An appeals court has revived an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon filed by the Attorney General of Washington, DC more than three years ago. The online retailer must now face allegations that it illegally raised prices for consumers.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2021 and cited Amazon’s practices related to third-party sellers on its platform. Specifically, it called out a provision in the company’s agreements with third-party sellers that allowed it to punish businesses that offered its products at lower prices on non-Amazon platforms. Karl Racine, the AG at the time, said these agreements allowed the company to “impose an artificially high price floor across the online retail marketplace.” Racine later expanded the case to include Amazon’s pricing tactics for wholesalers.
Amazon has disputed those allegations, and the case was dismissed in 2022. But an appeals court has now reversed that decision. “Viewed as a whole, the District’s allegations about Amazon’s market share and maintenance of its market power through the challenged agreements plausibly suggest that Amazon either already possesses monopoly power over online marketplaces or is close to a ‘dangerous probability of achieving monopoly power,’” the judge wrote.
“We disagree with the District of Columbia’s allegations and look forward to presenting facts in court that demonstrate how good these policies are for consumers," Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle told Engadget in a statement. "Just like any store owner who wouldn’t want to promote a bad deal to their customers, we don’t highlight or promote offers that are not competitively priced. It’s part of our commitment to featuring low prices to earn and maintain customer trust, which we believe is the right decision for both consumers and sellers in the long run.”
The reversal adds to Amazon’s antitrust woes. The company is also facing a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and more than a dozen states. The UK’s antitrust regulator has also opened an investigation centered around the company’s $4 billion investment into Anthropic.
In a statement, DC's current AG Brian Schwalb noted that the district “was the first jurisdiction to take antitrust enforcement action” against the company. “Now, our case will move forward, and we will continue fighting to stop Amazon’s unfair and unlawful practices that have raised prices for District consumers and stifled innovation and choice across online retail.”
Update, August 22 2024, 7:13 PM ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from Amazon.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/dcs-antitrust-case-against-amazon-comes-back-to-life-194314355.html?src=rss
Get ready, trainers: the original Pokémon anime will soon be getting a new home. The Pokémon Company has partnered with Canadian company WildBrain to be the distributor for a single-IP free ad-supported television channel that's all Pokémon, all the time. The deal covers the first 22 seasons of the animated tales of Ash Ketchum and his electrifying buddy Pikachu.
The FAST channel will arrive first in the US, followed by launches in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. WildBrain has existing relationships with several TV platforms, including Samsung, LG, Roku, Tubi and Pluto, but it didn't share any specific dates or likely homes for the future Pokémon channel. The company specializes in children's programming. It operates FAST channels for game franchises Sonic and Super Mario as well as kid-focused titles such as Teletubbies, Strawberry Shortcake and Caillou.
Fans should be pleased to have this new development from the Pokémon Company after its Pokémon TV venture was shuttered earlier this year. If you're looking for other Pokémon content, stateside viewers should be sure to catch up on the Netflix exclusive Pokémon Journeys before the show leaves in September. You've also got the latest show, Pokémon Horizons, which landed on the streaming service in February.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/the-first-22-seasons-of-pokemon-will-return-to-streaming-225513118.html?src=rss
If you buy a new Hewlett-Packard laptop in the next few weeks, then you’ll notice a new app on the “Start” menu called Google Essentials. On Thursday, Google announced that the new app will bundle some of its core services like Google Photos, Google Drive and Google Messages.
The Google Essentials app will not only house shortcuts to its most used services but it will also centralize your Google account information and saved materials such as documents, photos and saved games for titles from Google Play Games. Eligible subscribers will also receive a two month trial of Google One cloud storage with 100GB.
The blog posts says that Google Essentials will only be available on Windows PCs starting with new Hewlett-Packard (HP) laptops including models like the Spectre, Envy, Pavilion, OMEN and Victus. Google says it plans to make the Essentials app available on more Windows PC brands in the future.
The concept of a bundled Google services app sounds very similar to the old Windows Live Essentials. The collection of Microsoft applications allowed Windows users a quicker way to access apps like Mail, Movie Maker, Messenger and Writer. An archived version of the Windows Live Essentials installer is available on the Internet Archive.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-essentials-will-house-all-google-services-in-a-single-windows-app-223824942.html?src=rss
General Motors’ robotaxi service Cruise has inked a multi-year deal with Uber. The deal will let Uber customers hail a Cruise self-driving taxi from their smartphone starting next year, according to TechCrunch. This means that Cruise’s self-driving taxis will be back on roads for the first time since striking a pedestrian in San Francisco in October 2023.
Neither GM nor Uber gave a specific date or city for Uber’s rollout of Cruise’s robotaxis. A spokesperson told the website that the new partnership between Cruise and Uber would follow Cruise’s re-launch of its own driverless taxi service in 2025.
Cruise is currently testing cars with human drivers on roads in Dallas, Phoenix and Houston with plans to expand to more cities. Uber also has a partnership with the self-driving car fleet Waymo that’s currently operating in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Cruise also just reached an agreement with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) following an investigation that started in December of 2022 over three rear-end crashes involving its autonomous driving vehicles. The company was under another investigation following an accident in October in San Francisco when one of its vehicles struck a pedestrian who was thrown into its path by a human-driven vehicle and dragged 20 feet causing further injuries.
A third-party report released by Cruise found that executives knew about the incident but failed to disclose it in meetings with city officials and federal agencies. Cruise fired nine of its executives at the end of last year following a probe. The company also agreed to pay a fine to the California Public Utilities Commission allowing Cruise to restart its operations in the state.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/cruises-self-driving-cabs-are-coming-to-uber-next-year-214734509.html?src=rss
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim has been in the works for about three years now, but with its release date fast approaching we now have our first trailer. It's one of the more unusual and intriguing projects under the Lord of the Rings franchise, an anime-style standalone movie that covers events in the kingdom of Rohan some 200-ish years before the War of the Ring.
The trailer starts with some iconic footage from the '00s Lord of the Rings films focused on Rohan before diving into the animation. It's immediately obvious that this project is connected to Peter Jackson's films, as the designs for key areas like Edoras and Helm's Deep clearly reference those earlier movies despite the distinctly different style. As for characters, we're introduced to King Helm Hammerhand and his daughter Hera who, judging by the trailer, will likely be our main protagonist. It looks like an attempt to marry her off goes south, angering the family of suitor Wulf — things get decidedly more tense after that, with plenty of action and Oliphaunts and, naturally, some teases of ring-related events to come.
The film is directed by Kenji Kamiyama, who has been a writer and director on various anime including Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Eden of the East. He's also directed episodes of Star Wars: Visions and Ultraman. Most of the cast is still under wraps, but we know Brian Cox is voicing King Hammerhand, while Gaia Wise is voicing his daughter Hera. Miranda Otto is also reprising her role from the Lord of the Rings films as Eowyn, who will serve as the narrator for the story.
The movie is set to be released on December 13, and it's the first of several Lord of the Rings films in development — Andy Serkis, perhaps best known for his performance as Gollum in Jackson's Middle-earth films, is directing a new film tentatively entitled The Hunt for Gollum. While that movie is years away, fans can also catch Middle-earth on-screen in a week when season two of Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/first-trailer-for-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-shows-an-anime-styled-middle-earth-202139240.html?src=rss
The best thing about the free games that the Epic Games Store offers is they're genuinely yours to keep forever. They're not locked behind a subscription of any kind. The only form of payment you provide is a little personal information in the form of your email address and whatever else is required to create an Epic account. It might be worth signing up if you haven't already, as this week's free games are pretty notable.
First up is The Callisto Protocol, a 2022 survival horror game from Dead Space co-creator Glen Schofield. It's cut from the same cloth as Dead Space, but — stellar visuals aside — we didn't like it much. (In fact, a Dead Space remake that arrived shortly afterward was much more warmly received.) Still, it can be yours for absolutely zilch right now.
What a week for FREE games!
Whether you're up for Gigantic: Rampage Edition's 5v5 MOBA action or The Callisto Protocol's futuristic take on pulse-pounding survival horror, now's the time to claim them both.
The Callisto Protocol hit Epic's free game lineup just as the studio behind it announced a spinoff called [REDACTED]. The upcoming title from Striking Distance, which is no longer led by Schofield after he stepped down last year, is a stylized, roguelike dungeon crawler in which you play as a prison guard.
You must try to survive the threat of infected inmates and escape a penitentiary on Callisto, an icy moon of Jupiter. [REDACTED] will arrive on October 31 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
This week's other Epic Games Store freebie is interesting too. It's a MOBA-hero shooter hybrid called Gigantic that has a long and convoluted history. To keep things brief, the game debuted in 2017, was killed in 2018 after failing to gain enough traction and revived under a different studio this year. I played it for a bit and found the matches to be fun and chaotic.
The original Gigantic was free-to-play. While the revival — dubbed Gigantic: Rampage Edition —typically costs $20, it has zero microtransactions. So you won't have to worry about being nickel-and-dimed after claiming this one.
You'll have until August 29 to snag those two games. There's some good stuff to look forward to on the Epic Games Store next week as well. Starting on August 29, you can claim a Fallout bundle that includes Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics for free, along with an arcade-style football game called Wild Card Football.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/the-epic-games-stores-latest-freebies-are-the-callisto-protocol-and-the-revived-moba-gigantic-192403774.html?src=rss
Google DeepMind workers have signed a letter calling on the company to drop contracts with military organizations, according to a report by Time. The document was drafted on May 16 of this year. Around 200 people signed the document, which amounts to five percent of the total headcount of DeepMind.
For the uninitiated, DeepMind is one of Google’s AI divisions and the letter states that adopting military contracts runs afoul of the company’s own AI rules. The letter was sent out as internal concerns began circulating within the AI lab that the tech was allegedly being sold to military organizations via cloud contracts.
According to Time, Google’s contracts with the United States military and the Israeli military allow access to services via the cloud, and this reportedly includes AI technology developed by DeepMind. The letter doesn’t linger on any specific military organization, with workers emphasizing that it’s “not about the geopolitics of any particular conflict.”
Reporting since 2021 has slowly revealed the scope of tech supplied by Google (and Amazon) to the Israeli government via a partnership known as Project Nimbus. This is far from the first instance of Google employees openly protesting their work being used to support politically fraught military aims — the company fired dozens of staffers who spoke out against Project Nimbus earlier this year.
“Any involvement with military and weapon manufacturing impacts our position as leaders in ethical and responsible AI, and goes against our mission statement and stated AI principles,” the DeepMind letter says. It’s worth noting that Google’s slogan used to be “don’t be evil.”
The letter goes on to ask DeepMind’s leaders to deny military users access to its AI technology and to set up a new in-house governance body to prevent the tech from being used by future militaries. According to four unnamed employees, Google has yet to offer a tangible response to the letter. “We have received no meaningful response from leadership,” one said, “and we are growing increasingly frustrated.”
Google did respond to Time’s reporting, saying that it complies with its AI principles. The company says that the contract with the Israeli government “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.” However, its partnership with the Israeli government has fallen under plenty of scrutiny in recent months.
Google purchased DeepMind back in 2014, but under the promise that its AI technology would never be used for military or surveillance purposes. For many years, DeepMind was allowed to operate with a good amount of independence from its parent company, but the burgeoning AI race looks to have changed that. The lab's leaders spent years seeking greater autonomy from Google, but were rebuffed in 2021.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/deepmind-workers-urge-google-to-drop-military-contracts-190544509.html?src=rss
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will cease to exist on November 28, but players' saves should be getting a new home. Since its global launch in 2017, Pocket Camp has offered the core Animal Crossing experience on smartphones, including limited time special events.
Sales of Leaf Tickets, the in-game currency for speeding up access to camp accessories, will stop on November 27. The company is also ending its subscription plans for the Pocket Camp Club, which provides additional in-game cosmetics each month. New plans will not be accepted after October 28 and existing subscriptions will not renew after that date.
But all is not lost for those of us who have invested a lot of hours into building pint-sized communities. Nintendo cushioned the blow with the news that a new app is in the works where existing players can continue their save files. The new take on the game will be a paid purchase with no in-app purchases, as opposed to Pocket Camp's freemium approach. The team promised more information on the new app this October.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/dont-freak-out-but-nintendo-is-killing-off-animal-crossing-pocket-camp-181640622.html?src=rss
Snap is getting ready to show off a new pair of augmented reality glasses, according to a new report in The Verge. The glasses would be the fifth-generation of Spectacles, and the second pair to have augmented reality capabilities. CEO Evan Spiegel will reportedly unveil the glasses at the company’s upcoming Partner Summit event on September 17.
The company last introduced a pair of AR glasses in 2021. The glasses were only ever made available to a small handful of creators and developers, who came up with some interesting experiments that combined Snapchat’s lenses with the AR displays. But, as I noted in my hands-on with AR-enabled Spectacles that year, the device was still pretty limited. It had an extremely narrow field of view and only a 30-minute battery life. The glasses were also much bulkier and boxier compared to earlier generations of Spectacles that looked more like regular sunglasses.
Snapchat's fourth-generation Spectacles that had AR displays.
Karissa Bell for Engadget
Now, it sounds like Snap has made some improvements to the underlying tech. The Verge reports that the latest glasses will have a wider field of view and better battery life. However, it seems the Spectacles are still being positioned as more of a developer device than something any Snapchat user will be able to buy. Each pair reportedly costs “thousands of dollars to build” and Snap is planning on making “fewer than 10,000” of them.
Still, it suggests that Snap hasn’t entirely given up on its hardware ambitions. Its last new product was the $250 Pixy selfie drone, which it abandoned just four months after launch in 2022. The company recalled the device earlier this year after a reported battery fire.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snap-is-reportedly-working-on-a-new-pair-of-augmented-reality-spectacles-173024510.html?src=rss
This is a story about serendipity and probability.
Nicole He met Arnaud De Bock while waiting in line for the bathroom at a GDC developer party in 2019. She was giving a talk on voice technology in art and games based on her work as a creative technologist, her portfolio filled with interactive projects like the True Love Tinder Robot, Garden Friends, ENHANCE.COMPUTER and Soylent Dick. De Bock was working on the Reigns series and Card Shark for Nerial, and finishing up Pikuniku on the side.
Technically, He wasn’t invited to this particular party, but Ape Out co-creator Maxi Boch snuck her in.
“There in the bathroom line, I met Arnaud,” He told Engadget. “We started chatting, and we were sort of mutual fans of each other's work, and we talked about potentially collaborating on something. A few months later, we were trying to work on this other idea that he had with his collaborator Rémi [Forcadell] from Pikuniku. That idea never really worked out into anything. But at the same time, Arnaud and I were both obsessed with this reality show called Terrace House.”
Devolver Digital
Terrace House was a Japanese reality series that aired from 2012 to 2020, featuring a rotating cast of six strangers, mainly young professionals, as they lived together for months at a time. Episodes followed the participants as they navigated work and relationships, and the entire thing had a soothing, quiet kind of vibe, even during explosive arguments about eating someone else’s steak. Though cast members often ended up dating each other, you could call Terrace House very demure and very mindful — especially in comparison to Western reality shows like Love Island or Too Hot to Handle, which are built around the themes of bikinis, lust, betrayal and neon-lit product placement.
Inspired by Terrace House and 1990s reality shows like The Real World and Room Raiders, He and De Bock started creating a game called The Crush House. Nerial jumped on board: The studio was finishing up Card Shark and co-founder Francois Alliot saw this reality TV project as an opportunity for his team to flex their narrative muscles.
“At some point, we made a major pivot as far as the writing goes, just ramping it up from this chill Terrace House style, slice-of-life relaxed thing, to be trashy, essentially,” He said. “Like, the dialogue needs to be a lot more engaging. It needs to be funnier and raunchier, more over the top.”
Devolver Digital
That’s when shows like Love Island and The Ultimatum entered the production conversation. In its final form, The Crush House falls in the space between Terrace House and Love Island. It’s set in a bright seaside mansion (with an infinity pool, of course) and it stars four characters at a time as they form strategic friendships, have fiery arguments and make out with each other between ad breaks.
The Crush House is set in 1999, before smartphones enabled a call-and-response relationship with viewers, but the audience still plays a critical role. Players are the on-site producer and videographer, and they have to respond in real-time to demands from different categories of viewers, like drama queens, foodies, fish freaks, divorced dads and butt guys, while also appeasing advertisers and the mysterious network overlords. Capturing the correct footage, playing ads at the right time and placating the suits makes for a surprisingly intense gameplay loop. There’s a sprint button here for a reason.
One of the most intriguing aspects of The Crush House is its replayability. There are 12 cast members to choose from at the start of every run, and they have distinct personality traits that play off of each other in unique ways. There are classic reality-TV archetypes, like the himbo, the naive girl and the pretentious one, and their interactions are driven by procedural generation.
“Everything that you see on the screen, the dialogues, are generated,” Alliot said. “We have a system called rigmarole, which is a system that matches the traits of a character with what we call sagas, which are like models of stories. For example, if you got a love triangle, you have a number one, number two, number three, they will have different traits that we will match to the characters. If we have a match, we play that story and then it unfolds like that, with possible outcomes that may be different depending on the character that you picked. And this system allows us to have a very broad or very narrow type of narrative.”
He and the developers at Nerial wrote about 50,000 lines of dialogue for the Crush House rigmarole system. With 12 characters to choose from and four characters in each playthrough, there are 495 total possible cast combinations in the game. Essentially, The Crush House had to be procedurally generated.
“We have things that are logical, but it's never 100 percent super structured,” Alliot said. “It's a bit loose, a loose narrative that fits very well with reality TV. And so you can play the game basically forever, matching different characters, and it will still surprise you.”
The Crush House was a jumble of random dialogue and code for a long time before its procedural generation systems had enough information to produce a rational, powerful experience, He said. Alliot warned her this would be the case, and encouraged her to be patient and watch out for the moment when everything would snap into place. Eventually, that’s exactly what happened.
Devolver Digital
“It's kind of a mess for a long time,” He said. “But when we reached the point where actually it all came together — we had enough writing, we had the technical stuff working out, and the animations playing and all this stuff happening. It's like there's something that clicks and it kind of becomes magical.”
The Crush House still surprises He, even after years of studying its code and iterating on its outputs.
“I had this experience even yesterday playing the game, where there was a very sweet, romantic scene between Veer and Alex, and then the next scene, Veer says something that's really cruel to him,” He said. “And I was struck by that. I mean, I can see through the veil of it, I know how everything works, but it's really awesome to have that effect.”
The Crush Houseis available on Steam for PC, developed by Nerial and published by Devolver Digital.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/how-the-crush-house-turns-procedural-generation-into-social-manipulation-160020111.html?src=rss