Wizards of the Coast owner Hasbro is buying D&D Beyond, one of the most popular digital toolsets for playing Dungeons and Dragons. In a press release spotted by Gizmodo, the publisher said on Wednesday it had agreed to pay $146.3 million to acquire the platform from current owner Fandom. In a post over on the toolset’s official forums, the D&D Beyond team said the purchase would not change how players use the toolset to run their campaigns. “Wizards of the Coast has no plans to stop supporting D&D Beyond. Ever,” the team said.
In a way, today’s announcement effectively sees D&D Beyond return home. The toolset came out of a partnership Wizards of the Coast announced in 2017 with Curse, a gaming company that was then best known for its World of Warcraft addon manager. In 2018, Curse, following its 2016 acquisition by Twitch, sold D&D Beyond, among other media assets, to Fandom.
Outside of the origin story, the acquisition makes a lot of practical sense for Hasbro. The company notes the royalties Fandom paid to operate D&D Beyond represented “a significant contribution” to the revenue it was making from Dungeons and Dragons. What's more, the deal puts Hasbro where many of its fans are already heading. In 2021, more than 80 percent of D&D fans played the game virtually, according to the company.
Niantic is best known for creating augmented reality games based on existing franchises, but its next title will be an original one. Peridot is all about breeding and caring for unique virtual pets.
These Peridots (or Dots) have been asleep for thousands of years and they'll need players' help to ensure their survival, Niantic senior producer Ziah Fogel wrote in a blog post. Players will feed, play and explore with their Dots to raise them to adulthood. While you're out on daily walks, your Dot might discover hidden treasures. You'll be able to diversify the species of your Dots as well by working with other players.
Peridot seems skewed more toward players who enjoyed the likes of Pokémon Go and Pikmin Bloom than Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. It'll be Niantic's first original game since Ingress. Peridot is in its soft launch period and will only be available in select markets at first. If you're interested, you can sign up to be notified when the game's available in your region.
TikTok is testing a way for users to “dislike” comments in an effort to help people “feel more in control” over what they are seeing. The company revealed the experiment in a blog post about its most recent community guidelines enforcement report, which tracks how TikTok is enforcing its safety policies.
For now, TikTok hasn’t provided many details about exactly how the feature will work or what it looks like. Some users who appear to be part of the test have shared screenshots on Twitter of a thumbs down button appearing next to the heart in videos’ comment sections. The company did specify that individual users will have no way of knowing if their comment has been disliked, so it seems that dislike counts will not be viewable in the same way that likes are. (The screenshots show no numbers next to the thumbs down.)
“We've started testing a way to let individuals identify comments they believe to be irrelevant or inappropriate,” the company explained. “This community feedback will add to the range of factors we already use to help keep the comment section consistently relevant and a place for genuine engagement. To avoid creating ill-feeling between community members or demoralize creators, only the person who registered a dislike on a comment will be able to see that they have done so.”
The subject of “dislikes” on social media has been somewhat of a controversial topic. YouTube, which had public dislikes for years, recently made dislike counts private saying that the feature was contributing to targeted harassment on the platform. Though some creators welcomed the move, it’s proved so controversial that even one of YouTube’s co-founders has protested the change.
In TikTok’s case, it sounds like dislikes will be much more limited than how YouTube has used them, at least for now. The company has so far suggested the feature is meant to help inform how it ranks comments and give creators a way to control which ones are most visible.
Just a couple weeks after Kia announced a European release window for its EV9, the automaker has revealed when US drivers will be able to get behind the wheel of the electric SUV. It said at the New York Auto Show that the EV9 is coming Stateside in the second half of 2023.
Kia didn't announce any more details at the show, as Autoblognotes, meaning pricing is still unknown. Still, at least the timeframe has been narrowed down.
The automaker hasn't spilled the beans on how the road-ready version of the EV9 differs from the boxy concept model. In November, Kia offered an early look at the concept EV9, which had a 27-inch dashboard display and a yoke-style wheel. It said the EV offered up to 300 miles of range and 350kW charging that boosts the battery level from 10 percent to 80 percent in 30 minutes.
It’s hard to believe that FL Studio (née Fruity Loops) has been around for 24 years. It’s even harder to believe that it took 20 years for someone to make dedicated hardware for the DAW. And that it was another four years before a second company had a stab at it, after Akai’s Fire. Now Novation is taking its well regarded LaunchKey series, giving it a light facelift and rebranding it as FLKey – the first keyboard MIDI controller designed exclusively for controlling FL Studio.
FLKey comes in two varieties, the FLKey 37 and FLKey Mini. Novation sent over the 37 key version for me to test, and I can tell you that, physically, it’s nearly indistinguishable from the Launchkey 37. It’s got the same full-size keybed, 16 velocity sensitive pads and eight knobs across the top. They even both have the same amount of buttons and pitch and mod wheels placed somewhat awkwardly above the keys. The only real difference is that the FLKeys are gray instead of black, and the labels on the controls are slightly different.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
The build is solid, but not what you’d call rugged. I probably wouldn’t take the FLKey out on tour. Everything is plastic, and the keys have a slight springiness to them. The pads are velocity sensitive, and have polyphonic aftertouch, but are a tad stiff and small. They’ll get the job done for finger drumming, but can’t compare with those found on an Akai device. There's a small screen that gives you useful info at a glance, like preset names. And the eight knobs across the top are smooth and have a nice amount of resistance, but are quite small. They make sense on the Mini model, but on the 37 they look slightly out of place. Still, considering the almost rock-bottom price of $200, this is all pretty impressive.
What makes the FLKey stand out, though, is its out-of-the-box mapping for controlling FL Studio. With the pads and pots you can easily control volume and panning both from the mixer and channel rack, control many of Image Line’s native plugins, and play chords with a single button. You can’t ditch the mouse completely, but you can perform most basic tasks directly from the controller.
If you’re intimately familiar with FL Studio, chances are you’ll be able to get further with the keyboard than me. I haven’t used FL Studio much since I was in college and it was still called Fruity Loops. I had to relearn some terminology and try to unlearn some habits I’d developed after years of using Ableton Live as my primary DAW. But once I got over the initial hump, I found it relatively easy getting the rough outline of a track down with just the keyboard.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
I actually think that the FLKey lineup offers deeper control than its Ableton-focused siblings in the Launchkey series, at least when it comes to producing a full song from start to finish. Whereas the Launchkey lineup seems more focused on Live’s performance features, FLKey feels built more with production in mind. That probably has as much to do with the difference in the DAWs approaches as anything else, though.
It’s super quick and easy to lock the keyboard into a particular scale, or to assign the pads across the top to the chords in said scale. The latter is especially useful for me since I am what is commonly referred to as a terrible keyboard player. It also takes just a single button push to quantize a performance after you’ve recorded it which, again, is super handy for someone like me who’s simply faking their way around a keyboard.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
If you’re sticking to FLStudio’s built-in plugins the knobs are often mapped to controls automatically, though, it seems a little random in terms of what they actually control. This is probably the biggest issue with the FLKey (again, probably more to do with FLStudio’s quirks than anything else) – consistency.
Ableton Live was built very consciously from moment one with UI consistency being high on the list of priorities, so mapping controls is a much simpler and more predictable affair. FLStudio is a bit more hodgepodge. Every plugin has its own unique interface with controls scattered around, and sometimes presented in oddly skeuomorphic ways. In some plugins the mapping is completely nonexistent. For instance, while the buttons for changing presets work flawlessly in DX10 and Harmless, they don’t work at all in Sawyer or GMS. And the mod wheel doesn’t seem to do anything in most plugins.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget
It's also worth quickly mentioning that while the back is largely spartan, there is a full-sized 5-pin MIDI DIN there. So, when you're not knocking out beats with FPC or chopping up samples in SliceX you can control your hardware synths too.
FL Studios quirks can be part of its charm. But it does make it hard to build on top of what Image Line has already done. Still, if there’s any company I’d have faith in making it work, it would be Novation. Over the years it’s developed a reputation for relentlesslyupdating its products and adding new features. So there’s a decent chance that FLKey’s rough edges will get smoothed out.
A former lawyer with California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing has accused Governor Gavin Newsom of interfering with the agency’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Activision Blizzard. According to an email seen by Bloomberg, DFEH assistant chief counsel Melanie Proctor said Tuesday she was resigning her position to protest the abrupt firing of Janette Wipper, the watchdog’s chief counsel.
“The Office of the Governor repeatedly demanded advance notice of litigation strategy and of next steps in the litigation,” Proctor writes in her resignation. “As we continued to win in state court, this interference increased, mimicking the interests of Activision’s counsel.” Proctor alleges Wipper was “abruptly terminated” for attempting to protect the DFEH’s independence. According to the email, the former chief counsel is considering “all avenues of legal recourse,” including a claim under California’s Whistleblower Protection Act.
We’ve reached out to the Office of Governor Newsom for comment.
News of the resignation comes little more than two weeks after a federal judge ordered Activision Blizzard to pay $18 million to settle a US Equal Opportunity Commission lawsuit accusing the publisher of fostering a discriminatory workplace. Before that complaint was filed, California's fair employment agency launched its own lawsuit against Activision Blizzard following a two-year investigation into sexual harassment allegations at the publisher. The DFEH case is currently scheduled to go to trial in February 2023, but the allegations put forward by Proctor are likely to raise questions about the ultimate fate of the lawsuit.
Apple is looking to build on the success of TV+ by locking in Tom Hanks' production company to an exclusive multi-year deal. The agreement with Playtone covers series, documentaries and unscripted projects.
Hanks is also set to star in a sequel to World War II movie Greyhound. The thriller was one of the most-watched projects on Apple TV+, according to Deadline. Apple scooped up distribution rights to the film in 2020. Greyhound was supposed to be released theatrically, but the COVID-19 pandemic prevented it from being released in theaters. There was a similar situation with Finch, a post-apocalyptic survival film in which Hanks' character is accompanied on the road by his dog and a helper robot. That movie hit Apple TV+ in November.
Apple has had a working relationship with Playtone, which was founded by Hanks and producer Gary Goetzman, for a few years. It was announced in 2019 that the two companies and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television were working on Masters of the Air, a follow-up series to Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Production of the show has wrapped, but a release date hasn't been announced.
Adding more shows and movies from Playtone to the library will bolster Apple TV+, which is on a great run. It just became the first streaming service to win the Best Picture Oscar (for CODA) while sitcom Ted Lasso enjoyed huge success at last year's Emmys. Recent shows like Severance and Slow Horses have earned acclaim as well.
Meta has been conspicuously eager to stake its future on augmented reality and the metaverse, but a new report from The Verge might shed light on exactly what the social media giant hopes to deliver. According to anonymous sources, the company aims to launch its first AR glasses, part of its Project Nazare initiative, in 2024. You would see a "lighter, more advanced" model in 2026, and a third iteration in 2028. The initial model would be independent of your phone, but you would need a "phone-shaped device" to handle the computing and rely on a CTRL-Labs-derived electrical pulse-based wristband for control.
This first model is supposedly based on Android and could offer "full" AR with 3D visuals, eye tracking, an outward-facing camera, stereo audio, a relatively wide field of view and a "socially acceptable" look. The centerpiece feature would be communication with other people's "holograms," much like Meta portrayed in a video that accompanied its big rebranding last fall. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg apparently believes this will provide a more engrossing experience than simple video calling.
The tech firm might also hedge its bets by releasing a less exotic wearable. A pair of phone-paired smart glasses, nicknamed Hypernova, would show notifications through a small display. Hypernova would also debut in 2024.
Sales expectations are apparently modest for the first Project Nazare glasses. Meta might only sell the eyewear in the "low tens of thousands" to enthusiasts and developers. Zuckerberg, however, apparently sees them as crucial. A former staffer told The Verge that Zuckerberg wants the AR glasses to represent an "iPhone moment" for Meta — that is, a launch that shakes up the industry and redefines the company.
Whether or not they fulfill that ambition is another matter. Meta has faced numerous setbacks, including scrapped plans for a custom (if Google Fuschia-based) OS and staff shuffles. The prototype hardware also has its limitations. While it's using cutting-edge microLED projectors and waveguide technology, it's about four times heavier than conventional glasses and musters just four hours of battery life.
Still, it's not hard to see why Meta and Zuckerberg might pour so much energy into AR glasses. Meta has an increasingly negative reputation due to privacy issues, content controversies and regulatory pressure. It's also struggling with flat user growth as competition like TikTok eats away at its core business. The glasses will theoretically help Meta leave scandals behind and regain the innovator status it had in its early years.
Amazon’s IMDb TV is rebranding. Beginning April 27th, the ad-supported streaming service will be known as Freevee, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Amazon’s Studios division told the outlet the new name is designed to better reflect how much it costs to access the platform.
As part of the rebranding, Amazon said it would also invest more into original programming, with a promise to offer 70 percent more exclusive content than it does currently. Among the shows Amazon plans to debut on the platform is High School, a coming of age series from indie duo Tegan and Sara. The company will announce additional details about Freevee’s upcoming slate of originals at its NewFronts presentation on May 2nd.
We know from reporting from The Informationthat Amazon had been mulling a rebranding of IMDb TV since at least the start of last fall. At the time, company executives had reportedly considered names like “Zon,” along with “Free TV” and “Free Streaming TV,” as potential options. The thought among executives was that the existing name was too difficult for people to pronounce and was thereby hurting its popularity.
Amazon is said to have intensified its anti-union efforts ahead of a union election at a warehouse later this month. The Amazon Labor Union told Motherboard the company is mandating daily anti-union meetings at LDJ5, a facility in Staten Island, New York. It's also said to have distributed anti-union literature and disciplined a leader of the drive for organizing on the warehouse floor. What's more, ALU says Amazon has hired anti-union consultants to pose as employees.
Workers at the warehouse, which reportedly has around 1,500 employees, are scheduled to begin a union election on April 25th. Amazon's anti-union efforts ramped up in recent days, according to the report. The ALU recently won an election at a nearby facility, JFK8, which became the first Amazon warehouse in the US to formally unionize. Amazon plans to appeal the union's victory.
Amazon and the National Labor Relations Board in December reached a deal in December, under which the company agreed to inform past and current warehouse workers in the US of their right to organize. The terms of the agreement afforded workers more leeway to organize in break rooms, which is said to have been a key factor in ALU's success at JFK8.
However, Amazon reportedly isn't sticking to those terms at LDJ5. The ALU said the company removed pro-union literature from the break room and took down a pro-union banner after the JFK8 election result became clear. A lawyer representing ALU workers has filed unfair labor practice charges against Amazon for removing the banner and allegedly retaliating against a worker to stifle unionization efforts.
Engadget has contacted Amazon for comment.
Amazon has long been accused of cracking down on workers' attempts to organize. Last year alone, it spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants. The company's also said to be working on a chat app for workers, in which terms like "union" and "pay raise" are on a blocklist.
The NLRB said the company illegally interfered in a union election in Bessemer, Alabama last year and called for a rerun. However, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union claimed Amazon interfered in the second election as well. The result of that vote hinges on a court hearing over challenged ballots.
