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Recap: The proprietary mobile messaging service arrived in August 2005. Riding the wave of success that BlackBerry was experiencing at the time, BBM quickly became one of the top messaging applications around and influenced the development of several other messaging apps. The consumer version of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) will be shutting down on May 31, 2019, after a nearly 14-year run, it was announced on Thursday. BlackBerry’s fall from grace has been well documented but even still, the company had the wherewithal to bring BBM to other platforms including Android and iOS. In 2016, BlackBerry struck up a partnership with Emtek to keep BBM going with new features. Despite those efforts, however, users have moved on to other platforms and Emtek has found it difficult to attract new users. As a result, it’s time to move on and sunset the consumer BBM service. If you recently purchased stickers for BBM, you can nab a refund through Apple or Google. In light of Emtek’s decision, BlackBerry announced that it is making its BBM Enterprise (BBMe) service available for individual use. The enterprise-grade messaging platform with end-to-end encryption will be available for free for the first year. After that, it’ll set you back just $2.49 every six months.

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Bottom line: Details of Disney’s long-planned streaming service—Disney+—have finally been revealed. It will launch this November 12th and cost $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year. The app supports 4K and HDR content, and subscribers will be able to download movies and shows for offline viewing. It was way back in 2017 when Disney first announced it would be launching a streaming service to compete against the likes of Netflix. Last November, we learned that it would go by the name Disney+ and arrive with new and exclusive Marvel and Star Wars series. Now, Disney has revealed pricing and launch details at an investor event. $6.99 per month is certainly competitive—almost half the cost of Netflix’s standard $13 per month plan. Streaming services can live or die based on their content, but it appears Disney+ will have plenty to entice consumers. Disney can call on its catalog of current Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars franchises—Captain Marvel will be an exclusive on launch day—as well as new shows including live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian. There's also a slew of Marvel properties to look forward to: a Falcon & Winter Soldier spinoff show; WandaVision, in which Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprise their roles as Scarlet Witch and Vision, respectively; and the unnamed Loki series starring Tom Hiddleston. Subscribers will also be able to watch 5,000 episodes of the Disney Channel’s TV series and 100 of its original movies. But the biggest announcement came at the end of the event when it was revealed Disney+ would be “the exclusive streaming-video-on-demand home of The Simpsons.” All 30 seasons of the animated show will be available from day one. Disney said it expects to have 60 million to 90 million subscribers worldwide for the service by the end of 2024.

Members only: If you have been on the fence over whether or not to signup for Nintendo’s Switch Online service, Amazon might just have the offer to push you over the edge. Twitch announced on Thursday that it is offering up to one year of Switch Online to Twitch Prime members. If you already have Amazon Prime, then you already have Twitch Prime, meaning all you have to do is sign in and claim the offer. The deal starts you off with a 90-day trial membership to Nintendo’s online service. After 60 days, you can go back to Twitch Prime and claim nine months more of the service tacked on to your trial. One year of Switch Online is normally $19.99, so it’s not a bad offer if you have been hesitant to give it a go. Already have Switch Online? That’s okay. You can claim the offer too, and it will be stacked on to the end of your current subscription. Users will no longer be able to claim the offer after September 24th, 2019. The 9-month membership offer must be redeemed before January 22nd, 2020. It is only a good deal for those already paying for Amazon Prime. Memberships run $13 per month or $120 per year, so it doesn’t make sense to sign up for Prime just to get the Nintendo offer unless you were planning on joining anyway. Switch Online is similar to Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. It allows users to play with friends online and is required for online only games like Fortnite or Nintendo's new exclusive Tetris 99. Members also gain access to a library of classic NES titles and cloud saves to spare precious memory. Prime members have until September 24 to claim the first three months and January 22, 2020 to claim the remaining nine months. Be warned that once your free membership is up, you will be auto-renewed on a 3-month plan for $7.99 unless you turn off automatic renewals in your Switch settings. Article by: TechSpot

What just happened? Social media sites have been battling the spread of the New Zealand terror attack video. Facebook alone removed 1.5 million copies of the clip in the first 24 hours of the shooting, 1.2 million of which were deleted at the upload stage. Fifty people died and at least 20 more were injured in the shooting last Friday, which took place at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. A gunman livestreamed the incident on Facebook using a head-mounted camera, and while the social network removed the video and the person’s account, the 17-minute clip was still shared online. Despite stopping 1.2 million copies of the video being uploaded, 300,000 made their way onto Facebook before being taken down. The site also blocked edited versions that removed the graphic footage, something Facebook said it did as a mark of respect to those affected and over "concerns of local authorities." YouTube and Twitter have also been removing the video, and Reddit banned the notorious r/watchpeopledie subreddit in the wake of the massacres, citing a site policy on “glorifying violence.” Even Valve has been forced into action, with the company removing profiles that were allegedly tributes to the shooter. The perpetrator mentioned Pewdiepie in the livestream, something the YouTube star said he found “sickening.” This isn’t the first time extreme acts of violence have been streamed to Facebook. In 2016, the shooting of police officers appeared on Facebook Live, and a Thai man broadcast himself on the platform murdering his 11-month-old daughter a year later. In the wake of the attacks, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said she wants to discuss the subject of livestreaming with Facebook.

In brief: Valve first tried to implement measures to combat review bombing in 2017 but a new announcement from the company admits that there’s room for improvement. Valve have said they are now rolling out a new feature to remove ‘off-topic’ reviews from their overall ratings calculations. Steam’s review and rating system is a key part in many gamers’ decision-making when they are on the hunt for a new title to play. But while most gamers would expect the review scores to be indicative of the quality of the game, thanks to review bombing that’s not always the case. Review bombing has become a po[CENSORED]r method for consumers to voice their displeasure en masse about decisions or actions taken by developers that don’t necessarily pertain to how well a game plays. For example, when Metro Exodus publishers recently announced the latest installment would be a timed-exclusive on the Epic store, thousands of reviewers piled onto the older Metro games on Steam to vent their frustration. While it’s understandable for people to use whatever methods available to them to make their voices heard, review bombing is a phenomenon that’s bad for developers and bad for gamers who only really care about the quality of the product they are buying. And so the stage is set for Valve’s latest move to combat review bombing. In an announcement on Friday, Valve gave details for their new tool: “we’re going to identify off-topic review bombs and remove them from the Review Score.” Despite the simplicity of the proposition, Valve’s blog post goes into some depth about what they consider off-topic, and the potential flaws of the new system. One such flaw is that any genuine reviews posted during what Valve deems to be a ‘review bomb’ will be filtered out alongside the off-topic posts. It’s clear that Valve understands that people don’t want to just be silenced or have negative posts censored, so the reviews themselves aren’t being removed. Instead, those reviews just won’t count towards the overall rating. For gamers who do care about the more theoretical and political aspects of game publishing, Valve is including the option to turn off this feature in the Steam Store settings. This will mean the system doesn’t affect the ratings you’ll see – bombs and all.