Horrific abuse of workers at Indonesian external development studio revealed in new report"No viral, no justice."Image credit: Brandoville News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Published on Jan. 7, 2025 A new report from People Make Games has detailed disturbing allegations of abuse towards employees at Indonesian studio Brandoville, a company used for art and animation support in games such as Age of Empires 4 and Assassin's Creed Shadows.In 2021, People Make Games reported on crunch culture and the industry's reliance on outsourcing to external developers in order to meet deadlines. Brandoville Studios was one such developer. Little has changed in the industry since that report, but Brandoville's closure a few months ago has lead its employees to now share further stories of their experiences at the studio.At the centre of this report is Christa Sydney, who worked at the company from 2019 until 2024 and says she was subjected to mental and physical abuse by commissioner Kwan Cherry Lai, wife of Brandoville CEO Ken Lai, who ran day-to-day operations.The full report can be watched in the below video, though please note it contains some incredibly harrowing content and footage.100 Slaps: The Breaking News The Games Industry Ignored in 2024Watch on YouTubeSydney describes how Cherry Lai took her under her wing following a dispute early in her career, but how this led to toxic abuse. Initially, Lai imposed a strict working schedule on employees and would purposefully divide employees through gossip and demeaning words, Sydney said.Sydney was actually part of People Make Games' previous report, but says she was later forced by Lai to film a statement in support of Brandoville against her will. Other employees felt she was being brainwashed, it's reported.Sydney now says she was then continuously abused by Lai, including during a work trip to the XDS '22 conference where Lai micromanaged her time and only allowed her to sleep for a few minutes over the course of four days leading up to the event. Further abuse included imposing daily Christian worship, forcing Sydney to write lines like a schoolchild, daily check-ins over WhatsApp of her outfits as part of "quality control", and humiliating her in front of colleagues.Eventually Lai's abuse became physical, forcing Sydney to film herself slapping her face 100 times as punishment, or hitting her head against a door frame until she was concussed before forcing an apology.Another employee, Caesarion Balthazar, had an arrangement with Lai where she would take part of his salary to assist with his spending habits. This led to her, in Balthazar's words, stealing an amount of money equivalent to a month's salary. Additionally, Balthazar says he was told he owed money for expensive training programmes he hadn't yet taken when he tried to leave the company.A third employee, Syifana Afiati, also says she was abused by Lai during her time at Brandoville from 2019 to 2024. Afiati fell pregnant, but was repeatedly overworked by Lai. At one point during the pregnancy Afiati says she was taken to hospital due to an issue, but was still asked to come into the office and work - to which she declined. Afiati's son was born two months prematurely and sadly died four months later in intensive care, however Lai still expected her to work and provided no sympathy or support from the company.In August 2024, Brandoville Studios went into liquidation, though Cherry and Ken Lai convinced a handful of employees to stay and begin a new company: LaiLai Studios. Sydney was one such employee, but says she was subsequently subjected to direct physical violence from Cherry Lai on multiple occasions.Sydney eventually escaped and compiled evidence against Lai. Media reports in Indonesia went viral, which finally lead to police investigations. This was required due to the local phrase "no viral, no justice", stemming from mistrust in the police and justice system.In response to the allegations, Cherry Lai issued a statement to People Make Games, bizarrely stating: "To me my part of the story is not important, as long as my team are good and safe now." However, further discussion was declined.Other employees claimed Ken Lai was Cherry's "biggest enabler" and should've done more to stop this abuse. Sydney and others however say they believe Ken is yet another victim of Cherry's abuse and his silence comes from a place of fear.The report concludes by noting how the treatment of outsourced workers goes largely unnoticed and unremarked upon by the video games industry due to its discomfort discussing outsourced work, despite it being a crucial part of game development. Eurogamer has contacted Microsoft and Ubisoft for comment on their connections to Brandoville.

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Contents hide Every year, the Call of Duty franchise manages to set new records by generating huge revenue as millions get their hands on the latest release, often bolstered by expensive battle passes microtransactions after release. While Activision often flexes the billions generated through sales and microtransactions, Call of Dutys publisher rarely shares the intel on the budgets required to create a blockbuster first-person shooter.It takes several years and a huge budget to create a triple-A release year after year. Sometimes, a huge budget doesnt mean a successful release. A recent court filing has revealed the most expensive Call of Duty, on record, ended up selling the least number of copies compared to previous games. Black Ops Cold War didnt sell despite huge budgetA report from GameFile reveals Activision spent a total of $700 million on the development of 2020s Black Ops Cold War throughout development, including the six seasons of post-launch content. The number appeared from a document filed by Patrick Kelly, Activisions head of creative overseeing Call of Duty.Although Black Ops Cold War had the most budget, the game sold 30 million copies. A respectable total but far lower than other entries in the franchise. The filing also revealed 2015s Black Ops 3 cost $450 million, selling 43 million copies while 2019s Modern Warfare reboot cost $640 million and recorded 41 million sales.Developed by Black Ops 6 developer Treyarch and Raven Software, Black Ops Cold War launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when studios had to adapt to new working methods to create games for a world in lockdown.Was the pandemic to blame?Theres a high chance the pandemic played a role in Black Ops Cold War recording significantly lower sales than its predecessors showing a large budget doesnt necessarily mean a well-received product.At its core, Black Ops Cold War isnt the worst Call of Duty game ever made. But, considering it launched with one of the largest budgets ever seen, its likely Activision saw the Black Ops 4 sequel as a flop after struggling to meet the high bar set by Modern Warfare and older Black Ops games.For more CoD, check out the best C9 loadout along with the best keyboard and mouse settings to keep you shooting straight. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold WarPlatform(s):PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox Series XGenre(s):Shooter7VideoGamerRelated TopicsCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Subscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

Story TimeIt might only be Week One, but I think Ive already played one of 2025s best gamesAs first impressions go, its difficult to get better than this - and I genuinely think it could end up being one of the most exciting games of 2025.Image credit: Hazelight/VG247 Article by Alex Donaldson Assistant Editor Published on Jan. 7, 2025 I love it when a video game makes me say wow out loud. Its even better when it can happen often - and such was the case in an one-hour hands-on session with Split Fiction, the new game from Hazelight Studios thats set to once again be published by EA.As a co-op game, my play partner for the session is Hazelight founder Josef Fares. In Britain, wed call him a pretty flash dude. In the modern vernacular that sort-of gives me a headache, youd say he has rizz. Hes dressed so well that I almost want to apologize that Im coming to him from some nasty video game website and not to do a GQ profile. As a luxury watch nerd, my eyes flick to his wrist the second we shake hands. Im sufficiently impressed.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Another fun way to summarize Fares is this: I often use my phone as my dictaphone. Once a recording is complete, Googles AI whizzes into action and does a rough (but often woefully inaccurate) transcription of the conversation; based on that text it gives it a name. Chatting to the boss behind Flight Simulator, the AI calls the conversation Flight. Chatting to Capcoms hunting honcho Ryozo Tsujimoto, it unsurprisingly picks the word Monster. Makes sense. My chat with Fares? That gets named Shitload. This tracks - not just because of the refreshingly colorful way the studio boss speaks, but also because of what this game is.A shitload of stuff is very much the design philosophy behind Split Fiction. This isnt in an overwhelming open world icon vomit way, though. Following on from the award-winning It Takes Two, Split Fiction is a linear adventure with the odd bit of side content that instead aims to just throw something all new at you practically every few minutes. The result is pretty breathtaking: like I say, it made me say wow, or some other more colorful variation of that, more than once.Watch on YouTubeIn many ways, the killer philosophy here is the same one thats driven Hazelights last two, or three, games. That means there is, to some extent, a risk of any new game feeling like more of the same - and that was the fear that crept into my mind when I was first briefed, before the announcement, on the nature of what Split Fiction is. But the games clever design, interesting setting concept, and constant search for new ideas means that this feels nothing like It Takes Two, even if at very first blush they share much in common.The concept is essentially all about a clash of opposites. We have two protagonists (named after Fares young daughters, Zoe and Mio) that are strangers with very different personalities. The pair have one thing in common: they are both authors. But their tastes in fiction diverge greatly: Mio is a sci-fi writer, while Zoe is about the wistful sword and sandals of fantasy.The pair happen to visit the headquarters of some company that has shades of Assassins Creeds evil Abstergo - they can put people into some brain-scanning machine that can then extract the stories in their mind and make them a virtual reality experience of sorts. Only one person is meant to end up in this machine at a time, but somehow Zoe and Mio end up in there together - and so their worlds, both corporeal and imagined, collide.From here, the actual video game bit of Split Fiction is always - if you excuse the phrase - split between the two fictions. Get it? Youll play one level where Mio and Zoe battle their way through some Blade Runner-y sci-fi cityscape, then in the very next theyll tumble into a delightful fantasy forest of Zoes creation. Dios Mio! | Image credit: Hazelight Studios / Electronic ArtsHow this framework is used is utterly delightful, and plays on video game concepts and tropes in a manner that thrills. So, yes, some of the science fiction levels briefly resemble the puzzles of Metroid. But another is a more contemporary concept, dropping you into an alarmingly good recreation of a snowboarding game like SSX, complete with tricks, grinding, and scoring mechanics - it just happens to be taking place within a sci-fi level.Fares knows Hazelight is onto something here. He grins as I sort of reel in my chair in disbelief as he keeps repeatedly opening Split Fictions debug menus to teleport me from one level to another, then another. Take a look at this mechanic. Now this. Now this. Games are art, right? Theyre not just content. I believe that with all my heart. But this is a game with a whole lot of content - and by that I dont mean the same thing stuffed to bursting, I mean loads of truly different content. Shitloads, if you will.Sometimes stuff is just in here because its cool. Sometimes you look at it and go, well, somebody on the team clearly likes Contra, or somebody thought this was a funny gag, which is the thing that likely most often applies to optional segments that toss out new gameplay mechanics for ten or fifteen minutes, never to be seen again. Some of the more consequential design is of course driven by the co-op nature of the game, which like Hazelights other titles, is compulsory.Minute-to-minute between the stuff that wildly changes for each level, you can obviously expect tight platforming, some lovely cinematic moments, pitch-perfect split screen framing, and clever little puzzles thatll require player communication to progress. This is arguably the first hurdle for a game such as this, not all the crazy inventive stuff: but of course, Hazelight has all that down pat. This is something the developer has been practicing for some time, which is likely why theyve been able to deliver something with such impressive depth and polish.I think we're getting better and better at it, because we know we have done co-op for such a long time, Fares says, clearly happy with my response.We're almost the best in the world at what we're doing because nobody else is doing what we're doing - the idea of , like the written design from the beginning as a co-op. You have your single-player that does split screens and that, but none that does this from the beginning. Wood if you could. | Image credit: Hazelight StudiosAll of this has led to challenges, of course. Take the snowboarding I mentioned earlier, for instance - theres a bar of quality that Fares insists the team hits, because players are sensitive to quality of even something they only play for a few minutes.As a player, when you play on a snowboard, you expect it to play like a snowboard. And thats acceptable - cos a player shouldnt be thinking - the player doesnt know that, oh, if I play a combat game like Devil May Cry, they worked on polishing that combat for the whole time. But in this game, we cant do that. Yet as a player, you expect it to play like a combat game, Fares explains.In a sense, were not doing ourselves any favors. But we need to release something thats polished and tight, and thats the biggest challenge, but thats also the thing that we have become very, very good at within Hazelight. We can identify what mechanics we can really polish or not. Sometimes early, sometimes late, but we can kind of see better and better.Almost as if to demonstrate, were back in the demo. Theres a great trailer for the game that was shown shortly after my hands-on at The Game Awards, narrated by Fares. Its a pretty great and explainer for a game that I actually think isnt so easy to explain. But now Fares is going into spoiler territory, clicking through the dev toolbox like a mad-man, showing me bonkers mechanics and systems from later in the game; even from the very last level. Its nothing I can talk about, but once again Im rocking back in my chair, like, my god, these guys are insane. In a good way! Wall-to-wall fun. | Image credit: Hazelight StudiosThere are two other things Id say about Split Fiction. Its just about stuff the games approach to development and design reminds me of. The first is just - this is a game with a very Nintendo-like energy, but for the fact its led by a man who cusses like a salty sailor. The second is a more specifically British comparison: it reminds me a little bit of Doctor Who.Bear with me, yeah? But the thing about Doctor Who thats wonderful, which makes it difficult to make but also incredible, is that nothing is really predictable. Think about Star Trek. Any given episode of The Next Generation, or Discovery, or whatever, is set mostly on the ship. Theres a bunch of lovely, expensive standing sets that get used week-in, week-out. Then they beam down to a planet, a couple of scenes in front of a matte painting or green screen, a redshirt dies, beam back to the ship, more ship scenes, done. Point is, those expensive ship sets end up as the very center of the show.By comparison, Doctor Who is bonkers. Its a silly concept. Through a sixtyplus year history, for the most part the shows only standing set is a single room. After that, every week is something different, something new. They build a whole planet, spend the full 45 minutes there, then rip it to pieces and never return. Months of work gets used for ten minutes and then never used again. In Doctor Who, the ship is just a tool - in a sort of chaotic way, the show has no center.Anyway, you can probably see what Im needling at. The Trek manner of doing things is a lot like traditional game development - while what Hazelight is doing on Split Fiction is more Doctor Who-esque - a bold, slightly mad willingness to just build stuff up, knock it down, and throw it out in minutes. The player should be left reeling by the speed at which theyre encountering new stuff - and that is by design.In the end, this is a bit of a non-traditional hands-on. Rather than playing full levels in a natural way, it was a hands-on guided tour, hopping through tiny slices of the entire game while its charismatic director enthusiastically explained the vision. Because of that, it can be truly difficult to know exactly how the final game will stand up. But as first impressions go, its difficult to get better than this - and I genuinely think it could end up being one of the most exciting games of 2025.We wont have long to wait, anyway - Split Fiction releases on March 5. I cant wait to try it out in full.

Hard PassGame Pass's wave one January line-up disappointingly offers just one new game for Game Pass Ultimate console usersWhile PC or Game Pass Standard players are getting something fresh, those paying the most aren't getting much.Image credit: EA News by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on Jan. 7, 2025 Microsoft has announced the first wave of January Game Pass line-up, kicking off the new year with a selection of new titles for subscribers to check out. Though, if you're a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber playing on Xbox, you're only getting one new game.That game, EA Sports UFC 5 (Cloud, Xbox Series X/S), is coming on January 14 to the Xbox Series X|S. So is Road 96 (Cloud, Console, and PC), but that's been on the service before and is making a return. Lightyear Frontier (Xbox Series X/S), My Time at Sandrock (Console), Rolling Hills - Sherwood Builders (Xbox Series X/S), and Rolling Hills (Console) are all now playable by Game Pass Standard players. Meanwhile Diablo is just coming to the PC Game Pass. This means those paying the most for the sub are getting one new game on consoles.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Now, obviously, that doesn't seem great. It's worth mentioning that this is just the first wave of games this month, more will be coming in the coming weeks. But as far as value-for-money goes, it's not exactly a great selection for those forking out the big bucks. Especially if they aren't a fan of sports games! Now, games like My Time at Sandrock might be cool, but it's entirely possible that Ultimate subscribers have played it before.As a reminder, Microsoft increased the price of Game Pass Ultimate a little while ago to $19.99 from $16.99. This didn't go down especially well as you can imagine, but even so Game Pass has proven a good value for money on months when some absolute scorchers pop up on the monthly game line-up. This month, judging from this first wave, isn't looking like one of those.If you're a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, what do you think about this? Let us know below!

Crushed DreamsThe Until Dawn movie will have one familiar face, but if you were hoping to see your faves whacked off in live-action, you can probably forget about it"It completely honours the spirit of the game."Image credit: Supermassive Games News by Oisin Kuhnke Contributor Published on Jan. 7, 2025 Sorry, Until Dawn fans, but the characters you know and love seemingly won't be in the upcoming live-action film adaptation.We're coming up to the anniversary of the live-action movie adaptation of Until Dawn being announced, and while there's still no trailer (even though it's due out this coming April), Sony did at least offer up an update on the film. During its CES 2025 presentation this week, Sony had some big announcements, like a Helldivers 2 movie, a Horizon Zero Dawn movie, a Ghost of Tsushima anime, and a new manga app from Crunchyroll. On top of all that, Screen Gems president Ashley Bucks spoke of the Until Dawn movie, sharing that it isn't a direct adaptation of the game, but that director David F. Sandberg "took the essence of what makes the game great and selected elements we think are the most important to the fans and paid homage to it in the right way."To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Bucks continued, "We then built out Until Dawn's universe using the core premise of a group of friends who encounter a variety of terrifying threats to tell a new story that is truly visceral and horrifying." Essentially, you can probably place a safe bet on none of the main characters from the original game making a return, other than maybe in cameo form. We do know that Peter Stormare is back as his character from the game, Dr. Hill, and the actor appeared in video form to say that he's "so excited to be part of this film, because the whole thing is a love letter to horror and it completely honours the spirit of the game."Watch on YouTubeHe also noted that the movie will be filled with "fresh characters and victims in a brand new story loaded with twists." I don't think this is a bad move, honestly - straight up adaptations don't generally work, and last year's Fallout excelled in particular thanks to its completely original premise, so even if you're disappointed, you're probably better off.

The leash you could do.Cast your mind back to when you first opened your shiny new Nintendo Switch.After removing the individually wrapped controllers and clipping them onto the console itself, you delved into the box's second layer of goodies to find the dock, the power cable... and a couple of plastic stick things.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Tencent claims there's been a "misunderstanding".The US Department of Defense has officially added Chinese megacorp Tencent to the federal register of companies deemed to have ties to the Chinese military (thanks, Bloomberg).The addition to the list does not come with any specific sanctions for Tencent, though it may affect the company's ability to do business in the United States in the future, with US companies being discouraged from dealing with any of those mentioned on the 'blacklist'.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Uber will use Nvidias new generative world model simulation tool, Cosmos, and cloud-based AI supercomputing platform, DGX Cloud, to support the development of autonomous vehicle technology, the companies announced at CES 2025.Cosmos is being marketed to robotics and autonomy companies as a tool that generates physics-based videos from a variety of inputs, including 9,000 trillion tokens generated from 20 million hours of (likely copyrighted) video, which can be used to simulate realistic industrial and driving environments. Nvidia DGX Cloud would provide Uber and other companies with access to high-performance AI infrastructure to train, fine-tune, and deploy AI self-driving models.Uber shared few details about how it plans to use these Nvidia tools. The ride-hail and delivery giant has spent the last year racking up 14 partnerships with AV companies across verticals, from Waymo in robotaxis to Aurora Innovation in trucking to Serve Robotics in sidewalk robotic delivery.Perhaps Uber will hand over its vast data on how and where people use ride-hail and delivery, working in tandem with such partners. The company doesnt develop its own AV technology, preferring instead the asset-light approach of partnering with others. Thats not for lack of trying; Ubers history with AV development is troubled.Uber launched its self-driving unit, Uber ATG, in 2015 through a partnership with Carnegie Mellon Universitys National Robotics Center. A year later, the company acquired self-driving truck startup Otto, which was founded by one of Googles star engineers, Anthony Levandowski. Uber latershuttered its trucking tech unit to focus on self-driving cars. But some damage had been done by bringing Levandowski on board. Waymo accused him of stealing trade secrets, which they alleged were then used by Uber. The case ended in a settlement in 2018, and Levandowski was later sentenced to 18 months in prison before he was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump.Also in 2018, an Uber self-driving vehicle testing in autonomous mode in Arizona struck a pedestrian, who later died as a result of her injuries. The next year, Uber spun out Uber ATG after closing $1 billion in funding from Toyota, but then in 2020, sold it off to autonomous vehicle startup Aurora Innovation.Today, Uber seems committed to being the bridge between rider and driver, whether thats a human or robot driver. But that doesnt mean Uber is comfortable moving slowly.During the companys third-quarter earnings report, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi explained that the company is launching with Waymo in only two cities this year Austin and Atlanta due to the investment that goes into launch.What you want to get is the proper liquidity in a city anytime that you launch, Khosrowshahi said in response to an analyst question. You want to go into a city with the proper investment in your depots, in your infrastructure, in your mapping, etc., so that you can start getting a return on capital.It takes time to lay the groundwork for AV deployment in a new city, but it looks like Uber thinks that with Nvidias world models and cloud platform, it can get to scale quicker.By working with Nvidia, we are confident that we can help supercharge the timeline for safe and scalable autonomous driving solutions for the industry, Khosrowshahi said in a statement.Uber would not share any additional details with TechCrunch.

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! Its good to be back.This week, were looking at the wild ride that was Benchs shutdown and acquisition; dozens of companies that are hiring in the fintech space; lawsuits against PayPal; an IPO update; and more!This edition is a bit longer than normal since we were on a hiatus for a few weeks. Happy New Year, btw! Heres hoping for a peaceful and joyful year for us all.To get a roundup of TechCrunchs biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here.The big storyImage Credits:d3sign / Getty ImagesIts always news when a company that has raised more than $110 million in venture funding suddenly folds. But its even more eyebrow-raising when days later, that same company in this case, Bench gets acquired. Sadly, thousands of customers and hundreds of employees alike must be feeling the whiplash.In this deep dive, TechCrunchs Charles Rollet breaks down the details of what led to Benchs shutdown and just who swooped in to buy this fintech, which was backed by the likes of Shopify and Bain Capital Ventures. One tidbit: The move was so sudden that one customer who kept years of data on Benchs website, and was even featured on its front page before it went offline, learned of the shutdown only when TechCrunch called him for a reaction. Dollars and centsThomson Reuters officeImage Credits:Pascal Le Segretain / Staff / Getty ImagesWe kicked off the new year with news that Thomson Reuters had acquired tax automation company SafeSendTechCrunch EIC Connie Loizos interviewed Robinhood CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev about his company being named Yahoo Finances comeback stock of the year, and much more. Catch up here.ICYMIImage Credits:TBC UzbekistanUzbekistans mobile-exclusive bank, TBC Bank Uzbekistan, raised $37 million in a new funding round to bolster its dominating digital presence in the Central Asian nation by developing new AI and tech products and attracting more tech-savvy customers.Tyme Group, a South African fintech, secured $250 million in a Series D round, pushing its valuation to $1.5 billion. Notably, the funding was led by Nu Holdings which owns Latin Americas most valuable fintech, Nubank investing $150 million for a 10% stake.What else were writingImage Credits:Bryce DurbinLast week wasnt a great one for PayPal. First, Dominic-Madori Davis broke the news that PayPal is being sued by the founder of venture firm Andav Capital, Nisha Desai, who claims she was excluded from the payment giants diversity and equity program because she is Asian. Then another new lawsuit alleges that the PayPal-owned browser extension Honey is cheating creators out of money.Meanwhile, Zack Whittaker reported that a U.S. online gift card store, MyGiftCardSupply, has secured an online storage server that was publicly exposing hundreds of thousands of customer government-issued identity documents to the internet.And, Tage Kene-Okafor wrote about how Africas tech ecosystem recently got a boost of attention, with South Africas TymeBank and Nigerias Moniepoint both raising funds in recent weeks at valuations of over $1 billion, joining the coveted unicorn pantheon.IPO newsImage Credits:Peak XVIs 2025 the year for the fintech IPO?Before 2024 came to a close, Manish Singh wrote about how shares of digital payments firm MobiKwik surged 82% to 507.5 ($6) on their first day of trading and how the Indian fintechs $69 million IPO comes amid fierce competition from larger rivals. He also looked at the fact that Aye Finance, a lender targeting small- and medium-sized businesses in India, is seeking to raise $171 million from its initial public offering.Meanwhile, Julie Bort reported on how digital bank Chime filed its confidential paperwork with the SEC, a moment the company has been prepping for since it hired banker Morgan Stanley last September, with an eye to IPO in 2025.While fintechs are still hiring, many of them dont have as many open roles as they did just a few months ago. However, there are still plenty of open positions, and there are some companies that are even hiring for more roles than they were last summer.Three crypto industry groups the DeFi Education Fund, the Blockchain Association, and the Texas Blockchain Council are suing the Internal Revenue Service to block new regulations that require decentralized finance (DeFi) entities to report customer information.Mike Butcher looked at how revenue-based financing startups continue to raise capital in MENA, where the model just seems to work.Thanks for reading. Well see you again next week!

3D design app Rooms just landed more funding. Launched into beta in 2023, the app from ex-Google employees allows users to build and code interactive 3D rooms and mini-games using a library of more than 10,000 items, which can be further edited using the programming language Lua. Now, Google itself has invested $1 million into the app as part of a partnership deal that also offered Rooms early access to Googles Gemini AI.Founded by former Googlers including Jason Toff, Bruno Oliveira, and Nick Kruge, who have backgrounds in AR/VR, games, and YouTube, Rooms offers a way to create mini 3D spaces, as well as a TikTok-like experience for browsing those spaces in a vertical feed. Part creative outlet and part intro to coding, the experience allows room creators to express themselves through digital art that can then be remixed by others into rooms of their own making.Initially, creators were building simple spaces and mini-games using the technology, but more recent trends see people building even larger spaces and using the app to tell stories, Toff tells TechCrunch.One example of this trend comes from the user namedeodqueen, who first built standard rooms and then later began to create even bigger spaces while also weaving in animation and interactivity.The app itself was also updated to version 3.0 on November 26, 2024, with a new Actions editor that lets users bring their rooms to life without having to code. Soon, Rooms plans to leverage its access to Gemini to further enhance the in-app experience via a text-to-speech mode.Thanks to an integration with Gemini 2.0 Flash, creators will be able to add narration and characters will be able to speak, which will enable broader storytelling capabilities.Creators will even be able choose what sort of tone they should use when characters are speaking, like angry, bored, calm, confident, enthusiastic, happy, excited, and others, according to a demonstration of the feature published by Rooms on YouTube.Things, Inc., the company behind Rooms, also announced it has surpassed 1 million rooms built on the platform and that over 10,000 things and objects are now available in its inventory for designing these small, digital spaces. The latter is up from over 7,500 digital items as of April 2024.The startup isnt sharing any updates around user numbers or engagement times, but last year had grown Rooms to a quarter of a million registered users. The funding, which closed in December, came from Google itself (not GV, Alphabets venture arm) and was structured as a SAFE, which gives Google the ability to invest in Rooms next round, its Series A. The startup previously raised $10 million in seed funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Adobes Chief Strategy Officer and VP of Design & Emerging Products, Scott Belsky, as well as Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, among others. Rooms is currently available on the web and on iOS. It has not yet introduced monetization.