Paradox outlines a revenue-sharing plan for Vampire: The Masquerade fan games

Many publishers and developers are very protective of their intellectual property (what’s up, Nintendo?). But Paradox Interactive and World of Darkness are taking things in a slightly different direction. As part of the Unbound project, they’ll let anyone make a Vampire: The Masquerade fan game as long as they abide by certain rules.

Developers need to get their games approved by Paradox and can only offer them through the Itch.io storefront. They can charge for their creations if they want, but they’ll need to give Paradox a 33 percent cut of revenue.

The developers will own all game assets that don’t use World of Darkness intellectual property and can sell them in art books, soundtracks and so on. They can’t run crowdfunding campaigns for their project, however, and aren’t able to use science fiction, steampunk or cyberpunk settings. Beyond those (and a few other restrictions), developers can let their imaginations run wild.

The Unbound program stems from a successful game jam that took place in 2021. “Following the Vampire Jam last year, we realized how passionate our community is about creating Vampire: The Masquerade games,” World of Darkness community developer Martyna Zych said in a statement. “While we could only award one grand prize to Heartless Lullaby, we knew we had to create a platform that empowered our community to work on the projects they love while giving them the support they need to be successful.”

Developers created more than 80 games during Vampire Jam and six of those are available through Unbound at the outset. They include survival horror game Descent, puzzle project The Chantry Trials and strategic card title The Game of Elders. There’s a first-person shooter called The Autumn People. You can also check out point-and-click adventure Prodigal as well as 4x strategy and roleplaying game Praxis. All are free to download.

It’s neat to see a publisher and transmedia brand approve fan-made games. The fact that all of those six titles are in different genres is fascinating as well, since it shows the breadth of what developers can do when they have the freedom to be creative with a notable IP. 

As it happens, these titles might be the only way for fans to play a new Vampire: The Masquerade game for a while. Last year, Paradox parted ways with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 studio Hardsuit Labs and delayed the game indefinitely. The publisher said in November it was happy with the progress made by the game’s new, unnamed developer, but the release window remains unknown.

Twitter is experimenting with a status update feature

Twitter might soon take a page from Instagram’s defunct Threads app — not to mention other messaging apps you used in the past two decades. As The Vergereports, code sleuth Jane Manchun Wong has discovered that Twitter is developing a “Vibe” feature that would let you set status updates akin to Threads and the many, many IM clients at the turn of the century. You could set status at the profile level, but you could also attach them to specific tweets to indicate what you were doing at a specific moment.

Wong’s examples only showed generic presets like eating, listening to music and shopping. It’s not clear if you have the option of writing your own updates, or if third-party apps could hook into the feature (say, for music and videos).

The concept of a Twitter status update isn’t completely new, either. The social network was testing another form of status update back in 2018, although it didn’t work the same way and never reached everyday users.

We’ve asked Twitter for comment. There are no guarantees Vibe will reach the broader public or even enter testing. We wouldn’t be surprised if it does, however. Twitter has long had messaging features that could benefit from status updates (such as letting others know you’re busy), and it’s increasingly relying on live features like Spaces audio sessions where you might want to share what you’re doing.

The Morning After: CNN+ is shutting down

CNN+, the streaming service launched by the Cable News Network just three weeks ago, is shutting down on April 30th. The closure comes after reports that the high-profile project had reached just 10,000 daily users. It didn’t help that WarnerMedia is merging with Discovery with the explicit aim of consolidating their streaming services into one cohesive whole.

The service, which reportedly cost around $100 million to launch, will have survived for just 32 days, stealing Quibi’s title for most notorious and swift closure. CNN said at-risk employees will receive 90 days salary and benefits and get opportunities to move elsewhere within the Warner Bros. Discovery empire.

On one hand, it always seemed like a stretch to ask people to pay Netflix-level prices for even premium cable news. With the exception of blue-chip brands like NYT and WSJ, or the mega billionaire-backed Washington Post, paid-for journalism has been totally undermined. On the other hand, it’s a shame to see something bold and potentially paradigm-shifting “do a Quibi” so quickly.

— Dan Cooper

The biggest stories you might have missed

Buy with Prime’ lets third-party retailers use Amazon’s shipping service

Amazon will share its logistics power with others, for a price.

Amazon has launched Buy with Prime, a service that enables rival online retailers to leverage Prime’s speedy shipping. It means any e-commerce platform can add a Prime button to its page and make items available for next-or two-day delivery. The program will begin with sellers that already use Amazon’s fulfillment service before rolling out to merchants who have no presence on Amazon whatsoever. This is another neat way Amazon can both fold its competitors under its own umbrella but, given the SEC is investigating how Amazon uses the data it collects about third-party sellers, one that may deserve extra scrutiny.

Continue Reading.

Elon Musk says he has the financial backing for his proposed Twitter takeover

The Boring Company also received fresh funding.

Concept image for how Prufrock, TBC's new TBM, will operate.
The Boring Company

What’s Elon been up to over the last 24 hours, you ask?

Well, in a fresh SEC filing, the billionaire has said he’s received backing to make his hostile-ish bid for Twitter. That includes $13 billion in debt financing from lenders like Morgan Stanley and a further $12.5 billion in loans leveraged against Musk’s Tesla shareholding. It’s thought the remainder of the cash will come from Musk himself, although we wouldn’t bet that even someone who loves posting as much as ol’ Elon would spend north of $21 billion to do so.

The Boring Company, meanwhile, has raised fresh funding to the tune of $675 million, valuing the company at $5.7 billion. That cash will go toward hiring more engineers who can build more of the company’s signature taxis-in-a-tunnel Loop projects. At the same time, the company said its second-generation tunnel boring machine can carve out up to a mile of tunnel a week. It also made the unbelievable claim that its third-generation hardware will be able to crunch up to seven miles of bedrock per day.

Continue Reading.

FAA revokes YouTuber’s pilot license, saying he deliberately crashed his plane

Was it that much of a surprise given the video was titled I Crashed My Plane.

Image taken from the video 'I Crashed My Plane.'
Trevor Jacob / YouTube

Trevor Jacob is a former Olympic snowboarder-turned-YouTuber who, in December 2021, published a well-shot video titled I Crashed My Plane. The beautifully shot clip, with multiple cameras set up on the pilot side wing and tail, sees the plane apparently stall out in mid air. Jacob then climbs out of the cabin and parachutes to the ground. Unfortunately for him, the FAA accused Jacob of intentionally crashing the plane for online clout and revoked his pilot’s license. If Jacob doesn’t hand it back to officials, he’ll be liable for a daily fine of up to $1,644.

Continue Reading.

FAA blamed after parachute show leads to Congress evacuation

Whoops.

The FAA was also in the news yesterday for accidentally causing an emergency evacuation of Congress. FAA officials reportedly failed to notify the Capitol police and security services about a planned parachute demonstration by the US Army Golden Knights over Nationals Stadium. Nobody was hurt, and the Golden Knights followed proper procedure, avoiding restricted airspace and communicating with air traffic control at all times. But that didn’t stop House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from saying the FAA’s failure to communicate was “outrageous and inexcusable.”

Continue Reading.

Casetify x《星球大戰》聯乘產品開賣，星戰迷切勿錯過

為慶祝《星球大戰》（Star Wars）電影系列在過去、現在和未來所產生的深遠影響，向他們最喜愛的電影場景致敬，Casetify 將於今天「星戰日」推出《星球大戰》聯乘系列，並在 Casetify 網站及門市發售。這次除了 Apple 產品以外，特定型號的 Samsung 以及 Google Pixel 手機亦有份，《星戰》粉絲一定不能錯過。…

A new ‘Tales from the Borderlands’ game is coming this year

2022 is shaping up to be an exciting year for Borderlands fans. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has announced at PAX East that the developer will be releasing a new entry in the Tales from the Borderlands series this year. While it’s technically a sequel to the first Tales game, it will feature all new characters in a brand new story and adventure. 

According to Kotaku, the game will be created “in-house” by Gearbox, unlike the first title that was developed by the now-defunct Telltale Games. It will also be published by 2K, which is the same publisher behind the main Borderlands titles. Pitchford’s announcement kept details about the game to a minimum, so we’ve yet to know what kind of adventure we can expect. 

The first title was an interactive graphic adventure game with five episodes released over the course of a year. In it, players can make choices that significantly impact the story. It centers around Hyperion employee Rhys and a con-artist named Fiona who worked together to accomplish a common goal, but the new game having all new characters means we may not be seeing more of them.

Gearbox released the Borderlands spin-off Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a first-person shooter, in March. The Borderlands movie, which finished filming in 2021 and features a star-studded cast that includes Cate Blanchett and Jack Black, is also expected to hit theatres this year. Gearbox doesn’t have an exact release date for the new Tales from the Borderlands game yet, but it promises to make a full announcement for it this summer. 

Pixar’s new ‘Lightyear’ trailer portrays Buzz as a victim of relativity

Pixar has shared a second trailer for Lightyear, and the new clip sheds considerably more light on Buzz’s origin story. As it turns out, the explorer turned action figure is the victim of Einstein’s theory of relativity. When Lightyear conducts a “hyperspeed” test, he comes back 62 years later — many of the people and places he knows have changed. Naturally, it’s up to him to set things right.

While the trailer shows considerably more of the story, it still leaves some mysteries unanswered. It doesn’t show how Buzz becomes immortalized as a figurine in the Toy Story movies, or shed much light on other personas like Emperor Zurg.

The movie premieres in theaters on June 17th, with Chris Evans replacing Tim Allen as the voice of Buzz Lightyear. Sorry, folks, there won’t be a prompt Disney+ launch this time. If there’s anything that might coax people back into the real world, though, a spinoff of Pixar’s best-known franchise might do the trick.

Godzilla and King Kong are coming to ‘Call of Duty: Warzone’

Crossovers between gaming and other areas of entertainment are becoming more and more common. On the same day it emerged Wu-Tang Clan is coming to Fortnite(?), Activision Blizzard confirmed a long-rumored crossover for Call of Duty: Warzone. Godzilla and King Kong will arrive in the battle royale on May 11th.

The event is called Operation Monarch and it isn’t entirely clear just how exactly these movie monsters will fit into Warzone. However, a blog post notes that the event will introduce a new four-player Quads mode “based on several classic experiences with a titan-sized twist.”

Despite their militaristic vibes and settings, Warzone and the Call of Duty series at large aren’t exactly known for hyper-realism. They’ve long had zombie modes. Still, this seems like an odd crossover, especially given that the Godzilla vs. Kong movie came out over a year ago.

CNN+ is shutting down just weeks after launching

Just three weeks after the streaming service launched, Warner Bros. Discovery announced it is shutting down CNN+. Variety broke the news. The service will cease operations on April 30th, according to multiple reports, meaning it will close after just 32 days. 

CNBC reported last week that CNN+ was pulling in just 10,000 daily users who were willing to pay $6 per month for exclusive live, on-demand and interactive news-driven programming. New CNN president Chris Licht, who was appointed after WarnerMedia and Discovery merged earlier this month, reportedly made the recommendation to kill CNN+. 

Andrew Morse, the executive vice president who was running CNN+, is expected to leave Warner Bros. Discovery after a transition period. Reports suggest there may be hundreds of related job cuts. 

It seems some CNN+ programming could be bound for HBO Max. CNN itself noted that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav wants to combine the company’s content into a single streaming service. That tracks with the plan to eventually merge HBO Max and Discovery+.

CNN had high hopes for the project. It invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the streaming service and recruited talent from other networks (such as Kasie Hunt from NBC and Chris Wallace from Fox News) to host CNN+ shows. However, Warner Bros. Discovery executives quickly pulled the plug after CNN+ failed to gain much traction. 

For what it’s worth, CNN+ crashed and burned even harder than Quibi. The short-form streaming service launched in April 2020 and shut down that December. Warner Bros. Discovery might take a little solace in the fact that Quibi blew nearly $2 billion instead of a relatively meager nine-figure sum.

BTS dance lessons are coming to Apple Fitness+

Get ready for a Dynamite workout. Apple has a few updates for Fitness+ timed with International Dance Day, which is coming up on April 29th, and arguably the most interesting are the new Dance workouts set to Korean pop sensation BTS’ music. Through its existing relationship with BTS, Apple will be teaching users the actual choreography from videos for songs like “Dynamite,” “Mic Drop” and, very aptly, “Permission to Dance.” 

The first of the BTS dance workouts will arrive next week, but Apple is also bringing new content to its Artist Spotlight series. In addition to music from BTS, Fitness+ is also getting playlists from ABBA and Queen. Every Monday over the next four weeks, there will be new workouts featuring each artist across categories like Strength, HIIT, Treadmill, Cycling, Yoga, Pilates and Dance. 

There will be new dance workouts featuring music from other musicians too, including sessions led by trainer Jhon Gonzalez set to genres like cumbia, tango and Indian pop. While the Fitness+ team generally comes up with their own choreography, for the BTS videos they will be teaching the band’s own smooth-like-Butter moves. 

Those who work hard enough and shed some Blood, Sweat and Tears (okay, hopefully no blood) on April 29th will be eligible to earn limited-edition awards and animated Messages stickers. You’ll have to be On the workout for at least 20 minutes, and Fitness+ will highlight six sessions of that duration to help you Go get those rewards.

On April 25, which by the way is the perfect date for a Spring Day, Apple will also release a new collection of workouts to ease beginners into dancing with three 20-minute guides. There will also be three 30-minute options that focus more on performance, and span categories like 80’s classics, Latin music and hip hop. That last one is great for Hip Hop Lovers.

If BTS is your Idol, this news is probably Dope. Or Fire. Apple may add more workouts based on the band’s music so Stay tuned for more. And if BTS or dance are not your thing, then Life Goes On.