Valve buys ‘Firewatch’ developer Campo Santo

Firewatch

Valve has just purchased game developer Campo Santo. The small 12-person team known for its game Firewatch will be relocating to the video game developer’s headquarters in Seattle. In a blog post announcing the sale, Campo Santo claims they “found a group of folks who, to their core, feel the same way about the work that they do” in Valve. The studio has confirmed that they will continue working on its next game In The Valley of Gods and that this game won’t be a PC-exclusive under Valve. Campo Santo also plans to continue supporting Firewatch and will still release its literary journal, The Quarterly Review.

Source: The Verge

Pro photo hosting service SmugMug buys Flickr

After Flickr’s fate has been put up in the air with Yahoo’s sale to Verizon and being joined with AOL in Verizon’s Oath subsidiary, professional photo hosting service SmugMug wanted to help out. The company has just bought Flickr for an undisclosed amount. The photo service hasn’t been able to mount a successful comeback with tough competition in its space because of services like Instagram. But SmugMug is confident it can thrive still. SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill told USA Today “Flickr has survived through thick-and-thin and is core to the entire fabric of the internet.”

Now, whether SmugMug can revive the service is something we can’t say yet at the moment. The company promises to keep Flickr as a standalone community and will supposedly get the focus and resources it needs.

Report claims Xiaomi is in interested in buying GoPro

GoPro has been scaling down its business due to financial issues. The company announced back in January that it was leaving the drone business because of this. GoPro’s CEO Nick Woodman has said in an interview with CNN before that he was open to selling the company. He said, “If there was an opportunity to merge GoPro with a larger parent company that could help us scale our business and provide a better return on investment… we would welcome the opportunity…”

Now there seems to be someone interested in buying GoPro. Bloomberg reports Chinese tech company Xiaomi is looking to purchase the action sports camera company. Xiaomi is known in Asia for its affordable, feature-packed phones but it has also delved into everything from robot vacuums, laptops, electric scooters, power banks, routers, and many more. Perhaps, it wants to boost its action camera segment or possibly get into drones. Not much is known about this potential deal at the moment but GoPro is being valued at around a billion dollars, according to the report from The Information.

EU will review Apple’s acquisition of music discovery app Shazam

We reported back in December that Apple was set to buy music discover app Shazam. The tech giant reportedly signed a US$400m acquisition deal with the London-based company. And now it seems the European Commission wants to investigate the deal following requests from seven countries that fear the agreement will “adversely affect competition.” The seven petitioners include Austria, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. When Apple made the announcement last year, it said the deal will be less than the “turnover threshold” for the European Commission. However, it’s above the merger notification threshold for Austria, which is leading the quorum of countries worried about the deal.

This investigation forces Apple to let the EU authorities know about the deal and have to wait for the investigation into the deal’s implications. The EC has up to 35 working days for the initial investigations and another 105 working days if there are serious concerns that need to be looked into. Apple will then have the opportunity for approval by answering and addressing the concerns.

Source: The Guardian