Архив рубрики: Mobile

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

Facebook pushes back against Apple’s App Store fees

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Facebook joined the growing ranks of companies publicly complaining about the 30% fee that Apple collects on payments made through its App Store.
Those complaints came midway through a blog post about the social network’s new feature supporting paid online events. Facebook said that to support struggling businesses, it won’t be collecting any fees on those events, at least for the next year, which means that those businesses keep 100% of payments on the web and on Android.
But Facebook said that won’t be the case on iOS, due to App Store fees, and it took aim at Apple with surprisingly direct language (at least, direct for a corporate blog post):

We asked Apple to reduce its 30% App Store tax or allow us to offer Facebook Pay so we could absorb all costs for businesses struggling during COVID-19. Unfortunately, they dismissed both our requests and SMBs will only be paid 70% of their hard-earned revenue. Because this is complicated, as long as Facebook is waiving its fees, we will make all fees clear in our products.

iOS purchase flow on left, Android purchase flow on right. Image Credits: Facebook

To that end, the post includes screenshots of how the events payment flow will look on iOS and Android . On Android, it says, “Facebook doesn’t take a fee from this purchase,” while on iOS, it says, “Apple takes 30% of this purchase.”
Facebook said this language is included in the app update “which we submitted to Apple today for approval” — suggesting that there’s a possibility that the update won’t be approved.
This comes just about 24 hours after Fortnite was removed from the App Store, after Epic Games introduced direct payments into its hit title. It seemed like Epic was intentionally trying to provoke a fight, with the company quickly announcing a lawsuit against Apple and releasing a short in-game video parodying Apple’s famous 1984 commercial, with Apple cast as the villain. (The game publisher is in a similar battle with Google and Android.)
While Apple’s 30% fee has been around for as long as the App Store itself, the issue came to the forefront earlier this summer after Basecamp got into a public feud with the company over its subscription email app Hey, for which the developer tried to circumvent App Store fees by only accepting subscription payments on its website.
Apple’s Phil Schiller told us at the time that the controversy was not prompting the company to reconsider any of its rules, which he said were designed for a better app experience — to avoid situations where “you download the app and it doesn’t work.”

Epic Games launches a campaign (and lawsuit) against Apple

Facebook pushes back against Apple’s App Store fees

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

Square’s Cash App tests new feature allowing users to borrow up to $200

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Cash App, the peer-to-peer payments service from Square, is giving select users a way to get short-term loans.
The company said it’s only testing the feature with around 1,000 users for now. But it could become more broadly available — and there are probably plenty of people who could use the money, given the state of the U.S. and global economy, not to mention the current uncertainty about further stimulus plans.
Cash App is starting out by offering loans for any amount between $20 and $200. You’ll be expected to pay the loan back in four weeks, along with a flat fee of 5%. (Multiplied over a year, that turns into a 60% APR — which sounds high, but at least it’s significantly lower than the average payday loan.)
If you don’t pay off the loan after four weeks, you’ll get an additional one-week grace period, then Square and Cash App will start adding 1.25% (non-compounding) interest each week. You also won’t be able to take out an additional loan if you’ve previously defaulted.
“We are always testing new features in Cash App, and recently began testing the ability to borrow money with about 1,000 Cash App customers,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “We look forward to hearing their feedback and learning from this experiment.”
Square has already been expanding Cash App’s features beyond simple peer-to-peer money transfer with things like the Cash Card (a free debit card), Cash Boost (rewards) and Cash App Investing. And beyond Cash App, Square has been offering loans to small businesses through its Square Capital arm.

Square Cash users can now spend their balance with a virtual debit card

 

Square’s Cash App tests new feature allowing users to borrow up to $200