmed them. The problem crosses borders. That things are this regular is not something exclusive to Xbox. The entire industry suffers from structural tensions. Electronic components are more expensive than ever due to high demand for AI data centersand platforms compete for users’ time and money in an increasingly subscription-saturated environment. In this context, the price of entry to play games, whether it is a console, a mid-range PC or simply keeping up to date with all the services, has skyrocketed. “It is a very difficult formula. It is a very demanding business, but I think it is a very special business” recognize Sharma. Xbox’s bet to open the game. Todd Green, head of King (the company that owns Candy Crush that Microsoft acquired together with Activision Blizzard in 2023) explained in the same interview that his philosophy is to “treat everyone as important, regardless of whether they describe themselves as a gamer or not.” Candy Crush, with hundreds of millions of users, represents exactly that model, as it is an accessible title, free in its most basic form, and with no barrier to entry. What is at stake. If we refer only to billing, and although the comparison is a bit petecanderthe video game far surpasses the cinema. According to the Entertainment Software AssociationAmerican consumers spent $60.7 billion on video games in 2025, compared to nearly $8.87 billion at the box office that same year. But those overall numbers don’t necessarily reflect what the average player experiences. The challenge for Xbox, and the industry in general, is to find a way so that this growth is not concentrated only at the extremes, that is, the casual mobile gamer and the enthusiast with an unlimited budget, leaving everyone in the middle without a reasonable option. What’s coming now? Sharma has made it clear that his vision for Xbox goes beyond consoles, as he wants to turn the division into the largest entertainment company in the world, and that also happens with adaptations of its franchises in film and television, as is already the case with Fallout and Minecraft, and coming soon with Gears of War either Sea of ​​Thieves. But first you will have to resolve many pending issues. Cover image | Xbox In Xataka | 24 years ago Oliver Kahn sued EA and won. Then a new goalkeeper appeared in football games: Jens Mustermann

Jaén was the largest producer of lead in the world. Decades later, he wants to repeat the game with rare earths, but he has a problem: reality

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Somewhere between Linares and La Carolina there is a rusty derrick: the iron skeleton of what was, at the end of the 19th century, the largest producer of lead in the world. It is, obviously, the past, but in recent years many are completely obsessed with it being also the future. We have the latest example of this about 80 kilometers north of that derrick. There, in Aldeaquemada, an Australian company has just extracted a drill core and to announce that it is “a high quality area”. The question that hovers over Jaén these months is not whether there are minerals under its feet. We all know that. The question is whether all this dance of prospecting that we are seeing is something real or is it simply the expression of the desire of a province that continues to associate its ‘golden age’ with mining. What is happening? The last episode, as I say, stars Osmond Resources. In the SOR-08 survey has cut more ore than expected north of the province. We are talking about a project that covers 756 mining units between Aldeaquemada and Santiesteban del Puerto and search “titanium, zirconium, hafnium and rare earths” trapped in quartzites that hundreds of millions of years ago were beach sand. The ad has a trick, yes. What they have announced is a confirmation ‘during’ drilling. Laboratory analyzes (those that count) will take weeks. But, in reality, that is not what interests us. It is enough to do a small search on the internet to confirm that Jaén entire is being drilled with passion and enthusiasm for months now. And where does all that enthusiasm come from? In principle, three relatively independent engines. The first is geopolitical: in 2024, the European Union pressed the accelerator on ‘mineral sovereignty’ and approved a regulation on critical raw materials. The idea was to ensure that the extraction, processing and recycling of strategic raw materials carried out in Europe cover respectively 10%, 40% and 25% of EU demand. A project like Orión, oriented towards rare earths, is typical of something that in Europe (and in Madrid) sounds like glory. The thing about Madridor it is rhetorical. Just a couple of months ago, the Government approved a raw materials plan of 414 million euros which includes the largest mining prospecting campaign in Spain in more than half a century. Sierra Morena is expressly cited in it. Sara Aagesen he came to say that “with all certainty” rare earths will appear in the country. And then there’s the bag… That is the third engine. Companies like Osmond Resources live off the deposits, yes; but above all they live off the news cycle. After all, its market capitalization depends more on the ‘media battle’ than on the final results. In a field as complex as mining, failure is almost a given. And why is it important? Because behind all this noise there are a lot of small, aging towns those who are sold a new future. The mayor of Aldeaquemada It didn’t take long to celebrate Osmond’s results as a way to “generate jobs and wealth.” But the reality is that the Most exploration projects never produce. The energy transition has served as an alibi to look underground again, but the sector has changed so much that for the vast majority of actors, expectations are beginning to be more useful than reality. And that, in Empty Spain, is an existential problem. Image | Shane Mclendon In Xataka | Where there was lead before, now there will be rare earths: Jaén revives its mining past for the energy transition

Players celebrate that ‘GTA VI’ will cost 80 euros. It turns out that only the 100 euro ‘special’ is the entire game

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‘GTA VI‘ is the topic of the week in video games. Of the year, if you hurry me. The Rockstar title is a generational game and today reservations are open to get a digital version or a box that Does not include the game in physical format. That is, precisely, one of the controversies, but not the only one. The other has to do with the price. We have had rumors and leaks for months suggesting that ‘GTA VI’ was going to be the 100 euro game. Nintendo came close with the 90 euros of the ‘Mario Kart World‘, but many eyes were still on that ‘GTA VI’ whose development has been so monumental and expensive that it seemed to justify a considerable increase in price. In the end, it turned out that the game arrives for 80 euros in its standard version. But the twist is that there is a 100 euro version, one called ‘Ultimate’ that doesn’t feel like an ‘Ultimate’ edition: feels like the real ‘GTA VI’. Because this edition is not a collection of skins, as happens in other games: they are content that is unlocked as we progress through the game and are “threaded in all aspects of the story” of its protagonists, according to Rockstar itself. And it ranges from exclusive stores, items for the protagonists, vehicles of all kinds and some missions. The key to the Ultimate edition of ‘GTA VI’ On the website, Rockstar describes this edition as follows: “Welcome to Leonida, the state where anything goes. Get everything this vast world has to offer with Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition, an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons, fashion and action galore. The Ultimate Edition’s bonus content runs through Jason and Lucia’s story, discovering new items in each chapter.” We are used to the fact that when a game comes out in two editions, we have the full experience in the base edition and then an ‘Ultimate’ or ‘Complete’ edition that includes a code with skins. There may be some other element such as a vehicle or a couple of exclusive weapons, but in the end it is nothing that alters the experience too much. These contents are usually unlocked from the beginning of the adventure if we enter the code, but In the case of ‘GTA VI Ultimate’ things seem slightly different. As the company has commented, these new contents will be unlocked not all at once, but as we complete steps in the adventures of its protagonists. And that, with my experience as a player, sounds to me like content that has always been unlocked as we played, without having to pay anything else, but that now they want to pass off as additional content. Because yes, we have some different weapons, vehicles, tattoos, hairstyles and outfits, but also two car modification workshops, a new safe house in one of the areas, a store that only opens with this version and what seems like a mission or event in which we can raid the warehouse of a gang in the city to recover their merchandise. As I say, all of that sounds to me like content that, In another era, we would have been achieving with the normal course of the adventure. And for this reason, precisely, it gives rise to thinking that the ‘GTA VI’ that they had in mind from the beginning was the one for 100 euros, and that this so-called ‘Ultimate Edition’ is nothing more than the standard version, but with a cut version for 80 euros so as not to be ‘GTA’ the saga that raised the games to the 100 euro barrier. Because, in the end, no matter how much of a ‘GTA’ you are, the price of a video game matters. For example, the one that got involved when PS5 raised the price of some games up to 80 euros or when Nintendo did it a year ago with 90 euros. In fact, Rockstar must be quite happy with Nintendo for the 90 euros of ‘Mario Kart World’. And, speaking of Nintendo, another detail that gives rise to thinking that the ‘GTA VI’ “really” is the 100 euro one is the one that was set up when Nintendo launched ‘Donkey Kong Bananza‘ for 80 euros and, just a month later, it released a DLC that they most likely already had prepared for the original launch, but costing 20 euros. In practice, whoever wanted the complete game ‘dropped’ 100 euros in just a month and a half. But hey, price and controversies aside, ‘GTA VI’ is going to be a generational game. Rockstar has been cooking this work for more than a decade, which has become, possibly, the most expensive entertainment product ever created. It is a game that will not leave anyone indifferent and that, without really having many details about it, fills rivers of digital ink and a lot of content on YouTube. It also seems that they want to get rid of all the negative aspects as soon as possible so that the launch on November 19 goes as smoothly as possible. Although Rockstar must deal not only with issues such as price or differences between versions, but with much more serious things such as the denounced treatment of its workers and their rights. And if Reddit is a thermometer, it is neither hot nor cold, with users defending the decision and others questioning, precisely, that content is blocked. In Xataka | There are more and more physical video games that are paperweights. It is a tremendous problem for video games as art.

The GTA VI trailer is about to drop, but Rockstar wants you to keep talking about the game with a barrage of hyper-realistic screenshots

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If you thought today was well stocked with news about ‘GTA VI‘, Rockstar has decided not to. Today the editions have been known and the price of the game, with pre-orders opening at midnight on June 25. But to make sure we spend the day talking about his next gamethe company has updated its official materials with 70 captures in 4Kshowing characters, vehicles, settings, weapons and outfits with a level of detail that invites you to enlarge each image. At the time of writing there is no third trailer, but instead we have screenshots. Lots of catches. The cast. About half of the capture collection is from characters in the game: Jason Duval and Lucía Caminos have six captures each, and the game’s six confirmed supporting players (Cal Hampton, Boobie Ike, Dre’Quan Priest, Real Dimez, Raul Bautista and Brian Heder) have four captures each. Some clues about the most notorious: Jason Duval grew up surrounded by criminals, went through the army and ended up working for local drug traffickers. Lucia, for her part, has just been released from prison and wants to once and for all get the good life that her mother dreamed of in Liberty City. The secondary ones form an ecosystem of criminals from different strata. For example, Boobie Ike is a local Vice City legend, with an empire that spans from real estate to a strip club to a recording studio. Dre’Quan Priest is an ambitious producer who wants to turn the Real Dimez duo into stars, that is, Bae-Luxe and Roxy, friends since high school who turned their experience extorting neighborhood dealers into viral rap songs. And there’s more: Raul Bautista is a veteran bank robber and Brian Heder, an old-school smuggling narco who still moves product through his shipyard with his third wife. The places. Many of the other captures are from locations. Rockstar has confirmed six main areas of the game’s map: Vice City, Leonid Keys, Grassrivers Marshes, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia, and Mount Kalaga National Park. And with these captures we can immerse ourselves a little more in the careful setting: Vice City as Miami amplified (and interiors of a good number of the city’s nightlife venues); the Leonida Keys, Brian Heder’s territory (water everywhere, boats, that aspect of deep Florida that seems in a perpetual state of decomposition…) And there is more: Port Gellhorn as an industrial port area, and Ambrosia and Grassrivers that suggest a humid interior of dense vegetation, in the style of the Everglades swamps. Finally, Mount Kalaga National Park, the greenest and wildest space in the pack: a mountain full of forests that contrasts with all the coastal asphalt that abounds in the rest of the images. The cherry on top: the Vice City Vintage Pack. Twelve screenshots that capture, with all the impudence in the world, the decadent neon atmosphere of ‘Miami Vice’, the series that has always been the unconfessed reference framework of Vice City. With the announcement of the packs It has been specified what this includesand it is a paradise for devotees of shoulder pads and hairspray: the ’55 Vapid Stanier as an exclusive vehicle, a multitude of customization options for 80s hairstyles and clothing, and tropical patterns to decorate the weapons inspired by Tommy Vercetti’s Hawaiian shirt. But… are they catches? It is the great mystery that Rockstar, of course and by the account it brings, does not resolve: none of the 70 screenshots show a HUD. There’s no health bar, no minimap, no money gauge, and none of them take the third-person perspective of ‘GTA’. That, added to the hyperrealism of the graphics (the fluids and the hairstyles are especially spectacular) lead us to the usual question: cinematic or gameplay? Rockstar describes them as screenshotswhich, to be strict, would refer to game sequences, but we have already been teased too many times with that issue since the days of the Spectrum. So the doubt remains on the table, but in the meantime, we can celebrate neon, phosphorus and satin white nights.

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