Grow a Garden, a Roblox game created by a 16-year-old in just a few days, has shattered records for the most concurrent players in gaming history, surpassing Fortnite with over 21.6 million concurrent players at once. The Associated Press reports: Grow a Garden is as simple as its name suggests -- players can fill a plot of land with plants and animals, harvest and sell, trade or steal each others' bounty. The game is low stress, with an aesthetic reminiscent of Minecraft and a soundtrack of soothing classical tunes such as Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca playing in the background. Its popularity has further cemented Roblox' place not just in the gaming world but in popular culture -- for better or for worse, it's where the kids hang out. Coincidence or not, Grow a Garden soared to popularity around the same time that Take-Two Interactive announced it would delay the launch of its wildly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 until next year. In late June, the gardening game logged 21.6 million concurrent players, surpassing Fortnite's previous record of 15.2 million according to Roblox. Analysts who follow Roblox's stock say Grow a Garden is helping boost the company's revenue and will push the company's quarterly earnings numbers above Wall Street's expectations. While it's not clear if the GTA audience flocked to this simple gardening game to pass the time until then, the timing reignited the age-old debate about who gamers are and what titles are taken seriously by the video game establishment. It happened with Candy Crush, with puzzle games, with Animal Crossing. Are people who play cozy games true gamers? Or is the title reserved for the folks who shoot enemies in Call of Duty or drive around creating mayhem in GTA?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce66423 shares a report from the BBC: The body running courts in England and Wales has been accused of a cover-up, after a leaked report found it took several years to react to an IT bug that caused evidence to go missing, be overwritten or appear lost. Sources within HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) say that as a result, judges in civil, family and tribunal courts will have made rulings on cases when evidence was incomplete. The internal report, leaked to the BBC, said HMCTS did not know the full extent of the data corruption, including whether or how it had impacted cases, as it had not undertaken a comprehensive investigation. It also found judges and lawyers had not been informed, as HMCTS management decided it would be "more likely to cause more harm than good." HMCTS says its internal investigation found no evidence that "any case outcomes were affected as a result of these technical issues." However, the former head of the High Court's family division, Sir James Munby, told the BBC the situation was "shocking" and "a scandal." Bruce66423 comments: "Given the relative absence of such stories from the USA, should I congratulate you for better-quality software or for being better at covering up disasters?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.