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Monopoly

Harry Potter Monopoly Is Nearly 50% Off In Amazon's Early Big Deal Days Sale
Game Updates

Harry Potter Monopoly Is Nearly 50% Off In Amazon’s Early Big Deal Days Sale

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This remixed take on the iconic board game features characters, locations, and artwork from the Harry Potter books and movies. It supports 2-6 players and is recommended for kids 8 and up. The six metal player tokens include the Hogwarts Express, Hagrid’s Motorbike, The Knight Bus, Hippogriff, Thestral, and Firebolt.

Harry Potter Monopoly retains the core premise and progression of the classic game with some Wizarding World-themed modifications. Instead of paper money, players vie for points for their Hogwarts House: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff.

As players make their way around the board, they can use House Points to acquire familiar locations from around Hogwarts Castle, Hogsmeade Village, Diagon Alley, and other notable spots such as Malfoy Manor and the Dursley home on Privet Drive. House Crests can be added to properties to increase rent. Hogwarts House Common Rooms serve as railroads, but surprisingly the jail isn’t named Azkaban.

Owl Post cards replace both Chance and Community Chest cards. Each card is designed to look like a letter sent from Hogwarts by owl. The cards are held on a custom stand with a Hedwig figurine.



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Monopoly: Pokemon Edition Is Back In Stock And Only $20 At Amazon
Game Updates

Monopoly: Pokemon Edition Is Back In Stock And Only $20 At Amazon

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The popular Pokemon-themed edition of the classic board game Monopoly is back in stock and discounted to $20 (was $25) at Amazon. Released last December, Monopoly: Pokemon Edition has rarely been discounted below its budget-friendly $25 MSRP. Theo $20 price is very close to the all-time low of $18.74, and that deal sold out fast when Amazon had it in July. You can also get this deal at Walmart and Target.

If you’re interested in this deal, you may want to snag it soon. Pokemon Monopoly is regularly on Amazon’s top charts for board games at full price, so this could sell out (again).

$20 (was $25)

In Monopoly: Pokemon Edition, instead of buying and collecting property with Monopoly Money, 2-4 players use Poke Balls to search for Pokemon on locations around the board. The goal is to catch eight types of Pokemon or be the last trainer with any Poke Balls left in their inventory. Along with a colorful board featuring locations from the series, you’ll get adorable miniature figures of Pikachu, Sprigatito, Fuecoco, and Quaxly to use as the game pieces.

It’s not all too surprising that this edition of Pokemon Monopoly has been extremely popular. What is somewhat surprising, however, is that sold for only $25 out of the gate. Licensed editions of Monopoly based on huge media franchises routinely sell for $40.

Monopoly: Pokemon Edition (Hasbro Gaming)

This isn’t the first time Hasbro and The Pokemon Company have joined forces to release a Pokemon-themed edition of Monopoly. Earlier editions of the game are out of print and only available from resellers. Monopoly: Pokemon Kanto Edition is $45 at Amazon and features metal tokens of Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Eevee, and Jigglypuff. Over at Walmart, you can buy Monopoly: Pokemon Johto Edition for $58. This one also includes six metal game pieces: Pikachu, Totodile, Togepi, Chikorita, Cyndaquil, and Pichu.

For another themed version of a classic board game, check out Ravensburger’s Pokemon Labyrinth. Your goal is to navigate through an ever-shifting maze to track down various Pokemon. Matches are quick at around 30 minutes, and you can compete against up to three other players. A cool glow-in-the-dark version of Pokemon Labyrinth launched last fall. Both editions retail for $30.

And if you’re interested in learning the ropes of the Pokemon Trading Card Game, there are three very reasonably priced editions of Pokemon Battle Academy, each of which comes with multiple decks and offers a great way for kids (and adults!) to get started with the TCG.



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Tencent accuses Sony of seeking a "monopoly on genre conventions" as it responds to Light of Motiram copyright lawsuit
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Tencent accuses Sony of seeking a “monopoly on genre conventions” as it responds to Light of Motiram copyright lawsuit

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Tencent is disputing Sony’s claims that its upcoming game Light of Motiram is a “slavish clone” of its tentpole Horizon series, claiming the latter is not “fighting off piracy, plagiarism, or any genuine threat to intellectual property” but is instead attempting to “transform ubiquitous genre ingredients into proprietary assets.”

Back in July, Sony filed a copyright lawsuit against Tencent. In court papers filed at the time, Sony demanded a jury trial for copyright and trademark infringement and to prevent the “imminent” release of Tencent’s upcoming title, accusing it of “rip[ping] off” Horizon lead Aloy, “deliberatedly causing numerous game lovers to confuse Light of Motiram as the next game in the Horizon series with encountering Tencent’s promotional game play videos and social media accounts.” Shortly thereafter, Tencent made several changes to Light of Motiram’s Steam page and its promotional art.

Now, as spotted by The Game Post, Tencent claims Light of Motiram is merely making use of “time-honored” tropes that are outside “Sony’s exclusive domain,” calling Sony’s copyright claims “startling.”

“Plaintiff Sony has sued a grab-bag of Tencent companies – and ten unnamed defendants – about the unreleased video game Light of Motiram, alleging that the game copies elements from Sony’s game Horizon Zero Dawn and its spinoffs,” Tencent’s lawyers wrote.

“At bottom, Sony’s effort is not aimed at fighting off piracy, plagiarism, or any genuine threat to intellectual property. It is an improper attempt to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture and declare it Sony’s exclusive domain.”

The court papers further assert that Horizon Zero Dawn’s art director, Jan-Bart Van Beek, suggested in a documentary that the game’s premise was not original, and referenced 2013’s Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

“Long before this lawsuit was filed, the developers of Horizon Zero Dawn publicly acknowledged that the very same game elements that, today, Sony claims to own exclusively, were in fact borrowed from an earlier game.

“Sony’s Complaint tellingly ignores these facts. Instead, it tries to transform ubiquitous genre ingredients into proprietary assets,” Tencent added. “By suing over an unreleased project that merely employs the same time-honored tropes embraced by scores of other games released both before and after Horizon — like Enslaved, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Far Cry: Primal, Far Cry: New Dawn, Outer Wilds, Biomutant, and many more — Sony seeks an impermissible monopoly on genre conventions.”

Tencent also dismissed Sony’s claims its representatives pitched a Horizon mobile game at GDC in 2024, and states Sony is suing the wrong companies as “none of the served defendants develop and market the Light of Motiram video game that Sony alleges infringes its intellectual property in the Horizon franchise.” It also claimed that it cannot be sued for a game that has a release window of Q4 2027 and not yet released.

For more on Tencent, check out our feature, Behind the scenes at Tencent.



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End of VC monopoly: How crypto crowdfunding disrupts
NFT Gaming

End of VC monopoly: How crypto crowdfunding disrupts

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Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

Crypto crowdfunding platforms are breaking venture capital’s hold, giving both institutions and communities a bigger role in funding web3.

Summary

  • Platforms like CoinList and Republic have raised over $1b for projects including Solana, Filecoin, and Flow, reaching nearly 10m users.
  • SocialFi-driven models such as Kaito and Pump.fun show how reputation and virality can power token fundraising.
  • SeedList pushes further by replacing VC allocations with AI-driven, merit-based participation from KOLs, exchanges, and retail investors.

For decades, venture capital firms held an iron grip on technology funding. In crypto especially, their allocations often arrived with steep discounts and lockups, sidelining retail investors and narrowing access. Today, however, that dominance is eroding. Large web3 startups are increasingly bypassing the traditional VC path in favor of institutional and community-driven crowdfunding platforms that are proving more scalable, more transparent, and often more effective.

Institutional-grade crypto crowdfunding platforms like CoinList and Republic now count close to 10 million users between them and together hold valuations exceeding $10 billion as of their most recent raises. Since 2017, they’ve facilitated over 30 projects, helping secure more than $1 billion and propelling well-known names such as Solana, Filecoin, and Flow. These venues don’t just provide funding, they also bring massive communities into blockchains, create global visibility, and compress the timeline for projects to reach genuine network effects.

Oversubscribed offerings, stronger contribution frameworks, and growing frustration with opaque VC allocations that frequently leave retail investors out are accelerating the shift. With more than 100 token sales projected in the latter half of 2025 and into 2026, large-scale crypto crowdfunding is solidifying as a credible pathway for token launches aiming for top-100 CoinMarketCap status.

Mega launches set the tone

Recent cycles have shown how expansive, multi-platform crowdfunding can propel a project forward.

WalletConnect’s WCT token secured $10 million across multiple venues, including Bitget’s Launch X, CoinList, and Cobie’s Echo, in one of the year’s largest multi-platform raises.

CoinList, originally spun out of AngelList, hosted sales such as Obol, Bitlayer, and DoubleZero, using a karma-based rewards mechanism to allocate participation.

Republic, backed by Galaxy Digital, surpassed $120 million raised through its launchpad.

Echo rolled out its modular Sonar framework, enabling compliance-ready, self-hosted sales customized for early-stage ventures.

These launches highlight a move away from small, insular rounds toward global, community-first campaigns where thousands of contributors, not just a handful of funds, lay the groundwork.

SocialFi and the rise of community-centered crowdfunding

While institutional launchpads demonstrate compliance and scale, SocialFi platforms reveal how reputation, engagement, and virality increasingly shape fundraising. They show that who you are and how you participate can matter as much as the size of your check.

Kaito Capital Launchpad pioneered reputation-based allocations combined with AI analytics. Its debut sale, Espresso, applied allocation caps, staged vesting, and redirected platform fees via the KAITO token, now listed on Binance and valued at close to $300m.

Pump.fun, built on Solana, showcased the raw pull of virality, enabling thousands of meme-token launches that spread across social channels before exchanges caught on. Controversial or not, it proved that attention alone can power fundraising. The PUMP token climbed to nearly $3 billion in market cap without any centralized exchange listing.

Together, these SocialFi experiments foreshadow a landscape where token distribution relies less on passive capital and more on influence, community momentum, and active participation.

Beyond SocialFi: The death of the VC?

If Kaito and Pump.fun showed the potential of SocialFi dynamics, one project is pushing even further. SeedList, based in Singapore, seeks to remove venture capital entirely, reallocating those shares to KOLs, ecosystem funds, centralized exchanges, and retail micro-influencers.

Instead of lotteries or staking minimums, SeedList uses AI-powered, merit-based allocation that weighs technical contributions, KOL reach, and community engagement. By rewarding active participants, especially from underserved non-U.S. markets, it aims to build a fairer, more global model.

SeedList’s design builds on but diverges from CoinList and Republic. As co-founder Brijesh Patel explained at a closed investor session:

“The days of the old-school VC firm are numbered. In crypto, there are simply better options. We can provide projects with the same industry connections and capital, plus stronger community and global brand reach, with far less time wasted by founders doing pitches and sitting in board meetings. For contributors, we can give larger allocations, more ownership, and better interaction with the projects they want to support. In fact, by removing passive venture capital and reallocating it to strategic partners, exchanges, and retail microinfluencers, we believe launches can be five to ten times more impactful in market value, blockchain adoption, and brand reach.”

SeedList is supported by experienced crypto builders and investors. Brijesh Patel is a former partner at Pronomos Capital, backed by Marc Andreessen (a16z), Balaji Srinivasan (Coinbase’s CTO), the Winklevoss twins (Gemini; from the early Facebook era), and Naval Ravikant (founder of AngelList, parent of CoinList). Rosa Pagani, another co-founder, is CEO of WhiteBIT Australia, part of Europe’s major exchange WhiteBIT Global, which has over 8 million users.

CryptoSheldon, a longtime Solana ecosystem developer and advisor, emphasized the philosophical drive behind the project:

“Crypto venture capital has evolved to benefit only a privileged few. We want to fix that. Our goal is to reward everyone in the crypto value chain: developers, advisors, exchanges like Bybit and Binance, ecosystem foundations like Solana and Avalanche, and influencers like Mr. Beast who can reach tens of millions on YouTube or X. Even microinfluencers and retail investors can push adoption forward if given a seat at the table and an incentive to get the word out.”

He continued: “Platforms like Echo and Kaito already proved this dynamic works. Echo sold $500k of WalletConnect in 11 seconds thanks to AI and community momentum. In the years ahead, we believe SeedList, alongside Echo, Kaito, and CoinList, will be the go-to launch path for projects aiming at top-100 status. After decades of inequality in tech investing, it’s time someone addressed what we consider to be the elephant in the room in crypto.”

What comes next

By mid-2025, the boundaries between launchpad, exchange, and venture firm are blurring. Both institutional and SocialFi crowdfunding models are integrating compliance, analytics, and liquidity, allowing projects to raise significant sums while cultivating engaged global user bases.

Several notable token launches are already lined up for Q3–Q4 2025, including DePIN networks, AI-native protocols, and L2 infrastructure. With smarter distribution models and a stronger focus on real participation, 2026 may mark a decisive turn: crowdfunding, not venture capital, could become the default route for ambitious crypto founders.

And leading that shift are CoinList, Republic, Echo, Kaito, Pump.fun and, if its bold experiment pays off, SeedList.

Disclosure: This content is provided by a third party. Neither crypto.news nor the author of this article endorses any product mentioned on this page. Users should conduct their own research before taking any action related to the company.



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Photo: Spencer Platt
Gaming Gear

Newsmax Sues Fox News for Having a ‘Monopoly’ on Right-Wing News

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Conservative news broadcaster Newsmax is suing Fox News, accusing its fellow right-wing network of having engaged in anti-competitive practices.

In an antitrust lawsuit filed in Florida this week, Newsmax accuses Fox of abusing its position at the top of the rightwing media food chain to keep out smaller competitors—namely, itself.

“Fox Corporation has long engaged in an exclusionary scheme to increase and maintain its dominance in the market for U.S. right-leaning pay TV news, resulting in suppression of competition in that market that harms consumers, competition, and Newsmax Broadcasting,” the broadcaster’s complaint states.

Fox obviously disagrees. When reached for comment by Gizmodo, a Fox News spokesperson provided the following comment: “Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers.”

The lawsuit claims that, were it not for “Fox’s anticompetitive behavior,” Newsmax would have “achieved greater pay TV distribution, seen its audience and ratings grow sooner, gained earlier ‘critical mass’ for major advertisers and become, overall, a more valuable media property.” Newsmax is arguing that Fox has used at least three anti-competitive tactics that include the following:

First, Fox imposes explicit or tacit “no-carry” provisions on distributors, conditioning access to its commercially critical content on distributors’ concession not to carry other right-leaning news channels like Newsmax and others.

Second, it imposes financial penalties on distributors if they carry Newsmax or others by requiring the distributors to carry and pay high fees for Fox’s little-watched channels like Fox Business.

Third, Fox inserts a suite of other contractual barriers into its carriage agreements intended to prevent Newsmax and others from competing. These tactics constitute unlawful restraints of trade and flow directly from Fox’s unlawful monopolization of the Right-leaning Pay TV News Market.

The idea that one of Donald Trump’s favorite news broadcasters is suing the other one is pretty amazing. Trump has repeatedly praised Newsmax, including this summer, when he promoted the network on his social media platform, Truth Social. Fox, of course, is Trump’s first love—a love that runs long and deep—despite the fact that Trump recently sued its founder, Rupert Murdoch, over a story published by Murdoch’s other outlet, the Wall Street Journal, which provided alleged details of Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Fox and Newsmax have other things in common other than the president’s love, namely, that they have both faced massive legal troubles for having reported on unsubstantiated claims spread by his followers. Both Fox and Newsmax have faced disastrous lawsuits by election vendors over the networks’ respective roles in spreading voting machine conspiracy theories during the 2020 presidential election. Newsmax has since settled with Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, while Fox recently settled with Dominion.



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Google doesn’t have to sell Chrome, judge in monopoly case rules

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Google will not have to divest its Chrome browser but will have to change some of its business practices, a federal judge has ruled. The ruling comes more than a year after the same judge ruled that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in internet search.

Following the ruling last year, the Department of Justice had proposed that Google should be forced to sell Chrome. But in a 230-page decision, Judge Amit Mehta said the government had “overreached” in its request. “Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment,” Mehta wrote. “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”

Google will, however, no longer be permitted to strike exclusive deals around the distribution of search, Google Assistant, Gemini or Chrome, Mehta ruled. For example, Google can’t require device makers to pre-load its apps in order to get access to the Play Store. It also can’t condition revenue-sharing arrangements on the placement of its apps. But Google will be able to continue to pay partners — like Apple — for pre-loading search and other apps into their products. Mehta said that ending these arrangements could cause “downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers.”

Mehta also ruled that Google will need to share some of its search data with competitors going forward. “Making data available to competitors would narrow the scale gap created by Google’s exclusive distribution agreements and, in turn, the quality gap that followed,” he wrote. The company is not required to hand over data related to its ads.

Mehta’s ruling is largely a win for the search giant, which had argued that divesting Chrome or Android “would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership.” In a statement Tuesday, Google said it had “concerns” about some aspects of the ruling.

“Today’s decision recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information,” the company said. “Now the Court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google services, and will require us to share Search data with rivals. We have concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely.”

The company previously indicated it plans to appeal Mehta’s original decision, but said in June it would wait for a final decision in the case.

Update, September 2, 2025, 4:28PM PT: This post has been updated to add a statement from Google on the ruling.



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Crypto Trends

Elon Musk Sues Apple, OpenAI Over iPhone AI ‘Monopoly’

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In brief

  • Musk’s X Corp. and xAI claim Apple’s exclusive ChatGPT integration gives OpenAI “billions of user prompts” while completely blocking competitors.
  • The lawsuit accuses Apple of manipulating App Store rankings to favor ChatGPT despite Grok ranking second in “Productivity.”
  • Xai and X Corp. are seeking billions in damages and court orders to end the exclusive arrangement.

Elon Musk’s X Corp. and xAI filed a federal antitrust lawsuit Monday against Apple and OpenAI, claiming the tech giants entered an exclusive arrangement that blocks competitors from iPhone AI integration while cementing lopsided dominance in the chatbot market.

The complaint, filed in the Northern District of Texas, seeks “billions” in damages and court orders to end what the plaintiffs call an anticompetitive conspiracy between “two monopolists joining forces to ensure their continued dominance.”

The lawsuit targets Apple’s June 2024 decision to make ChatGPT the exclusive AI chatbot integrated into iOS. 



ChatGPT controls “at least 80 percent” of the generative AI chatbot market while Grok holds only “a few percent” despite claimed superior capabilities, the filing says.

The arrangement gives ChatGPT “exclusive access to billions of user prompts originating from hundreds of millions of iPhones” while shutting out competitors like xAI’s Grok, the firms allege.

“Apple’s exclusive ChatGPT deal has left rivals like Grok unable to match the data scale, and they continue to fall behind,” Midhun Krishna M, MLOps engineer at Juno AI, told Decrypt.

The integration gives OpenAI control of the “largest real-time feedback loop,” he added, ensuring “accuracy and dominance.”

The exclusive integration means iPhone users can receive Siri responses powered by ChatGPT, use AI for photo analysis, and access writing tools, all exclusively through OpenAI’s technology. 

The lawsuit also accuses Apple of manipulating App Store rankings to favor ChatGPT while suppressing competitors. 

Earlier in August, Musk challenged Apple over App Store rankings, questioning why his apps don’t appear in the “Must Have” section despite high rankings.

Despite Grok ranking second in Apple’s “Productivity” category and X ranking first in “News,” neither appears in the prominent “Must-Have Apps” section where ChatGPT is featured, according to the firms.

They also allege Apple delayed approval for Grok app updates and rejected featuring requests, even when new capabilities were added. 

The complaint quotes former Apple App Store director Phillip Shoemaker acknowledging that rankings are often “arbitrary” and that “Apple has struggled with using the App Store as a weapon against competitors.”

Apple fears “super apps” could make iPhones obsolete, threatening its 65 percent U.S. smartphone market share, the filing reads.

OpenAI plans to raise ChatGPT’s premium fee to $44 by 2029, and share revenue with Apple, according to the complaint, which would then collect what it calls “monopoly rents.”

The complaint lists Sherman Act violations such as restraint of trade, monopolization, attempted monopolization, and conspiracy, together with civil conspiracy, unfair competition, and Texas antitrust violations.

X Corp. and xAI are demanding injunctive relief ending the exclusive arrangement and requiring equal integration opportunities for competitors.

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