author_name|Jon Fingas

Star Wars: Visions is returning for a second ‘season,’ this time with a more international scope — including a studio you might not have expected. Disney has announced that Star Wars: Visions Volume 2 will premiere May 4th (aka Star Wars Day) with shorts from nine countries, including one from UK stop-motion legend Aardman. Details of the project (“I Am Your Mother”) aren’t available, but it’s directed by Wallace & Gromit veteran Magdalena Osinska.

Other titles come from 88 Pictures (India), Cartoon Saloon (Ireland), D’art Shtajio (Japan), El Guiri (Spain), Punkrobot (Chile), Studio La Cachette (France), Studio Mir (South Korea) and Triggerfish (South Africa). Some of the creators have illustrious credentials. El Guiri’s Rodrigo Blaas is a Pixar alumnus, for example, while Triggerfish has worked on BBC titles like The Highway Rat and Stick Man.

The first Visions focused on Japanese anime studios’ approach to the Star Wars universe, including well-known names like Production I.G (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) and Trigger (Kill la Kill). Creators were given more creative freedom than those producing canonical movies and TV shows — they were free to not only pursue different art styles and themes, but to break continuity with the official storyline. That’s likely to continue with Volume 2, as series executive producer James Waugh says the anthology is about “celebratory expressions” of Star Wars that open “bold new ways” of telling stories in the space fantasy setting.

The Visions release date bolsters an increasingly packed Star Wars release schedule at Disney+. It starts with The Mandalorian season three on March 1st, but will also include Young Jedi Adventures (spring), Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew. You’ll have plenty to watch, then, even if the animated shorts aren’t to your liking.

Meta has routinely fought data scrapers, but it also participated in that practice itself — if not necessarily for the same reasons. Bloomberg has obtained legal documents from a Meta lawsuit against a former contractor, Bright Data, indicating that the Facebook owner paid its partner to scrape other websites. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the relationship in a discussion with Bloomberg, but said his company used Bright Data to build brand profiles, spot “harmful” sites and catch phishing campaigns, not to target competitors.

Stone added that data scraping could serve “legitimate integrity and commercial purposes” so long as it was done legally and honored sites’ terms of service. Meta terminated its arrangement with Bright Data after the contractor allegedly violated company terms when gathering and selling data from Facebook and Instagram.

Neither Bright Data nor Meta is saying which sites they scraped. Bright Data is countersuing Meta in a bid to keep scraping Facebook and Instagram, arguing that it only collects publicly available information and respects both European Union and US regulations.

Meta has spent years suing individuals and companies for scraping its platforms without permission. In some cases, it has accused companies of masking their activities and accessing sensitive details that require logins. Last year, for instance, Meta sued Octopus last year over a tool that reportedly collected sign-ins and took private information like dates of birth and phone numbers.

However, the Bright Data revelation isn’t a good look for a company that has faced numerous privacy violation accusations, including some related to scrapers. The EU fined Meta €265 million (about $277 million) last fall for allegedly failing to protect Facebook users against scraping that grabbed and exposed private information. This latest case isn’t guaranteed to create further trouble, but certainly won’t help Meta’s defense.

Don’t worry if you missed out on Nintendo’s bargain game vouchers from 2019 — they’re back. The company is once again offering a pair of vouchers for $100 to Switch Online subscribers. If you buy two eligible $60 games, this could save you $10 on each….

343 Industries and Halo may be here to stay despite Microsoft’s mass layoffs, but that doesn’t mean it’s business as usual for the franchise. Bloombergsources claim 343 is effectively restarting Halo development between multiple changes that include the loss of “at least” 95 jobs, including directors and key contractors. Notably, the studio is reportedly switching to Epic’s Unreal Engine after both a leadership shuffle and struggling with its aging in-house platform (Slipspace) — it’s even breaking from its familiar story-driven gameplay, according to the tipsters.

The 343 team is understood to be using Unreal for an unannounced game, nicknamed “Tatanka,” developed with the help of long-time ally Certain Affinity. It was originally built as a battle royale title but might “evolve” into other forms, the sources say. While some at 343 are supposedly worried Unreal might affect how Halo feels to play, Slipspace’s glitches and hard-to-use tech have apparently held back multiplayer features in Halo Infinite that include past favorites like Assault and Extraction.

Many of the laid off workers were crafting game prototypes in Unreal rather than producing new missions for Halo Infinite, Bloomberg says. 343 had considered switching engines for the past decade, the insiders claim, but it wasn’t until studio lead Bonnie Ross and engine overseer David Berger left in late 2022 that the company committed to the change. Pierre Hintze, who replaced Ross, is said to have focused the company on “greenlighting” new tech while expanding Infinite.

Microsoft has declined to comment. A revamped strategy wouldn’t be surprising even without layoffs. While Infinite was well-received on launch, delayed modes, seasons and even a cancelled split-screen mode haven’t helped its reputation. 343 has also played a role in some of the Halo series’ less-than-stellar projects, including the problematic Halo: Master Chief Collection and offshoots like Halo Wars 2. A fresh start isn’t guaranteed to reinvigorate the sci-fi shooter, but it may address lingering concerns.