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According to Reuters and Bloomberg, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is winding down its gaming arm, including the Nuverse brand, with “hundreds” of jobs likely to be affected. This spells yet more trouble for the Chinese tech giant following the layoffs in its VR division, Pico, earlier this month (Meta says hi, apparently). Nuverse, acquired by ByteDance in 2017, is the publisher of notable titles including Marvel Snap, Ragnarok X: Next Generation and One Piece: Blood Routes, as well as the developer of Crystal of Atlan, Earth: Revival and more. The company is allegedly seeking divestment from existing titles, while they remain in service for the time being.

Despite the seeming success of these games, iFeng Tech’s sources claim that ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo had earlier criticized the gaming arm for its lack of focus and misallocation of resources. 21st Century Business Herald also reports that when it comes to revenue, the Douyin (the Chinese counterpart of TikTok) and ad businesses still overshadow that of the gaming division within ByteDance, according to a source close to the matter. Moonton, another gaming subsidiary acquired by ByteDance in 2021, has apparently been seeking a buyer as well since earlier this month.

Tech site 36Kr claims that as many as around 700 employees across ByteDance’s gaming business group are impacted by this restructuring, with all but two in-development projects already terminated. The likes of Tencent, NetEase and MiHoYo may eventually benefit from ByteDance’s seeming defeat, but it’s also a cautionary tale for these local competitors bound by China’s ever-changing gaming regulations.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bytedances-latest-layoffs-have-reportedly-gutted-the-publisher-of-marvel-snap-101548665.html?src=rss 

Cyber Monday is here and, with it, the last big day of deals before the present buying frenzy known as the holiday season begins. Gift cards are a great option for the people in your life who are hard to shop for, and Nintendo is making them all the more enticing with a sale. Right now, you can pick up a $99 gift card to Nintendo’s eShop for $89 on Amazon — a 10 percent discount. 

If $89 still feels steep to spend, Nintendo has 10 percent off deals on a bunch of gift card values. You can get a $70 gift card for $63, $35 for $31.50, $10 for $9 and $5 for $4.50. The “card” comes as a code, a great digital gift option for someone you want to give a present to but won’t see in person. They can put the gift cards towards thousands of new and classic games on the Nintendo Switch.

Speaking of games, you can also pick up some incredible Nintendo Switch titles for a deal. Notably, the Nintendo Switch OLED and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Bundle is available at Walmart for $329, down from $418. It comes with the Nintendo Switch console, the game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and a subscription to Switch Online for three months. Then there are Nintendo games on sale like Kirby and the Forgotten Land, down to $42 from $60, and Portal: Companion Collection for $7 versus its usual $20 — a 66 percent discount.

Your Cyber Monday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Cyber Monday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Cyber Monday tech deals. Learn about Cyber Monday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Cyber Monday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Cyber Monday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nintendo-eshop-gift-cards-are-10-percent-off-for-cyber-monday-103500403.html?src=rss 

The beloved action-adventure roguelike Cult of the Lamb is getting some much-awaited new content next year in an update called “Sins of the Flesh,” and many fans are hoping it’ll be the “sex update” they’ve been (jokingly? semi-seriously?) asking for. But, the team behind the game is being characteristically coy about whether that’ll actually be the case. “Sins of the Flesh,” announced in a tweet this week, will be free and “packed with new features, stories, and more.”

Per the tweet, the update will be available “very early next year.” The official X account also teased the release of more information in the weeks to come. Art shared alongside the announcement shows the cutesy cult members dancing nearly nude around a fire. Further fueling the “sex update” speculation, the team also posted a zoomed in crop of the art on Sunday showing two characters laying on the ground, embracing, and tweeted, “This could be us.”

Amidst the celebration and some concern online over the possible sex update, though, a community manager for developer Massive Monster wrote on Steam that people are “really running with” the sex update joke, and that “the age rating hopefully won’t change after this update,” suggesting it won’t dip too far into more explicit territory. Yet, responding on X to a PC Gamer article that said the expansion won’t be the sex update, the Cult of the Lamb account posted, “Says who?” So really, who knows at this point. In a game that already has cannibalism and ritual sacrifice, everything is on the table.

Cult of the Lamb last got some new DLC back in April and announced a crossover with Don’t Starve Together over the summer. If you missed the boat when the game first dropped in 2022, there’s plenty of time to start playing and catch up before the new content is released… new content that may or may not involve sex.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cult-of-the-lamb-is-getting-a-major-free-update-called-sins-of-the-flesh-in-early-2024-203500271.html?src=rss