- Escape from Tarkov u-turns on decision to lock “exclusive” PvE mode to a special edition following blacklash Eurogamer.net
- Tarkov studio claims it actually doesn’t have the server capacity for everyone who bought the game for $150 to play its upcoming PvE mode, still wants players to pay extra PC Gamer
- Escape from Tarkov devs attempt to put out fire caused by $250 ‘pay to win’ edition by giving everyone access to an exclusive game mode – but only for 6 months Gamesradar
- ‘Tarkov’ Developers Accuse ‘Arena Breakout Infinite’ Of Plagiarism Forbes
- Escape From Tarkov developer reverses course on limited-time PvE access PCGamesN
Tag Archives: Uturns
European markets higher after UK fiscal U-turns; EU energy announcement
The U.K.’s new Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt made big fiscal announcements Monday.
House of Commons – PA Images / Contributor / Getty Images
LONDON — European markets are higher as the region feels the impact of the U.K.’s fiscal U-turns on Monday and anticipates new EU measures to tackle energy prices. The Stoxx 600 index is up 0.4%.
Most sectors and major bourses have made gains at 11.00 a.m. London time, with autos leading increases up 2.2%, followed by technology and financial services both at 1.4%.
Basic resources, health care and oil and gas have dipped into the red, with losses below 1%.
The British pound rose and bond yields fell after new Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt scrapped most of Prime Minister Liz Truss’ fiscal policies in an announcement Monday. Sterling is down 0.7% to $1.1353 at 11.00 a.m.
Truss apologized for the “mistakes” she made in her first six weeks in the position.
U.S. stock futures rose Tuesday morning after the Nasdaq Composite posted its best daily performance since July. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 373 points, or 1.23%. S&P 500 futures jumped 1.46% and Nasdaq 100 futures climbed 1.7%.
Shares in the Asia-Pacific traded higher on Tuesday after Wall Street’s rally overnight. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 1.68% to lead gains in the region, the Nikkei 225 was 1.38% up, while the Topix added 1.11%.
Elon Musk U-turns, says he will keep funding Starlink in Ukraine | Russia-Ukraine war News
Founder of SpaceX says although Starlink is losing money, he will ‘just keep funding Ukraine gov’t for free’, a day after suggesting he cannot.
Elon Musk has announced his company will continue to pay for Starlink satellite internet services in war-torn Ukraine a day after suggesting he cannot keep funding the project.
“The hell with it,” the world’s richest man wrote on Saturday on Twitter.
“Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
Although it was not immediately clear whether Musk’s change of mind was genuine, he later appeared to indicate it was. When a Twitter user told Musk “No good deed goes unpunished”, he replied, “Even so, we should still do good deeds”.
A day earlier, Musk had said on Twitter that SpaceX would not be able to pay for Starlink in Ukraine indefinitely. And the US military confirmed it was communicating with the billionaire’s company about funding for the critical network.
The discussions come as Musk has been embroiled in public spats with Ukrainian leaders who were angered by his controversial proposals for de-escalating the conflict.
While Ukraine has long maintained it will never agree to relinquish land taken by force, Musk suggested that it permanently cede the Crimea region to Russia, that new referendums be held under United Nations auspices to determine the fate of Russian-controlled territory, and that Ukraine agree to neutrality.
The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2022
Starlink, a constellation of more than 3,000 small satellites in low Earth orbit, has been vital to Ukraine’s communications as it fights against Russia’s invasion.
Musk activated Starlink in late February after Ukraine’s internet services were disrupted because of Russia’s invasion. Its internet terminals have since been crucial in keeping the Ukrainian military online.
SpaceX has donated some 25,000 ground terminals to Ukraine, according to an updated figure given by Musk last week.
The disruption of the service may have dire consequences for Ukraine. Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said this week that Starlink services helped restore energy and communications infrastructure in critical areas after more than 100 Russian cruise missile attacks.
Encrypted satellite messages have been used for military communications after the local mobile phone network was severed during heavy shelling.
Mykola Balaban, the deputy head of the Ukraine Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security, told Al Jazeera that Musk’s support is crucial for Ukrainian military efforts.
“For the last six months, Ukraine has showed very good strategic communication,” he added. “Of course there is sometimes lags in the communication and some misunderstanding, but at the end of the day, as you see with this tweet [from Musk], we managed to communicate to our partners around the world the importance of supporting Ukraine and Ukrainian people in their fight against the war from Russia.”
U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss Fires Treasury Chief, U-Turns on Taxes
LONDON—U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss fired Treasury chief Kwasi Kwarteng and reversed crucial parts of her government’s tax cuts, after her plans to jolt the economy into growth unraveled in spectacular fashion following a backlash from financial markets and her party.
Mr. Kwarteng, who three weeks ago presented the U.K.’s largest tax cuts since the 1970s, was asked to quit by Ms. Truss as markets balked at the scale of the borrowing required to fund the package and her lawmakers protested at the prospect of deep public-spending cuts. Mr. Kwarteng’s tenure as chancellor of the exchequer was the second shortest in recent British history. He was replaced by Jeremy Hunt, a party centrist and former foreign secretary.
British pound jumps as UK government U-turns on cut to top tax rate
U.K. Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng outside 10 Downing Street. Britain will cap the cost of electricity and gas for businesses.
Rob Pinney | Getty Images News | Getty Images
LONDON — The British pound rose sharply Monday morning as the U.K. government reversed its planned scrapping of the top rate of income tax.
“It is clear that the abolition of the 45p tax rate has become a distraction from our overriding mission to tackle the challenges facing our economy,” Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said in a statement.
“As a result, I’m announcing we are not proceeding with the abolition of the 45p tax rate. We get it, and we have listened.”
Sterling was 0.8% higher against the dollar at one stage on Monday morning, but dipped to $1.1212 by 7:30 a.m. London time after the formal announcement. It takes it back to the level it was at before Kwarteng unveiled a raft of tax cuts on Sept. 23.
The cuts were poorly received by financial markets and a scrapping of the 45% tax paid on incomes over £150,000 ($166,770) was seen as politically toxic as Brits deal with a cost-of-living crisis.
With the ruling Conservative Party plunging in opinion polls since the so-called “mini budget,” which was also criticized by the International Monetary Fund in a rare move, several of its own politicians have spoken out against the proposals.
Grant Shapps, the former transport secretary, said in a BBC interview Monday morning the reversal in the top rate tax cut was a “sensible response” because a tax cut for “the people who need them least … jarred for people in a way which was unsustainable.”
It represents a major and humiliating U-turn for new Prime Minister Liz Truss, who was insisting as recently as Sunday she was “absolutely committed” to the cut.
She also revealed the decision was taken by Kwarteng and had not been announced to her whole cabinet. The plan would have delivered an average £10,000 annual benefit to the country’s 660,000 top earners, the Treasury had said.
Troy Baker U-turns on voice NFT project • Eurogamer.net
Prolific video game voice actor Troy Baker, star of The Last of Us, BioShock Infinite and Fortnite, has abandoned his plans to partner with a controversial voice NFT company.
In a short statement issued via Twitter today, Baker also apologised for “accusing anyone of ‘hating’ just by simply disagreeing with me”.
Two weeks ago, Baker announced his partnership with VoiceverseNFT, a company which uses software to create and sell AI voiceovers.
“You can hate. Or you can create,” Baker wrote at the time. “What’ll it be?”
The response online, almost universally, was the former.
Criticism of the idea ranged from condemnation of voices being sold via planet-burning cryptocurrency, the suggestion this could lead to less work for other, less-famous voice artists, and scrutiny of VoiceverseNFT itself – which proved worthwhile.
Just days after Baker’s announcement, VoiceverseNFT admitted using voice lines taken from another AI voice service without permission in a promotion for its own tech.
Baker previously responded to the backlash surrounding his initial announcement, and admitted his wording “might have been a bit antagonistic”. Today’s apology and climbdown is a complete U-turn, however.
Thank you all for your feedback and patience. After careful consideration, I?ve decided to not continue the partnership with VoiceVerseNFT. Intentions aside, I?ve heard you and apologize for accusing anyone of ?hating? just by simply disagreeing with me.
— Troy Baker (@TroyBakerVA) January 31, 2022
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“Thank you all for your feedback and patience,” Baker wrote today. “After careful consideration, I’ve decided to not continue the partnership with VoiceVerseNFT.
“Intentions aside, I’ve heard you and apologise for accusing anyone of ‘hating’ just by simply disagreeing with me.”
Earlier today, Team17 sought to distance itself from the idea it would add NFTs to the indie games it published, following the widely-disliked announcement it had partnered with an NFT firm to sell Worms collectibles.
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Notability subscription broke App Store rules; developer U-turns
A major backlash to this week’s Notability subscription announcement has forced the developer of the popular note-taking app to make a U-turn in the way it treats existing purchasers. Some existing owners pointed out that the developer was breaking App Store rules.
The company announced a switch to a subscription model, which is rarely a change that goes down well – but the bigger controversy here was regarding those who had previously purchased the app …
The company announced that existing customers – that is, those who had already purchased the app and its optional premium features – would only retain access to them for a year. After that, they would have to start paying the subscription fee like anyone else.
Users who had already paid for the app were quite rightly unimpressed. Some pointed out that this broke App Store Review Guideline 3.1.2(a), and said that they had reported it to Apple. Here’s Apple’s guideline:
If you are changing your existing app to a subscription-based business model, you should not take away the primary functionality existing users have already paid for. For example, let customers who have already purchased a “full game unlock” continue to access the full game after you introduce a subscription model for new customers.
App owners expressed their anger at the move.
“I bought the app assuming the current functionality was going to be accessible forever. I didn’t rent the app for 2 years. I’m going to be seriously pissed if my access gets revoked. I don’t do subscribing apps for things like Notability. I have WAY too much information there to have that level of risk. I think its time to start migrating out of Notability if this is how they want to do things. It’s not really about the money, it’s about being unreliable and having all my notes locked up suddenly.”
“Downgrading paid users who have used the app for years is wrong.”
“I was 99% certain that this was a violation of the ToS but didn’t know the specifics. This is a clear violation and we ALL need to complain incessantly to Apple about it. Either they hold them to the rules or pull the app from the store.”
“This is BS. I paid for every feature I currently have, including some of the add-on stuff (math and handwriting). Those were perpetual licenses. If Notability wants to switch to SaaS for new customers, fine. If they want to create a completely new app and do it that way, fine. But don’t take away something I paid for and say I get it “free” for a year, and after that am forced to pay more for it.”
The company has now reversed course, and said that existing owners will now have lifetime access to the premium features they purchased without needing to pay for a Notability subscription.
Yesterday, we made a big announcement regarding our transition to a free app with an optional subscription. We heard the disappointment from our existing customers, and we want to correct our course.
Today, we are making some changes (coming soon in Notability version 11.0.2). Everyone who purchased Notability prior to our switch to subscription on November 1st, 2021 will have lifetime access to all existing features and any content previously purchased in the app.
This includes the core Notability experience that users know and love, including unlimited editing, iCloud sync, and any features or content that was previously purchased through the Notability Shop.
The company said that it “sincerely apologized” for the misstep. Reactions to the change of heart have also been mixed.
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