Gamer's Outpost Press (Archived)

by Lateshia Beachum via The Washington Post

Daniel Zeitz listed his PlayStation 4 for $280 on Craigslist.

He had three names of potential buyers to choose from, and he chose one. The avid gamer who was part of a professional gaming team would meet his potential buyer in the parking lot of his Roswell, Ga., apartment building to complete the deal.

On a September evening in 2014, he approached a car with a young man in the front seat, his teenage girlfriend in the passenger’s seat and a 16-month old baby in the backseat.

When Zeitz showed the gaming console to the young man, he tried to yank the machine into the car. Zeitz struggled to hold on to the PlayStation. That fight against being robbed in front of his own home led the teenage girl to reach between her legs to grab a .25 caliber handgun. She fired a shot, and the bullet pierced through her boyfriend’s hand before finding a mortal spot in the side of Zeitz’s chest.

That night is the reason why Daniel Zeitz is dead. It’s also the reason why that girl, Kayla Dixon, 18, was sentenced to 40 years in prison as part of a plea deal on Monday.

Monday was supposed to be the first day of her trial for her role in the murder of Zeitz, according to WSB-TV. Just as jury selection was about to begin, she accepted a plea and gave a prepared apology to Zeitz’s family.

“I would trade anything, almost anything, to bring Daniel back. But I know I can’t,” Dixon said with a crackling voice, but no visible tears. “I know he had plans. I wish I could tell him I’m so, so sorry that this happened, but I can’t.”

She said she sits in her cell every day thinking about that night.

The night she shot Zeitz, she and her boyfriend, Nathaniel Vivian, went to a local hospital initially claiming that he had been a victim of a crime as an excuse for the wound in his hand. Vivian later admitted to authorities at the hospital what he and Dixon had done, according to The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

It was later revealed that the pair had researched how to rob someone. David Lapides, a detective in the case, testified that Dixon and Vivian used their cell phones to plan the robbery and their computers to scheme how to execute one, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

“There were numerous text messages between Dixon and Vivian discussing plans to rob someone,” he said. “They discussed getting the address. How they wanted to do it — come at him with the gun (or) surprise him and catch him when he came outside. Go inside the apartment. These messages went back and forth for a while.”

Dixon’s baby was taken away and given to relatives, and Dixon was eventually tried as an adult.

On Monday, her lawyer, Leah Abbasi, shared with the judge that Dixon had a troubled childhood that consisted of rape and relationships with men who were involved in illegal dealings. Abbasi said that her client’s past doesn’t excuse what’s happened, but that it might provide an explanation for why Dixon is where she is now.

Zeitz’s mother, Patty, told WSB-TV reporter Mike Petchenik that she has accepted Dixon’s apology.

“At first I didn’t want to accept her apology. I thought her apology today was very heartfelt and I feel like she is truly sorry for what happened,” she told Petchenik.  “It’s just a crime that young people can get caught in these situations because of the examples they’d had in their lives.”

Zeitz’s father told the same reporter that he hopes the tragedy stays with Dixon so that she can become a better person once she’s released.

Vivian will face trial later this summer. According to WSB-TV, Dixon is willing to testify against him if she’s asked.

Zeitz’s life inspired a short documentary called “Level Up,” which was part of the 2014 Fusion Doc Challenge, a film-making competition where creators make four to seven minute documentaries with a five-day limit. The documentary placed in the top 20 and ranked in first place internationally. The film documented what was left in the wake of his murder for his family and his friends in the gaming community.

Zeitz would have celebrated his 30^th birthday next month.

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As many as 10 million PS3 console owners will be eligible for payment.

by David Kravets via Ars Technica

After six years of litigation, Sony is now agreeing to pay the price for its 2010 firmware update that removed support for the Linux operating system in the PlayStation 3.

Sony and lawyers representing as many as 10 million console owners reached the deal on Friday. Under the terms of the accord, (PDF) which has not been approved by a California federal judge yet, gamers are eligible to receive $55 if they used Linux on the console. The proposed settlement, which will be vetted by a judge next month, also provides $9 to each console owner that bought a PS3 based on Sony’s claims about “Other OS” functionality.

The deal also provides up to $2.25 million in attorneys’ fees for the lawyers who brought suit. Under the plan, gamers eligible for a cash payment are “all persons in the United States who purchased a Fat PS3 model in the United States between November 1, 2006, and April 1, 2010.” The accord did not say how much it would cost Sony, but the entertainment company is expected to pay out millions.

The troubles began with the PS3 software update 3.21. On March 28, 2010, Sony announced that the update would “disable the ‘Install Other OS’ feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models.” This feature, Sony claimed, would be removed “due to security concerns.”

Sony did not detail those “concerns,” but the litigation alleged piracy was behind the decision. “Sony’s concerned that the Other OS feature might be used by hackers to copy and/or steal gaming and other content, the suit said.” Making matters worse, Sony said the update was voluntary. However, without updating, console owners couldn’t connect to the PlayStation Network, play any games online, play any games or Blu-ray movies that required the new firmware, play any files kept on a media server, or download any future updates.

Before the settlement, Sony argued that its terms of service allowed it to remove the Other OS feature and that the functionality wasn’t that big of a deal for most console owners.

While the deal still needs a judge’s signature, here’s what the settlement says about how gamers can get their cash:

To get the $55, a gamer “must attest under oath to their purchase of the product and installation of Linux, provide proof of their purchase or serial number and PlayStation Network Sign-in ID, and submit some proof of their use of the Other OS functionality.” To get the $9, PS3 owners must submit a claim that, at the time they bought their console, they “knew about the Other OS, relied upon the Other OS functionality, and intended to use the Other OS functionality.”

Alternatively, according to the deal, to get $9, a gamer “may attest that he or she lost value and/or desired functionality or was otherwise injured as a consequence of Firmware Update 3.21 issued on April 1, 2010.”

Sony is agreeing to employ the PlayStation network’s e-mail database to notify its customers about the settlement. “Additionally, the Notice Program provides for Internet notice via banner ads and search-related advertising on CNET, IGN, GameSpot.com and other websites intended to reach the targeted audience based on market research from GfK Mediamark Research, Inc. and comScore,” according to the deal, which also spells out the use of social media to alert class members about the settlement.

A hearing on the proposed deal was scheduled for 2pm, July 19, before US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, in Oakland, California.

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by Dave Thier via Forbes

We all knew that Microsoft was working on a more powerful Xbox codenamed “Scorpio,” but a lot of us didn’t expect to hear about it this year. The machine isn’t coming out until holiday 2017, and a year and a half is a very long way off to announce a brand new machine, especially when you’ve got a console you’re trying to sell in the meantime. I wasn’t the only one surprised by the move. PlayStation Head Andrew House told The Guardian that he didn’t see it coming:

“I was surprised by the step of announcing something over a year ahead of time,” he told The Guardian. “The dynamics of the tech industry are such that there’s a much heavier emphasis on immediate gratification than there was. A lot of that is to do with how Apple has very cleverly and elegantly managed the ‘available now’ approach. So yes, that was a slight surprise to me. We experienced this ourselves, when, in 2013, very much in line with our previous strategies, we announced a concept and a name for PlayStation 4, and everyone said ‘where’s the box? How dare you?!’ That was the point we realised, well, we hadn’t changed but the world around us had.”

It’s interesting to hear House reference the original PS4 reveal in that statement, especially because we all know how that story ends: well.

According to Phil Spencer, the team decided to go ahead and let the world know about Scorpio so far in advance so that developers would have plenty of time to get things ready for launch (and, one supposes, because we had all found out about it anyway). It’s still a major risk: without more information, it’s hard to know if a new customer should wait for a more powerful machine or stick with what’s on offer now. This is theoretically mitigated by the fact that the games will work on both machines, but questions remain regardless.

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