Open Access (OA) facilitates access to articles. But, authors or funders often must pay the publishing costs preventing authors who do not receive financial support from participating in OA publishing and citation advantage for OA articles. OA may exacerbate existing inequalities in the publication system rather than overcome them. To investigate this, we studied 522,411 articles published by Springer Nature. Employing correlation and regression analyses, we describe the relationship between authors affiliated with countries from different income levels, their choice of publishing model, and the citation impact of their papers. A machine learning classification method helped us to explore the importance of different features in predicting the publishing model. The results show that authors eligible for APC waivers publish more in gold-OA journals than others. In contrast, authors eligible for an APC discount have the lowest ratio of OA publications, leading to the assumption that this discount insufficiently motivates authors to publish in gold-OA journals. We found a strong correlation between the journal rank and the publishing model in gold-OA journals, whereas the OA option is mostly avoided in hybrid journals. Also, results show that the countries' income level, seniority, and experience with OA publications are the most predictive factors for OA publishing in hybrid journals.

Publishing deals in the video game industry are generally kept secret, with terms hidden behind non-disclosure agreements and the threat of legal fallout. However, in the realm of AAA publishing, it's common for independent developers to sign contracts granting them less than 10 percent of a game's lifetime revenue, in exchange for marketing and financial assistance from a multibillion-dollar organization. In some cases, the developer also signs away their intellectual property rights, losing creative control over the game entirely. Or, a huge company will simply buy the smaller studio outright, devouring its existing library and creative talent, and overseeing all of its future products. In late March, Epic Games launched a multiplatform publishing initiative touting "the most developer-friendly terms in the industry." Under this deal, developers are guaranteed 50 percent of a game's revenue once production costs are recouped, and they retain full creative control over their own titles. Epic also promises to cover up to 100 percent of a game's development costs, including salaries, advertising and publishing fees. "We're building the publishing model we always wanted for ourselves," said Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. Epic Games has been experimenting with publishing models since the early '90s, decades before the launch of Fortnite, The Epic Games Store or the Unreal Engine. We're talking about the days of BBS, back when Sweeney was building ZZT out of his parents' house and the World Wide Web was just flickering to life.