Tech

UPDATED: It’s game on for Netflix: The streaming giant is launching the first collection of games available in its Android mobile app for users worldwide. Starting Tuesday, Netflix subscribers worldwide can play five mobile games: “Stranger Things: 1984” (BonusXP), “Stranger Things 3: The Game” (BonusXP), “Shooting Hoops” (Frosty Pop), “Card Blast” (Amuzo & Rogue Games),

Will “Matrix” fans take the NFT pill? Warner Bros. is launching the sale of 100,000 nonfungible tokens (NFTs) of “Matrix”-inspired avatars later this month. The studio is pairing the hype over NFTs with the upcoming release of “The Matrix Resurrections,” aiming to gin up excitement for the long-awaited fourth movie in the popular sci-fi franchise

Netflix, which has been steadily growing its subscribers in the Arab world, has teamed up with Kuwait-based production studio NCIG (National Creative Industries Group) to set up a writers’ lab that will spawn six series projects from writers based in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The plan is to turn them into market-ready pitch decks on

A beta version of Epic Games’ popular “Fortnite” battle-royale game that launched in China three years ago is shutting down. In China, the game was known as “Fortress Night” and operated by Tencent Games, which is a major investor in Epic and announced a deal in 2018 to launch the title in China. The shutdown

Yahoo has officially exited China, shutting down all of its services in the communist country as of Monday, Nov. 1. “In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed

Snapchatters can now add dozens of famous quotes and theme music from NBCUniversal movies and TV shows on Snapchat’s Sounds to their Snaps, under a new pact between Snap and the media conglomerate. The lineup of sounds from NBCU now on Snapchat includes this favorite from “The Office,” uttered by Steve Carell’s Michael Scott: “Don’t

Jay Leno has come on board Fireside, a new app platform for creators to host live, interactive shows, with his first event to livestream from a Las Vegas car show on Nov. 2. Fireside, whose founders include Mark Cuban, publicly launched its app on iOS in early October. The startup promises to let professional creators

Achtung, baby! U2 is now on TikTok — and for the first time, users of the social-video app can use the band’s tracks in their own posts. Sounds now available in the TikTok library from the Irish rockers include such hits as “With Or Without You,” “Vertigo,” “Sweetest Thing,” “One,” “Beautiful Day” and ‘Where The

It’s unclear how many people were clamoring for this, but here it is: Owners of Amazon’s Fire TV streaming devices in the U.S. and Canada can watch the latest viral TikTok memes, dances and music videos on their living-room TV sets. Fire TV is the exclusive connected-TV partner for TikTok. “No more huddling around a

Pinterest wants to turn more users into buyers with Pinterest TV — a series of live, shoppable episodes featuring top creators. With Pinterest TV, creators can showcase and tag products to let users purchase them on the retailer’s site. Episodes air each weekday and will be recorded and available for users to watch on-demand. Beginning

Tara Walpert Levy, a 10-year Google and YouTube veteran ad exec, is moving over to YouTube full-time in a big new role. Walpert Levy has been named VP, Americas for YouTube, leading the teams overseeing the video giant’s partnerships across the U.S., Canada, Latin America and Brazil that work with creators and media partners to

Netflix’s newest addition to its official online store: The Chilleez, plush toys that are characters based on the streamer’s default profile icons. The Chilleez 12-inch plushies, available in four colors, will go on sale Nov. 12 on Netflix.shop, the ecommerce site that launched this June. They’re priced starting at $24.99 apiece. In addition, the streaming

Roblox experienced the worst kind of Halloween trick this weekend, but kids everywhere are now in for a treat: Roblox is back online. The game-creating platform was restored on Sunday afternoon, after being dark for more than two days. In a blog post, Roblox founder/CEO David Baszucki apologized for the lengthy delay in restoring the

Chalk & Blade, the London-based production company behind the hit “Hunting Ghislane” podcast, which is soon to become a TV drama, has signed with talent agency WME. In addition, Jason Phipps is joining the as head of content and development. Phipps’ work includes hit series “The Missing Cryptoqueen,” which is being adapted for TV, investigative

Roblox and its related website have been offline for more than 24 hours. While the company is working to solve the outage, no official timeline for the massively popular digital creative space’s return has been announced. The game-creating platform began to demonstrate issues on Thursday evening. Roblox has released a statement on its official Twitter,

Red light or green light? Costumes based on Netflix’s smash hit “Squid Game” have soared in popularity this Halloween — and searches for baby costumes based on the ultra-violent Korean drama are currently No. 1 on Google’s top-trending rankings. Google searches for “Squid Game Halloween costume” have spiked 450% in the U.S. the past week,

Two Netflix employees have filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging the streaming giant retaliated against them for protesting Dave Chappelle’s comedy special “The Closer.” An NLRB representative confirmed that an unfair labor practice charge was filed Wednesday. B. Pagels-Minor, a Black trans program manager at Netflix, was fired

Popular YouTube creators MrBeast and Mark Rober are back with another hype-tastic, eco-friendly charity collab. The duo on Friday launched #TeamSeas, a crowdfunding campaign to raise $30 million to remove 30 million pounds of plastic and trash from the world’s oceans, rivers and beaches. MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) and Rober, both viral-video maestros, are aiming

Rock legends Metallica are now holding forth in their first-ever internet class. In their online course, offered through celeb-oriented learning company MasterClass, the group’s foursome — James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo — will reflect on four decades of their partnership. The course comprises 15 individual video lessons, spanning 2 hours and

In today’s podcast roundup, the Clone Club returns for “Orphan Black: The Next Chapter” Season 2; “The Sesame Street Podcast With Foley and Friends” gets two more seasons on Audible; “The Paris Review Podcast” returns for a third season; and more. DATES Audio entertainment company Realm premiered “Orphan Black: The Next Chapter” Season 2 on

The metaverse is coming, according to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook who is now trying to reinvent the company under a new name: Meta Platforms. In a presentation Thursday at the Facebook Connect conference, Zuck announced the corporate name change. He pitched the metaverse (which, for now, is mostly hypothetical) as a game-changer: “In

Clare Priestley, former director of commercial production at Vice Media, has joined LADstudios as head of production, reporting into recently appointed director Alex Morris. LADstudios is the factual entertainment division of youth-focused content creator LADbible Group, whose video content published across major platforms, including Facebook and TikTok, receives some three billion views per month. Priestley

With Facebook’s cutover to a new corporate name — Meta — the company is giving the Oculus brand the axe. Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who is currently head of Facebook Reality Labs overseeing the company’s VR and AR businesses, announced a series of nomenclature changes in a Facebook post Thursday. “VR will be the most immersive

In the life of an artist, there often comes a time when they’re faced with a choice: to continue pursuing a creative career, or opt for a more traditional path. This was a decision 22-year-old photographer and director Aidan Cullen confronted at 18 — but he pressed on to great success, working with artists like

Apple, the world’s most valuable tech company, reported record revenue for a September quarter — but its stock slid after sales fell short of expectations and execs warned of ongoing supply-chain problems. The company posted $83.4 billion in revenue, up 29% year over year, and net income of $20.6 billion (or quarterly earnings per diluted

Amazon posted a 15% rise in revenue for the third quarter, its slowest growth in more than six years, and it missed Wall Street expectations on the top and bottom lines — and CEO Andy Jassy said the online retailing giant expects to incur several additional billions of dollars in costs in Q4. Total sales

Mark Zuckerberg is now chairman and CEO of Meta. The rechristened Meta, as the parent company of Facebook’s social services and AR/VR businesses, is intended to reflect Zuckerberg’s positioning of the company as focused around “metaverse” experiences and services, which he hopes will reach 1 billion people in the next decade. “Our mission remains the

Hip-hop icon T-Pain has entered into a content partnership with Twitch, which kicks off tonight with an exclusive listening party featuring the debut of his new single, “I’m Cool With That.” T-Pain’s livestreamed listening party is scheduled to start at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, Oct. 28, on his Twitch channel (twitch.tv/tpain). The event will

Comcast struck a deal with Apple that will bring the Apple TV app, which includes access to the Apple TV Plus subscription service, to the cable giant’s Xfinity X1, Flex and XClass TV platforms, CEO Brian Roberts announced on the company’s Q3 earnings call. In turn, under the pact, Comcast’s Xfinity Stream app (which provides

French media conglomerate Mediawan is to adapt Leonine Studios’ digital event show “YouTopia” for the French market. The deal is an early example of a pan-European collaboration between the two companies, who recently set up a European studio that united 61 production companies from France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Spain and the U.K. “YouTopia” is an