Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? It is time for
Speaker 1: the Tech News for November twenty second, two thousand twenty two,
Speaker 1: the Tuesday before American Thanksgiving. So the rest of this
Speaker 1: week is going to be reruns and then we'll be
Speaker 1: back next week with all new episodes. But let's get
Speaker 1: to the news today, and you know the drill. We
Speaker 1: need to get the Twitter stuff out of the way first,
Speaker 1: because obviously a ton has happened since our last news
Speaker 1: episode on Thursday of last week. So last Thursday, Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's ultimatum hit. Employees had to sign a form indicating
Speaker 1: whether they would stick it out and work longer, harder
Speaker 1: hours to build what Musk calls Twitter two point oh,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about the it in a second, or
Speaker 1: if they would take a severance package and just walk.
Speaker 1: And reportedly a lot of folks, maybe as many as
Speaker 1: a thousand, took that package. It's hard to get a
Speaker 1: real number because I feel some of the reporting has
Speaker 1: been fueled by schadenfreude and also Twitter no longer has
Speaker 1: a public relations office Elon must got rid of that
Speaker 1: early on in the layoffs, so there's no one to
Speaker 1: ask to get official feedback on this stuff. There were
Speaker 1: stories about entire departments within Twitter essentially being emptied, including
Speaker 1: departments like payroll, which obviously would create a real hassle
Speaker 1: at the company. One story that proved to at least
Speaker 1: have some substance was that the folks in charge of
Speaker 1: monitoring badge access to Twitter h q had left, and
Speaker 1: since Musk had directed Twitter HQ two essentially go on
Speaker 1: lockdown for this week, the idea being they want to
Speaker 1: keep the area safe from disgruntled former employees while things
Speaker 1: settle down. Uh. It also meant that no one, not
Speaker 1: even Musk, could regain access to the building because all
Speaker 1: the people who maintain that had left, So Musk actually
Speaker 1: had to call up a now former employee to come
Speaker 1: in and open the building up again, which is pretty
Speaker 1: wild anyway. Tons of people popped on Twitter throughout the weekend,
Speaker 1: waiting to see if it might crash and not come
Speaker 1: back up, you know, kind of like I was there
Speaker 1: when Twitter went away, but for now the site is
Speaker 1: still active. I imagine the people left at Twitter are
Speaker 1: really working super hard to make sure that stays the case. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Musk has also sent a memo in Twitter indicating that
Speaker 1: many employee perks are now gonzo, as in they are
Speaker 1: no more at least for the time being. And that
Speaker 1: includes stuff like company allowances for home internet, employee wellness programs,
Speaker 1: training and development programs, daycare, and quarterly team activities, among
Speaker 1: other things. So for the folks who are left behind,
Speaker 1: there are fewer and fewer benefits that they can take
Speaker 1: advantage of while they work longer and longer hours. Of course,
Speaker 1: for some employees, working for Twitter is absolutely critical. Some
Speaker 1: are here in the US on work visas and if
Speaker 1: their employment ends, they have to leave the country. Some
Speaker 1: are dependent upon healthcare for ongoing treatments. So even if
Speaker 1: you never use Twitter, or you've never liked Twitter, or
Speaker 1: maybe you hate Twitter now, whatever it might be, please
Speaker 1: send out good vibes for the people who are in
Speaker 1: tough situations that are just continuing to get tougher. I mean,
Speaker 1: for all the people who resigned, who are laid off,
Speaker 1: and for the people who are still at Twitter. It
Speaker 1: is a tough time to be in that situation, especially
Speaker 1: right as the holidays are picking up. But wait, there's more.
Speaker 1: After all that drama late last week, this week opened
Speaker 1: with even more drama. Musk announced that he was holding
Speaker 1: even more layoffs, this time specifically targeting twitters sales teams.
Speaker 1: Last week, the company saw the head of ads Ales
Speaker 1: and the VP of Partnerships both get their walking papers. Reportedly,
Speaker 1: these leaders were fired because they refused directives to lay
Speaker 1: off more of their employees. They were trying to protect
Speaker 1: the people who are working in their departments, and they've
Speaker 1: been canned as a result. So must decide that if
Speaker 1: these folks are not going to follow his orders, they
Speaker 1: gots to go. And then the head of US Content
Speaker 1: Partnerships left the company. From what I can tell, she
Speaker 1: made that choice on her own. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: she saw what was going on in other departments and
Speaker 1: said I can't be a part of this, or maybe
Speaker 1: she had other reasons. I don't know, but she left
Speaker 1: the company as well. So the senior leadership at Twitter
Speaker 1: continues to dwindle. When Musk assumed control of Twitter, the
Speaker 1: company had seventy five hundred employees seven thousand, five hundred people. Now,
Speaker 1: The Verge reports that the head count is down to
Speaker 1: around two thousand, seven hundred, and Business Insider is even
Speaker 1: more pessimistic. They say it's actually two thousand, three hundred employees. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: after the sales team layoffs, must held in all hands
Speaker 1: meeting where he announced that he'd be hiring again, specifically
Speaker 1: that he was looking to hire people in engineering, and
Speaker 1: hang on a second, says here sales, you know the
Speaker 1: department where he had just laid people off. Well, details
Speaker 1: are somewhat scarce because you know, again no public relations
Speaker 1: department within the company, so you can't really reach out
Speaker 1: to get comment. But outlets are saying that Musk himself
Speaker 1: was fairly vague about what these people would be doing. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he needs engineers and he needs needs salespeople, but he
Speaker 1: didn't specify what roles he was looking to fill. Um
Speaker 1: And at least as of yesterday, there were no job
Speaker 1: openings listed on Twitter's corporate site, but Musk said, quote,
Speaker 1: in terms of critical hires, I would say people who
Speaker 1: are great at writing software are the highest priority end quote.
Speaker 1: And one recent higher well and in turn is George
Speaker 1: hots H o t Z. If you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: Hotts's name, he's a hacker, and he made his name
Speaker 1: doing things like jail breaking iOS devices. Uh. He figured
Speaker 1: out how the PlayStation three works, he reverse engineered it. Uh. Infamously,
Speaker 1: he had a real kind of tiff with Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: Musk apparently wanted Hots to come over and work for
Speaker 1: Tesla because Hatts was looking to replicate Tesla's auto pilot system,
Speaker 1: but make it like a kit that you could just
Speaker 1: get and install into other machines, like other cars, and
Speaker 1: so Musk reportedly wanted to offer Hots a job, but
Speaker 1: Hots says that while they were sitting down to work
Speaker 1: out terms, they couldn't come to an agreement, and eventually
Speaker 1: Hots split and he got irritated at Musk. But now
Speaker 1: Hots has agreed to spend twelve weeks working at Twitter,
Speaker 1: and he says it's his main focus is to work
Speaker 1: on search functions for Twitter itself. So what do you
Speaker 1: do after you lay off half of your company, your
Speaker 1: newly purchased company. You then convince another one thousand or
Speaker 1: so folks to resign. You require engineers to come in
Speaker 1: on a weekend to cram on code and keep things afloat,
Speaker 1: and then you call in all hands, meaning to talk
Speaker 1: about hiring again, well, you also unveil your plan for
Speaker 1: the next incarnation of your company. Musk's Twitter two point
Speaker 1: oh is going to have voice calls and video chat
Speaker 1: and encryption for direct messages, according to Elon himself, and
Speaker 1: it's sounding like Musk is merging his vision of Twitter
Speaker 1: with his desire to build and everything app that he
Speaker 1: had previously referred to as X. You may not know this,
Speaker 1: but when Musk was first founding UH, I believe it
Speaker 1: was PayPal co founding PayPal, he wanted to call it
Speaker 1: X and ended up not calling it that because they
Speaker 1: thought that probably wouldn't be a viable business name. But
Speaker 1: now he wants to make an everything app called X
Speaker 1: that would be similar to China's we Chat app, and
Speaker 1: we Chat incorporates tons of off like communications, social networking,
Speaker 1: commerce features, all these sort of things. Elon Musk kind
Speaker 1: of wants to make a similar app to that, but
Speaker 1: for markets outside of China. Obviously, whether he can do
Speaker 1: that with a team that has been so heavily affected
Speaker 1: by layoffs and resignations remains to be seen. Reportedly, a
Speaker 1: lot of the folks who have left Twitter were ones
Speaker 1: who are senior members of their respective teams, which could
Speaker 1: represent a huge loss of knowledge like that alone is
Speaker 1: going to set people back when you've got people who
Speaker 1: were sort of the the depositories of knowledge within the
Speaker 1: company and they leave. I mean, if the documentation is there,
Speaker 1: then you can you can muscle your way through it,
Speaker 1: but it takes time. But the documentation isn't there, then
Speaker 1: it gets increasingly difficult. Elon Musk himself has said that
Speaker 1: several of Twitter's departments are going to need to be
Speaker 1: rebuilt from scratch, which seems to me to be a
Speaker 1: monumental undertaking of itself that where people are going to
Speaker 1: be around to actually tackle. So it definitely sounds like
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a tough time ahead. Um and in
Speaker 1: the meantime, we don't know if any of this is realistic,
Speaker 1: even from inside Twitter, because again there's no PR department there. Well,
Speaker 1: that's it for the Twitter dues. Will move on to
Speaker 1: some other things after we come back from this quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So last spring, the National Labor Relations Board,
Speaker 1: or in l RB here in the United States brought
Speaker 1: a lawsuit against Amazon, saying that the company had engaged
Speaker 1: in retaliatory actions against employees who are workplace activists, namely
Speaker 1: that Amazon fired former employee Gerald Bryson after Bryson worked
Speaker 1: to organize employees at a warehouse on Staten Island that
Speaker 1: went on to actually vote to unionize. Now, a judge
Speaker 1: has partly ruled in favor of the n l RBS argument.
Speaker 1: They have said that Amazon did engage in such behaviors
Speaker 1: and that Amazon needs to knock that crap off in
Speaker 1: the future. However, the judge did not go so far
Speaker 1: as to agree with the n l r B the
Speaker 1: Amazon's actions impacted employees efforts to unionize and that the
Speaker 1: company should reinstate Bryson. So, the n l RB said
Speaker 1: Bryson's firing was intended to scare other employees away from organizing,
Speaker 1: because firing Bryson showed that other employees would receive no
Speaker 1: protection during the actual organization process. That yes, once you
Speaker 1: are unionized, you have an organization that can protect you
Speaker 1: from the company, but until that happens, you are incredibly vulnerable.
Speaker 1: But the judge determined that employees continue to organize even
Speaker 1: in the wake of Bryson's firing, and so did not
Speaker 1: agree to the request to have Bryson reinstated as an
Speaker 1: Ama on employee. So Amazon does have a cease and
Speaker 1: desist order against it regarding interfering and employee organization efforts,
Speaker 1: but the company will not have to hire Bryson back
Speaker 1: on the team. As I mentioned last week, Amazon is
Speaker 1: holding layoffs that are expected to hit around ten thousand
Speaker 1: employees before they're all done, and the hardware divisions have
Speaker 1: been affected a lot by this, and Business Insider reports
Speaker 1: that the Amazon Alexa division is in real jeopardy right now.
Speaker 1: My apologies for any of you who have Amazon devices
Speaker 1: in ear shot, but we are going to have to
Speaker 1: say that name a couple of times. The project began
Speaker 1: as a Jeff Bezos backed idea. That is, Alexa was
Speaker 1: like Jeff Bezos's baby for a little while, but after
Speaker 1: a few years of failing to find any way to
Speaker 1: drive revenue via Alexa, the shine on the product has
Speaker 1: really worn off for the company. Of course, Bezos has
Speaker 1: no longer had Hancho at Amazon. You've got Andy Jase
Speaker 1: there as CEO now, and he tends to take a
Speaker 1: more pragmatic view of the business. And according to various reports,
Speaker 1: a big part of the problem is that while Amazon's
Speaker 1: Echo devices are really popular, they sell really well. The
Speaker 1: company is selling them at cost with the goal of
Speaker 1: making money off of the use of the devices, rather
Speaker 1: than through the sale of devices themselves. So this is
Speaker 1: similar to how companies that make game consoles will sell
Speaker 1: those consoles close to the cost of production. So while
Speaker 1: a game console might be hundreds of dollars, that typically
Speaker 1: isn't making the company a lot of profit or any
Speaker 1: profit with each sale. Sometimes companies even take a loss
Speaker 1: on it because their ideas that they'll make their money
Speaker 1: by selling you games and services that leverage the console,
Speaker 1: the consoles the entry point to making revenue. Well, that's
Speaker 1: how Amazon was looking at the Echo line of products.
Speaker 1: But the problem is the team never quite figured out
Speaker 1: a way to monetize Alexa's use, and so the division
Speaker 1: and accrued more and more financial losses over time, and
Speaker 1: according to Ours Technica, that division is headed toward a
Speaker 1: ten billion dollar loss this year billion with a B
Speaker 1: Holy cow. Just to be clear, this problem is not
Speaker 1: unique to Amazon. Apple and Google each have found it
Speaker 1: difficult to monetize their digital voice assistant products. People have
Speaker 1: been using them, but there hasn't really been a way
Speaker 1: to tap into that use and generate revenue. And that
Speaker 1: could mean that the days of us talking to our
Speaker 1: electronics like we're aboard the starship Enterprise and we're chatting
Speaker 1: with the ship's computer could be living on borrowed time
Speaker 1: across the pond. In the United Kingdom, regulators are taking
Speaker 1: a closer look at the mobile operating system landscape. So
Speaker 1: the concern is that Google's Android and Apple's iOS represent
Speaker 1: a duopoli, you know, two companies that control pretty much
Speaker 1: the entire mobile operating system landscape. And I don't think
Speaker 1: you can really argue that. I think that's pretty much
Speaker 1: effectively the case. I mean, there's not really that many
Speaker 1: operating systems in the laptop desktop universe either. You've got
Speaker 1: a few, but the two dominant ones, really the dominant
Speaker 1: one is Windows and then you've got mac os. There
Speaker 1: are others as well, their Linux systems, their unique systems,
Speaker 1: but those represent such a a small percentage of at
Speaker 1: least a particular slice of computer. Like if we're talking
Speaker 1: about web servers is a totally different thing. But anyway,
Speaker 1: this do woppoli may have a negative impact on app developers. Specifically,
Speaker 1: the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK or the
Speaker 1: c m A is looking into issues that impact mobile gaming.
Speaker 1: So one thing they're looking at is cloud gaming, which
Speaker 1: is where you have servers that run an instance of
Speaker 1: a game and then stream that instance too and in
Speaker 1: device like a smartphone. Another is that developers claim Apple
Speaker 1: and Google have failed to address deficiencies in their respective browsers,
Speaker 1: which in turn forces developers to create workarounds to try
Speaker 1: and deal with these shortfalls. So the CMA is going
Speaker 1: to investigate these developer concerns. They're gonna look into this
Speaker 1: and then if they decide that the concerns are merited
Speaker 1: and changes are warranted, they will issue a kind of
Speaker 1: patch response. Now, there is an entire department within the
Speaker 1: UK that is intended to deal with just this kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and it's called the Digital Markets Unit. But
Speaker 1: the problem is this particular agency lacks any regulatory authority,
Speaker 1: Like they have no way of creating any implements of
Speaker 1: change because they don't have any authority yet. So that's
Speaker 1: that's an agency that's still kind of forming and until
Speaker 1: it gets some bite to it, it really it really
Speaker 1: can't do much. So the dirty work is following falling
Speaker 1: to other departments for the time being. Alphabet Google's parent
Speaker 1: company appears to be bending to pressure brought against it
Speaker 1: by Sir Christopher Hone, whom you might remember owns some
Speaker 1: six billion dollars worth of steak in the company, and
Speaker 1: Hone had argued that Google was overstaffed and that employees
Speaker 1: there are overpaid, which, again I want to say, is
Speaker 1: really saying something when you're a freaking billionaire. Okay, when
Speaker 1: you're a billionaire and you're saying other people are overpaid,
Speaker 1: maybe rethink your statements a bit, But enough commentary. The
Speaker 1: crux of this story is that Alphabet has directed Google
Speaker 1: managers to identify the low performers in their departments, and
Speaker 1: the bottom six percent or so, which would be around
Speaker 1: ten thousand employees, will presumably be shown the door. And
Speaker 1: it's a really tough time to be working for tech
Speaker 1: companies right now. Amazon, Meta, Twitter, infamously, Alphabet and many
Speaker 1: others have been laying off thousands of people right at
Speaker 1: the start of the holiday season. So if you're listening
Speaker 1: to the show and you've been affected directly or indirectly
Speaker 1: by these layoffs, I just want to say I wish
Speaker 1: you the absolute best. I hope things turn around quickly.
Speaker 1: And as for the argument that companies like Alphabet and
Speaker 1: particularly Google have too many employees. Part of that can
Speaker 1: actually be a strategy to scoop up talent so that
Speaker 1: this talent doesn't end up working for a competitor because
Speaker 1: it is a cut road business out in Silicon Valley, y'all.
Speaker 1: Just in case my fellow Americans weren't worried enough that
Speaker 1: Meta slash Facebook is gathering all of their data, let's
Speaker 1: talk about taxes, shall we. So The Markup has published
Speaker 1: a piece that says tax services like tax Slayer, tax Act,
Speaker 1: and H and R Block have been transmitting financial information
Speaker 1: from web clients that are coming to do their taxes
Speaker 1: online to Facebook. And that information being sent to Facebook
Speaker 1: includes some pretty you know, standard stuff like like person
Speaker 1: names and their email addresses and user names, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. But in some cases at least, it also
Speaker 1: includes more privileged information like income filing status, refund amounts,
Speaker 1: the actual amount of income a person makes, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And you might be saying to yourself, Huh,
Speaker 1: does matter really know how much I make? Do they
Speaker 1: need to know that how much I pay in taxes
Speaker 1: or whether or not I qualify for a refund? Do
Speaker 1: I want Meta to use that kind of information as
Speaker 1: a way to sell more targeted ads to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can easily see why Meta would like that information
Speaker 1: in the first place, because advertisers would love to be
Speaker 1: able to more accurately target their customers. At the heart
Speaker 1: of this is the pixel. This is a product that
Speaker 1: Facebook offers up for free for companies to use, and
Speaker 1: installing pixel into a web page allows several things, Like
Speaker 1: on the web page side, it allows for a lot
Speaker 1: of customization of an experience, but the Facebook side, it
Speaker 1: means that users who visit these pages that have the
Speaker 1: pixel on it are sending data to Facebook. Facebook gets
Speaker 1: more information about user behaviors, like what websites are they visiting,
Speaker 1: how long are they spending time there, what are they
Speaker 1: doing in some cases, So in these cases the activities appear,
Speaker 1: at least in some instances to include sensitive financial data. Now,
Speaker 1: not all tax preparation services have the pixel installed on
Speaker 1: sensitive pages, even if they have used the pixel so
Speaker 1: into its Turbo Tax, which has its own history of issues,
Speaker 1: does use pixel, but it only has it at the
Speaker 1: log in page, which means that the pixel on that
Speaker 1: page sends information like user names and how frequently a
Speaker 1: specific device has logged into the service, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: include any financial information or anything like that, and the
Speaker 1: pixel is not included on any pages beyond the log
Speaker 1: in page. So Facebook isn't getting any more information about
Speaker 1: turbo taxes clients in that case. But for other tax
Speaker 1: preparation preparation services that's not necessarily the case. And if
Speaker 1: you don't live in the US, and you're wondering why
Speaker 1: I'm even talking about all this, because most places outside
Speaker 1: of the US, the government handles all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: really it just comes down to the individual citizen to
Speaker 1: sign off on what the government has found or to
Speaker 1: you know, take issue with it and explain, hey, you
Speaker 1: you missed this thing that should change the amount of
Speaker 1: taxes i owe. US does not do that. The tax
Speaker 1: preparation sequences is highly privatized here in the United States.
Speaker 1: Taxes are incredibly complex. If you do have a good
Speaker 1: grounding in how taxes are prepared, you can do it yourself,
Speaker 1: nothing stopping you. But a lot of people find them
Speaker 1: intimidating because the language used, the forms used, they're not
Speaker 1: they're not user friendly. So frequently people turn to professional
Speaker 1: services or web services that that automate A lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff. So that's why this is a huge issue
Speaker 1: here in the United States. And there's a lot more
Speaker 1: to this story, but I actually recommend heading over to
Speaker 1: the Verge and reading their article. It's titled tax filing.
Speaker 1: Websites have been sending users financial information to Facebook. Go
Speaker 1: check out that article. It's very well done. It's exhaustive,
Speaker 1: it's a very long article and incredibly informative. So check
Speaker 1: that out. Okay, we've got a few more news items
Speaker 1: to cover before we conclude, but first let's take one
Speaker 1: more break. We're back. Researchers at MISK, that's m Y
Speaker 1: s k are saying that Apple talks the talk, but
Speaker 1: does not necessarily walk the walk when it comes to
Speaker 1: user activity and privacy on iOS devices. So Apple famously
Speaker 1: handed over more control to iOS users when it comes
Speaker 1: to how their data and behavior can be tracked by
Speaker 1: third party apps. This was a huge blow to companies
Speaker 1: like Meta, for example, because users could choose to not
Speaker 1: share their behaviors and other private data with Meta, which
Speaker 1: meant that Meta could no longer use that data to
Speaker 1: sell targeted ads and have them target you, the user
Speaker 1: more effectively. But MISK says that Apple's first party apps
Speaker 1: don't have the same sort of restrictions, which may mean
Speaker 1: Apple is preventing other companies from being able to do
Speaker 1: what it itself can continue to do. On iOS. Miss
Speaker 1: said that some first party apps use what is called
Speaker 1: a Directory Services Identify R or D s I D,
Speaker 1: and that this identifier, in turn is linked to a
Speaker 1: user's unique I cloud data and Apple I D. So
Speaker 1: while Apple might say our apps are not depending on
Speaker 1: data that can personally identify you, it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: at best one degree of separation away from doing just that. Moreover,
Speaker 1: Miss researchers are arguing that other details can converge to
Speaker 1: create a kind of digital fingerprint for a user, so
Speaker 1: that while you might be able to say that no
Speaker 1: single point of data points to a specific person, if
Speaker 1: you collectively take all the different points of data, you
Speaker 1: can start making very educated guesses as to who that
Speaker 1: user is. We've seen this in the past. It really
Speaker 1: takes just a few points of data to kind of
Speaker 1: narrow down a person's identity, and you don't need anything
Speaker 1: specific to to really, you know, figure that out. You
Speaker 1: just need a few different general points and that's enough
Speaker 1: for you to make a really good guess. Now, this
Speaker 1: does not necessarily mean that Apple is doing anything with
Speaker 1: that data, right, We don't know that. We don't know
Speaker 1: if Apple is actually taking advantage of this data collection
Speaker 1: and analyzing it in any meaningful way. Uh. The problem
Speaker 1: is Apple's really quiet when it comes to its data
Speaker 1: acquisition and analytics, and that means that we do have
Speaker 1: these unanswered questions. We don't know if Apple is actually
Speaker 1: doing anything with data. It just seems like Apple could
Speaker 1: do something that Apple has that capability because of these
Speaker 1: little points of connection. And the problem is we don't
Speaker 1: know enough, so that breeds suspicion. But um, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is what happens when you have a lack of transparency.
Speaker 1: The Global Games Market report from New Zoo has good
Speaker 1: news and it has some bad news for the gaming industry. Now,
Speaker 1: the good news is that there are four point six
Speaker 1: percent more gamers there today than there were this time
Speaker 1: last year. Places like Africa in the Middle East saw
Speaker 1: the largest gains in people becoming gamers. North America grew
Speaker 1: the least. But even in North America, we saw two
Speaker 1: point six percent more gamers this year compared to last year. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's impressive because you gotta remember that there was a big,
Speaker 1: big boost in gaming during the pandemic, as people were,
Speaker 1: you know, in lockdown and they couldn't leave their their homes.
Speaker 1: There was a big surge towards gaming in various ways. Uh.
Speaker 1: So to see growth continue even as the world has
Speaker 1: largely emerged from lockdown is impressive. Now, the bad news
Speaker 1: is that even though there are more gamers, they generated
Speaker 1: less revenue this year compared to last year. Uh this
Speaker 1: is where we're reminded that gaming is a multibillion dollar industry,
Speaker 1: because even the revenue dropped by four point three percent globally,
Speaker 1: still amounted to a hundred eighty four billion dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: about half of that came just from mobile games. And
Speaker 1: that's a spassive meatball. I know, like quote unquote real
Speaker 1: gamers can often dismiss mobile games, but y'all, that makes
Speaker 1: up like half of all the revenue generated by gaming.
Speaker 1: If you look at consoles, that's like a little more
Speaker 1: than a quarter, and then PC is a little less
Speaker 1: than that, and then it's everything else. Right, So mobile
Speaker 1: gaming is by far the dominant form of gaming if
Speaker 1: you're looking at it from a global perspective. Uh. The
Speaker 1: decline in revenue was the first time the gaming industry
Speaker 1: saw a decline in fifteen years. But as tech spot
Speaker 1: points out, that's still not terrible considering how other industries
Speaker 1: have fared in the current era of economic uncertainty. I
Speaker 1: still wonder if in the future we will name this
Speaker 1: period as the Great Economic Uncertainty, sort of akin to
Speaker 1: the Great Depression. Speaking of games, about four years ago,
Speaker 1: it would be Soft made the decision to lean on
Speaker 1: the Epic Game Store when it came to digital distribution
Speaker 1: of its titles and its spurned valves competing Steam Store.
Speaker 1: These are online stores where you can purchase games and
Speaker 1: then download them directly to your machine. Now now Ubisoft
Speaker 1: is actually bringing some titles back to Steam. On December six,
Speaker 1: gamers will be able to purchase titles like Assassin's Creed, Valhalla,
Speaker 1: or a No. Eight hundred through Steam. So why did
Speaker 1: it be Soft ditch Steam in the first place. Well,
Speaker 1: it's very similar to how app developers are frustrated with
Speaker 1: Google and Apple because Steam takes a thirty cut off
Speaker 1: sales that are made through its store, so the game
Speaker 1: company only gets each sale it makes. Ubisoft didn't really
Speaker 1: care for that, and so it made the move to
Speaker 1: pull out of Steam. But Steam also has an incredible reach,
Speaker 1: is really popular with gamers. So while you will keep
Speaker 1: more of each individual sale, if you can get gamers
Speaker 1: to come to whichever digital storefront you use, there are
Speaker 1: potentially millions of gamers that you will never reach because
Speaker 1: they are more sticking to the Steam environment. So you
Speaker 1: could say like, well, yeah, on an individual level, we're
Speaker 1: making more per sale, but look at all these millions
Speaker 1: of sales were not making because we aren't where the
Speaker 1: people are, So it would be soft appears they have
Speaker 1: decided to go where the people are. Maybe we soft
Speaker 1: wants to see wants to see them dancing, walking around
Speaker 1: on those what do you call them. Finally, in a
Speaker 1: general trend of inclusivity, Axios reports that more big title
Speaker 1: games are untethering character creation tools from gendered terms. Players
Speaker 1: will have access to more options to create characters they
Speaker 1: feel they want to play. That can include players feeling
Speaker 1: that they are a closer match to the characters that
Speaker 1: they've created, which is nice. To be able to see
Speaker 1: representation of yourself in a game is incredible. So we're
Speaker 1: seeing a trend for games to allow players to mix
Speaker 1: and match features that often would have been divided into
Speaker 1: a gendered approach in the past, and now players are
Speaker 1: more frequently discovering they are not being forced down binary
Speaker 1: pathways where choosing one gender will limit you to a
Speaker 1: subset of features and options and remove others. So one
Speaker 1: example of a game that's doing this is World of Warcraft,
Speaker 1: which is preparing to release an expansion called Dragonflight. Wow
Speaker 1: has ditched the terms male and female in character creation
Speaker 1: instead opted for body type one and body type two.
Speaker 1: Other games like The Sims have done this, and surprisingly,
Speaker 1: so has Hogwarts Legacy. I say surprisingly for Hogwarts Legacy
Speaker 1: because Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has made some
Speaker 1: infamous statements, mostly on Twitter, that are critical of the
Speaker 1: transgender community, but Hogwarts Legacies character creation system appears to
Speaker 1: allow trans characters. Personally, I think increased inclusivity is great.
Speaker 1: It is a huge benefit to people who otherwise would
Speaker 1: never see represent tation within a game, and on the
Speaker 1: flip side, it doesn't have negative impacts on anyone else
Speaker 1: who already had representation in games, so I see it
Speaker 1: as a net win. I like how games can bring
Speaker 1: people together, though obviously games have also served as incubators
Speaker 1: for hateful behavior, as well, it's complicated. Oh feet, that's
Speaker 1: what you call them. That's the stuff that people are
Speaker 1: dancing on. I'm glad we got that sorted out alright.
Speaker 1: That wraps up this episode of tech Stuff News. Hope
Speaker 1: you are all well. Hope you fellow Americans out there
Speaker 1: are getting ready for a joyful Thanksgiving. I hope you
Speaker 1: have lots to be thankful for. And if you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. There are a couple of ways to
Speaker 1: get in touch. One is to download the I Heart
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Speaker 1: leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length
Speaker 1: if you like. You can even indicate if I can
Speaker 1: use that voice message in a future episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I will not do it unless you tell me it's okay,
Speaker 1: or if you prefer. You can reach out on Twitter,
Speaker 1: assuming that it's up and the handle there is tech
Speaker 1: stuff hs W. I did create an account on Mastodon.
Speaker 1: I will share that in the future when probably do
Speaker 1: a full episode about Mastodon, so people who are on
Speaker 1: Mastodon can find me there. And I'm looking at a
Speaker 1: couple of other possibilities. The problem is, of course, that
Speaker 1: one a lot of people are gonna stick with Twitter
Speaker 1: until it just isn't a thing anymore if that, in
Speaker 1: fact happens, and too if they choose something else. There
Speaker 1: are like a dozen other options, and I can't maintain
Speaker 1: a presence at all of them because I'll always forget
Speaker 1: one and I'll never be like, checking like fourteen different
Speaker 1: accounts for messages is a huge time sink. So we'll
Speaker 1: figure it out. We'll keep on going. Maybe I'll reach
Speaker 1: out yet again to get an email address for this show. Uh,
Speaker 1: I know that Ben Bowland keeps sending people to my
Speaker 1: personal email address to issue complaints from ridiculous history and
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know because that's fun.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I hope you're all well and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
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