Tag Archives: australia

Nvidia has yet to officially unveil its new generation of GeForce graphics cards, but with the event just over a week away, some retailers have begun listing the RTX 4090 at eye watering prices. 

For the first time since August 2021, the RTX 3090 is available in Germany and Austria for less than €2,000. Moreover, it seems prices in Australia are also getting better, with RTX 3080 cards now being sold by a few retailers for $1,499 AUD (£841). 3DCenter has updated its on-going …

Listings for two upcoming Gigabyte Z690 motherboards appeared online over the weekend, revealing pricing and specifications. From the looks of it, some Z690 motherboards may support DDR4 memory, while others will support the new DDR5 standard. The listings were spotted by @momomo_us, showing some of the specifications and prices for …

After cracking down on PC-based digital platform holders, Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission began turning its attention to the refund policies for digital games sold on consoles. Sony has been one of the targets this week, with an Australian Federal Court ordering a fine to be paid due to PlayStation …

When news of the Australian bushfires began to gain traction across the news and social media, a Reddit user by the name of ‘Gazoob’ suggested in the Modern Warfare subreddit that proceeds from the game’s pre-existing ‘Outback’ bundle should be donated to the cause. After receiving widespread support from the …

Technology companies have long clashed against various government officials when it comes to accessing encrypted data for criminal investigations. This is about to change in Australia, as the country’s government has passed a bill that compels firms to divulge customer information or face harsh penalties. The bill passed on Thursday …

US and European regulators came together yesterday to sign a declaration dedicated to keeping in-game loot boxes in check. It seems Australia might not be too far behind after the Australian Environment and Communications Reference Committee (ECRC) has concluded its study into the practice, linking loot boxes to gambling. The …

Huawei and ZTE seem to have run into another snag as Australia's government has imposed a ban on both companies. The ban will stop the pair from bringing 5G wireless devices to the country over national security concerns. The situation harkens back to other issues Huawei and ZTE have faced …

A new study from psychology researchers at the University of Adelaide has lambasted in-game purchases, particularly loot boxes, due to their resemblance to gambling. Dubbing the techniques deployed as “predatory,” it’s possible that this conclusion could factor into the rest of Australia’s investigation into the practice. While microtransactions in general …

Loot boxes have been a hot topic for the past year, with governing bodies seemingly divided on relationship between chance-based microtransactions and gambling. Australia is looking to make its own decisions by September, authorising the Environment and Communications References Committee to investigate the practice. The motion was presented earlier this …

Update (27/04/18): After a lengthy legal battle in Australia over a $3 million fine, Valve has finally run out of options. The company lost its High Court appeal to have the fine overturned for its lack of refund policy in 2014. As a result, Valve will now have to pay …

For years, Valve got away with having lackluster customer support and a ‘no refund policy' on Steam, despite laws in certain parts of the world where Steam is available. However, some governing authorities began noticing and back in 2014, Australia's consumer watchdog took Valve to court over its lack of …

Anyone who's a fan of Michael Chrichton will have bumped into the idea of gene patenting back in the mid '00s with the release of Next, showing a terrifying future where companies can patent our very genetics in a bid to capitalise on them – be that through commerce or …

Buying and selling Bitcoins in Australia should be a little easier going forward, as the government has declared that digital currencies should now be considered as real money, making their taxation far simpler. It will mean more work for exchanges however, which will now need to monitor their services for …

While most of us might still be trying to perfect our aerial shots on Rocket League, the ability to manipulate the ball without a human foot going anywhere near it has been pushed to the limits at the 19th annual robot world cup, held in China as part of the …

Following on from the UK's general election taking place last week, many people have their eyes on the re-elected prime-minister David Cameron, to see if (among other things) he will make good on promises he's made in the past that tech firms dodging British tax law would be strapped down …

Australia has a bit of a history of being sensitive about games. Until not too long ago, the maximum age rating it had for any game was 15, which meant if anything was considered inappropriate for someone in their mid-teens, the game wasn't going on sale. Despite the implementation of …

GTA as a franchise has always flirted with controversy. Whether it was the Hot Coffee mod, or the torture scene in the latest version, or like this latest instance where it's cited as a game that incites violence against women. Due to a petition that drew tens of thousands of …

Google is making some advancements on Project Loon as it has begun preparing a series of test flights in Australia. Twenty internet carrying balloons will be launched across western Queensland in December, this will mark the first time Google has teamed up with a wireless carrier to help beam the …

If you use a virtual private network (VPN) to access another country's version of Netflix, then you could soon be out of luck, as major media lobby groups and movie studios are now pushing for Netflix to figure out a way to ban the practice from being able to access …

Cash machine's tend to be pretty dull but YouTube user, Aussie50 has found a way to spruce them up a bit by installing Doom on an ATM machine. The in-game actions are controlled by the buttons on the ATM via a keyboard emulating PCB. The video was originally shared by hackaday. …

One of the main reasons that rates of piracy are so high in Australia, is because the legal ways of getting access to media are either non-existent, or monopolised and criminally expensive and yet News Corp, one of the company's that ‘suffers' the most from people pirating its shows, is …

We're still a few years off of Google's self-driving cars taking over, so until then, we have to watch out for speed cameras, especially if you like to goose it on an open road. However Hyundai may eliminate that need in the near future, as it's upcoming Genesis saloon will …

A PR stunt for the release of Watch Dogs didn't go quite as planned as a bomb squad was called in to a newsroom to inspect a mysterious, “creepy” looking package sent anonymously from the PR team behind Ubisoft's most recent game. A black safe was delivered to the Australian …

Game of Thrones is a wildly popular show and as with any such programme, it attracts impressive numbers of pirated downloads. However, the latest season has broken all previous records, with over a million illegitimate downloads in the half a day after release and over 300,000 people sharing the episode …

Australia regularly gets the short end of the stick stuffed where it doesn't want it, when it comes to media content access. Thanks to its often hyper-inflated per-unit cost for movies, games and TV shows, many people choose to pirate content, making it the copyright infringement capital of the world, …

While I'm not sure how much the rest of the world noticed – we were busy throwing money at our digitally discovered pipe dreams – Australia and New Zealand haven't been able to run their own, native campaigns on Kickstarter since the site's inception. That's all about to change though, …

For a long time Australia has been restricted to selling only titles that fall under the 15+ age rating, as there simply wasn't an 18+ rating to go on. Recently an adult rating was brought in, but Queensland, one of the larger and most populous provinces lagged behind – now …

Australian gamers may get beautiful weather, fantastic scenery and the envy of almost every holiday maker in the world, but they do get shafted when it comes to games. Prices are often far higher than elsewhere in the world, release dates are behind everyone else and it took until January …

An Australian Internet Service Provider (ISP), iiNet, has walked out of talks with copyright lobbyist groups, claiming that it shouldn't have to “perform work on their [copyright holder's] behalf,” and that instead, the real problem behind piracy in the country was down to the limited legal availability of much of the protected …