Bungie sues ‘Destiny 2’ player over alleged threats and cheating

On the same day it officially became a PlayStation studio, Bungie filed a lawsuit against a Destiny 2 player it accused of persistent cheating and making threats against its employees. The developer claimed Luca Leone violated the game’s Limited Software License Agreement (LSLA) on multiple occasions. It’s seeking $150,000 in damages and an injunction preventing Leone from “harassing, stalking or otherwise engaging in unwanted or unsolicited contact with Bungie, its employees or Destiny 2 players,” as Kotaku reports.

Bungie said it banned Leone multiple times for using Destiny 2 cheat software while streaming on Twitch. In an attempt to evade the ban, Leone created 13 accounts, each of which constituted a fresh breach of the LSLA, according to the filing. The studio claimed Leone violated the LSLA on other fronts, including by selling Destiny 2 accounts that contain emblems, or non-transferable badges that players can earn. Bungie says these “are prized by many players, especially collectors.”

In addition, Bungie claims that Leone has made threats regarding the studio and its employees. According to the suit, Leone tweeted “about his desire to ‘burn down’ Bungie’s office building and [wrote] that specific Bungie employees were ‘not safe’ given Leone’s intent to move into their neighborhood.”

In May, an image of Destiny 2 community manager Dylan Gafner’s employee badge appeared on a Twitter account that’s said to belong to Leone. “I just realized I’ll be moving to a place that’s 30 minutes away from dmg,” Leone allegedly wrote, followed by “he is not safe.” Bungie notes that “dmg” likely refers to Gafner, who uses the Twitter handle @dmg04.

Leone’s purported Twitter account has since been locked. His reported Twitch channel features no content other than a bio reading “[23-year-old] Bungie playtester from Los Angeles.” Engadget has contacted Leone for comment.

The filing follows a number of instances of harassment against game developers. Forbes’ Paul Tassi wrote that Destiny 2 sandbox design lead Kevin Yanes has all but left Twitter. Players reportedly reacted with fury to Yanes saying an item from the original Destiny will not return. “I dream of a day where videogame developers (from any studio) can openly discuss their work without being harassed,” Gafner wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

A few weeks ago, Sony Santa Monica developers received threats and unsolicited photos of genitalia for not revealing the God of War: Ragnarök release date when the studio was reportedly planning to. Sony Santa Monica announced the release timing just a few days later.

This isn’t the first time Bungie has targeted players with legal action. Just last month, it sued someone who allegedly uploaded music from the Destiny 2 soundtrack for filing fake DMCA notices against content creators.

‘FIFA 23’ has a female player on the Ultimate Edition cover for the first time

EA has announced the cover stars for FIFA 23 and, for the first time in the series, a female player will feature on the Ultimate Edition, which will be available internationally. Chelsea’s Sam Kerr is one of the two cover stars, along with Kylian Mbappé of Paris Saint-Germain. This will be the third straight year Mbappé has appeared on FIFA covers.

Kerr is a more than worthy player to showcase on the game’s cover. She has been shortlisted for the women’s Ballon D’Or every year since the award’s inception and finished in third place in last year’s voting. Among her many other honors, Kerr has helped Chelsea to win the Women’s Super League in each of the three seasons since she joined the club.

EA put women on the cover of its soccer games for the first time with FIFA 16. Steph Catley, Alex Morgan and Christine Sinclair featured on the Australian, US and Canadian covers, respectively. They appeared alongside Lionel Messi, who was the cover star on other editions.

Meanwhile, Eurogamer reports that the Women’s Super League, which is the highest-tier of pro women’s soccer in England, will make its debut in the FIFA series this year. Until now, FIFA fans have only been able to play as women in the Volta and Pro Clubs modes, as well as in international teams through the kick-off mode.

EA will reveal much more about FIFA 23 when the first trailer debuts at noon ET on Wednesday (you’ll be able to watch the video below once it’s live). This will be the last annual EA soccer game that bears FIFA branding in its title. The name of the series will become EA Sports FC next year following a messy divorce from FIFA.

Instagram now lets you shop in chat

Instagram is making it a little easier for small businesses to make a living from their merch. The social network has introduced the option to shop through chats. Message a business and you can ask questions, receive product details and check out (using Meta Pay, naturally) without leaving the conversation. You can buy and customize that must-have shirt without visiting a website or looking for a shoppable post. The feature is available through qualified small businesses in some countries. We’ve asked Meta for more details.

Chat-based shopping isn’t a surprising move. You can already shop through WhatsApp chats in many countries. This expansion could make Instagram chats just as viable for shopping, and might be particularly useful in North America and other regions where WhatsApp doesn’t have much clout. If nothing else, this makes Instagram more of a full-service storefront — you might never need to leave the app to address your concerns.

UK forces Meta to halt its forced sale of Giphy

The UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal has ordered the country’s antitrust watchdog to review its decision to force Meta to sell Giphy, reports Bloomberg. “We have agreed to reconsider our decision in light of this finding,” a spokesperson for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) told the outlet, adding the agency hopes to complete the process within three months.

As The Verge notes, the ruling comes after Meta largely lost its appeal against the CMA. The tribunal sided with the watchdog on five of the agency’s six claims against the company. However, on the one ruling that went in Meta’s favor, the tribunal said the CMA had failed to properly inform the company of Snapchat’s acquisition of Gfycat, thereby undermining its defense. Now, not only must the CMA reconsider its decision, but it must also allow Meta to comment on an unredacted version of its report.

Meta’s $315 million acquisition of Giphy drew the attention of the CMA shortly after the company announced the deal in May 2020. One month after the announcement, the watchdog began investigating the purchase. By August 2021, it ruled Meta’s ownership of Giphy could allow the company to prevent rivals like TikTok and Snapchat from accessing Giphy’s GIF library. Meta declined to comment on the ruling. The company previously argued that the CMA was acting outside of its jurisdiction because Giphy had no operations in the UK. 

“Today’s ruling found that the CMA’s approach to its investigation was ‘difficult to defend’ and ‘undermines the entirety of the Decision,’” the company said after the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s initial ruling. “We look forward to understanding how these serious process flaws will be addressed. We firmly believe our investment would enhance GIPHY’s product for the millions of people, businesses, and partners who use it.”

Crunchyroll is lowering monthly subscription fees in almost 100 regions

Crunchyroll is changing prices for users in nearly 100 countries and territories, but not in the way you’d probably expect. Instead of increasing the cost of monthly subscription plans, Crunchyroll is lowering them to offer users “even more value.” The move could help the anime-focused streaming service attract more subscribers too.

In the UK, the Mega Fan plan (which allows for offline viewing and up to four simultaneous streams) now costs £6 per month instead of £8. The lower-tier Fan plan is £5, down from £6.50. Users in India will see a far more significant price decrease. Instead of $10 USD per month for a Mega Fan subscription, they’ll pay 99 rupees, which converts to around $1.25. Meanwhile, users in Brazil will save around 37.5 percent each month and those in the United Arab Emirates will pay nearly 50 percent less on a monthly basis.

Crunchyroll’s announcement includes a full list of countries and territories where it is lowering prices, including European, Caribbean, South American, African and Middle Eastern regions. There are some notable omissions, including the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 

Sony bought Crunchyroll from AT&T in 2021 and folded content from Funimation into it earlier this year. Given that Crunchyroll is the go-to streaming service for anime fans, it wouldn’t have been surprising to see Sony bump up the monthly fees. Instead, it’s making Crunchyroll more competitive against the likes of Netflix and Hulu, each of which have anime offerings but have increasedprices over the last year.

Records reveal the scale of Homeland Security’s phone location data purchases

Investigators raised alarm bells when they learned Homeland Security bureaus were buying phone location data to effectively bypass the Fourth Amendment requirement for a search warrant, and now it’s clearer just how extensive those purchases were. TechCrunchnotes the American Civil Liberties Union has obtained records linking Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other DHS divisions to purchases of roughly 336,000 phone location points from the data broker Venntel. The info represents just a “small subset” of raw data from the southwestern US, and includes a burst of 113,654 points collected over just three days in 2018.

The dataset, delivered through a Freedom of Information Act request, also outlines the agencies’ attempts to justify the bulk data purchases. Officials maintained that users voluntarily offered the data, and that it included no personally identifying information. As TechCrunch explains, though, that’s not necessarily accurate. Phone owners aren’t necessarily aware they opted in to location sharing, and likely didn’t realize the government was buying that data. Moreover, the data was still tied to specific devices — it wouldn’t have been difficult for agents to link positions to individuals.

Some Homeland Security workers expressed internal concerns about the location data. One senior director warned that the Office of Science and Technology bought Venntel info without getting a necessaryPrivacy Threshold Assessment. At one point, the department even halted all projects using Venntel data after learning that key legal and privacy questions had gone unanswered.

More details could be forthcoming, as Homeland Security is still expected to provide more documents in response to the FOIA request. We’ve asked Homeland Security and Venntel for comment. However, the ACLU report might fuel legislative efforts to ban these kinds of data purchases, including the Senate’s bipartisan Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act as well as the more recently introduced Health and Location Data Protection Act.

Lucid’s Air Grand Touring EV delivers luxurious speed and range

We were impressed with the Lucid Air Dream Edition earlier this year, even though it was just a pre-production vehicle. Well, the automaker gave time behind the wheel of its latest top-of-the-line Grand Touring Performance model with all the proper pieces of hardware and software ready to go. This is a Lucid you can actually buy — although the starting price is $179,000. We have to say, it’s better than anticipated.

The Grand Touring and Grand Touring Performance deliver on the Lucid promise to take on the German sport sedans in an all-EV package. The newish automaker was so confident in the 1,050 horsepower Performance trim level that it took it to the Goodwood Festival hill climb and was victorious in the production vehicle category. The regular $154,000 Grand Touring model is a touch slower — it takes 3 seconds to hit 60MPH, rather than 2.6 in the Performance — but you’ll get another 70 miles of range (516 total, compared to the Performance’s 446). 

All of which is to say, the Lucid Air GT models are more than just fast electric sedans. Check out the video below for the full story.

Snapchat’s messaging and calling features land on a new set of screens

Snapchat’s messaging and video chat features are no longer limited to just the mobile app. More than a decade after the Snapchat app first launched, company is introducing Snapchat for Web, a new browser-based version of its service.Snapchat+ subscribe…