According to a report in the South China Morning Post, a smartphone-based charades game popular in China uploaded 36,000 private user videos without notifying or asking the permission of its users.

The Sims 4 modders are certainly proving to be a creative bunch, allowing players to do everything from filling in gameplay holes to adding new features into the game. Of course, sometimes people make mods to allow the game to do things that are a little bit questionable, as highlighted in this Kotaku report.

Engadget has an extensive report on Samsung's freshly announced Gear VR, a virtual reality headset device that combines software created by Oculus VR with Samsung's new Galaxy Note 4 phone. Yes, this is a real thing.

An Anaheim, California couple have been sentenced for neglecting their two young daughters to play World of Warcraft over a three-year period. Lester Louis Huffmire and his wife Petra Huffmire, both 41-years-old and resident of Anaheim, were sentenced to five years in prison on August 5.

This Local.se report details the story of a Swedish father who is taking a little bit of heat from other parents for taking his two young sons on a trip to occupied Israel and Palestine in order to teach them about the realities of war. Yes, video games -- specifically Call of Duty -- is part of this story. Carl-Magnus Helgegren is a journalist, university teacher, and a father of two boys (ages 10 and 11).

Crunchyroll points out new DLC for Dead or Alive V: Ultimate Edition that allows player to dress characters up for the game in bath-time or bed-time gear. Yes these ladies will be fighting in towels and whatnot according to the video promo for the DLC.

The privilege of doing so (by buying the "Bath & Bedtime Costumes" DLC) will cost you $15.

Here's a bizarre story: apparently two developers working on Far Cry 4 witnessed an animal sacrifice while doing research for the upcoming shooter.

According to this Polygon story, two Ubisoft developers took a trip to Nepal to do research for the fictional Himalayan setting in the game - Kyrat. While there they witnessed a goat being sacrificed as an offering to Kali, the Hindu goddess of change and destruction..

The hosts of MSNBC's morning political talk show Morning Joe highlight what's wrong with reporting on video games via cable news. In a recent segment the show reported that former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega (who is currently in prison in Panama after serving prison time in the United States) has filed a lawsuit against Activision for use of his likeness in Call of Duty Black Ops 2.

Popular YouTube gaming crew The Yogscast, which has over 7 million subscribers, announced plans to take "a small share" of the sales revenue for sandbox space game Space Engineers during July.

In return the Yogscast team will run a series of videos and Yogscast-branded items for the game. Yogscast presenters are calling this new initiative "YogDiscovery," and the team says this is the first of a series of paid partnerships with developers. They also stress that the developers of this game will have no editorial input or control.

Glu Mobile's Kim Kardashian iOS game is set generate $200 million annual revenue for the company, according to one analyst. The game has already boosted the company's share price by 40 percent in less than a month, and according to what analyst Doug Creutz told Bloomberg, revenue from Glu's game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood could reach $200 million for the year.

According to this pre-order page on the Microsoft Store, the Kinect for Windows v2 Sensor will be available for Windows PC users on July 15. One of the curious things about the page is that it lists the motion sensing camera technology for $200. That's about half the cost of buying an Xbox One without a Kinect. Hopefully this will not be the price when it releases the standalone retail version of the device sometime this fall for Xbox One.

The latest Call of Duty DLC lets players show their appreciation of pot. The new "Blunt Force" character pack for Call of Duty: Ghosts is available now for $2 on Xbox platforms and comes with a pot-themed uniform and two headgear options that feature pot leaves.

According to Infinity Ward's description of the pack, it will make your enemies "experience chronic defeat." The "Blunt Force" character pack follows a similar weapon camouflage pack that launched in April which featured marijuana-themed decorations for weapons.

Did someone order something with extra cheese at Denny's, allegedly "America's Diner?" Well whether you did or not a new deal with Atari to transform some of its select classic Atari 2600 games is some of the cheesiest marketing we've seen.

The deal sees Denny's app offer three classic Atari games reimagined with new titles and food items as themes. There's Hasteroids (Asteroids), Centiup (Centipede), and Take-Out (Breakout). The games are free, and available now in both iOS and Android app stores via the Denny's app.

While Sony works on Morpheus for PS4 and Oculus continues to developer Oculus Rift, Google is offering a more mundane approach to the virtual reality space called Google Cardboard. It sounds like an April Fool's Day prank, but Google Cardboard is a DIY VR headset offering developed by a two-man team (in Europe) at Google that uses a simple cardboard headset, and a few household items to offer VR using an Android phone and a Google app.

Microsoft hasn't been the best of friends with the PC gaming community over the last few years. While the company says that it has a lot of faith in the PC gaming space, you can always tell how strongly they feel about something by how much they highlight it at E3. And at this year's E3 Microsoft didn't even talk about PC games or show any that we know of.

Despite being indicted on corruption charges for allegedly taking bribes and for attempting to facilitate an international gun deal, suspended California senator Leland Yee (D - San Francisco) managed to come in third in the Democratic primary for Secretary of State last week. As the San Jose Mercury News political blog points out, it has to suck to come in behind a guy who has been indicted on several charges.

Over the weekend copies of Atari's disastrous 1982 E.T game adaptation were excavated from a landfill in New Mexico. The long-rumored cache of trash contained copies of the game, promotional materials, and other games, according to published reports.

A documentary team accompanied by senior figures at Microsoft were on hand, as were several media outlets who spent the Saturday enjoying the fragrance and ambience that only a landfill can provide.

What's faster than a speeding train? Apparently U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who was nearly clipped by one at a press conference on Friday while standing on a train platform. Ironically enough, Sen. Blumenthal (who is known on GamePolitics as a politician keen on passing laws against gaming and the video games industry at large) was at the train stop to promote train safety.

If Republican California for Attorney General candidate Phil Wyman had his way State Senator Leland Yee (D) and two other lawmakers would be put to death if convicted of their crimes. He has put forward the idea that the best way to prevent government corruption is for those who put their constituents in harm's way with their dirty dealings should face the death penalty.

Cautionary tale #657: drinking too many energy drinks to do anything - in this case to play a marathon session of Call of Duty - can put you in a coma. That is exactly what happened to a 14-year-old Norwegian boy. After drinking four liters of energy drinks he collapsed and was hospitalized with kidney failure. He then slipped into a coma for several days.

New documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden cited in a new Guardian report indicate that UK spy agency GCHQ evaluated the potential of using the Xbox 360 (and now Xbox One) Kinect peripheral as a means to spy on people. The report also indicates that the agency also considered the usefulness of the PlayStation Eye as well.

Just for fun, check out this audio interview from the BBC featuring a mother who claims that her 13-year-old son racked up a £4,000 bill on FIFA 14 by buying "Player Packs." He apparently spent £1,000 of that on DLC in 24 hours, according what his mom tells the BBC.

You can check it out here.

EA declined to comment on the story.

One of Andrew Eisen's latest videos (has been busy in the last week or so) points out that Ubisoft's latest move - to delay the Wii version of Watch Dogs to an undetermined date well after the Spring release of the game on other platforms - ensures that that version of the game will have crappy sales.

Some would say that Ubisoft is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by doing this, giving other publishers an example to point to when they abandon development of their top properties for Wii U.

On this week's show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about the possibility of Amazon releasing a home console of some sort this year, a study that says relaxing games make people more prosocial, Killer Instinct's new jail system for rage quitters, the PS3 trade-in for Xbox One promotion from Microsoft, and Microsoft buying Gears of War from Epic. Download Episode 86 now: SuperPAC Episode 86 (1 hour, 11 minutes) 81 MB.

Zynga has invested $527 million in a buyout of Clumsy Ninja and CSR Racing maker - UK-based mobile game maker NaturalMotion - even as it lays off one in seven of its employees. The company made the announcement during the release its most recent earning report. The NaturalMotion buyout is the biggest acquisition by Zynga to date, beating out its $200 million purchase of Draw Something maker OMGPOP in 2012. And the company still has roughly $1.2 billion in cash built up from its Farmville and Cityville days.

According to a Games Industry International report, Candy Crush Saga makers King (who are trying to get a trademark for the word "Candy") are apparently opposing a trademark filed by The Banner Saga developer Stoic.

Trademarking a single common word is never a good idea, but that hasn't stopped King.com from attempting to secure a trademark for the word "candy." The company, which makes the ridiculously popular social and mobile game Candy Crush Saga, has filed a patent application for "Candy" with the USPTO. The application, which was filed for last year, was approved on January 15. Companies who oppose this filing have a 30 day window to file a complaint.

According to a report on Ars Technica, Microsoft and Machinima colluded to get Machinima YouTube content creators to say nice things about the Xbox One for money and required that they not disclose the financial relationship to viewers.

In a thread on Reddit, Valve front man Gabe Newell said something that surprised a lot of people: that he's okay with EA's Origin digital distribution platform running on Steam Machines. While we don't know how Steam OS and Origin would cooperate within the same environment, Newell's comments continue to illustrate Valve's commitment to being an all-inclusive platform for all kinds of games and methods of delivery, etc.

Former Call of Duty series Creative Strategist Robert Bowling has had some interesting moments since leaving Infinity Ward and joining game developer Robotoki, but some of them have often involved the LAPD.

In a recent tweet Bowling detailed his latest late-night fun at the LA-based offices of game developer Robotoki: while working late the other night someone decided to break in and rob the place. They didn't realize that someone was still in the office but were shocked to see Bowling get up from his desk and bolt towards the door they had just knocked the glass out of.