A new year means a new League of Legendsseason. And for the past few years, this has also meant a big, cinematic trailer to announce the new season. However, this time the trailer for League of Legends’ next season was pretty dang boring and underwhelming, especially when compared to last year’s. In fact, the response from the community was so bad that Riot felt the need to apologize and explain why the trailer was so lackluster on Twitter.
Since 2018, Riot has created and released extremely cinematic and epic trailers for each new season of the long-running F2P MOBA. Last year’s trailer for Season 2022 was particularly popular among fans, cited as one of the best trailers the company had ever produced for League of Legends. And past trailers have also been big hits among the community. So anticipation around this year’s new season and trailer was very high.
So that makes it even worse that the actual trailer we got, titled The Brink of Infinity, was a boring two minutes or so of narration while the camera flies around the famous battleground from LoL. And…that’s it. As you might expect, the community and its many players basically started dunking on this trailer from the moment it went live yesterday.
Riot Games
“After the 2022 cinematic, I can’t even begin to explain how DISAPPOINTING this year’s is” commented one user on YouTube. “I never thought that I [would] ever dislike a cinematic from League,” said another viewer. Many others joked that the new trailer was just the original LoL map, Summoner’s Rift, re-rendered in Unreal Engine 5. In less than an hour it reportedly had over 5k dislikes. As I write this now, the trailer has over 170k dislikes. Across Twitter and Reddit people were critical of the trailer, with some complaining that Riot cared more about its popular FPS Valorantthan its aging MOBA.
After hours and hours of these reactions pouring in along with rumors and speculation running wild that Riot wasn’t planning to support League of Legends as much as it had before or that the game might be dying, the studio itself stepped in and explained via a Twitter thread what happened with the trailer, and apologized to the community.
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“This year, there were some unprecedented circumstances that had us choose an alternate approach to the Season 2023 video,” explained Riot. “However, we believed it could still embody League’s broad universe and competitive spirit while celebrating the start of a new season. But we’ve heard your feedback, and we want to acknowledge Brink of Infinity missed the mark for the action-packed, champion-led trailer you expected and has led to further speculation about our investment in League.”
Riot further explained that it should have been “more communicative” about the trailer and its different approach this year, suggesting that this could have helped avoid the “feeling” that the company wasn’t as invested in LoL in 2023 as it has been in the past.
“We do believe that League has a bright future and we are investing in that, but we can do a better job of sharing those plans with you,” tweeted Riot. “We are committed to giving you more details about what that investment looks like in the next couple of days. We really appreciate your passion and feedback, and League’s success wouldn’t be possible without your dedication. Thank you.”
Kotaku reached out to Riot for further comment on the trailer and the community’s reaction.
Response to Riot’s Twitter thread was mixed, with some happy that it was at least acknowledging the disappointment and frustration and others upset that Riot wasn’t doing more to support League of Legends and its community. And for many, this response doesn’t quell their concerns that the company may be more focused on other projects and games, like Valorant, and could be putting League on the backburner.
The U.S. labor market is losing momentum as hiring and wage growth cooled in December, showing the effects of slower economic growth and the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate increases.
After two straight years of record-setting payroll growth following the pandemic-related disruptions, the labor market is starting to show signs of stress. That suggests 2023 could bring slower hiring or outright job declines as the overall economy slows or tips into recession.
Employers added 223,000 jobs in December, the smallest gain in two years, the Labor Department said Friday. Average hourly earnings were up 4.6% in December from the previous year, the narrowest increase since mid-2021, and down from a March peak of 5.6%.
All told, employers added 4.5 million jobs in 2022, the second-best year of job creation after 2021, when the labor market rebounded from Covid-19 shutdowns and added 6.7 million jobs. Last year’s gains were concentrated in the first seven months of the year. More recent data and a wave of tech and finance-industry layoffs suggest the labor market, while still vibrant, is cooling.
“I do expect the economy to slow noticeably by June, and in the second half of the year we’ll see a greater pace of slowing if not outright contraction,” said
Joe Brusuelas,
chief economist at RSM U.S.
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Friday’s report sent markets rallying as investors anticipated it would cause the Fed to slow its pace of rate increases. The central bank’s next policy meeting starts Jan. 31. The Fed’s aggressive rate increases aimed at combating inflation didn’t significantly cool 2022 hiring, but revisions to wage growth showed recent gains weren’t as brisk as previously thought.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 700.53 points, or 2.13%, on Friday. The S&P 500 Index was up 2.28% and NASDAQ Composite Index advanced 2.56%. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield declined 0.15 percentage point to 3.57%. Yields fall as bond prices rise.
The unemployment rate fell to 3.5% in December from 3.6% in November, matching readings earlier in 2022 and just before the pandemic began as a half-century low. Fed officials said last month the jobless rate would rise in 2023. December job gains were led by leisure and hospitality, healthcare and construction.
Historically low unemployment and solid hiring, however, might mask some signs of weakness. The labor force participation rate, which measures the share of adults working or looking for work, rose slightly to 62.3% in December but is still well below prepandemic levels, one possible factor that could make it harder for employers to fill open positions.
The average workweek has declined over the past two years and in December stood at 34.3 hours, the lowest since early 2020.
Hiring in temporary help services has fallen by 111,000 over the past five months, with job losses accelerating. That could be a sign that employers, faced with slowing demand, are reducing their employees’ hours and pulling back from temporary labor to avoid laying off workers.
The tech-heavy information sector lost 5,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department report showed. Retail saw a 9,000 rise in payrolls, snapping three straight months of declines.
Tech companies cut more jobs in 2022 than they did at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to layoffs.fyi, which tracks industry job cuts. On Wednesday,
Salesforce Inc.
said it would cut 10% of its workforce, unwinding a hiring spree during the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal reported that
Amazon.com Inc.
would lay off 18,000 people, roughly 1.2% of its total workforce. Other companies, such as
Facebook
parent
Meta Platforms Inc.,
DoorDash Inc.
and
Snap Inc.,
have also recently cut positions.
Companies in the interest-rate-sensitive housing and finance sectors, including
Redfin Corp.
,
Morgan Stanley
and
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.,
have also moved to reduce staff.
Months where overall jobs gained
Months where overall jobs declined
By the end of 2022, the U.S. had added nearly 2 million jobs since the end of 2019
More than 20 million jobs were lost near the start of the pandemic
Employment returns to prepandemic level
A monthly gain of more than 4 million jobs
Months where
overall jobs gained
Months where
overall jobs declined
By the end of 2022, the U.S. had added nearly 2 million jobs since the end of 2019
More than 20 million jobs were lost near the start of the pandemic
Employment returns to prepandemic level
A monthly gain of more than 4 million jobs
Months where
overall jobs gained
Months where
overall jobs declined
By the end of 2022, the U.S. had added nearly 2 million jobs since the end of 2019
More than 20 million jobs were lost near the start of the pandemic
Employment returns to prepandemic level
A monthly gain of more than 4 million jobs
Months where
overall jobs gained
Months where
overall jobs declined
By the end of 2022, the U.S. had added nearly 2 million jobs since the end of 2019
More than 20 million jobs were lost near the start of the pandemic
Employment returns to prepandemic level
A monthly gain of more than 4 million jobs
Months where
overall jobs gained
Months where
overall jobs declined
By the end of 2022, the U.S. had added nearly 2 million jobs since the end of 2019
More than 20 million jobs were lost near the start of the pandemic
Employment returns to prepandemic level
A monthly gain of more than 4 million jobs
Other data released this week point to a slowing U.S. economy. New orders for manufactured goods fell a seasonally adjusted 1.8% in November, the Commerce Department said Friday. Business surveys showed a contraction in economic activity in December, according to the Institute for Supply Management. Manufacturing firms posted the second-straight contraction following 29 months of expansion, and services firms snapped 30 straight months of growth in December.
Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal last fall saw a 63% probability of a U.S. recession in 2023. They saw the unemployment rate rising to 4.7% by December 2023.
“We’ve obviously been in a situation over the past few months where employment growth has been holding up surprisingly well and is slowing very gradually,” said
Andrew Hunter,
senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “There are starting to be a few signs that we’re maybe starting to see a bit more of a sharp deterioration.”
Max Rottersman, a 61-year-old independent software developer, said he had been very busy with consulting jobs during much of the pandemic. But that changed over the summer when work suddenly dried up.
“I’m very curious to see whether I’m in high demand in the next few months or whether—what I sort of expect will happen—there will be tons of firing,” he said.
Despite some signs of cooling, the labor market remains exceptionally strong. On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that there were 10.5 million job openings at the end of November, unchanged from October, well more than the number of unemployed Americans seeking work.
Some of those open jobs are at Caleb Rice’s home-renovation business in Calhoun, Tenn., which has been consistently busy since the start of the pandemic. The small company has raised pay and gone to a four-day week in an effort to hold on to workers.
“If I could get three more skilled hands right now, I’d be comfortable,” Mr. Rice said. “The way it goes is I’ll hire five, two will show up and of those two one won’t be worth a flip.”
Fed officials have been trying to engineer a gradual cooling of the labor market by raising interest rates. Officials are worried that a too-strong labor market could lead to more rapid wage increases, which in turn could put upward pressure on inflation as firms raise prices to offset higher labor costs.
The central bank raised rates at each of its past seven meetings and has signaled more rate increases this year to bring inflation down from near 40-year highs. Fed officials will likely take comfort in the slowdown in wage gains, which could prompt them to raise rates at a slower pace, Mr. Brusuelas, the economist, said.
“We’re closer to the peak in the Fed policy rate than we were prior to the report, and the Fed can strongly consider a further slowing in the pace of its hikes,” he said. “We could plausibly see a 25-basis-point hike versus a 50-basis-point hike at the Feb. 1 meeting.”
Write to David Harrison at david.harrison@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications A graphic in an earlier version of this article showing the change in nonfarm payrolls since the end of 2019 was incorrectly labeled as change since January 2020. (Corrected on Jan. 6)
com Inc.’s layoffs will affect more than 17,000 employees, according to people familiar with the matter, the highest reduction tally revealed in the past year at a major technology company as the industry pares back amid economic uncertainty.
The Seattle-based company in November said that it was beginning layoffs among its corporate workforce, with cuts concentrated on its devices business, recruiting and retail operations. At the time, The Wall Street Journal reported the cuts would total about 10,000 people. Thousands of those cuts began last year.
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The rest of the cuts will bring the total number of layoffs to more than 17,000 and will be made over the coming weeks, some of the people said. As of September,
Amazon
AMZN -0.79%
employed 1.5 million people, with a large percentage of them in its warehouses. The layoffs are concentrated in the company’s corporate ranks, some of the people said.
Amazon
was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Covid-19 pandemic as customers flocked to online shopping. The rush to Amazon’s various businesses, from e-commerce to groceries and cloud computing, pushed forward years of growth for the company. To keep up with demand, Amazon doubled its logistics network and added hundreds of thousands of employees.
When demand started to wane with customers moving back to shopping in stores, Amazon initiated a broad cost-cutting review to pare back on units that were unprofitable, the Journal reported. In the spring and summer, the company made targeted cuts to bring down costs, shutting physical stores and business units such as Amazon Care. Amazon later announced a companywide hiring freeze before deciding to let employees go.
Many tech companies have cut jobs as the economy sours. Amazon’s layoffs of more than 17,000 employees would represent the highest number of people let go by a tech company in the past few months, according to tallies released on Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks the events as they surface in media reports and company releases.
The trend has affected companies such as Amazon and others that have acknowledged they grew too quickly in many cases.
Facebook
parent
Meta Platforms Inc.
said it would cut more than 11,000 workers, or 13% of its staff, adding to layoffs at
Lyft Inc.,
HP Inc.
and other tech companies. On Wednesday,
Salesforce Inc.
said that it was laying off 10% of its workforce. Co-Chief Executive
Marc Benioff
said the business-software provider hired too many people as revenue surged earlier in the pandemic. “I take responsibility for that,” he said.
Write to Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com and Jessica Toonkel at jessica.toonkel@wsj.com
In the worst year for stocks since the Great Recession, several big names are headed for their worst year on record with just one trading day left in 2022.
The S&P 500 index
SPX,
+1.75%
and Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+1.05%
are both headed for their worst year since 2008, with declines of 20.6% and 9.5% respectively through Thursday. But at least 19 big-name stocks — and half of another — are headed for a more ignominious title for 2022, according to Dow Jones Market Data: Worst year ever.
Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+8.08%
is having the worst year among the group of S&P 1500 constituents with a market capitalization of $30 billion or higher headed for record annual percentage declines. Tesla shares have declined 65.4% so far this year, which would be easily the worst year on record for the popular stock, which has only had one previous negative year since going public in 2010, an 11% decline in 2016.
Tesla may not be the worst decliner on the list by the time 2023 arrives, however, as another Silicon Valley company is right on its heels. Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
+4.01%,
the parent company of Facebook, has fallen 64.2% so far this year, as Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has stuck to spending billions to develop the “metaverse” even as the online-advertising industry that provides the bulk of his revenue has stagnated. It would also only be the second year in Facebook’s history that the stock has declined, after a 25.7% drop in 2018, though shares did end Facebook’s IPO year of 2012 30% lower than the original IPO price.
Only one other stock could contend with Tesla and Meta’s record declines this year, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has some familiarity with that company as well. PayPal Holdings Inc.
PYPL,
+4.46%,
where Musk first found fame during the dot-com boom, has declined 63.2% so far this year as executives have refocused the company on attracting and retaining high-value users instead of trying to get as many users as possible on the payments platform. It would be the second consecutive down year for PayPal, which had not experienced that before 2021 since spinning off from eBay Inc.
EBAY,
+4.76%
in 2015.
None of the other companies headed for their worst year yet stand to lose more than half their value this year, though Charter Communications Inc.
CHTR,
+1.99%
is close. The telecommunications company’s stock has declined 48.2% so far, as investors worry about plans to spend big in 2023 in an attempt to turn around declining internet-subscriber numbers.
In addition to the list below, Alphabet Inc.’s class C shares
GOOG,
+2.88%
are having their worst year on record with a 38.4% decline. MarketWatch is not including that on the list, however, as Alphabet’s class A shares
GOOGL,
+2.82%
fell 55.5% in 2008; the separate class of nonvoting shares was created in 2012 to allow the company — then still called Google — to continue issuing shares to employees without diluting the control of co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Apart from that portion of Alphabet’s shares, here are the 19 large stocks headed for their worst year ever, based on Thursday’s closing prices.
Company
% decline in 2022
Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+8.08%
65.4%
Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
+4.01%
64.2%
PayPal Holdings Inc.
PYPL,
+4.46%
62.6%
Charter Communications Inc.
48.0%
Edwards Lifesciences Corp.
EW,
+2.87%
41.9%
ServiceNow Inc.
NOW,
+3.67%
39.9%
Zoetis Inc.
ZTS,
+3.00%
39.3%
Fidelity National Information Services Inc.
FIS,
+2.03%
BERLIN—Rocketing electricity prices are increasing the cost of driving electric vehicles in Europe, in some cases making them more expensive to run than gas-powered models—a change that could threaten the continent’s electric transition.
Electricity prices have soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in some cases eliminating the cost advantage at the pump that EVs have enjoyed. In some cases, the cost difference between driving both types of cars 100 miles has become negligible. In others, EVs have become more expensive to fuel than equivalent gasoline-powered cars.
The price rises for power, which economists expect to last for years, remove a powerful incentive for consumers who were contemplating a switch to EVs, which used to be much cheaper to run than combustion engines.
Coming just as some governments are removing subsidies for EV buyers, this change could slow down EV sales, threaten the region’s greenhouse-gas emission targets, and make it hard for European car makers to recoup the high costs of their electric transition.
In Germany,
Tesla
has raised supercharger prices several times this year, most recently to 0.71 euros in September before falling somewhat, according to reports from Tesla owners on industry forums. There is no public source to track prices on Tesla superchargers.
At that price, drivers of Tesla’s Model 3, the most efficient all-electric vehicle in the Environment Protection Agency’s fuel guide in the midsize vehicle category, would pay €18.46 at a Tesla supercharger station in Europe for a charge sufficient to drive 100 miles.
By comparison, drivers in Germany would pay €18.31 for gasoline to drive the same distance in a Honda Civic 4-door, the equivalent combustion-engine model in the EPA’s ranking.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The change has been particularly notable in Germany, Europe’s largest car market, where household electricity cost €0.43 per kWh on average in December. This puts it well ahead of France, where consumers paid €0.21 per kWh in the first half of the year, but behind Denmark, where a kWh cost €0.46, according to the German statistics office.
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The cost of electricity isn’t the only factor that can make an EV cheaper or more expensive to run than a gas-powered car. The price of the car, including potential subsidies, the cost of insurance and the price of maintenance all play a role in the cost equation over a car’s lifetime.
Maria Bengtsson, a partner at Ernst & Young responsible for the company’s EV business in the U.K., said studies of the total cost of owning an EV now show that with much higher electricity prices, it will take longer for EVs to become more affordable than conventional vehicles.
“When we looked at this before the energy crisis, we were looking at a tipping point of around 2023 to 2024. But if you assume you have a tariff going forward of $0.55, the tipping point then moves to 2026.”
If costs for operating EVs rise again, the tipping point would be pushed even further into the future, she said.
So far, there is no sign that the higher costs to charge electric cars has affected EV sales. Sales of all-electric cars totaled 259,449 vehicles in the three months to the end of September, up 11% from the previous quarter and 22% from the year earlier, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. In the third quarter, all-electric cars accounted for 11.9% of total new vehicle sales in the EU.
There is no relief in sight for EV users. In Germany, power prices have risen by a third from €0.33 per kWh in the first half of this year, according to Germany’s federal statistics office, and some power companies have announced prices will increase to more than €0.50 per kWh in January.
The German government’s independent panel of economic experts forecast that in the medium term these prices are likely to decline but won’t return to precrisis levels, meaning that higher costs for EV owners are here to stay.
Rheinenergie, a municipal utility in Cologne, said in November that it would raise its prices to €0.55 per kWh in January. In October, EnBW, a Stuttgart-based regional power company, raised its prices for a kWh of electricity to €0.37, up 37% from the previous month.
The most expensive way to charge an EV in Europe is on one of the fast-charging networks. Operators such as Tesla, Allego and Ionity have built roadside charging stations along major highways, where EV owners can drive up, plug in, and charge their batteries in as little as 15 minutes.
Fuel-economy estimates calculated by the EPA and current charging and gas prices in Europe show that some conventional vehicles are now cheaper to fuel with gasoline than equivalent electric models using fast-charging stations.
In the subcompact segment of the EPA’s 2023 Fuel Economy Guide, the Mini Cooper Hardtop was the most efficient model among EVs and gasoline-powered cars.
A 100-mile ride cost the Mini EV owner €26.35 at the Allego fast-charging network, which charges €0.85 per kWh. The conventional Mini cost €20.35 to pump enough fuel to accomplish the same journey.
Mini and its owner,
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG
, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the small two-door SUV category, the gasoline-powered Nissan Rogue handily beats the Hyundai Kona Electric, at a cost difference of €19.97 to €22.95. The Subaru Ascent standard SUV with four-wheel drive costs less to drive 100 miles than the Tesla Model X.
If an EV owner only charges their vehicle at home, they are generally still paying less for driving than conventional car users, although this gap has narrowed considerably.
Analysts say about 80% of EV charging takes place at home or at work, so if an electric vehicle is only used close to home it generally remains the least expensive option. But once the vehicle is used for longer road trips, drivers are more likely to use fast-charging stations because other options would take too long to charge the battery.
Charging a Tesla on 120V AC power—the power that comes from a standard U.S. wall socket—would take days. In Europe, 230V is the AC standard, according to Germany’s ZVEI electronics-industry association. European chargers installed on street corners, at supermarkets, places of work and in home garages can charge a powered down Tesla battery overnight.
The supercharger networks run on DC power, requiring at least 480 volts of power, and can charge up to around 200 miles of range within 15 minutes.
Write to William Boston at william.boston@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications Standard household power is 120 volts in the U.S. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said 120 volts is the standard in Europe. (Corrected on Dec. 25)
Cloud gaming is an emerging technology that allows people to stream videogames to nearly any internet-connected device, similar to how movies and shows are viewed on
Netflix,
Hulu and other streaming platforms.
The business model being developed alongside cloud gaming is a subscription service, where consumers get to play a catalog of games for a flat monthly or annual fee. With cloud gaming, players can avoid downloading games to their devices, which takes up memory, and they don’t need to invest in hardware such as a console or high-end computer.
The FTC and videogame industry participants anticipate cloud gaming will become a much larger part of the market in years to come. With its lawsuit, the FTC says it is protecting the videogame-distribution market—as it is today and how it is expected to evolve—from being dominated by a few companies.
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Microsoft is an early leader in cloud gaming with its Xbox Game Pass subscription service. The company’s $75 billion deal forActivision would bolster its content library, adding several blockbuster franchises including “Call of Duty,” “World of Warcraft” and “Candy Crush Saga.”
Microsoft, which has pledged to fight the FTC’s suit, has said it is an underdog in the existing console market, with Xbox’s position trailing
Sony Group Corp.’s
PlayStation and
Nintendo Co.
’s Switch. The company doesn’t disclose Xbox sales by volume.
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The technology giant has also said that it has no meaningful presence in mobile, the biggest corner of the overall videogame industry by revenue.
Apple Inc.
and
Alphabet Inc.’s
Google, makers of the predominant smartphone operating systems, play a critical role in how people access mobile games, and they take a cut of developers’ in-app and subscription sales.
Xbox Game Pass, which Microsoft launched in 2017, offers a library of hundreds of games for subscribers to play starting at $9.99 a month. The basic plan allows subscribers to download individual games on their Xbox or PC to play whenever they want. For $14.99 a month, subscribers can play some of thosegames via the cloud, all part of Microsoft’s ambitions to build a “Netflix of gaming.” The company in January said Game Pass had 25 million subscribers.
Global consumer spending on cloud-gaming services and games streamed via the cloud will reach a combined $2.4 billion by the end of this year, according to an estimate from Newzoo BV. That is a tiny fraction—1.4%—of the $184.4 billion in overall spending on videogame software.
Sony, which has aggressively lobbied governments around the world to oppose the Microsoft-Activision tie-up, and others have attempted to grow their own cloud-gaming subscription services. Microsoft, for now, is the dominant player, accounting for 60% of the overall cloud-gaming business last year, according to an estimate from research firm Omdia.
Microsoft is an early leader in cloud gaming with its Xbox Game Pass subscription service.
Photo:
etienne laurent/Shutterstock
The FTC appears concerned that it “can’t see the unintended consequences even just a few years down the road for an acquisition like this,” said
Paul Swanson,
a Denver-based antitrust lawyer at Holland & Hart LLP. “What they’re saying here is we’re going to err on the side of preserving as many independent competitors as we can.”
Over the past decade, Microsoft has poured billions into its cloud operations primarily for selling software and infrastructure for enterprise customers. It is now building out a separate cloud infrastructure to power its videogaming ambitions, which have been under development since it launched its first Xbox console in 2001.
Cloud gaming hasn’t been an easy business to navigate. The technology is difficult for companies to execute smoothly because games need to support multiple players with minimal delay regardless of where players are located. Earlier this year, Google shut down its game-streaming service, Stadia, after struggling to gain traction with users.
Microsoft remains heavily invested in its Xbox hardware, but cloud gaming gives it an opportunity to reach more gamers. It wants to build its own mobile app store, a move it says would create more competition in mobile videogames, not less. The Redmond, Wash., company has argued that Apple and Google’s app marketplaces have policies that pose technical and financial barriers to its goals.
Representatives for Apple and Google didn’t respond to requests for comment. Apple has said that it doesn’t prevent cloud-gaming apps from appearing in the App Store and that it isn’t trying to block their emergence.
Industry researcher and academic
Joost van Dreunen
said Microsoft’s mobile move would likely benefit the videogame ecosystem by diminishing Apple and Google’s grip.
Microsoft has said it is an underdog in the console market, with Xbox trailing consoles such as Nintendo’s Switch.
Photo:
Guillaume Payen/Zuma Press
“It breaks down the so-called walled-garden strategy that has dominated the game industry for 20 years,” he said.
Since Microsoft announced its deal for Activision, which it values at nearly $69 billion after adjusting for the developers’ net cash, some videogame players have been concerned about what it means for industry competition.
Steve Schweitzer of State College, Pa., is worried that Microsoft will raise the price of Game Pass over time. He said that it is affordable now but that in a few years, if Microsoft becomes more dominant, it could bump up the price and start cutting back on quality. Mr. Schweitzer, 55 years old, said he remembers back in the 1990s when Microsoft was able to use its market power to capture market share in the browser wars. “I’ve seen this game before,” he said.
Before its lawsuit, the FTC had been reviewing the deal for months. Regulators in other jurisdictions, including the European Union and the United Kingdom, are doing the same. The company has gained approval for the deal in smaller markets such as Brazil and Saudi Arabia.
Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com and Aaron Tilley at aaron.tilley@wsj.com
Meta Platforms Inc. has long given unfair deference to VIP users of its Facebook and Instagram services under a program called “cross check” and has misled the public about the program, the company’s oversight board concluded in a report issued Tuesday.
The report offers the most detailed review to date of cross check, which Meta has billed as a quality-control effort to prevent moderation errors on content of heightened public interest. The oversight board took up the issue more than a year ago in the wake of a Wall Street Journal article based on internal documents that showed that cross check was plagued by favoritism, mismanagement and understaffing.
AUSTIN, Texas—Even as a cold night started to settle outside
Tesla
‘s headquarters here on Saturday, a group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs had no plans to leave until
Elon Musk,
the man they named their currency after, accepted a 12,000-pound sculpture of a Mr. Musk-headed goat riding a rocket.
It is the latest stunt in the cryptocurrency space, where jokes and memes about digital currencies regularly flood social media. But a 6-ton sculpture as a marketing gimmick isn’t so common.
The creators of Elon GOAT say the name of their cryptocurrency was inspired by their respect for Mr. Musk. They and his other fans think he is the “greatest of all time,” or a “GOAT.” They took the admiration literally, spending $600,000 to create a sculpture of Mr. Musk’s head, wearing a gold-plated dogecoin necklace on a goat’s body. The rocket can move, pointing to the sky as if it is taking off. Gas lines run through it so that flames can shoot out of the back.
They trucked it to
Tesla Inc.’s
headquarters, in hopes Mr. Musk would accept the gift. The creators are calling called the event “GOATSgiving.”
Elon Musk has warned of dire financial challenges facing Twitter, the social-media company he took over for $44 billion in October. WSJ’s Mark Maurer explains how the company is trying to fix its finances and avoid a potential bankruptcy. Photo Illustration: Laura Kammermann
But about two hours after the co-founders of Elon GOAT parked the sculpture right outside the Tesla building, there was no sign of Mr. Musk.
Dustin Dailey, a security officer at Tesla, walked over to a group of about 15 people and said they couldn’t accept the sculpture on Mr. Musk’s behalf, but would find a spot for it on their property if Mr. Musk gave the thumbs-up.
But so far Mr. Musk hasn’t given any indication he would accept it or whether he knew the sculpture was there. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment
“I am fairly certain he does know about it,” said Mr. Dailey of the sculpture. “It’s all over Twitter.”
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Alec Wolvert, an Elon GOAT co-founder and chief marketing officer, said they were planning on camping out on a piece of public land off a toll road that overlooks the headquarters until Mr. Musk accepted the sculpture.
“We’re gonna stay here as long as possible,” Mr. Wolvert said. “I even heard some people say they were going to strap themselves to it.”
The idea of the sculpture came together last year. “It was an evening joke that kind of just came to fruition,” said
Ashley Sansalone,
an Elon GOAT co-founder.
Metal sculptor Kevin Stone spent nearly six months working on the sculpture of Elon Musk.
Photo:
Kevin Stone
The cryptocurrency entrepreneurs asked Kevin Stone, a metal sculptor in British Columbia, Canada, to make the giant sculpture with Mr. Musk’s head. The goal: to get Mr. Musk to tweet about the sculpture to his more than 118 million followers and draw attention to their cryptocurrency, the Elon GOAT.
“Elon tweeting us would legitimize the token,” said Mr. Sansalone, 40 years old.
Mr. Sansalone said he works on the token full time and previously ran a construction company and traded energy. Unlike bitcoin, ether or dogecoin, the Elon GOAT token is far from a household cryptocurrency name. It is ranked well outside the largest cryptocurrencies by market value, according to CoinMarketCap.
Mr. Musk’s head, which took nearly six months to complete was made by Mr. Stone. The goat body and rocket were made by others in Phoenix to speed up the project, Mr. Sansalone said. Then all the pieces were put together and attached to the back of a 70-foot long semi-truck trailer.
“When I first saw the statue my jaw dropped,” said DeMarco Hill, 51, who spotted it in September in Goodyear, Ariz., where he lives. He grabbed his 12-year-old son and they followed it. “It was something you’ve never seen before in your life.”
Mr. Hill, a trucker who owns his own company, Stay Ready Trucking, thought the stunt was so entertaining that he found Mr. Sansalone and asked if he could participate. Mr. Sansalone said Mr. Hill was needed because only someone with a special license could drive around the heaping pile of metal.
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He has since driven the sculpture through California, Arizona and Washington, before bringing it to Texas. People who drive by honk their horns or give a thumbs-up, Mr. Hill said.
“If I pull up to the side of the road it’s like people crowding around,” he said. “It gets crazy.”
Mr. Sansalone said the sculpture has mostly gotten a positive response. He hasn’t heard anyone mistaken Mr. Musk’s face for someone else. “I would say he is probably the most relevant person on the planet right now,” Mr. Sansalone said about Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person who recently bought Twitter Inc. for $44 billion.
In September, the sculpture sat in front of Tesla’s office in Palo Alto, Calif., during the company’s artificial-intelligence conference. Tesla employees crossed the street to take pictures with the sculpture, Mr. Sansalone said. Mr. Musk was at the conference, according to Twitter posts he made, and Mr. Sansalone assumes the billionaire saw the sculpture.
“All there was to look at was a lit-up rocket erected in the middle of the street,” he said.
On Saturday night, the group remained hopeful.
At one point in the evening, a group of about 20 people who were waiting outside started to chant “Elon claim your goat” in the hopes that the god of crypto, as one co-founder put it, would hear them.
“I’m a huge fan of Elon and I want to give this man his flowers while he’s alive,” said Aamir Manzoor, a 36-year-old from Toronto who is a holder of Elon GOAT. “He’s done a lot for the world.”
Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com, Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com and Adolfo Flores at adolfo.flores@wsj.com
Group AG warned it would lose around $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter after customers pulled their investments and deposits over concerns about the bank’s financial health.
The warning of a big pretax loss pushed Credit Suisse’s shares to a new closing low, below a previous nadir hit in late September as concerns swirled about the bank’s financial health.
Switzerland’s No. 2 bank by assets said outflows were around 6% of its total $1.47 trillion assets, or around $88.3 billion, between Sept. 30 and Nov. 11. Customers in its wealth-management arm—its main business serving the world’s rich—removed $66.7 billion from the bank. Credit Suisse in late October said that a social-media frenzy around its finances was causing large outflows. The bank typically attracts at least $30 billion in net new assets in a year and hasn’t posted an annual net outflow since 2008, according to its filings.
Analysts at JPMorgan said the outflows and the anticipated loss were much worse than they expected. The bank “is not out of the woods yet in terms of stabilizing the franchise,” they said.
The fast pace of withdrawals meant the bank’s liquidity fell below some local-level requirements, the bank said. It said it maintained its required group-level liquidity and funding ratios at all times. Banks must keep enough liquid assets on hand to meet expected cash outflows in a 30-day period, under post-financial-crisis-era rules.
Credit Suisse’s stock fell 6.1% Wednesday to end at 3.62 Swiss francs, a record closing low. The shares are down 59% this year, according to FactSet.
The cost to insure the bank’s debt against default rose Wednesday.
The warning comes at a precarious time for the bank, which weeks ago launched a sweeping overhaul of its operations. Credit Suisse received shareholder approval Wednesday on a plan to raise more than $4 billion in new stock. It is in the process of selling a large group within its investment bank to free up capital, as part of its recovery effort.
The new stock is being sold to new and existing investors, with terms due to be finalized Thursday. Saudi National Bank said it would take a stake of up to 9.9% as a new shareholder. Some analysts are concerned the new capital raising may not be enough if Credit Suisse’s revamp doesn’t go to plan. The bank’s capital needs depend on selling and exiting some businesses, and on how its continuing businesses perform.
Chairman
Axel Lehmann
said shareholders showed their confidence in the bank by approving the stock increase.
The reduction of customer assets means Credit Suisse has less money to manage and earns less in fees. A broader slowdown in activity in its wealth-management division and investment bank contributed to the warning of a pretax loss of around $1.6 billion for the quarter, it said.
In all, more than $100 billion has left the bank since June, according to Credit Suisse’s filings. It said client balances have stabilized in its Swiss bank and that the outflows have slowed in wealth management, but haven’t reversed.
Wealth management, the business of managing rich people’s money, is Credit Suisse’s largest and most important business. The bank’s overhaul is meant to reduce its reliance on risky Wall Street trades and double down on the steady fee-collecting business of working with the world’s ultra wealthy.
Large outflows indicate that some of those well-heeled clients have grown wary of Credit Suisse’s troubles despite its more than 160-year history. The bank was hit hard when a client, family office Archegos Capital Management, defaulted in March 2021, triggering a loss of more than $5 billion.
Uncertain markets have meant clients aren’t transacting as much across wealth managers. However, crosstown rival UBS Group AG reported around $35 billion in net new fee generating assets from wealth- and asset-management clients in the third quarter.
Concerns about the bank reached a fever pitch in October when commentators on social-media platforms Twitter and Reddit called into question the bank’s health.
Credit Suisse warned last month it would make a net loss in the fourth quarter, in part because of costs from the overhaul. It posted consecutive quarterly losses this year after starting to restructure its operations late last year. In last year’s fourth quarter, it lost around $2.2 billion.
The bank said it is still targeting a capital ratio of at least 13% between 2023 and 2025 as it restructures.
Write to Margot Patrick at margot.patrick@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications Credit Suisse reported about a $2.2 billion net loss in the fourth quarter of 2021. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it lost around $1.7 billion in the quarter. (Corrected on Nov. 23)
Saudi Arabia and other OPEC oil producers are discussing an output increase, the group’s delegates said, a move that could help heal a rift with the Biden administration and keep energy flowing amid new attempts to blunt Russia’s oil industry over the Ukraine war.
A production increase of up to 500,000 barrels a day is now under discussion for OPEC+’s Dec. 4 meeting, delegates said. The move would come a day before the European Union is set to impose an embargo on Russian oil and the Group of Seven wealthy nations’ plans to launch a price cap on Russian crude sales, potentially taking Moscow’s petroleum supplies off the market.
After The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations reported on the discussions Monday, Saudi energy minister Prince
Abdulaziz bin Salman
denied the reports and said a production cut was possible instead.
Any output increase would mark a partial reversal of a controversial decision last month to cut production by 2 million barrels a day at the most recent meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their Russia-led allies, a group known collectively as OPEC+.
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The White House said the production cut undermined global efforts to blunt Russia’s war in Ukraine. It was also viewed as a political slap in the face to President Biden, coming before the congressional midterm elections at a time of high inflation. Saudi-U.S. relations have hit a low point over oil-production disagreements this year, though U.S. officials had said they were looking to the Dec. 4 OPEC+ meeting with some hope.
Talk of a production increase has emerged after the Biden administration told a federal court judge that Saudi Crown
Prince Mohammed
bin Salman should have sovereign immunity from a U.S. federal lawsuit related to the brutal killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The immunity decision amounted to a concession to Prince Mohammed, bolstering his standing as the kingdom’s de facto ruler after the Biden administration tried for months to isolate him.
It is an unusual time for OPEC+ to consider a production increase, with global oil prices falling more than 10% since the first week of November. Oil prices fell 5% after reports of the increase and then pared those losses after
Prince Abdulaziz
‘s comments. Brent crude traded at $86.25 on Monday afternoon, down more than 1%.
Ostensibly, delegates said, a production increase would be in response to expectations that oil consumption will rise in the winter, as it normally does. Oil demand is expected to increase by 1.69 million barrels a day to 101.3 million barrels a day in the first quarter next year, compared with the average level in 2022.
Saudi energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman has said the kingdom would supply oil to ‘all who need it.’
Photo:
AHMED YOSRI/REUTERS
OPEC and its allies say they have been carefully studying the G-7 plans to impose a price cap on Russian oil, conceding privately that they see any such move by crude consumers to control the market as a threat. Russia has said it wouldn’t sell oil to any country participating in the price cap, potentially resulting in another effective production cut from Moscow—one of the world’s top three oil producers.
Prince Abdulaziz said last month that the kingdom would “supply oil to all who need it from us,” speaking in response to a question about looming Russian oil shortages. OPEC members have signaled to Western countries that they would step up if Russian output fell.
Talk of a production increase sets up a potential fight between OPEC+’s two heavyweight producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia. The countries have an oil-production alliance that industry officials in both nations have described as a marriage of convenience, and they have clashed before.
Saudi officials have been adamant that their decision to cut production last month wasn’t designed to support Russia’s war in Ukraine. Instead, they say, the cut was intended to get ahead of flagging demand for oil caused by a global economy showing signs of slowing down.
Raising oil production ahead of the price cap and EU embargo could give the Saudis another argument that they are acting in their own interests, and not Russia’s.
Another factor driving discussion around raising output: Two big OPEC members, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, want to pump more oil, OPEC delegates said. Both countries are pushing the oil-producing group to allow them a higher daily-production ceiling, delegates said, a change that, if granted, could account for more oil production.
Under OPEC’s complex quota system, the U.A.E. is obligated to hold its crude production to no more than 3.018 million barrels a day. State-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., which produces most of the U.A.E.’s output, has an output capacity of 4.45 million barrels a day and plans to accelerate its goal of reaching 5 million barrels of daily capacity by 2025. Abu Dhabi has long pushed for a higher OPEC quota, only to be rebuffed by the Saudis, OPEC delegates have said.
Last year, the country was the lone holdout on a deal to boost crude output in OPEC+, saying it would agree only if allowed to boost its own production much more than other members. The public standoff inside OPEC was the first sign that the U.A.E. has adopted a new strategy: Sell as much crude as possible before demand dries up.
Earlier this month, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani said that his country, which is the second-largest crude oil producer in OPEC, would discuss a new quota with other members at its next meeting.
A discussion of OPEC production quotas has been on hold for months. The idea faces opposition from some OPEC nations because many can’t meet their current targets and watching other countries run up their quotas could cause political problems domestically, delegates said.
—Michael Amon contributed to this article.
Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com
