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In a ground-breaking step for the streaming industry, Movies Plus has become the “first streaming platform” to allow subscribers to pay for their service using Bitcoin.
The free movie streaming app announced on Wednesday (Mar.12) it has integrated Bitcoin as an accepted payment method through a partnership with crypto payment processor Flash, which utilizes the Bitcoin Lightning Network for fast and cheap transactions.
What is Movies Plus?
It should be pointed out that Movies Plus is a small and up-and-coming streaming service. The company’s tagline on X is, “No commercials, no censorship, no agenda. Just quality content, at an affordable price.”
It is part of a wave of new entertainment brands in the US promoting their belief in free speech as a reason to subscribe.
One of the biggest titles on the service currently is The Plot Against the President a documentary into the Russian collusion accusations levelled at former President Donald Trump.
The company’s CEO and founder Corey Tucek, an evangelical Bitcoin supporter and businessman, shared his excitement of the news on X earlier this week.

Have been waiting a while to share this.
You can now subscribe to Movies Plus by paying in Bitcoin! https://t.co/C7B0aoIHpR
— Cory Tucek (@Cory_Tucek) March 12, 2024

As of yet, the big players in the sector like Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video have not yet shown any indication they will also allow payments by Bitcoin. But with the digital asset reaching record highs this month and the launch of the Bitcoin ETF earlier this year there are signs the cryptocurrency is beginning to penetrate the mainstream.
Featured image: Ideogram
The post This movie streaming platform is accepting Bitcoin appeared first on ReadWrite.

Oh good. Another monthly subscription. This time for Minecraft and its catalog of DLC. Fed up with rarely spending any money in the Minecraft Marketplace for skins? Great news, now you can hand over a monthly fee to Mojang and Microsoft so you can access all the things you mainly never wanted for “free”.
As the world surely closes in on critical mass for subscription services even though humans everywhere continue to sign up and forget to cancel, never really noticing the drip, drip, drip of monthly cash from their accounts, the options keep coming.
Sidenote, I scanned my account the other month to tot up outgoings on subscriptions and the amount was scary. YouTube Premium, Game Pass, Spotify Family, and so on, are all sucking money from my account at different times of the month so I never really notice. Do I, or indeed we now need to pay more to download DLC from the Minecraft Marketplace?
Well, Mojang seems to think we do and the pass is going to cost you $3.99 a month and for this, you will receive access to a rotating catalog of DLC and other Minecraft items and goodies. Long gone is the time when we would just eagerly await a new beta drop of the game from Notch back in the day before corporate Minecraft.
A total of around 150 items will be available at any one time as they come and go and the Pass is available for all Bedrock versions of the game.
If you are mad-keen on downloading the latest and greatest Minecraft worlds like this great Hogwarts one then this could work out well for you, but there seems little point if you only have a passing interest and download the occasional new asset to play around with. A limited free trial is available before you jump in properly. If you do try it, don’t forget to cancel before the billing period starts if you have no intention of staying around.
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According to a talk Cosmic Lounge’s cofounder Tomi Huttula gave at Think Games 2024, his studio has developed a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can prototype games in “five to six hours.”
“Yes, AI is really changing how games are developed and it is a big part of the future of game development,” he said during his talk. “My recommendation to everybody here is that you should be getting your teams and technology ready for AI.”

During the talk, Huttula demonstrated Cosmic Lounge’s in-house tool, Puzzle Engine, which uses dropdown menus and prompts to create a variety of game elements from puzzle engines and game logic to art and levels. He showed off ‘Angry Dev’, a puzzle game prototype created using Puzzle Engine in five to six hours.
“Creative people have a lot of game ideas. The challenge, of course, always has been: how do you know if your idea is good?” said Huttula. “Typically within companies, a designer has an idea, but they need an artist and an engineer to try the idea. So we want it to be super easy for designers – they can come up with ideas to create a prototype, just with Puzzle Engine, without an artist or an engineer.”
He described how Cosmic Lounge’s tech can generate vast quantities of levels, and then play through those levels for testing. It can then provide feedback on important points such as difficulty, possible churn points, and even potential areas for monetization. The human designers, which the studio only has two of, can edit and tweak based on the AI feedback.
Generative AI in an industry scarred by layoffs
“We don’t think that AI is doing anybody’s job,” said Huttula. “This is not replacing somebody…we are thinking about AI as helping our team members to do their job better, be more productive, and get better results.”
However, this might not be a stance shared with many game developers. The industry has been dominated by layoffs for the better part of a year despite soaring profits. It is hard to hear ‘AI is generating and testing levels’ and ‘AI isn’t taking any jobs’ in the same talk without it sticking in the throat. The games industry is grappling with how generative AI will affect it, and with large company bosses such as Square Enix’s President Takashi Kiryu and EA CEO Andrew Wilson boarding the AI hype train, the mood is uneasy.
Valve has introduced new processes for developers to disclose how AI is used in their games. Several users have taken to X to express their unease, with one saying they won’t touch any game made with generative AI. This is a complex, multifaceted issue that the games industry will be confronting for months and years to come.
Featured image credit: Ideogram
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Palworld will forever be known as the game that poked its fingers into the cage holding the giant Nintendo bear. Its fairly unashamed take on the Pokemon world attracted a lot of adverse attention on launch, all the while helping to propel it to one of the most talked about games of the game and garner a player base in the multi-millions in the process.
The launch version was still on the janky side, its Early Access roots well and truly showing above ground. Since then the devs have been constantly tweaking and updating in the background, while fending off legal probing from the Japanese gaming giant and is now ready to launch its first boss into the wild.
So which Pokemon is it based on? That’s probably a highly cynical question but the “internet” is generally happy it is loosely based upon Gardevoir. But it might not be. We do still have to give credit to the devs at Pocketpair for this weird purple Pal that would not look out of place in The Nightmare Before Christmas or Beetlejuice.
A post on the Palworld X account announced its impending arrival:

Attention Pal Tamers
A powerful evil Pal has appeared and is laying siege to the Palpagos Islands! Only the most skilled Pal Tamers stand a chance against her…
Palworld’s first raid, Bellanoir, is coming soon! pic.twitter.com/jZ4iWVl1Qk
— Palworld (@Palworld_EN) March 15, 2024

“Attention Pal Tamers
A powerful evil Pal has appeared and is laying siege to the Palpagos Islands!
Only the most skilled Pal Tamers stand a chance against her…
Palworld’s first raid, Bellanoir, is coming soon!”
But that’s about it to be fair. We know it will be part of a wider patch that will again attempt to address the rampant cheating issue the game is still going through alongside general fixes and balances as the game pushes toward its V1.
In the meantime, the game is included in the current Steam Spring Sale, so if you haven’t picked it up yet, you can get 10% off as we speak.
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