News & Reviews:   shut down

In an unexpected piece of news, OpenAI officially announced that it is shutting down its Sora video generation app, marking a sudden end to one of its most ambitious consumer-facing AI experiments. The company confirmed the move in a public statement, signalling a shift in priorities away from standalone experimental apps.

MBO Cinemas has officially announced that it will cease operations permanently, marking the end of one of Malaysia’s long-running cinema chains. In a public statement shared with customers, the company said it was making the announcement with heavy hearts after many years of serving moviegoers across the country.

Looks like the metaverse isn't going smoothly. According to The Verge, Meta has closed three of its virtual reality game development studios, including Armature Studio, Sanzaru Games, and Twisted Pixel Games, as part of cuts within its Reality Labs division. The moves were confirmed this week during a broader round of layoffs affecting roughly 10% of Reality Labs staff, which reflects a strategic push to reduce costs and rethink investment in metaverse-related projects.

We reported about YouTube demonitising Screen Culture and KH Studios before for releasing thousands of fake AI trailers. Today, it seems that the tech giant has swung the axe. YouTube has permanently shut down these two channels after repeatedly violating the platform’s rules against spam and misleading metadata. Visitors now see an unavailable message when trying to access their pages.

If you read the news about Crucial Memory getting shut down by Micron, this is not really good news for consumers as a whole in the market. But before we get to that, here's the official statement by Micron regarding the exit.

In case you didn't know, Netflix released its first Squid Game: Unleashed mobile game app when the show's third season aired earlier this year. Unfortunately, the developers who built the game app didn't live long enough, as Netflix has confirmed that Boss Fight, the game studio behind the app, will be shut down.

Malaysian aviation magnate Tony Fernandes has announced his decision to shut down all his personal social media accounts under the umbrella of Meta Platforms Inc. — including Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

This month, Microsoft has officially retired the once popular internet voice, video and chat service, Skype. The change will affect both free and paid users of Skype, though Skype for Business will remain unaffected.

Over the weekend, it was announced that ICQ, one of the early pioneers of social online messaging platforms will be shutting down soon. The official ICQ website didn't offer much explanation, as it simply stated "ICQ will stop working from June 26".

Yesterday evening, Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd (AMH) officially announced that its Go Shop business will be shut down soon. A sudden announcement for sure, but what's even more surprising is that the operation will cease on 11 October 2023.