Asmodee, the giant board game company behind Catan, Ticket to Ride and Exploding Kittens, has been spun off from corporate owner Embracer Group in a larger move that effectively trisects the beleaguered Swedish holding corporation and leaves Asmodee holding €900 million of new debt.

Advertised as a “transformative step for value creation” by Embracer’s press release, the dissolution will create three business entities that will be separately and publicly traded on Nasdaq Stockholm, the country’s stock exchange. Embracer claims that such a plan will “enable the entities to unlock value in [their] high-quality assets” while owner Lars Wingesfors stays on as the largest shareholder and leader of a new ownership structure (he will control 20% of the total capital and 40% of votes).

Along with Asmodee Group, Embracer’s suite of independent and video game studios will be collected under the strangely named “Coffee Stain & Friends” - referencing the Goat Simulator and Satisfactory developer - while the licence for The Lord of the Rings joins Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider franchise (which has its own taletop RPG adaptation in the works), comics label Dark Horse and several other miscellaneous holdings as “Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends”.

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When 21st Century Fox (and with it Deadpool) officially came under Disney’s jurisdiction in 2017, there was some rightfully placed concern that the Mouse would bar the merc with a mouth from saying whatever the hell he motherfucking wanted. Fans can rest easy, however, because Marvel just released the first trailer…

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The cast and crew of 1999's game-changing The Blair Witch Project didn’t go out and get terrorized in the woods for nothing, even if that’s sort of how they’re being treated by Lionsgate and Blumhouse right now. Ever allergic to new ideas, the two major studios announced yet another reboot of the iconic found footage…

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New Secret Knots comic! “How to step out of the picture”. This one was inspired by people I saw looking at the camera in some photos from a concert. No hats though. (I had, at one point in my life,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Late Friday night the U.S. Senate "reauthorized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a key. U.S. surveillance authority," reports Axios, "shortly after it expired in the early hours Saturday morning." The reauthorization came despite bipartisan concerns about Section 702, which allows the government to collect communications from non-U.S. citizens overseas without a warrant. The legislation passed the Senate 60 to 34, with 17 Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 16 Republicans voting "nay." It extends the controversial Section 702 for two more years. The bill had already passed last week in the U.S. House of Representatives, explains CNN: Under FISA's Section 702, the government hoovers up massive amounts of internet and cell phone data on foreign targets. Hundreds of thousands of Americans' information is incidentally collected during that process and then accessed each year without a warrant — down from millions of such queries the US government ran in past years. Critics refer to these queries as "backdoor" searches... According to one assessment, it forms the basis of most of the intelligence the president views each morning and it has helped the U.S. keep tabs on Russia's intentions in Ukraine, identify foreign efforts to access US infrastructure, uncover foreign terror networks and thwart terror attacks in the U.S. An interesting detail from The Verge: Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced an amendment that would have struck language in the House bill that expanded the definition of "electronic communications service provider." Under the House's new provision, anyone "who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications." The expansion, Wyden has claimed, would force "ordinary Americans and small businesses to conduct secret, warrantless spying." The Wyden-Hawley amendment failed 34-58, meaning that the next iteration of the FISA surveillance program will be more expansive than before. Saturday morning the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill banning TikTok if its Chinese owner doesn't sell the app.

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The U.S. House of Representatives just passed its long-delayed Ukraine aid bill. But along with it they also approved a bill banning TikTok "if its Chinese owner does not sell the video app," according to NPR: While lawmakers in the House advanced a similar bill last month, this effort is different for two reasons: It is attached to a sweeping foreign aid bill providing support for Ukraine and Israel. And it addresses concerns from some members of the Senate by extending the deadline for TikTok to find a buyer. President Biden supports the effort. That means TikTok being forced to sell, or face a possible ban, is on the fast-track to becoming law. It would mark the first time ever the U.S. government has passed a law that could shut down an entire social media platform, setting the stage for what is expected to be a protracted legal battle... TikTok says it has built a firewall between its headquarters in Los Angeles and its parent company in Beijing, but some reports indicate U.S. user data does still move between the two. While there has been no evidence made public that Chinese government officials have accessed Americans' information through TikTok, the idea that China has the theoretical ability to weaponize an app used by half of America has been enough to set off an all-out crackdown.

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