Stuff Worth Knowing for the Week of April 10, 2023
Discord is the place for U.S. government secrets, Sega might buy the Angry Birds publisher, and Warner Bros. Discovery reveals MAX.
Welcome back to Stuff Worth Knowing! Each week, I'll round up news related to tech, video games, film, television, anime, and more.
Tech ⌨️
Discord Becomes A Vector For Leaked Government Documents
The biggest story of the week is likely the arrest of Jack Teixeira, a U.S. National Guard airman who was leaking classified documents to Discord. The 21-year old was identified by The New York Times as the administrator of a Discord called Thug Shake Central. In an attempt to gain points and win arguments on the chat server, Teixeira posted documents he had obtained, including detailed battlefield maps related to the conflict in Ukraine. These documents were classified, putting him in violation of the Espionage Act.
Members of the Discord noted to The New York Times and The Washington Post that Teixeira was not leaking documents in a whistleblower capacity. The server itself was also home to racist and antisemitic statements and Nazi imagery.
Much of the official discussion on the arrest and leaks involves figuring out how a younger airman could obtain access to so much classified material in the first place. However, the Post acknowledges that “thousands of military personnel and government employees around OG’s age, working entry-to-low-level positions, could plausibly have access to classified documents like the ones he allegedly shared.” That feels like a problem, but I’m not the U.S. government.
Why It's Worth Knowing: The movies are all about clandestine heists with highly-trained agents, but in reality, a 21-year old on Discord is all you need to get access to government secrets. This is one of the biggest leaks of classified intelligence and it was done purely by a young man trying to win street cred on his chat server. The U.S. government has to scramble to unpack the damage of the leaks now, but it’s almost senseless how it happened in the first place.
This Week in Twitter: Twitter, Inc Is Now X-Corp
On Wednesday, Twitter filed documentation noting that Twitter, Inc. was no longer a legal entity. According to Bloomberg, Twitter is now under the control of X Corp, a new firm incorporated in Nevada. Musk has been toying with the “X” name for years, as the branding for his vision of the “everything” app, a place where users can chat, share media, buy items, trade money, and more.
In addition, two news organizations moved away from Twitter entirely this week. NPR dipped after Twitter marked the organization as “U.S. state-affiliated media”, closing all 52 associated accounts. This was followed by PBS doing the same on its primary account for the same reason. “PBS stopped tweeting from our account when we learned of the change and we have no plans to resume at this time,” a PBS spokesperson told Bloomberg. It still posts on social media via affiliated accounts like PBS News Hour, as those accounts were not hit with the “U.S. state-affiliated media” tag.
By Friday, Twitter also announced that Twitter Blue subscribers would now be able to create tweets with up to 10,000 characters. Those users would also be able to use bold and italic formatting in their tweets. The move seems to be a response to Substack’s launch of Substack Notes, a short-form service on the newsletter platform; if Substack can offer something like tweets, Twitter can offer something like a blog. The move comes as Musk continues to puzzle out ways to entice users to subscribe to Twitter Blue, with The Information estimating that the service only has around 290,000 subscribers in total.
AI 🤖
Elon Musk Starts Up X.AI Corp To Chase Trends
Microsoft, Google, and more are chasing the magic of AI, but there’s one guy that doesn’t want to be left out of the gold rush. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Musk started another new company called X.AI Corp. This seems to be his attempt to compete with OpenAI, a firm that he tried to take control of in 2018.
Back in March, Musk signed a letter urging for a pause on the development of AI. “Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium,” said the letter. It seems that it was more about AI that he doesn’t control, not the concept entirely, as I doubt Musk wants governments to step in on his new venture.
Why It's Worth Knowing: Musk has money to burn and no new ideas to offer. The renaming of Twitter and the launch of X.AI are both uses of Elon’s “X” idea, which is his vision for the “everything app”. Of course, his problem is a severe lack of trust; no one is going to trust you with their payments if they don’t think you’re a stable individual, and everything Musk has done since buying Twitter doesn’t point in that direction. Likewise, he lacks the technology foundation to beat the rest.
Video Games 🎮
Sega Working On Deal To Buy Rovio
It seems pretty late to the party, but Sega is apparently mulling over a deal to acquire Rovio, the mobile game publisher most know as the home behind Angry Birds. According to the Wall Street Journal, the deal will cost Sega Sammy Holdings around $1 billion if it goes through. Prior to this, Rovio was in talks with Playtika Holding Corp for a takeover worth around $813 million.
Why It's Worth Knowing: With this move, all of the major developers and publishers behind the original mobile boom have been acquired. Activision-Blizzard owns King, Electronic Arts owns PopCap, Take-Two agreed to a merger with Zynga last year. While it feels like the mobile boom is over, the space still represents nearly half of all game software sales.
That said, while Rovio Entertainment was part of the initial boom in the space, it’s certainly not riding high these days. A quick look at the Apple App Store free games chart shows a single Rovio title, and that’s Angry Birds 2 at 78th place. This combines with the fact that the $1 billion acquisition price is a decent chunk of Sega Sammy’s assets; the company’s last financial earnings report listed cash and deposits at around $1.1 billion and total assets around $3.5 billion. It feels like Sega Sammy is spending a lot to gain a little.
Dark and Darker Developer Turns To Torrents To Distribute Next Beta
A month ago, I wrote about the trials of Korean indie developer Ironmace. After finding a hit in its first title, Dark and Darker, during the Steam Next Fest, Ironmace found itself accused of stealing assets. The Ironmace team was founded by former Nexon developers, and Nexon accused them of stealing code and assets from an old in-house project to create their new game. Ironmace was raided by Korean police back in March.
Nexon also sent a cease-and-desist to Valve Software, pushing Dark and Darker off Steam entirely. Ironmace is still working on the game, however. On Friday, the developer tweeted a torrent for the latest version of the game. In a message on the official Discord later posted to the subreddit, one of the Ironmace developers explained the situation.
“Unfortunately, due to the complexities of our situation, especially across international lines, it is taking time to resolve the Steam situation. In order for us to keep our promise to our fans we’ve had to go old school this time,” said the developer. “Unfortunately, due to compliance with the Korean game rating regulations, we are unable to service this playtest in the Korea region. We are deeply sorry to our fans here and will do our best to include all regions in the future. We apologize to our global fans as we were unable to complete the localizations in time for this test and had to remove them from the game.”
Why It's Worth Knowing: It’s honestly one of the most bizarre situations in gaming currently. It’s similar to the legal battle between Frogwares and Nacon, or the mire happening between the original creators of Disco Elysium and their former studio ZA/UM. I can’t remember the last time I saw a developer ask players to torrent an official client.
Nintendo Announces Live Event For September
E3 might be dead, but that doesn’t mean publishers and platform owners are out of options. This week, Nintendo announced Nintendo Live 2023, a live event happening in Seattle, Washington some time in September. The event looks to be more community focused, with games, live stage performances, tournaments, and more, but that doesn’t mean that Nintendo won’t lean on a captive audience to make some announcements. Nintendo’s current schedule of first-party Switch games peters out on July 21 with Pikmin 4, so early September would be a perfect time to announce major titles for the second half of 2023. Or perhaps some new hardware…?
The Dream Is Dead As Sony Shutters Dreams Support
It seems that it’s time to wake up. This week, Media Molecule announced that support for Dreams, its robust content creation platform on PlayStation 4, would be ending live support on September 1, 2023. Players will still be able to create and share new things in Dreams, but the team will no longer offer updates on the title.
“As we continue to evaluate and evolve our priorities for the studio and Dreams, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue live support for Dreams after 1st September, 2023 to shift our focus to an exciting new project,” said the developer in its announcement post. “We know this won't be an easy message for everyone to hear, and it's certainly not been an easy decision—Dreams has been a special project for Media Molecule and helping this burgeoning community of game developers, tinkerers, creatives, collaborators and dreamers grow and express themselves remains one of the best things we've ever done. Thank you for being part of it with us - we look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.”
Why It's Worth Knowing: Dreams is one of those impressive tools that opened the door for hundreds of creators since its launch in February 2020. Unfortunately, launching on the PS4 at the tail end of its lifespan meant the title wasn’t able to really grow as a creation platform. Given the rise in Roblox and Epic bending Fortnite in the same direction, it feels like Dreams was a missed opportunity for something much bigger.
Arkane Austin Announces That Redfall Won’t Have a 60fps Mode At Launch
One of the bigger upcoming games for Microsoft is Redfall, a first-person shooter from the minds at Arkane Austin. The game is planned for a May 2, 2023 launch on PC and Xbox Series S/X. This week, the developer revealed that the title won’t be launching with a 60fps performance mode, to the dismay of much of the community.
Why It's Worth Knowing: On one hand, it’s not worth knowing at all. The game will likely be quite playable at 30fps, and the PC iteration can run at a higher framerate.
Unfortunately, it reads like bad news for Microsoft’s ongoing first-party offerings. Microsoft’s first-party studios have been light on heavy hitters—Halo Infinite is struggling, games like Fable and Perfect Dark are incognito, the Activision-Blizzard acquisition is lagging, and many of the other acquired studios aren’t putting out hits yet. Redfall’s lack of graphical options add the pile and means Xbox isn’t the best place to play the game.
It’s less that Redfall will be bad and more that the perception isn’t great. Worse, there’s no particular release date for the 60fps patch. The Xbox Series X was catering to a specific type of player, touting being the “fastest, most powerful Xbox ever,” but that comes with expectations for graphical performance. (Whereas Nintendo makes no such promises, so The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom running 30fps and below isn’t a problem.) Not meeting them makes players wonder what they paid for, and that’s not a good place to be.
Film, Television, and Streaming 🎞️
Merged HBO Max and Discovery+ Service Is Just Called Max
Warner Bros. Discovery finally unveiled its streaming service bringing together HBO Max and Discovery+. As previously rumored, the new service is simply called “Max”. Max will launch on May 23, 2023 with three tiers of pricing:
Max Ad Light offers ads for $9.99 a month/$99 a year
Max Ad Free allows two concurrent ad-free streams for $15.99 a month/$149.99 a year
Max Ultimate Ad Free allows four concurrent ad-free streams for $19.99 a month/$199.99 a year
According to WBD executives, the name change is meant to signal that Max’s content is open to everyone, while the HBO name speaks to adult programming. “We all love HBO. And it’s a brand that has been built over five decades to be the edgy, groundbreaking trendsetter in entertainment for adults. But it’s not exactly where parents would most eagerly drop off their kids,” JB Perrette, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery’s global streaming and games, told attendees at the reveal event (via The Verge).
WBD touted new programming coming to the service, including the Game of Thrones prequel series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight; a new series based on The Conjuring Universe; True Detective: Night Country starring Jodie Foster; Park Chan-wook’s The Sympathizer, and The Batman spin-off series The Penguin.
The biggest news was the full announcement of the Harry Potter reboot series from Max. The series will be a new adaptation of the original novels. Previously it was rumored to adapt a book per season, but Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav touted a run for “ten consecutive years”.
WBD is going all-in on the series, with HBO and Max CEO Casey Bloys talking up budgets akin to Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. Of course, the series is still in search of a showrunner. Creator J.K. Rowling is on board to executive produce despite her recent controversies, and the deal seems to allow WBD to potentially pursue other Potter projects.
“We’re free to do anything we want,” Zaslav said, according to THR. “Some areas we need to do with J.K., other areas we have the full ability to go forward. This is a full deployment on Max of Harry Potter. We can still develop other properties.”
Why It's Worth Knowing: Warner Bros. Discover is one of the primary producers of entertainment in North America. The company has been struggling recently, but it still owns the rights to properties like DC Comics, Looney Tunes, Game of Thrones, and Harry Potter, while also boasting brands like HBO and Discovery. This is its shot as a robust service akin to Disney+, and Harry Potter, despite Rowling’s nonsense, is still one big card to play. The price remains prohibitively high though and existing HBO Max users might not want the additional Discovery+ content.
Writers Guild of America Has Strike Authorization Meeting
This week, the Writers Guild of America West had a strike authorization meeting, allowing members to vote on whether the union will strike if an agreement isn’t reached in current contract negotiations with Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. During this meeting, members of the guild’s Negotiation Committee noted that it was “far away” from a firm deal, according to Deadline.
“[Former WGA West President Chris Keyser] talked about how the compensation system is broken. He said that no one wants a strike but said that the two sides are ‘far away’ from a deal. That’s an exact quote. He said that negotiations have really just begun, but the companies have really not given us much of anything,” said one source.
For their part, film and TV producers are complaining that now is not the right time to ask for money. Still, the WGA needs to address issues with streaming compensation and the lack of writers rooms on certain shows. The WGA contract expires on May 1, and the other major guilds, Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and Directors Guild of America (DGA), also have contract negotiations coming up.
Why It's Worth Knowing: A proper strike could derail television and film production. There’s not as much leverage given that a lot of the industry has moved away from standard television seasons, but you can’t bolster your streaming service or film theater seats without help from the three major guilds. If the WGA moves to strike, the two other two guilds gain more leverage as well. At the moment, companies are stockpiling scripts in anticipation of a writers strike.
The Night Agent Becomes One of Netflix’ Most Popular Shows
Ever heard of The Night Agent? I remember watching a trailer (shown above) for the series and noting that outside of its generic premise and cast, the show actually filmed in Washington, D.C. proper. Outside of that, I assumed it would come and go, as some Netflix series do. Instead, The Night Agent is one of Netflix’s most watched series ever.
The series, from The Shield, The Unit, and S.W.A.T. creator Shawn Ryan, debuted with 168 million hours viewed on Netflix. It has remained at the top of the Netflix weekly charts since then. On the Most Popular TV (English) chart, it landed at #9 with 515 million total hours viewed in the first 28 days and it still has another week to go. It bumped Ginny & Georgia Season 2 off the list entirely, and will likely top Stranger Things Season 3 if it adds another 100 million hours viewed this week.
Never bet against a solid military guy show or crime procedural, I guess.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie Pass $500 Million Globally, Becoming Biggest Video Game Adaptation
I’ve been talking about the new trend in Hollywood, the rise of video game adaptations. One of the biggest boosters of that trend continues to make bank, as The Super Mario Bros. Movie crossed $500 million worldwide this week. The film made $22.6 million on Friday in the United States, bringing its worldwide total to $531 million.
It’s also the highest grossing film of 2023, beating Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania on the domestic and global charts. The Super Mario Bros. Movie still has a lot of gas in its tank too; a 60% drop this weekend would be $58 million, and there’s no real competition on the horizon in the family market. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the only other real contender and that isn’t releasing until May 5, 2023. Compared to other Illumination films, Mario is ahead of the curve, and those films—Minions: The Rise of Gru, Despicable Me 2, and Minions—all crossed $938 million at the box office. The limit is the sky.
At very least, there will be more Mario from Illumination, Nintendo, and Universal. Expect a sequel and the rumored Donkey Kong spin-off, but fans are already hoping for far more Nintendo adaptations from Universal in the future.
“I’m not allowed to talk about that right now. Clearly I’ll continue to work with them on the board level and we definitely hope to do more things together,” Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri told Bloomberg in an interview. “The character that was most on our mind was Yoshi. I’d say there was more discussion about Yoshi than any other character that didn’t figure prominently in the film.”
Books 🎞️
Former Comixology Executives Form DSTLRY
As an avid comics reader, it hurt when Comixology owner Amazon gutted the storefront, both from a service and staffing standpoint. Now former executives of Comixology are back with a new idea, but one that’s more digital comic publisher rather than digital comic store. Comixology co-founder David Steinberger and former head of content Chip Mosher have formed DSTLRY, a new publisher.
DSTLRY—which is meant to be a brand shortening of “distillery”— will publish single-issue comics online and in comic shops. The trick is the digital editions will be available for one week only. Following that period, those comics can be resold on the digital marketplace, with a percentage of each sale going to the creators. That seems like a bizarre move to me, but the company insists that collected editions will still be available digitally and in print.
The company will also be setting aside 3% of company equity to be given to creators who are published within the company’s first three years. The inaugural set of creators includes Mirka Andolfo, Brian Azzarello, Marc Bernardin, Elsa Charretier, Becky Cloonan, Lee Garbett, Jock,
Joëlle Jones, Tula Lotay, Jamie McKelvie, Junko Mizuno, Stephanie Phillips, Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, and Ram V, with Will Dennis as the founding editor.
Why It's Worth Knowing: Video game adaptations might be the future, but comics are still another space for Hollywood to pull from. As an example, one of the names here, James Tynion IV, has two upcoming television series based on his creator-owned books, Something Is Killing The Children and Department Of Truth. While creators might not own their work at Marvel or DC, these publishing deals allow them to retain more of their creations. That’s a good thing, even if the digital reselling seems weird to me.
On My Mind 🧠
Kids Like Chess Now: Apparently, the youth of America are playing chess. In a story over at Polygon from the always-excellent Nicole Carpenter, we dive into the current boom the game is seeing, which might have started with Netflix’ The Queen’s Gambit.
“All kids across all high schools [and middle schools] in the U.S. are playing chess and screaming out chess memes. What a time to be alive. I don’t remember anything like this even in 2019 when I was just a chess teacher.”
Lofi Girl Returns with Synthwave Boy In Tow: Look, I don’t quite get Lofi Girl, the YouTube channel that just DJs cool Lofi beats 24/7. But I don’t need to, as the channel has 12.3 million subscribers tuning in. It disappeared briefly on April 10, only to return a day later with a third stream, Synthwave Radio, featuring a young boy rather than the familiar studying girl. There’s no quotes here, just an acknowledgement of something big happening out there on the internet.