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Action-adventure open-world game Valheim has crossed the four million player mark on the Steam platform within three weeks of its launch in Early Access. Also, the game has hit 5 lakh concurrent Steam players that put it amongst the top 5 most played games in the history of Steam. The game has also been played for a combined time of a mind-boggling 10,000 years. Iron Gate AB , the developers of the sandbox game, announced this accomplishment via a post on the game’s Steam page. The Viking survival game has also climbed to the 57th spot in Steam’s Top 250 best-reviewed games of all time, as per Iron Gate AB. It has not even been one month since its launch and Valheim has become quite popular on the Steam platform. The game is still in Early Access mode and can be purchased for Rs 529. It had 2 million players within 13 days of its release, a number that has steadily grown and now stands at 4 million. The game is set in the realm of Valheim, where you play as … [Read more...] about 10,000 years and 4 million ‘Vikings’: The story of Valheim

Kogan's net profit after tax (NPAT) at the 2021 financial half year grew by 164% to AU$23.6 million when compared to its performance from last year. It added that gross sales and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by more than 95% and 130%, respectively, to AU$638.2 million and AU$38.8 million during the period. For the half year, Kogan paid AU$11.5 million in Australian taxes. The company attributed the growth to strong Christmas and Black Friday sales periods, touting that seven of the company's 10 biggest trading days ever occurred during those periods. According to Kogan, its online website earned more AU$50 million in gross sales during Black Friday week alone by selling over 470,000 items. Meanwhile, Kogan marketplace saw over AU$10 million in gross sales during that same week. As of the end of 1HFY21, Kogan also reported that it has around 3 million active customers. During this time last year, Kogan had 1.7 active million … [Read more...] about Kogan profit grew 164% during first half of FY21

Instant messaging app Telegram has announced a new update to its app through which it will add support for new features for its users. Telegram is arch-rival to WhatsApp and recently seen a surge in its popularity ever since WhatsApp announced its new privacy policy. As part of the new update, the app is adding support for features like auto-delete, expiring invites, new emojis, improvements in chat imports and reporting system and more. Here’s a look at each of them in detail: Auto-delete After this update, Telegram users will be able to enable an auto-delete timer in all Telegram chats . This will automatically erase messages for all participants after sending. Users will get to choose from two expiry limits — 24 hours and 7 days. Readers must note that the auto-delete function will work only for messages sent after the timer is set and earlier messages will stay in the chat history. Once this setting is enabled, all messages will show a countdown to their … [Read more...] about Telegram rolls out new features to take on WhatsApp

Salesforce.com Inc on Thursday forecast full-year profit that was below market expectations, sending the shares of the online software company down 3.9% in extended trading. The company's latest and biggest acquisition of workspace messaging company Slack Technologies Inc for $27.7 billion deal in December is seen as expensive by any Wall Street analysts, even though there are long-term benefits. "Weak FY22 EPS guidance suggests margin expansion is likely to be muted even adjusting for the acquisition of Slack," Scott Berg, Needham & Co analyst, said. The largest provider of customer relationship management software forecast full-year adjusted earnings per share between $3.39 and $3.41, below estimates of $3.49 per share. While new emerging virus strains pose a new hurdle to business spending, Salesforce is also facing stiff competition from Microsoft Corp, which is ramping up its cloud-based offerings. Revenue in the quarter ended Jan. 31 rose to $5.82 billion … [Read more...] about Salesforce full-year profit forecast disappoints, shares drop

Facebook Inc ended a one-week blackout of Australian news on its popular social media site on Friday and announced preliminary commercial agreements with three small local publishers. The moves reflected easing tensions between the U.S. company and the Australian government, a day after the country's parliament passed a law forcing it and Alphabet Inc's Google to pay local media companies for using content on their platforms. The new law makes Australia the first nation where a government arbitrator can set the price Facebook and Google pay domestic media to show their content if private negotiations fail. Canada and other countries have shown interest in replicating Australia's reforms. Facebook said it had signed partnership agreements with Schwartz Media, Solstice Media and Private Media. The trio own a mix of publications, including weekly newspapers, online magazines and specialist periodicals. Facebook did not disclose the financial details of the agreements, which … [Read more...] about Facebook switches news back on in Australia, signs content deals