Goodbye Warzone

Good Morning. It’s been almost 12 years since the last book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, source material for the HBO hit Game of Thrones, was published. While George R.R. Martin has been working for some time on Winds of Winter, he certainly doesn't want AI writing it for him.

George R.R. Martin is one of over a dozen authors who sued OpenAI this week, claiming their works were used to train ChatGPT, without permission.

Perhaps Bethesda could tap into that model before it’s too late.

— Derek Neville, Jason Liu

MAIN QUEST: Fortnite Refunds — how did we get here?

Yesterday, we mentioned that the FTC. vs. Fortnite refund applications were now open for users to receive a piece of the $245M settlement. The gist of the issue was that Epic used ‘dark patterns’ to generate unwanted purchases. Here are some of the finer details:

• Epic deployed single button purchases without confirmation, often swapping the visual layout for purchasing UI.

• Children were able to make V-Bucks purchases without parental consent.

• Accounts that disputed charges with credit card companies were banned and access to purchased content was locked.

The penalty: The unwanted purchases settlement is just one part of the broader case against Epic — the other half of the story is their breaking of privacy laws related to children. In fact, the $275M fine imposed on Epic for breaking the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) was the largest to date. All together, that’s a combined $520M.

Step back: ‘Dark patterns’ are simply a game of greed — how far can you push before users are fed up? A singular micro-transaction is easy to brush aside but when it sums to a large bucket on a credit card statement, it becomes hard to ignore.

HUD

• 👋 Dead Space co-creator and Callisto Protocol director Glen Schofield is leaving Striking Distance Studios, the studio he founded in 2019.

• 🤝 TSM has sold its League of Legends LCS slot to Shopify Rebellion, the esports brand of the e-commerce giant. The deal is for a reported $10 million.

• 🏎 Electronic Arts has moved Need for Speed developer Criterion Games from their EA Sports division to their EA Entertainment division, where most of the developer’s team will shift their focus from NFS to Battlefield.

MAJOR W

• 🌟 Star Citizen has climbed a little bit closer to being fully developed with its “Alpha 3.20” update. The game has crowdfunded over $600 million since being announced in 2012.

• 📢 There is speculation that Counter-Strike 2 could be launching as early as next week, after Valve posted on the game’s official X account, asking “What are you doing next Wednesday?”

• 🎁 Re-Logic, the developer of Terraria, announced it is donating $200,000 to two different open-source game engines following the Unity debacle — even though they don’t use Unity.

F IN THE CHAT

• 😭 As Activision continues to focus on Warzone 2.0, the original Warzone servers (now Warzone Caldera) officially shut down today.

THIS DAY IN GAMING HISTORY

Today marks 3 years since Microsoft announced it would be acquiring ZeniMax Media and publisher Bethesda Softworks. It’s a fitting week for this anniversary to fall, as Starfield hits 10 million players and tons of details leak from Microsoft’s push to acquire Activision Blizzard.

CAREER CORNER

• Account Executive - Fandom (New York)

• Account Director, Gaming & Esports - R&CPMK (New York)

• Consumer Products Partnership Manager - Bungie (Remote)

HIVE MIND

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