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Three more high-profile leaders have left gaming giant Activision Blizzard, including some from new game Diablo 4.

Diablo director Luis Barriga and designer Jesse McCree have both departed, as has Jonathan LeCraft, a designer on World of Warcraft.

It follows the resignation of president J Allen Brack and other executives in the wake of allegations of widespread sexual harassment at the company.

No reason has been given for the three most recent departures.

News of their leaving was first reported by gaming news site Kotaku, and later confirmed by Activision Blizzard.

It follows the filing of a legal case by the state of California against Activision Blizzard, which alleges widespread discrimination and sexual harassment at the firm.

Blizzard initially rejected the allegations as “distorted, and in many cases false”. Following internal and external criticism, some senior management softened that language, issuing statements that the initial response had been “tone deaf” and promising an investigation.

None of the three most recent departures were named in the California legal case.

In a statement, Activision Blizzard said: “We can confirm Luis Barriga, Jesse McCree, and Jonathan LeCraft are no longer with the company.”

But it is not clear why the three have suddenly departed.

Mr McCree – who shares a name with the popular cowboy character in Blizzard’s multiplayer shooter Overwatch – was allegedly aware of the infamous “Cosby suite” detailed in the sexual harassment lawsuit, according to photos and text exchanges obtained by Kotaku in July.

Alongside Mr LeCraft, he seems to appear in a photograph of several developers posing with a photo of Bill Cosby – the actor who, years after that photo was taken, was convicted of sexual assault before having that conviction overturned.

Mr Barriga does not appear in the controversial photograph.

The loss of two significant leaders from Diablo 4 may pose problems for the game, which is widely seen as an important forthcoming title for Blizzard. The company has seen declining player numbers across its existing titles in recent years.

Blizzard directly addressed such concerns in its statement.

“We have a deep, talented roster of developers already in place and new leaders have been assigned where appropriate,” it said.

“We are confident in our ability to continue [to] progress, deliver amazing experiences to our players, and move forward to ensure a safe, productive work environment for all.”

Beijing prosecutors have filed a civil legal action against Tencent over claims its messaging-app WeChat’s Youth Mode does not comply with laws protecting minors.

Youth Mode prevents younger users from accessing payments, playing certain games and finding nearby friends.

However, prosecutors have not specified exactly how the app is allegedly violating Chinese law.

Tencent said it would “investigate” the claim.

“We will earnestly inspect and check the functions of WeChat Youth Mode, accept user suggestions humbly and sincerely respond to civil public-interest litigation,” the company posted on Weibo.

WeChat, known as Weixin in China, has about 1.26 billion monthly active users.

Tencent shares slide after Beijing music crackdown
Last week, Chinese authorities called for minors to be better protected from online dangers, with a state-media article labelling games as “spiritual opium”.

Tencent’s share price fell by more than 10% shortly after the article was published.

And it swiftly announced stricter limits for younger players of its hugely popular game Honour of Kings.

Young players can now access the game for only an hour a day on weekdays.

Play time in China was previously capped at:

90 minutes on weekdays
three hours on weekends and holidays
The mobile title has more than 100 million users worldwide.

In April, it was reported Chinese authorities were preparing a substantial fine for Tencent as part of its efforts to clamp down on internet giants.

Scotland has left the final level of coronavirus restrictions.

Level zero ended at midnight with almost all of the remaining anti-Covid measures now removed.

The legal requirement for physical distancing has stopped in most places and hospitality venues are now allowed to open at full capacity. Large outdoor gatherings can now go ahead.

But the health secretary urged caution, warning the public “the virus is still with us”.

First minister Nicola Sturgeon announced at her last update that Monday 9 August would see almost all restrictions lifted.

On Friday it was also revealed that children under 12 would no longer have to wear face coverings.

The restrictions which remain are:

the requirement to wear face coverings indoors in public places and on public transport
pupils and teachers must continue wearing masks indoors for up to six weeks after schools return
school staff must keep at least 1m distance from each other and from children and young people while on the school estate
2m distancing should still be observed in healthcare settings
office workers should still work from home, where possible
details still need to be given at hospitality venues for test and protect
There are also new rules on self-isolation for close contacts of positive cases.

Double-vaccinated adults and all children can now avoid self-isolation if identified as a close contact so long as they are symptomless and provide a negative PCR test.

Whole classes in schools will no longer have to stay at home if an infection is discovered, although children and adults who are higher-risk close contacts will be told to isolate.

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The new rules also signal the return of outdoor events of more than 5,000 people and indoor events of more than 2,000 – but they must apply for permission from local authorities and the government to go ahead.

On Saturday, Ms Sturgeon said that Scotland was in a “much better position” with Covid-19 than could have been expected at the start of summer, but she also urged Scots to “continue to take sensible precautions” despite many of the legal coronavirus rules being lifted.

‘Enjoy yourself but be sensible’
Health Secretary Humza Yousaf also urged caution.

On Sunday, he said the Scottish government was reluctant to use the term “freedom day” because Covid was “still here”.

He told BBC Scotland News: “Today is a really important day. People have been living with the harshest restrictions in their personal lives that any of us will ever remember, and they have been doing so on and off for 17-18 months.

“It has been really challenging for people, so I would enjoy this day but also please remember that the virus is still with us.

“That’s why you’ll have to continue to wear face masks in indoor settings and continue to give your details in terms of test and protect when you go to hospitality. Enjoy yourself but continue to be sensible.”

Nightclubs are now able to open for the first time since the pandemic began.

Caroline Campbell, director of the Ironworks venue in Inverness, was looking forward to welcoming back staff and customers.

She said: “It has been a very long 18 months, not just for businesses in our industry but all businesses having to operate under restrictions.

“I am very much looking forward to opening my front door again and having my staff back. But everybody knows that Covid is not over and some limited restrictions will still be in place for a period of time.”

‘Rush of promoters’
She said there had been “a rush” of promoters confirming dates at the music venue and they were starting to put tickets on sale for shows. They also had to re-stock to deal with a venue at full capacity.

The end of social distancing means public transport can carry its full number of passengers again – this will be welcomed by Scotland’s ferries which have been running at well below the normal capacity.

It also means many venues and attractions which could not operate within the rules can now reopen. And those that were running limited services are easing their own restrictions.

Apple is facing criticism over a new system that finds child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on US users’ devices.

The technology will search for matches of known CSAM before the image is stored onto iCloud Photos.

But there are concerns that the technology could be expanded and used by authoritarian governments to spy on its own citizens.

WhatsApp head Will Cathcart called Apple’s move “very concerning”.

Apple said that new versions of iOS and iPadOS – due to be released later this year – will have “new applications of cryptography to help limit the spread of CSAM online, while designing for user privacy”.

The system will report a match which is then manually reviewed by a human. It can then take steps to disable a user’s account and report to law enforcement.

The company says that the new technology offers “significant” privacy benefits over existing techniques – as Apple only learns about users’ photos if they have a collection of known child sex abuse material in their iCloud account.

But WhatsApp’s Mr Cathcart says the system “could very easily be used to scan private content for anything they or a government decides it wants to control. Countries where iPhones are sold will have different definitions on what is acceptable”.

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He argues that WhatsApp’s system to tackle child sexual abuse material has reported more than 400,000 cases to the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children without breaking encryption.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, has also criticised the move, labelling it “a fully-built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change”.

But some politicians have welcomed Apple’s development.

Sajid Javid, UK Health Secretary, said it was time for others, especially Facebook, to follow suit.

US Senator Richard Blumenthal also praised Apple’s move, calling it a “welcome, innovative and bold step”.

“This shows that we can protect children and our fundamental privacy rights,” he added.

Video-sharing platform TikTok is trialling a new vanishing clips feature similar to functions on Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram.

TikTok Stories will allow users to see content posted by accounts they follow for 24 hours before they are deleted.

It comes as WhatsApp rolls out a feature for users to post photos or videos that vanish after they are seen.

This week rival social media platform Twitter shut down its Fleets disappearing stories feature.

TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, told the BBC: “We’re always thinking about new ways to bring value to our community and enrich the TikTok experience.”

“Currently we’re experimenting with ways to give creators additional formats to bring their creative ideas to life for the TikTok community,” the spokesperson added.

The feature was highlighted by social media consultant Matt Navarra, who shared screenshots of TikTok Stories on Twitter.

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TikTok is the latest major social media platform to experiment with the feature first made popular by Snapchat.

The news comes as Facebook-owned WhatsApp rolls out a function that allows its users to have photos or videos vanish after they are seen.

In the “view once” feature, an image is deleted after the recipient opens it for the first time and doesn’t save to a phone.

WhatsApp said the feature was aimed at “giving users even more control over their privacy”.

However, child protection advocates have expressed concerns that automatically vanishing messages could help cover up evidence of child sexual abuse.

On 3 August, Twitter discontinued its Fleets function which allowed users to post photos and videos that disappeared after 24 hours.

Fleets was first announced in March last year in response to the popularity of Snapchat and Instagram Stories.

In the eight months that Fleets was available, Twitter added a number of new features, including GIFs, stickers and different coloured text.

However, the feature did not become as widely used as the company had hoped.

Chinese electric car maker Li Auto has said it plans to raise as much as $1.9bn (£1.4bn) in a secondary listing of its shares in Hong Kong.

Shares in the Tesla rival are already traded on the Nasdaq stock market in New York.

Li Auto is the latest Chinese company to raise money closer to its home country in recent months.

The move comes as Chinese firms listed in the US face increasing scrutiny by Beijing and Washington.

The six-year old Chinese start-up said it would issue 100 million shares in the Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) at a maximum price of HK$150 (£13.85; $19.30) per share.

The firm, which is also known as Li Xiang, said it will offer 10 million shares to Hong Kong investors, with the balance made available to people around the world.

Final pricing of the shares is due to be announced before the end of this week.

The Beijing-based company raised almost $1.1bn through its Nasdaq listing a year ago.

On Sunday, Li Auto said it delivered 8,589 of its Li One vehicles in July, a monthly record for the firm.

The Li One is the company’s only model currently on the market. It is a plug-in hybrid which has a fuel tank to charge the battery and extend its range although the petrol engine does not directly drive the car’s wheels.

The strong sales numbers come even as a recovery in vehicle sales is threatened by the global chip shortage that has forced many car makers around the world to suspend production.

Secondary listings in Hong Kong are becoming increasingly popular amongst Chinese companies as they try to protect themselves from the fallout of the friction between Beijing and Washington.

On Friday, Wall Street regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission said it will now require extra information from Chinese companies aiming to sell shares in the US.

The announcement came as Beijing intensified oversight of Chinese companies with share listings in the US, as well as tightening its grip on technology and education firms at home.

In recent weeks, shares in ride-hailing app Didi have slumped after China announced a probe into the company and barred it from signing up new customers just days after its New York Stock Exchange debut.

Several Chinese technology giants including Alibaba, NetEase and JD.com have opted to take out secondary listings in recent years.

Last month, one of Li Auto’s competitors Xpeng raised about $1.8bn with a secondary listing of its shares in Hong Kong.

Shares in two of China’s biggest online gaming firms have slipped after a state media outlet called them “electronic drugs”.

Tencent and NetEase shares fell more than 10% in early Hong Kong trade before regaining some of those losses.

Investors are increasingly concerned about Beijing cracking down on firms.

In recent months authorities have announced a series of measures to tighten their grip on technology and private education companies.

An article published by the state-run Economic Information Daily said many teenagers had become addicted to online gaming and it was having a negative impact on them. The news outlet is affiliated with the official Xinhua news agency.

The article cited Tencent’s hugely popular game Honor of Kings, saying students were playing it for up to eight hours a day, and asked for more curbs on the industry.

“No industry, no sport, can be allowed to develop in a way that will destroy a generation,” it said before going on to liken online games to “spiritual opium”.

Tencent did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the BBC.

The company also saw its shares fall last week after being ordered to end exclusive music licensing deals with record labels around the world.

The move was aimed at tackling the technology giant’s dominance of online music streaming in the country – it currently controls more than 80% of China’s exclusive music streaming rights after an acquisition in 2016.

Tencent is only one of a number of Chinese companies listed in the US, Hong Kong and mainland China to see shares fall sharply this year as Beijing clamps down on the country’s technology and education industries.

Last week saw shares in Chinese online tutoring firms slump after they were stripped of the ability to make a profit from teaching core subjects in China.

The new guidelines also restricted foreign investment in the industry.

The major shift in policy came as authorities try to ease the financial pressures of raising children.

Officials have been worried after China’s latest census showed that the birth rate had fallen to the lowest in seven decades.

It is one of the biggest ever overhauls of the country’s $120bn (£87bn) private tutoring sector.

Big tech firms are altering their return-to-work plans for employees, as Covid-19 cases rise in the US – with some stipulating that staff working in the office must be vaccinated.

Google announced that it would delay a return to the office until 18 October.

The company joined Facebook in saying it would require US workers returning to the office to be vaccinated.

Twitter said it would pause office re-opening, closing offices in San Francisco and New York once again.

The two Twitter offices had been operating at up to 50% capacity for staff who wanted to return.

In a statement, the company wrote that it was “continuing to closely monitor local conditions and make necessary changes that prioritise the health and safety of our Tweeps”.

Twitter said it remained committed to giving employees the option to work from home where possible.

Other tech firms have also put back, or changed, return-to-work plans

Apple has reportedly delayed a planned return to on-site working until October.

Amazon has previously announced a three-day-a-week return to work for “corporate” staff, in a seeming shift of policy.

It comes as the US administration struggles with flagging rates of vaccination.

President Biden recently ordered two million federal employees to show proof of vaccination or be subject to mandatory testing and mask-wearing.

Some tech firms are now taking a similar stance.

In an email to all employees on Wednesday, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said the firm would extend a global, voluntary, work-from-home policy through to 18 October.

In addition, the email said “anyone coming to work on our campuses will need to be vaccinated”.

The policy will be rolled out in the US, and later expand to other regions.

The Google boss said its implementation of the policy would vary according to local conditions and regulations, and would only apply once vaccines are widely available in an area. More details would be forthcoming about exemptions for medical and other “protected” reasons, he added.

Facebook has also announced that it would “require” US staff returning to offices to be vaccinated.

In a statement, Facebook vice president Lori Goler wrote: “We will have a process for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and will be evaluating our approach in other regions as the situation evolves.

Ms Goler said the company’s return-to-office plans would “prioritise everyone’s health and safety”.

A computer key that can unlock the files of hundreds of companies which were hacked in a large-scale cyber-attack has been obtained.

US IT firm Kaseya – which was the first to be targeted earlier this month – said it got the key from a “trusted third party”.

Ransomware is malicious software that steals computer data and scrambles it so the victim cannot gain access.

The hackers then ask for payment in return for releasing the files.

Kaseya’s decryptor key will allow customers to retrieve missing files, without paying the ransom.

The company’s spokeswoman Dana Liedholm declined to answer whether Kaseya had paid for access to the key.

She told tech blog Bleeping Computer that the firm was actively helping customers restore their files.

The “supply chain” attack initially targeted Kaseya, before spreading through corporate networks which use its software.

Kaseya estimated that between 800 and 1,500 businesses were affected, including 500 Swedish Coop supermarkets and 11 schools in New Zealand.

After the attack at the beginning of July, criminal ransomware gang REvil demanded $70m worth of Bitcoin in return for a key that would unlock the stolen files.

But members of the group disappeared from the internet in the days following the incident, leaving companies with no way of retrieving the data until now.

Who is the mystery gifter?

That’s the big question in the cyber-security world at the moment.

But really it is irrelevant for two reasons.

Firstly, giving away the key now is far too late for most of the victims of this massive ransomware attack.

The most desperate companies would have paid the gang already to get their operations back online, and others would hopefully be on their way to recovering by now without the help of the criminals.

Secondly, the mystery gifter was most probably linked to – or working with – the criminals directly.

It seems improbable that a well-run and experienced cyber-crime group like REvil would have accidentally leaked its most prized possession, or had it taken by some sort of secret law enforcement operation.

I’m told by a hacker who claims to be a part of the inner circle that it was “a trusted partner” who gave the key away on behalf of the group’s leader, who calls himself Unknown.

My contact says it’s all part of “a new beginning”.

So while some are calling this the end of the REvil group, it could well be the start of something else.

Mark Zuckerberg has laid out his vision to transform Facebook from a social media network into a “metaverse company” in the next five years.

A metaverse is an online world where people can game, work and communicate in a virtual environment, often using VR headsets.

The Facebook CEO described it as “an embodied internet where instead of just viewing content – you are in it”.

He told The Verge people shouldn’t live through “small, glowing rectangles”.

“That’s not really how people are made to interact,” he said, speaking of reliance on mobile phones.

“A lot of the meetings that we have today, you’re looking at a grid of faces on a screen. That’s not how we process things either.”

‘Infinite office’
One application of the metaverse he gave was being able to jump virtually into a 3D concert after initially watching on a mobile phone screen.

“You feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness,” he said.

Facebook is also working on an “infinite office” that lets users create their ideal workplace through VR.

“In the future, instead of just doing this over a phone call, you’ll be able to sit as a hologram on my couch, or I’ll be able to sit as a hologram on your couch, and it’ll actually feel like we’re in the same place, even if we’re in different states or hundreds of miles apart,” he said. “I think that is really powerful.”

Facebook has invested heavily in virtual reality, spending $2bn (£1.46bn) on acquiring Oculus, which develops its VR products.

In 2019, it launched Facebook Horizon – an invitation-only immersive environment where users can mingle and chat in a virtual space with a cartoon avatar through Oculus headsets.

Zuckerberg admitted current VR headsets were “a bit clunky” and needed improving for people to work in them all day.

But he argued that Facebook’s metaverse would be “accessible across… different computing platforms” including VR, AR (augmented reality), PC, mobile devices and games consoles.

Metaverse origins
The concept of a metaverse is popular with tech companies who believe it could be a new 3D internet, connecting digital worlds where people hang out in virtual reality.

Its origins come from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, where it served as a virtual-reality-based successor to the internet.

Tech firms have tried to implement metaverse elements in popular games including Animal Crossing, Fortnite and Roblox.

This includes planning live events such as concerts and tournaments where millions of players can interact from around the globe.

Behavioural data
“Part of the reason Facebook is so heavily invested in VR/AR is that the granularity of data available when users interact on these platforms is an order of magnitude higher than on screen-based media,” Verity McIntosh, a VR expert at the University of the West of England, told the BBC.

“Now it’s not just about where I click and what I choose to share, it’s about where I choose to go, how I stand, what I look at for longest, the subtle ways that I physically move my body and react to certain stimuli. It’s a direct route to my subconscious and that is gold to a data capitalist.

“It seems unlikely that Facebook will have an interest in changing a business model that has served them so well to prioritise user privacy or to give users any meaningful say in how their behavioural data in the ‘metaverse’ will be used.”

Tech giants like Facebook defining and colonising the space, while traditional governance structures struggle to keep up with the technological change could cause further issues, she added.