Gaming

Niantic continues to push forward in its quest to build a 3D map of the world. This morning the company announced that it has acquired Scaniverse, an iPhone/iPad app for scanning objects and environments in high-resolution 3D. A rep for Niantic tells me that Scaniverse will remain on the App …

Ariana Grande strutted and soared around a candy-colored series of Fortnite sets in Epic’s latest major in-game live music event. The multi-day “tour” offered gamers and Grande fans alike plenty to enjoy while showcasing Epic’s impressively smooth and visually inventive vision for live events that millions of people can enjoy …

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. The question for the tech news cycle in China these days has become: Who is Beijing’s next target? Regulatory clampdowns are …

With most popular online video games, there’s a huge gap between being a good player and a great one. A casual player might be able to hold their own against other casual players, only for a random pro to wander by and chew through everyone like they’re somehow playing with …

One of the world’s biggest video game companies is reeling after a state discrimination and sexual harassment suit kicked off a firestorm of controversy within the company. California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Activision Blizzard last week, alleging that the company fostered a “breeding ground for harassment and …

A 10-step guide by the creators of memoryOS Alex Ruzh is the CEO and co-founder of memoryOS, an edtech startup developing AI-powered gamified software teaching people how to remember anything. Here at memoryOS, we have a saying we repeat often: “Most of the Kickstarter happens before the actual Kickstarter.” Preparation …

Playdate, the adorable whimsy-and-nostalgia-box/handheld game system built by Panic (with some help from Teenage Engineering), has taken one more big step toward reality: it has an official preorder date. And it’s soon! The company announced this morning that preorders for the handheld will go live on July 29th at 10 …

New York-based startup Sketchfab has been acquired by Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite and Unreal Engine. Sketchfab has been building a platform to upload, download, view, share, sell and buy 3D assets. Essentially, it is the leading repository for 3D files on the web. Epic Games isn’t disclosing the …

At its Game Developer Summit, Google today announced a new feature for Android game developers that will speed up by almost 2x the time from starting a download in the Google Play store to the game launching — at least on Android 12 devices. The name of the new feature, …

The gamification of payments is not a new concept. A number of companies are attempting to combine gamification and payments in creative ways. And today, one such company, Play2Pay, has raised $13 million in a Series A round of funding. The Miami-based startup has a straightforward mission. It wants to …