Hasta La Gadget!

Washington is filled with a revolving door of people who work in government and then go on to use that experience getting highly paid gigs in the private sector. And while we’re used to seeing that in areas like healthcare and defense, there’s a new game in town. Everyone wants to get hired to work on crypto.

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Amazon won’t face fines and other penalties following the collapse of an Illinois warehouse that killed six workers during a tornado, CNBC has reported. However, the US Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) asked Amazon to review its procedures after discovering issues with its Emergency Action Plan (EAP). 

The storm that ripped across six states in December, well outside of tornado season, was one of the deadliest in years. Despite tornado warnings from the National Weather Service 36 hours ahead of the event, Amazon continued to operate the Edwardsville, Illinois warehouse. It was in the middle of a shift change when the tornado touched down with wind speeds up to 150 MPH, destroying the south side of the building. 

OSHA investigators concluded that Amazon’s severe weather emergency guidelines “met minimal safety guidelines for storm sheltering.” Because of that, “under our standards, there’s not a specific citation we can issue in light of the actions at Amazon,” OSHA’s assistant secretary of labor Doug Parker told reporters.

We’re making recommendations because under our standards, there’s not a specific citation we can issue in light of the actions at Amazon.

OSHA identified some workplace conditions as “risk factors,” though. A megaphone to be used to activate shelter-in-place procedures was locked in a cage and inaccessible, and some employees didn’t recall the location of the designated shelter-in-place location. In addition, Amazon’s EAP had a section for severe weather emergencies, but it wasn’t customized with specific instructions for the Edwardsville facility. To that end, investigators recommended that Amazon “voluntarily” take steps to address the issues.

An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that it would “carefully consider” the recommendations. “Employees receive emergency response training, and that training is reinforced throughout the year. OSHA’s investigation did not find any violations or causes for citations, but we’re constantly looking to innovate and improve our safety measures and have already begun conducting additional safety and emergency preparedness drills at our sites and will carefully consider any OSHA recommendation that we have not already.”

While Amazon avoided penalties from OSHA, it’s facing a separate probe in Congress and multiple lawsuits. The House Oversight committee announced it was investigating Amazon Warehouse safety earlier this month, saying it “seeks to fully understand the events that led to the tragedy at Amazon’s Edwardsville facility.” The company is also facing multiple lawsuits from several injured workers and the family of one of the people killed in the collapse. 

For the first time, the UK’s annual Proms classical music festival will feature a concert dedicated to video game compositions. On August 1st, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, led by conductor Robert Ames, will perform a selection of music from Battlefield 2042, Dear Esther, Kingdom Hearts, Shadow of the Colossus and other influential titles.

“Fantastic worlds, epic adventures, complex characters and huge moral choices – the universe of computer gaming is a natural match for orchestral music, and in the 21st-century games have created a huge and passionate global audience for some of the most vivid, ambitious and inventive music currently being written for symphony orchestra,” the BBC writes of the upcoming concert.

“From 8-Bit to Infinity” will take place at the historic Royal Albert Hall. If you imagine you’ll find yourself in London this summer, tickets start at £14. And if not, the BBC plans to broadcast the concert on August 5th. The full program will be announced at a later date. 

Sony is gearing up to roll out the revamped PlayStation Plus in the coming weeks. Ahead of the new tiers being introduced, the company is reportedly placing more demands on certain developers. According to Game Developer, it’s asking studios working on games with a price point of at least $34 to create timed trials that last at least two hours.

The report suggests that Sony informed studios of the directive through its developer portal and without advance warning. They can reportedly release their timed trial (which will need to be available for at least a year) up to three months after their game hits the PlayStation Store. The policy is said not to apply to previously released games, titles that will be sold for less than $34 or PlayStation VR2 games.

The highest tier of the overhauled subscription service, PS Plus Premium, will include access to time-limited game trials. Sony started testing such trials on PS5 in October. It granted players access to Death Stranding: Directors Cut for six hours and Sackboy: A Big Adventure for five hours at no extra cost.

While many folks appreciate game demos and being able to try out a title before paying for it, this move will require studios to dedicated precious time and resources to create the timed trials. That’ll surely put more strain on smaller developers. 

It’s not clear why Sony decided on a $34 threshold for this policy, but there’s a case to be made that developers selling games at a higher price point are more likely to be larger studios with more resources. Engadget has contacted Sony Interactive Entertainment for comment.

Sony will be aware it has to make sure PS Plus Premium delivers good value to users. That tier will cost $18 per month, $50 per quarter or $120 per year (the lowest tier is the same as the current version of PS Plus and won’t have a price increase).

The new PS Plus service is different from Xbox Game Pass in that none of the tiers will offer first-party games on their release day. Offering trials of many new and recent games on top of a library of several hundred games from every generation of PlayStation may make up for that, at least to some extent.

Ahead of the June 23rd release of Sonic Origins, Sega announced today it would delist the standalone digital versions of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic CD. Outside of a handful of Nintendo-related exceptions (for instance, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will continue to be available through the recently announced Switch Online Expansion Pack), you won’t have the option to buy those titles through marketplaces like Steam as of May 20th. If you don’t already own those titles after that date, you’ll need to obtain them by buying Sonic Origins, which will remaster and bundle them together.    

The announcement comes just days after Sega shared the first details on the different versions of Sonic Orgins it plans to sell. In a chart that has since been roasted endlessly, the company revealed some of the collection’s new features would be locked behind DLC and special editions of the game. If you want the full experience, you must pre-order the “Digital Deluxe” version of Sonic Origins. Contrast that to the original releases of the games included in the collection: those shipped as complete games without the need for you to pay extra for additional features.