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Lickd, EMPIRE & Kobalt Bridge Music & Sports in LaLigaLand

The metaverse will never sound the same again. Today marks the official signing of the milestone agreement between leading micro-licencing and music solutions company, Lickd, and music label and publishers EMPIRE and Kobalt Music Group, who are licencing their music catalogues to bring the noise to the open source VR world of Decentraland’s Vegas City.
After news broke in late 2022 of a ‘first-of-its-kind’ metaverse partnership for Lickd, the company acted fast to build a ‘metaverse enabled’ player and to curate ‘background’ and ‘featured’ music for it with both EMPIRE and Kobalt’s catalogues, amongst others. The music player is called ‘Chorus’ and is available across all venues and public spaces in the Vegas City district, delivering hundreds of genre and mood specific playlists into the city’s attractions.
Launching in the LaLigaLand venue in Vegas City, Lickd will look to bridge the entertainment worlds of music and sport. After announcing its presence in the metaverse, the new zone, associated with the world renowned Spanish football league ‘LaLiga’, will see a new take on fan engagement. LaLigaLand will tap into a Gen-Z audience with the development of a series of LaLiga-themed land parcels related to the activity of the ongoing football league. With music a vital asset to the success of each district, this is an obvious interest area for Lickd as it looks to expand its offering into this land.
Paul Sampson, CEO of Lickd, said: “We’re thrilled that we’ve officially signed with EMPIRE and Kobalt to deliver music to Vegas City, Decentraland. At the heart of everything we do at Lickd is innovation and the synergies between what we, EMPIRE and Kobalt all envisaged being the scalable opportunity for music in the metaverse were clear. They agreed that the industry needs to act quickly and decisively to capitalise on that opportunity and what we’re announcing today is evidence of that. The growing popularity of the metaverse is inevitable and we continue to lead by example and deliver new offerings to our partners, customers and metaverse users alike.”
Lickd is a micro-licensing, music solutions business that already offers over a million songs from independent and major labels and publishers, pre-cleared, to a growing database of 130,000 existing social video content creators for UGC. Lickd’s new product, Chorus, seeks to provide a similar level of access to music to creators in the metaverse, enabling brands and venues of all descriptions to create as high quality user experience as their users deserve. Partnering with EMPIRE and Kobalt from the off ensures that Chorus has world class partners from day one and that their music will be heard across the Vegas City district and beyond.
Derek Cournoyer, VP, Global Digital Partnerships & Emerging Media at Kobalt Music Group said, “As community building further transcends physical boundaries, music will continue to play a vital role in shaping shared experiences. We’re thrilled to join forces with Lickd to help ensure that our songwriters, publishing clients, and their music thrive in this burgeoning digital universe of creation and experiences.”
Ghazi, CEO and Founder of EMPIRE said, “EMPIRE prides itself on being an early adopter of new technology and culture, whether that’s in the physical world or the ever expanding digital landscape. Lickd has identified a problem and built a solution that allows us to bring our music and culture to the metaverse in a scalable fashion.”
As owners of the largest entertainment areas in Decentraland, Vegas City continues to dominate metaverse offerings, with new venues popping up at a lightning pace. All of the areas, including LaLigaLand, will have music delivered by Lickd, curated by genre, theme and mood to suit the experience. With the support of EMPIRE & Kobalt under its belt, Lickd’s ambitious route map to reach more realms of the metaverse with music includes tapping into new districts as they appear in a world that continues to grow in popularity.
James Ashton, CEO of Vegas City said, It is exciting to think that people from around the globe can meet in the Metaverse and hang out virtually to a backdrop of awesome music like they do every day in the physical world and we are delighted to roll this out in LaLigaLand and make it the first project in Decentraland to have this great service for the players of this gamified experience.
Lickd’s groundbreaking work with EMPIRE & Kobalt Music Group adds to a history of notable industry partnerships, with a portfolio including Warner Music Group, Epic Games and Universal Music Group.
Gaming and Entertainment Europe
Fractured Sanity released on Steam and Meta Quest – Dive into an intense VR horror experience

Brazilian Studio United Games is thrilled to announce the release of their horror VR adventure game Fractured Sanity. The team was going full steam to make the last changes to the game and add language options before today’s launch on Steam and Meta Quest’s App Lab.
“We’ve added Portuguese, Spanish and Simplified Chinese to the language options, and there’s an exciting new trailer out to get people pumped. We’re working day and night to iron out the kinks – we’re all very excited and focused on making the game more accessible!” – Gabriel Marques, Co-creator of Fractured Sanity
UPCOMING PICO 4 SUPPORT
Not only that, but the team has received an exciting new task: they’ve confirmed the game will be supported on the PICO4 platform, which along with the new language options, marks an expansion into the Chinese market. The release date for the PICO 4 version has yet to be announced, but VR and horror fans can expect it soon after today’s release on Steam VR and Meta Quest.
“We’re super stoked that the Chinese market has demonstrated interest in the game. Guess everybody likes horror games!” – Gustavo Longhi, Co-creator of Fractured Sanity
Fractured Sanity is a single-player game developed exclusively for VR where all mechanics and puzzles are realistic and interactive. In this survival horror game, you will engage in a thrilling story and uncover the dark truth about the psychiatric clinic runned by Dr. Simmons who has been conducting research into how to break someone’s id, ego and superego apart.
Fractured Sanity is looking better than ever, with an amount of detail that will leave players of all kinds immersed, tense, intrigued and – of course – trembling with fear!
Check out Fractured Sanity’s new launch trailer:
Get Fractured Sanity on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1954840/Fractured_Sanity/
Get Fractured Sanity on Oculus App Lab: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/5347273738669610/
Artificial Intelligence
XLA REVEALS ‘METASITES’ 3D INTERNET FRAMEWORK

XLA, a community-driven organization of video game and entertainment industry professionals, will today announce ‘Metasites’; a modular 3D internet framework leveraging metaverse, cloud, and AI technologies.
Funded with an initial $100M USD, XLA Metasites empowers users to transform virtual worlds by creating unique content. XLA Chief Product Officer Alexey Savchenko will present a demo of Metasites at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this afternoon during a panel called “Emerging Approaches: What the Metaverse can teach us about Social and Narrative Design through Synthetic Media”.
The presentation will reveal Metasites’ high fidelity graphics, core experience, instant access to the system in the cloud through the browser, OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 integration powering non-active characters and their behavior, virtual assistant IVEE, ability to semantically analyze text and generate 3D scenes in UE5, and many other features. Metasites allows creators to deploy Unreal Engine 5 content and connect to the XLA ecosystem of features and services.
“We call them Metasites, and the idea here is that every one of these locations is part of an infinite network of 3D, explorable spaces. Like hyperlinks, portals connect these worlds, and the core infrastructure operates on a series of open protocols and standards – much like today’s web,” Savchenko will say. “We strongly believe that the future of the internet is in 3D and are looking to partner up with creators and brands from all spheres and industries to build it together.”
Access to Metasites for individual creators and enterprise clients will be based on a revenue share model, providing every user full control and management of their content. Users can access virtual assets and various tools, including a versatile SDK, experiences editor, inventory and item management system, payment processing, marketing tools, and more. XLA also aims to provide a seamlessly interoperable encounter related to digital items – with various functionalities connected to inventory objects within different environments.
“What we’re creating,” Savchenko will say, “is an evolution of the internet and new form of storytelling – authors shaping worlds that create their agency, presence, and stories, accessible across multiple platforms. It’s not about bringing games to new audiences. It’s about making it easier to communicate, educate, commerce, play, and create while being justly rewarded for your actions.”
Metasites will be revealed at GDC at 4:40 PM PDT in Room 24, West Hall, Moscone Center, alongside Hexagram Founder and CEO Rob Auten. The framework is set for closed beta in summer 2023, with enterprise and creators programs opening next quarter and full commercial release expected in Q4 2023.
Gaming and Entertainment Europe
Leading Metaverse Game, Runiverse, Announces Collaboration With Polygon

Runiverse, a leading metaverse gaming platform, has announced its collaboration with Polygon to deliver an unmatched gaming experience to players. The announcement is the first step in Runiverse’s roadmap to bring exciting developments and events to the Polygon community.
Runiverse, powered by their utility token $RUNY, combines blockchain gaming with crypto knowledge, requiring players to understand how the crypto market is performing and then act accordingly to win. Gamers can translate their crypto knowledge into tangible rewards through fast-paced and dynamic gameplay that blends luck, strategy, and creativity. The platform leverages real-time data from Binance, offering a run-to-earn experience where players’ speed is determined by market performance. Players can earn rewards through rallies and by holding Runiverse’s Player Skins and Tracks NFTs.
Polygon blockchain, the leading Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, has been a driving force in Web3, providing scalable, affordable, secure, and sustainable blockchain infrastructure. Polygon has recently been the blockchain of choice for industry leaders such as The Walt Disney Company, Reddit, Starbucks, Meta, and more due to the low fees, fast transactions, and interoperability with other blockchains such as Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum.
“We believe that gaming is more than just entertainment, and it can drive blockchain adoption and innovation. With Polygon’s support, we plan to expand our reach and provide players with an innovative ecosystem that fosters creativity and community.” Said Gip Cutrino, COO of Runiverse.
The collaboration between Runiverse and Polygon signals the commitment to bring new events and opportunities to the Gamefi community, contributing to the growth and adoption of Web3 gaming.
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