Payment - Page 2 of 19

You can now buy NFTs on eBay, and ‘blockchain-driven collectibles’ are coming soon

eBay is now allowing NFTs to be sold on its platform, making the digital collectibles available side by side with physical ones. Whether you’re looking for a physical Dogecoin replica or a digital representation of Elon Musk holding Doge, eBay is apparently now the place to get both.

At the moment, eBay wants to make sure that NFTs are listed by trusted sellers, and only in certain categories like trading cards, music, entertainment, and art. The company does say, though, that it hopes to expand its policies and tools in the future to allow more categories after it’s gathered feedback from the community with the current crop of NFTs.

The first result when searching “NFT” on eBay, to the surprise of no one.

The blog post also mentions future updates to allow “blockchain-driven collectables,” though it doesn’t expand on what that means outside of NFTs.

eBay’s CEO said earlier this month that the company would be open to accepting cryptocurrencies in the future, but at the moment the NFTs being sold on the platform seem to be using its standard payment system linked to a credit card or PayPal account.

The cybersecurity ‘pandemic’ that led to the Colonial Pipeline disaster

The cyberattack that forced the Colonial Pipeline offline is just one failure to address existing weaknesses and an escalating “ransomware pandemic,” experts tell The Verge. That leaves the nation’s energy infrastructure especially vulnerable, even though there are basic steps that could have been taken to prevent the crisis that’s unfolding now.

“Honestly, I think for anyone who’s been tracking ransomware closely, this really shouldn’t be a surprise,” says Philip Reiner, CEO of the nonprofit Institute for Security and Technology. “This is yet another example of what is really a ransomware pandemic that needs to be addressed at the highest level.”

An escalating threat from bad actors, like the criminal group DarkSide that’s believed to be behind the attack on Colonial Pipeline, is coinciding with more potential weak points in the energy sector’s cyber infrastructure. Reiner says ransomware poses growing risks to critical infrastructure beyond energy, including health care and financial systems. Hackers have targeted tech, too. A subcontractor for Apple was hit with a $50 million ransomware attack just last month. But the energy sector seems particularly vulnerable to all kinds of cyber threats.

“This is the kind of thing that keeps folks like us awake at night,” says Tucker Bailey, a partner and cybersecurity expert at consultancy McKinsey & Company. “We’ve known that the [vulnerabilities] have been there for a while.

Almost half of all the East Coast’s fuel typically travels through the Colonial Pipeline, which has been shuttered since May 7th. The pipeline company’s IT system fell victim to ransomware, a type of cyber attack in which hackers demand payment to bring systems back online. DarkSide also stole data from the company and threatened to publish it online, Bloomberg reported.

The frequency and severity of attacks against utility systems is on the rise, according to the National Regulatory Research Institute. Fifty-six percent of utility professionals surveyed by Siemens in 2019 said they had experienced at least one attack over the previous year that led to an outage or a loss of private information. More than a third of the 796 “cyber incidents” reported to the Department of Homeland Security between 2013 and 2015 took place in the energy sector.

A collision of a couple key factors could drive those numbers up. First, there are more state actors, cybercriminals, and hacktivists targeting critical infrastructure, according to experts. Second, an increasingly digital power sector opens up more opportunities for hackers to attack.

“As everything is becoming more computerized, the controls for our critical infrastructure are also more computerized and steps need to be taken to ensure that they are protected from cyber attacks,” says Leslie Gordon, acting director for homeland security and justice at the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO). She says what happened to Colonial Pipeline is “an example of a failure to protect critical infrastructure.”

Companies are regularly failing to practice even basic security hygiene, which leaves critical infrastructure open to attack. Good security hygiene can include relatively simple things like requiring multi-factor authentication, having response plans ready, and keeping backup systems in place. With Colonial Pipeline, failing to keep its network segmented — so that bad actors can’t easily hop from one piece of the system to the next — was a big problem that shows a lack of cyber hygiene, according to Reiner. Colonial’s IT system was attacked, but that was connected to the company’s operating system, so it shut that down, too.

“One of the things we see here is another example of basic steps not being taken in order to secure your systems,” Reiner says. “Cyber hygiene, or the lack thereof, is really one of the greatest causes of cyber crime. It’s not so much that these guys are so good. It’s just people leave very basic things undone.”

President Joe Biden is expected to announce an executive order that could require contractors the federal government works with to take those kinds of safety measures, and last month, the administration launched a 100-day plan to tackle “increasing cyber threats” to the US electric system. It includes working with utilities to build up their capacity to stop, detect, and respond to attacks. The Department of Energy also launched new research programs in March to make the energy sector more resilient to hazards, both physical and cyber.

But a workforce shortage is another lingering problem for the energy sector that could jeopardize those plans. There’s an estimated shortage of 498,480 cybersecurity workers in the US, a 2019 report found. The Transportation Security Administration, which oversees pipeline security, is short on inspectors and lacks a strategic workforce development plan to help it “carry out its pipeline security responsibilities,” a 2018 report by the GAO found. Three years after the agency recommended that the TSA fill that gap, the GAO says that has yet to happen (although the TSA reports that it’s in the middle of completing a workforce plan).

Until these basic problems are solved, the threat of cyberattacks will loom large over the energy system and other critical infrastructure. And while the attacks are virtual, the consequences can be quickly felt on the ground. The longer the Colonial Pipeline stays out of commission, the bigger the risk of gas stations, jet fuel, and even home heating oil running dry. The pipeline company did not respond to The Verge by time of publication but said in a statement that it’s bringing parts of its pipeline online in stages — with hopes that most operations will be restored by the end of the week.

Twitter is testing a new Tip Jar feature for sending money to your favorite accounts

Twitter has started rolling out a new Tip Jar feature on its Android and iOS apps, which (as rumored) will allow users to send money directly to their favorite accounts.

To use the tip jar, simply tap on the freshly added dollar bill icon next to someone’s username when viewing their profile on one of Twitter’s mobile apps. Users will be able to toggle the tip jar feature, too (for those individuals or organizations that don’t want people just sending them cash out of the blue). Android users will also be able to send money in Twitter’s Clubhouse-like Spaces.

Tip Jar supports a variety of payment options and links: Bandcamp, Cash App, Patreon, Paypal, and Venmo. Twitter is using those services’ external payment processors for transactions; it doesn’t take a cut. All English language Twitter users can send tips starting today, but only a select group (including “creators, journalists, experts, and nonprofits”) can turn on the feature to accept money for now.

Users have been using Twitter to solicit tips or Patreon follows for years — ending viral threads with a shoutout to a SoundCloud account is practically a meme at this point. So it makes sense that Twitter would be looking to streamline the feature as part of its own app.

Notably, the only way to access Tip Jar right now is through navigating to a user’s profile. That means sending someone some money for a truly fantastic tweet will still take a bit more effort than, say, just liking or retweeting it.

The announcement tweet from Twitter also promises “more coming soon,” so it’s likely that we’ll continue to hear more about how Twitter is implementing tipping in the coming weeks and months.

IRS Now Seeks Identities of American Cryptocurrency Traders

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

A federal court in the Northern District of California have authorized the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to identify taxpayers that have used a cryptocurrency exchange. In particular, the IRS wants to know about taxpayers who conducted at least $20,000 in crypto transactions from 2016 to 2020.

Cryptocurrencies were originally designed to be an anonymous payment method that could not be regulated by governments. But as they have become a widespread payment instrument as well as an investment asset for those who want to protect their savings and/or make some additional money, they quickly emerged on the radar of tax collecting agencies, such as the IRS. Although crypto transactions are still anonymous, the process or buying or selling cryptocurrencies is not. To that end, it is not surprising that the IRS want to know about U.S. taxpayers who used cryptocurrencies in the past few years.

For now, the court in California authorized the IRS to identify Americans who have used the services of Payward Ventures Inc. and its subsidiaries, such as Kraken, a digital currency exchange headquartered in San Francisco, California. The IRS is seeking information about taxpayers who conducted at least the equivalent of $20,000 in transactions. Meanwhile, on April 1, 2021, a federal court in the District of Massachusetts granted an order for the IRS to serve a similar John Doe summons on Circle, an exchange from Boston. In the future, the IRS may be authorized to identify customers of other crypto exchanges.

“Gathering the information in the summons approved today is an important step to ensure cryptocurrency owners are following the tax laws,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General David A. Hubbert of the Justice Department’s Tax Division. “Those who transact with cryptocurrency must meet their tax obligations like any other taxpayer.”

It remains to be seen how serious the IRS about taxing owners of cryptocurrency is. There are hundreds of crypto exchanges not only in the U.S., but around the world and theoretically an American taxpayer could use any of such services.

Epic v. Apple turns into Windows v. Xbox

Is an iPhone more like a PC or an Xbox?

That question was asked — implicitly and explicitly — over and over on the third day of Epic v. Apple testimony. The antitrust trial started on Monday with some heady pronunciations about Fortnite, the game and/or metaverse at the heart of the case. Yesterday, both sides argued about whether iPhones and iPads were truly locked down. And today, Apple and Epic delved into one of the biggest questions of the trial: whether saying iOS violates antitrust law would make every major game console an unlawful monopoly too.

Apple’s attorneys issued a dire warning to Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft during its opening statement, saying that their business models were all fundamentally similar. “If Epic prevails, other ecosystems will fall too,” they warned. But today, Epic called up Microsoft’s Xbox business development head Lori Wright as a sympathetic witness. In response to a line of questioning, Wright divided computing devices into “special-purpose” and “general-purpose” devices — in a way that clearly defined iPhones as the latter.

The Xbox, as Wright describes it, is a special-purpose device. “You are basically building a piece of hardware to do a specific thing,” she told a judge. “The Xbox is designed to give you a gaming experience. People buy an Xbox because they want to play games.” As a result, Microsoft keeps tight control of what content users can access — it’s a “curated, custom-built hardware/software experience.” The market is also much smaller: tens or hundreds of millions sold, compared to “billions” of Windows devices. Later in the day, Epic engineering fellow Andrew Grant gave his own, similar definition of gaming consoles in general, calling a console “a single-purpose device for entertainment.”

Windows computers, according to Wright, are “general-purpose” devices. “You’re buying it to do a wide variety of things, and that changes every day as new ideas are getting created,” she said. “It can do a bunch of things already, and it has the aperture to do a bunch more things.” These platforms can support unexpected, emergent applications across more aspects of people’s lives, particularly when it’s easy to get an app onto them in the first place.

Wright made a point of discussing all the different ways that users could get apps on Windows. That includes Microsoft’s own app store, but also Steam, the Epic Games Store, and direct downloads from a website. Microsoft recently dropped its commission on Windows apps to 12 percent to compete with Epic, while the Xbox still takes a 30 percent commission. Wright says there’s no plan to change that discrepancy. That’s despite the fact that under the hood, there’s not a massive hardware difference between an Xbox and a desktop PC.

It’s hard to call the iPhone anything but a general-purpose device under Wright’s definition. (She described a “special-purpose” Apple product as something like an iPod.) Intentionally or not, Wright also linked the distinction to one of Epic’s major talking points: profit.

Epic describes profit as one of the biggest differences between iPhones and consoles. It argues console makers have to treat app makers better because they lose money on hardware, unlike Apple, so they need to plan around attracting developers to the platform. And from Microsoft’s point of view, Wright emphasized in testimony that no Xbox console has been sold at a profit, even late in a generation’s lifespan after manufacturing costs fall. So part of that curated hardware/software experience includes planning around a specific genre of app and attracting the developers who will build it, rather than simply turning it loose and seeing what happens.

Microsoft later hedged in a statement saying that “profits are generated in game sales and online service subscriptions,” but it didn’t really contradict the claim — it just made clear, as Wright did, that the overall operation is profitable.

Will these distinctions convince the court? It’s hard to say, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has asked questions that appear lightly skeptical of Epic’s hard lines between consoles and iPhones and Wright’s strict delineation of “general” and “specific” devices.

Apple’s attorney didn’t spend as much time arguing over precise definitions. Apple’s strategy relied more on questioning Wright’s credibility by noting that she’d failed to produce documents that Apple requested. Later, an attorney similarly lambasted Grant for working on the hotfix that secretly introduced a new payment system into Fortnite, insisting that “you knew you were being dishonest, didn’t you?”

But Apple did push Wright to lay out in detail just how much more locked-down Xbox is than Windows, asking whether it did things like support rival game stores or streaming services. (This questioning was muddled by the fact that Microsoft refers to both its consoles and general gaming division as “Xbox,” so you can have an “Xbox store” on PC — a fact that led to some confusion during cross-examination.)

Why is this useful to Apple? Well, Epic began the trial by saying that iOS should work more like macOS. Both operating systems have a reputation for relative security and seamlessness, but only the latter allows installing software from outside the App Store. Epic’s opening statement questioned why Apple needed to lock down the iPhone when it had already created a perfectly workable but more open system. But with Wright and Microsoft, Apple has a perfect comparison point: a major computing company that offers two very different versions of a big black box.

WhatsApp payments are finally coming back to Brazil after government suspension

WhatsApp is again rolling out its payments service in Brazil, after the service was suspended by Brazil’s Central Bank in June of 2020 a few days after it launched there. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement in a video aired in Brazil, where he spoke about how the payment information added to WhatsApp will also be able to be used on Facebook and Instagram.

According to David Marcus the head of Facebook Financial, the service returning to Brazil will be part of a “gradual rollout,” but it seems like the company is serious about it returning: it’s already posted a video promoting the service, and has published a page that states the underlying Facebook Pay system has been authorized by the Central Bank (Facebook is WhatsApp’s parent company).

When the service originally launched in Brazil, the country’s central bank suspended it, citing concerns about competition in the payment system market. The bank said it planned to evaluate whether the service was compliant with regulations, despite the fact that Facebook said it had been in contact with the authority before the launch.

In late March of this year, it was reported by Reuters that the bank had approved the service, after Facebook had obtained formal approval to run payments. According to a press release, WhatsApp users will be able to connect debit, prepaid or combo cards from several banks that are working with its payment processor.

Epic pushed Xbox chief to open free multiplayer just ahead of Apple Fortnite battle

Epic pushed Microsoft to open up its Xbox network for free multiplayer gaming just weeks before the Apple and Fortnite battle. In the weeks leading up to Epic Games’ decision to circumvent Apple’s 30 percent cut on Fortnite in-app purchases, CEO Tim Sweeney sent an email to Xbox chief Phil Spencer teasing something big and asking whether Microsoft could time free multiplayer with Fortnite season 14.

“Epic has certain plans for August that will provide an extraordinary opportunity to highlight the value proposition of consoles and PCs, in contrast to mobile platforms, and to onboard new console users,” said Sweeney. “While I can’t share details with any third party at this point, I give you Epic’s assurance that our efforts will be positive and supportive of Microsoft, Xbox and Windows.”

Sweeney also asked Spencer whether free Xbox Live multiplayer was coming, and whether Microsoft could time it to support Fortnite season 14, the season Epic Games launched its alternate payment method that got Fortnite kicked off the App Store.

Spencer replied that “we will get there and I want to partner with you,” and that pushing these policies was “at the highest levels” at Microsoft, but implied Xbox Live wasn’t ready to go free multiplayer just yet. “Totally understood!” said Sweeney in response. “I gather there’s a lot going on at Microsoft nowadays. Anyway, you’ll enjoy the upcoming fireworks show.”

The timing of the email is provocative, given the events that followed. Had Spencer gone along with the plan, it seems likely that Xbox could have opened up Fortnite to non-Gold subscribers at the same time that Apple was shutting out the game entirely.

The fireworks show that Sweeney promised certainly kicked off when Fortnite season 14 launched, and it has since resulted in Epic Games taking Apple to court in a trial that’s ongoing. Microsoft did eventually unlock Xbox Live free-to-play multiplayer last month, but it wasn’t as simple as Epic Games had hoped.

Microsoft’s removal of the Xbox Live Gold requirement came after the company was forced to reverse a price hike to its Xbox Live Gold subscriptions earlier this year. Microsoft had attempted to double the cost of a yearly Xbox Live Gold subscription, a move that backfired. Microsoft quickly reversed the decision and offered to remove the paywall for free-to-play multiplayer games.

Apple exec suggested cutting App Store commission to 20 percent as early as 2011

Phil Schiller, the Apple executive in charge of the App Store, raised the possibility of the company cutting its 30 percent commission rate to 25 or even 20 percent back in 2011 in response to competition. Schiller floated the idea in an email to then Apple CEO Steve Jobs and head of Apple services Eddy Cue. The email has been made public as part of the company’s legal battle with Epic Games. Bloomberg was first to report on the email exchange.

“Do we think our 70/30 split will last forever?” Schiller’s email begins. “I think someday we will see enough challenge from another platform or web based solutions to want to adjust our model.” Schiller goes on to suggest that if Apple were to ever change its fee structure, that it should do so “from a position of strength rather than weakness” and floats the idea of Apple dropping its commission rate once the App Store is generating over $1 billion in annual profit.

The email, released as part of Epic’s lawsuit against Apple.

Image: Court Documents

“I know that this is controversial, I just tee it up as another way to look at the size of the business, what we want to achieve, and how we stay competitive,” Schiller wrote. “Just food for thought.” Attached to the email is a Wall Street Journal article from 2011 which discussed the possibility of developers using web apps to bypass Apple’s App Store fees.

Apple’s 30 percent commission on many in-app purchases is central to its legal battle with Epic Games, which has accused the App Store tied to iPhones and iPads of being a monopoly. Epic is required to use Apple’s payment method for in-app purchases within Fortnite (and hence pay a 30 percent commission), and it was the company’s switch to offering its own in-app payments system that caused Apple to kick the game out of the App Store.

In response to the email, Apple said there is no evidence that the App Store’s fees are tied to its profit, and that the 2011 email did not confirm the store made $1 billion in profit, Bloomberg reports. Analysis from Sensor Tower has the App Store’s 2020 commissions revenue at around $22 billion, and Epic cites one witness who claims that its profit rate sits at around 80 percent.

Apple has adjusted its commission structure over the years, but has never dropped it standard rate wholesale to 25 or 20 percent. In 2016 it dropped its commission to 15 percent for subscribers who have signed up to a service for over a year. Then, last year, it dropped its rate to 15 percent for any developers who make under $1 million in sales on its store. The move saw pushback from Apple’s critics, with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney calling the decision “a calculated move by Apple to divide app creators and preserve their monopoly on stores and payments, again breaking the promise of treating all developers equally.”

Why Epic is burning its own cash to cook Apple

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Epic Games didn’t sue Apple to get a big payout, but that’s because the lawsuit itself is an investment. And to rewrite Apple’s rules, Epic is spending a fortune.

The reason Epic’s Fortnite got thrown out of the Apple App Store was that Epic rogue-updated Fortnite to offer a payment mechanism that bypassed Apple’s 30 percent cut of all in-app transactions. Apple booted Fortnite for violating its rules. Epic threw an… epic… hissy fit about this, culminating in the trial starting this week. While Epic has cobbled together an alliance called the Coalition for App Fairness — along with Spotify, Match Group, Basecamp, and Tile — there’s one more tech behemoth in play. Epic Games Store runs on Amazon Web Services. So does Fortnite itself.

The fight with Apple echoes Epic’s tactics elsewhere. The Epic Game Store is a clear challenge to Valve, which has an iOS-like store called Steam that also takes a 30 percent cut of sales. In a basic act of moral consistency, the Epic Game Store contains — in addition to games by other developers — other game stores. It also takes only a 12 percent cut of sales. Just last week, Microsoft announced it would cut its take on PC games to 12 percent to match Epic, from 30 percent. (It also filed a letter of support for Epic in the current case.)

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said in 2019 that the Epic Game Store’s hardball tactics against Valve will continue until either the store is profitable or Valve lowers its cut. Epic will torch an estimated $593 million by the end of 2021 on the Epic Games Store, according to court documents in the Apple case. At many companies, losing this much money would be a problem, but that figure is only slightly more than Epic’s Fortnite revenue from April 2020, which was $400 million that month.

Fortnite pretty much prints cash because the video game industry has hit on a business model that almost no other part of the entertainment industry can match: in-app payments. For Spotify, it’s not a fatal problem to dodge the App Store and its cut. I just go to a desktop computer, enter my credit card information, and — thanks to recurring billing — I’m done.

Fortnite is different, and it’s why a video game company is leading the effort to challenge the App Store payment rules. In Fortnite, if I want to buy a sweet dance move, I spend Epic’s V-Bucks to do it. The store refreshes every day, so if I want the new hotness, I need to act immediately. (There’s also a seasonal pass and a recently-introduced monthly subscription, but these do not seem to be as explicitly geared toward impulse buys.) Last year, in-app purchases were estimated to account for 40 percent of all gaming revenue.

Epic’s position gets weirder. Part of the story will involve people who imprinted on Neal Stephenson like ducklings, but before we get there, let’s run down what we know about the economics of Fortnite and the Epic Games Store to get a rough sense of how much money is in play.

It’s true that Fortnite is free to download, but in-app purchases more than make up for that. In 2019, Epic Games had revenue of $4.2 billion, with earnings of $730 million. (We know this because Epic, a private company, sold a stake, and those meddling kids at VentureBeat got a hold of numbers as a result.) Epic’s 2020 numbers are forecast at about $5 billion in revenue, with $1 billion in earnings, according to VentureBeat; in the court documents, Epic’s total 2020 revenue is projected at a mere $3.85 billion. In the two years Fortnite was available in the App Store, iOS customers alone accounted for $700 million in revenue for Epic, according to the court documents.

“Epic is in a fortunate position because Fortnite is the most popular game in the world,” says Christopher Krohn, an adjunct associate professor of marketing at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Apple’s revenue split from digital purchases is a little complicated — it’s got special rates for small developers, for instance — but in Epic’s case, Apple gets 30 percent of all in-app purchases. That’s in line with Minitel, the French pre-internet, which also had a 30 / 70 split for third-party content, says Bill Maurer, a professor of anthropology at the University of California Irvine who specializes in payment processors. Frankly, it looks like a carrier fee.

“At some level, Apple’s being greedy, because it doesn’t depend on this revenue,” says Michael Cusumano, a distinguished professor of management at MIT’s Sloan Business School. “It’s rolling in money from the iPhone itself.” On March 28, Apple reported its quarterly earnings — almost $24 billion in net income, riding mostly on strong sales of the iPhone and Mac; the previous quarter was a blowout for the company, with revenue of more than $100 billion.

Greed isn’t illegal. It’s also probably what’s motivating Epic, despite its CEO’s bluster. Epic wants to build something called the “metaverse,” an online haven where superhero IP owned by different companies can finally kiss. (The idea is based on Snow Crash, a 1991 book by Neal Stephenson.) The revenue potential here is the kind of thing that sends VCs into thinkfluencing fever dreams.

Fortnite is already a hangout space, one where IP from Marvel and DC can legally interact. Add to that the Unreal engine, which fuels a number of games as well as shows such as Disney’s The Mandalorian, and its other developer tools, and you’re looking at what could potentially be a piece of a metaverse. Should Fortnite, the Epic Games Store, or another Epic offering underpin a major chunk of a metaverse, the amount of money Epic is torching on its store and these lawyers will look like a wise investment against the fuckload of money it stands to make.

You can see why they might not want to cut Apple — or Valve, or Google, or anyone at all — in at 30 percent.

Look, I’m going to pop my popcorn and, as Sweeney put it, “enjoy the upcoming fireworks show” at the trial. I don’t think the outcome will matter much, since any verdict is going to get appealed immediately. But at the very bottom, it seems obvious that Epic’s position is the same as Apple’s: greed is good. Forget the fight to own the metaverse. The real world belongs to Big Tech, and we’re just NPCs who drop loot for the corporate players.

Coinbase now lets you buy cryptocurrency with your PayPal account

Coinbase has added the option for users to buy cryptocurrency using their PayPal accounts in the US, the company has announced. It says the feature offers a “familiar and trusted” experience for users buying any of the numerous cryptocurrencies that the exchange currently supports, and using PayPal as an intermediary means you don’t have to give your bank account or debit card information directly to the cryptocurrency exchange. The feature will expand to other countries in the coming months.

To use the new option, Coinbase says you can add your PayPal account via the “Add a payment method” option, which links to the PayPal login screen. Purchases made via PayPal are capped at $25,000 a day, or 0.46 Bitcoin as of this writing. Debit cards and bank accounts linked to a PayPal account can be used to buy cryptocurrencies, but a Coinbase FAQ notes the feature doesn’t support payment methods like prepaid cards or credit cards.

A PayPal account can be added from the “Add a payment method” screen.

Image: Coinbase

The news is part of PayPal’s broader trend towards embracing cryptocurrency. In November last year, the company started letting US users buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies directly from their PayPal accounts, and this year it rolled out the option for users to pay with cryptocurrency held in their PayPal account (though this is converted to local currency before a merchant is paid). PayPal currently only supports four cryptocurrencies natively — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash — compared to the dozens available on Coinbase.

Fortnite is not on Xbox Cloud Gaming due to competition with Epic PC offerings

Home / Software & Gaming / Fortnite is not on Xbox Cloud Gaming due to competition with Epic PC offerings

Matthew Wilson
16 hours ago
Software & Gaming

With the Epic Games V Apple trial set to get underway in just a matter of days, court documents are starting to reveal some interesting facts about both companies. One court document reveals that Epic Games is keeping Fortnite off of Microsoft’s xCloud streaming service, as Epic views it as a competitor to its own PC offerings.

The document, which was uncovered by The Verge, goes over deposition questions directed towards Epic Games VP of business development, Joe Kreiner. When asked about why Fortnite isn’t on Microsoft’s Xbox Game Streaming service, Kreiner said: “we viewed Microsoft’s efforts with xCloud to be competitive with our PC offerings”.

As a result, Fortnite isn’t available to stream on Microsoft’s service, although it is available elsewhere, including Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming service.

On GeForce Now, all revenue made through microtransactions and in-game subscriptions goes straight to Epic Games, while on the Xbox, Epic has to use the Xbox Store for in-game transactions. However, Kreiner does admit that Epic Games hasn’t negotiated this with Microsoft.

This line of questioning is all part of the lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple. Epic’s case against Apple is centred around iOS App Store policies, which prohibit rival app stores and payment processing methods from being used. Due to this, Fortnite was removed from the iOS platform last year.

KitGuru Says: We’re going to get some interesting looks behind the scenes of mobile, PC and console businesses during this case. The Epic V Apple trial is set to begin next week.

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Epic Games v. Apple: the fight for the future of the App Store

All the news about the huge trial

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Verge Staff

After months of preparation, Epic Games will finally take on Apple in court in a trial that could fundamentally change the makeup of the App Store. The fight dates back to August, when Epic added a direct payment mechanism to its hit battle royale game Fortnite in violation of Apple’s rules. The iPhone maker quickly removed the game from the App Store, and Epic responded shortly after with an antitrust lawsuit aiming to establish the App Store as a monopoly. The case will finally be brought to trial starting May 3rd.

The trial promises to deliver huge revelations about the inner workings of one of the biggest and most influential companies in the world, with testimony from Apple CEO Tim Cook, Craig Federighi, Phil Schiller, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, and more. We’ve already made some fascinating discoveries from documents published ahead of the trial, and there’s sure to be a lot more news ahead.

You can follow along with everything right here.

Spotify now lets you subscribe to podcasts

(Image credit: Spotify)

Spotify has launched its paid podcast subscription service. This lets podcasters who host their shows on Spotify’s Anchor platform to charge listeners for their podcasts. As rumoured, podcasters can choose to offer subscriber-only extras such as bonus content and no adverts.

Spotify has opened a waiting list that podcasters can join. Once their turn comes, they should be able to offer subscriptions.

For the first two years, Spotify won’t take a cut of podcasters’ earnings, but creators will have to cover the cost of transaction fees through Spotify’s payment partner Stripe. From 2023, Spotify will take five per cent of creators’ subscription revenue, which is less than Apple will take with its forthcoming podcast subscription service.

Spotify’s service is currently only available in the US, but will come to other countries “in the coming months”. It launched with 12 independent podcasts, including Tiny Leaps, Big Changes and Mindful in Minutes, offering subscriber-only content.

Broadcaster NPR will also offer subscribers ad-free versions of certain shows from 4th May. These include How I Built This with Guy Raz, Short Wave, It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders, Code Switch, and Planet Money, with more following in the coming weeks.

These NPR shows will be tagged as ‘Plus’ – for example, Planet Money Plus.

Spotify claims the new service will help podcasters grow their audiences.

“By enabling wide distribution of subscriber-only content, our aim is to help podcasters maximise their subscription audiences and grow them from their existing listener bases,” it said in a blog post. “Within Spotify, this content will be searchable and discoverable like any other podcast episode.”

Paid-for shows will show up with a lock on the Play button. Because subscribers pay through Spotify’s Anchor platform, Spotify won’t have to pay Apple any cut of in-app purchases.

Anyone hosting podcasts elsewhere will also soon be able to integrate them into Spotify, though it’s not clear exactly how this will work.

Apple announced last week that it was launching its own podcast subscription service next month. As well as setting the price, podcasters on Apple’s platform can decide what extras (if any) you get for paying – examples include bonus content, early access, and ad-free shows. Free trials and sample episodes are also options.

With the news that Spotify raised its UK prices this week, hopefully, this service will be worth paying that little bit extra for.

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Fortnite isn’t on Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service because Epic won’t allow it

Epic Games is holding back Fortnite from being available on Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service, according to a new deposition made public as part of the Epic case against Apple. The Fortnite developer views Microsoft’s xCloud service as competition to its PC offerings, and the company is deliberately not offering Fortnite on xCloud as a result.

Joe Kreiner, Epic’s vice president of business development, was questioned over why Fortnite isn’t available on xCloud, and confirmed it was a deliberate choice. “We viewed Microsoft’s efforts with xCloud to be competitive with our PC offerings,” says Kreiner in the deposition. The court document makes it appear like Kreiner may go on to explain why, but the next part of the questioning has been redacted.

Fortnite is a free-to-play game on Xbox, and the only way to currently access the game on an iPhone is through Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service. Epic Games partnered with Nvidia last year to launch Fortnite on GeForce Now and has helped Nvidia offer a number of other games from its PC game store on the Nvidia cloud gaming service, where all of the revenue from the original game’s purchase or any in-app purchases goes back to Epic rather than Nvidia. As far as Epic is concerned, the game is simply running on a PC.

That is likely a key reason why Epic has favored Nvidia over Microsoft to host Fortnite in the cloud. Microsoft doesn’t currently allow rival game stores on Xbox or xCloud in any form, and all transactions go through Microsoft there. In fact, Kreiner even admits that Epic Games hasn’t tried to negotiate with Microsoft over the requirement to have to use the Xbox maker’s store and commerce engine.

Epic’s entire case against Apple is centered on the App Store, and the company believes Apple should allow rival app stores on iOS devices or rival payment processing platforms. Epic is trying to fight Apple’s App Store policies, a 30 percent (15 percent for some) cut for subscriptions and in-app purchases, and the removal of Fortnite from the App Store. Kreiner’s questioning is part of this ongoing lawsuit, and it’s a huge case that’s already shining a light on the practices throughout the mobile and game industry that result in consumers being able to access games and apps across devices beyond just the iPhone.

The Golden State Warriors are auctioning team memorabilia collections as NFTs

The Golden State Warriors are auctioning off a plethora of team-related memorabilia as non-fungible tokens, the team’s first foray into the world of NFTs. The Golden State Warriors Legacy NFT Collection has two series minted on the blockchain: the Warriors Championship Ring NFTs and Commemorative Ticket Stub NFTs, which were designed by artists’ studio Black Madre.

The Championship Ring NFT collection features the Warriors’ six NBA championship rings reproduced as NFTs, with a one-of-one NFT combining all six championships into one NFT. The collection includes:

1947 NBA Championship celebrating the first championship in league history
1956 NBA Championship
1975 NBA Championship
2015 NBA Championship
2017 NBA Championship
2018 NBA Championship
1-of-1 Warriors Six-Time NBA Champion Ring

The winning bidder on the one-of-one NFT will also receive a physical ring to be presented on court at a future game. The NFTs will be “paired with live experiences,” the team said, including a Warrior-for-a-Day experience, and proceeds from the auction will benefit the Warriors Community Foundation.

The ticket stub NFT collection includes

The First Ever NBA Championship (Game 5)
1956 NBA Championship (NBA Finals Game 5)
1975 NBA Championship (Game 4)
We Believe First Round Upset (NBA Playoffs First Round Game 6), 2007
2015 NBA Championship (NBA Finals Game 6)
Single Season NBA Wins Record (73)
2017 NBA Championship (NBA Finals Game 5)
2018 NBA Championship (NBA Finals Game 4)
Last regular season game at Oracle Arena Warriors vs. Clippers; April 7th, 2019
First Game at Chase Center – Warriors vs. Clippers; October 24th, 2019
1-of-1 Warriors Golden Ticket NFT

The auction — which only will accept the Ethereum cryptocurrency as payment — for the collection is now live and will run through the weekend on GSWNFT.com. Given the Warriors’ large fan base among the techies of Silicon Valley, the foray into NFTs should be a slam dunk for the team.

This isn’t the first NBA appearance in the NFT realm — the NBA Top Shot platform lets fans of the game buy “moments” from NBA history, sort of like digital trading cards. The moment where LeBron James dunked over Nemanja Bjelica in 2019 recently sold for $208,000.