Stuff Worth Knowing for the Week of December 5, 2022

The FTX files a legal complaint to stop Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, Meta threatens news over a bill in Congress, and Petty Jenkins walks away from Wonder Woman 3.

Welcome back to Stuff Worth Knowing! Each week, I'll round up news related to tech, video games, film, television, anime, and more. At the end of each newsletter, there will be a section called On The Calendar, which will include some of those notable dates that are near-term. Oh, and I also launched my Patreon, SavePhile, where my more thoughtful musings on any topic will go.

Video Games 🎮

Diablo IV Devs Call Out Mismanagement and Crunch Ahead Of Release Date Announcement

Yesterday at the Game Awards, we received a final release date for Diablo IV, the long-delayed sequel in Blizzard Entertainment's dungeon-crawling franchise. The game will launch on June 6, 2023 for PC, Xbox Series, PS4, and PS5. 

That announcement was bookended by good and bad news for Blizzard, however. On one end, there were previews of an early build — including one by yours truly — and on the other, there was a story in the Washington Post about the troubled development of the game. The employees that spoke to WaPo allege poor working conditions, including intense crunch, high turnover, and an unclear vision for the title. 

“We were never going to hit our date without crunch,” one former Blizzard employee told the Post. “And even with crunch, I don’t even know if we would have hit our date.” 

Employees also pointed to the failed leadership of former director Luis Barriga and former lead designer Jesse McCree. Both were fired in August 2021. The report also highlights the narrative work of creative director Sebastian Stępień, who previously worked on The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. Stępień's story apparently focused the rape of a female character, while others pointed out the poor handling of other female characters, including Diablo IV villain Lilith.

Why It's Worth Knowing: A number of games are too big to fail, and it's likely that Diablo IV is in that high tier. But it's worth knowing about the poor business practices that create some of the biggest games in our industry. Games are made by people, and the best games come from proper and healthy working conditions. Also, poor working conditions at Blizzard Entertainment would likely be concerning to its potential parent company…

FTC Will Sue to Stop Microsoft's Purchase of Activision-Blizzard

The week started off good for Microsoft's potential acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. A story in the New York Post highlighted a split in the four-member Federal Trade Commission (FTC) panel reviewing the deal, with the commissioners leaning toward letting the acquisition pass. This report was joined by an op-ed from Communications Workers of America (CWA) president Chris Shelton in The Hill, which argued that the acquisition was a good idea because of Microsoft's commitment to labor neutrality, allowing all employees to unionize if they wanted to. In fact, employees at ZeniMax Media began voting on whether to unionize this week. Xbox boss Phil Spencer even tweeted an odd commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms for the next decade after the merger.

The sunshine dimmed on Friday, when the FTC filed a legal complaint against the acquisition. The vote mentioned above went three-to-one in favor of the complaint, which stated that, "Microsoft would have the ability and increased incentive to withhold or degrade Activision’s content in ways that substantially lessen competition."

Many jumped upon one erroneous statement within the FTC's complaint. Item #12 of its "Nature of the Case," states: "Microsoft assured the European Commission (“EC”) during its antitrust review of the ZeniMax purchase that Microsoft would not have the incentive to withhold ZeniMax titles from rival consoles. But, shortly after the EC cleared the transaction, Microsoft made public its decision to make several of the newly acquired ZeniMax titles, including Starfield, Redfall, and Elder Scrolls VI, Microsoft exclusives."

MLex, a business-only EU regulatory news outlet, asked the European Commission about this and the EU regulatory body denied part of this claim. "The commission cleared the Microsoft/Zenimax transaction unconditionally as it concluded that the transaction would not raise competition concerns," the EC told MLex (via ResetEra). The EC also stated that Microsoft had not made any "commitments" in the matter. 

This is only one point in the FTC's overall argument, however, so it's not game over just yet. We don't know how everything will shake out, but the FTC is probably riding high on blocking the merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. Microsoft is also feeling confident in its case, at least in public. "While we believe in giving peace a chance, we have complete confidence in our case and welcome the opportunity to present it in court," said Microsoft president Brad Smith on Twitter.

Why It's Worth Knowing: Look, this is the biggest gaming industry acquisition, period. It's big enough that the FTC likely had to step in and at least get some concessions out of Microsoft regardless. I'm still of the mindset that the deal will go through, but it'll be interesting to see the shape of it at the end. 

Xbox Raising First-Party Game Prices to $70 in 2023

Sony made the jump to $69.99 as its new standard price point when it began this generation. All of the Sony first-party launch games on the PS5 came in at the price point, with the exception of Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Sackboy: A Big Adventure. This left Microsoft to differentiate itself as the "good guy" publisher, keeping its first-party games at $59.99 in addition to a growing Xbox Game Pass library.

Well, the good times are over. Microsoft has told Eurogamer that 2023 is going to represent a price change. "We've held on price increases until after the holidays so families can enjoy the gift of gaming. Starting in 2023 our new, built for next-gen, full-priced games, including Forza Motorsport, Redfall, and Starfield, will launch at $69.99 USD on all platforms," said the company in a statement.

Why It's Worth Knowing: We've been locked into $59.99 as the standard price point for major games for a very, very long time now, while development has only gotten more and more expensive. Personally, $69.99 does represent a speed bump to any quick purchase, causing me to be more picky in my spending. But for the games I do buy, hopefully that money can go to better working conditions for developers in the future. (I mean, I doubt that's the case, but I can hope.)

If Nintendo joins, $69.99 becomes the de facto standard with all the major console owners. 

GameStop Begins to Lay Off Employees Making Its Blockchain Wallet

We're almost done with 2022, but the season of layoffs continues. This is the first of two layoffs stories in the newsletter this week. According to a report by Axios, at least six engineers tasked with building the company's planned blockchain wallet were laid off. Axios was unable to find out the full scope of the layoffs.

The reduction came ahead of GameStop's fiscal third quarter results. Net sales were down 8.5% year-over-year to $1.1 billion and the company still reported a net loss of $94 million for the quarter. Having a meme stock boom did nothing to fix the company's fundamentals. GameStop is still trading far above where it was in 2021 before the fake boom, but there's no clear turnaround available.  

Why It's Worth Knowing: Part of the GameStop turnaround story was leaning into new markets like NFTs and cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, all of these potential business models have gone absolutely nowhere. GameStop's NFT marketplace was a flop, the FTX partnership went bust with the crypto exchange's crash, and cryptocurrency as a whole continues to fall. The alternatives were all mirages and GameStop has yet to figure out how to make its core business more profitable.

Ziff Davis Layoffs Hit IGN

Yesterday, a number of IGN employees announced on social media that they had been fired unceremoniously, on the day of The Game Awards and right before the holidays. According to one of the employees laid off, the reason given was due to "restructuring." Gamesindustry.biz reported that the cuts hit the content, engineering, and ad sales teams at IGN and in other business units at Ziff Davis. 

This follows other media layoffs at companies like GameInformer, Vice, Future, Fanbyte, and G4TV. Similar to the season of tech layoffs, gaming media has been hacked apart for a lot of 2022. Hopefully things will look up next year. 

Tech ⌨️

Apple's Virtual and Augmented Reality Software Now Named xrOS

Everyone is patiently waiting for Apple to dive into the virtual and augmented reality space. Meta has been doing its best to corner the market and the metaverse, but the industry knows not to bet against Apple. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple has renamed its new operating system from its originally-rumored name, RealityOS, to the brand-new "xrOS". 

The name is meant to illustrate the combined virtual and augmented reality that the operating system and headsets are meant to provide. "Extended reality" is the blanket term encompassing both types of digital reality, also known as XR for short. It's a move similar to Facebook changing its name to Meta to corner the mindshare of a particular term. Apple already has versions of iOS apps like Messages, Maps, and FaceTime planned for xrOS. 

Gurman previously reported that the device will cost between $2,000 and $3,000. It'll be powered by Apple's own M2 chip and sport more than 10 cameras for tracking and passthrough. The name for the headset itself was previously rumored to be "Reality Pro" or "Reality One".

Why It's Worth Knowing: Extended reality is the next thing, but right now the devices are either too expensive or the companies behind them are focusing on the wrong thing. Meta is currently running into both issues, with the enterprise-focused Meta Quest Pro while also focusing on the Metaverse rather than providing more useful software for the cheaper, mass market Meta Quest 2. The devices need to be cheaper and smaller, so that they can fit easily into users' lives and actually provide a useful need. (Take this example, with Google testing out augmented reality glasses for real-time translation.)

Meta Threatens To Ban News If Congress Passes Journalism Bill

This year saw a big push for a pair of bills in the U.S. Senate and House (S. 673 and H.R. 1735), each known as the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA). The idea behind the bills is "to provide a temporary safe harbor for publishers of online content to collectively negotiate with dominant online platforms regarding the terms on which content may be distributed." Essentially, news organizations could band together to negotiate with Meta and Google about how their news is used on those platforms, including compensation terms.

The bills have been around since 2021, but this week, one of them was supposed to be added as a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This moved the bills from potential threat to existential reality, causing tech companies and lobbyists to push back hard. Meta head of policy communications Andy Stone tweeted a statement against the bill.

"If Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscription. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act fails to recognize the key fact: publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves because it benefits their bottom line — not the other way around," he wrote.

The push back looks to have worked. The text of the JCPA was left out of the NDAA this week. This does not prevent the standalone bills from progressing in the House or Senate. 

Meta has threatened the same in other countries in response to similar legislation. Last year in Australia, Meta actually prevented Australian users from sharing news in response to a bill, which was later amended. (Google threatened to leave the country entirely.) When Canada introduced its Online News Act in 2022, Meta once again spoke out against the legislation, arguing that news wasn't even all that important for Canadian users.

Why It's Worth Knowing: Let's be entirely honest, Facebook has done irreparable damage to news. Any pushback to that is probably a good thing, which is why Meta is doing its best to stop any legislation that would allow news orgs to band together and negotiate. Meta is simply too powerful without some sort of union-style group on the other side, which was what JCPA is intended to allow.

Twitter Blue Will Cost More on App Store

Last week, Twitter owner Elon Musk said that he'd "go to war" with Apple over its 30% cut of all App Store transactions. That ultimately didn't happen after Musk had a meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Musk thinks he's got strength and swagger, but no one is winning a fight against Apple.

According to The Information, Twitter Blue will be returning with two different price points. The subscription service will cost $11 a month if you subscribe through the Twitter iOS app, or $8 if you do so through Twitter on the web. There's no mention on whether this additional tax will extend to the Google Play Store and the Android app, where Google also takes a 30% cut. Perhaps Musk doesn't know about that yet. 

Oh, I guess there was some nonsense about the "Twitter Files," but none of that was actually newsworthy.

Film, Television, and Streaming 🎞️

The Combined HBO and Discovery Service Might be Called "Max"

Following the merger of Warner Bros and Discovery, CEO David Zaslav has promised a combined streaming service, bringing together HBO Max and Discovery+ in one app. This new service is coming in 2023, but one question that remains: What will this new service be called? HBO+? Discovery Max?

The answer is apparently… just "Max". According to a report by CNBC, Warner Bros. Discovery's lawyers are currently vetting the new name. Apparently, the merged service is internally known as BEAM. 

Why It's Worth Knowing: Branding is everything! Zaslav has already pushed up the launch for the merged service to Spring 2023 and landing on the right name is key. The strongest creative brands in the company are undoubtedly "Warner Bros" and "HBO," but Zaslav is also more open to licensing Warner Bros content to other companies, so he might not want to lean too heavily on those names.

The thing is… Max is a terrible name. Just terrible. I'm sure it'll be fine, but come on folks. Aim higher.

Superhero Watch: Patty Jenkins Walks Away From Wonder Woman 3

Shifting to another Warner Bros. Discovery story, let's talk about DC Studios. Everything started on Thursday, when the Hollywood Reporter said that the next Wonder Woman sequel was not moving forward. This was followed by a story in The Wrap, stating that the reason the film wasn't still in active development was because director and co-writer Patty Jenkins walked off the project.

Apparently, Jenkins presented her pitch for Wonder Woman 3 to Warner Bros. Film Group CEOs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. The pair disliked the treatment and thought it was the wrong direction for the franchise, offering notes for a rework. Jenkins ultimately decided that she wanted to stick with her vision, walking away from the film entirely. This doesn't mean Gal Gadot won't reprise her role, merely that new DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran need to find a new helmer and direction. 

THR's Heat Vision newsletter dropped further DC Studios tidbits, including the stalled Man of Steel 2, another film with Michael Keaton's Batman, and former boss Walter Hamada's plans for the universe. If that's the kind of thing that interests you, it's well worth reading! I won't steal THR's thunder.

On My Mind 🧠

This section is where I can highlight statements or moments that aren't entirely newsworthy, but still interesting. 

James Cameron Says Superhero Films Are "The Rising Tide of Technique": James Cameron is making the rounds promoting Avatar: The Way of Water. The film is looking to be huge, but more importantly it means a bunch of interviews with Cameron, who answers every question with his usual brusque manner. In an interview with Deadline, he compared the visual effects work in the Avatar sequel to Thanos from Avengers: Endgame.

“Obviously, the big comic book superhero films have been driving the sheer volume of the industry, and the rising tide of technique raises everybody together. It gives you higher quality artists. You’ve got more tools and plug-ins and code. You’ve got more talented people writing code, and simulations, and all that sort of thing out there. Then, as we’re putting our team together, and as Weta Digital is constantly having new hires, it’s coming out of that pool, so it improves everything together.”

“Weta Effects, as it’s now known, is the best. Right? I mean, ILM does great work, but when it comes to the kind of emotive facial stuff that we’re doing…I mean, Thanos? Come on. Give me a break. You saw this [new Avatar] movie. It’s not even close.”

Mike Flanagan Taking Another Shot at The Dark Tower: Last week, Mike Flanagan split with Netflix, taking his horror storytelling over to Amazon Studios. In an exclusive interview with Deadline this week, Flanagan talked about his next project. He's already directed adaptations of other Stephen King projects like Doctor Sleep and Gerald's Game, but this time he's taking on King's magnum opus, The Dark Tower. The rights are currently separate from any Amazon deal, but he could bring the planned series to the streamer.

"Predating our deal with Amazon, we acquired the rights to The Dark Tower, which if you know anything about me, you know it has been my Holy Grail of a project for most of my life. We actually have those rights carved out of our Amazon deal, which doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t get behind it at some point — you don’t know. But that’s something we’ve been developing ourselves and are really passionate about finally getting it up on its feet at some point."

"I wrote a pilot, we view it as a series that’s going at least five seasons. And having lived with this project as long as I have, I have an enormous amount of it worked out in my brain. But I have a pilot script I’m thrilled with and a very detailed outline for the first season and a broader outline for the subsequent seasons."

Markiplier Created an OnlyFans Page: Look, if you don't know who Markiplier is, fair. He is one of the biggest YouTubers in the world, with 34 million subscribers. He's also generally a good-looking dude. So when he announced that he'd create an OnlyFans page if fans pushed his podcast over Joe Rogan on Spotify and Apple, they listened and made it happen.

So, as promised, he released a video with a link to his official OnlyFans and offered up what fans wanted. He promised tasteful nudes and that's what he gave fans. Now, it's unlikely that he's going to stay on the platform long-term, as he's not the first celebrity to engage in some OnlyFans tourism. Bella Thorne did the same in 2020, courting big cash and controversy for the move. At the very least, the proceeds from Markiplier's account will be going to two named charities.