Over the weekend Reddit users started reporting that some PlayStation 4 players were receiving messages that bricked their consoles, forcing a factory reset to return the console to working condition. To avoid facing this fate on your own console and losing your precious PlayStation data, here are some steps to make sure your console and account are secure and protected.

Last month, the Internet Archive added a Commodore 64 emulator to its ever-growing library of historical software, effectively bringing the retro computer/game console to the public domain. Like the Internet Archive’s libraries of MS-DOS and Apple II programs, every program they’ve archived is now available on the site and playable in your browser.

When I’m in another city and I want to see what neighbourhoods to wander, I crack open Foursquare. Some people use Yelp, some look for the brown-tinted areas on Google Maps. My friend Henry uses Pokemon GO.

Rumours of Google’s entry into the game-streaming space have circulated for ages, but today those rumours were finally confirmed when the company announced it will be teaming up with game publishers for its newly announced Project Stream service. Project Stream will allow users to play fully-fledged console and PC games through their Chrome browser without the need for a gaming PC or console hardware, all thanks to the cloud.

Merriam-Webster just updated the official Scrabble dictionary for the first time in four years (buy it here), adding some new words like bizjet (opening with the plural bizjets gets you 120 points) — plus some old words that are finally deemed playable, including OK, ew, zen, and qapik. These new words will change gameplay, and for a little while, they might give you a new dickish way to win a Scrabble game.

Tami Sigmund is a senior producer at Zynga, the social game developer that brought us FarmVille, Words With Friends 2, Zynga Poker and CSR Racing 2. As someone who’s been making video games for past 11 years, she wants to help make the game industry a more inclusive place for marginalised game enthusiasts. She talks to us about balancing her career and being a queer single mum of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy. Here’s how she parents.

Every month, Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus subscribers get several free games, which they can continue to play as long as they stay subscribed to the services.

You can claim your free games directly from their respective consoles, but to make sure you don’t forget them, it’s easier to grab the freebies as soon as you learn they’re available each month — even if you’re out of the house. Here’s how.

Looking for some new games to play over the weekend? Look no further as we wrap up some of the best gaming deals going round right now.

Mums and dads have thanked Pokemon GO for getting their kids to explore the great outdoors — even if it means they’re taking their screens with them. Now, parents will be better able to manage their children’s privacy in the game.

Running a game of Dungeons & Dragons, or any tabletop role-playing game, involves telling your players what they see. Players rely on you to give a sense of tone and ambience, but also to point out anything interesting or relevant to their quest. But they also need you to leave them room to ask and explore. A good game master learns how to describe a scene in enough, but not too much, detail.

One way to learn that skill, says redditor non_player on r/RPG, is to turn audio descriptions on when watching movies and TV shows.

Android: Fortnite Battle Royale, one of the most popular battle royale games around, is finally on Android. And you get first dibs with the beta if you own a Samsung device — a list that includes its flagship Galaxy S9 / S9 Plus (and its predecessors, the S8 / S8 Plus); the Note8 (and the just-announced Galaxy Note9, when it arrives later this month); as well as the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge and Tab S3.

Frickin’ Fortnite. Your kids won’t stop playing it, and you’re fed up. What do you do? You could join one of the many parent support groups, or make a musical parody to vent your frustrations, or try locking the game consoles in the car and hiding the key (yes, this is really happening).

Or you can play, too.

The nostalgia effect is powerful. If you’re still clinging to your old-school Nintendo Entertainment System (however you pronounce it) there’s no reason to let it collect dust in a closet or a forgotten corner of your home entertainment system. Your older gaming consoles will still work with your fancy new television, or even your sort-of new television; they just need a little TLC.

Windows, Mac: There’s something delightful about the old LucasArts ScummVM games: The beautiful environments, the crafty puzzles and the incredible voice-overs (for the games that weren’t just text captions over moving mouths).

Surprise surprise: scientists are huge nerds. Just like there's a gene named after Sonic the Hedgehog, there's a real life bandicoot named after video game protagonist Crash Bandicoot. It may be 15 million years old and super extinct, but that doesn't make it any less cool, right?

Some of my earliest gaming memories involve getting all the neighbourhood kids together for a game of Goldeneye 007 on our shiny new Nintendo 64: remote mines, Facility, first to ten kills. I feel like most kids with a N64 or with access to one would have wasted many hours on this game throughout the years - so I was surprised to find that Goldeneye's incredible multiplayer mode was never actually meant to be in the game.

While many games now come with support for different gaming consoles, there are some that are more monogamous and don't have multi-platform support. Or, it might be that you prefer playing particular games on specific consoles. If you're looking to add to your console collection, there are some great deals around. Let's see what's out there for the big three; Switch, PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X.

Windows/Mac: There are plenty of apps you can use to put on a little light show in your house (or geek den) if you’ve bought into Philips’ Hue ecosystem. My room is full of the company’s expensive colour-changing LED bulbs, and I’ve checked out a few of these apps, but generally don’t need to make my room look like an exploding volcano on a regular basis. These kinds of apps are fun for parties, but not all that practical for everyday use.

Yes, there is such a thing as a free lunch. But if you hack your Nintendo Switch to play pirated games for free, that comes with a cost: You can't play online.