Xbox’s Game-Pass Hike Shows Cost of Lost ‘Call of Duty’ Sales Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox division surprised many video game enthusiasts this week when the company announced a 50% price hike, to $30 a month, for the highest level tier in its Game Pass subscription se...

Game Pass grew central to the Xbox strategy, but employees told me the day-one releases have been controversial. Many held concerns that the strategy was cutting into sales of higher-margin games like Call of Duty. Here's our October Game Pass deep dive: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Xbox Cuts Game Pass Price, Will No Longer Include New ‘Call of Duty’ Less than a year after hiking the price of Game Pass, Xbox is bringing it back down.

Call of Duty will no longer release day-one on Game Pass. Xbox gave up more than $300 million in Call of Duty sales after the game started launching on Game Pass, I reported last year after speaking with current and former employees www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Apple, Google Offer ‘Nudify’ Apps Despite Policies Against Them Apple Inc. and Google have continued to offer mobile apps that let users make nonconsensual sexualized images of people despite their policies prohibiting such content, according to a report published...

New: Apple and Google have directed users to dozens of nudifying apps, per new report. The apps, found by searching "undress" or "nudify," have earned $122 million and were downloaded 483 million times. w/ @julialove.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Scoop: Epic is working on a Disney extraction shooter

Ahead of its slated Nov launch employees say they're worried about Epic's pattern of "Version 0.5" releases - a challenge they say may have hurt adoption for the Epic Games Store, mobile store and Fortnite modes
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

congratulations on a legendary run!! can't wait to see what you do next

Roblox’s Hit Game ‘Steal A Brainrot’ Battles Its Many Imitators In the popular video game Steal A Brainrot, the object is petty theft. But now that the internet is awash with knockoffs of the runaway Roblox Corp. hit, its makers are defending their turf.

New: Can you steal "Steal A Brainrot"? Countless games inspired by the Roblox mega-hit have overtaken UGC platforms. And some of them are getting sued! www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I've really enjoyed playing lately :)

Fortnite Maker Epic Games Cuts About 1,000 Jobs Across Company The company is seeing a downturn in engagement on Fortnite

New: Epic is laying off 1,000 employees, sources tell Bloomberg News. The company blamed a downturn in Fortnite engagement. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Investigating AI Deepfakes YouTube video by Coffeezilla

Loved speaking with @coffeezilla.bsky.social about our deepfake research for his new video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=srr0...

New: How will war impact Saudi Arabia's $38 billion investment in becoming the next global gaming hub? We asked Savvy CEO Brian Ward: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Understanding Roblox’s Grooming Problem Spotify video

I love @404media.co and really enjoyed talking Roblox on their podcast ! open.spotify.com/episode/5p7K...

Roblox Is Minting Teen Millionaires Roblox creators are raking in hundreds of thousands a month from simple games like ‘Fisch,’ even as major studios cut jobs and cancel blockbusters.

New: Meet Roblox's teen millionaires. A couple hit games "set them up for life," according to one 22-year-old dev who calls them "a great source of passive income."

Move over YouTube and Twitch -- Roblox is minting the next class of rich, young gamers www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Unlikely Wins and Comped Spins: Inside Stake’s Empire Crypto casino Stake pays Drake and other stars to bet, spreading clips of big wins to impressionable gamblers. The numbers show unusual luck is at work.

NEW @bloomberg.com feature on Stake: the world's largest crypto casino. Our year-long piece dives into Stake employing superstar influencers such as Drake and Adin Ross to livestream gambling. By @cecianasta.bsky.social @oliviasolon.bsky.social and myself: www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

The Math Behind Drake’s Lucky Spins YouTube video by Bloomberg Television

Stake's advertising operation relies on clips from Kick streamers -- including of big jackpots. People have suspected that those influencers won more than the average person. We actually did the math youtube.com/watch?v=SQMIA_9qe80&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fx.com%2F&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE

Wild: Stake co-founder Ed Craven has sat in Kick streamers' chats and suggested games to play. Here's one time Adin Ross really lucked out :)

Wins that big occurred in just one out of every 170,000 rounds, according to our analysis www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

Unlikely Wins and Comped Spins: Inside Stake’s Empire Crypto casino Stake pays Drake and other stars to bet, spreading clips of big wins to impressionable gamblers. The numbers show unusual luck is at work.

Our Stake investigation found that Drake won four times more often than the average gambler playing Stake's own games. And he wasn't the only influencer getting very lucky livestreaming Stake slots on Kick www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

Unlikely Wins and Comped Spins: Inside Stake’s Empire Crypto casino Stake pays Drake and other stars to bet, spreading clips of big wins to impressionable gamblers. The numbers show unusual luck is at work.

Stake says influencers like Drake and Adin Ross don’t win more than the average gambler. We ran the numbers, and guess what :)

Here's our year-long data investigation into Stake and Kick's influencer empire, with @oliviasolon.bsky.social and @leonyin.bsky.social: www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

I interviewed Roblox's head of parental advocacy for Vulture about safety on the platform 👀

Xbox’s President on Handheld Devices and Subscription Gaming A relative outsider, Sarah Bond is leading a high-stakes transformation of a company that’s lagging behind Sony and Nintendo.

We profiled Sarah Bond in 2024 and went deep into her goals for Xbox. With @dinabass.bsky.social: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Microsoft Taps AI Executive to Run Xbox, Recommits to Console Microsoft Corp. named AI executive Asha Sharma to lead its Xbox and gaming business, replacing Phil Spencer, and will recommit to console users after years of developing products for mobile and PC pla...

Phil Spencer is retiring from Xbox: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

honored 🫡

Overwatch's new "story-driven era" launch doubles release day concurrent record on Steam | News-in-Brief The resource for people who make and sell games.

Overwatch attracted a record 166,000 Steam players last night... so crazy.... congrats to the Overwatch team.... I had a lot of fun making up new curse words for Jetpack Cat www.gamesindustry.biz/overwatchs-n...

Jasontheween Parlays Goofy Antics Into $3-Million-a-Year Job Twitch star still lives in the mansion that the gamer group FaZe Clan occupied

How did JasonTheWeen break through so quickly on Twitch? “My niche was doing cringy shit on the internet,” he told me. Now, he makes $3m a year. From stream-sniping on Val to a $125,000 car and the FaZe Clan drama, here's the first JasonTheWeen profile: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Jasontheween Parlays Goofy Antics Into $3-Million-a-Year Job Twitch star still lives in the mansion that the gamer group FaZe Clan occupied

New: Had a lot of fun watching JasonTheWeen get a space-alien makeover at the FaZe Clan house in December -- only for FaZe to spectacularly explode weeks later. Read our profile of Jason, Twitch's new breakout star: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

this is fantastic

X updated Grok's image-generation feature so only paid users can make deepfakes. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

X is producing deepfakes at a rate 84x higher than the top 5 dedicated deepfake sites combined, according to an analysis. Victims say there's no recourse. Their images are still up despite reports to X, and those who speak out become targets. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Musk’s Grok AI Generated Thousands of Undressed Images Per Hour on X Elon Musk’s X has become a top site for images of people that have been non-consensually undressed by AI, according to a third-party analysis, with thousands of instances each hour over a day earlier ...

New: 6,700. That's how many sexually suggestive or nudifying images Grok is producing every hour, according to an analysis. X is now a top deepfake site. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

New: FaZe talent left after a major contract dispute. Influencers had the option to go independent or sign with HardScope, formed by DraftKings co-founder Matt Kalish, who invested $10m in FaZe.

Kalish says FaZe's current structure is "unsustainable." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...