Gaming

Epic today announced the acquisition of Rad Game Tools, maker of game development tools for many years. They’ve stayed largely behind the scenes, but many gamers will recognize the colorful Bink Video logo, which has appeared in the openings of many a title over the years. “Our work with Epic ...

This has been quite a week. Instead of walking backward through the last few days of chaos and uncertainty, here are three good things that happened: Google employee Sara Robinson combined her interest in machine learning and baking to create AI-generated hybrid treats. A breakthrough could make water desalination 30%-40% ...

Also: Who is really mispricing companies? So it turns out that Roblox is worth $29.5 billion. That’s the lesson the market learned this week when the gaming platform company announced that it had raised $520 million in an epic Series H. For a company valued at just $4 billion last ...

n Developing…n”,”protected”:false},”excerpt”:”rendered”:” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced via his platform that Donald Trump will be blocked from using both Facebook and Instagram “for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.” The company blocked his accounts temporarily on Wednesday following Trump’s posting on ...

Pokémon GO creator Niantic has acquired a small SF gaming startup building a league and tournament organization platform to help gamers create their own communities around popular titles. Mayhem was in Y Combinator’s winter 2018 batch and went on to raise $5.7 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Other backers ...

Sony said on Friday that it will launch the PlayStation 5 in India on February 2, suggesting improvements in the supply chain network that was severely impacted last year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Japanese firm said it will begin taking pre-order requests for the new gaming console in ...

Pokémon GO was created to encourage players to explore the world while coordinating impromptu large group gatherings — activities we’ve all been encouraged to avoid since the pandemic began. And yet, analysts estimate that 2020 was Pokémon GO’s highest-earning year yet. By twisting some knobs and tweaking variables, Pokémon GO ...

DeepMind has made it a mission to show that not only can an AI truly become proficient at a game, it can do so without even being told the rules. Its newest AI agent, called MuZero, accomplishes this not just with visually simple games with complex strategies, like Go, Chess, ...

Social gaming platform Rec Room has scored some new funding as it aims to bring its once VR-centric world to every major gaming platform out there. The startup has closed a $20 million Series C led by Madrona Venture Group . Existing investors, including First Round Capital, Index, Sequoia and ...

n”,”protected”:false},”excerpt”:”rendered”:” Welcome back to This Week inu00a0Apps,u00a0the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, withu00a0a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in global consumer spend in 2019. Not including third-party ...