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Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Elvis Costello, Darius Rucker, Jason Isbell, Luis Fonsi, Miranda Lambert and the estates of Bob Marley and Frank Sinatra are among more than 200 signees to an open letter targeting tech companies, digital service providers and AI developers over irresponsible artificial intelligence practices, calling such work an “assault on human creativity” that “must be stopped.”
The letter, issued by the non-profit Artist Rights Alliance, calls on such organizations to “cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists,” stressing that any use of AI be done responsibly. “Make no mistake: we believe that, when used responsibly, AI has enormous potential to advance human creativity and in a manner that enables the development and growth of new and exciting experiences for music fans everywhere. Unfortunately, some platforms and developers are employing AI to sabotage creativity and undermine artists, songwriters, musicians and rights holders.”
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Artists, songwriters and producers from all genres, several generations and multiple continents added their names to the letter, from younger artists like Ayra Starr to legends like Smokey Robinson and organizations like HYBE. In particular, the signatories point to the use of AI models trained on unlicensed music, which they call “efforts directly aimed at replacing the work of human artists with massive quantities of AI-created ‘sounds’ and ‘images’ that substantially dilute the royalty pools that are paid out to artists. For many working musicians, artists and songwriters who are just trying to make ends meet, this would be catastrophic.”
“Working musicians are already struggling to make ends meet in the streaming world, and now they have the added burden of trying to compete with a deluge of AI-generated noise,” Jen Jacobsen, executive director of the Artist Rights Alliance, said in a statement accompanying the letter. “The unethical use of generative AI to replace human artists will devalue the entire music ecosystem — for artists and fans alike.”
Over the past year or so, many in the music industry have echoed similar calls for the ethical and responsible use of artificial intelligence, which left unchecked has the potential to undermine copyright law and make issues like streaming fraud, soundalikes and intellectual property theft much more rampant, much more quickly. There have been Congressional hearings on the matter, and states like Tennessee have begun introducing and passing legislation hoping to protect creators and intellectual property owners from deception and fraud, broadening laws and addressing ethical use. Universal Music Group has developed a task force to address the issue, and UMPG has cited TikTok’s AI approach as one of the reasons for the standoff between the two companies that is ongoing, while the RIAA, Warner Music Group and others have all weighed in stressing that protecting IP from unlicensed AI overreach is of utmost importance.
“We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem,” the letter concludes. “We call on all digital music platforms and music-based services to pledge that they will not develop or deploy AI music-generation technology, content, or tools that undermine or replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists or deny us fair compensation for our work.”
Read the full letter and see the list of signatories here.
Venice announced the beta launch of a new tool called Co-Manager on Tuesday (April 2nd). The “career assistant” for artists incorporates “insights from top artist managers, marketers, streaming analysts, and digital strategists with OpenAI machine learning and your unique streaming data,” according to a release.
“Co-Manager is designed to educate artists on the business and marketing of music, so artists can spend more time focused on their creative vision,” Suzy Ryoo, co-founder and president of Venice Music, said in a statement. Venice, co-founded by Troy Carter, believes its tool can help artists plan advertising campaigns and album roll-outs.
Many of the most consequential questions related to the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence — whether genAI models need to license training data, for example — have yet to be decided.
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“Unfortunately, other than right of publicity laws that vary in effectiveness on a state-by-state basis, there is little current protection for an artist regarding the threats posed by artificial intelligence, and, therefore, governmental action is urgently needed,” Russell L. King, director of the King Law Firm, told Billboard earlier this year.
But the government isn’t known for moving quickly. That means, “whatever we think about the state of AI and its legal treatment, it’s important to stay nimble and try to think several steps out because things may change fast,” Spotify general counsel Eve Konstan said recently.
To that end, the heads of the major labels have all discussed the importance of finding AI-powered tools to help their artists.
“We are at the gateway of a new technological era with AI,” Sony Music CEO Rob Stringer said in 2023. “And unsurprisingly, music will be a core component of this process. AI promises to provide us tools so that our artists and writers can create and innovate. It also heralds greater levels of insight through machine learning, as well as potential new licensing channels and avenues for commercial exploitation.”
Similarly, Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge talked about the company goal of “forg[ing] groundbreaking private-sector partnerships with AI technology companies” in a memo to staff in January.
“In addition, our artists have begun working with some of the latest AI technology to develop tools that will enhance and support the creative process and produce music experiences unlike anything that’s been heard before,” Grainge continued. “And to leverage AI technology that would benefit artists, we continue to strike groundbreaking agreements with, among others, Endel and BandLab.”
As the entertainment attorney Tamara Milagros-Butler put it recently, “don’t be afraid to explore AI as a tool, but maintain human connection.”
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Most smart TVs have built-in speakers, but it may not be enough to provide crystal-clear sound quality to make you feel […]
When Megan Thee Stallion released her single “Hiss” on Jan. 26, she let the music do the talking, with two exceptions: On Jan. 30, she appeared on Good Morning America, the top-rated network morning show. Then, on Feb. 1, she logged on to social-audio platform Stationhead to speak directly to her most dedicated supporters.
“Let me tell y’all something — if ‘Hiss’ hits No. 1, I’m having an OG ratchet-ass Hottie party,” she said on the HottieRanch fan channel, laughing along as two of her longtime fans hosted an off-the-cuff conversation with her. “[My first single] ‘Cobra’ and ‘Hiss’ are the first two music videos that I’ve done since I’ve been off of my labels, and I did this shit because I finally had full creative range. I could do whatever I wanted to do,” she declared. “I’m just happy that [people are] appreciating the art, because I really thought about it and put my all into it. And I’m just happy to be here, today — the Hotties are gagging!”
During the 14 minutes that Megan spent on HottieRanch, 7,000 fans logged on to the channel, racking up 3,000 song downloads through the site and flooding the comments with her signature snake emojis and messages of support. Fireworks effects and alerts about sales milestones and other benchmarks flew across the app’s interface, and “Hiss” later debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — Megan’s first-ever solo chart‑topper. According to Stationhead, its users contributed 13,200 download sales and millions of global streams to the track’s debut, and the benefits did not end there. The song’s withering lyrics — which target Nicki Minaj, Tory Lanez and other artists — led Minaj to hop on her own Barbz channel on Stationhead to clap back during an extended dialogue with her fans. Her own dis track, “Big Foot,” followed, leading to a back-and-forth that boosted streams for Minaj’s and Megan’s songs — and to Stationhead trending on X as the two MCs and their fans traded darts.
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It’s one of the latest examples of Stationhead’s growing popularity with artists who want to foster strong connections to their fans and boost streams and chart positions in the process. In recent months, Olivia Rodrigo, Cardi B, BTS, Blackpink, Ed Sheeran, Jennifer Lopez, Coldplay, GAYLE and other acts have engaged with fans on the platform — which focuses exclusively on music — playing songs, telling stories and answering questions while thousands listen along.
“Stationhead is incorporated in every single and album release that we do,” says Kirsten Stubbs, co-head of pop/rock digital at Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA), who has run campaigns with Rodrigo and Selena Gomez on the platform and says she first discovered it after hearing about it from fans themselves. “It’s an app that the industry was looking for for a long time, and they were the first ones to really nail that strategy.”
“Your fans on Stationhead are like your season ticket holders at a sporting event: You can build a plan around them, count on them to show up to things,” says TMWRK founder and CEO Andrew McInness, whose company manages Diplo and Dillon Francis, among others, and who serves on Stationhead’s board. “Those types of fans are the reason why Taylor Swift is Taylor Swift, why Nicki Minaj has her power base or the various HYBE or K-pop artists have this big support system.”
The platform, which debuted in 2017, functions much like a digital pirate radio station, where anyone with a streaming music account can host their own station and play music, with other users able to log on and listen, chat and even call in and speak to the DJ. And since the app functions as a skin over Spotify or Apple Music, each listener in a room counts as an individual stream.
Over the years, Stationhead has evolved into a destination for fan groups to discuss (whether through the chat or a podcast-like audio function) their favorite artists with the channel’s host. These virtual connections sometimes lead to in-real-life relationships with, for instance, channel members meeting at music venues to see concerts together. The addition of channels — rooms created specifically for fans of certain artists, such as Minaj, Jimin or Stray Kids — in January 2023 solidified the app’s new direction and led to Cardi and Rodrigo discovering the app through their fans and occasionally joining them. According to the company, there are now more than 1,000 channels.
“Music’s future is leaning into fandom, period, and fandoms live here,” says Stationhead co-founder Ryan Star. “They played the instrument we built better than anybody.”
The platform’s role in fostering the artist-fan connection — and helping to deliver hits — comes at a time when “superfan” is arguably the industry’s biggest buzzword. In his New Year’s memo to staff, Universal Music Group (UMG) chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge wrote that in 2024, the label group will focus on “grow[ing] the pie for all artists by strengthening the artist-fan relationship through superfan experiences and products.”
Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl also cited superfans in his holiday letter to staff, calling them “relatively untapped and undermonetized.” Two months later, during a panel discussion at the Web Summit conference in Doha, Qatar, Kyncl mentioned that WMG had hired a team of engineers to help the company build its own superfan operation, with an emphasis on “a cross-platform solution,” which he said at a later appearance that he felt labels were better positioned than anyone to do.
Stationhead and WMG aren’t alone in the superfan space; HYBE’s WeVerse and companies like Medallion and Fave are attempting to address different aspects of superfan monetization, with various levels of success. UMG invested in NTWRK’s $109 million acquisition of Complex in February, and Live Nation, Spotify and others have also expressed an interest in or begun to explore ways to enter the superfan space. Last year, a Goldman Sachs report estimated that there will be a $4.2 billion addressable market for superfan monetization by 2030, and Luminate reported that superfans spend 80% more on their favorite artists than the regular music listener.
But Stationhead has gone further than many others in terms of bringing more revenue into the business by focusing on the one thing at its center: the music. “Stationhead is a good example of a company that is creating the bridge between the main lane of how someone makes money — whether that be a rights holder, artist or roster — and people who are avid listeners or supporters who are exhibiting fan affinity,” says Mike Pelczynski, a strategist who helped build SoundCloud’s direct-to-fan capabilities and pioneered its fan-powered business. “They know you still need to make money based on scale and volume of plays, and they’re creating hyper communities that help, literally, stream music in groups, but then also give [artists] the capability to tap into those people, and then to give them something else, like merch or other purchase [options].”
Before he began developing Stationhead in 2014, Star released albums and performed in the band Stage and as a solo artist. He says that whenever he opened for such acts as the Goo Goo Dolls or O.A.R., he made a point of meeting fans at the merchandise booth afterward — even when the headliners would roll their eyes.
“I think right now [fandom] is still a buzzword, and I hear a lot of people throw it around, and they don’t really know it,” he says. “I know it from the days of actually being an artist that relied on those kinds of fans for my life. For me, I was like, ‘These are the people who are gonna be there for me no matter what.’”
SB19 fans who met on Stationhead at the Filipino boy band’s concert at Araneta Coliseum in Manila in 2022.
Courtesy SB19 Stationhead Team
On a Wednesday afternoon in early March, 3,700 people were logged on to Stationhead’s BTS ARMY Jungkook channel; 3,500 were tuned in to the BTS ARMY channel dedicated to V; 1,200 people were on the ONCE channel for fans of TWICE; 1,300 were on the STAYS channel for fans of Stray Kids; and 800 people were on the BardiGang channel dedicated to Cardi B fans. The Beyhive channel, which Beyoncé has never visited, had 150 listeners, with the host dutifully streaming “Texas Hold ’Em” every three songs. Stationhead says it drove 15% of first-week downloads for the song when it debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100.
During the pandemic, social audio apps like Clubhouse, Spotify’s Greenroom/Live and Amazon’s AMP live radio app began to pop up, sometimes attracting star names to host conversations or live podcast shows on their platforms. But those big names — occasionally brought in with big checks — were often what attracted audiences, and investors, to the platforms. (Last year, both Amazon and Spotify shut down their platforms, and Clubhouse laid off half its workforce.) Stationhead grew on the opposite side of the spectrum: the company says it has never paid for marketing, or for an artist to appear on the platform. Instead, artists and labels who have embraced it heard about it through the fans themselves, and Stationhead says that 95% of the billions of streams it facilitated in 2023 came when there were no artists on the platform, just fans hanging out amongst themselves.
It’s something that speaks even to the biggest artists in the world. “It’s a good way to get thousands, tens of thousands of people to all come together and have an amazing experience together. And with great examples, artists jump in, and then that turns into content because people record that kind of stuff and it travels beyond the platform onto Instagram or TikTok,” says Atlantic general manager Paul Sinclar, who has worked Stationhead into rollouts with Ed Sheeran, Melanie Martinez, Charlie Puth and the Barbie soundtrack, among others. And the experience goes well beyond just boosting a song’s streams or downloads — true, die hard fans are created through more than just commercial interactions. “If you get an audience together that wants something special and cool to them in that moment, there’s an opportunity. But we try to measure it by, did fans think that was an amazing experience?”
When Sheeran released his Autumn Variations album last September, his fans were having a listening party on Stationhead — and Sheeran randomly crashed the party, with no heads up. When GAYLE was launching her tour, she held a contest on Stationhead for her fans to guess her set lists, which became a nightly listening party and debate, culminating with GAYLE herself jumping in to confirm the set list and update a playlist for her fans. For the release of the Barbie soundtrack, Atlantic facilitated a 12-hour listening party, with a different fan each hour hosting their own playlist based on a different song and artist that appeared on the album. For the two year anniversary of Rodrigo’s SOUR album, she popped in to a listening party her fans were holding, proving the power the platform has to boost catalog, too. “The spontaneity of logging in and not knowing who is gonna be in there, if the artist is gonna be in there, is a really cool experience,” Stubbs says.
Stationhead says that over the past year, its user base has quadrupled to more than 15 million fans, and the average user spends over two hours per day on the platform. The company claims it drove billions of streams and hundreds of thousands of downloads in the past year, creating tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue for labels and artists — an admittedly vague figure that it nonetheless expects to grow fivefold in the next year. (The company declined to reveal specifics.)
Stationhead’s revenue comes largely from a cut of the downloads sold through the platform — a format that IGA’s Stubbs says is “more important to the success of a song and album because downloads are weighted more” for chart algorithms.
Though its current business model is better suited to making money for streaming services and rights holders, Stationhead says that will change soon. “In the same way that Discord and Twitch created entirely new channels of revenue for the video game industry, Stationhead is doing the same with music,” co-founder and COO Murray Levison says. “We plan to continue to innovate in the space and roll out a number of monetization features over the course of the next year.”
Until then, Stationhead continues to do what it does best: serve as the destination for over 1,000 fandoms. “Stationhead is always on, and the community is always there even if nobody is talking,” Star says. “We’ve been building it quietly for years now, really focused on understanding the fans, learning them, validating them, giving them a home — all of this has happened. We found our audience, and this market is just beginning. And it’s going to be massive.”
A version of this story appeared in the March 30, 2024, issue of Billboard.
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Source: Future Publishing / Getty / White Xbox Series X
Didn’t care for the black Xbox Series X console? Well, there might be a white option on the way.
Exputer has shared leaked images of a white All-Digital Xbox Series X sporting the “robot white” look of Series S. The Verge reports it has seen documents confirming the photos are genuine.
While there should be excitement for the white All-Digital Xbox Series X, it can also mean that Xbox’s console refresh, the leaked “Brooklin” console, could have its wig pushed back.
The Verge reached out for comment but has not gotten word back.
The Brooklin console was also disc-less, but instead of box-shaped, it sports a new circular design plus a much-needed increased internal storage of 2TB, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, improved efficiency, 15% reduced PSU power, and a $499 price.
Xbox was allegedly gunning for a November release date, but speaking on the leak, Xbox chief Phil Spencer threw some cold water on those expectations.
“It is hard to see our team’s work shared in this way because so much has changed, and there’s so much to be excited about right now and in the future,” Spencer said in a September post on X, formerly Twitter. “We will share the real plans when we are ready.”
Exputer also reports that the All-Digital Xbox’s new coat of white paint and lack of disc drive are not the only upgrades. Some internal components, including the heatsink, which cools the console, will see an upgrade.
As for the price, Exputer reports the console will cost $50-$100 less than the current $499 Xbox Series X console.
Gamers Have Thoughts
The news of the white All-Digital Xbox Series X is sparking reactions. “Charging more while getting less. A tale as old as time. At least the ps5 slim still has a drive for $500, “one person wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“Why wouldn’t you just get a PC at this point? The whole thing about consoles is the physical media with them and their exclusives. And the Xbox won’t have either anymore if this is true,” another post read.
Again, this isn’t confirmed, but if Xbox does verify its existence, we are intrigued to see how it will be received.
Hit the gallery below for more reactions.
1. Damn, flat out no.
2. Well, someone is excited
6. It might be cheaper
In November, I quit my job in generative AI to campaign for creators’ right not to have their work used for AI training without permission. I started Fairly Trained, a non-profit that certifies generative AI companies that obtain a license before training models on copyrighted works.
Mostly, I’ve felt good about this decision — but there have been a few times when I’ve questioned it. Like when a big media company, though keen to defend its own rights, told me it couldn’t find a way to stop using unfairly-trained generative AI in other domains. Or whenever demos from the latest models receive unquestioning praise despite how they’re trained. Or, last week, with the publication of a series of articles about AI music company Suno that I think downplay serious questions about the training data it uses.
Suno is an AI music generation company with impressive text-to-song capabilities. I have nothing against Suno, with one exception: Piecing together various clues, it seems likely that its model is trained on copyrighted work without rights holders’ consent.
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What are these clues? Suno refuses to reveal its training data sources. In an interview with Rolling Stone, one of its investors disclosed that Suno didn’t have deals with the labels “when the company got started” (there is no indication this has changed), that they invested in the company “with the full knowledge that music labels and publishers could sue,” and that the founders’ lack of open hostility to the music industry “doesn’t mean we’re not going to get sued.” And, though I’ve approached the company through two channels about getting certified as Fairly Trained, they’ve so far not taken me up on the offer, in contrast to the 12 other AI music companies we’ve certified for training their platforms fairly.
There is, of course, a chance that Suno licenses its training data, and I genuinely hope I’m wrong. If they correct the record, I’ll be the first to loudly and regularly trumpet the company’s fair training credentials.
But I’d like to see media coverage of companies like Suno give more weight to the question of what training data is being used. This is an existential issue for creators.
Editor’s note: Suno’s founders did not respond to requests for comment from Billboard about their training practices. Sources confirm that the company does not have licensing agreements in place with some of the most prominent music rightsholders, including the three major label groups and the National Music Publishers’ Association.
Limiting discussion of Suno’s training data to the fact that it “decline[s] to reveal details” and not explicitly stating the possibility that Suno uses copyrighted music without permission means that readers may not be aware of the potential for unfair exploitation of musicians’ work by AI music companies. This should factor into our thoughts about which AI music companies to support.
If Suno is training on copyrighted music without permission, this is likely the technological factor that sets it apart from other AI music products. The Rolling Stone article mentions some of the tough technical problems that Suno is solving — having to do with tokens, the sampling rate of audio and more — but these are problems that other companies have solved. In fact, several competitors have models as capable as Suno’s. The reason you don’t see more models like Suno’s being released to the public is that most AI music companies want to ensure training data is licensed before they release their products.
The context here is important. Some of the biggest generative AI companies in the world are using untold numbers of creators’ work without permission in order to train AI models that compete with those creators. There is, understandably, a big public outcry at this large-scale scraping of copyrighted work from the creative community. This has led to a number of lawsuits, which Rolling Stone mentions.
The fact that generative AI competes with human creators is something AI companies prefer not to talk about. But it’s undeniable. People are already listening to music from companies like Suno in place of Spotify, and generative AI listening will inevitably eat into music industry revenues — and therefore human musicians’ income — if training data isn’t licensed.
Generative AI is a powerful technology that will likely bring a number of benefits. But if we support the exploitation of people’s work for training without permission, we implicitly support the unfair destruction of the creative industries. We must instead support companies that take a fairer approach to training data.
And those companies do exist. There are a number — generally startups — taking a fairer approach, refusing to use copyrighted work without consent. They are licensing, or using public domain data, or commissioning data, or all of the above. In short, they are working hard not to train unethically. At Fairly Trained, we have certified 12 of these companies in AI music. If you want to use AI music and you care about creators’ rights, you have options.
There is a chance Suno has licensed its data. I encourage the company to disclose what it’s training its AI model on. Until we know more, I hope anyone looking to use AI music will opt instead to work with companies that we know take a fair approach to using creators’ work.
To put it simply — and to use some details pulled from Suno’s Rolling Stone interview — it doesn’t matter whether you’re a team of musicians, what you profess to think about IP, or how many pictures of famous composers you have on the walls. If you train on copyrighted work without a license, you’re not on the side of musicians. You’re unfairly exploiting their work to build something that competes with them. You’re taking from them to your gain — and their cost.
Ed Newton-Rex is the CEO of Fairly Trained and a composer. He previously founded Jukedeck, one of the first AI music companies, ran product in Europe for TikTok, and was vp of audio at Stability AI.
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Source: SEBASTIEN BOZON / Getty
Facebook’s parent company Meta has been called out over the muting of an Arabic word on its platforms.
An oversight board has made a recommendation to Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Threads, and Instagram to loosen their blanket restrictions on the Arabic word “shaheed”. Meta had enacted a blanket ban on the word, reviewing it in 2020, and removing it from the posts of people on the platform that were deemed dangerous. In a statement, the “blunt method” was regarded as “overbroad and disproportionately restricts freedom of expression and civic discourse,” wrote Oversight Board member Helle Thorning-Schmidt, saying it ignored the complexities of the word and settled for one definition meaning “martyr”.
The group’s findings declared the ban unnecessary given the company’s established policies that can already address any danger posed by terrorist organizations and individuals on the platform when used properly. The board finalized their decision to make the recommendation after the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict on October 7, 2023, which currently has seen 32,000 Palestinians killed according to the Gaza Health Ministry after members of Hamas invaded an area of southern Gaza and killed or taken hostage 1,400 people. They had extended research on “shaheed” but still agreed on the recommendation.
“The term is used in many circumstances, but the vast majority of those referred to as Shaheed are civilians,” said Nadim Nashif, the executive director of The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media. Thorning-Schmidt agreed, stating that the restriction stops legitimate usage of the word in reporting on discussions of terrorism and violence. “It can even lead to those speaking about deceased loved ones having their content taken down in error,” he said.
Jewish advocacy groups have come out against any potential change, claiming that softening the restrictions would enable more antisemitism on the platforms. “These calls to terror and violence will be normalized and, more importantly, more people will be exposed to them, possibly leading to additional violence at a time there is already a lot of violence and targeted antisemitic attacks,” said Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, the founder of CyberWell, an Israeli nonprofit group that tracks antisemitism online. Montemayor said that it flagged over 300 usages of “shaheed” in antisemitic posts on Facebook since October 7.
“We want people to be able to use our platforms to share their views, and we have a set of policies to help them do so safely,” Meta said in a statement. They also said that they would review the feedback they’ve collected and make a decision in 60 days.
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Source: Rockstar Games / GTA 6
Grand Theft Auto 6’s 2025 date release could be in danger.
According to a Kotaku report, Grand Theft Auto 6, the next highly anticipated installment in the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise, could have its wig pushed back.
GTA 6 is still slated for an “early 2025” release date, but that date is in jeopardy due to “production delays.” The game could be released in late 2025 or sometime in 2026.
Per Kotaku:
As remote workers struggle with an unwanted return-to-office mandate from Rockstar Games, Kotaku has learned from sources with knowledge of the game’s development process that GTA 6 could miss its 2025 release window and slip into 2026.
Kotaku has also learned that it’s becoming more and more likely that the sequel might not land until late 2025. It’s also possible that it could even slip into 2026 as production reportedly falls behind.
While security and quality are reportedly the main reasons Rockstar is instituting the mandate to return to the office, I was told by sources—who wish to remain anonymous to avoid possible retaliation—that development on GTA 6 has started “falling behind.” I’m told this has leadership at Rockstar nervous and worried about the game missing the 2025 window and slipping into 2026, and is another big reason the company is pushing for a return to the office in April.
Is Rockstar Games Pushing Out Remote Workers?
Kotaku’s report comes after Bloomberg’s report that Rockstar Games was ending remote work, ordering employees back to the office following numerous leaks.
The drastic change was met with immediate criticism and caught many by surprise, leading to frustration. According to Aftermath’s reporting, some employees initially hired to work remotely felt like they were being pushed out of the company by not complying and completely upending their lives.
Some workers expressed concern to Aftermath that Rockstar Games was reverting back to its old crunch ways.
“We’re concerned about going back to that,” one Rockstar employee told Aftermath.
“I’ve been through a couple of projects, both of which had crunch. The first one was extremely difficult. I had way less gray hair back then. … We want to continue the strides we’ve made as a company to remove that toxic culture.”
Gamers also react to the news that they may have to wait even longer for GTA 6.
Some want Rockstar Games to take its time with the game, others don’t want the developers to experience crunch, and some are just overwriting; it’s been about 11 years.
You can see those reactions in the gallery below.
1. LOL, damn
4. Exactly
5. No, not yet
European Union regulators opened investigations into Apple, Google and Meta on Monday, the first cases under a sweeping new law designed to stop Big Tech companies from cornering digital markets. The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm, said it was investigating the companies for “non-compliance” with the Digital Markets Act.
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The Digital Markets Act that took full effect earlier this month is a broad rulebook that targets Big Tech “gatekeeper” companies providing “core platform services.” Those companies must comply with a set of do’s and don’ts, under threat of hefty financial penalties or even breaking up businesses. The rules have the broad but vague goal of making digital markets “fairer” and “more contestable” by breaking up closed tech ecosystems that lock consumers into a single company’s products or services.
The commission has heard complaints that tech companies’ measures to comply have fallen short, European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s competition chief, said at a press briefing in Brussels. “Today, we decided to investigate a number of these suspected non-compliance issues. And as we unearth other problems, we will tackle those too.”
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The companies have been ordered to hold on to certain documents that the commission can access in current and future investigations, she said.
Regulators are looking into whether Google and Apple are fully complying with the DMA’s rules requiring tech companies to allow app developers to direct users to cheaper options available outside their app stores. The commission said it’s concerned the two companies are imposing “various restrictions and limitations” including charging recurring fees that prevent apps from freely promoting offers.
Google is also facing scrutiny for not complying with DMA provisions that prevent tech giants from giving preference to their own services over rivals. The commission said it is concerned Google’s measures will result in third-party services listed on Google’s search results page not being treated “in a fair and non-discriminatory manner.”
Google said that it has made “significant changes” to the way its services operate in Europe to comply with the DMA. “We will continue to defend our approach in the coming months,” Google’s director of competition, Oliver Bethell, said.
The commission is also investigating whether Apple is doing enough to allow iPhone users to easily change web browsers.
Apple said it’s confident that its plan complies with the DMA, and it will “continue to constructively engage with the European Commission as they conduct their investigations.” The company said it has created a wide range of new developer capabilities, features, and tools to comply with the regulation.
The commission is also looking into Meta’s option for European users to pay a monthly fee for ad-free versions of Facebook or Instagram, so they can avoid having their personal data used to target them with online ads. “The Commission is concerned that the binary choice imposed by Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ model may not provide a real alternative in case users do not consent, thereby not achieving the objective of preventing the accumulation of personal data by gatekeepers,” it said.
Meta said it will “engage constructively” with the Commission. “Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are a well-established business model across many industries, and we designed Subscription for No Ads to address several overlapping regulatory obligations, including the DMA,” it said in a prepared statement.
The commission said it aims to wrap up its investigations within 12 months.
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Source: Anadolu / Getty / Xbox
Xbox has been in the news A LOT as of late, primarily due to fanboys losing their sh*t about the company’s new direction, but this latest development is something many gamers are on board for.
Spotted on VG247, the Microsoft gaming division is reportedly looking to make a big splash in the handheld gaming department after seeing Sony’s surprising success with its cloud-based/remote-play PS5 companion device, the PlayStation Portal.
On a recent episode of the Xbox Two podcast, Windows Central managing editor Jez Corden claims the Microsoft gaming company already has working prototypes.
Per VG247:
Speaking on the Xbox Two podcast, Jez Corden said that he knows that “[Xbox] have got handheld prototypes right now.” He clarified that they are “new prototypes” and not old ones that were supposedly previously in the works, and he also made sure to point out that it’s “not a cloud handheld” it’s “a fully native Xbox handheld.” This was pointed out on the podcast too, but it should be noted that just because Xbox is working on a handheld prototype, if it is, that doesn’t mean it will ever actually release. Projects like these are cancelled all the time, so don’t go writing any comments complaining it never came out when it was never guaranteed in the first place.
A “Fully Native” Handheld Sounds Clutch
This news isn’t all that surprising because Xbox is pushing the plan to make Xbox Game Pass available on devices other than Xbox Series X, S, or PC.
You can now run the subscription gaming platform on handhelds like Steam Deck, ASUS ROG Ally, Logitech G Cloud, the Lenovo-Legion Go, or your smartphones via a cloud gaming app still in beta.
However, a dedicated device would be a clutch, especially if paired with an Xbox Game Pass.
Gamers are reacting positively to the rumor of a “fully native” handheld console.
“I want a Xbox Handheld – its time As much as I like my ROG Ally, portable hardware that plays all my Xbox games with a simplified UI and not having to worry about system settings with improved battery life In other words a pick up and play experience,” Kinda Funny (XCast) and Gamertag Radio host Parris Lilly wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
You can see those reactions in the gallery below.
1. From your lips to God’s ears.
2. We hear you Parris
3. It would be nice