Activision Blizzard Sued by Esports Pros Seeking at Least $680 Million, Alleging Monopoly Over ‘Call of Duty’ Leagues and Tournaments

K.J. Yossman U.K. commercial broadcaster ITV’s annual results for 2023 were revealed Thursday.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Vince McMahon, the founder of WWE who resigned from the board of TKO Group earlier this year amid sexual assault allegations against him, filed to sell $411.95 million worth of TKO stock, according to a regulatory filing. McMahon’s sale comprised 5.35 million shares of TKO, per an SEC filing Monday. That came after he sold 8.4 million shares of Class A common stock in TKO — in sale worth $670.3 million — last November.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The “face with tears of joy” emoji represents “a crying with laughter facial expression,” according to Wikipedia. “The emoji is used in communication to portray joking and teasing on messaging platforms.” Elon Musk, the multibillionaire tech baron who owns X (formerly Twitter), on Monday was sued by four former Twitter executives, whom Musk fired immediately after (reluctantly) closing the $44 billion takeover of the company in October 2022.

Octopus Energy has issued a major update for 1.3 million customers following a big takeover.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Will Shortz, the longtime crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times and NPR’s “puzzlemaster” for more than three decades, suffered a stroke last month and has spent the last several weeks rehabilitating. Shortz revealed the injury in a recorded message aired on on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday” on March 5. He has been absent from the show in recent weeks, and at the end today’s puzzle segment, “Weekend Edition Sunday” host Ayesha Rascoe shared an audio clip from Shortz to let fans know the situation.

Toys For Bob, the developer of Crash Bandicoot 4 and the remastered Spyro collection, has confirmed it’s going independent.Toys For Bob was founded in 1989 before being acquired by Activision in 2005, where they worked on Skylanders. As well as heading up a number of sequels, Toys For Bob also developed Crash Bandicoot 4 and was behind 2018’s Spyro Reignited Trilogy.As part of the recent wave of layoffs at Activision Blizzard, Toys For Bob lost 89 members of staff and saw the closure of their Californian offices.In a new blog post though, Toys For Bob has confirmed it has broken away from Activision.

Love Island star Callum Jones has dropped huge hints that he is no longer with fellow islander Jess Gale, after the duo reached the final together earlier this month. The couple, who initially met on the 2020 series of Love Island, hit it off during their second round in the villa and ended up placing second, despite many fans wishing Callum had rekindled his romance with ex Molly Smith. Callum and Jess ended up finishing in second place on the first All Star series, with Molly Smith and Tom Clare taking home the crown, and the 50k cash prize.

NME about the highs and lows of playing live in the current climate, and shared advice for rising acts about taking to the stage.The event, showcasing unsigned music across the capital, is set to return for its second year tomorrow (Wednesday, February 28) as a core element of the ILMC. With over 1,000 agents, promoters and live music professionals in town, ILMC offers a platform for artists to perform in front of a potentially career-changing crowd.Across five intimate venues across Soho – The 100 Club, 21Soho, The Lower Third, Phoenix Arts Club and The Spice of Life – London Calling boasts a stacked line-up of August Charles, b1no*, Babymorocco, Backroad Gee, Emilia Tarrant, Forgetting The Future, freekind, Gia Ford, Hyphen, Lala Hayden, Luna Morgenstern, LYVIA, MAVICA, Noah and the Loners, Nxdia, The New Eves and YIIGAA.With the ILMC hosting talks, workshops, mentor sessions, special events and more during based around the business and culture of touring, festival and live entertainment, three of the acts appearing at London Calling caught up with NME to share some insight about their life on the road.Taking to the stage at the Phoenix Arts Club, Lala Hayden said that she was looking forward to the next step of her “surreal” journey after taking an “indefinite break” as frontwoman of previous band Anteros.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor It’s the end of the road for Warner Bros. Discovery‘s MotorTrend+ automotive streaming service. The media company announced that MotorTrend+ will be shut down after content from the service is fully migrated to Discovery+ and Max at the end of March.

A mum denied trying to 'cover up' an alleged murder by cleaning up the scene, a trial has heard. Callum Riley, 17, was stabbed to death at a house on Heywood’s Darnhill estate. Three men are on trial at Manchester Crown Court, accused of his murder. Tony Adams, 34, Dale Heywood, 26, and a 17-year-old boy who cannot be named for legal reasons, have all pleaded not guilty.

Sorry Bravo, but to paraphrase that classic song of 39 years ago from The Smiths: That joke isn’t funny now.

Call Of Duty titles will launch day and date on Xbox Game Pass, according to an interview with Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer.Spencer spoke about how Xbox Game Pass will work with new studios that have been purchased by Xbox in an interview with Gamefile‘s Stephen Totillo.“Our intent is the full portfolio from ZeniMax, Activision Blizzard and XGS- Xbox Game Studios – will be on Game Pass, day one,” Spencer said in the interview. It’s important to note however, that there’s still work to be done before they’re ready to launch day and date on the system.“We’re doing the back end work to make them come to PC and console simultaneously,” Spencer confirmed.In the same interview, Spencer also spoke about what he believes the future of physical media is in regards to the Xbox platform, stating that while Xbox themselves are fans of physical media, they “don’t have a need to drive that disproportionate to customer demand”.“Gaming consoles themselves have kind of become the last consumer electronic device that has a drive.

Emma Stone is clearing the air about her friendship with Taylor Swift after a joke she made about the singer got taken way out of context.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor BuzzFeed has sold Complex — the youth-culture media company it bought three years ago — and will pink-slip another 16% of BuzzFeed’s remaining staffers in a restructuring designed to get back on financial track. BuzzFeed announced Wednesday that it closed the sale of Complex to ecommerce platform Ntwrk in a $108.6 million all-cash deal.

Stephen King is calling out Warner Bros. for holding off on releasing Salem’s Lot, which had been set to release in 2023.

The planned sports streamer team-up between Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Fox may be stuck at the starting line if Fubo TV gets its way in court.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Fubo, which bills itself as a sports-first TV subscription streaming service, is suing Disney, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery over the trio’s plans to launch a sports streaming bundle.

(MSFT.O), opens new tab acquired Activision last year for $69 billion, in a deal that still faces U.S. Federal Trade Commission scrutiny.Activision in 2016 paid $46 million to buy Major League Gaming, which the lawsuit called the leading Call of Duty competition organizer.League and tournament play for Call of Duty was a “vibrant, competitive product market” until 2019, when Activision moved to open its own league and eliminate competition, the lawsuit said.Activision then imposed “draconian” contract provisions on teams and players, according to the lawsuit.“Teams that did not (or could not) accede to Activision’s extortionate demands were cut out of the professional Call of Duty market entirely,” the lawsuit said.

Carole Horst Highland Film Group shared a first look at “London Calling,” an action-comedy that reunites director Allan Ungar with star Josh Duhamel after the success of the action heist thriller “Bandit.” Film also stars Jeremy Ray Taylor (“It,” “and “It: Chapter Two”), Rick Hoffman (“Billions,” “Suits”) and Aidan Gillen (“Game of Thrones”) Written by Omer Levin Menekse and Quinn Wolfe, “London Calling” sees mediocre hit man Tommy Ward (Duhamel) go on the run and get stuck in L.A. after mistakenly killing a relative of London’s biggest crime boss (Gillen).

Love Island fans are asking "what's the point of watching" as their Callum and Molly hopes are shattered.The duo were a couple for three years after meeting on winter Love Island in 2020. After splitting last year, they were reunited as exes in the All Star villa in South Africa.