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‘World of Warcraft’ battle heats up as NetEase rejects Blizzard offer

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'World of Warcraft' battle heats up as NetEase rejects Blizzard offer

Chinese games publisher NetEase Inc NTES.O (9999.HK) said on Wednesday it has rejected a proposal from Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI.O) to extend their long-time partnership for six months, as the U.S. game developer looks for a new partner.

NetEase said the proposal was “commercially illogical” and accused the U.S. firm of “seeking a divorce but still remaining attached,” in a rare public display of acrimony between the two gaming giants.

Blizzard said in November it would end its 14-year partnership with NetEase – sending shockwaves across the industry as the partnership was widely seen as one of the most lucrative in video games.

The companies had been unable to agree on key terms of cooperation and hits such as  World of Warcraft  will not be available in China, the world’s largest gaming market, from Jan. 23.

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NetEase said Blizzard reached out last week with an offer to extend the partnership for six months but also made it clear that it would not stop negotiating with other potential partners.

“Considering the non-reciprocity, unfairness and other strict conditions attached to the cooperation, the parties could not reach an agreement in the end,” China s second-largest gaming company said in a statement.

The exact sticking points that soured the deal, which started in 2008 and was renewed in 2019, remain unclear.
A person close to Blizzard said the dispute that scuttled the renewal revolved around commercial terms rather than data issues as some media had reported.

The person, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue, said NetEase had proposed to make structural changes to the partnership that would affect Blizzard’s control over its intellectual property (IP).

In its statement late on Tuesday, NetEase said it had never requested control over IP from Blizzard or any other partners as a publishing company over the past 14 years.

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“Any usage and licensing of Blizzard’s IP were done in accordance with contract terms and with Blizzard’s consent and approval,” it said.

Activision Blizzard did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
With the demise of their partnership, Blizzard is currently without a Chinese publisher. Unlike other countries, foreign gaming companies typically need a Chinese publisher before they can release games in China.

NetEase rose to become a gaming giant partly by publishing Blizzard s games in China. It has since accelerated its own game development capability, with in-house games now accounting for more than 60% of revenue.

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Apple CEO says looking into possibility of building manufacturing facility in Indonesia

Apple CEO says looking into possibility of building manufacturing facility in Indonesia

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Apple CEO says looking into possibility of building manufacturing facility in Indonesia

Apple Inc will look into the possibility of building a manufacturing facility in Indonesia, its CEO said on Wednesday after meeting President Joko Widodo.

Apple CEO Tim Cook arrived in Jakarta on Tuesday, after visiting Vietnam. He met with Jokowi, as the president popularly known, and will be inaugurating an academy for Apple developers on the island of Bali.

“We talked about the president’s desire to see manufacturing in the country, and it is something that we will look at,” Cook told reporters after the meeting. 

Apple has based much of its key manufacturing of iPads, AirPods and Apple Watches in Vietnam and suppliers for MacBooks are also investing in the country.

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Apple has no manufacturing facilities in Indonesia but has established four Apple Developer Academies.

Indonesia has a huge tech-savvy population, making the Southeast Asian nation a key target market for tech-related investment.

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TikTok quizzed by EU on TikTok Lite launch in France, Spain

TikTok quizzed by EU on TikTok Lite launch in France, Spain

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TikTok quizzed by EU on TikTok Lite launch in France, Spain

ByteDance’s TikTok has been given 24 hours to provide a risk assessment on its new app TikTok Lite launched this month in France and Spain on concerns of its potential impact on children and users’ mental health, the European Commission said on Wednesday.

The move by EU industry chief Thierry Breton under EU tech rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) comes two months after he opened an investigation into TikTok over possible DSA breaches. 

The landmark DSA requires companies to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content on their platforms, with fines of up to 6% of their global annual turnover for violations.

The Commission on Wednesday said it had sent a request for information to TikTok, asking for more details on the risk assessment the social media company should have done before deploying TikTok Lite in the 27-country European Union.

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“This concerns the potential impact of the new ‘Task and Reward Lite’ programme on the protection of minors, as well as on the mental health of users, in particular in relation to the potential stimulation of addictive behaviour,” the EU executive said in a document seen by Reuters.

“TikTok must provide the risk assessment for TikTok Lite in 24 hours and the other requested information by 26 April 2024, after which the Commission will analyse TikTok’s reply, and then assess next steps.”

The Commission also asked for details on measures the company has put in place to mitigate systemic risks.

TikTok Lite, an app with a new functionality aimed at users aged 18+, was launched in France and Spain this month.

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SiTime introduces chip aimed at saving power in AI data centers

SiTime introduces chip aimed at saving power in AI data centers

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SiTime introduces chip aimed at saving power in AI data centers

SiTime (SITM.O) on Wednesday introduced a chip that it says is designed to help data centers built for artificial intelligence applications run more efficiently.

SiTime makes what are known as timing chips, whose job is set a steady beat for all the parts of a computer and keep them running together in sync, like a conductor in an orchestra directing multiple groups of instruments. The company says its new line of chips, called Chorus, can do so with 10 times more precision than older styles of timing chips.

SiTime CEO Rajesh Vashist said the company aims to help customers save electricity with that precision. SiTime’s chips themselves require less than a watt of power, but powerful AI chips such as Nvidia’s (NVDA.O) require more than 1,000 watts of power.

With a more precise clock to keep all the elements of a computer in sync, parts of the machine can be turned off for a few milliseconds at a time when they are not in use. Over the multiple years a power-hungry data center server might be in use, it can generate energy savings, though the amount will depend on how SiTime’s chips are used.

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“We deliver timing that they can rely on so that they can wake up their products and bring data more efficiently to them, rather than just running more often,” Vashist said in an interview.

SiTime said the chips will be available in the second half of this year.

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