Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, has agreed to pay a $112,500 fine for failing to provide full information about an accident involving one of its robotaxis last year. The settlement with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) not only avoids litigation, it puts Cruise in a position to restart operations in the state.
The settlement agreement “bring[s] this dispute to a close” allowing the Commission staff to “devote their resources to Cruise’s regulatory oversight rather than engage in potentially protracted litigation,” reads the ruling. In an emailed statement, Cruise said the company is “gratified” to have reached a settlement, noting that the company has taken “important steps to improve our leadership, processes and culture.”
Cruise received backlash in October 2023 after a Cruise robotaxi ran over a pedestrian that had been flung into its path after being hit by a human-driven vehicle. The robotaxi then dragged the pedestrian 20 feet as it was attempting a pullover maneuver, a fact that Cruise staff didn’t immediately share with the CPUC and other state and federal regulators when they probed the company. That withholding of information resulted in both the CPUC and the California Department of Motor Vehicles pulling Cruise’s permits to operate driverless vehicles in the state.
Since then, Cruise has implemented a series of “corrective measures” that seem to have satisfied many of the CPUC’s concerns about the company’s continued autonomous vehicle operations. The agency’s ruling points to actions Cruise has taken, including retaining law firm Quinn Emanuel to conduct an internal investigation of Cruise’s operational structure, creating a more transparent corporate operation and instigating the departure of personnel like former CEO Kyle Vogt.
The Commission noted that Cruise has taken responsibility for its past failures and promises to be more transparent with the agency in the future. Cruise also appears to be getting brownie points for seeking to “resolve this dispute expeditiously,” rather than letting the matter go through the expensive and time-consuming slog of decisions, appeals and rehearings.
“We conclude that by taking these corrective measures, Cruise is on its way to restoring public trust by making itself a more transparent and cooperative entity that will not hide material information from regulatory agencies who oversee its AV transportation services,” reads the ruling.
As part of the agreement, Cruise is also required to regularly share incident information with the CPUC. This includes increased collision reporting as well as monthly reports on incidents involving stopped AVs that must be physically retrieved from the field.
Before the infamous October 2 incident, Cruise had also been criticized by members of the public, politicians and law enforcement agencies because its robotaxis had a bad habit of malfunctioning in the middle of traffic.
Cruise has been slowly making its way back onto public roads in other states that have less regulatory red tape. Since April, the AV company has deployed small fleets with human safety operators behind the wheel in Phoenix, Houston and Dallas to map and restart testing.
Cruise may take a similar tack in California, where competitor Waymo is quickly gaining ground. The DMV suspended Cruise’s permits to test and deploy vehicles without a human driver in the front seat, and the CPUC suspended Cruise’s permits to charge for any such service. But Cruise still has an active permit with the DMV to test its vehicles with a safety driver, something the company might lean on as it attempts to close its last chapter and move forward.
A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Cruise is committed to rebuilding trust with regulators, officials and communities in San Francisco, Cruise’s hometown, and everywhere it previously operated. Both the DMV and Cruise have confirmed that the company has taken steps to have its other permits reinstated, but neither shared any other updates or a timeline. A Cruise spokesperson said the DMV permits are a necessary condition to reapply for CPUC permits.
The CPUC did not respond to TechCrunch’s query if the agency is preparing to re-approve any of Cruise’s permits.
Just weeks ago, during an interview with TechCrunch, Thomas Ingenlath laid out his plan to turn Polestar into a self-sustaining company. Now, he’s out.
Polestar said Tuesday Ingenlath has resigned as CEO, a position he has held since the EV startup spun out of Volvo in 2017. He will be replaced by Michael Lohscheller, who was previously CEO of the Stellantis brand Opel, as well as VinFast and Nikola.
The executive shakeup comes at a precarious time for Polestar, which has undergone layoffs and other cost-cutting measures over the past year.
The company, which is now publicly traded, is attempting to bring several new EVs to market even as it experiences slower sales growth. Earlier this year, Volvo divested a significant portion of its holdings. Polestar has since turned to banks for a $1 billion loan, critical funds needed to keep its EV plans moving ahead.
Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, has agreed to pay a $112,500 fine for failing to provide full information about an accident involving one of its robotaxis last year. The settlement with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) not only avoids litigation, it puts Cruise in a position to restart operations in the state.
The settlement agreement “bring[s] this dispute to a close” allowing the Commission staff to “devote their resources to Cruise’s regulatory oversight rather than engage in potentially protracted litigation,” reads the ruling. In an emailed statement, Cruise said the company is “gratified” to have reached a settlement, noting that the company has taken “important steps to improve our leadership, processes and culture.”
Cruise received backlash in October 2023 after a Cruise robotaxi ran over a pedestrian that had been flung into its path after being hit by a human-driven vehicle. The robotaxi then dragged the pedestrian 20 feet as it was attempting a pullover maneuver, a fact that Cruise staff didn’t immediately share with the CPUC and other state and federal regulators when they probed the company. That withholding of information resulted in both the CPUC and the California Department of Motor Vehicles pulling Cruise’s permits to operate driverless vehicles in the state.
Since then, Cruise has implemented a series of “corrective measures” that seem to have satisfied many of the CPUC’s concerns about the company’s continued autonomous vehicle operations. The agency’s ruling points to actions Cruise has taken, including retaining law firm Quinn Emanuel to conduct an internal investigation of Cruise’s operational structure, creating a more transparent corporate operation and instigating the departure of personnel like former CEO Kyle Vogt.
The Commission noted that Cruise has taken responsibility for its past failures and promises to be more transparent with the agency in the future. Cruise also appears to be getting brownie points for seeking to “resolve this dispute expeditiously,” rather than letting the matter go through the expensive and time-consuming slog of decisions, appeals and rehearings.
“We conclude that by taking these corrective measures, Cruise is on its way to restoring public trust by making itself a more transparent and cooperative entity that will not hide material information from regulatory agencies who oversee its AV transportation services,” reads the ruling.
As part of the agreement, Cruise is also required to regularly share incident information with the CPUC. This includes increased collision reporting as well as monthly reports on incidents involving stopped AVs that must be physically retrieved from the field.
Before the infamous October 2 incident, Cruise had also been criticized by members of the public, politicians and law enforcement agencies because its robotaxis had a bad habit of malfunctioning in the middle of traffic.
Cruise has been slowly making its way back onto public roads in other states that have less regulatory red tape. Since April, the AV company has deployed small fleets with human safety operators behind the wheel in Phoenix, Houston and Dallas to map and restart testing.
Cruise may take a similar tack in California, where competitor Waymo is quickly gaining ground. The DMV suspended Cruise’s permits to test and deploy vehicles without a human driver in the front seat, and the CPUC suspended Cruise’s permits to charge for any such service. But Cruise still has an active permit with the DMV to test its vehicles with a safety driver, something the company might lean on as it attempts to close its last chapter and move forward.
A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Cruise is committed to rebuilding trust with regulators, officials and communities in San Francisco, Cruise’s hometown, and everywhere it previously operated. Both the DMV and Cruise have confirmed that the company has taken steps to have its other permits reinstated, but neither shared any other updates or a timeline. A Cruise spokesperson said the DMV permits are a necessary condition to reapply for CPUC permits.
The CPUC did not respond to TechCrunch’s query if the agency is preparing to re-approve any of Cruise’s permits.
Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, has agreed to pay a $112,500 fine for failing to provide full information about an accident involving one of its robotaxis last year. The settlement with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) not only avoids litigation, it puts Cruise in a position to restart operations in the state.
The settlement agreement “bring[s] this dispute to a close” allowing the Commission staff to “devote their resources to Cruise’s regulatory oversight rather than engage in potentially protracted litigation,” reads the ruling. In an emailed statement, Cruise said the company is “gratified” to have reached a settlement, noting that the company has taken “important steps to improve our leadership, processes and culture.”
Cruise received backlash in October 2023 after a Cruise robotaxi ran over a pedestrian that had been flung into its path after being hit by a human-driven vehicle. The robotaxi then dragged the pedestrian 20 feet as it was attempting a pullover maneuver, a fact that Cruise staff didn’t immediately share with the CPUC and other state and federal regulators when they probed the company. That withholding of information resulted in both the CPUC and the California Department of Motor Vehicles pulling Cruise’s permits to operate driverless vehicles in the state.
Since then, Cruise has implemented a series of “corrective measures” that seem to have satisfied many of the CPUC’s concerns about the company’s continued autonomous vehicle operations. The agency’s ruling points to actions Cruise has taken, including retaining law firm Quinn Emanuel to conduct an internal investigation of Cruise’s operational structure, creating a more transparent corporate operation and instigating the departure of personnel like former CEO Kyle Vogt.
The Commission noted that Cruise has taken responsibility for its past failures and promises to be more transparent with the agency in the future. Cruise also appears to be getting brownie points for seeking to “resolve this dispute expeditiously,” rather than letting the matter go through the expensive and time-consuming slog of decisions, appeals and rehearings.
“We conclude that by taking these corrective measures, Cruise is on its way to restoring public trust by making itself a more transparent and cooperative entity that will not hide material information from regulatory agencies who oversee its AV transportation services,” reads the ruling.
As part of the agreement, Cruise is also required to regularly share incident information with the CPUC. This includes increased collision reporting as well as monthly reports on incidents involving stopped AVs that must be physically retrieved from the field.
Before the infamous October 2 incident, Cruise had also been criticized by members of the public, politicians and law enforcement agencies because its robotaxis had a bad habit of malfunctioning in the middle of traffic.
Cruise has been slowly making its way back onto public roads in other states that have less regulatory red tape. Since April, the AV company has deployed small fleets with human safety operators behind the wheel in Phoenix, Houston and Dallas to map and restart testing.
Cruise may take a similar tack in California, where competitor Waymo is quickly gaining ground. The DMV suspended Cruise’s permits to test and deploy vehicles without a human driver in the front seat, and the CPUC suspended Cruise’s permits to charge for any such service. But Cruise still has an active permit with the DMV to test its vehicles with a safety driver, something the company might lean on as it attempts to close its last chapter and move forward.
A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Cruise is committed to rebuilding trust with regulators, officials and communities in San Francisco, Cruise’s hometown, and everywhere it previously operated. Both the DMV and Cruise have confirmed that the company has taken steps to have its other permits reinstated, but neither shared any other updates or a timeline. A Cruise spokesperson said the DMV permits are a necessary condition to reapply for CPUC permits.
The CPUC did not respond to TechCrunch’s query if the agency is preparing to re-approve any of Cruise’s permits.
When it comes to figuring out a formula for a hit game that keeps players coming back year after year, Saxs Persson would know. Now at Epic Games overseeing the Fortnite ecosystem, Persson previously spent 12 years at Mojang building Minecraft into the stratospheric success it is today.
Persson hopped over to Epic in 2022 to work on the Fortnite maker’s roadmap, shepherding Lego Fortnite from a press release last year into a polished, ambitious standalone experience designed to draw new audiences to Fortnite’s free-to-play world.
We spoke with Persson about Epic’s grand plans for Lego Fortnite and its two other new games, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival. Knowing Fortnite’s penchant for maximalism and a steady drip feed of fresh content, the trio of games is only just getting started — but here’s a glimpse of where they’re going.
Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
TechCrunch: With the three new games, and particularly Lego Fortnite, is the goal to broaden Fortnite’s appeal to new kinds of players?
Persson: Battle Royale has been extraordinarily popular. And from a Battle Royale perspective we understand our players quite well. We’ve done our very best for the last six years to always make a game that feels fresh, evolves, never stands still, constantly updates and sets us apart from the competition by not taking itself too seriously. That’s always been the goal of Battle Royale.
The next ring that developed from that was when we put out Fortnite Creative and subsequently when we launched UEFN [Unreal Editor for Fortnite] in March this year — that is very much realizing that Fortnite players want to play more games, not just Battle Royale. And the more content they have, and the better content they have and the more varied content they have, the happier they are.
So if your only goal is to say, if you came to Fortnite, we would like you to consider all these different options, and to stay as long as you want to because we hope you’re going to have fun.
Image Credits: TechCrunch/Epic Games
Our creators have done a phenomenal job of broadening, already, who plays Fortnite. Battle Royale is really important — it’s like an anchor tenant, whatever you want to call it. But if you asked players like ‘what do you play in a week,’ I think the average island played in the week is about seven, seven different islands. And they’re varied in style, aesthetics, genre… We ask our creators what they would like to create. If they want to create it, we bet there’s going to be players that want to play it. That’s been the strategy up until this far.
…In order for us to make really good tools, we have to use them ourselves. And we know that in order for us to really extend deep tools and new genres, our best bet is that we need to make some first-party content that really stretches what Unreal Engine can do. And then take those tools and turn them over to creators and say now you have these capabilities.
So with that in mind, the three games we announced, Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing and [Fortnite] Festival all have different goals of extending the toolset in a particular direction, but also attracting new players to say ‘oh I guess Fortnite is not just Battle Royale. Really, we just need to get them over the hump of installing 54 gigabytes… and once you’re there, there should be a lot for you to do.
A test of turns. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. pic.twitter.com/X2mgqfv9YL
— Rocket Racing (@RocketRacing) December 4, 2023
What do those sets of tools look like and what can people build with them?
“[With] Lego Fortnite… we’ve worked a lot on [procedural generation], we’ve worked a lot on different styles — like adding the Lego styles so you can both play as Fortnite style and as a minifig, as Lego style. And down the line we fully expect creators are gonna have access to that too.
The procedural world is really fascinating. Again, like we’ve always operated on a very static play playing field, but Lego is pioneering a whole lot of procedural tools that hopefully we can extend to creators, and a much bigger island — like we’re 20 times bigger than a Battle Royale island. So it is a massive island that we’re still working to expand. That again should benefit creators.
Rocket Racing is adding credible racing mechanics to our creators and track design editors and that sort of thing. So the game is important because it comes from Rocket League, and it’s an excellent game. And we really believe in that game. The secondary effect is creators get great vehicle tools.
And finally [Fortnite] Festival. A ton of effort has gone into music generation tools and music editing tools and music making tools and gameplay with music. And a lot of those devices, as we call them, have already been extended to creators.
So that’s the goal. Music attracts a new audience. Racing attracts a new audience. Lego attracts a new audience. Even though we know it appeals to current Fortnite players, it’s certainly going to appeal to audiences that are not interested in Battle Royale.
Get the band back together, you haven’t played with them since last year 😜 pic.twitter.com/OoKh69wcI5
— Fortnite Festival (@FNFestival) January 1, 2024
What about expanding Fortnite to younger players, is that part of the objective here?
We had introduced separately from Lego but in collaboration with Lego a new ratings paradigm in Fortnite, where every piece of content is rated. That streamlines really nicely with our parental controls. It feels like if you’re a parent when you let your kid come into Fortnite, you don’t have to just slam the door wide open… you can still have at a granular level control over what your kids play.
And you can see what. So yeah, like, Lego is an E10 game, so mechanically, that opens a new audience. But I think underneath that, again, is there’s a whole suite of new features, just to be able to rate islands on an individual level. And just to really focus on like, how do we make a great experience for all ages that is age-appropriate and safe?
Lego Fortnite seems to smartly dip into some genres and gameplay loops that people already love in other games. Animal Crossing, Minecraft and Valheim all come to mind, but there are quite a few.
I think all games should be inspired by something. What do we all enjoy? We really enjoy Zelda, really enjoy Minecraft, really enjoy Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley. All four of them are absolutely, in and of themselves, excellent examples of games that just have stood the test of time. That really, really resonate emotionally with people and we would love to add to that genre and be part of that genre.
I don’t think we’re anything in particular. Like we have aspects of Animal Crossing and a social sim… as it turns out, there’s nothing as cute as building a building with minifigs that all have jobs, and they all want to be part of your village and can [help out] with the harvest and go on adventures with you. The social sim design is very much focused on realizing the Lego fantasy, but it does feel like it has the cozy gamer aspect of it for sure, of homesteading and building and village building and investing in your people.
Image Credits: TechCrunch/Epic Games
In a procedurally generated survival game — when you play something like Valheim or Minecraft — you have a big moment when you first open the map. It’s exciting, and you don’t know what’s around you and how dangerous it is. Lego Fortnite has that same feeling.
I think a key part of what Fortnite is is ‘what’s around the next corner?’ When we started working on procedural, procedurally generating these landscapes, there was just a lot of just wandering and just making these amazing-looking things and then adding like more and more and more into it and sort of doing a true crossover between Lego and Fortnite and trying to find like what is it that would satisfy Lego players and would satisfy Fortnite players — really feeling like we understand these two IPs. And the landscape is littered with that.
I think the internal model was that Fortnite is the canvas and Lego is the paint. Basically anything you touch becomes Lego as you play, and the more you play, the more Lego-ized you make the world. I really liked that idea of landing on a Fortnite planet mysteriously transformed into a Lego figure and then, like making that into a survival sandbox — a true sandbox where anything can happen.
I love that, I really think it speaks to all of us, like in a very simple way that you get to set your own stakes and really the job is to not die. But everything else like thriving is completely up to you.
Image Credits: TechCrunch/Fortnite
People who don’t follow Fortnite and don’t know about its user-generated content probably still think it’s just a zany battle royale game where 100 people fight to the death. How do you get the word out that hey, Fortnite is an ecosystem filled with lots of different things, now including these three major games we developed?
There’s nothing like YouTube videos showing the shenanigans of Lego Fortnite or your favorite streamer spending time in it. Because we think it has enormous storytelling potential for YouTubers and for Twitch streamers. It’s a sandbox that is made for you to essentially tell stories.
It is very much what has made Minecraft very, very successful. It is what you make it, meaning the more creative you are the better your videos and we really, really feel like the streaming community and YouTube is gonna help us tell that story for us.
Now it’s on to updates. If there is one thing Epic knows and the Fortnite team knows it’s players want content, they want updates and that is very much what the team is focused on.
All of us agreed that the best chance we have of retelling the story of Fortnite is to go overboard with content. And really show like, when Epic puts its mind to it, we have done our groundwork and we believe that Fortnite is the place that you would want to be and to spend time in, no matter what age you are, no matter what you’re interested in. There should be content that will resonate with you.
Lego Fortnite’s debut builds momentum with 2.4M people playing at once
When it comes to figuring out a formula for a hit game that keeps players coming back year after year, Saxs Persson would know. Now at Epic Games overseeing the Fortnite ecosystem, Persson previously spent 12 years at Mojang building Minecraft into the stratospheric success it is today.
Persson hopped over to Epic in 2022 to work on the Fortnite maker’s roadmap, shepherding Lego Fortnite from a press release last year into a polished, ambitious standalone experience designed to draw new audiences to Fortnite’s free-to-play world.
We spoke with Persson about Epic’s grand plans for Lego Fortnite and its two other new games, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival. Knowing Fortnite’s penchant for maximalism and a steady drip feed of fresh content, the trio of games is only just getting started — but here’s a glimpse of where they’re going.
Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
TechCrunch: With the three new games, and particularly Lego Fortnite, is the goal to broaden Fortnite’s appeal to new kinds of players?
Persson: Battle Royale has been extraordinarily popular. And from a Battle Royale perspective we understand our players quite well. We’ve done our very best for the last six years to always make a game that feels fresh, evolves, never stands still, constantly updates and sets us apart from the competition by not taking itself too seriously. That’s always been the goal of Battle Royale.
The next ring that developed from that was when we put out Fortnite Creative and subsequently when we launched UEFN [Unreal Editor for Fortnite] in March this year — that is very much realizing that Fortnite players want to play more games, not just Battle Royale. And the more content they have, and the better content they have and the more varied content they have, the happier they are.
So if your only goal is to say, if you came to Fortnite, we would like you to consider all these different options, and to stay as long as you want to because we hope you’re going to have fun.
Image Credits: TechCrunch/Epic Games
Our creators have done a phenomenal job of broadening, already, who plays Fortnite. Battle Royale is really important — it’s like an anchor tenant, whatever you want to call it. But if you asked players like ‘what do you play in a week,’ I think the average island played in the week is about seven, seven different islands. And they’re varied in style, aesthetics, genre… We ask our creators what they would like to create. If they want to create it, we bet there’s going to be players that want to play it. That’s been the strategy up until this far.
…In order for us to make really good tools, we have to use them ourselves. And we know that in order for us to really extend deep tools and new genres, our best bet is that we need to make some first-party content that really stretches what Unreal Engine can do. And then take those tools and turn them over to creators and say now you have these capabilities.
So with that in mind, the three games we announced, Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing and [Fortnite] Festival all have different goals of extending the toolset in a particular direction, but also attracting new players to say ‘oh I guess Fortnite is not just Battle Royale. Really, we just need to get them over the hump of installing 54 gigabytes… and once you’re there, there should be a lot for you to do.
A test of turns. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. pic.twitter.com/X2mgqfv9YL
— Rocket Racing (@RocketRacing) December 4, 2023
What do those sets of tools look like and what can people build with them?
“[With] Lego Fortnite… we’ve worked a lot on [procedural generation], we’ve worked a lot on different styles — like adding the Lego styles so you can both play as Fortnite style and as a minifig, as Lego style. And down the line we fully expect creators are gonna have access to that too.
The procedural world is really fascinating. Again, like we’ve always operated on a very static play playing field, but Lego is pioneering a whole lot of procedural tools that hopefully we can extend to creators, and a much bigger island — like we’re 20 times bigger than a Battle Royale island. So it is a massive island that we’re still working to expand. That again should benefit creators.
Rocket Racing is adding credible racing mechanics to our creators and track design editors and that sort of thing. So the game is important because it comes from Rocket League, and it’s an excellent game. And we really believe in that game. The secondary effect is creators get great vehicle tools.
And finally [Fortnite] Festival. A ton of effort has gone into music generation tools and music editing tools and music making tools and gameplay with music. And a lot of those devices, as we call them, have already been extended to creators.
So that’s the goal. Music attracts a new audience. Racing attracts a new audience. Lego attracts a new audience. Even though we know it appeals to current Fortnite players, it’s certainly going to appeal to audiences that are not interested in Battle Royale.
Get the band back together, you haven’t played with them since last year 😜 pic.twitter.com/OoKh69wcI5
— Fortnite Festival (@FNFestival) January 1, 2024
What about expanding Fortnite to younger players, is that part of the objective here?
We had introduced separately from Lego but in collaboration with Lego a new ratings paradigm in Fortnite, where every piece of content is rated. That streamlines really nicely with our parental controls. It feels like if you’re a parent when you let your kid come into Fortnite, you don’t have to just slam the door wide open… you can still have at a granular level control over what your kids play.
And you can see what. So yeah, like, Lego is an E10 game, so mechanically, that opens a new audience. But I think underneath that, again, is there’s a whole suite of new features, just to be able to rate islands on an individual level. And just to really focus on like, how do we make a great experience for all ages that is age-appropriate and safe?
Lego Fortnite seems to smartly dip into some genres and gameplay loops that people already love in other games. Animal Crossing, Minecraft and Valheim all come to mind, but there are quite a few.
I think all games should be inspired by something. What do we all enjoy? We really enjoy Zelda, really enjoy Minecraft, really enjoy Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley. All four of them are absolutely, in and of themselves, excellent examples of games that just have stood the test of time. That really, really resonate emotionally with people and we would love to add to that genre and be part of that genre.
I don’t think we’re anything in particular. Like we have aspects of Animal Crossing and a social sim… as it turns out, there’s nothing as cute as building a building with minifigs that all have jobs, and they all want to be part of your village and can [help out] with the harvest and go on adventures with you. The social sim design is very much focused on realizing the Lego fantasy, but it does feel like it has the cozy gamer aspect of it for sure, of homesteading and building and village building and investing in your people.
Image Credits: TechCrunch/Epic Games
In a procedurally generated survival game — when you play something like Valheim or Minecraft — you have a big moment when you first open the map. It’s exciting, and you don’t know what’s around you and how dangerous it is. Lego Fortnite has that same feeling.
I think a key part of what Fortnite is is ‘what’s around the next corner?’ When we started working on procedural, procedurally generating these landscapes, there was just a lot of just wandering and just making these amazing-looking things and then adding like more and more and more into it and sort of doing a true crossover between Lego and Fortnite and trying to find like what is it that would satisfy Lego players and would satisfy Fortnite players — really feeling like we understand these two IPs. And the landscape is littered with that.
I think the internal model was that Fortnite is the canvas and Lego is the paint. Basically anything you touch becomes Lego as you play, and the more you play, the more Lego-ized you make the world. I really liked that idea of landing on a Fortnite planet mysteriously transformed into a Lego figure and then, like making that into a survival sandbox — a true sandbox where anything can happen.
I love that, I really think it speaks to all of us, like in a very simple way that you get to set your own stakes and really the job is to not die. But everything else like thriving is completely up to you.
Image Credits: TechCrunch/Fortnite
People who don’t follow Fortnite and don’t know about its user-generated content probably still think it’s just a zany battle royale game where 100 people fight to the death. How do you get the word out that hey, Fortnite is an ecosystem filled with lots of different things, now including these three major games we developed?
There’s nothing like YouTube videos showing the shenanigans of Lego Fortnite or your favorite streamer spending time in it. Because we think it has enormous storytelling potential for YouTubers and for Twitch streamers. It’s a sandbox that is made for you to essentially tell stories.
It is very much what has made Minecraft very, very successful. It is what you make it, meaning the more creative you are the better your videos and we really, really feel like the streaming community and YouTube is gonna help us tell that story for us.
Now it’s on to updates. If there is one thing Epic knows and the Fortnite team knows it’s players want content, they want updates and that is very much what the team is focused on.
All of us agreed that the best chance we have of retelling the story of Fortnite is to go overboard with content. And really show like, when Epic puts its mind to it, we have done our groundwork and we believe that Fortnite is the place that you would want to be and to spend time in, no matter what age you are, no matter what you’re interested in. There should be content that will resonate with you.
Lego Fortnite’s debut builds momentum with 2.4M people playing at once
PlayStation VR often gets overlooked in conversations about mixed reality. These days, it seems all anyone wants to talk about is Apple Vision Pro versus Meta Quest. But Sony has been an enduring presence in VR for years now, throughout the industry’s various ups and downs (mostly downs, if we’re being honest here).
The Japanese electronics giant this week confirmed plans to give the PS VR2 a new lease on life, as it has begun testing PC compatibility. The news was buried a few paragraphs deep in a PlayStation.Blog post highlighting a number of new titles for the platform.
Here’s the entirety of what Sony Interactive Content Communications Manager Gillen McAllister wrote on the topic this morning: “Also, we’re pleased to share that we are currently testing the ability for PS VR2 players to access additional games on PC to offer even more game variety in addition to the PS VR2 titles available through PS5. We hope to make this support available in 2024, so stay tuned for more updates.”
Phrases like “we hope to make” don’t instill a lot of confidence around when — or if — the cross-platform compatibility will arrive. Given that we’re only just entering late-February, we’re talking about a big window, assuming Sony does hit the 2024 deadline.
That the feature was tossed off in a post of new titles is telling in itself. Content has always been an issue for mixed reality, but opening up the headset to Windows titles would suddenly bring in a flood of new experiences overnight.
PlayStation exclusivity is likely a big part of the reason PS VR often doesn’t feel like a part of the broader mixed reality conversation. So, too, is the fact that the peripheral is focused pretty exclusively on gaming, whereas Apple, Meta and — to an extent — HTC are looking to encompass something broader that also includes spatial computing/productivity, enterprise applications and other entertainment avenues.
Gaming is, of course, a big, broad category unto itself. The space has been the key driver of VR technologies for decades now, and there’s plenty of growth to navigate and grow in that line. Opening up to PC titles will certainly help PS VR on both of those fronts.
Substack is adding new capabilities to its Twitter-like Notes feature that bring it more in-line with the social network now known as X. The company announced on Tuesday that users can now post videos directly to Notes in the Substack app and on the web. Users can now also embed Notes on external webpages.
The launch of the new features come a year after Substack introduced Notes in April 2023, during a time when companies were aiming to attract users who were fleeing Twitter after Elon Musk took the reigns of the social network in late 2022. The Notes feature lets users share posts, quotes, comments, images, links and ideas in a Tweet-like format, and the short-form content is displayed in a dedicated Twitter-like feed.
Starting today, users can post videos directly to Notes by recording a video or selecting one from their phone’s camera roll or their desktop. The company says more writers and creators are using its video tools and starting new shows on the platform, so it wants to make it possible for them to share their work on Notes, too. Given that apps like X and Meta’s Threads allow users to post videos, it makes sense for Notes to offer the capability as well.
As for embedding Notes on external pages, Substack says the new capability will allow writers’ content to travel widely across the web beyond Substack. In an example given by Substack, a writer’s Note could be embedded into a news article, which happens with X posts quite often. Users can find a Note’s embed code by clicking on the three-dot menu in the top-right corner and selecting the “embed note” option.
Substack announced on Tuesday that Notes has generated more than 3,000 paid subscriptions and 230,000 free subscriptions for writers and creators on Substack in the past 30 days. In its blog post, Substack explains that Notes is especially valuable for users who don’t have large pre-existing audiences.
The company saw an opportunity to capitalize on the chaos at Twitter as soon as it began. In October 2022, Substack took a direct shot at Twitter and warned in a post that: “Twitter is changing, and it’s tough to predict what might be next.” The post encouraged creators of all sorts to port their Twitter follower base to Substack. Substack then took its ambitions further with the launch of a Chat feature, and then later, Notes.
As Substack continues to build out its Twitter-like product, X is spiraling further into disarray, as the company announced on Monday that it plans to charge new users a small fee before they are allowed to post on the social network, in an effort to curb the platform’s bot problem.
Substack now allows podcasters to sync and distribute their episodes to Spotify
You know that mildly jarring experience whenever that well-known celebrity shows up in an entirely different context — e.g. a musician making a horror flick cameo; an NFL player rearing their head in a comedy series; or a Hollywood movie icon selling mobile phone plans on TV? Well, it’s starting to feel like that with Spotify’s foray into the enterprise and developer tooling space — nothing wrong with it per se, but it makes you flinch just a little due to its divergence from the norm.
What we’re talking about is Backstage, a platform and framework Spotify introduced internally in 2016 to bring order to its developer infrastructure. Backstage powers customizable “developer portals” that combine tooling, apps, data, services, APIs and documents in a single interface. Want to monitor Kubernetes, check your CI/CD status or track security incidents? Backstage to the rescue.
Lots of companies construct their own internal systems to help developers work more efficiently. And lots of companies release such systems to the public via an open source license to spur wider adoption, as Spotify did with Backstage in 2020. But it’s highly unusual for a consumer technology company to actively monetize this side of its business, which Spotify has been doing since 2022.
Now, Spotify is leaning even further into this play with the launch of a new suite of products and services designed to make Backstage the de facto developer portal platform for the software development industry.
Spotify’s grand plan to monetize developers via its open source Backstage project
Modular
Backstage is built on a modular, plug-in based architecture that allows engineers to layer-up their developer portal to meet their own needs. There is already a thriving marketplace for Backstage plug-ins, some developed by Spotify itself and some by the wider community, including developers from Red Hat and Amazon Web Services (AWS) — AWS, for example, has developed a plug-in to make data from Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) available in Backstage.
Since late 2022, Spotify has been selling a handful of premium plug-ins as a subscription, such as Backstage Insights, which serves up data related to Backstage usage across an organization, including which plugins they’re engaging with most.
The open source Backstage project has been adopted internally by some of the world’s most well-known companies, including LinkedIn, Twilio, American Airlines, Unity, Splunk, Ikea, HP and more than 3,000 organizations. But as with just about any open source project, the main issue with Backstage is the complexity involved in getting set up — lots of integrations, configurations and figuring out how it all glues together.
Thus, Spotify is now introducing an out-the-box version of the open source project called Spotify Portal, available in beta from today, which is pitched as a “full-featured, low-/no-code internal developer portal (IDP)” built atop Backstage.
Spotify Portal. Image Credits: Spotify
Spotify Portal ships with quick-start tools for connecting all their internal services and libraries, replete with setup wizard for installing Portal and connecting it with a company’s GitHub and cloud provider.
“When you set up your IDP, typically you need to ingest a lot of software into that, because the point of the IDP is to capture your full software catalogue and map that to the user base, and there’s potentially a lot of integrations involved in,” Tyson Singer, Spotify’s head of technology and platforms, explained to TechCrunch. “And so with Spotify Portal for Backstage, we’ve basically given folks a no-code way to do that.”
On the surface, this seems like some sort of SaaS play, similar to how a commercial company might offer a fully managed, hosted version of a popular open source product. But that isn’t quite what’s happening here — there is no hosted element to this, though that might change in the future. It’s what Singer calls “Backstage in a box,” one which is deployed within the customer’s own ecosystem either on-premises, or in their own cloud.
“It’s the customer who manages it,” Singer said. “What’s important from our perspective is that we’ve really focused on both reducing the startup time and the maintenance time. So that means not only is the setup and the onboarding ‘no-code,’ it’s also the maintenance where we’re reducing code. That really makes it quite easy to manage in your own particular context.”
However, in a follow-up question, a Spotify spokesperson clarified that Spotify Portal for Backstage is its “first step towards a managed product,” which means that it more than likely will be offered more like a SaaS service in the future. “We’ve seen a growing appetite for a more managed product that would allow us to share our expertise more directly with companies, and we want to be able to offer more in support of that need,” the spokesperson said. “Portal is our first step on that journey, but in the future, we’re going to expand our offerings as managed.”
In addition, Spotify is adding various enterprise support and services to the mix, which it says it has already been providing since last summer but hasn’t disclosed this until now. This includes one-on-one tech support from dedicated Backstage personnel at Spotify, and includes service-level agreements (SLAs), security reviews and incident notifications. And for those wanting to get up-and-running with Backstage in the first instance, Spotify is also offering consulting services.
Spooling up
In essence, Spotify is now catering to three broad category of users: the core open source project for those with the resources and technical nous to self-deploy everything; the “hybrid adopters,” which is what Spotify calls those that have some of the necessary skills but need some support along the way; and the businesses that need something a bit more oven-baked — which is where Spotify Portal enters the fray.
Similar to the pricing structure for its existing plugin subscriptions, which are charged based on “individual customer parameters” such as usage and capacity, the new Portal and enterprise services don’t come with up-front costs.
“For pricing, we are referring customers back to our sales organization,” Singer said. “It’s custom pricing.”
Given this transition to an enterprise-focused developer tools company, Spotify is also having to staff-up accordingly, though Singer wouldn’t share how many people it would be hiring or allocating to these new support roles.
“We are changing how we go forward with both our sales organization and support,” Singer said. “So we’re shifting more focus towards how can we support customers in their initial journey and then also, once they’ve got it set up, their ongoing journey because we do want to be able to support them to get to value as quickly as possible.”
All this, it seems, is just the tip of the iceberg as far as Spotify’s developer tooling shift is concerned. The company is adding new features to some of its existing premium plug-ins, and it’s adding more plug-ins to the mix, too. One of these is the “data experience” plug-in, which makes it easier to add individual data entities to a software catalog — this includes built-in “ingestors” to scoop metadata from external data platforms, and make this available across Backstage.
Last year, Spotify also teased a totally separate product for software development teams called Confidence, which is like an A/B experimentation platform based on one of its own internal tools. For now, that remains a beta product, but Singer says that it’s “all systems go” as it readies things for prime-time in the future.
“We are super happy with the feedback that we’ve been getting from our [Confidence] beta customers so far,” Singer said. “We built out an experimentation platform that is broad and deep, covering a tremendous amount of use cases covering everything from your typical A/B testing on a user surface, to being able to do that across all of our ML [machine learning] use cases. And I think that really sets it aside, as more and more companies are using ML in the same sorts of ways that we are to optimize things.“
Image Credits: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images
At its annual Google I/O 2024 conference, Google announced that users will soon be able to access geospatial augmented reality (AR) content directly on Google Maps on their phones. The feature will first appear in Singapore and Paris as part of a pilot program launching later this year.
Users will be able to access the AR content by first searching for a location in Google Maps. If the location has AR content and the user is near the place, they will have to tap on the image that says “AR Experience” and then lift their phone.
If someone is exploring a place remotely, they can see the same AR experience in Street View. After exploring the AR content, users can share the experience through a deep link URL or QR code on social media.
In Singapore, users will be able to explore popular landmarks like Singapore’s Chinatown and Gardens by the Bay, as well as check out the local dishes and watch a ceremonial dragon dance. In Paris, users will be able to see the scene of the 1900 Exposition Universelle country pavilions along the Seine River and visualize the different modifications to the famous Eiffel Tower.
Google says these AR capabilities lay the foundation for the extended reality (XR) platform that it’s building in collaboration with Samsung and Qualcomm for the Android ecosystem.
