January was a full-out sprint for video game industry mergers, with major players jostling for a shot to have the best console money can’t buy due to supply issues. The latest: Sony announced plans to buy Bungie, the studio responsible for the creation of both Halo and Destiny, for $3.6 billion.

The deal is not only notable for Bungie’s top-class IP offerings, but also for being another thrilling entry into the strange saga of the studio. Bungie was first acquired by Microsoft in 2000, becoming a household name and helping put Xbox on the map with Halo. After splitting from Microsoft in 2007, Bungie eventually entered a 10-year publishing deal with Activision Blizzard (which it left in 2019). Microsoft announced plans to buy Activision Blizzard earlier in January for a whopping $68.7 billion.

Not to be forgotten in last month's gaming acquisition-athon, Take-Two Interactive agreed to purchase Farmville creator Zynga for $12.7 billion. Where’s Nintendo in all this? Stuck on the sand kingdom level of Super Mario Odyssey and screaming at each other.

So what happens now?

Well, Xbox and PC Destiny fans can breathe a sigh of relief—according to Sony, the Bungie acquisition isn’t about creating new, exclusive content for Playstation (at least for now): Bungie will remain a multiplatform studio with the option to self-publish its games. Microsoft made a similar announcement for its Activision deal, confirming that it plans to continue supporting Activision Blizzard games on competing platforms (as it’s done with Minecraft).

While these cross-platform friendly moves could be seen as the dawning of a harmonious new era in the console wars, they more likely point to the industry’s increased focus on the subscription model.

• The Xbox Game Pass features over 400 games users can download and play for one monthly fee. Microsoft says the service has 25 million subscribers.
• Destiny 2, Bungie’s most popular title, is free to play but offers season passes and expansions. The game has drawn in 20 million players since 2019.
• In December, Bloomberg reported that Sony is planning a new subscription service to compete with Game Pass.

For now, subscription services and popular IP offer Sony and Microsoft a shield against the battered supply chain.—MK

And we feel…weird?

In the second-biggest gaming deal of the day (but first in our hearts), the word puzzle sensation Wordle was acquired by the New York Times.

The purchase is simultaneously a shock—considering how “grassroots” the Wordle experience felt—and also not that shocking at all. The NYT has been vocal about investing in its puzzles business, and now it adds this viral phenomenon to a heavyweight roster that already includes Crossword and Spelling Bee. The Times said the price for Wordle was in the low seven figures.

Not a bad haul for a pandemic hobby. Created by software engineer Josh Wardle to help his puzzle-loving partner kill time during Covid, Wordle has exploded in recent months.

• The game was played by just 90 people on Nov. 1, per the NYT. Fast forward to today, and millions of people play it on the reg.
• Wordle spawned numerous spinoffs, has been leveraged by brands for marketing purposes, and was crocheted into a pillow.

The only news that matters for Wordle fans: The game will remain initially free for new and existing players, the NYT said.—NF

The 2022 Beijing Olympics must be taking notes from your mom after you broke curfew sophomore year. Ahead of the start of the games on Friday, China has created the most aggressive “closed loop” Covid bubble of the pandemic.

It’s kinda like the NBA’s bubble in Orlando in 2020, but supersized. The Olympics bubble (which actually consists of three interconnected bubbles) will host about 11,000 international athletes, guests, and other participants, as well as thousands of Chinese volunteers and staff responsible for monitoring everyone’s movements within it.

Speaking of movement, people involved in the Olympics will be shuttled to three competition locations nearly 111 miles apart…all while avoiding contact with every single citizen in China’s second-largest city.

• All locations are connected by high-speed trains and bus routes used only by residents of the Olympic bubble. Chinese citizens have even been told not to help if they saw one of these bubble buses crash.

Zoom out: China’s intense Covid bubble is just one manifestation of its attempt to assert complete control over the upcoming Olympics. Authorities have also detained activists in their homes, shut down social media accounts of critics, and declared that “any behavior or speech that is against the Olympic spirit” will be subject to punishment.—MM

Stat: The Complete Maus, the first and second installments of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, shot up to the top of the Amazon bestseller list yesterday morning. Interest in Maus has soared since a Tennessee school board banned the book from its curriculum.

Quote: “I’ve done a lot of work on this and 5k is not enough.”

19-year-old Jack Sweeney, who runs a Twitter account that tracks Elon Musk’s private jet, told Insider why he turned down Musk’s offer of $5,000 to shut down the account. Musk has said that accounts that followed his movements were “becoming a security issue,” but Sweeney isn’t moved—he wants $50k from the tech mogul.

Read: The moral calculations of a billionaire. (Washington Post)

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX is now valued at $32 billion after its latest funding round, putting the three-year-old company in the ranks of the richest private startups in the world. It was worth just $1.2 billion in 2020.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet to get you up to speed.

What does it offer? FTX calls itself a crypto exchange “built by traders, for traders.” It’s where you can buy or sell derivatives like crypto futures, options, leveraged tokens, and more. It’s not available in the US, but it has an affiliate that is: FTX U.S., which is worth $8 billion on its own.

Why does it seem familiar? Probably because FTX has been on a marketing blitz, buying the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena and partnering with celebs like Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen. It’ll also have a commercial spot in the upcoming Super Bowl.

Who’s in charge? Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s CEO, is a name to know. He lives in the Bahamas, wears T-shirts and shorts, is 29 years old, and has a net worth of more than $22 billion.

Big picture: Crypto prices have taken a big tumble in recent months, and the biggest digital token—bitcoin—is down ~43% from its November peak. Bankman-Fried and his legions of investors think this is a temporary stumble in the sector’s upward march.—NF

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Geography trivia

With 267,570, Sweden has the most of these out of any country in the world.

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