Author: TechBrunch

Google has announced today's new features for PC and mobile games ahead of the Game Developer Conference (GDC), including new titles, control customizations, and developer tools to make mobile games available on PCs. The company first introduced PC play games in the beta phase in 2022. Over time, the programmes were introduced in various regions. Later this year, the project will enter general availability. As part of the new release, Google is adding new tools for game developers, including a dedicated SDK for native PC games for Google Play games with in-app purchase integration. We're also updating our Play console…

TechCrunch's biggest AI event is less than 3 months away! If you are shaping the future of AI, investing in the next game-changing innovation, or wanting to dig deeper into what's next, TechCrunch Session: AI is a place. On June 5th, Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California, will be bustling with 1,200 AI experts, investors and enthusiasts exchanging ideas, building connections and exploring the artificial intelligence frontier. Secure spots now and save up to $210 before ticket prices go up. Don't sit this – AI's biggest breakthroughs and insights await you! 1. Expert wisdom directly from the industry heavyweights on the…

Privacy Rights Groups are calling for a legal challenge to Apple's secret UK government order to backdoors for an end-to-end encryption (E2EE) version of iCloud storage services that are heard in public places rather than in closed rooms. The existence of orders emerged in a reporter's report last month. Apple has confirmed it has shut down advanced data protection services for UK users. However, it is unclear whether Apple's actions are considered compliant, as surveillance orders requiring law enforcement access to data stored within the E2EE service are also believed to include information about users outside the country. This means…

In expanding its existing audiobook efforts, Spotify announced on Thursday the launch of a new publishing program for authors. When Spotify selects Audiobook Publishing stories, the company says it will handle the creation and distribution of the work to other major audiobook retailers. Meanwhile, Spotify pays the author both upfront and royalty. Spotify said it is specifically looking for stories across three genres: romance, mystery or thriller, sci-fi or fantasy. Spotify has seen the success of titles like the top audiobook of 2024, the fantasy romance “The Court of Thorns & Roses.” Spotify encourages authors to submit cross-genre works such…

TechCrunch All Stage (previously early stages) returned to Boston on July 15th, with the agenda for the Tentpole East Coast founder event being nearly complete. We look forward to sharing this sneak peak with some of the amazing speakers and sessions we're tapping. For builders who are just beginning their founder journey, our foundation stage is a must-have place. We recruit an incredible cast of leading investors and entrepreneurs to dig deep into founder-focused topics such as: All the methods VCS doesn't realize are evaluating pre-seeded companies. MVP in the age of AI: When will you bot or when? Tam…

Skich, an app like Tinder for discovering mobile games, announced the launch of a new marketplace on Thursday that will take part in close competition with alternative game stores such as Aptoide and Epic Games. The new alternative mobile game store, Skich Store, will be available to iOS users in the European Union. The company plans to begin adding titles at the end of March after the Game Developers Conference (GDC). Skich's iOS Marketplace announcement follows the recent implementation of new regulations in the EU, known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA). DMA is looking to enhance fairness and competition…

While many business employees today are expected to make decisions through careful data analysis, the tools needed to do so are clunky, slow, or sometimes absent. This is according to Colin Zima, CEO of Omni, a Business Intelligence (BI) platform that aims to help organizations simplify how they work with their data. Before co-founding Omni, Zima led the search quality team at Google and was Looker's Chief Analytics Officer. “In cloud data warehouses like Snowflake and BigQuery, legacy reliability combines with modern scalability,” Zima told TechCrunch. “Even so, tens of thousands of companies are tied to the outdated BI process.…

The Productivity Platform Click-Up launches an improved calendar tool that integrates tasks, documents, chats and meetings in one place. The most interesting feature of the calendar is the blocking of the integrated AI meeting note taker and task blocking. Clickup already had a calendar product, but it focused on managing and scheduling the team. Last year, the global supporters of A16Z and Tiger acquired calendar startup Hypercal. We are currently using some of that acquisition with our new calendar product. The company is currently focusing on personal productivity in the workplace by putting tasks at the forefront. Users can add…

Next week, Meta will begin one of the company's most important overhauls on how to check the platform information. On March 18th, Meta will begin releasing versions of Community Notes for Facebook, Instagram and US thread users. The program copied the crowdsourcing fact-checking system announced by Twitter in 2021, and became the only way to fix misleading information after Elon Musk changed the platform to X. Meta executives say they are focusing on getting community notes correctly in the US before deploying the feature to other countries. Given that the US is the most profitable market for meta, it is…

At the heart of many copyright lawsuits against AI companies, AI-powered image generators are frequently trained on huge amounts of data from public websites. Most of these companies argue that fair use doctrines protect data scraping and training practices. However, many copyright holders disagree. That's why some startups and companies developing image generators are trying out different tacks. I train the generator using only licensed content. Founded in 2023 by entrepreneurs Yair Adato and Assa Eldar, Bria is one of these. Bria pays images from around 20 partners, including Getty Images, and uses these to train image generation models on…