A web site dedicated to helping game developers include accessibility options for disabled players into their games has been honored by the FCC's Accessibility and Innovation Initiative. The site, "Game Accessibility Guidelines" (www.gameaccessibilityguidelines.com), was launched in Sept. of 2012 and has helped bring accessibility options to games of all shapes and sizes - from AAA titles to indie offerings.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and Yogcast have teamed up to create a series that gives the community an inside look at how video games are made and offers advice to young people looking to make it in various fields within the industry.

The V&A’s first ever Game Designer in Residence, Sophia George, today launches the annual game design competition for students, Dare to be Digital. George started her career on Dare to be Digital, winning in 2011 with her family-friendly puzzle game Tick Tock Toys. The Dare to be Digital competition is an annual affair hosted and run by Abertay University.

Torment: Tides of Numenera, inXile's spiritual sequel to the classic AD&D game from Black Isle Studios and Interplay, has been delayed until the fourth quarter of 2015. The game, which raised nearly $4.2 million via a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, was scheduled for release in the first half of 2015.

Frontier Developments founder and Elite series creator David Braben has been appointed OBE (Order of the British Empire) in the Queen's Birthday Honors list. Braben was selected for his recent work with the Raspberry Pi movement, promoting science, match and technology education in the United Kingdom, and for his work in the video games industry.

On the Frontier blog, Braben noted that it was "a great honor" to receive the award.

Marriage has always been an important part of the Harvest Moon series, but has remained "traditional" since the game's launch so many "moons ago." Speaking to Joystiq Natsume's Graham Markay, Vice President of Operations; and Hiro Maekawa, President and CEO of Natsume indicated that Nastume is looking into the issue very closely and are listening to what fans of the popular and long-running farming sim-RPG want.

Stig Asmussen has confirmed with Polygon that he has been working at Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment for "a couple months" on an unannounced project.

Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella told Polygon in a response to him joining the company, that it was "super excited to have him."

Asmussen spent the last 12 years with Sony Computer Entertainment America, working his way up from lead environment artist on God of War to creative director on God of War 3.

Game companies in Quebec are about to see their subsidies from the government evaporate. In an effort to get rid of the provincial government's deficit and cut spending, lawmakers in Quebec have decided to cut the generous subsidies they have given companies willing to move to and do business in the region.

According to a report in the French-Canadian publication La Presse, the Quebec government plans to cut as much as $500 million from the incentives it currently offers multinational businesses like Ubisoft. Ubisoft could lose as much as 20 percent of their benefits.

While the difficulty of bringing gender choices to games is a hot topic this week thanks to comments from Ubisoft (related to gender options in the multiplayer portions of Far Cry 4 and Assassin's Creed Unity), one developer says that such efforts are usually the first things to get the axe on a big project.

In another interview with Polygon about female character options, this time in Far Cry 4, another Ubisoft employee blamed an increased work load for the game not featuring more options. Far Cry 4 game director Alex Hutchinson said that the team were "inches away" from allowing players to choose between a man or woman co-op buddy in the upcoming shooter's multiplayer... but it never materialized.

Jonathan Cooper, a former Assassin's Creed designer says that Ubisoft's claims about the complexity of adding playable female character options in Assassin's Creed: Unity is bullshit. Cooper, who now works at Naughty Dog, says that such a task would be simple to implement. In fact, he says it would be one or two days' worth of work.

"In my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two's work. Not a replacement of 8000 animations," Cooper said on Twitter.

The composer behind the music for The Banner Saga, Monaco, and Journey is in a very public dispute with the American Federation of Musicians and could be fined as much as $50,000 for his work on The Banner Saga.

In an interesting interview with Gamestar, Todd Howard of Bethesda Game Studios admitted that if Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind had not been the commercial success that it was on both the Xbox and the PC, then Bethesda might have gone out of business.

A game like Legend of Grimrock 2, the old-school first-person dungeon crawler RPG sequel from Almost Human, would have no problem garnering support as an early access title on Steam, but the developer says it is not interested in releasing the game in that space.

Speaking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the studio says that it is "old fashioned" and wants to release a final polished game when the development cycle is over.

"You don’t need balls to be ballsy," notes Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre, in an announcement promoting the new game from UK developer RedBedlam based on his novel, Bedlam. The first-person shooter is slightly different from that novel, in that the developers have swapped out male protagonist Ross Baker for a "strong female lead."

EVE Online maker CCP Games has laid off 49 employees from its Icelandic headquarters. The latest round of layoffs follow 56 employees being let go from its Atlanta, Georgia offices a few months ago. CCP confirmed the layoffs in a statement to Polygon, saying that those who were affected this time around were from the company's "publishing organization."

Military-themed video game charity Operation Supply Drop announced several new initiatives for 2014 that are possible because of the strong support it received during its recent 8-Bit Salute fundraiser. The new "Thank You Deployment" initiative was announced, and the goal of it is to send select members of the armed forces on an all-expenses-paid VIP trip to gaming events or tours of game development studios for a rare insider's look at the video game industry.

PR 101: if the President of the United States name checks your product in an international speech, it is the best thing in the world that can happen to you. While visiting Poland today, President Barack Obama mentioned CD Projekt Red's popular RPG, The Witcher. The last time the president was visiting the country, he was given a copy of The Witcher 2 Collector's Edition as a gift by prime minister Donald Tusk. Today while in Poland the President mentioned the game and admitted that he wasn't very good at games in general.

Riot Games announced that it has banned two more high profile professional League Legends players for bad behavior while playing the popular MOBA game. Their behavior was deemed "extremely toxic," including verbal abuse and game harassment, according to a forum post from eSports coordinator Scott "Riot Abhorsen" Parkin.

IndieCade, the international festival of independent games, will bring more than 30 independently developed games for this year’s IndieCade Showcase @ E3. The 2014 IndieCade Showcase @ E3 is presented in collaboration with the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and will be located in South Hall, Booth #2835. Each game selected for the E3 Showcase was curated from submissions for this Fall’s IndieCade Festival, to be held in downtown Culver City, CA October 9-12. The E3 lineup serves as a preview of what’s to come at the larger fall IndieCade event.

Last week Harmonix raised $844,127 on Kickstarter to create a successor to its popular 2002 PS2 music rhythm game, Amplitude. There was much celebration and appreciation from the company. But hot on the heels of that positive news, Harmonix has laid off 37 of its staff and shuffled several executives into new positions.

Graphics hardware maker Nvidia is responding to accusations by rival AMD that its new GameWorks toolset interferes with the ability of game developers to optimize their products for AMD graphics hardware. Last week Robert Hallock, AMD's head of technical communications, software and technologies made the allegations in regard to Watch Dogs.

Relic Entertainment has indicated plans to move its Warhammer 40K strategy games over to Steam in a bid to keep the multiplayer portions of the games alive, Eurogamer reports. The original Dawn of War and the expansions recently underwent a major update to preserve multiplayer, Dawn of War franchise design lead Philippe Boulle wrote on the Steam forum.

Last month Dungeon Defenders developer Trendy Entertainment hired former LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez as its CEO. This month the Florida-based developer has made some serious changes - a reduction of around 20 percent of its workforce, according to GamesIndustry International. The 20 percent reduction in staff hit both the development and marketing departments within the company, though Trendy declined to say exactly how many employees had been let go.

It's official: Zenimax is suing Oculus VR. Earlier in the month lawyers for the company sent letters to Oculus laying claim to the software technology that powers the virtual reality headset made by Oculus. Today in the U.S.

Social game maker Zynga opposed SOPA in 2010, noting that the anti-piracy legislation crafted by Congress would "freeze innovation" and generally damage the way the internet works. But now the company is joining its former SOPA adversaries in supporting voluntary anti-piracy initiatives.

According to UK publication The Sunday Times, Grand Theft Auto creators and Rockstar co-founders Sam and Dan Houser have made the paper's "1,000 wealthiest people in Britain" list, alongside the creator of RuneScape, the owner of a video game retailer, and a man associated with King.com.

The Houser brothers barely made the list at the 947 spot with a joint fortune of $151 million.

Women In Games International has announced new members to its advisory board. WIGI 's advisory board helps support its mission statement of promoting diversity in the industry and helping women advance their careers.

"Everyone involved with WIGI is passionate about making the video game industry more inclusive, and we all have amazing ideas about outreach programs we can create to make that happen," said president and CEO Belinda Van Sickle.

Grinding Gear Games said that its first charity race event related to Path of Exile has already raised almost $20,000 to benefit the Child's Play charity. The event, which started on Saturday, May 10, 2014 in its game, will continue to run till Saturday, May 24, at 1:00 PM PST. The in-game item on sale for this charity event, an Angelic Mask, has sold over 3,600 units at a cost of $5.00 a piece, and is only available during the two week event. One-hundred percent of the proceeds are being donated to the Child's Play charity.

On this week's show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss the latest GamePolitics Poll results (should Kickstarter adopt an equity-based investment model?), the web-hosting service that dared to throttle the FCC, the national Reason-Rupe poll about gaming, and the Tomodachi Life controversy. Download Episode 98 now: SuperPAC Episode 98 (1 hour, 8 minutes) 78 MB.