Enlarge / Who doesn't want less recoil? Unless, that is, you're someone competing against the person getting this benefit with a $100 "emulation" device. (credit: Cronus)

The Cronus Zen describes itself as a hardware tool for "universal controller compatibility," letting you plug in a third-party controller, an Xbox controller into a PlayStation, or even your keyboard and mouse into a console. But you can also use its scripting engine to "amplify your game" and set up "GamePacks" to do things like reduce recoil animations in games like Call of Duty. And that is where Cronus seems to have gotten into trouble.

As first noted by the Call of Duty news channel CharlieIntel, the latest update to the PlayStation 5's system (24.01-08.60.00) software blocks the Cronus from connecting. The update is "NOT mandatory," Cronus claims in a notice on its website, so Zen players can hold off and keep playing. Still, there is "currently no timetable on a fix … it could be 24 (hours), 24 days, 24 months, we won't know until we've dug into it." There is, for now, a " Remote Play Workaround " for those already too far updated.

Ars attempted to reach Cronus for comment and reached out to Sony as well and will update this post with any new information.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

For most PC gamers, the ability to update their game with a wide variety of mods is a huge benefit they can claim over most ( but not all ) console players. But Japanese publisher Capcom ( Resident Evil , Street Fighter ) says it sees unauthorized modding of PC games as a problem akin to cheating, bringing with it the risk of headaches for the company's reputation and support costs. That's according to a 50-minute presentation covering "anti-cheat and anti-piracy measures in PC gaming" that was posted to the Capcom R&D YouTube channel last week (and noticed recently by GamesRadar ).

The presentation describes modding as an "inseparable part of PC gaming" and a reflection of a PC platform that lets you "do anything you want compared to the game console." At the same time, these facts make the PC a place "that allows you to create freely, but [where] people are also free to tamper with the game."

“No different than cheating”

One obviously bad form of PC game tampering, according to Capcom, is piracy. If anti-piracy tools are not used for PC titles, Capcom says, "pirated copies appear in less than a day [and] paid content such as DLC will be made free," leading to what the company calls "an immediate loss of profit." Then again, Capcom does admit that the size of this profit loss is "unobservable" because there is no suitable control case to compare it to. "We can only speculate on the cost of cheats and piracy," Capcom says, "but it's clear that if we don't do anything, the damage will surely be greater."

Enlarge / Artist's conception of the judge getting ready to legally blast the defendant into Destiny 2 's version of non-existence. (credit: Bungie)

Just over a year ago, Bungie went to court to try to stop a serial Destiny 2 cheater who had evaded multiple account bans and started publicly threatening Bungie employees. Now, that player has been ordered to pay $500,000 in copyright-based damages and cannot buy, play, or stream Bungie games in the future.

In a consent judgment that has apparently been agreed to by both ides of the lawsuit (as dug up by TorrentFreak ), district court judge Richard Jones agrees with Bungie's claim that defendant Luca Leone's use of cheat software constitutes "copyright infringement" of Destiny 2 . Specifically, the cheat software's "graphical overlay" and use of "inject[ed] code" creates an "unauthorized derivative work" that violates federal copyright law. The judgment imposes damages of $150,000 for violations on each of two infringed works (seemingly encompassing Destiny 2 and its expansions)

Leone also created new accounts to get around multiple ban attempts by Bungie and tried to "opt out" of the game's license agreement as a minor in an attempt to do a legal end run around Bungie's multiple account bans. This made each of Leone's subsequent Destiny 2 logins unlicensed violation of Bungie's copyright, according to the judge's order, which tacks on $2,000 in damages for each of "at least 100" such logins.

Mitchell (right) at the 2007 FAMB convention with former Twin Galaxies referee Todd Rogers and what appears to be a Donkey Kong cabinet with a modified joystick. (credit: David Race )

Over the years, King of Kong star Billy Mitchell has seen his world-record Donkey Kong scores stripped , partially reinstated , and endlessly litigated , both in actual court and the court of public opinion . Through it all, Mitchell has insisted that every one of his records was set on unmodified Donkey Kong arcade hardware, despite some convincing technical evidence to the contrary .

Now, new photos from a 2007 performance by Mitchell seem to show obvious modifications to the machine used to earn at least one of those scores, a fascinating new piece of evidence in the long, contentious battle over Mitchell's place in Donkey Kong score-chasing history.

The telltale joystick

The photos in question were taken at the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers (FAMB) Convention, which hosted Mitchell as part of its "80s Arcade Night" promotion in July 2007. Mitchell claims to have achieved a score of 1,050,200 points at that event, a performance that was recognized by adjudicator Twin Galaxies as a world record at the time (but which by now would barely crack the top 30 ).

Enlarge / Call it a hunch, but something tells me these two players are working together...

Do you ever feel like your opponents in a free-for-all online game are trying to get you, specifically? It might not just be paranoia; it might be collusion among your opponents. And in a newly published patent application, Electronic Arts details some potential tools and data points—both inside and outside the game—that it could use to detect and root out this unfair practice.

EA's simply titled "Detecting Collusion in Online Games" patent , published earlier this month, defines collusion as when two or more players/groups that are "intended to be opponents" instead "contribute to a common cause" to "gain an unfair advantage" over others. In battle royale shooter, for instance, a small group of players communicating outside the game could stay together and gain a decided firepower advantage against their single opponents.

Many of the patent's potential methods for discovering this kind of collusion use simple and obvious in-game data. If two or more ostensibly opposed players or teams show abnormal amounts of "time spent in proximity... without engagement," for instance, there's a good chance they're working together. Even if those players show some cursory opposition at points, metrics like damage per second can be compared with the average to see if this is just opposition "for appearance sake."

Enlarge / Using Bungie's own licenses against it worked once for the makers of Aimjunkies, but this time a judge ruled that a bit more finesse (i.e. evidence) was required. (credit: Bungie / Ars Technica)

Months after failing to prove that Destiny 2 cheat makers had infringed their copyright , Bungie has surged ahead in the late game, as a quirky counterclaim accusing Bungie of "hacking" the cheat makers' computers has been dismissed.

AimJunkies, a division of Phoenix Digital, makers of cheating tools for many popular games, including Destiny 2 (since removed but archived ), had survived the typically effective claim that their cheat software illegally copied aspects of an original game to function. It was a tactic successfully used by the makers of Grand Theft Auto Online , Overwatch , Rainbow Six , Fortnite , and other properties.

Western District of Washington Judge Thomas Zilly had struck down most of those claims in late April, ruling that Bungie had "not pleaded sufficient facts to plausibly allege that [the cheat maker] copied constituent elements of Bungie's work." Zilly also ruled at the time that Bungie's own license agreement for Destiny 2, which forces arbitration for circumvention and other disputes, meant that its claims could not go forward in federal court before first trying arbitration. Zilly did, however, allow Bungie time to restate its case , and it focused on trademark infringement, reverse engineering, and code copying.

Enlarge / Overwatch 2 characters offer varied reactions based on whether or not they are now exempt from Blizzard's "SMS Protect" system.

Blizzard has partially walked back a controversial policy that required Overwatch 2 players to confirm a valid mobile phone number to play the game. Now, players "with a connected Battle.net account"—a group Blizzard says includes "a majority of existing Overwatch players"— will be able to avoid that requirement.

Blizzard originally announced late last month that all Overwatch 2 players would be required to sign up for its "SMS Protect" service with a valid phone number. The move was sold as a way to bring "meaningful change when it comes to disruptive play" in the game.

In free-to-play games like Overwatch 2 , problematic players can easily create new accounts in an attempt to evade bans. By linking all Overwatch 2 player accounts to a distinct phone number, Blizzard said it was "mak[ing] it more difficult for [disruptive players] to return to the game."