Are We Entering A Period In The Video Game Industry Of Hyper-Consolidation?

from the bigger-and-bigger-and-bigger dept

You will recall that we had several posts covering when Microsoft acquired Zenimax Media for $7 billion, as well as some of the potential fallout from that acquisition. Much of the focus was on what the purchase of Zenimax and its child studios, such as Bethesda, would mean for long-running game franchises from those studios going exclusive to PC and/or Xbox. Microsoft made a bunch of vague, lightly-conflicting statements on the topic before ripping the bandaid off by making the next Elder Scrolls game an Xbox/PC exclusive.

Most folks in the gaming community are either agnostic about exclusives, or decidedly hate them. There are very few cheerleaders for exclusives in other words, which is why most news about larger publishers acquiring small or mid-sized publishers is greeted with very narrow eyes.

That being said, there are acquisitions, and then there are acquisitions.

You might have heard the news: Microsoft has announced plans to acquire gaming behemoth Activision Blizzard King (ABK) and its subsidiary development studios. The deal is valued at $68.7 billion—or roughly 17 acquisitions of the Star Wars franchise—and that kind of money isn't spent without an expectation of major moves (and revenue) going forward.

From there, the ArsTechnica post digs into some predictions as to what those moves will be: more games going into Xbox's Game Pass, more mobile games spun out through the King studio, and, of course, the potential for franchises like World of Warcraft going exclusive. A good portion of the reaction to this deal being announced is focused on what titles will go exclusive.

But this deal is much, much bigger than that. It is the largest acquisition in the gaming space by Microsoft and the read on it in the financial space is that this is the real start to a much larger trend of consolidation in the industry.

“It’s going to start a major ripple effect in terms of consolidation for other videogame publishers,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives.

Microsoft’s purchase of Activision will accelerate more deals in the industry, analysts said, as big tech companies seek to broaden their consumer offerings by acquiring game publishers and developers that attracted players during the pandemic. Microsoft’s purchase of Activision, which owns the Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush franchises, would also help the company edge into the streaming and metaverse spaces, they added.

Notably, once news of this deal broke, stocks for publishers like EA, Ubisoft, and Nintendo all rose significantly. That's the market buying this as a trend and trying to get out ahead of the eventual stock climb when future deals are announced.

So, what does this mean for the industry? It doesn't have to be bad, so long as these large acquisitions are backfilled by new entrants from smaller players. But there are a lot of ways for this consolidation to go wrong. Kotaku's writeup is a bit over the top for my taste, but there are some valid points to consider in there.

This is the future. There is zero chance that boardrooms everywhere from EA to Ubisoft to Sony aren’t going to be full this week with panicked executives talking about their options for something similar, because their only instinct will be to match this. To keep up, keep those share prices growing, until there are only 2-3 companies left at the top of the food chain, and things are just a little worse still for the rest of us. Because they know nothing else.

We're unlikely to reach a reality in which there are 3 parent gaming companies out there. If we did, yeah, that would be bad. Instead, I think the real danger in all of this could be the coordinated fragmentation of the gaming industry along platform lines. If the same companies that make the platforms (PCs, Playstations, Xboxs, etc) also makes some sizable plurality or majority of the games, that absolutely will lead to more exclusivity, more walled gardens, more hoarding of the culture that is games.

And that would ultimately be bad for the industry, no matter how many billions of dollars are exchanged in these acquisitions.

Filed Under: consolidation, video games, world of warcraft, xbox
Companies: activision blizzard, microsoft

Netflix Hits Users With Another Round Of Price Hikes

from the meet-the-new-boss... dept

It's been obvious for a while that the future of internet television is starting to look increasingly like traditional cable. Initially, the streaming sector was all about innovation, choice, and lower costs to drive subscriber interest. But as the market has matured and become dominated by bigger players, some familiar patterns have emerged, including giant companies trying to lock down as much content as possible in exclusives, and a steady parade of price hikes that slowly, surely, start to erode the value proposition.

Last week Netflix announced that the company would be imposing yet another price hike. Here in the U.S., the company's 720p "basic" tier is increasing $1 to $10 per month, its 1080p "standard" tier is increasing $1.50 to $15.50 per month, and its 4K "premium" will see a $2 increase to $20 per month. Similar hikes are also on their way to Canadian subscribers. In a statement, Netflix justified the hikes using familiar rhetoric about "improving the customer experience":

"We understand people have more entertainment choices than ever, and we’re committed to delivering an even better experience for our members," the statement said. "We’re updating our prices so that we can continue to offer a wide variety of quality entertainment options. As always, we offer a range of plans so members can pick a price that works for their budget."

Granted every time the company imposes a rate hike, folks act as if the world is falling. Back when the company bungled its "Qwikster" DVD unit spin off and imposed price hikes there were no shortage of critics insisting the company was doomed. But for now, consumers continue to find the value proposition streaming offers to be worthwhile, especially in comparison to the still high prices of traditional cable TV options. Streaming still generally sees the kind of customer satisfaction ratings traditional cable companies can only dream of.

But the price hikes that have hit streaming TV services (especially live streaming services) haven't been without repercussion. Not only did more customers cut the traditional TV cord last year, streaming TV services saw a significant reduction in growth. Netflix itself saw a significant drop in subscriber growth across 2021 and a loss in total subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, in no small part due to a 2020 price hike.

With the pricing for live streaming TV services like YouTube TV increasingly looking more and more like traditional cable, and the hunt to lock down exclusives driving increased confusion among consumers trying to find their favorite content, there continues to be a real risk the entire sector simply forgets to learn anything from the plight of traditional TV. As in, keep pushing price hikes for the same or an eroded value proposition, and you can expect a lot of potential subscribers to move to alternatives... whether that's over the air broadcasts using an antenna, or TikTok.

Filed Under: cable, price hikes, streaming, video
Companies: netflix

Vice Publishes Bullshit Nonsense Article Blaming DEFCON Voting Village For 'Stop The Steal' Idiots

from the this-is-bad-reporting dept

Vice News has some really great reporters on tech issues who work for its Motherboard publication. For reasons that don't make sense, last week they had some other reporter write an absolutely ridiculously bad story trying to argue that the "stop the steal" idiots were helped along by the amazingly important work done by folks in the famed "Voting Village" at the DEFCON conference. The full article is long and bad and has the ridiculous and misleading title: How an "Ethical" Hacker Convention Is Fueling Trump's Big Lie. But the very premise of this story is not just wrong, but dangerously stupid. It's shameful that anyone at Vice thought this was an appropriate story to publish.

The facts are this: there have been quite reasonable concerns about the security and technology in certain electronic voting machines going back decades. In fact, Techdirt covered tons of these stories, which were often about problems with the security in early machines, the lack of paper trails for the votes, and (perhaps most importantly) the unwillingness of the voting machine companies to work transparently with actual security researchers who could help harden those machines. Voting Village was set up in DEFCON as a response to that, in which these ethical hackers would get their hands on voting machines, seek out the vulnerabilities in order to help harden the security and improve these machines. It's how cybersecurity has always worked.

And while it is true that some of the Stop the Steal grifters have tried to take some of the headlines or presentations from DEFCON and pretend that they prove that the 2020 election was hacked or broken or whatnot, that's got nothing to do with Voting Village "helping" them. If it weren't for Voting Village, those same grifters would have found other reports and other news stories to misinterpret and to make their unsubstantiated claims.

The simple fact is that just because security researchers have concerns about some voting machines, and have worked to highlight where security vulnerabilities might be, that does not mean that an election is easily hacked, or that any election was actually hacked. That's the kind of thing that the "stop the steal" grifters have never been able to show and all of the evidence to date has failed to substantiate.

Paragraphs like this are utter nonsense:

And then there is DEFCON. The experts here agree that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and many have worked hard to debunk those conspiracy theories. But with its sensationalist rhetoric, flashy theatrics, unstructured hacking, and lack of context about how elections operate, DEFCON also emphasizes the vulnerabilities that are possible, even when they’re not necessarily probable. As a result, the event serves as easy fodder for dis- and malinformation, showing how even well-intentioned experts are being used to prop up the Big Lie.

Yeah, it emphasizes vulnerabilities are possible because of course they're possible. That's just being factual and accurate. And, on top of that, the way to minimize those vulnerabilities and to better protect elections is to allow security researchers to find those vulnerabilities, report them, and seek better ways of protecting voting. And that's exactly what Voting Village does. Arguing that they should somehow be blamed because idiots are misrepresenting their work, as if the work was the problem is so disingenuous to be effectively disinformation.

Or as security researchers Rob Graham rightly notes:

As he notes later in the thread, "pretty much all government transparency information is at some point misrepresented by conspiracy theorists" but that's no excuse to say we should have less transparency.

Others, like Kim Zetter -- one of the best cybersecurity reporters ever -- point out that the reporter's main sources for the article appear to be people close to voting tech companies and election officials, which are the two groups of people who are most frequently embarrassed by the security research that comes out of Voting Village. In other words, this was a hit piece, put in place by folks who have long wanted to destroy Voting Village. In fact, Zetter highlights that one of the main sources quoted in the article has complained about Voting Village for years, which seems like extremely relevant context that was left out of the article.

Others noted that many of the actual experts in this space -- names which have been mentioned on Techdirt frequently, like Alex Halderman and Matt Blaze -- are not quoted in the article at all. The author claimed that while he spoke to many such experts he didn't have room to include their quotes. Maggie MacAlpine, a Voting Village organizer notes that neither she nor any of her colleagues were quoted, and the article is full of "unattributed, and factually incorrect statements."

Matt Blaze -- again, one of the foremost experts on election security issues -- summed up the nonsense premise of the article perfectly:

He later notes three important facts about the complicated world of computer security:

• There's been great progress securing US election infrastructure.
• There are still serious vulnerabilities and much work is left to be done.
• Yet there's no evidence technical attacks have altered election outcomes.

And the only reason the first bullet point is as true as it is, is because of the work of the security researchers like those who populate Voting Village every year at DEFCON. The only reason more work is progressing on the second point is because of the same thing. And articles like this one in Vice make that much, much more difficult.

Do better, Vice.

Filed Under: defcon, electronic voting, security research, voting, voting village
Companies: vice

German Police Caught Using COVID-Tracing Data To Search For Crime Witnesses

from the law-enforcement-means-applying-enforcement-in-one-direction-only dept

Multiple governments have been relying on contact-tracing apps to limit the spread of COVID. This has gone on nearly uninterrupted for the last couple of years in more than a few countries. Given the type of data collected -- contact information and location data -- it was only a matter of time before some government decided to abuse this new information source for reasons unrelated to tracking COVID infections.

I guess the only surprise is that it took this long to be abused.

Authorities in Germany faced increasing criticism on Tuesday over their misuse of a COVID contact tracing app to investigate a case.

[...]

The incident concerns authorities in the city of Mainz. At the end of November, a man fell to his death after leaving a restaurant in the city, prompting police to open a case.

While trying to track down witnesses, police and prosecutors managed to successfully petition local health authorities to release data from the Luca app, which logs how long people stayed at an establishment.

Authorities then reached out to 21 potential witnesses based on the data they had unlawfully acquired from the app.

The Luca app used in Germany collects data on visitors to public places. Users enter their contact info into the app and scan QR codes posted at restaurants, bars, and public events. When they leave the venue, Luca users sign out of the location.

This app has proven very useful in Germany, mostly due to it automating the mandatory paperwork required of restaurant and venue owners, who were required to gather contact information on patrons and log the time they spent in their businesses. The Luca app does this automatically and encrypts the info, protecting it from the prying eyes of malicious outsiders.

Both the venue and the health department have to agree to decrypt the data and, once decrypted, it remains solely in the hands of the health department. It is only supposed to be used to track potential infections, hence the backlash against police and prosecutors in Mainz.

Following the backlash, prosecutors are now promising to never do this again. But that pledge only applies to these law enforcement officials. According to Luca's developers, lots of cops are asking for this data.

The app's developers, culture4life, sharply criticized the actions of authorities in Mainz.

"We condemn the abuse of Luca data collected to protect against infections," the company said in a statement.

Culture4life added that it receives frequent requests for its data from the law enforcement — but those requests are routinely denied.

This may be Germany's first scandal related to misuse of COVID-tracking data. Hopefully, the public response to this news will help it to be its last. But if the rules that have been in place since the app went into use aren't sufficient to deter law enforcement from seeking data it's clearly illegal for it to obtain, it's unlikely a little bad press targeting another agency will have much of an effect on investigators who think they've found a better way to round up suspects or witnesses.

Filed Under: contact tracing, covid tracking, germany, luca, surveillance

Daily Deal: 1.75'' HD Touch Screen Smartwatch

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The 1.75'' HD Touch Screen Smartwatch is the perfect fitness and lifestyle partner. Connect it with Bluetooth 5.0 compatible devices to receive and make calls, or get SMS and message notifications. Let it record, keep track of, and monitor your heart rate, blood pressure, and sleeping patterns. With an IP67 waterproof rating, you can wear it as it keeps track of your activity with multiple sport modes, including walking, running, cycling, basketball, and more. Complete with an impressive 1.75'' TFT HD circular touch screen, 230mAh battery capacity, and wide compatibility, this smartwatch is a modern lifestyle must-have. It's on sale for $53.95.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

New Bill Claims To Ban 'Surveillance Advertising,' But Doesn't Actually Do It

from the half-measures dept

This week Representatives Anna Eshoo and Jan Schakowsky, and Senator Cory Booker introduced the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act, which the trio proclaim will dismantle the snoopvertising industry and make everybody immeasurably safer:

"Surveillance advertising is a predatory and invasive practice. The hoarding of people’s personal data not only abuses privacy, but also drives the spread of misinformation, domestic extremism, racial division, and violence,” said Senator Booker. “With the introduction of the Ban Surveillance Advertising Act, advertisers will be forced to stop exploiting individuals’ online behavior for profits and our communities will be safer as a result."

Except it's not really clear the bill actually does that.

This bill does claim to prohibit digital advertisers from flinging targeted ads at users based on protected class information like race and sexual orientation. But "broad" location-based targeting would still be allowed as would "contextual advertising," or ads linked to specific online content being viewed. It also continues to allow a lot of behavior just as long as ad market participants pinky swear they're doing the right thing:

"Paragraph (1) does not apply to the targeting of the dissemination of an advertisement based on information described in clauses (i) through (iv) of subparagraph (B) of such paragraph that is provided to an advertising facilitator by an advertiser or by a third party on behalf of an adver6 tiser, if the advertising facilitator is provided a written attestation that the advertiser is not in violation of subsection (b) with respect to such information.

So basically, if companies proclaim they're doing the right thing (which they often won't be, and over-extended regulators likely won't be able to consistently confirm), they'll get a bit of a pass:

That's the real problem here. The entire digital advertising space is such an intentionally complicated mess, even reporters who cover it for a living are often utterly dumbfounded as to what's actually happening. Some of this is just because internet technology can be complicated, something that's a challenge for Luddite lawmakers. Some of it is because making it intentionally complicated makes it extremely difficult for even competent regulators to effectively regulate. The idea that a single bill can fix vast problems across an ocean of global industries seems a bit simplistic at this point.

All policed by U.S. regulators that are so underfunded, understaffed, under-resourced, or just plain corrupt that they can't even tackle the majority of obvious fraud occurring everyday, much less the elaborate data monetization systems driving the global economy. Which is why we keep seeing a rotating parade of ad and privacy related scandals that take years for policymakers to even identify, much less address. More often than not, these scandals end with adorable wrist slaps long after the fact (see: the tale of Verizon's "zombie cookie," or the wireless industry's recent location data scandals) and fines that are paltry in comparison to the money made off of the offense.

Much like the recent bill to force companies to shorten overlong terms of service, this bill feels like a feel-good venture to fix a very complicated problem with language that doesn't actually do what it promises to do. There are so many reasons we don't really effectively police the entire massive data collection realm (from telecom networks and app stores to data brokers), but a major reason is we don't actually enable and fund our regulators to actually do a job of this (or any real) scope. And the regulators we do have tend to be of the revolving door variety -- utterly disinterested in any solution that might topple the money trough for their previous or future employees.

A core underlying component of U.S. dysfunction is corruption. And our regulators are so dysfunctional, under-resourced, and corrupt they can't even tackle very basic, obvious examples of fraud and monopolization (see the telecom, banking, pharmaceutical, and energy sectors). This idea that they're going to fix the entire data collection ecosystem (which again includes telecom, data brokers, app makers, the entirety of modern tech, and even the prison industry) without first fixing those problems -- much less with a bill filled with loopholes -- feels a tad performative and naïve.

Filed Under: advertising, anna eshoo, cory booker, jan schakowsky, privacy, targeted advertising

The Governor Who Thinks Examining HTML Is Criminal Hacking Is Now Working To Make Missouri's Public Records Laws Worse

from the thank-you-for-your-self-serving dept

Missouri Governor Mike Parson is perhaps best known these days for trying to convert a right-click menu option into criminal hacking with his relentless (and relentlessly uninformed) desire to turn the people who exposed a security flaw in the state's Department of Education website into nefarious criminals.

Governor Parson seems to believe intimidation is better than accountability. Whatever can be used to deter normal people from exposing the shortcomings of better people (i.e., government employees) is fair game. For years, the state's public records law have served this same purpose: increasing the distance between the state's government and the lowly people who have the misfortune of living in this state.

In 2016, the state's laws were used to justify something that looked a whole lot like extortion. Non-profit group Reclaim the Records asked the state for birth and death records dating back to 1910. To be sure, this was a big ask. But it wasn't nearly as big as the state agency portrayed it. According to the state's Department of Health and Senior Services, compiling these records for release would involve more than 23,000 hours of labor at $42.50 an hour, resulting in a $1.5 million bill for services rendered.

This wasn't acceptable to Reclaim the Records, which chose to hire a lawyer rather than issue a $1.5 million check to the Missouri government. Once the group lawyered up, the DHSS changed tack, informing Reclaim the Records it simply wouldn't be releasing the data at all. It became apparent the agency was only interested in profiting from information it was required to collect and compile. Any third-party with enough money could buy this data from the DHSS. But public records requesters were being asked to pay full retail plus a sizable markup for information the agency was obligated to turn over to them.

A few years later, the transparency rating of the state and its "sunshine law" took another hit when the state's attorney general arrived in court to argue the government had a First Amendment right to withhold records. The AG deliberately conflated rights afforded to residents (the protection that allows them to make complaints about government officials without fear of retaliation) with the state government's nonexistent right to withhold records under the First Amendment.

With the state governor and his office undoubtedly facing hundreds of public records requests related to his inexplicable decision to treat responsible reporting of security flaws as criminal hacking, the governor's office is backing (and directing) efforts that will make it more difficult for public records requesters to obtain documents and data from government agencies.

Amending Missouri’s open records law to permit government agencies to withhold more information from the public — and charge more for any records that are turned over — is among Gov. Mike Parson’s priorities for the 2022 legislative session.

The changes, which were outlined in a presentation to Parson’s cabinet that was obtained by The Independent through an open records request, include a proposal to allow government agencies to charge fees for the time attorneys spend reviewing records requested by the public.

Such a change would reverse a recent Missouri Supreme Court ruling against Parson’s office that found attorney review time was not “research time” under the Sunshine Law and thus could not be charged.

Governor Parson wants to deter requests, which lends itself to the operation of a more-opaque government. Fees are a big part of the amendment. But it also increases the number of records state agencies can withhold. State Rep Bruce DeGroot is running interference for the governor, admitting in earlier statements that the governor directly approached him with suggestions on how to amend the law.

If the law passes, requests will become more expensive. They will also be less likely to be fulfilled.

DeGroot’s bill also redefines what is considered a meeting and makes it easier for agencies to destroy public records.

“It actually makes the Sunshine Law significantly more complex. It creates a lot more reasons that an attorney might find to treat records as closed,” said Dave Roland, director of litigation for the Freedom Center of Missouri, a libertarian nonprofit that promotes government transparency. And that, in turn, could increase the number of hours government attorneys spend reviewing records, driving up the cost.

The governor and his supporters want to make public records a pay-to-play game. Adding fee increases to release restrictions shifts a lot of power back to the state government, diminishing the power of residents to inform themselves about their government's activities or to attempt to hold them accountable for misdeeds by using their own words and actions against them. The state government has no reason to do this other than the obvious one: to insulate it from the limited power of the governed. But the government gets to make the rules and, without the presence of enough legislators that still feel obliged to serve the public, the government will probably get its way.

Filed Under: foia, freedom of information, mike parson, missouri, secrecy, transparency