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Futurism Compartió un vínculo

2025-05-13 22:23:45 ·

Company Regrets Replacing All Those Pesky Human Workers With AI, Just Wants Its Humans Back
Two years after partnering with OpenAI to automate marketing and customer service jobs, financial tech startup Klarna says it's longing for human connection again.Once gunning to be OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's "favorite guinea pig," Klarna is now plotting a big recruitment drive after its AI customer service agents couldn't quite hack it.The buy-now-pay-later company had previously shredded its marketing contracts in 2023, followed by its customer service team in 2024, which it proudly began replacing with AI agents.
Now, the company says it imagines an "Uber-type of setup" to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes."From a brand perspective, a company perspective, I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will be always a human if you want," admitted Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the Swedish fintech's CEO.That's a pretty big shift from his comments in December of 2024, when he told Bloomberg he was "of the opinion that AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do." A year before that, Klarna had stopped hiring humans altogether, reducing its workforce by 22 percent.A few months after freezing new hires, Klarna bragged that it saved $10 million on marketing costs by outsourcing tasks like translation, art production, and data analysis to generative AI.
It likewise claimed that its automated customer service agents could do the work of "700 full-time agents."So why the sudden about-face? As it turns out, leaving your already-frustrated customers to deal with a slop-spinning algorithm isn't exactly best practice.As Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, "cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality."Klarna isn't alone.
Though executives in every industry, from news media to fast food, seem to think AI is ready for the hot seat — an attitude that's more grounded in investor relations than an honest assessment of the tech — there are growing signs that robot chickens are coming home to roost.In January of last year, a survey of over 1,400 business executives found that 66 percent were "ambivalent or outright dissatisfied with their organization’s progress on AI and GenAI so far." The top issue corporate bosses cited was AI's "lack of talent and skills."It's a problem that evidently hasn't improved over the year.
Another survey recently found that over 55 percent of UK business leaders who rushed to replace jobs with AI now regret their decision.It's not hard to see why.
An experiment carried out by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University stuffed a fake software company full of AI employees, and their performance was laughably bad — the best AI worker finished just 24 percent of the tasks assigned to it.When it comes to the question of whether AI will take jobs, there seem to be as many answers as there are CEOs excited to save a buck.There are gray areas, to be sure — AI is certainly helping corporations speed up low-wage outsourcing, and the tech is having a verifiable effect on labor market volatility — just don't count on CEOs to have much patience as AI starts to chomp at their bottom line.Share This Article
Source: https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back" style="color: #0066cc;">https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back
#company #regrets #replacing #all #those #pesky #human #workers #with #just #wants #its #humans #back

Company Regrets Replacing All Those Pesky Human Workers With AI, Just Wants Its Humans Back
Two years after partnering with OpenAI to automate marketing and customer service jobs, financial tech startup Klarna says it's longing for human connection again.Once gunning to be OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's "favorite guinea pig," Klarna is now plotting a big recruitment drive after its AI customer service agents couldn't quite hack it.The buy-now-pay-later company had previously shredded its marketing contracts in 2023, followed by its customer service team in 2024, which it proudly began replacing with AI agents. Now, the company says it imagines an "Uber-type of setup" to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes."From a brand perspective, a company perspective, I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will be always a human if you want," admitted Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the Swedish fintech's CEO.That's a pretty big shift from his comments in December of 2024, when he told Bloomberg he was "of the opinion that AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do." A year before that, Klarna had stopped hiring humans altogether, reducing its workforce by 22 percent.A few months after freezing new hires, Klarna bragged that it saved $10 million on marketing costs by outsourcing tasks like translation, art production, and data analysis to generative AI. It likewise claimed that its automated customer service agents could do the work of "700 full-time agents."So why the sudden about-face? As it turns out, leaving your already-frustrated customers to deal with a slop-spinning algorithm isn't exactly best practice.As Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, "cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality."Klarna isn't alone. Though executives in every industry, from news media to fast food, seem to think AI is ready for the hot seat — an attitude that's more grounded in investor relations than an honest assessment of the tech — there are growing signs that robot chickens are coming home to roost.In January of last year, a survey of over 1,400 business executives found that 66 percent were "ambivalent or outright dissatisfied with their organization’s progress on AI and GenAI so far." The top issue corporate bosses cited was AI's "lack of talent and skills."It's a problem that evidently hasn't improved over the year. Another survey recently found that over 55 percent of UK business leaders who rushed to replace jobs with AI now regret their decision.It's not hard to see why. An experiment carried out by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University stuffed a fake software company full of AI employees, and their performance was laughably bad — the best AI worker finished just 24 percent of the tasks assigned to it.When it comes to the question of whether AI will take jobs, there seem to be as many answers as there are CEOs excited to save a buck.There are gray areas, to be sure — AI is certainly helping corporations speed up low-wage outsourcing, and the tech is having a verifiable effect on labor market volatility — just don't count on CEOs to have much patience as AI starts to chomp at their bottom line.Share This Article Source: https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back #company #regrets #replacing #all #those #pesky #human #workers #with #just #wants #its #humans #back

FUTURISM.COM

Company Regrets Replacing All Those Pesky Human Workers With AI, Just Wants Its Humans Back

Two years after partnering with OpenAI to automate marketing and customer service jobs, financial tech startup Klarna says it's longing for human connection again.Once gunning to be OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's "favorite guinea pig," Klarna is now plotting a big recruitment drive after its AI customer service agents couldn't quite hack it.The buy-now-pay-later company had previously shredded its marketing contracts in 2023, followed by its customer service team in 2024, which it proudly began replacing with AI agents. Now, the company says it imagines an "Uber-type of setup" to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes."From a brand perspective, a company perspective, I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will be always a human if you want," admitted Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the Swedish fintech's CEO.That's a pretty big shift from his comments in December of 2024, when he told Bloomberg he was "of the opinion that AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do." A year before that, Klarna had stopped hiring humans altogether, reducing its workforce by 22 percent.A few months after freezing new hires, Klarna bragged that it saved $10 million on marketing costs by outsourcing tasks like translation, art production, and data analysis to generative AI. It likewise claimed that its automated customer service agents could do the work of "700 full-time agents."So why the sudden about-face? As it turns out, leaving your already-frustrated customers to deal with a slop-spinning algorithm isn't exactly best practice.As Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, "cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality."Klarna isn't alone. Though executives in every industry, from news media to fast food, seem to think AI is ready for the hot seat — an attitude that's more grounded in investor relations than an honest assessment of the tech — there are growing signs that robot chickens are coming home to roost.In January of last year, a survey of over 1,400 business executives found that 66 percent were "ambivalent or outright dissatisfied with their organization’s progress on AI and GenAI so far." The top issue corporate bosses cited was AI's "lack of talent and skills."It's a problem that evidently hasn't improved over the year. Another survey recently found that over 55 percent of UK business leaders who rushed to replace jobs with AI now regret their decision.It's not hard to see why. An experiment carried out by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University stuffed a fake software company full of AI employees, and their performance was laughably bad — the best AI worker finished just 24 percent of the tasks assigned to it.When it comes to the question of whether AI will take jobs, there seem to be as many answers as there are CEOs excited to save a buck.There are gray areas, to be sure — AI is certainly helping corporations speed up low-wage outsourcing, and the tech is having a verifiable effect on labor market volatility — just don't count on CEOs to have much patience as AI starts to chomp at their bottom line.Share This Article

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The Verge Compartió un vínculo

2025-05-13 13:47:29 ·

#333;">Why one obscure app could help crumble Meta’s empire
If the question, “Who is Meta’s biggest rival?” were on a Family Feud survey, TikTok would likely be the winning answer.
In the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against the Facebook and Instagram owner, the government’s response probably wouldn’t even make the top 10: a small blockchain-based platform called MeWe.
MeWe looks a fair amount like Facebook at first glance, except that you make an account using the Frequency blockchain — which the company explains is a decentralized protocol that lets you move your social connections to other (mostly hypothetical at this point) apps that support Frequency.
The company says 20 million users have joined, but when I make a MeWe account and log in, I scroll through my autopopulated feed and think, “Who are these people?” I search for a few of my Verge colleagues, figuring if anyone has tried this obscure app, it might be one of them, but I come up short.
I try some public figures: Tim Cook? Jeff Bezos? Mark Zuckerberg? There are some accounts with these names, but it seems unlikely they’re the ones I have in mind.The claim that MeWe is a closer competitor to Facebook and Instagram than TikTok might be baffling if you’re not steeped in antitrust law or the specifics of the FTC’s complaint.
Meta CEO Zuckerberg testified he hadn’t even heard of the app before this case was filed.
But the FTC has spent the past three weeks laying out its logic.
Using Meta’s own internal discussions about how it views itself and its competition, it says that Meta has historically, and to this day, competed in a market for connecting with friends and family online — and when it saw its dominance in that space threatened by the rise of Instagram and WhatsApp, it bought them to squash the competition.Whether Judge James Boasberg buys this could determine who wins the case — if the FTC can also show that Meta acted illegally through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp to solidify its alleged monopoly power.Antitrust law is supposed to ensure fair competition, which usually means that people have options for a useful class of goods and services — what’s known as a relevant market.
The FTC says that here, that market is “personal social networking services,” or PSNs: spaces where a core purpose is helping people connect with friends and family.
While there are many online platforms that overlap with Meta’s services, the FTC argues that virtually none of them serve that market.
If internet users want to find and hang out with people they know — as opposed to, say, watching influencers or making work connections — then it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s way or… in the government’s telling, Snapchat, BeReal, and MeWe.
Beyond that core definition, PSNs have some other unique features and norms: The apps feature a social graph of users’ friends and family connections, as opposed to mapping users primarily based on their interests.
Users can look up and find people they know in real life.
And they come to the app to share personal updates with those people.Facebook and Instagram increasingly display videos and photos from influencers and celebrities, but the FTC argues personal social networking remains a core service.
It used Instagram chief Adam Mosseri’s testimony to most clearly make this point.
In that testimony as well as posts to his own Instagram account, Mosseri said that it’s still important for the app to connect users with their friends.
The FTC argues that even if that use case is a smaller portion of what Meta’s apps do these days, it’s still a significant need users have that can virtually only be fulfilled by Facebook and Instagram.
While someone might connect with people they know in real life on LinkedIn, they likely won’t primarily share personal updates there.
And while they also could follow and interact with people they know on TikTok or YouTube, they’re more likely to passively watch videos from people they don’t.Meta says this is an entirely wrong way to think about it.
Social media platforms compete for users’ time and attention, so whether a particular app is squarely aimed at so-called friends and family sharing is beside the point.
Facebook and Instagram have evolved to show more content from people like influencers, shifting further from the use case the FTC says Meta has illegally dominated.
The company has already landed some important points that could help its case, and it will get more time to push back on the agency’s framing when it calls its own witnesses in the coming weeks.But as the FTC’s case-in-chief continues into its fifth week, its argument for Meta’s dominance is becoming a lot clearer.Why do people use Facebook?When defining a market, each side is trying to answer a key question: why are people choosing one particular company’s product? A lot of goods and services compete with each other in some sense, but this doesn’t mean they serve the same niche.
In the case of sodas, for example, “you could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi,” says George Washington Law professor and former FTC Chair Bill Kovacic.
In the tech world, Netflix has claimed its biggest competitors are Fortnite and sleep — but those comparisons probably wouldn’t stand up in court.The FTC says that outside of Facebook and Instagram, only apps like Snapchat and MeWe can fulfill a users’ desire to broadcast personal updates with friends and family online.
To make its case, it brought in a string of executives from other social media companies to explain why their apps can’t quite scratch the same itch for users.
Strava’s former VP of connected partnerships Mateo Ortega testified that sure, users of the fitness-tracking social media app could share baby photos on the platform, but they probably wouldn’t unless it was in a running stroller.
“It’s all about fitness, and while you can post other stuff, it just doesn’t seem as relevant,” he said.
“You could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi”Pinterest’s former head of user growth Julia Roberts testified that users who come to Pinterest “expecting it to be like other social media apps … tend to be confused about how to use the product.” That’s because the app is so much not about connecting with other people that it works much differently from other social media platforms.
Pinterest is more about finding things users are interested in, she said, so “following is not a big part of the Pinterest experience.”TikTok has a tab where users can watch videos from their friends — identified as people who mutually follow each other.
But head of operations Adam Presser testified only about 1 percent of videos watched on the platform are there.
The company doesn’t think of itself as competing with Meta’s apps for personal social networking, he testified.
And even though side-by-side screenshots of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts look identical, Presser said, “when you click out of this view for these other platforms, you would get to essentially what I think of as their core business,” which for Instagram, includes a feed and stories that often contain at least some content from family and friends.At times, Meta’s cross-examination of rival company executives showed the limits of apps’ similarities.
When questioning Apple director of product marketing Ronak Shah, Meta sought to show that group chats in Apple’s messaging feature could serve as a social media feed for friends and family sharing.
But Shah testified that feed would be limited to 32 people at most, and users can’t just look up each others’ profiles like they would on social platforms.
Still, Meta pointed out, Apple’s messages app is listed under social media on its own app store.However, Meta also made important arguments about why the judge should question the FTC’s framing.
It pointed out that some documents from TikTok and YouTube owner Google claiming their products are very different from Meta’s were submitted to foreign officials to try to avoid getting drafted into potentially frustrating regulations.
It also pointed out when TikTok briefly went dark in the US ahead of a (now-aborted) ban, users flocked to Meta apps, showing consumers see it as a substitute on at least some level.
That’s because, Meta argued, competition for users is really about winning their time and attention.Companies can “sometimes make mistakes.
They misjudge who their users are”But X VP of product Keith Coleman testified it’s not that useful to think about competition this way.
Instead, “it’s much more helpful to understand what people are trying to accomplish in their lives and to try to help them accomplish that.” Under former CEO Jack Dorsey, then-Twitter leaned into focusing on news and users’ interests, Coleman testified, because that’s why people were coming to the platform.
Coleman was later surprised at how his own website characterized the product in its help center as a “service for friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.” “I can’t believe that’s on the website,” he said.
“That’s pretty wacky.”This point was “a caution that not everything a company writes down or says is necessarily decisive in establishing what the boundary of a market is,” Kovacic said.
Companies can “sometimes make mistakes.
They misjudge who their users are.”There are real ramifications for internet users here.
Going back to Netflix’s comparisons, if the streaming video service went down, some people would probably be happy to play a video game or get a few hours of shut-eye instead.
But others would be frustrated that they couldn’t watch a movie, which is why it’s good that Hulu, HBO, and Amazon Prime Video also exist.
The FTC’s argument isn’t that Meta owns the only social apps on the internet, it’s that the company faces little competition for a service many people specifically want — so the fact that you probably don’t know anyone using MeWe is sort of the point.How will the judge decide?Ultimately, Boasberg’s market definition — whether it’s Meta’s, the FTC’s, or his own — will come down to a few things: how Meta views itself, how competitors see it, and his own intuition, says Kovacic.
”Notice how much the FTC has been questioning Meta witnesses on the basis of its own internal documents,” he says.
“Does the story in the courtroom match the story of your own internal documents?” So far, the documents have shown that Meta has clocked that at least some portion of users come to its products to connect with family and friends, but also that the rise of TikTok has had it looking over its shoulder.
In September 2020, Meta told its board that Instagram revenue would be “meaningfully lower” than planned in the second half of the fiscal year because TikTok was drawing users’ attention.
But other internal documents have shown Meta’s well aware that at different points in time, users have come to its apps to connect with family and friends, and worriedly took note of other apps entering that space.
In a 2018 presentation, Meta found that the highest percentage of surveyed users said they come to Facebook, Instagram, and Snap to “see daily casual moments” and “see special moments.” By contrast, users came to Twitter’s feed for news and YouTube’s for entertainment.
And even as Instagram expands into entertainment, the FTC notes that it still advertises its sign-up page as a place to “see photos and videos from your friends.”“Instagram will always need to focus on friends”In a 2018 email, Zuckerberg told Mosseri that “Instagram will always need to focus on friends.” And even though a lot has changed in the social media landscape since then, Mosseri testified that to this day on the app, “friends are an important part of the experience.” Even though users may share fewer of their own updates on Facebook and Instagram, Mosseri admitted that two friends talking in the comments of a public figure’s post counts as an interaction between friends — and one that Instagram actively tries to facilitate.Meta has argued that this special focus on friends and family sharing makes up a shrinking portion of its offerings as it works to compete with fierce rivals like TikTok.
But the FTC says it’s still significant enough to monopolize.
It’s a scenario that came up in another major tech monopolization case, Kovacic says: the late-1990s lawsuit US v.
Microsoft.
In that case, Microsoft argued the Justice Department was ignoring how computing would soon move beyond the personal computer to the Internet of Things, meaning it couldn’t truly lock up the computing ecosystem as much as the government alleged.“Judge Jackson in the Microsoft case said, yeah, those things are happening, but not happening fast enough to deny you real market power in this PC and laptop-based market that the Justice Department is emphasizing,” Kovacic says.Still, he adds, a market niche can at some point become so small that it’s no longer significant in the eyes of antitrust law.
“You can have a process of change that ultimately renders the market segment unimportant,” he says.
“And the hard task of analysis for the judge is to say, has it already happened?”See More:
#666;">المصدر: https://www.theverge.com/antitrust/665308/meta-ftc-antitrust-trial-market-definition-tiktok-mewe-snap" style="color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none;">www.theverge.com
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Why one obscure app could help crumble Meta’s empire
If the question, “Who is Meta’s biggest rival?” were on a Family Feud survey, TikTok would likely be the winning answer. In the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against the Facebook and Instagram owner, the government’s response probably wouldn’t even make the top 10: a small blockchain-based platform called MeWe. MeWe looks a fair amount like Facebook at first glance, except that you make an account using the Frequency blockchain — which the company explains is a decentralized protocol that lets you move your social connections to other (mostly hypothetical at this point) apps that support Frequency. The company says 20 million users have joined, but when I make a MeWe account and log in, I scroll through my autopopulated feed and think, “Who are these people?” I search for a few of my Verge colleagues, figuring if anyone has tried this obscure app, it might be one of them, but I come up short. I try some public figures: Tim Cook? Jeff Bezos? Mark Zuckerberg? There are some accounts with these names, but it seems unlikely they’re the ones I have in mind.The claim that MeWe is a closer competitor to Facebook and Instagram than TikTok might be baffling if you’re not steeped in antitrust law or the specifics of the FTC’s complaint. Meta CEO Zuckerberg testified he hadn’t even heard of the app before this case was filed. But the FTC has spent the past three weeks laying out its logic. Using Meta’s own internal discussions about how it views itself and its competition, it says that Meta has historically, and to this day, competed in a market for connecting with friends and family online — and when it saw its dominance in that space threatened by the rise of Instagram and WhatsApp, it bought them to squash the competition.Whether Judge James Boasberg buys this could determine who wins the case — if the FTC can also show that Meta acted illegally through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp to solidify its alleged monopoly power.Antitrust law is supposed to ensure fair competition, which usually means that people have options for a useful class of goods and services — what’s known as a relevant market. The FTC says that here, that market is “personal social networking services,” or PSNs: spaces where a core purpose is helping people connect with friends and family. While there are many online platforms that overlap with Meta’s services, the FTC argues that virtually none of them serve that market. If internet users want to find and hang out with people they know — as opposed to, say, watching influencers or making work connections — then it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s way or… in the government’s telling, Snapchat, BeReal, and MeWe. Beyond that core definition, PSNs have some other unique features and norms: The apps feature a social graph of users’ friends and family connections, as opposed to mapping users primarily based on their interests. Users can look up and find people they know in real life. And they come to the app to share personal updates with those people.Facebook and Instagram increasingly display videos and photos from influencers and celebrities, but the FTC argues personal social networking remains a core service. It used Instagram chief Adam Mosseri’s testimony to most clearly make this point. In that testimony as well as posts to his own Instagram account, Mosseri said that it’s still important for the app to connect users with their friends. The FTC argues that even if that use case is a smaller portion of what Meta’s apps do these days, it’s still a significant need users have that can virtually only be fulfilled by Facebook and Instagram. While someone might connect with people they know in real life on LinkedIn, they likely won’t primarily share personal updates there. And while they also could follow and interact with people they know on TikTok or YouTube, they’re more likely to passively watch videos from people they don’t.Meta says this is an entirely wrong way to think about it. Social media platforms compete for users’ time and attention, so whether a particular app is squarely aimed at so-called friends and family sharing is beside the point. Facebook and Instagram have evolved to show more content from people like influencers, shifting further from the use case the FTC says Meta has illegally dominated. The company has already landed some important points that could help its case, and it will get more time to push back on the agency’s framing when it calls its own witnesses in the coming weeks.But as the FTC’s case-in-chief continues into its fifth week, its argument for Meta’s dominance is becoming a lot clearer.Why do people use Facebook?When defining a market, each side is trying to answer a key question: why are people choosing one particular company’s product? A lot of goods and services compete with each other in some sense, but this doesn’t mean they serve the same niche. In the case of sodas, for example, “you could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi,” says George Washington Law professor and former FTC Chair Bill Kovacic. In the tech world, Netflix has claimed its biggest competitors are Fortnite and sleep — but those comparisons probably wouldn’t stand up in court.The FTC says that outside of Facebook and Instagram, only apps like Snapchat and MeWe can fulfill a users’ desire to broadcast personal updates with friends and family online. To make its case, it brought in a string of executives from other social media companies to explain why their apps can’t quite scratch the same itch for users. Strava’s former VP of connected partnerships Mateo Ortega testified that sure, users of the fitness-tracking social media app could share baby photos on the platform, but they probably wouldn’t unless it was in a running stroller. “It’s all about fitness, and while you can post other stuff, it just doesn’t seem as relevant,” he said. “You could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi”Pinterest’s former head of user growth Julia Roberts testified that users who come to Pinterest “expecting it to be like other social media apps … tend to be confused about how to use the product.” That’s because the app is so much not about connecting with other people that it works much differently from other social media platforms. Pinterest is more about finding things users are interested in, she said, so “following is not a big part of the Pinterest experience.”TikTok has a tab where users can watch videos from their friends — identified as people who mutually follow each other. But head of operations Adam Presser testified only about 1 percent of videos watched on the platform are there. The company doesn’t think of itself as competing with Meta’s apps for personal social networking, he testified. And even though side-by-side screenshots of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts look identical, Presser said, “when you click out of this view for these other platforms, you would get to essentially what I think of as their core business,” which for Instagram, includes a feed and stories that often contain at least some content from family and friends.At times, Meta’s cross-examination of rival company executives showed the limits of apps’ similarities. When questioning Apple director of product marketing Ronak Shah, Meta sought to show that group chats in Apple’s messaging feature could serve as a social media feed for friends and family sharing. But Shah testified that feed would be limited to 32 people at most, and users can’t just look up each others’ profiles like they would on social platforms. Still, Meta pointed out, Apple’s messages app is listed under social media on its own app store.However, Meta also made important arguments about why the judge should question the FTC’s framing. It pointed out that some documents from TikTok and YouTube owner Google claiming their products are very different from Meta’s were submitted to foreign officials to try to avoid getting drafted into potentially frustrating regulations. It also pointed out when TikTok briefly went dark in the US ahead of a (now-aborted) ban, users flocked to Meta apps, showing consumers see it as a substitute on at least some level. That’s because, Meta argued, competition for users is really about winning their time and attention.Companies can “sometimes make mistakes. They misjudge who their users are”But X VP of product Keith Coleman testified it’s not that useful to think about competition this way. Instead, “it’s much more helpful to understand what people are trying to accomplish in their lives and to try to help them accomplish that.” Under former CEO Jack Dorsey, then-Twitter leaned into focusing on news and users’ interests, Coleman testified, because that’s why people were coming to the platform. Coleman was later surprised at how his own website characterized the product in its help center as a “service for friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.” “I can’t believe that’s on the website,” he said. “That’s pretty wacky.”This point was “a caution that not everything a company writes down or says is necessarily decisive in establishing what the boundary of a market is,” Kovacic said. Companies can “sometimes make mistakes. They misjudge who their users are.”There are real ramifications for internet users here. Going back to Netflix’s comparisons, if the streaming video service went down, some people would probably be happy to play a video game or get a few hours of shut-eye instead. But others would be frustrated that they couldn’t watch a movie, which is why it’s good that Hulu, HBO, and Amazon Prime Video also exist. The FTC’s argument isn’t that Meta owns the only social apps on the internet, it’s that the company faces little competition for a service many people specifically want — so the fact that you probably don’t know anyone using MeWe is sort of the point.How will the judge decide?Ultimately, Boasberg’s market definition — whether it’s Meta’s, the FTC’s, or his own — will come down to a few things: how Meta views itself, how competitors see it, and his own intuition, says Kovacic. ”Notice how much the FTC has been questioning Meta witnesses on the basis of its own internal documents,” he says. “Does the story in the courtroom match the story of your own internal documents?” So far, the documents have shown that Meta has clocked that at least some portion of users come to its products to connect with family and friends, but also that the rise of TikTok has had it looking over its shoulder. In September 2020, Meta told its board that Instagram revenue would be “meaningfully lower” than planned in the second half of the fiscal year because TikTok was drawing users’ attention. But other internal documents have shown Meta’s well aware that at different points in time, users have come to its apps to connect with family and friends, and worriedly took note of other apps entering that space. In a 2018 presentation, Meta found that the highest percentage of surveyed users said they come to Facebook, Instagram, and Snap to “see daily casual moments” and “see special moments.” By contrast, users came to Twitter’s feed for news and YouTube’s for entertainment. And even as Instagram expands into entertainment, the FTC notes that it still advertises its sign-up page as a place to “see photos and videos from your friends.”“Instagram will always need to focus on friends”In a 2018 email, Zuckerberg told Mosseri that “Instagram will always need to focus on friends.” And even though a lot has changed in the social media landscape since then, Mosseri testified that to this day on the app, “friends are an important part of the experience.” Even though users may share fewer of their own updates on Facebook and Instagram, Mosseri admitted that two friends talking in the comments of a public figure’s post counts as an interaction between friends — and one that Instagram actively tries to facilitate.Meta has argued that this special focus on friends and family sharing makes up a shrinking portion of its offerings as it works to compete with fierce rivals like TikTok. But the FTC says it’s still significant enough to monopolize. It’s a scenario that came up in another major tech monopolization case, Kovacic says: the late-1990s lawsuit US v. Microsoft. In that case, Microsoft argued the Justice Department was ignoring how computing would soon move beyond the personal computer to the Internet of Things, meaning it couldn’t truly lock up the computing ecosystem as much as the government alleged.“Judge Jackson in the Microsoft case said, yeah, those things are happening, but not happening fast enough to deny you real market power in this PC and laptop-based market that the Justice Department is emphasizing,” Kovacic says.Still, he adds, a market niche can at some point become so small that it’s no longer significant in the eyes of antitrust law. “You can have a process of change that ultimately renders the market segment unimportant,” he says. “And the hard task of analysis for the judge is to say, has it already happened?”See More:
المصدر: www.theverge.com
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Why one obscure app could help crumble Meta’s empire

If the question, “Who is Meta’s biggest rival?” were on a Family Feud survey, TikTok would likely be the winning answer. In the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against the Facebook and Instagram owner, the government’s response probably wouldn’t even make the top 10: a small blockchain-based platform called MeWe. MeWe looks a fair amount like Facebook at first glance, except that you make an account using the Frequency blockchain — which the company explains is a decentralized protocol that lets you move your social connections to other (mostly hypothetical at this point) apps that support Frequency. The company says 20 million users have joined, but when I make a MeWe account and log in, I scroll through my autopopulated feed and think, “Who are these people?” I search for a few of my Verge colleagues, figuring if anyone has tried this obscure app, it might be one of them, but I come up short. I try some public figures: Tim Cook? Jeff Bezos? Mark Zuckerberg? There are some accounts with these names, but it seems unlikely they’re the ones I have in mind.The claim that MeWe is a closer competitor to Facebook and Instagram than TikTok might be baffling if you’re not steeped in antitrust law or the specifics of the FTC’s complaint. Meta CEO Zuckerberg testified he hadn’t even heard of the app before this case was filed. But the FTC has spent the past three weeks laying out its logic. Using Meta’s own internal discussions about how it views itself and its competition, it says that Meta has historically, and to this day, competed in a market for connecting with friends and family online — and when it saw its dominance in that space threatened by the rise of Instagram and WhatsApp, it bought them to squash the competition.Whether Judge James Boasberg buys this could determine who wins the case — if the FTC can also show that Meta acted illegally through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp to solidify its alleged monopoly power.Antitrust law is supposed to ensure fair competition, which usually means that people have options for a useful class of goods and services — what’s known as a relevant market. The FTC says that here, that market is “personal social networking services,” or PSNs: spaces where a core purpose is helping people connect with friends and family. While there are many online platforms that overlap with Meta’s services, the FTC argues that virtually none of them serve that market. If internet users want to find and hang out with people they know — as opposed to, say, watching influencers or making work connections — then it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s way or… in the government’s telling, Snapchat, BeReal, and MeWe. Beyond that core definition, PSNs have some other unique features and norms: The apps feature a social graph of users’ friends and family connections, as opposed to mapping users primarily based on their interests. Users can look up and find people they know in real life. And they come to the app to share personal updates with those people.Facebook and Instagram increasingly display videos and photos from influencers and celebrities, but the FTC argues personal social networking remains a core service. It used Instagram chief Adam Mosseri’s testimony to most clearly make this point. In that testimony as well as posts to his own Instagram account, Mosseri said that it’s still important for the app to connect users with their friends. The FTC argues that even if that use case is a smaller portion of what Meta’s apps do these days, it’s still a significant need users have that can virtually only be fulfilled by Facebook and Instagram. While someone might connect with people they know in real life on LinkedIn, they likely won’t primarily share personal updates there. And while they also could follow and interact with people they know on TikTok or YouTube, they’re more likely to passively watch videos from people they don’t.Meta says this is an entirely wrong way to think about it. Social media platforms compete for users’ time and attention, so whether a particular app is squarely aimed at so-called friends and family sharing is beside the point. Facebook and Instagram have evolved to show more content from people like influencers, shifting further from the use case the FTC says Meta has illegally dominated. The company has already landed some important points that could help its case, and it will get more time to push back on the agency’s framing when it calls its own witnesses in the coming weeks.But as the FTC’s case-in-chief continues into its fifth week, its argument for Meta’s dominance is becoming a lot clearer.Why do people use Facebook?When defining a market, each side is trying to answer a key question: why are people choosing one particular company’s product? A lot of goods and services compete with each other in some sense, but this doesn’t mean they serve the same niche. In the case of sodas, for example, “you could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi,” says George Washington Law professor and former FTC Chair Bill Kovacic. In the tech world, Netflix has claimed its biggest competitors are Fortnite and sleep — but those comparisons probably wouldn’t stand up in court.The FTC says that outside of Facebook and Instagram, only apps like Snapchat and MeWe can fulfill a users’ desire to broadcast personal updates with friends and family online. To make its case, it brought in a string of executives from other social media companies to explain why their apps can’t quite scratch the same itch for users. Strava’s former VP of connected partnerships Mateo Ortega testified that sure, users of the fitness-tracking social media app could share baby photos on the platform, but they probably wouldn’t unless it was in a running stroller. “It’s all about fitness, and while you can post other stuff, it just doesn’t seem as relevant,” he said. “You could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi”Pinterest’s former head of user growth Julia Roberts testified that users who come to Pinterest “expecting it to be like other social media apps … tend to be confused about how to use the product.” That’s because the app is so much not about connecting with other people that it works much differently from other social media platforms. Pinterest is more about finding things users are interested in, she said, so “following is not a big part of the Pinterest experience.”TikTok has a tab where users can watch videos from their friends — identified as people who mutually follow each other. But head of operations Adam Presser testified only about 1 percent of videos watched on the platform are there. The company doesn’t think of itself as competing with Meta’s apps for personal social networking, he testified. And even though side-by-side screenshots of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts look identical, Presser said, “when you click out of this view for these other platforms, you would get to essentially what I think of as their core business,” which for Instagram, includes a feed and stories that often contain at least some content from family and friends.At times, Meta’s cross-examination of rival company executives showed the limits of apps’ similarities. When questioning Apple director of product marketing Ronak Shah, Meta sought to show that group chats in Apple’s messaging feature could serve as a social media feed for friends and family sharing. But Shah testified that feed would be limited to 32 people at most, and users can’t just look up each others’ profiles like they would on social platforms. Still, Meta pointed out, Apple’s messages app is listed under social media on its own app store.However, Meta also made important arguments about why the judge should question the FTC’s framing. It pointed out that some documents from TikTok and YouTube owner Google claiming their products are very different from Meta’s were submitted to foreign officials to try to avoid getting drafted into potentially frustrating regulations. It also pointed out when TikTok briefly went dark in the US ahead of a (now-aborted) ban, users flocked to Meta apps, showing consumers see it as a substitute on at least some level. That’s because, Meta argued, competition for users is really about winning their time and attention.Companies can “sometimes make mistakes. They misjudge who their users are”But X VP of product Keith Coleman testified it’s not that useful to think about competition this way. Instead, “it’s much more helpful to understand what people are trying to accomplish in their lives and to try to help them accomplish that.” Under former CEO Jack Dorsey, then-Twitter leaned into focusing on news and users’ interests, Coleman testified, because that’s why people were coming to the platform. Coleman was later surprised at how his own website characterized the product in its help center as a “service for friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.” “I can’t believe that’s on the website,” he said. “That’s pretty wacky.”This point was “a caution that not everything a company writes down or says is necessarily decisive in establishing what the boundary of a market is,” Kovacic said. Companies can “sometimes make mistakes. They misjudge who their users are.”There are real ramifications for internet users here. Going back to Netflix’s comparisons, if the streaming video service went down, some people would probably be happy to play a video game or get a few hours of shut-eye instead. But others would be frustrated that they couldn’t watch a movie, which is why it’s good that Hulu, HBO, and Amazon Prime Video also exist. The FTC’s argument isn’t that Meta owns the only social apps on the internet, it’s that the company faces little competition for a service many people specifically want — so the fact that you probably don’t know anyone using MeWe is sort of the point.How will the judge decide?Ultimately, Boasberg’s market definition — whether it’s Meta’s, the FTC’s, or his own — will come down to a few things: how Meta views itself, how competitors see it, and his own intuition, says Kovacic. ”Notice how much the FTC has been questioning Meta witnesses on the basis of its own internal documents,” he says. “Does the story in the courtroom match the story of your own internal documents?” So far, the documents have shown that Meta has clocked that at least some portion of users come to its products to connect with family and friends, but also that the rise of TikTok has had it looking over its shoulder. In September 2020, Meta told its board that Instagram revenue would be “meaningfully lower” than planned in the second half of the fiscal year because TikTok was drawing users’ attention. But other internal documents have shown Meta’s well aware that at different points in time, users have come to its apps to connect with family and friends, and worriedly took note of other apps entering that space. In a 2018 presentation, Meta found that the highest percentage of surveyed users said they come to Facebook, Instagram, and Snap to “see daily casual moments” and “see special moments.” By contrast, users came to Twitter’s feed for news and YouTube’s for entertainment. And even as Instagram expands into entertainment, the FTC notes that it still advertises its sign-up page as a place to “see photos and videos from your friends.”“Instagram will always need to focus on friends”In a 2018 email, Zuckerberg told Mosseri that “Instagram will always need to focus on friends.” And even though a lot has changed in the social media landscape since then, Mosseri testified that to this day on the app, “friends are an important part of the experience.” Even though users may share fewer of their own updates on Facebook and Instagram, Mosseri admitted that two friends talking in the comments of a public figure’s post counts as an interaction between friends — and one that Instagram actively tries to facilitate.Meta has argued that this special focus on friends and family sharing makes up a shrinking portion of its offerings as it works to compete with fierce rivals like TikTok. But the FTC says it’s still significant enough to monopolize. It’s a scenario that came up in another major tech monopolization case, Kovacic says: the late-1990s lawsuit US v. Microsoft. In that case, Microsoft argued the Justice Department was ignoring how computing would soon move beyond the personal computer to the Internet of Things, meaning it couldn’t truly lock up the computing ecosystem as much as the government alleged.“Judge Jackson in the Microsoft case said, yeah, those things are happening, but not happening fast enough to deny you real market power in this PC and laptop-based market that the Justice Department is emphasizing,” Kovacic says.Still, he adds, a market niche can at some point become so small that it’s no longer significant in the eyes of antitrust law. “You can have a process of change that ultimately renders the market segment unimportant,” he says. “And the hard task of analysis for the judge is to say, has it already happened?”See More:

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2025-05-13 12:37:58 ·

Palworld’s next big update is a Terraria collab — something Pokémon would never do

Pocketpair has announced that the next major update for its hit creature-collection game Palworld will be a crossover event with Terraria — which, apropos of nothing, is something Nintendo would never do with the legally distinct (or is it?) creature-collection game Pokémon.

The update, titled “Tides of Terraria,” will be released this summer. Pocketpair didn’t reveal much about its collab with Re-Logic’s 2011 indie smash in its press release. Instead, it said it would announce the contents of the update “across official Palworld social media channels over the next few weeks.”

But it seems the core of the update will be adding creatures from Terraria to Palworld as, essentially, new Pals. “Catch, train, fight, and work monsters from Terraria just like Pals…?” Pocketpair teased. Official art for the update showed some Palworld hunters facing off against a giant floating eyeball that bears a strong resemblance to Terraria’s Eye of Cthulu boss, plus a horde of the older game’s signature bat enemies.

“Tides of Terraria” will extend beyond the crossover content, too, with Pocketpair promising new Pals and new islands will be added in the summer patch.

Pocketpair’s partnership with ReLogic is a vote of confidence from a grandee of the indie community in the midst of the Japanese developer’s legal battle with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company over alleged patent infringement, which Pocketpair has sought to portray as an unjust, David-and-Goliath situation. Last week, Pocketpair rather sulkily admitted its disappointment at having to remove ball-throwing and Pal-gliding from the game as a consequence of the court case.

المصدر: https://www.polygon.com/news/598779/palworlds-tides-of-terraria-update

Palworld’s next big update is a Terraria collab — something Pokémon would never do
Pocketpair has announced that the next major update for its hit creature-collection game Palworld will be a crossover event with Terraria — which, apropos of nothing, is something Nintendo would never do with the legally distinct (or is it?) creature-collection game Pokémon. The update, titled “Tides of Terraria,” will be released this summer. Pocketpair didn’t reveal much about its collab with Re-Logic’s 2011 indie smash in its press release. Instead, it said it would announce the contents of the update “across official Palworld social media channels over the next few weeks.” But it seems the core of the update will be adding creatures from Terraria to Palworld as, essentially, new Pals. “Catch, train, fight, and work monsters from Terraria just like Pals…?” Pocketpair teased. Official art for the update showed some Palworld hunters facing off against a giant floating eyeball that bears a strong resemblance to Terraria’s Eye of Cthulu boss, plus a horde of the older game’s signature bat enemies. “Tides of Terraria” will extend beyond the crossover content, too, with Pocketpair promising new Pals and new islands will be added in the summer patch. Pocketpair’s partnership with ReLogic is a vote of confidence from a grandee of the indie community in the midst of the Japanese developer’s legal battle with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company over alleged patent infringement, which Pocketpair has sought to portray as an unjust, David-and-Goliath situation. Last week, Pocketpair rather sulkily admitted its disappointment at having to remove ball-throwing and Pal-gliding from the game as a consequence of the court case. المصدر: https://www.polygon.com/news/598779/palworlds-tides-of-terraria-update

WWW.POLYGON.COM

Palworld’s next big update is a Terraria collab — something Pokémon would never do

Pocketpair has announced that the next major update for its hit creature-collection game Palworld will be a crossover event with Terraria — which, apropos of nothing, is something Nintendo would never do with the legally distinct (or is it?) creature-collection game Pokémon. The update, titled “Tides of Terraria,” will be released this summer. Pocketpair didn’t reveal much about its collab with Re-Logic’s 2011 indie smash in its press release. Instead, it said it would announce the contents of the update “across official Palworld social media channels over the next few weeks.” But it seems the core of the update will be adding creatures from Terraria to Palworld as, essentially, new Pals. “Catch, train, fight, and work monsters from Terraria just like Pals…?” Pocketpair teased. Official art for the update showed some Palworld hunters facing off against a giant floating eyeball that bears a strong resemblance to Terraria’s Eye of Cthulu boss, plus a horde of the older game’s signature bat enemies. “Tides of Terraria” will extend beyond the crossover content, too, with Pocketpair promising new Pals and new islands will be added in the summer patch. Pocketpair’s partnership with ReLogic is a vote of confidence from a grandee of the indie community in the midst of the Japanese developer’s legal battle with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company over alleged patent infringement, which Pocketpair has sought to portray as an unjust, David-and-Goliath situation. Last week, Pocketpair rather sulkily admitted its disappointment at having to remove ball-throwing and Pal-gliding from the game as a consequence of the court case.

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2025-05-13 12:02:48 ·

Review: Labyrinth Of The Demon King (Switch) - FromSoft & Horror Vibes Straight Out Of '97

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)Retro-inspired games have reigned supreme for some time now in the indie scene, but one niche that’s been getting increasingly more attention in recent years is modern projects that aim to replicate the primitive 3D games of the fifth console generation.
There’s something distinctly appealing about the roughness of releases from that key transition point in the industry, and few games showcase that appeal better than New Zealand dev J.
R.
Hudepohl's Labyrinth Of The Demon King.
A dim and disturbing dungeon crawler, this fresh release offers up a potent blend of difficulty, action, dread, and intrigue.
Labyrinth of the Demon King is set in “the Age of Dharma”, a Feudal Japan-inspired period in which war and famine have utterly ravaged the land and demons torture humanity.
You play as a lowly ashigaru foot soldier who’s taken it upon himself to kill the titular ruler following a ruinous battle where the Demon King slaughtered your army and lord in an ambush, leaving you as the sole survivor.
Beyond this basic premise, there really isn’t much more plot to speak of, but the labyrinth is full of creepy and dubious figures whose assistance you’ll need to move deeper.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Gameplay feels a bit like a slightly more modern take on FromSoft’s cult classic, King’s Field, and we do mean slightly—Labyrinth of the Demon King is the sort of game that just dumps you in and expects you to figure things out with minimal handholding once it’s taught you the basics.
The main gameplay loop centres on you simply crawling through a few different themed and interconnected dungeons, solving puzzles, bashing baddies, and discovering secrets along the way.
It’s slow, brutal, and unforgiving, and if you happen to make a big enough mistake, you’ll be sent straight back to the last shrine you prayed at so you can do it all over again with the freshly (and randomly) respawned enemies.
When you stumble across a foe, combat plays out in a very measured and simple melee-focused system that stresses the importance of timing and stamina management.
It’s not quite full-on ‘Soulslike’ combat, but it has a lot of that energy as you carefully determine from moment to moment whether to push your foe hard or play things safe and hang back.
Most enemies can kill you in a matter of a few hits, so learning how to parry and stun to break guards is absolutely critical, and even then, you’re almost sure to accrue some damage even when you perform well in a battle.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
Though we certainly appreciated the weightiness and difficulty of the combat, it does feel like the stamina bar limits combat a bit too much.
You can permanently expand stamina via limited pickups found while exploring, but even a fight against one relatively low-level goon will leave your hero absolutely gassed as he leans against a nearby wall to catch his breath.
If more than one enemy jumps you, running away and hoping you can kite just one of them is effectively your only viable option because the stamina bar just takes so long to refill.
Some may enjoy this commitment to uncompromising old-school design, but this is one element that we feel could’ve been a little more forgiving without really taking anything away from the tense nature of encounters.
Combat aside, this still isn’t an experience for the faint of heart, as a lot of your time will be spent cursing as you try yet another locked or jammed door, wondering how on earth that cryptic key item could possibly be part of progression, and trying not to get lost as you roam yet another floor that you haven’t found the map for yet.
It's clearly designed to be disorienting, anxiety-inducing, and mysterious, and it does a masterful job of doing so in a way that feels fair.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
When you finally stumble upon the solution to that puzzle that had you stumped, or find yourself stealing your way down a hidden hall that doesn’t show up on your map, there’s a thrilling rush of dopamine as you feel like you’re maybe just starting to get the hang of this.
Then it throws you another curveball with a new enemy type or yet another twisted and unmapped floor that you swear doesn’t have you going in circles.
If you like to get lost in your games, then Labyrinth of the Demon King is certainly one for you—its simplistic appearance hides a magnificently complex maze that’ll take you a long time to solve if you try to do so without any help.
As for its visuals, Labyrinth of the Demon King leans hard into the lo-fi PSX aesthetic, which it executes masterfully.
The gritty, gloomy design of the labyrinth lends a tremendously oppressive atmosphere, and this is perfectly accentuated by the intentional roughness.

Between the 4:3 aspect ratio, the simplistic UI, animated FMV door loading screens, and heavy dithering effects, there’s a palpable sense of unease that runs through this experience as you creep your way through the halls and question every movement at the edge of your vision.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
Complementing this perfectly is the sound design, which keeps you on the edge of your seat with all its environmental and atmospheric effects.
It’s never completely clear whether the footsteps you’re hearing belong to you or an unseen enemy just out of frame, and all sorts of unnatural noises occasionally pierce the silence to remind you that you’re not alone as you shuffle through another bloody corridor.
There’s admittedly not much of a soundtrack here aside from the assorted strings and bells woven in along with the sound effects, but this works to strengthen the experience by giving the labyrinth halls that extra bit of immersive realism.
Conclusion
Labyrinth of the Demon King does a great job of providing an authentic action-horror, dungeon-crawling experience that feels like it’s straight out of 1997 in all the best ways.
The eerie, lo-fi visuals, punishing combat, and disorienting dungeon layouts all combine to make for a maze worth solving.
We’d give this one a strong recommendation to any fans of Soulslike games who want to try something with similar traits, but that also feels different in some key ways.
This is a great experience if you’re willing to stick it out and learn its intricacies.

Lo-fi visuals add a lot to the atmospherePunishing, but fair combatLots of secrets and collectibles to uncover
Stamina system is a little too unforgiving

Great 8/10

المصدر: https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/nintendo-switch/labyrinth-of-the-demon-king

#Review #Labyrinth #The #Demon #King #Switch #FromSoft #ampamp #Horror #Vibes #Straight #Out #03997

Review: Labyrinth Of The Demon King (Switch) - FromSoft & Horror Vibes Straight Out Of '97
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)Retro-inspired games have reigned supreme for some time now in the indie scene, but one niche that’s been getting increasingly more attention in recent years is modern projects that aim to replicate the primitive 3D games of the fifth console generation. There’s something distinctly appealing about the roughness of releases from that key transition point in the industry, and few games showcase that appeal better than New Zealand dev J. R. Hudepohl's Labyrinth Of The Demon King. A dim and disturbing dungeon crawler, this fresh release offers up a potent blend of difficulty, action, dread, and intrigue. Labyrinth of the Demon King is set in “the Age of Dharma”, a Feudal Japan-inspired period in which war and famine have utterly ravaged the land and demons torture humanity. You play as a lowly ashigaru foot soldier who’s taken it upon himself to kill the titular ruler following a ruinous battle where the Demon King slaughtered your army and lord in an ambush, leaving you as the sole survivor. Beyond this basic premise, there really isn’t much more plot to speak of, but the labyrinth is full of creepy and dubious figures whose assistance you’ll need to move deeper. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) Gameplay feels a bit like a slightly more modern take on FromSoft’s cult classic, King’s Field, and we do mean slightly—Labyrinth of the Demon King is the sort of game that just dumps you in and expects you to figure things out with minimal handholding once it’s taught you the basics. The main gameplay loop centres on you simply crawling through a few different themed and interconnected dungeons, solving puzzles, bashing baddies, and discovering secrets along the way. It’s slow, brutal, and unforgiving, and if you happen to make a big enough mistake, you’ll be sent straight back to the last shrine you prayed at so you can do it all over again with the freshly (and randomly) respawned enemies. When you stumble across a foe, combat plays out in a very measured and simple melee-focused system that stresses the importance of timing and stamina management. It’s not quite full-on ‘Soulslike’ combat, but it has a lot of that energy as you carefully determine from moment to moment whether to push your foe hard or play things safe and hang back. Most enemies can kill you in a matter of a few hits, so learning how to parry and stun to break guards is absolutely critical, and even then, you’re almost sure to accrue some damage even when you perform well in a battle. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked) Though we certainly appreciated the weightiness and difficulty of the combat, it does feel like the stamina bar limits combat a bit too much. You can permanently expand stamina via limited pickups found while exploring, but even a fight against one relatively low-level goon will leave your hero absolutely gassed as he leans against a nearby wall to catch his breath. If more than one enemy jumps you, running away and hoping you can kite just one of them is effectively your only viable option because the stamina bar just takes so long to refill. Some may enjoy this commitment to uncompromising old-school design, but this is one element that we feel could’ve been a little more forgiving without really taking anything away from the tense nature of encounters. Combat aside, this still isn’t an experience for the faint of heart, as a lot of your time will be spent cursing as you try yet another locked or jammed door, wondering how on earth that cryptic key item could possibly be part of progression, and trying not to get lost as you roam yet another floor that you haven’t found the map for yet. It's clearly designed to be disorienting, anxiety-inducing, and mysterious, and it does a masterful job of doing so in a way that feels fair. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) When you finally stumble upon the solution to that puzzle that had you stumped, or find yourself stealing your way down a hidden hall that doesn’t show up on your map, there’s a thrilling rush of dopamine as you feel like you’re maybe just starting to get the hang of this. Then it throws you another curveball with a new enemy type or yet another twisted and unmapped floor that you swear doesn’t have you going in circles. If you like to get lost in your games, then Labyrinth of the Demon King is certainly one for you—its simplistic appearance hides a magnificently complex maze that’ll take you a long time to solve if you try to do so without any help. As for its visuals, Labyrinth of the Demon King leans hard into the lo-fi PSX aesthetic, which it executes masterfully. The gritty, gloomy design of the labyrinth lends a tremendously oppressive atmosphere, and this is perfectly accentuated by the intentional roughness. Between the 4:3 aspect ratio, the simplistic UI, animated FMV door loading screens, and heavy dithering effects, there’s a palpable sense of unease that runs through this experience as you creep your way through the halls and question every movement at the edge of your vision. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked) Complementing this perfectly is the sound design, which keeps you on the edge of your seat with all its environmental and atmospheric effects. It’s never completely clear whether the footsteps you’re hearing belong to you or an unseen enemy just out of frame, and all sorts of unnatural noises occasionally pierce the silence to remind you that you’re not alone as you shuffle through another bloody corridor. There’s admittedly not much of a soundtrack here aside from the assorted strings and bells woven in along with the sound effects, but this works to strengthen the experience by giving the labyrinth halls that extra bit of immersive realism. Conclusion Labyrinth of the Demon King does a great job of providing an authentic action-horror, dungeon-crawling experience that feels like it’s straight out of 1997 in all the best ways. The eerie, lo-fi visuals, punishing combat, and disorienting dungeon layouts all combine to make for a maze worth solving. We’d give this one a strong recommendation to any fans of Soulslike games who want to try something with similar traits, but that also feels different in some key ways. This is a great experience if you’re willing to stick it out and learn its intricacies. Lo-fi visuals add a lot to the atmospherePunishing, but fair combatLots of secrets and collectibles to uncover Stamina system is a little too unforgiving Great 8/10 المصدر: https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/nintendo-switch/labyrinth-of-the-demon-king #Review #Labyrinth #The #Demon #King #Switch #FromSoft #ampamp #Horror #Vibes #Straight #Out #03997

WWW.NINTENDOLIFE.COM

Review: Labyrinth Of The Demon King (Switch) - FromSoft & Horror Vibes Straight Out Of '97

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)Retro-inspired games have reigned supreme for some time now in the indie scene, but one niche that’s been getting increasingly more attention in recent years is modern projects that aim to replicate the primitive 3D games of the fifth console generation. There’s something distinctly appealing about the roughness of releases from that key transition point in the industry, and few games showcase that appeal better than New Zealand dev J. R. Hudepohl's Labyrinth Of The Demon King. A dim and disturbing dungeon crawler, this fresh release offers up a potent blend of difficulty, action, dread, and intrigue. Labyrinth of the Demon King is set in “the Age of Dharma”, a Feudal Japan-inspired period in which war and famine have utterly ravaged the land and demons torture humanity. You play as a lowly ashigaru foot soldier who’s taken it upon himself to kill the titular ruler following a ruinous battle where the Demon King slaughtered your army and lord in an ambush, leaving you as the sole survivor. Beyond this basic premise, there really isn’t much more plot to speak of, but the labyrinth is full of creepy and dubious figures whose assistance you’ll need to move deeper. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) Gameplay feels a bit like a slightly more modern take on FromSoft’s cult classic, King’s Field, and we do mean slightly—Labyrinth of the Demon King is the sort of game that just dumps you in and expects you to figure things out with minimal handholding once it’s taught you the basics. The main gameplay loop centres on you simply crawling through a few different themed and interconnected dungeons, solving puzzles, bashing baddies, and discovering secrets along the way. It’s slow, brutal, and unforgiving, and if you happen to make a big enough mistake, you’ll be sent straight back to the last shrine you prayed at so you can do it all over again with the freshly (and randomly) respawned enemies. When you stumble across a foe, combat plays out in a very measured and simple melee-focused system that stresses the importance of timing and stamina management. It’s not quite full-on ‘Soulslike’ combat, but it has a lot of that energy as you carefully determine from moment to moment whether to push your foe hard or play things safe and hang back. Most enemies can kill you in a matter of a few hits, so learning how to parry and stun to break guards is absolutely critical, and even then, you’re almost sure to accrue some damage even when you perform well in a battle. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked) Though we certainly appreciated the weightiness and difficulty of the combat, it does feel like the stamina bar limits combat a bit too much. You can permanently expand stamina via limited pickups found while exploring, but even a fight against one relatively low-level goon will leave your hero absolutely gassed as he leans against a nearby wall to catch his breath. If more than one enemy jumps you, running away and hoping you can kite just one of them is effectively your only viable option because the stamina bar just takes so long to refill. Some may enjoy this commitment to uncompromising old-school design, but this is one element that we feel could’ve been a little more forgiving without really taking anything away from the tense nature of encounters. Combat aside, this still isn’t an experience for the faint of heart, as a lot of your time will be spent cursing as you try yet another locked or jammed door, wondering how on earth that cryptic key item could possibly be part of progression, and trying not to get lost as you roam yet another floor that you haven’t found the map for yet. It's clearly designed to be disorienting, anxiety-inducing, and mysterious, and it does a masterful job of doing so in a way that feels fair. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) When you finally stumble upon the solution to that puzzle that had you stumped, or find yourself stealing your way down a hidden hall that doesn’t show up on your map, there’s a thrilling rush of dopamine as you feel like you’re maybe just starting to get the hang of this. Then it throws you another curveball with a new enemy type or yet another twisted and unmapped floor that you swear doesn’t have you going in circles. If you like to get lost in your games, then Labyrinth of the Demon King is certainly one for you—its simplistic appearance hides a magnificently complex maze that’ll take you a long time to solve if you try to do so without any help. As for its visuals, Labyrinth of the Demon King leans hard into the lo-fi PSX aesthetic, which it executes masterfully. The gritty, gloomy design of the labyrinth lends a tremendously oppressive atmosphere, and this is perfectly accentuated by the intentional roughness. Between the 4:3 aspect ratio, the simplistic UI, animated FMV door loading screens, and heavy dithering effects, there’s a palpable sense of unease that runs through this experience as you creep your way through the halls and question every movement at the edge of your vision. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked) Complementing this perfectly is the sound design, which keeps you on the edge of your seat with all its environmental and atmospheric effects. It’s never completely clear whether the footsteps you’re hearing belong to you or an unseen enemy just out of frame, and all sorts of unnatural noises occasionally pierce the silence to remind you that you’re not alone as you shuffle through another bloody corridor. There’s admittedly not much of a soundtrack here aside from the assorted strings and bells woven in along with the sound effects, but this works to strengthen the experience by giving the labyrinth halls that extra bit of immersive realism. Conclusion Labyrinth of the Demon King does a great job of providing an authentic action-horror, dungeon-crawling experience that feels like it’s straight out of 1997 in all the best ways. The eerie, lo-fi visuals, punishing combat, and disorienting dungeon layouts all combine to make for a maze worth solving. We’d give this one a strong recommendation to any fans of Soulslike games who want to try something with similar traits, but that also feels different in some key ways. This is a great experience if you’re willing to stick it out and learn its intricacies. Lo-fi visuals add a lot to the atmospherePunishing, but fair combatLots of secrets and collectibles to uncover Stamina system is a little too unforgiving Great 8/10

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Review: Labyrinth Of The Demon King (Switch) - FromSoft &amp; Horror Vibes Straight Out Of '97

Review: Labyrinth Of The Demon King (Switch) - FromSoft & Horror Vibes Straight Out Of '97