Embracer, the mega game publisher that's been snapping up new properties left and right, has made a deal to acquire the intellectual property catalogue and worldwide rights to various JRR Tolkien-related media and merch. To be precise, it will own the rights to "motion pictures, video games, board games, merchandising, theme parks and stage productions" based on the The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit if the deal pushes through. It will also own the rights tied to any future literary work related to LOTR and The Hobbit that's authorized by the Tolkien Estate.

This isn't the first Tolkien-related purchase Embracer has made: Back in 2021, it bought the board game publisher Asmodee, which has published over a dozen LOTR board games over the past 20 years. And if the acquisition goes through, Embracer will work with Amazon on The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power series that will start streaming on September 2nd.

In addition to starting the process of acquiring Middle-earth Enterprises — that's the team that currently owns the IP rights to Tolkien-related merch — Embracer has also announced that it's purchasing more game studios. The biggest name in its latest list of acquisitions is Tripwire Interactive, which is known for the co-op survival horror Killing Floor and the third-person shark sim Maneater.

Embracer, founded in 2008 by Swedish entrepreneur Lars Wingefors, has been quietly buying up game studios over the past few years. We called it the "biggest games publisher you've never heard of," though it's recently been gaining recognition as it continues to add more and more developers under its umbrella. Back in May, it entered a deal to acquire several studios with a catalogue of IPs that include "Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, Legacy of Kain and more than 50 back-catalogue games from Square Enix Holdings." That deal will cost Embracer $300 million — the company didn't reveal how much it will pay to acquire the rights to Tolkien-related media.

Microsoft is taking an interesting approach to secure regulatory approval for its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In a recent filing spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun, the company told New Zealand’s Commerce Commission the troubled publisher produces no “must have” games. Yes, you read that right.

“There is nothing unique about the video games developed and published by Activision Blizzard that is a ‘must have’ for rival PC and console video game distributors that give rise to a foreclosure concern,” the company says in the document. Put another way, Microsoft believes owning the rights to best-selling Activision Blizzard franchises like Call of Duty won’t prevent rivals like Sony from competing against it.

At first glance, that would seem to be a nonsensical argument to make about a company Microsoft plans to spend $68.7 billion to acquire. All the same, it’s a claim the tech giant is making in response to its rivals. In a filing with Brazilian regulators, Sony called Call of Duty “an essential game” and an AAA title “that has no rival.” It argues the franchise is so popular that it influences the consoles people buy. Sony is likely speaking from experience. In 2015, the company announced an agreement with Activision that saw some Call of Duty content arrive on PlayStation consoles first.

Downplaying the importance of Call of Duty is just one of the ways Microsoft has tried to placate regulators. In February, the company pledged it would continue to make the franchise available on PlayStation consoles beyond the end of any agreements Sony and Activision had in place before the acquisition was announced. More recently, the company announced a labor neutrality agreement with the Communications Workers of America, which has been organizing video game workers across the industry.

The Federal Trade Commission has filed an antitrust suit against Meta in a bid to block it from buying Within Unlimited, the maker of the virtual reality workout app Supernatural. The agency accused the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg of "planning to expand Meta’s virtual reality empire with this attempt to illegally acquire a dedicated fitness app that proves the value of virtual reality to users."

The FTC claimed that Meta is "already a key player" at every level of the VR ecosystem. It said the company has the top-selling VR device (Meta Quest 2), a leading VR app store, "seven of the most successful developers and one of the best-selling apps of all time." The latter is likely referring to Beat Saber. Meta bought the maker of that rhythm game, Beat Games, in 2019.

“Instead of competing on the merits, Meta is trying to buy its way to the top,” John Newman, deputy director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition, said in a statement. “Meta already owns a best-selling virtual reality fitness app and it had the capabilities to compete even more closely with Within’s popular Supernatural app. But Meta chose to buy market position instead of earning it on the merits. This is an illegal acquisition and we will pursue all appropriate relief.”

Meta announced its plan to buy Within last October. It was reported in December that the FTC was looking into the $400 million deal. Meta, of course, got into the VR market in the first place when it bought Oculus in 2014.

The FTC argues in the complaint that Meta has the resources and "reasonable probability" of entering the VR fitness market by building its own app. That approach, the agency claims, would "increase consumer choice, increase innovation, spur additional competition to attract the best employees, and yield other competitive benefits." Instead, if it were to buy Within, the FTC claims Meta would limit "future innovation and competitive rivalry" and says "that lessening of competition violates the antitrust laws."

“The FTC's case is based on ideology and speculation, not evidence. The idea that this acquisition would lead to anticompetitive outcomes in a dynamic space with as much entry and growth as online and connected fitness is simply not credible," a Meta spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. "By attacking this deal in a 3-2 vote, the FTC is sending a chilling message to anyone who wishes to innovate in VR. We are confident that our acquisition of Within will be good for people, developers and the VR space.” 

The move will come as another blow to Meta's aim to become the leading metaverse player. The company has plowed billions into the effort, though in recent months it has dialed back some of its ambitions by cutting costs and reportedly shelving plans for some devices that were supposed to hook into its metaverse. This week, the company announced that it will increase the price of a Meta Quest 2 headset by $100 as of August 1st. News of the FTC's move to block the Within acquisition comes on the same day that Meta will report its earnings for the second quarter of 2022.

Internet satellite operators OneWeb and Eutelsat are planning to merge in the hopes of becoming a stronger rival to SpaceX's Starlink. The merger, which is subject to approval from regulators and Eutelsat shareholders, is expected to close by mid-2023 and it values OneWeb at $3.4 billion. Shareholders of OneWeb and Eutelsat will each own half of the combined company.

Eutelsat has a fleet of 36 geostationary orbit satellites. These will be combined with OneWeb's cluster of low-earth orbit satellites, which can provide internet access from the skies. OneWeb currently has 428 satellites in orbit of a planned 648 in its first-generation network.

OneWeb and Eutelsat expect to have combined revenues of €1.2 billion ($1.56 billion) in the 2022-23 fiscal year. Eutelsat chair Dominique D’Hinnin and CEO Eva Berneke will remain in those positions in the merged entity. OneWeb investor Sunil Bharti Mittal will become co-chairman.

The merger comes after OneWeb stumbled in its bid to become a viable competitor to Starlink and Amazon's Project Kuiper. OneWeb filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2020 as it sought a buyer. The UK government and Mittal's Bharti Global each paid $500 million for a 45 percent stake in OneWeb. The company secured additional funding in early 2021 to launch hundreds of satellites.

More recently, OneWeb was caught in the crossfire between Russia and the West following the former's invasion of Ukraine. UK sanctions prompted Russia to block launches of OneWeb satellites — it demanded that the UK sell its stake in OneWeb and wanted assurances the satellites wouldn't be used for military purposes. OneWeb ended up turning to its rival SpaceX to launch the remainder of its first-gen satellites.

After the expected merger, the UK will retain a "special share" in OneWeb as well as exclusive rights over the company. These grant the government a significant say in national security controls over the network and veto rights over certain decisions, such as the location of OneWeb's headquarters.

Microsoft is giving select PC gamers free access to four classic games by Bethesda and id Software, which it acquired as part of its $7.5 billion ZeniMax purchase in 2020. And three of them wouldn't have been released if the tech giant isn't acquiring Activision Blizzard, as well. In a post on the Xbox blog, Microsoft has revealed that Xbox Insiders on Windows PC can now preview Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders, HeXen: Beyond Heretic, HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel, The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Quake Champions. 

It's not surprising that the offer is only available for PC users part of Microsoft's Insider program — as Ars Technica notes, the first four games in the list were originally released in the mid-90s and run via DOSBox emulation. DOSBox runs software for MS-DOS compatible games, but it's a pretty inelegant solution for making old titles playable. 

The Elder Scrolls: Arena is an open-world action RPG published by Bethesda, with a first person perspective and features melee combat and magic. Meanwhile, Heretic, its sequel HeXen: Beyond Heretic and the latter's expansion pack, HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel, are all first-person dark fantasy shooters. They were built using a modified version of the Doom engine, and though they were published by id Software, they were developed by Raven Software. Activision acquired the rights to those games when it purchased Raven in 1997.

Microsoft first announced that it's purchasing Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in January this year and expects the deal to close no later than June 2023 if regulators give it their approval. It's an all-cash deal that values Activision at $95 a share. Microsoft plans to add Activision Blizzard games to the Xbox Game Pass as part of the acquisition, and some of those games may be like the Heretic-HeXen series, which Activision doesn't fully own.

The developer behind Destiny is now a part of the Sony universe. Sony Interactive Entertainment officially closed on a $3.6 billion deal today to buy the independent game studio and publisher Bungie, according to tweets from both Bungie and PlayStation Studios. Under the terms of the acquisition, Bungie will still maintain creative control over its operations and independently develop its games. As leaders from bothcompanies have noted since the deal was announced in January, Bungie will be considered an independent subsidiary of Sony and won’t be required to make either current or future games exclusive to PlayStation consoles.

As TechCrunch noted, Sony is hoping Bungie’s expertise with games like Destiny will help it expand its own live service game offerings. The company plans to spend 55 percent of PlayStation’s budget on live service games by 2025, revealed Sony CEO Jim Ryan at a May investor presentation. PlayStation plans on releasing 10 live service games before March 2026, and Sony believes Bungie’s assistance will be crucial in this effort.

Sony this week also closed on a deal to acquire Montreal-based Haven Studios, which is working on a multiplayer title for PlayStation. And Sony is far from finished. The company plans to acquire even more studios over the next few years in a bid to grow its live service and PC offerings, as Ryan has noted in several interviews. And on the Xbox side, Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is expected to close next summer.

Twitter has laid off dozens of employees amid growing uncertainty around Elon Musk’s acquisition. The company cut 30 percent of its talent acquisition team, which includes recruiters and others charged with bringing on new hires, The Wall Street Journalreports. Twitter told The Journal that “fewer than 100 people” had been let go and that it was only the talent acquisition team that was affected.

Twitter had previously announced a partial hiring freeze as part of a broader attempt to cut costs as it attempts to finalize its acquisition by Elon Musk. The status of the deal is uncertain as Musk has threatened to pull out of the agreement, citing concerns about the number of bots on the platform. On Thursday, The Washington Postreported that the deal was in “serious jeopardy,” and that “it was likely a change in direction from Musk’s team would come soon.”

The subject of layoffs reportedly came up at recent Twitter all-hands with Musk. The Tesla CEO said he was concerned about costs at Twitter but didn't directly answer a question about whether job cuts were on the table. "It depends," he said, according to CNBC.

In a post on LinkedIn, Ingrid Johnson, a senior technical recruiter at Twitter, wrote that it was “a really tough day.” “There are people losing their jobs that have been there over a decade,” she wrote. “If Twitter has chosen to spend potential billions suing Elon and maintaining a falsely inflated stock price at the expense of the people who gave their lives building the company— that is an even more tragic story.”

Twitter isn’t the only tech company to recently pull back on hiring or lay off employees. Meta recently said it would slow its hiring as it faces “serious times.” Netflix, Unity, Coinbase and Paypal have all recently cut jobs as well.

Microsoft will have to satisfy more than just the Federal Trade Commission to complete its $68.7 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard. On Wednesday, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority announced it would investigate the proposed merger. The watchdog says it seeks to determine whether the agreement would create a “substantial lessening of competition” within the UK. The CMA could announce a decision on whether it will move forward with a probe as early as September 1st. With today’s announcement, the public has until July 20th to submit comment.

Microsoft was most likely ready for the deal to be intensely scrutinized, and in recent months it has made moves seemingly designed to placate regulators. In June, for instance, the company announced a labor neutrality agreement with the Communications Workers of America, the organization that seeks to represent the quality assurance workers who recently voted to unionize at Activision’s Raven Software studio. Just how effective such gestures will be is hard to say. At the start of the year, NVIDIA abandoned its proposed $40 billion deal to buy chip designer ARM after the FTC sued to block the purchase. At the time, the agency called the outcome “signifcant” because it represented “the first abandonment of a litigated vertical merger in many years."

Chinese car giant Geely has purchased a majority stake in the now-small smartphone maker Meizu. Bloomberg reports that Meizu will be run as an independent company under Xingli Technology, another tech brand under Geely’s umbrella. That said, the pair are expected to work together on new products, and Xingli has already expressed plans to make a big splash in the AR/VR space.

If you’ve been reading Engadget for long enough, you’ll have likely seen Meizu’s early rise at the dawn of the smartphone boom. Unfortunately, it found its lunch being eaten by other Chinese upstarts, including Xiaomi, and wound up remaining a small player. Back in 2015, Alibaba decided to take a stake in the company just as it found itself distracted by various boondoggles, including the baffling-in-retrospect decision to build phones with Ubuntu.

Geely, meanwhile, is perhaps best known in the West as the controlling owner of Volvo, Polestar and Lotus, all of which have been pushed towards electrification. Of course, with cars becoming more like phones (and phones becoming such a crucial part of most cars) the idea of automakers buying in to the phone space makes plenty of sense. As Reuters reports, both the mobile and car businesses are slowing down, and so deeper integration might be one way to corner the market.

eBay truly has fully embraced non-fungible tokens: The e-commerce company has acquired KnownOrigin, an established marketplace for digital art NFTs. As CoinDesk notes, eBay hasn't disclosed how much it paid for the marketplace, but it said in its announced that the purchase is an "important step in [its] tech-led reimagination." KnownOrigin has been around since 2018 and gives artists a platform they can use to create and sell their art as NFTs in exchange for cryptocurrency payments. Based on information from DappRadar, which tracks data on decentralized apps, KnownOrigin has facilitated $7.8 million worth of NFT transactions since its inception. 

Jamie Iannone, eBay CEO, said in a statement:

"eBay is the first stop for people across the globe who are searching for that perfect, hard-to-find, or unique addition to their collection and, with this acquisition, we will remain a leading site as our community is increasingly adding digital collectibles."

eBay made its first foray into NFTs as part of its "tech-led reimagination" last year. It allowed the sale of NFTs on its platform in May 2021 for sellers that meet the company's standards. Back then, it told Reuters that it will add more capabilities "that bring blockchain-driven collectibles" to its platform. This May, the company launched an NFT collection of its own, releasing 13 limited-edition digital collectibles that feature 3D-animated renders of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky. In fact, we can expect the company to launch more NFT collections throughout the year. eBay and OneOf, its Web3 partner for the Gretzky drop, said they plan to release more NFTs in the coming months featuring other athletes and updated versions of iconic Sports Illustrated covers.