Microsoft apos;s £50bn Merger With Activision Blizzard Faces In-depth Probe

The CMA said merging Activision with Microsoft could allow the tech giant to use games to 'damage' competition in the growing market for cloud gaming, which allows consumers to stream games to their devices in a manner similar to Netflix's offering for movies and TV shows.

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Explaining the move, Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison noted Google's investments in gaming through its Google Play digital distribution service, its cloud tech and YouTube streaming.

Cloud gaming service Google Stadia will shut down on Jan. 18, the search giant said in blog post Thursday. Google will refund all Stadia hardware purchased through its Google Store, along with all games and add-on content purchased from its Stadia store.

Earlier, RIA reported that Telegram messenger was hit with two fines totalling 11 million roubles ($179,000) for refusing to delete channels which allegedly showed how to "sabotage" military vehicles and hosting "unreliable data" about Russia's progress in what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine.

LONDON, Aug 16 (Reuters) - A court in Russia has fined streaming service Twitch 2 million roubles ($33,000) for hosting a short video containing what it calls "fake" information about alleged war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday.

'Two paramedic officers, four ambulances, two critical care paramedics from the Midlands Air Ambulance charity, HART paramedics and the Midlands Air Ambulance helicopter from Cosford with medics on board attended the scene.

It appears that Google didn't tell many developers about the shut-down prior to the public blog post. Destiny 2 makers Bungie tweeted on Thursday about coming up with "a plan of action" in the wake of the announcement. Assassin's Creed developer Ubisoft intends to allow players who've bought its games on Stadia to bring them to PC through its Ubisoft Connect digital distribution service, it said Friday. 

'A girl was given treatment at the scene for non-life threatening injuries before being conveyed to Worcestershire Royal Hospital.
A man, a woman and a second boy were also taken to the same hospital as a precaution for further checks.'

"A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia," he said in the blog post. "And while Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we've made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service."

That tech will also be made available to Google's industry partners. Sony gave its own streaming service a headstart in 2015 by buying the patents of OnLive -- an early game streaming service -- shortly before the once-promising startup shut down.

The driver is understood to have been an accomplished off-road driver who knew the site 'like the back of his hand', with roll-bars fitted to the off-road vehicle said to have prevented an even greater tragedy.

People using Stadia will still to be able to access to their game libraries, Eastnovel.net including Pro games if you had an active Pro subscription as of Thursday. In an email sent to players, Google warned that publisher support for games may vary, and it's possible that your gameplay experience may be affected during the shut-down period (suggesting that some games could vanish or lose features early). 

While Stadia will shut down on January 18, 2023, we're happy to share that we're working to bring the games you own on Stadia to PC through Ubisoft Connect. We'll have more to share regarding specific details as well as the impact for Ubisoft+ subscribers at a later date.