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Rocksmith+ Announces New Music Partnership with Warner Music Group

Rocksmith+ has announced a new partnership with Warner Music Group, to bring even more popular artists to the music-learning service, such as Linkin Park, The Cure, Sepultura, Twisted Sister, and more. "Rocksmith+ has always been about empowering people to learn guitar with their favorite songs," said Jay Cohen, Vice President of Executive Publishing at Ubisoft. "For beginners, guitar players, and music fans this is a great step forward. The large library of songs for learners and players to pick up and play on Rocksmith+ continues to expand every month.

This new partnership with Warner Music Group will help bring both new and established artists to a new and growing audience. We appreciate the progressive approach of our colleagues at WMG, and we look forward to everything we will do together to deliver on the promise of a new music distribution model for all those who make music and the people who love to jam along to it."

NetEase Not Taking Blizzard to Court, One Man Seeking $43.5 Million Settlement

According to a recent news article released by Chinese news group Sina Technology, NetEase has filed a lawsuit against its former publishing partner Blizzard Entertainment, to the tune of (around) $43.5 Million. The Chinese Internet technology company is seeking compensation, in the form of a very large refund, following Blizzard's total exit from the nation's online gaming sector - its server infrastructure in China was shut down in January of this year. The closing of Blizzard-related services represented a very abrupt end to a 14-year long relationship between the two online gaming specialists - press coverage at the time presented a tense situation involving many major disagreements - the partnership was broken because of unfavorable terms on Blizzard's part.

NetEase posits that it had to compensate its customer base through refunds from its own reserves, after the sudden shutdown of Blizzard's hugely popular MMO - World of Warcraft, and other online multiplayer game series including Overwatch, Hearthstone, Diablo and Starcraft. A significant chunk of the $43.5 million settlement is said to cover the company's cost in refunding part of its customer base - somewhere in the range of 1.12 million players - for discontinued games and services. NetEase is also reported to be seeking damages for broken license agreements, unsold merchandise inventory and the loss of access to future Blizzard intellectual properties.

Update Apr 25th: According to an article from PC Gamer, published today, NetEase is not taking Blizzard to court. It turns out that a serial litigator, Yang Jun, has included NetEase as an appellant in his filed legal documents - under another company name, The9, an apparently defunct former licensing partner. PC Gamer has been informed that Yang Jun has sued NetEase in the past, and that his latest batch of legal documents have been amended to reflect that he is the lone party in demanding a financial settlement from Blizzard.

Intel Denies Graphics IP Licensing Deal with AMD

You must've read recent reports on the web about an AMD-Intel licensing deal. We purposefully didn't cover that information, spread on May 15th, based on an expiring graphics IP licensing deal between NVIDIA and Intel. The initial report said that since that deal was expiring, Intel was now turning to its x86 arch-enemy, AMD. It would seem those reports weren't based on facts, having since been denied by Intel, who told Barron's Tiernan Ray that "the recent rumors that Intel has licensed AMD's graphics technology are untrue."

Investors and speculators are an attentive bunch, and jumped at the original rumor, expecting another million-dollar licensing deal. As a result of the Intel-AMD licensing deal rumor, AMD's stock soared by 12% even before AMD's Financial Analyst day. Naturally, after Intel rectified the story, AMD's stock proceeded to correct the speculative bubble, dropping back to previous levels. AMD could have denied the deal as much as Intel could (it takes two to tango), but chose not to. The company played smartly, keeping its cards close to its chest with a "no comment" posture regarding the rumor. This let AMD AMD play on it, seeing their stock increase (even if it was a short-lived scenario, now rectified in its stock value.)
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