Young Venezuelans Aspire To Gaming Stardom Despite Obstacles

The dream of earning a living as a professional gamer is particularly resonant for many young people in Venezuela given the sparse opportunities otherwise available in a country with a minimum monthly salary equivalent to about $22 a month.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - North Dakota´s five American Indian tribes are seeking exclusive rights to host internet gambling and sports betting in the state, a monopoly worth millions, just a year after legislators turned aside a push by one big national player to allow it in the state.

Dr Cecilia Melendres, a pediatric sleep expert at Johns Hopkins University, told DailyMail.com that the rise in video game supplements was 'definitely is a major factor' in the current sleep crisis facing among US children and teens.

"A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia," he said in the blog post. "And while Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we've made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service."

In the fifth year of legal sports betting, the action is speeding up due to microbetting, the ability to place a bet on an outcome as narrowly targeted as the result of the next pitch in baseball or the next play in football.

It appears that Google didn't tell many developers about the shut-down prior to the public blog post. Destiny 2 makers Bungie tweeted on Thursday about coming up with "a plan of action" in the wake of the announcement. Assassin's Creed developer Ubisoft intends to allow players who've bought its games on Stadia to bring them to PC through its Ubisoft Connect digital distribution service, it said Friday. 

But while most parents recognize brands like Monster and Red Bull as energy drinks, experts warn gaming supplements could be mistaken for a protein shake because they are diluted in a gym shaker bottle.

The proposal comes as Burgum has worked to improve state-tribal relations that have been especially strained since he took office in 2016 in the midst of prolonged protests and hundreds of arrests during the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline that passes beneath the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The tribe draws its water from the Missouri and fears pollution.
Xbox maker Microsoft announced the $69 billion acquisition of "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard Inc in January and has pledged to keep the hit franchise on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement with Activision.

"There are a lot of interested people, there is a lot of talent advice here in Venezuela, a lot of players," said Abreu.
(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago in Cagua; Writing by Steven Grattan; Editing by Christian Plumb, Alexandra Hudson)

Dream makes YouTube videos and streams on Twitch and is best known for his Minecraft videos. His multiple YouTube channels have millions of subscribers, with 30.4 million subscribing to his main channel. He won YouTube's Streamy award for gaming in 2020 and 2021. 

CAGUA, Venezuela, Sept 1(Reuters) - Gamer Gabriel Parra was ecstatic to see himself hailed as the "Venezuelan star" after scoring the fastest time in an international Formula 1 eSports racing competition in May.
That tech will also be made available to Google's industry partners. Sony gave its own streaming service a headstart in 2015 by buying the patents of OnLive -- an early game streaming service -- shortly before the once-promising startup shut down.

People using Stadia will still to be able to access to their game libraries, including Pro games if you had an active Pro subscription as of Thursday. In an email sent to players, Google warned that publisher support for games may vary, and it's possible that your gameplay experience may be affected during the shut-down period (suggesting that some games could vanish or lose features early). 

"The truth is that when I saw the result... it was something magical, surprising, a dream I always had as a child that came true," said 23-year-old Parra, who lives in central-Venezuela's Aragua state, and started playing video games at the age of four.

Cloud gaming service Google Stadia will shut down on Jan. 18, the search giant said in blog post Thursday. Google will refund all Stadia hardware purchased through its Google Store, along with all games and add-on content purchased from its Stadia store.

DraftKings, a big player in the U.S. mobile gambling market, supported legislation and a failed resolution last year to allow sports betting in North Dakota to join about two dozen other states.
The company said at the time that sports wagering already is taking place in North Dakota, with an estimated 138,000 people betting more than $355 million in illegal offshore markets annually each year.

The tribes argue their casinos have been hurt by the explosion of electronic pull tab machines statewide after they were legalized in 2017, with North Dakotans pouring almost $1.75 billion into the machines in fiscal 2022.