Google Stadia Lacks Games In Its Library, Isn't Shelling Out For New Games
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This Google Stadia thing is starting to move into full on failure to launch territory. If you're unfamiliar with the Stadia product, it was pitched by Google as essentially the end of console gaming. Something like trying for "the Netflix of gaming" moniker, the idea is that Google would stream games for a monthly fee, freeing gamers from the need of having dedicated gaming hardware in their homes. The initial launch of the product was met with a public mostly uninterested in or skeptical of the service. Add to all of that the problems the platform had accepting new gamers, what looks like very real resolution issues with how games are delivered visually, and Stadia's problems getting gamers to "buy in" to the platform more recently, and it's all looking to be something of a disaster.It's not the most public problem Stadia has had thus far, but yet another issue is the empty shelves in Stadia's library of games. Right now, less than 30 games are on offer, which isn't exactly the sort of library that gets gamers to give up their consoles. What's worse, based on feedback gathered from game developers, Google doesn't appear to be terribly interested in enticing more publishers onto its platform.As reported by Business Insider, many developers have explained that one of the biggest reasons indies have mostly stayed away from Stadia is the lack of financial incentive from Google. One executive at a publishing company described the amount of money that Google was offering to them as “so low” that it wasn’t even part of the conversation. Another indie dev described how most platform owners, like Microsoft and Epic, offer upfront incentives to entice developers and publishers to create or release games on their stores. But with Google Stadia the incentive was, in the words of that dev, “...kind of non-existent.” For its part, Google is insisting it's going to increase its game library four-fold. For developers to come out and publicly discuss their reasons for not getting on board, however, and for those reasons to be the incentives for doing so, this really is starting to feel like one of those Google products that never achieves exit velocity. Everyone remembers Google Plus, for instance, where the company rolled out what was supposed to be a Facebook-killer, but never really backed that claim up with the attention a goal like that would deserve and require.Public comments like that are only going to compound the lack of incentives for publishers to be on Stadia and create even more trepidation for getting on Stadia. And if the games library never really takes off, neither will Stadia as a whole.
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posted at: 12:00am on 04-Mar-2020
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Orange County DA's Office Shrugs Off Sheriff's Deputies Falsifying Evidence Reports
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If this were a private business, it would have collapsed under the combined weight of its unhappy customers and its own incompetence. But it isn't. We realize you don't have a choice in your law enforcement provider and all that.The Orange County Sheriff's Department is a mess. It has been a mess for years. Some of its corruption was exposed five years ago, when an investigation by lawyers in a murder trial uncovered multiple occasions where the department had buried exculpatory information or refused to hand it over to defendants. This resulted in Orange County DA's office (including all of its 250 prosecutors) being kicked off the high-profile murder trial. The Sheriff's involvement was the strategic housing of jailhouse informants to illegally coax information out of defendants awaiting trial.The problems uncovered here were made worse when the Sheriff's Department shredded documents ahead of a DOJ investigation and then-Sheriff Sandra Hutchens claimed the omissions made by deputies during testimony were honest mistakes -- the unfortunate result of the officers supposedly not knowing what they could and could not discuss about the Department's informant database in open court.The same office "inadvertently" collected thousands of recordings containing privileged conversations between defendants and their lawyers. The department claimed a "software glitch" resulted in this windfall of rights violations.Evidence-handling continues to be a problem for this department. Last year, it managed to anger one of its best friends -- the Orange County DA's office -- by constantly booking in evidence in an untimely manner. The root cause? Very succinctly, the DA's office said the Sheriff's evidence-handling protocols had "no system of accountability."The audit of the department's extremely faulty booking process continues. And, as Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg reports for The Appeal, it's uncovering even more lax handling of criminal evidence.Deputies booked evidence days, and sometimes weeks, after it was purportedly collected, according to an internal audit, which examined thousands of police reports filed between 2016 and 2018. Thirty percent of evidence was “booked out of policy,” according to a slide presentation describing the first audit’s findings. A second audit found that deputies had claimed to have collected evidence that was never booked. Some deputies were far worse than others. One deputy in particular appeared to have set the curve the rest of the department was graded on.In one investigation, the department found that Sheriff's Deputy Bryce Simpson falsely claimed he booked evidence in 74 cases, according to a motion Sanders filed last month. In 56 of those cases, no evidence was booked at all, and in 18 only some of the evidence he reported was booked.Another young go-getter, Deputy Joseph Atkinson, claimed evidence had been booked in 26 cases where no evidence could be located. This included seven cases where Atkinson claimed to have booked drugs, leading one to wonder what actually happened to those drugs.And yet, as angry as the DA's office was with the Sheriff's Department late last year, nothing has been done to introduce any more accountability into a system that clearly has none. The department referred 17 deputies to the DA's office for criminal investigation. The DA's office has decided none of these public servants should be punished for abusing the public's trust.This isn't DA Todd Spitzer's fault. He defeated the former DA by running as a reformer. And while he has expressed his vast displeasure with the department's booking procedures, his office still decided none of the first 17 deputies referred to him for falsifying records should be criminally charged. That's not much of a reform and it's not going to change the culture that led to this situation. It's going to cost the DA a lot of criminal cases. Maybe once his office bleeds enough, he'll finally start taking this seriously.
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