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Take-Two Interactive acquires Two Dots game developer for $192M

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Playdots — developer of the mobile games Dots, Two Dots and Dots & Co. — has reached an agreement to be acquired by publisher Take-Two Interactive.
Take-Two will pay $192 million for the deal, $90 million in cash and the remaining $102 million in stock.
Playdots was founded in 2014 by Paul Murphy and Patrick Moberg, spinning out of startup studio betaworks with $10 million in funding led by Tencent and Greycroft. It’s currently led by CEO Nir Efrat, a former King.com executive who joined Playdots in 2018.

In the acquisition announcement, Take-Two (best known for publishing major franchises like BioShock and NBA 2K, plus — through its Rockstar Games subsidiary — Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption) says that Erfat will continue to lead Playdots’ 70-person team.
Apparently the various Dots games have been downloaded more than 100 million times, with more than 80 million of those downloads coming from the most popular title, Two Dots.
In a statement, Michael Worosz, Take-Two’s executive vice president and head of strategy and independent publishing, said:
Our acquisition of Playdots will diversify and strengthen further Take-Two’s mobile game offerings, particularly within the casual, free-to-play segment. Two Dots continues to grow its audience and under the leadership of Nir, the addition of scavenger hunts, social leader boards and live-ops technology are enhancing the game and driving meaningful, long-term consumer engagement. We are very pleased to welcome Nir and the entire team at Playdots to the Take-Two family and are excited by the potential of their development pipeline and positive, long-term contributions to our business.

Take-Two Interactive acquires Two Dots game developer for $192M

Daily Crunch: Epic Games escalates legal battle with Apple

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The battle between Epic Games and Apple continues, Facebook faces criticism in India and Pinterest appoints its first Black board member. This is your Daily Crunch for August 17, 2020.
The big story: Epic Games files injunction against Apple
Epic’s legal and PR fight with Apple and its App Store policies seems to be escalating. The Fortnite-maker has filed an injunction in U.S. District Court, saying it was notified by Apple that all of its developer accounts and access to developer tools will be cut off at the end of next week.

“[Apple] told Epic that by August 28, Apple will cut off Epic’s access to all development tools necessary to create software for Apple’s platforms — including for the Unreal Engine Epic offers to third-party developers, which Apple has never claimed violated any Apple policy,” Epic’s lawyers said in their court filing.
Fortnite was removed from Apple’s App Store (and the Google Play Store) last week after Epic introduced direct payments. Apple said at the time that it would “make every effort to work with Epic to resolve these violations.”
The tech giants
Facebook faces heat in India after report on hate speech posts — The debate was sparked by a Wall Street Journal report claiming that Facebook’s top public-policy executive in India had opposed applying the company’s hate-speech rules to a member of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party.
Pinterest announces first Black board member — Pinterest has appointed Andrea Wishom, president of real estate company Skywalker Holdings and former Harpo Studios executive, to its board of directors.
Google warns users in Australia free services are at risk if it’s forced to share ad revenue with ‘big media’ — Google has fired a lobbying pot-shot at a looming change to the law in Australia that will force it to share ad revenue with local media businesses.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Deepfake video app Reface is just getting started on shapeshifting selfie culture — Reface (previously Doublicat) is an app that uses AI-powered deepfake technology to let users try on another face/form for size.
DST Global pumps $35 million into Asian e-grocer Weee! — The delightfully named startup delivers groceries, like fresh kimchi and Japanese desserts, to major cities across the U.S.
Amex acquires SoftBank-backed Kabbage after tough 2020 for the SMB lender — Amex’s acquisition will include employees, technology and financial data, but “Kabbage’s pre-existing loan portfolio is not included in the purchase agreement.”
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
Founders can raise funding before launching a product — I spoke to Precursor Ventures’ Charles Hudson about how to pitch VCs before you’ve built a real product.
Robinhood raises $200M more at $11.2B valuation as its revenue scales — Robinhood already raised capital multiple times this year, including an initial $280 million round at an $8.3 billion valuation, and a later $320 million addition that brought its valuation to $8.6 billion.
How tech can build more resilient supply chains — Coatue’s Caryn Marooney recently made the jump into venture capital.
(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)
Everything else
SpaceX will attempt to break a rocket reusability record with a launch this week — SpaceX is preparing for yet another launch of Starlink satellites on Tuesday.
US Commerce Department updates rules to further limit Huawei’s chip access — The new restrictions follow a similar decree announced in May.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Daily Crunch: Epic Games escalates legal battle with Apple

Daily Crunch: Apple removes Fortnite from the App Store

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Epic Games takes on Apple, Instagram fixes a security issue and Impossible Foods raises $200 million. This is your Daily Crunch for August 13, 2020.
The big story: Apple removes Fortnite from the App Store
The controversy over Apple’s App Store policies has expanded to include Epic Games and its hit title Fortnite. The company introduced a direct payment option for its in-game currency on mobile, leading Apple to remove the app for violating App Store rules.
“Epic enabled a feature in its app which was not reviewed or approved by Apple, and they did so with the express intent of violating the App Store guidelines regarding in-app payments that apply to every developer who sells digital goods or services,” Apple said.
Epic, meanwhile, said it’s taking legal action against Apple, and that the game’s removal is “yet another example of Apple flexing its enormous power in order to impose unreasonable restraints and unlawfully maintain its 100% monopoly over the iOS In-App Payment Processing Market.”
The tech giants
Bracing for election day, Facebook rolls out voting resources to US users — The hub will centralize election resources for U.S. users and ideally inoculate at least some of them against the platform’s ongoing misinformation epidemic.
Instagram wasn’t removing photos and direct messages from its servers — A security researcher was awarded a $6,000 bug bounty payout after he found Instagram retained photos and private direct messages on its servers long after he deleted them.
Slack and Atlassian strengthen their partnership with deeper integrations — At the core of these integrations is the ability to get rich unfurls of deep links to Atlassian products in Slack.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Impossible Foods gobbles up another $200 million — Since its launch the plant-based meat company has raised $1.5 billion from investors.
Omaze raises $30 million after expanding beyond celebrity campaigns — The Omaze model has shifted away from celebrity-centric campaigns to include fundraisers offering prizes like an Airstream Caravel or a trip to the Four Seasons resort in Bora Bora.
We’re exploring the future of SaaS at Disrupt this year — We’re bringing Canaan Partners’ Maha Ibrahim, Andreessen Horowitz’s David Ulevitch and Bessemer Venture Partners’ Mary D’Onofrio together to help explain how the landscape has changed.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
How to get what you want in a term sheet — Lior Zorea discusses the reality of term sheets.
Five success factors for behavioral health startups — Courtney Chow and Justin Da Rosa of Battery Ventures argue that behavioral health is particularly suited to benefit from the digitization trends COVID-19 has accelerated.
Minted.com CEO Mariam Naficy shares ‘the biggest surprise about entrepreneurship’ — Naficy got into the weeds with us on topics that founders don’t often discuss.
Everything else
Digital imaging pioneer Russell Kirsch dies at 91 — It’s hard to overstate the impact of his work, which led to the first digitally scanned photo and the creation of what we now think of as pixels.
AMC will offer 15-cent tickets when it reopens 100+ US theaters on August 20 — The theater juggernaut announced plans to reopen more than 100 theaters in the U.S. on August 20.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Daily Crunch: Apple removes Fortnite from the App Store

Lenovo brings some unique features to its new gaming phone

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Gaming phones are a weird one. They make sense on paper to some degree. As we well know, everyone’s a gamer these days, and much or most of that gaming happens on mobile devices. So why aren’t devoted gaming phones a more popular phenomenon? It’s not for lack of trying.
Lenovo is the latest company to toss its hat in that highly specific ring. That’s the sort of thing you can do when you’re the size of Lenovo and can experiment with such things. Gaming phones are a kind of go big or go home proposition, and the company’s doing mostly the former with the Legion Phone Duel, a mobile addition to the company’s Legion line of gaming PCs.
Image Credits: Lenovo class=»piano-inline-promo»>
For starters, the handset was briefly alluded to in Qualcomm’s recent Snapdragon 865 Plus announcement — and is now one of a very small club of phones sporting the chip. From where I sit, however, the most interesting thing about the category is the way it affords manufacturers an opportunity to experiment with ideas in a way that you don’t often see on flagships. And, indeed, there’s definitely some interesting stuff happening here.
For one thing, it has two batteries — something you don’t really see outside of foldables. Of course, those sport them for the very pragmatic reason that phone batteries don’t fold. Here, however, the batteries are separated to prevent overheating, leading the company the split the extremely healthy 5,000mAh capacity in two. You’re going to need that sort of battery for a gaming-centric 5G handset.

Asus and Lenovo among the first to launch Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus devices

Also worth pointing out is the horizontal pop-up selfie camera — the most notable feature from early leaks. The idea here, of course, is that serious mobile gaming happens in the landscape configuration. As such, the design makes sense for video capture to stream to services like Twitch and YouTube. It’s a highly specific use case, of course, but this is a highly specific phone. And, of course, your results of taking selfie video on the mobile device you’re using to game may vary.
Image Credits: Lenovo
Speaking of unique feature positions, there are also two separate USB-C charging ports — one in standard position on the bottom, and the other on the side. Again, the idea here is to make it as easy as possible to remain in landscape mode. If you’ve ever attempted to charge your phone and play a game at the same time, you know how much of a pain that can be.
Along with the aforementioned Snapdragon chip, you’ll also find up to 16GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. The display is 6.65 inches at 2340×1080, with a 144Hz refresh rate. The phone does not appear to be coming to the U.S. for now, but will be available this month in China (where it will be called the Legion Phone Pro), followed by the Asia Pacific region, Europe/Middle East/Africa and Latin America.
Pricing is TBD.

Lenovo brings some unique features to its new gaming phone

Tilting Point acquires FTX Games and Plamee Studios’ assets

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Game publisher Tilting Point announced today that it has made its third acquisition in eight months, buying games, key employees and “most of the assets” from FTX Games and Plamee Studios — both previously owned by Playtech, which will be focusing on its gaming and sports betting software moving forward.
Plamee previously developed Narcos: Cartel Wars, which has supposedly made $60 million in revenue since launch. FTX published Cartel Wars, as well as The Walking Dead: Free Casino Slots and Criminal Minds: The Mobile Game. Tilting Point has taken over operations for all three FTX titles, as well as a fourth that’s currently in development.
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Last fall, Tilting Point acquired Gondola, a startup that optimizes in-game offers and ads. Then it purchased the mobile game Star Trek Timelines earlier this year, hiring the development team to form a new gaming studio called Wicked Realm Games in the process.
CEO Kevin Segalla said he’s always seen acquisitions as a big part of the company’s “progressive publishing” model, in which the company is first hired to help developers with user acquisition and then develops a deeper business relationship over time.
“We were built to ultimately be in a position where we could acquire some of the studios that we’re working with,” Segalla said.
He added that he expects “more acquisitions down the pike for sure,” with Tilting Point particularly interested in acquiring games that have previously been “constrained in marketing spend” and “clearly are going to have longer legs.”
It sounds like studios acquired by Tilting Point continue to operate with a degree of independence while drawing on the larger company’s resources to grow and monetize their games.
“We truly value the developers’ independence,” Segalla said. “We specifically want to work to continue operating their business and help them accelerate their growth. A lot of development studios are recognizing that scale is becoming more and more important.”

Tilting Point acquires mobile game Star Trek Timelines

Tilting Point acquires FTX Games and Plamee Studios’ assets