RedLynx, a Finnish video game developer that was purchased by Ubisoft last year, has denied this week that it leaked its own game to torrent sites.
Their latest game, Trials Evolution, recently made its public debut via The Pirate Bay, and immediate blame was thrown back on the developers, who have been known to be pirates.
In 2009, CEO Tero Virtala admitted that the company put the first “Trials” game online, “taking advantage” of piracy: “What we did actually, on day one, we put [the PC edition of Trials] immediately on all the torrent networks ourselves.”
Virtala was quick to deny this leak, however: “We want to be clear that [leaking Trials Evolution] is not something we did ourselves.”
Result for: online
Microsoft is on the verge of purchasing Internet phone company Skype for over $7 billion, in what would be the company’s largest ever acquisition.
Negotiations are in the final stages but the deal could still fall apart, say multiple sources speaking to WSJ.
Skype has 663 million users globally and says 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls were made over the service in 2010.
In 2007, Microsoft overpaid for online advertising firm aQuantive, paying $6 billion in what is their current largest deal, ever. In 2008, Microsoft offered $48 billion for Yahoo but was turned down and eventually the deal collapsed. Yahoo is valued at $25 billion today so it certainly appears that Microsoft dodged a bullet.
The Skype deal will be very expensive given the company’s history of no profits.
In 2010, Skype had nice revenue of $860 million but lost $7 million. Google and Facebook were reported as being interested in the VoIP company, as well.
Result for: online
Apple has said today that it will begin selling the iPad 2 online at 4am EST tomorrow morning, give buyers a chance to purchase the tablet before it is available in stores.
Apple stores will begin selling the device at 5pm tomorrow.
All of the company’s retail partners, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Target, will begin selling the tablet at 5pm, as well.
Carriers AT&T and Verizon will do the same.
The iPad 2 adds a dual-core A5 processor, is 33 percent thinner, adds two cameras, new magnetic covers, and some first-party apps like iMovie.
